Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849», sayfa 14

It is singular enough to find from these revelations of Lord Grange's character and habits, that while he was plotting the abduction of one mad woman, he was busily engaged in attempting the release of another. Yes, as a first step, he was intending to release her; but there are a few hints, slight in themselves, but wonderfully suggestive when they are associated with his wife's history, showing us that his ultimate intention was to make a second victim. In this scheme he was defeated by a spirit less crafty but more audacious than his own – by no less renowned a person than Lady Mary Wortley Montague, whose name has already been mentioned as "openly blessed" by Lady Grange for her "opposition to our friends," meaning the Jacobites. We have among the papers the history of the baffled attempt – at least one side of the history, and, when shaken free of the dust of Grange's prolix grumblings, it is infinitely amusing. The intended victim in this instance was Lady Mar, Lady Mary's sister, the wife of Grange's brother. Lady Mar was insane, and in some shape or other committed to the guardianship of her sister. There were some pecuniary matters depending on the question of her detention or release, so vaguely hinted at that it is not easy to discover their nature. It would appear that Lady Mar was allowed by the favour of the court, and probably through the interest of her relatives, a jointure of £500 a-year over the estates which were forfeited from her husband. Lord Mar was then living in poverty abroad; and Lord Grange was inclined to think that this sum would be better administered by himself and his friends than by Lady Mary. Looking at the £500 from his own side, he of course saw Lady Mary on the other, and judged that her motives were as parallel to his own as the one jaw of a shark is to the other – so he says, "Lady Mar, they say, is quite well; and so as in common justice she can no longer be detained as a lunatic; but she is obstinately averse to appearing in chancery, that the sentence may be taken off. Her sister probably will oppose her liberty, for thereby she would lose, and Lord Mar in effect gain, £500 yearly: and the poor lady, being in her custody, and under her management, had need to be very firmly recovered, for the guardian may at present so vex, tease, and plague her, that it would turn anybody mad."²⁹

It was believed that if Lady Mar were released from Lady Mary Wortley Montague's influence, means might be taken for so arranging matters that her husband should participate in her jointure. There was another matter, however, in which Grange himself had a more particular prospect of pecuniary advantage. Lady Mar appears to have had a beneficiary interest in a lease of a house in Whitehall, forming part of the royal demesne. An arrangement seems to have been made by which, during her incapacity from insanity, her own term was conveyed to her brother-in-law, Lord Grange, while he at the same time obtained a reversion of the lease in his own favour. He had, it appears, sold his whole interest in the property – both the lease he had obtained from Lady Mar's guardians and his own reversionary interest. He was now, therefore, in endeavouring to procure the release of Lady Mar, on the ground of her restoration to sanity, about to enable her to revoke the transference that had been made to him of her own share in the lease. In his own words, "On Lady Mar's being at freedom, the assignment of her lease to Lord Grange becomes void, and so does the sale he has made of it; and in that sale the lease to Lady Mar was valued at £800 sterling, which will be lost by the avoidance of it." Such is the danger; and now, in a very brief continuation of the quotation, let us observe the way in which it was to be met, for, considering who was the writer, it is really well worthy of observation. "Were Lady Mar in her freedom, in right hands, she would ratify the bargain, but if in her sister's, probably she will not." Such was the plot; she was to be restored to her freedom that she might be put "in right hands," – in hands in which there was no chance of her refusing what might be demanded. But there was a lion in the way, or rather a lioness, as we shall see. Lord Grange's anticipations of Lady Wortley Montague's operations is not the least remarkable of his revelations. It is "the power within the guilty breast" working as in Eugene Aram's dream. What Lady Mary suspected it were difficult to say, but he who ventured to predict her suspicions spoke from his own guilty conscience – spoke as the kidnapper and secret imprisoner. We pray attention to the remarkable expressions with which the following quotation closes: —

