THE GHOST OF PRINCE CHARLIE
Scotland in the autumn of the pre-war days was a very gay place. The big
country houses were filled with shooting parties, and for the Autumn
Meetings, Ayr races, Perth races, and games, The Inverness Gathering,
etc. The dates were so arranged that one could go the round, and thus
dance through several weeks. I used to go regularly to Inverness, and
afterwards visit friends in the surrounding neighborhood. One of the
most delightful houses to visit was Tarbat, belonging to the Countess of
Cromartie. Any one who has read her unique books must have come to the
conclusion that Lady Cromartie is a mystic of no ordinary type, but only
those who know her intimately are aware how predominating in her
character is this inborn mysticism.
I first remember the two sisters, Lady Sibell and Lady Constance
Mackenzie, hanging on to their father's arms as they walked about
Folkestone. They were then tiny tots, and I was staying with their
mother, the beautiful Lilian, daughter of Lord Macdonald of the Isles.
Beautiful was the only word to describe Lord Cromartie's wife--and Lily
seemed the most suitable name that could have been bestowed upon her.
She was intensely musical and interested in ghosts. Born the daughter of
a Highland chieftain she understood how to live the life of a great
Scottish noblewoman. She was always very kind to me, and I used to stay
with her very often.
In 1893 Lord Cromartie died, and his eldest daughter, Lady Sibell,
became Countess of Cromartie in her own right--the title going in the
female line. As a child the young Countess had been a great reader. I
remember she used often to be missing, and found in some quiet room
buried in a book. To this day she has the faculty of so absorbing
herself in a book that no amount of talking and noise in the room
penetrates her ears. Lady Constance was quite different, devoted to
out-of-door life, and I shall never forget how adoring the old people on
the properties were to her, and how she loved them. One sterling and
unusual quality she had. I never heard her say an unkind word of any
one.
In 1899 the Countess of Cromartie married Major, now Colonel Blunt, and
she has three fine children, two boys and a girl.
One of the most remarkable facts about her is her agelessness. She never
alters with the years. Her white delicate skin, her girlish figure and
dark glowing eyes, always retain their look of extreme youth.
I have said that her mysticism must at once become apparent to the
readers of her books, but to those, who like myself have known her from
childhood, her psychic powers have always been extraordinary.
I remember one autumn staying at Tarbat with only a very few other
guests, I forget now who they all were. It had been a dead, still day.
One of those sad, brooding days one gets so often in the north. In the
afternoon, when we were out walking, Lady Cromartie said suddenly to me
and a Miss Drummond, whom we were both very fond of, "There is going to
be an earthquake to-night."
We received this piece of information as a joke, and I thought nothing
more of the matter till tea-time, when a gorgeous sunset was
illuminating the heavens. As we were standing at the window looking out
at it we were all startled by a tremendous roar, more like a very loud
peal of thunder than anything else, yet we knew, by the look of the sky,
that it could not have been thunder. Every one offered a different
opinion as to what the noise could mean, but Lady Cromartie calmly said,
"The noise is in the earth, not in the sky; it is the forerunner of the
earthquake."
We now began to take this earthquake business more seriously. Sibell
Drummond, also very psychic, said she knew the noise came from the
interior of the earth, and that very early that morning she had heard
the same sound, only much more distant. We asked Lady Cromartie how she
could possibly tell that an earthquake was coming. Such convulsions are
not common enough in Scotland to admit of lucky guesses.
"I can tell those things of Nature; something in me is akin to them,"
she explained. "It is quite certain this earthquake will come before
morning."
As the sun went down the quiet weather changed, and by bed-time it was
blowing such a gale that we forgot all about Lady Cromartie's prophecy.
At one o'clock in the morning, when we were all asleep, the earthquake
arrived, and awakened us all instantly. My bed rocked, and the china
clattered, and I heard a big picture near my bed move out from the wall
and go back again. Some of us got up, but there was only the one sharp
shock. In the morning we heard that considerable damage had been done.
