THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS
A century and a half ago the "Douglas cause" was a subject of hot debate
from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle
and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided
families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it
generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled
the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided
into two hostile camps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of
Lady Jean Douglas, and thus the rightful heir to the estates of his
ducal uncle; the other, protesting with equal warmth and conviction that
he was nothing of the sort.
Dr Johnson was a stalwart in one camp; Boswell in the other. "Sir, sir,"
Johnson said to his friend and biographer, "don't be too severe upon the
gentleman; don't accuse him of a want of filial piety! Lady Jane Douglas
was _not_ his mother." "Whereupon," Boswell says, "he roused my zeal so
much that I took the liberty to tell him that he knew nothing of the
cause, which I most seriously do believe was the case." For seven years
the suit dragged its weary length through the Courts; the evidence for
and against the young man's claim covers ten thousand closely-printed
pages; but although Archibald won the Douglas lands, his paternity
remains to-day as profound a mystery as when George III. was new to his
throne.
Forty years before the curtain rose on this dramatic trial which,
Boswell declares, "shook the security of birthright in Scotland to its
foundation," the Lady Jean, only daughter of James, second Marquess of
Douglas, was one of the fairest maids north of the Tweed--a girl who
combined beauty and a singular charm of manner with such abounding
vitality and strength of character that she did not require her high
rank and royal descent to make her desirable in the eyes of suitors. She
was, moreover, the only sister of the head of her family, the Duke of
Douglas, who seemed little disposed to provide an heir to his vast
estates; and these there seemed more than a fair prospect that she would
one day inherit.
It was thus but natural that many a wooer sought Lady Jean's hand; and
had she cared for coronets she might have had her pick of them. On the
evidence of the man who ultimately became her husband she refused those
of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch and Atholl, the Earls of Hopetoun,
Aberdeen and Panrnure, _cum multis aliis._ However this may be, we know
that she had several love romances; and that one at least nearly led to
the altar while Jean was still a "wee bit lassie." The favoured suitor
was the young Earl of Dalkeith, heir to the Buccleuch Dukedom, a young
man who may have been, as Lady Louisa Stuart described him, "of mean
understanding and meaner habits," but who was at least devoted to her
ladyship, and in many ways a desirable _parti_. The Duchess of Buccleuch
was frankly delighted with the projected marriage of her son with Lady
Jean Douglas, "a young lady whom she had heard much commended before she
saw her, and who since had lost no ground with her"; and, no doubt, the
fair Douglas would have become Dalkeith's Countess had it not been for
the treacherous intervention of Her Grace of Queensberry, whose heart
was set on the Earl marrying her sister-in-law.
The marriage day had actually been fixed when a letter was placed in
Lady Jean's hand, when on her way to the Court--a letter in which the
Earl claimed his release as he no longer loved her. That the letter was
a clever forgery never occurred to Lady Jean, who was so crushed by it
that it is said she fled in disguise to France to hide her shame and her
humiliation. Such was the tragic ending to Lady Jean's first romance,
which gave her such a distrust of man and such a distaste for matrimony
that for thirty years she vowed she would listen to no avowal of love,
however tempting.
During the long period, while youth was slipping from her, Lady Jean
appears to have lived alone at Drumsheugh House, near Edinburgh, where
she made herself highly popular by her affability, admired for her gifts
and graces of mind, and courted for her rank and her lavish
hospitality--paying occasional visits to her brother, the Duke of
Douglas, whose devotion to her was only equalled by the alarm his
eccentric behaviour and his mad fits of jealousy and temper inspired in
her. That the Duke, who is described as "a person of the most wretched
intellect, proud, ignorant, and silly, passionate, spiteful and
unforgiving," was scarcely sane is proved by many a story, one alone of
which is sufficient to prove that his mind must have been unbalanced.
Once when Captain Ker, a distant cousin, was a guest at the castle, he
ventured to remonstrate with his host on allowing his servants,
especially one called Stockbrigg, to rule over him; whereupon
"the poor Duke," to quote Woodrow, "who for many years
had been crazed in his brain, told this familiar, who
persuaded him that such an insult could only be wiped out
in blood. On which the Duke proceeded to Ker's room and
stabbed him as he was sleeping."
It is little wonder that Lady Jean declined to live with a brother who
was thus a slave to his own servants and to a temper so insane; but
although their lives were led apart, and although, among many other mad
delusions, the Duke was convinced that his sister had applied for a
warrant to "confine him as a madman and she to sit down on the estate
and take possession of it," he was generous enough to make her a
liberal allowance, and to promise that, if she married and had children,
"they would heir his estate."