"May not an artful woman impose on one in such circumstances, and whose mind cannot yet be very firm? And this is the more to be feared, because at the beginning of her illness the sister said loudly, and oftener than once to Lord Grange himself, that her husband's bad usage had turned her [Lady Mar] mad. Supposing, then, the sister tell and persuade her to this purpose: 'You see your husband's friends quite neglect you. Lord Erskine, though in the place, seldom comes near you. How easy were it for Lord Grange to have made you a visit on hearing you are so well. Surely it became the fellow to pay you that regard, and he would have done it had he any kindness for you; and, if the husband had, he would have laid such commands on his son and brother which they could not have resisted. Now, you may get your freedom, but can you again trust yourself in their hands? Quite separated from your father's and mother's friends, and from your country, locked up in Scotland or foreign parts, and wholly in their power, what can you expect? Your friends here could give you no relief, and you should be wholly at the barbarous mercy of those whose sense get not sufficiently the better of their hatred or contempt, as to make them carry with seeming respect to you till they get you in their power. What will they not do when they have you?"³⁰

Such are Lord Grange's "imaginary conversations" of Lady Mary Wortley – like many others, a more accurate reflection of the thoughts habitually dwelling in the writer's own mind, than of those of the person in whose name they are uttered. And then, in continuation, he paints the formidable effect of the imaginary pleading – "Such things to a woman so lately of a disturbed brain, constantly inculcated by so near a relation whom she only sees, and her creatures, and depends on her entirely for the time – what may they not produce? And if they have their effect, then the consequences are these: the lady being at freedom legally, but de facto still under her sister's absolute government, the bargain about her jointure becomes void, and thereby she (or rather the sister) gets more by £500 sterling yearly, and our friend has nothing at all." Then follows the statement about the lease; and the meaning of the whole is, that Lady Mar, as a free woman, would be entitled to live with her sister, and dispose of her own property, unless she were put in the "right hands" to make her "ratify" any desired bargain.

The interchange of compliments between the parties, when they came to actual conflict, is extremely instructive. "She concluded with rage," says the judge, "that we were both rascals, with many other ridiculous things." But perhaps more people will think her ladyship's penetration was not more ridiculously at fault on this than on other occasions. Horace Walpole left an unfavourable testimony to her treatment of her sister, when he alluded to "the unfortunate Lady Mar, whom she treated so hardly when out of her senses." Pope caught up the same charge in the insinuation —

"Who starves a sister, or denies a debt."

Lord Grange, for his own part, has the merit, when characterising his opponent, of a coincidence with the illustrious poet – at least in the bestowal of an epithet. Every one remembers Pope's —

"Avidien and his wife, no matter which;

For him you call a dog, and her a – ."

It is satisfactory to find, on the most palpable evidence, that Lord Grange had sufficient poetical genius to supply this rhyme, though whether his poetic powers went any farther, we are unable, and perhaps no one will ever be able, to determine.

We must quote, unmutilated, one of Grange's conflicts with Avidien's wife. Though the scene be roughly described, it has an interest, from the unscrupulous vehemence of the principal actors, and the eminence of the little group, who cluster round it like a circle of casual passengers round the centre of disturbance, where the wife and the brother-bacchanalian compete, on the pavement, for the possession of some jovial reveller, whose half-clouded mind remains vibrating between the quiet comforts of home and the fierce joys of the tavern. There is something affecting in the vacillating miseries of the poor invalid – we wonder how much of the cruel contest can be true; for, that it is all true, it is impossible to believe – yet Lady Mary could be violent, and she could be hard, when she was attacked or baffled; and she had a rough and unscrupulous nature to combat with, in the historian of their warfare.