Several houses and stables had been razed to the ground, and some
animals killed and people injured.
Another curious incident I remember happening during a visit to Tarbat.
At breakfast one morning Lady Cromartie told us that she had a very
vivid dream just before daylight. She dreamed that if she went into a
certain room in the house she would find some jewels that had been
hidden there. She seemed to have been told this in her sleep by some one
she did not know. The room was indicated, but not the spot where the
jewels lay. The present Duke of Argyll, always keenly alive to psychic
phenomena, was of our party, and he at once proposed that directly after
we had finished breakfast we should all proceed to the room, rarely
used, but formerly a business room, and make a thorough search.
By the way, I cannot refrain here from suggesting what a wonderful book
of Scottish ghost stories the Duke could give us if he chose. His
repertoire was endless and most thrilling, and he knew how to tell a
ghost story.
After breakfast we adjourned to the room indicated in the dream, and
began our search. The only likely place seemed a large bookcase, full of
books, with cupboards beneath. All the doors were locked and keyless. A
pause ensued whilst keys were fetched from the housekeeper's room, and
for a long time we could find nothing to fit the doors, but at last we
were rewarded. The cupboards below were opened, disclosing a quantity of
rubbish. Old books, estate maps, fishing tackle, every sort of thing,
but no jewels.
At last the Duke, down on his knees fumbling amongst the dust, drew
forth two tin japanned boxes. He shook them, and the thumping inside
proved that they were not empty. The trouble was they also were locked
and keyless. Again there was a scramble to fit keys. We were all on the
tiptoe of excited expectation.
At last both boxes were opened, and there lay the jewels. Fine,
old-fashioned pieces that had lain there, who knows for how long, and
probably had belonged to Lady Cromartie's grandmother, "the Countess
Duchess" 3rd Duchess of Sutherland.
Still another reminiscence of beautiful Tarbat.
Lady Cromartie asked me to join a shooting party she and Major Blunt
were giving, to meet Prince Arthur of Connaught.
I arrived one evening in wild winter weather. There had been a heavy
snowstorm, and the sky looked as if there was considerably more to come.
I found all the other guests had already arrived, and we were a very
merry party. It was Prince Arthur's first "shoot" in the far North, and
his first experience of what Scotland could provide in the way of autumn
weather, and he was glad to avail himself of a thick woolen sweater of
mine, which I was proud to present to him. He was perfectly charming to
us all, and there was, owing to his simplicity, no sense of stiffness
introduced into our party. That evening, after dinner, he was strolling
round the room, looking at the pictures, and he paused opposite a framed
letter, written by Prince Charles Edward during the '45 to the Lord
Cromartie of that time, who was his earnest supporter.
"Why!" exclaimed Prince Arthur, "that letter is written by 'The
Pretender,' isn't it?"
There was no answer. A thrill of horror ran through the breasts of the
ardent Jacobites present. Dead silence reigned.
Then I could stand it no longer. "Please, sir," I said, "we all call him
Prince Charles Edward Stuart."
Prince Arthur turned round laughingly. "I beg his pardon and all of
yours," he exclaimed in the most charming manner, and the hearts of all
the outraged Jacobites warmed to him at once.
I was just about to creep into bed, very late that night, and very tired
after my long, cold journey in a desperately sluggish train, when Lady
Cromartie peeped in at my door. Her wonderful dark eyes were ablaze, and
I knew at once she had something psychic to tell me. Her eyes looked
like nothing else in the world but her eyes, when she is on the track of
a ghost, or one of her "other side" experiences.
"I have just seen Prince Charles Edward," she announced.
I took her firmly by the arm. Prince Charles Edward means a very great
deal to me, and I don't let anything pass me by that concerns his
beloved memory.
"Tell me quick. Where did you see him?" I asked.
