Love Romances of the Aristocracy Part 21

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 antic.i.p.ations 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, a.s.signing 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, Liege, 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 succ.u.mbs 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.serted, 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 circ.u.mstances, of which so much was made in the trial of future years, and which heralded the birth of the desired heir--or "to make a.s.surance 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 a.s.sistance, especially since Lady Jean was a.s.sured 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, a.s.suming 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. G.o.defroi, 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. G.o.defroi 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 G.o.defroi'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 G.o.defroi'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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, to whom I must answer, I declare that the two children were born of my body." Thus pa.s.sed "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 d.u.c.h.ess of Douglas or never marry"; and in d.u.c.h.ess "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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 t.i.tle 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d, 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 t.i.tle, 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.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MAYPOLE d.u.c.h.eSS

For many a century, ever since her history emerged from the mists of antiquity, Germany never lacked a Schulenburg to grace her Courts, to lead her armies, or to wear the mitre in her churches. They held their haughty heads high among the greatest subjects of her emperors; their family-tree bristled with marshals and generals, bishops and amba.s.sadors; and they waxed so strong and so numerous that they came to be distinguished as "Black Schulenburgs" and "White Schulenburgs," as our own Douglases were "black" and "red."

But not one of all the glittering array of its dignitaries raised the family name to such an eminence--a bad eminence--as one of its plainest daughters, Ehrengard Melusina von der Schulenburg (to give her full, imposing name), who lived not only to wear the coronet of a d.u.c.h.ess of England, but to be "as much a Queen as ever there was in England."

Fraulein Ehrengard and her brother, who, as Count Mathias von der Schulenburg, was to win fame as the finest general in Europe of his day, were cradled and reared at the ancestral castle of Emden, in Saxony.

The Schulenburg women were never famed for beauty; but Ehrengard was, by common consent, the "ugly duckling" of the family--abnormally tall, angular, awkward, and plain-featured, one of the last girls in Germany equipped for conquest in the field of love.

When she reached her sixteenth birthday, Ehrengard's parents were glad to pack her off to the Court of Herrenhausen, where the family influence procured for her the post of maid-of-honour to the Electress Sophia of Hanover. At any rate she was provided for--an important matter, for the Schulenburgs were as poor as they were proud--and she was too unattractive to get into mischief. But it is the unexpected that often happens; and no sooner had the Elector's son and heir, George, set eyes on the ungainly maid-of-honour than he promptly fell head over ears in love with her, to the amazement of the entire Court, and to the disgust of his mother, and of his newly-made bride, Sophia Dorothea of Zell. To George--an awkward, sullen young man of loutish manners and loose morals--the gaunt girl, with her plain, sallow face, was a vision of beauty. She appealed in some curious way to the animal in him; and before she had been many weeks at Herrenhausen she was his avowed mistress--one of many.

"Just look at that mawkin," the Electress Sophia once exclaimed to Lady Suffolk, who was a guest at the Hanoverian Court, "and think of her being my son's mistress!" But to any other than his mother, George's taste in women had long ceased to cause surprise. The ugly and gross appealed to a taste which such beauty and refinement as his young wife possessed left untouched. He had markedly demonstrated this perverseness of fancy already by showering his favours on the Baroness von Kielmansegg--who was reputed to be his natural sister, by the way--a lady so ugly that, as a child, Horace Walpole shrieked at sight of her.

She had, he recalls,

"two fierce black eyes, large and rolling, beneath two lofty arched eyesbrows; two acres of cheeks spread with crimson; an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not distingushed from the lower part of her body, and no part of it restrained by stays. No wonder," he adds, "that a child dreaded such an ogress!"

Such were the two chief favourites of this unnatural heir to the throne of Hanover, who, by a curious turn of Fortune's wheel, was to wear the English crown as the first of the Georges. In the company of these ogresses and of a brace of Turkish attendants, George loved to pa.s.s his time in beer-guzzling and debauchery, while his beautiful and insulted wife sought solace in that ill-starred intrigue with Konigsmarck, which was to lead to his tragic death and her own thirty years' imprisonment in the Schloss Ahlden, where she, who ought to have been England's Queen, ate her heart out in loneliness and sorrow.

To George his wife's intrigue was a welcome excuse for getting rid of her--a licence for unfettered indulgence in his low tastes; and the tragedy of her eclipse but added zest and emphasis to his unfettered enjoyment of life. In the hands of Von der Schulenburg the weak-minded, self-indulgent Prince was as clay in the hands of the potter. She moulded him as she willed, for she was as crafty and diplomatic as she was ill-favoured. Madame Kielmansegg was relegated to the shade, while she stood in the full limelight. She bore two daughters to her Royal lover--daughters who were called her "nieces," although the fiction deceived n.o.body--and as the years pa.s.sed, each adding, if possible, to her unattractiveness, her hold on the Prince became still stronger.

Thirty years pa.s.sed thus at the Herrenhausen Court, when the death of Queen Anne made "the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Hanover, rightful King of Great Britain, France and Ireland." The sluggish sensual life of the Hanoverian Court was at an end. George was summoned to a great throne, and no King ever accepted a crown with such reluctance and ill-grace. He would, and he would not. For three weeks the English envoys tried every artifice to induce him to accept his new and exalted _role_--and finally they succeeded.

But even then he had not counted on the "fair" Ehrengard. She refused point-blank to go with him to that "odious England," where chopping off heads seemed to be a favourite pastime. She was quite happy in Hanover, and there she meant to stay. She fumed and raged, ran about the Palace gardens, embracing her dearly-loved trees and clinging hysterically to the marble statues, declaring that she could not and would not desert them. And thus George left her, to start on his unwelcome pilgrimage to England.