"Lady Mary, perceiving how things were like to go, did what I was always afraid of, and could not possibly prevent: she went in rage to her poor sister, and so swaggered and frightened her, that she relapsed. While she was about that fine piece of work, Lord Erskine happened to go to Lady Mar's; and in his presence Lady Mary continued to this purpose with her sister: 'Can you pretend to be well? Don't you know you are still mad? You shan't get out of my custody; and if Lord Grange and his confederates bring you before Lord Chancellor, I'll make you, in open court, in presence of the world, lay your hand on the Gospel, and swear by Almighty God, whether you can say you are yet well. Your salvation shall be at stake; for, remember, perjury infers damnation – your eternal damnation.' So soon as I was informed of this, I assured my lady (and so did others,) that in law no such oath could be put to, her, and that Lady Mary had only said so to fright her. But so strong was the fright, that nothing we could say was able to set her right again. And Lady Mary, having thus dismounted her came again and coaxed her, and (as I found by diverse instances) strove to give her bad impressions of her family, and everybody but Lady Mary's sweet self. Yet next day Lady Mar went and dined at Mr Baillie's in town, and there saw a deal of company, and behaved very well. And Dr Arbuthnot, who, among others, saw her there, said he thought her very well; and had not the turn happened you will presently hear of, he and Dr Monro (son to Mr Monro who, at the Revolution, was Principal of Edinburgh College, and is now physician to Bedlam,) and Dr Mead, were to have gone to her with me next day and afterwards, that they might have vouched her condition before the chancellor. I believed it best for me not to be at Mr Baillie's, that all might appear as it was, free and natural, and not conducted by any art of mine; only I went thither about seven at night, and found her in a room with Ladies Harvey, Binning, Murray, Lady Grizzel Baillie, and others. She was behaving decently, but with the gravity of one that is wearied and tired. Mr Baillie himself, and the other gentlemen and ladies, (a great many being in the next room,) now and then joined us, and she seemed not in anything discomposed, till the conversation turned on her sister's late insult, which, it was visible, gave a shock to her, and disconcerted her; and when Lady Murray and I went home with her to Knightsbridge, she was so dumpish that she scarcely said one word. When I went to her next day, I saw how strongly Lady Mary's physic wrought, and dissipated her poor returning senses. She had before urged me earnestly to proceed faster than was fit, to get her before the chancellor, and do everything needful for her liberation, that she might go to her husband and family. But now she told me she would not for the world appear before the chancellor, and that neither she nor any other must make oath as to her recovery, (at this time, indeed, it had been a very bold oath); and that she preferred her soul's salvation to all things. And, among other things, she said, what a dismal condition shall I be in if, after all, the chancellor send me back under Mary's government; how shall I pass my time after such an attempt? In short, she was bambouzled, and frighted quite. But that her head was really turned by Lady Mary's threats of damnation, farther appeared by this instance: Lady Grizzel Baillie and Lady Murray having gone to take leave of her, (their whole family is gone to Spa,) when I saw her next day, she gravely told me that Lady Murray was no more her friend, having endeavoured, when taking leave, to deprive her of all the comfort left her – the hope of heaven. And though (said she) I was bred to the Church of England, and she to that of Scotland, yet merely the difference is not so great that she must pronounce me in a state of damnation: and she asked me seriously, what Lady Murray had said to me about her being damned? Never in my life, madam, answered I, did she or any London lady speak to me about salvation or damnation; but I'm sure my Lady Murray loves you as her sister, and heartily wishes your happiness here and hereafter. Then she gave me a sealed letter to Lady Murray, begging me to deliver it and bring an answer. I read it with Lady Murray. It was long, and all expostulatory why she pronounced her to be damned; and said many odd things. Lady Murray's answer was the proper one – short and general, but very kind, which I also delivered; and Lady Mar said no more to me on that head. Before she took this turn, perceiving her so vapourish and easily disconcerted, I would not venture to put the case wholly on perfect recovery, but stated it also as I really thought it – viz., recovered from all that could properly be called lunacy, yet exceeding weak, and apt to be overturned. And I had prepared a memorial in law on that supposition, which I was to have laid before Mr Talbot, solicitor-general, and other counsel, the very day she took this wrong turn; but thereupon stopt altogether. At parting, she appeared to me as one who, fearing to provoke a worse fate by attempting to be better, sat down in a sort of sullen despairing, content with her present condition, which she (justly) called misery. Thus seemed she to be as to any sense that remained with her; but all her sense was clouded, and, indeed, fancies which now perplexed her brain were, like the clouds, fleeting, inconstant, and sometimes in monstrous shapes."³¹