"I was just going to get into bed when I saw him standing looking at me,
at the far end of the room. He was smiling, and as I stared back at him
he slowly crossed the floor, his smiling face always turned to me, and
vanished through the wall," was Lady Cromartie's answer.
Then I told her of a certain feeling I had experienced earlier in the
evening. At the moment when our Jacobite hearts were stung to deep,
though fleeting resentment, we had formed a thought form, powerful
enough to reach the spirit of Bonny Prince Charlie on "the other side."
Our spirits had called on him, and he had heard and responded. Why not?
If we believe in the immortality of the soul, the soul of Prince Charles
Edward surely lives. Where? On the Astral plane, where the souls of all
must go to divest themselves of the lower passions of earth, and the
veil between the Physical plane and the Astral plane is wearing very
thin in these days.
For many of us there are rents through which we are permitted to see the
old friends who are not lost but gone before, and who await us in a
sphere where we in turn will await the coming of those who follow after.
Indeed, the time does not now seem to be so far distant when so-called
death will be pushed one stage further back, and the transference of the
soul from earth to the Astral plane will no longer be treated as
severance. What then will be termed the severance we now call death? It
will be the passing of the cleansed soul from the Astral plane to the
Heaven world, for a period of blissful rest before the life urge compels
the reincarnating ego to take on once more the veil of flesh, in a
transient human world.
I doubt if it is possible for an English person to comprehend what it
means to be a Jacobite. One is born a Jacobite or one is not. I was born
a Jacobite, and I never lose my passionate love and regret for the
sufferings and sorrows of Prince Charles Edward. No female figure in the
past attracts me so much as does Flora MacDonald. Had I lived during the
'45 I would have worn the white cockade, and parted with my last "shift"
for the love of Bonny Prince Charlie. All very ridiculous, many may say,
but there it is. That is what it means to be born a Jacobite.
My grandfather was an ardent Jacobite, and consorted largely with old
Jacobite families. The Sobieski Stuarts often made their home with him.
Grand looking men of striking physique and good looks. Robert Chambers
used to tell a story of the ghost Piper of Fingask; the property of a
fine old Jacobite, Sir Peter Murray Threipland. The baronetcy is now
extinct.
One night, whilst my grandfather was visiting Sir Peter, they were
sitting at supper in the old dining-hall. The two old sisters of Sir
Peter, Eliza and Jessie, were present. Suddenly the faint strain of the
pipes was heard in the distance, surely no uncommon sound in Scotland,
where every Laird has his own piper to play round the dining-table, yet
a sudden silence fell upon the little party of four. All ears were
listening intently, and straining eyes were blank to all but the
evidence of hearing. The noise grew louder, the piper seemed to be
mounting the stone staircase, yet his brogues made no sound as he
ascended.
Sir Peter dropped his head down into his arms folded upon the table. He
sought to hide the fear in his old eyes. The women sat as if chiseled
out of granite, gray to the lips. The piper of Fingask had come for one
of them. Which? Now the piper of death was drawing very near, the skirl
of his pipes had nearly reached the door. In another moment, with a full
blast of triumph that beat about their ears as it surged into the hall,
he had passed, and had begun his ascent to the ramparts. The skirl was
dying away into a wail. Miss Eliza spoke: "He's come for you, Jessie."
There was no response. The piper of Fingask was playing a "Last Lament"
now, as he swung round the ramparts.
True enough he had come for Miss Jessie, and very shortly after she
obeyed the call.
To this day there are men and women who never forget to offer up their
passionate regret for Prince Charles before they sleep. I know of one
old Scottish house where his memory is an ever-present, ever-living
thing. The shadowy old room is consecrated to him. On the walls hang
portraits of him, and trophies of the '15 and the '45 stand round in
glass cases. On one table lies a worn, white cockade, yellow with age,
and a lock of fair hair clasped by a band of blackened pearls. In a tall
slender glass there is always, in summer-time, a single white rose.