Such was the state of affairs at the time this story really opens. Lady
Jean had carried her aversion to men and matrimony to middle-age, happy
enough in her independence and extravagance; while the Duke, still
unwed, remained a prey to his jealousies, his morbid fancies and his
insensate rages; and it is at this time that Colonel Stewart, the
"villain of the play," makes his appearance on the stage.
Ten years earlier, it is true, John Stewart, of Grandtully, had tried to
repair his shattered fortunes by making love to Lady Jean, who, although
then a woman of nearly forty, was still handsome enough, as he confessed
later, to "captivate my heart at the first sight of her." She was,
moreover (and this was much more to the point), a considerable heiress,
with the vast Douglas estates as good as assured to her. But to the
handsome adventurer Lady Jean turned a deaf ear, as to all her other
suitors; and the "Colonel," who had never won any army rank higher than
that of a subaltern, had to return ignominiously to the Continent, where
for another ten years he picked up a precarious living at the
gaming-tables, by borrowing or by any other low expedient that
opportunity provided to his scheming brain. The Duke of Douglas, who
cordially detested this down-at-heels cousin, called him "one of the
worst of men--a papist, a Jacobite, a gamester, a villain"--and his
career certainly seems to justify this sweeping and scathing
description.
Such was the man who now reappeared to put his fate again to the
test--and this time with such success that, to quote his own words,
"very soon after I had an obliging message from Lady Jean
telling me that, very soon after my leaving Scotland, she
came to know she had done me an injustice, but she would
acknowledge it publicly if I chose. _Enfin_, I was
allowed to visit her as formerly, and in about three
months after she honoured me with her hand."
Was ever wooing and winning so strange, so inexplicable? After refusing
some of the greatest alliances in the land, after turning her back on at
least half-a-dozen coronets, this wilful and wayward woman gives her
hand to the least desirable of all her legion of suitors--a man broken
in fortune and of notorious ill-fame: swashbuckler, gambler and
defaulter; a man, moreover, who was on the verge of old-age, for he
would never see his sixtieth birthday again. The Colonel's motive is
manifest. He had much to gain and nothing to lose by this incongruous
union. But what could have been Lady Jean's motive; and does the sequel
furnish a clue to it? She was deeply in debt, thanks to her long career
of extravagance; and, to crown her misfortune, her brother threatened to
withdraw her annuity. But on the other hand she was still, although
nearly fifty, a good-looking woman, "appearing," we are told, "at least
fifteen years younger than she really was"; and thus might well have
looked for a eligible suitor; while her marriage to a pauper could but
add to her financial embarrassment. There remained the prospect of her
brother's estates, which would almost surely fall to her children if she
had any, if only to keep them out of the hands of the Hamiltons, whom
the Duke detested. And this consideration may have determined her in
favour of this eleventh hour marriage, with its possibilities, however
small, of thus qualifying for a great inheritance.
Thus it was, whatever may be the solution of the mystery, that, one
August day in 1746, Lady Jean was led to the altar by her aged pauper
lover, and a few days later the happy pair landed at Rotterdam, with a
retinue consisting of a Mrs Hewit (Lady Jean's maid) and a couple of
female servants, leaving her ladyship's creditors to wrangle over the
belongings she had left behind at Edinburgh.
From Rheims, to which town the wedding party journeyed, Lady Jean wrote
to her man of business, Mr Haldane:--
"It is mighty certain that my anticipations were never in
the marrying way; and had I not at last been absolutely
certain that my brother was resolved never to marry, I
never should have once thought of doing it; but since
this was his determined, unalterable resolution, I judged
it fit to overcome a natural disinclination and
backwardness, and to put myself in the way of doing
something for a family not the worst in Scotland; and,
therefore, gave my hand to Mr Stewart, the consequence of
which has proved more happy than I could well have
expected."
Such was the unenthusiastic letter Lady Jean wrote on her honeymoon,
assigning as her motive for the marriage a wish "to do something for her
family," which could scarcely be other than to provide heirs to the
Douglas lands--an ambition which to the most sanguine lady of her age
must have seemed sufficiently doubtful of realisation.