We have no more of this affair until the lapse of several months, when the judge, at the very moment of apparent victory, is routed by his watchful antagonist. He had obtained possession of Lady Mar – she was on her way to Scotland, "in right hands," but had not crossed the border. This was in 1733, a few months after Lady Grange had been safely conveyed to the grim solitudes of Hesker. Surely some bird of the air had whispered the matter to Lady Mary; for her measures were prompt and stern, and they draw from the baffled plotter many hard expressions and insinuations. "But on the road, she [Lady Mar] was seized by Lord Chief-Justice's warrant, procured on false affidavit of her sister Lady Mary, &c., and brought back to London – declared lunatic, and by Lord Chancellor (whose crony is Mr Wortley, Lady Mary's husband) delivered into the custody of Lady Mary, to the astonishment and offence even of all the English, (Sir Robert among the rest;) and Ilay pretended to be angry at it, yet refused to give me that relief by the king in council, which by law was undoubtedly competent."³²

The people with whom his London connexion brought the judge in contact, display a gathering of dazzling names in the firmament of fashion and wit. Bolingbroke, Windham, and "the courtly Talbot" are casually mentioned. Grange says in passing, "I am acquainted with Chesterfield." He has something to say of "sweet Lepel," the "wife of that Lord Hervey who last winter wrote the pamphlet against Mr Pulteney, and on Mr Pulteney's answer, fought with him and was wounded." Arbuthnot, and the prince of classical collectors, Richard Mead, mix with the ordinary actors of the scene. Young Murray, not then a crown lawyer – but sufficiently distinguished for wit, eloquence, and fashionable celebrity, to have called forth the next to immortal compliments of Pope —must have been one of the brilliant circle; and in the early period of his intercourse with his brother's sister-in-law, accident would be strangely against him, if he did not sometimes meet in the ordinary circle the pale distorted youth, with noble intellectual features and an eye of fire, whose war of wit and rancour with "furious Sappho" left the world uncertain whether to laugh with their fierce wit, or lament the melancholy picture of perverted genius, exhibited by a hatred so paltry yet so unquenchable.

In his autobiographical revelations, the economical old judge leaves some traces of his consciousness that his journeys from Merlyn's Wynd to Whitehall were a decided transition from the humble to the great world. He thus describes one of these journeys, in the letter already cited, in which he gratified his humour by talking of himself in the third person.

"Lord G. is now pretty well acquainted with the ways there; his personal charges, he is sure, will be small in comparison; he will not be in expensive companies or houses, but when business requires it; nor at any diversion but what he finds necessary for keeping up the cheerfulness of his own spirit, and the health of his body. He wears plain and not fine clothes. When there last he kept not a servant, but had a fellow at call, to whom he gave a shilling a-day such days as he was to be at court or among the great, and must have a footman as necessarily as a coat on his back or a sword by his side. He never was nice and expensive in his own eating, and less now than ever; for this winter he has quite lost the relish of French claret, the most expensive article in London. He is to travel without a servant, for whom he knows not any sort of use on the road, and only has a post-boy, whom he must have, had he twenty servants of his own; and so he travelled last year."³³

Strange indeed were the social extremes between which this journey lay. At the one end we see the brilliant assemblages of the most brilliant age of English fashion. The rays of the wax-lights glitter back from stars and sword-hilts, diamond buttons and spangles. Velvet coats, huge laced waistcoats, abundant hoops, spread forth their luxurious wealth – the air is rich and thick with perfumed powder – the highest in rank, and wealth, and influence are there, so are the first in genius and learning. Reverse the picture, and take the northern end of the journey. In an old dark stone house, at the end of a dismal alley, Lovat's ragged banditti throttle a shrieking woman – a guilty cavalcade passes hurriedly at night across the dark heath – next opens a dreary dungeon in a deserted feudal fortalice – a boat tosses on the bosom of the restless Atlantic – and the victim is consigned to the dreary rock, where year follows year, bringing no change with it but increasing age. The contrast is startling. Yet, when we read Lady Grange's diary and Lady Mary Wortley's letters together, they leave one doubtful whether most to shudder at the savage lawlessness of one end of the island, or the artificial vices that were growing out of a putrid civilisation in the other.