Above is the portrait of the idol of the present house, who gave in the
past of their all in life and treasure, for the cause they hold so
sacred, so dear. I cannot look upon that gay, careless, handsome face
without the tears rising to my eyes. His eyes smile into mine.
Involuntarily I bend before him. What was the power in you, Prince
Charles Edward Stuart, that drew from countless women and men that wild
unswerving devotion? Which made light of terrible hardships, which
followed you faithfully through glen and corrie? What is that power
which you still exert over those to whom your name is but a memory, but
who still, when they think on you or look upon your pictured face, cry
silently in their hearts for the lost House of Stuart? "Oh! waes me for
Prince Charlie!"
One must be Scotch to understand that the Union did nothing to unite
England and Scotland. To the Scottish plowman the Englishman is still a
foreigner, whom he dislikes. Scotch and English servants do not work
well in the same house. To us, Mary Queen of Scots lived "only the
other day." When the House of Stuart passed from us our history ended.
Our old houses are full of ghosts, the atmosphere is saturated with the
tragic history of the past, the very skies seem to brood in melancholy
over the soil, where so many wild bloody scenes were enacted. To the
Psychic, Scotland is a land not yet emerged from the dour savagery of
the past. Once, on visiting an historic old castle, my host pointed out
to me a group of seven old trees standing close to the entrance.
"Seven skeletons lie there," he said. "My grandfather went after a
neighboring clan who had raided his cattle. He brought back seven men
with halters round their necks and strung them up to those trees. Holes
were dug beneath, and they all dropped into them by degrees, and then
the earth was shoveled over them again."
What will become of all those grand old places in the future? They are
so costly to maintain. I think of all those lying around our own
Aberdeenshire home; Fyvie Castle, a great stately pile, beautiful to
look upon always, but more especially so when the red fires of a winter
sunset blaze upon its many windows, and turn to rose the mantling snow
on battlements and towers, whilst all around is wrapped in a garment of
spotless white: House of Monymusk, Craigston Castle, Craigievar.
I have just mentioned a few, all have their ghosts, and some have a
curse upon them.
A friend of ours came to see us, not very long ago, and told us of a
horrible experience he had been through recently.
He had been visiting a great house in the North, noted in Scottish
history. The new Laird had only entered into possession during the last
few years, on the death of a near relative, who had died from excessive
drinking, the Scotchman's curse. Our friend had heard that this dead
Laird "walked," but he had not met any one who had actually seen his
ghost. After spending a pleasant evening with his host, and going
through many reminiscences of his former visits to the house, and to the
late Laird, who in spite of his fatal propensities had been a gallant
gentleman and a great sportsman, our friend retired to bed.
The room he slept in was a large one, and the bed faced the door, and a
washstand stood on one side of it. He remembered the room, having slept
in it on former occasions. He was roused in the night by some one rather
noisily fumbling at the handle of his door, which was not locked. He sat
up in bed and called out, "Who is it?"
There was a full moon riding in a clear, frosty sky, and the room was
only in semi-darkness. He stared at the door, which at that moment burst
open, and standing in the aperture was a man, the dead Laird. Outside,
was a long corridor with several windows, through which the moonlight
poured. Against this silvery background stood the huge figure of the
late Laird. He leaned forward, supporting himself by holding with both
hands to the framework of the door, and with a glowering, half-drunken
stare his eyes were fixed on the startled occupant of the bed.
A panic seized our friend, who felt that if that menacing figure
advanced into the room he would go mad. There was only one door, and no
other means of escape, and very stealthily he slid to the opposite side
of the bed, and reaching out, seized the water-bottle on his washstand.
This action did not pass unnoticed by his terrible visitor. Suddenly
relaxing his hold on the doorposts, he dropped down on his knees, and
began rapidly crawling on all fours towards the bed, his inflamed eyes
blazing with anger.