Then began a wandering life for the grotesque pair. Rheims, Utrecht,
Geneva, Aix-la-Chapelle, Liège, and many another Continental town appear
in turn on their erratic itinerary, the Colonel travelling as Lady
Jean's _maitre d'hotel_, and never avowed by her as her husband; and at
every place of halting my lady finds fresh victims for her clever tongue
and ingratiating charm of manner, who, in return for her smiles and
flatteries, keep her purse supplied. Now it is young Lord Blantyre who
succumbs to her wiles, and follows her from place to place like a
shadow, drawing large sums from his mother to "lend to my Lady Jean, who
is at a loss by not receiving letters which were to bring her
remittances." Now it is Mr Hay, Mr Dalrymple, or some other susceptible
admirer who obliges her by a temporary loan, and is amply rewarded by
learning from her lips that he is "the man alive I would choose to be
most obliged by." Thus, by a system of adroit flatteries, Lady Jean
keeps the family exchequer so well replenished that she is able to take
about with her a retinue consisting of two maids and a man-cook, in
addition to the indispensable Mrs Hewit; and to ride in her carriage,
while her husband stakes his golden louis on the green cloth and
drinks costly wines.
Even such an astute man of the world as Lord Crawford she makes her
devoted slave, ready at any moment to place his purse and services at
her disposal, to the extent of breaking the news of her marriage to the
Duke, her brother, and begging for his approval and favour; a task which
must have gone considerably against the grain with the proud Scotsman.
"I can assure your Grace," his lordship writes, "she does
great honour to the family wherever she appears, and is
respected and beloved by all that have the honour of her
acquaintance. She certainly merits all the affectionate
marks of an only brother to an only sister."
This appeal, eloquent as it was, only seemed to fan the anger of the
Duke, who, as he read it, declared to the Parish minister who was
present: "Why, the woman is mad.... I once thought, if there was a
virtuous woman in the world, my sister Jeanie was one; but now I am
going to say a thing that I should not say of my own sister--I believe
she is no better than ...; and that I believe there is not a virtuous
woman in the world."
At the very time--so inconsistent was this singular woman--that Lord
Crawford, at her request, was breaking the news of her marriage to her
brother, she was repudiating it indignantly to every person she met. To
Lady Wigton, she declared with tears that it was an "infamous story
raised by Miss Molly Kerr, her cousin, in order to prejudice her brother
against her, and that it had been so effectual that he had stopped her
pension"; and she begged Lady Wigton "when she went to England to
contradict it."
But this nomadic, hand-to-mouth life could not go on indefinitely. The
supply of dupes began to show signs of failing, and in her extremity she
wrote urgent letters to friends in England and Scotland for supplies;
she even borrowed from a poor Scottish minister almost the last penny he
had. A crisis was rapidly approaching which there was no way of
escaping--_unless_ the birth of a child might soften her brother's
heart, and, perchance, re-open the vista of a great inheritance in the
years to come. Such speculations must have occurred to Lady Jean at this
critical stage of her fortunes; but whether what quickly followed was a
coincidence, or, as so many asserted, a fraudulent plot to give effect
to her ambition, it would need a much cleverer and more confident man
than I to say. At any rate, from this failure of her purse and of her
hopes of propitiating the Duke began all those mysterious suggestions
and circumstances, of which so much was made in the trial of future
years, and which heralded the birth of the desired heir--or "to make
assurance doubly sure," in Lady Jean's case--heirs.
As the expected event drew near it became important to go to Paris in
order to have the advantage of the best medical assistance, especially
since Lady Jean was assured that the doctors of Rheims, where she was
then living, were "as ignorant as brutes." And so to the French capital
she journeyed with her retinue, through three sultry July days, in a
public diligence devoid of springs. How trying such a journey must have
been to a lady in her condition is evidenced by the fact that, during
the three days, she spent forty-one hours on the road, reaching Paris on
the 4th of July. Just six days later her ladyship, to quote a letter
written by Mrs Hewit, "produced two lovely boys," one of whom was so
weak and puny that the doctor "begged it might be sent to the country as
soon as possible."
So far the story seems clear and plausible, assuming that a lady, in
such a delicate state of health, could bear the fatigues of so long and
trying a journey as that from Rheims to Paris. But from this stage the
mystery, which it took so many wise heads to penetrate in future years,
begins to thicken. Although the children were said to have been born on
the 10th of July it was not until eleven days later that Mrs Hewit
imparted the news to the two maids who had been left behind at Rheims,
in the letter from which I have quoted. Further, although the Colonel
wrote to six different people on the 10th not one of his letters
contains any reference to such an interesting event, which should, one
would think, have excluded all other topics from a father's pen.