THE ROYAL PROGRESS

Question – "What is a King?" Answer – "A monster who devours the human race." Such was a part of the catechism taught to all the children of France during the first fervour of the Revolution in 1789. "I wonder the people should die of want," said a princess during the dreadful famine of 1774; "for my part, if I was one of them, I should live on beef-steaks and porter, rather than perish." Such are the feelings with which the members of the same community, children of the same family, unhappily sometimes come to regard each other during periods of democratic excitement, or mutual estrangement. Ignorance, worked on by falsehood, and misled by ambition, is the main cause of this fatal severance. Nothing removes it so effectually as bringing them together. So natural are the feelings of loyalty to the human heart, so universally do they spring up when the falsehood which has smothered them is neutralised by the evidence of the senses, that it may be considered as one of the greatest evils which can afflict society, when circumstances occur which keep sovereigns aloof from their people, and one of the greatest blessings when they can rejoin each other. Of this, a signal example occurred on the return of the royal family of France from the fatal journey to Varennes, when Barnave, who had been sent down with Petion, as one of the most vehement and stern republicans, to bring them back to Paris, was so impressed with the philanthropic benevolence of the King, and so melted by the heroic magnanimity of the Queen, that he became thenceforward one of the most faithful defenders of the royal cause. "How often," says Thiers, in recounting this remarkable conversion, "would factions the most inveterate be reconciled, if they could meet and read each other's hearts!"

The sudden change often produced in the general mind, by the veil of ignorance and prejudice being withdrawn, which had concealed from them the real character of their rulers, is not to be ascribed merely to the lustre of royalty, or the dazzling of the public gaze by the magnificent pageants which, on such occasions, generally surround it. It arises mainly from a different cause: it is allied to the generous affections – it springs from the feelings planted by the Author of nature in the human heart, to bind society together. It is often seen most strongly when the royal pageants are the most unpretending, and the royal personages, laying aside their previous state, mingle almost without distinction, save from the superior grace of their manners, with the ordinary citizens. It is more like the irresistible gush of affection which overspreads every heart, when the members, long severed, of a once united family are reassembled; or when the prodigal returns to his father's home, only the more dear from the events which had estranged him from it.

It is sometimes said that loyalty is an instinctive principle, meant to supply the place of reason before the intellectual faculties have grown to their full strength among a people, but unnecessary, and which gradually dies out, when society, under the direction of self-government, has come to be regulated by the rational faculties. There never was a greater mistake; and every day's experience may convince us that it is not only false, but directly the reverse of the truth. The time will never come, when the aid of loyalty will not be required to bind society to its chief: and if the time should ever come that its generous influence is no longer felt, it may safely be concluded that the sun of national prosperity has set, and that a night of darkness and suffering is at hand. Mankind cannot be attached, save in a passing moment of fervour, to an abstract principle, or a vast community without a head, or something which may supply its want to the senses. The aid of individuals or localities is required to concentrate and keep alive the patriotic affections, where they are not centred on an individual sovereign. What the Acropolis was to Athens, the Capitol to Rome, St Mark's to Venice, that the sovereign is to a monarchical community, and so it will remain to the end of the world. All the fervour of the Revolution could not supply in France the want of one chief, till Napoleon concentrated the loyal affections on himself. The real enemy to loyalty is not reason, but selfishness. It dies away, not under the influence of enlarged education, but under that of augmented corruption; and till that last stage of national decay has arrived, its flame will only burn the more steadily from reason adding the fuel by which it is to be fed.