Our friend did not wait for his arrival. With a blood-curdling yell he
hurled the water-bottle full at his old friend, and leaping from the
other side of the bed tore to the door and fled down the passage, as if
pursued by a pack of devils. Hardly knowing what he did, he battered
with his hands on the door of the room he knew to be occupied by his
host and hostess, shouting out at the same time a call for assistance.
Then he heard the voice of the wife saying to the husband, "It's
Charlie. Open the door. I believe he's seen poor Angus."
He had indeed seen "poor Angus," and for the last time, he assured us.
Old friendship could not stand the test of so horrible an apparition.
The room was empty when he returned to it with his host. Angus had gone
back again to the land of the shadows, and only the scattered fragments
of the water-bottle remained as a souvenir of his visit.
Several servants had seen Angus, and it was difficult to keep the house
staffed. One old housemaid, who had been in the family many years, had
seen him frequently, and had even ventured to remonstrate with her
former master, bidding him go back to his shroud and sleep peacefully in
his grave like a respectable man, but apparently to no purpose. Angus
preferred to "walk" and to terrify all to whom he had the power to show
himself.
Speaking of the Duke of Argyll has reminded me of some curious
occurrences in connection with Lord Colin Campbell. At one time of my
life, soon after my father's death, I saw a good deal of him. He was
then studying law and intended later to practice in India. This plan he
carried out, and in India he died, the result of a chill.
Lord Colin was a very interesting man, a keen geologist and something of
an artist. There were few subjects he was not interested in, and though
somewhat shy of the subject, he had a decided aptitude for ghosts.
One day in London he brought to my house a small gold cross fixed to a
slab of gray marble, and asked me if I would keep it for him. He
explained that it was an exact reproduction of the old stone cross of
Inverary. He was then living in Argyll Lodge, Campden Hill, and I said I
should have thought there was room enough for it there. I could not
understand why he brought it to me. He looked uneasy and said he wished
to get rid of it out of the house. When pressed to say why, he confessed
that there was something uncanny about it. He thought it made him "see
things," and he added, "Garry hates it."
Garry was a fine, sable collie, devoted to his master and he to it.
Garry had the misfortune to break his leg, and this caused Lord Colin
acute distress. The leg was set, and the dog lay in a large clothes
basket, and eventually got well. Garry was just recovering when Lord
Colin brought me the cross.
He became more expansive in a few moments, and said that he had seen a
figure bending over the cross, as if to examine it. The figure had a
hood, and he thought it must be the ghost of a monk. He had seen this
many times, and Garry often growled, and his hair bristled at the very
moment when his master caught sight of the apparition. Anything that
distressed the dog must be removed, and knowing how interested I was in
ghosts he had brought the cross to me.
Of course I was delighted to have a chance of witnessing psychic
phenomena of any kind, but alas, though I kept the cross for years, and
only sent it lately to the present Duke, I never saw anything in
connection with it.
I did, however, see something interesting in connection with Lord Colin.
One hot June evening, in London, I was sitting alone by the open window.
The day had been very exhausting; it was one of those hot spells that
come so often before regular summer sets in, and I was glad to rest
quietly and do nothing.
The street was wonderfully quiet at that hour, nine o'clock, when all
the world of fashion was dining, and the daylight was strong enough to
read by, had I so desired. Suddenly my attention was attracted by a
slight noise behind me, and glancing round at the open door I saw that
Lord Colin and his dog had just entered the room, as was their habit,
unannounced. In his hand he carried a huge bunch of white and mauve
lilac blossoms. I had not expected him that evening, but I was very
pleased to see him, and exclaimed, "Why, Colin, what a glorious bouquet!
I can smell it already."
He was smiling as he and his dog moved up the long room towards me, but
he said nothing. I had risen and held out my hand, but when about
halfway across the floor both he and the dog vanished entirely and quite
suddenly.