Moreover, although the Colonel and his wife were, as the house-books
proved, staying on the 10th of July at the hotel of a M. Godefroi,
neither the landlord nor his wife had any knowledge that a birth had
taken place, or was even expected; and it was beyond question that the
lady left the house on the 13th, three days after the alleged event,
without exciting any suspicion as to what had so mysteriously taken
place.
On the 13th, the Colonel and his lady, accompanied by Mrs Hewit,
declared that they went for a few days to the house of a Madame la
Brune, a nurse--but no child, M. and Mme. Godefroi swore, accompanied
them; and on the 18th of July, eight days after the accouchement, they
made their appearance at Michele's Hotel (still without a solitary
infant to show), where Madame was already so far recovered that she
spent the days in jaunting about Paris and making trips to Versailles.
At Michele's the story they told was that the infants were so delicate
that they had been sent into the country to nurse; and yet none had seen
them go. But before the parents had been a day in their new quarters the
Colonel, after hours of absence, appeared with a child--a puny infant,
but still unmistakably genuine. Thus one of the twins was accounted for.
The other, they declared, was still more delicate and must be left in
the country.
It was quite certain that the children had not been born either at
Godefroi's or Michele's Hotel. As for the intermediate place of lodging,
the most diligent later enquiries failed to discover either Madame la
Brune or the house in which she was supposed to live in the Faubourg St
Germain. Moreover, was it a coincidence that on the very day on which
the Colonel at Michele's with one of the alleged children, it was
proved that a "foreign gentleman," exactly answering his description,
had purchased, for three gold louis, a fortnight-old baby from its
peasant-parents, called Mignon, in a Paris slum?
To add further to the confusion, both Colonel Stewart and Mrs Hewit, in
later years, declared in the most positive manner, first that the
children had been born at Michele's, and secondly at Madame la Brune's,
in defiance of the facts that on the 10th of July, the alleged date of
birth, the mother was beyond any doubt staying at Godefroi's hotel, that
no such person as Madame la Brune apparently existed, and that the only
visible child at Michele's was a fortnight old.
On the 7th of August Lady Jean wrote to inform her brother, the Duke,
that she had been blessed with "two boys," one of which she begged his
permission to call by his name--a letter which only had the effect of
rousing His Grace's "high passion and displeasure," with a threat to
stop her annuity. For sixteen months the second and more delicate infant
was left with his country nurse, the mother never once taking the
trouble to visit it; and then the Colonel and his wife made a mysterious
journey to Paris, returning with another child, who, they alleged, was
the weakling of the twins. Was it again a coincidence that, at the very
time when the second child made his appearance, another infant was
purchased from its parents in Paris by a "strange monsieur" who, if not
the Colonel, was at least his double? And was it not strange that this
late arrival should appear to be several months older than his more
robust brother, as the purchased child was?
At last, provided with two children, and having exhausted their credit
on the Continent, Lady Jean and her husband turned their faces homeward,
prepared to carry the war into the enemy's camp. Arrived in London they
set to work to win as many influential friends and supporters as
possible; and this Lady Jean, with her plausible tongue, succeeded in
doing. Ladies Shaw and Eglinton, the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Lindores,
Solicitor-General Murray (later, Lord Mansfield), and many another
high-placed personage vowed that they believed her story and pledged
their support. Mr Pelham proved such a good friend to her that he
procured from the King a pension of £300 a year, which she sorely
needed; for, at the time, her husband was a prisoner for debt "within
the Rules" of the King's Bench.
Even Lady Jean's enemies could not resist a tribute of admiration for
the courage with which, during this time, she fought her uphill fight
against poverty and opposition. Her affection for her children and her
loyalty to her good-for-nothing husband were touching in the extreme;
and, if not quite sincere, were most cleverly simulated.
To all her appeals the Duke still remained obdurate, vowing he would
have nothing to do either with his sister or the two "nunnery children"
which she wanted to impose on him. In spite of her Royal pension Lady
Jean only succeeded in getting deeper and deeper involved in debt,
until it became clear that some decisive step must be taken to repair
her fortunes. Then it was that, at last, she screwed up her courage to
pay the dreaded visit to her brother, in the hope that the sight of her
children and the pathos of her personal pleading might soften his heart.
One January day in 1753, one of the Duke's servants says,
"she looked in at the little gate as I was passing
through the court. She called and I went to her, when she
told me she was come to wait on the Duke with her
children. I proposed to open the gate and carry in her
Ladyship; but she said she would not go in till I
acquainted his Grace."