If any doubt could be entertained, by a well-informed mind, of the incalculable importance of loyalty, as the chief and often the only bond which holds society together, it would be removed by two events which have occurred in our own times, – the Moscow invasion, and the steadiness of England during the mind-quake of 1848. On the first occasion, this sacred principle defeated the mightiest armament ever assembled by the powers of intellect against the liberties of mankind; on the last, it preserved unshaken and unscathed the ark of the constitution in the British islands, amidst the deluge which had shaken the thrones of almost all the other European monarchies. In these two examples, where two states in the opposite extremes of infancy and civilisation were successively rescued from the most appalling dangers, amidst the ruins of all around them, by the influence of this noble principle, we may discern the clearest proof of its lasting influence upon man, and of the incalculable blessings it is fitted to confer, not less in the most enlightened than the most unenlightened ages of society. But for it, the social institutions of Great Britain would have been overturned on the 10th April 1848, and England, with all its education, civilisation, and habits of freedom, would have been consigned to destruction by a deluge of civilised barbarians, compared to whom, as Macaulay has well said, those that followed the standard of Attila or Alaric were humane and temperate warriors. Hence we may learn how wonderfully loyalty is strengthened, instead of being weakened, by the progress of knowledge and the spread of civilisation in a really free community; and what force that noble principle acquires when, to the generous enthusiasm which binds the unlettered warrior to his chief, is added the determination of freemen to defend a throne which all feel to be the keystone in the arch of the national fortunes.

It is a fortunate, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say a providential circumstance, that a Queen, during the late eventful years, has been on the throne of the British empire. Had a king been there, still more one of unpopular manner or retired habits, when all the thrones of Europe were falling around us, the event might have been very different, and England, with all its glories, have been sunk in the bottomless pit of revolution. The feelings of loyalty to a Queen, especially if she is young and handsome, and unites the virtues to the graces of her sex, are very different from those which, under the most favourable circumstances, can be awakened in favour of a king. The natural gallantry of man, the feelings of chivalry, the respect due to the softer sex, are mingled in overwhelming proportions with the abstract passions of loyalty when a young and interesting woman, endowed with masculine energy, but adorned with feminine beauty, surrounded by the husband of her choice and the children of her love, is seen braving the risks and enduring the fatigues of a journey through lands recently convulsed by civil dissension, solely to win the love of her subjects, to heal the divisions of the great family of which she forms the head.

History affords numerous examples of the far greater power, in periods of intestine troubles, queens have than kings in winning the affections or calming the exasperation of their subjects. Despite all her errors, notwithstanding her faults, Queen Mary exercised a sway over a large part of her subjects which no man in similar circumstances could have done. Austria would have been crushed by the arms of France and Bavaria in 1744, but for the chivalrous loyalty which led the Hungarian nobles to exclaim in a transport of generous enthusiasm, "Moriamur pro Rege nostro, Maria Theresa."

 
"Fair Austria spreads her mournful charms,
The Queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms."
 

And it is doubtful if all the fervours of the Reformation could have enabled England to withstand the assault of the Catholic league, headed by Spain in the time of Philip II., if in defence of the nation had not been joined the chivalrous loyalty of a gallant nobility to their queen, as well as the stern resolution of a Protestant people in behalf of their religion and their liberties.

But the passion of loyalty, as all other passions, requires aliment for its support. Like love, it can live on wonderfully little hope, but it absolutely requires some. A look, a smile, a word from a sovereign, doubtless go a great way; but entire and long-continued absence will chill even the warmest affections. It is on this account that royal progresses have so important an influence in knitting together the bonds which unite a people to their sovereign. They have one inestimable effect – they make them known to each other. The one sees in person the enthusiastic affection with which the sovereign is regarded by the people, the latter the parental interest with which the people are regarded by their sovereign. Prejudices, perhaps, nourished by faction or fostered by party, melt away before the simple light of truth. A few hours of mutual intercourse dispels the alienation which years of separation, and the continued efforts of guilty ambition during a generation, may have produced. The generous affections spring up unbidden, when the evidence of the senses dispels the load of falsehood by which they had been restrained. Mutual knowledge produces mutual interest; and the chances of success to subsequent efforts to bring about an estrangement are materially lessened, by the discovery of how wide had been the misapprehension which had formerly existed, and how deep the mutual affection which really dwelt in the recesses of the heart, and was now brought to light by the happy approximation of the sovereign and her people.