I shall never forget my utter amazement and consternation. I could not
disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, for I was absolutely certain
I could still smell the lilac, and I had no doubt whatever that I had
seen Lord Colin and his dog.
I sat down again and fell to considering the extraordinary circumstance.
I was perfectly well and normal, I had not been thinking of Lord Colin,
and yet in the midst of other thoughts a sound had attracted my
attention, and looking round I had seen him enter with his dog. For the
space of quite two minutes both had been visible. I got up again and
timed the whole affair by my wrist watch. The room I sat in was very
long. I was at one end, and the door at the other. It took me just one
minute to walk leisurely forward over the ground they had covered,
before they vanished from my sight.
I sat down again and began to wonder if Lord Colin was ill, or was he
dead, and why was he carrying lilacs? 'Phones were uncommon things in
those days; I had no means of communication with Argyll Lodge.
For an hour I sat considering the wonderful vividness of my curious
experience. The daylight had faded into a close, soft twilight, but I
wanted no artificial light. Then just as ten o'clock was striking I
heard a voice in the hall below; a voice I was sure was Lord Colin's,
and he was answered by one of my servants. Steps sounded on the stairs,
and in another moment in he walked with Garry, and in his hand he
carried a big bunch of white and mauve lilacs.
I stood staring at him in the dim twilight. Was this the real man and
dog at last?
"I know it's awfully late to pay a call, but I thought you would like
some lilac," he exclaimed; "it's so lovely in our garden just now," and
he held out the flowers.
I took them and bade him be seated. Garry came to me and rested his nose
on my lap. For a moment I could not speak.
"Aren't you well?" asked Colin.
Then I recovered myself, but I did not tell him what had happened only
an hour before. As we talked I discovered that he had intended to come
at nine o'clock, and was just starting when a relative arrived and
detained him.
On another occasion he told me of a curious dream he had as a boy.
Queen Victoria came to Inverary to pay a visit to the Duke and Duchess
of Argyll, Lord Colin's parents, and it was arranged that the young sons
of the house should act as pages to Her Majesty. The night of the day on
which the Queen arrived, Colin dreamed that some one whom he did not
know came to him and said, "To-morrow the Queen will give you twenty
shillings."
When the boy wakened up in the morning he remembered this dream, and all
day long he was on the outlook for its fulfillment. The hours passed,
but though he was often in her presence and kept as close to her as he
dared, the Queen never produced her purse. Just before reentering the
house towards evening, she suddenly turned to John Brown, her constant
attendant, and said something which Colin did not catch. What was his
joy on perceiving that surly henchman extract from a shabby old purse a
filthy Scotch one pound note, which he handed to Her Majesty.
"My little Colin, here is a present for you," said the Queen, and making
his best bow the boy accepted the gift. His dream had come true.
John Brown was the terror of all the great nobles whom the Queen was
pleased to visit. Her Majesty took him everywhere with her, and he was
her closest attendant. Born of the humblest Scotch parents on the Estate
of Balmoral, he died in the position of a potentate in a royal
residence. His manners were terribly rough and objectionable, and his
behavior to the gentlemen with whom he constantly came into contact was
insulting to the last degree. He had one invariable habit. When the
Queen paid a visit naturally her honored host was in waiting to hand her
out of her carriage. Brown contrived to nip down from his perch at the
back of the carriage, just at a certain moment, and with a violent push
thrust aside the prince, duke or peer who sought to do honor to the
Sovereign.
Some of the gentlemen about the Court paid him very liberally, not for
civility, but simply to desist from his habitual insults, and it has
been said that Disraeli discovered some method of conciliation, but
Brown took an absolute pleasure in insulting all who had occasion to
approach Her Majesty. Latterly he drank very heavily, and when he died,
to the unutterable relief of all and sundry he bequeathed all his
savings and possessions, even the watch he wore, to Her Majesty. His
many poor relatives living in cottages on the estate never saw a penny
of his money, nor so much as a button from his doublet.