The Duke, however, after consulting with his minion Stockbrigg, who
still ruled the castle and its lord alike, sent word that he refused to
see his sister; and the broken-hearted woman walked sadly away. To a
letter in which she begged "to speak but a few moments to your Grace,
and if I don't, to your own conviction, clear up my injured innocence,
inflict what punishment you please upon me," he returned no answer.
Trouble now began to fall thickly on Lady Jean. Her delicate child,
Sholto, died after a brief illness. She was distracted with grief, and
cried out in her deep distress: "O Sholto! Sholto! my son Sholto! if I
could but have died for you!" This last blow of fate seems to have
completely crushed her. A few months later, she gave up her gallant and
hopeless struggle, but only with her life. Calling her remaining son to
her bedside she said, with streaming eyes: "May God bless you, my dear
son; and, above all, make you a worthy and honest man; for riches, I
despise them. Take a sword, and you may one day become as great a hero
as some of your ancestors." Then, but a few moments before drawing her
last breath, she said to those around her: "As one who is soon to appear
in the presence of Almighty God, to whom I must answer, I declare that
the two children were born of my body." Thus passed "beyond these
voices" a woman, who, whatever her faults, carried a brave heart through
sorrows and trials which might well have crushed the proudest spirit.
Lady Jean's death probably did more to advance her son's cause than all
her scheming and courage during life. Influential friends flocked to the
motherless boy, whose misfortunes made such an appeal to sympathy and
protection. His father succeeded to the family baronetcy and became a
man of some substance. His uncle, the Duke, took to wife, at sixty-two,
his cousin, "Peggy Douglas, of Mains," a lady of strong character who
had long vowed that "she would be Duchess of Douglas or never marry";
and in Duchess "Peggy" Archibald found his most stalwart champion, who
gave her husband no peace until the Duke, after long vacillation, and
many maudlin moods, in which he would consign the "brat" to perdition
one day and shed tears over his pathetic plight the next, was won over
to her side. To such good purpose did the Duchess use her influence
that when her husband the Duke died, in 1761, Colonel (now Sir John)
Stewart was able to write to his elder son by his first marriage:
"DEAR JACK,--I have not had time till now to acquaint you
of the Duke of Douglas's death, and that he has left your
brother Archie his whole estate."
Thus did Lady Jean triumph eight years after her scheming brain was
stilled in death.
The rest of this singular story must be told in few words, although its
history covers many years, and would require a volume to do adequate
justice to it. Within a few months of the Duke's death the curtain was
rung up on the great Douglas Case, which for seven long years was to be
the chief topic of discussion and dispute throughout Great Britain.
Archibald's title to the Douglas lands was contested by the Duke of
Hamilton and the Earl of Selkirk, the former claiming as heir-male, the
latter under settlements made by the Duke's father. Clever brains were
set to work to solve the tangle in which the birth of the mysterious
twins was involved. Emissaries were sent to France to collect evidence
on one side and the other; notably Andrew Stewart, tutor to the young
Duke of Hamilton, who seems to have been a perfect sleuth-hound of
detective skill; and it was not until 1768 that the Scottish Court of
Session gave its verdict, by the Lord-President's casting-vote (seven
judges voting for and seven against) against Lady Jean's son.
"The judges," we are told, "took up no less than eight
days in delivering their opinions upon the cause; and at
last, by the President's casting-vote, they pronounced
solemn judgment in favour of the plaintiffs."
Meanwhile (four years earlier) Sir John Stewart had followed his wife to
the grave, declaring, just before his death:
"I do solemnly swear before God, as stepping into
Eternity, that Lady Jean Douglas, my lawful spouse, did
in the year 1748, bring into the world two sons,
Archibald and Sholto; and I firmly believe the children
were mine, as I am sure they were hers. Of the two sons,
Archibald is the only one in life now."
But Archibald Douglas was not long to remain out of his estates. On
appeal to the House of Lords, the decree of the Scottish Court was
reversed, and the victory of Lady Jean's son was final and complete.
Of his later career it remains only to say that he entered Parliament
and was created a Peer; and that he conducted himself in his exalted
position with a dignity worthy of the parentage he had established. But,
although he became the father of eight sons, four of whom succeeded him
in the title, no grandson came to inherit his honours and estates; and
to-day the Douglas lands, for which Lady Jean schemed and fought and
laid down her life, have the Earl of Home for lord.