by Susan Nagel
Two days later, on January 20, their fifth child, a daughter named Lucy, was born. Mary had been hoping for a boy, not only because she missed William, but also because his death had intensified Elgin’s urgency for more sons. Mary had suffered through labor in the middle of the night and had the baby on her own before Dr. Croft could arrive. Once the doctor saw Mary, he gave her “twice Brandy, a good deal of Opium and bread soaked in White Wine.” Four days later, she was still given large quantities of opium:
Elgin I solemly declare to you if you wish to preserve my life, or if you wish a being even common happiness—you must promise sacredly promise not to put me at least for a few years into this situation—answer me my Elgin fairly & honestly, all my future happiness is now in your hands—every person here says they never saw any body human being suffer like me—I would before Heaven I declare it, sooner die than look forward to such suffering—but answer me— … what I suffered afterwards is beyond describing—the after pains still continue pretty violent & Croft gives me Opium to appease them & make me sleep.
Mary wanted her husband to practice birth control from then on or she wanted no sex at all. Elgin’s greatest fear, sharpened by the death of their son William, emanated from his childhood. He wanted to ensure that he had an heir to the eminent titles and estate. He would never agree to birth control, even though various methods were available. The most popular method of birth control in the early nineteenth century was coitus interruptus, or withdrawal; but since the days of King Charles II, when the court doctor, Dr. Condum, supposedly introduced the condom to His Majesty and society, the condom was widely available as well. In 1717, a well-known treatise by Daniel Turner insisted that the condom was the best protection against syphilis. Casanova used the term redingote anglaise. By the late eighteenth century, handbills in London advertised the sale of condoms, and they could be easily purchased by any gentleman. Birth control was entirely the gentleman’s option.
As Mary recuperated, she experienced the bittersweet pleasure of this new little child while memories of William flooded her emotions. She received visitors, mostly family, who came to meet Lucy and to look in on her very frail mother. Aunt Bluey helped Mary with her correspondence except for those letters to Elgin. (Mary unhappily remembered Elgin’s severity when she allowed Ferguson to write for her.) Ferguson also came to rally Mary’s spirits with reports on his progress on Elgin’s behalf, and indeed, Elgin had now moved to a more comfortable situation in Paris while negotiations concerning his liberty resumed. “I trust my dearest Elgin when the Emperor returns to Paris, you will get leave. I cannot doubt it if Seb. [Sébastiani] is there,” Mary wrote. She joked that since she had already shown off all of her Paris gowns once, she needed to return to Paris to buy some more, but she also threatened, once again, to take matters into her own hands should Elgin not proceed. She was determined to see Elgin in Paris once she was on her feet and was angry that he had not sent her the proper papers. “How I can return to France, if you will not send one an answer,” she wrote to Elgin, and in desperation warned him that to be near him she would make her own way without his cooperation and “go to Holland & wait there till I hear from Paris.” For an English person, because of the war with Napoleon, entering the Netherlands—still the Batavian Republic until later in the year when Napoleon placed his brother, Louis-Napoleon, on the throne of Holland—was a far less labyrinthine feat than procuring a safe passage to France. She was convinced that once in Europe, Napoleon would be easier to persuade than her husband, and she would return to Paris. Mary’s fighting spirit was subdued, however, because she was unable to rise until Friday, February 7, when she went out of doors for the first time since her confinement.
She had ample time in bed to decide with much regret not to nurse her little girl because she felt to do so would worsen the hourly pain of William’s loss. Lucy had not taken his place, could not take his place, and Mary begrudgingly admitted that none of her children ever would. She admitted that she had felt closest to her deceased son and thought it might have had something to do with the fact that she had nursed him. Although she adored her other children, he had been her favorite. She understood to her core that Elgin feared the possibility that another of their children would die, and especially since Lord Bruce was now his only male heir, Mary repeatedly tried to reassure her husband that their four surviving children enjoyed robust good health. She urged him to be satisfied with their brood as complete, and declared a moratorium on further pregnancies.
Mary barraged Elgin with her new position on the matter. She was sincerely terrified of having to go through one more pregnancy. To ensure her happiness, she told him, she would no longer sleep with him. She wanted her own bedroom. She wanted to live with him as “friends” and she wanted him to agree to this arrangement. In April, she wrote:
I am determined to have a room to myself, I am serious nothing can alter me—my health & happiness requires it…. My resolution is fixed, I do not care where I live, but I will not run the risk of suffering as I have done, any more. Why will you not answer me? You might make me comfortable by saying you will agree to my having a room to myself, tell me what I am to expect.
He did not reply to these demands nor did he take them seriously, believing them to be a temporary reaction to yet another difficult pregnancy and delivery.
Mary had not stopped loving him, calling him “my beloved Elgin,” wondering if he were being unfaithful, and asking him forlornly if he remembered his “little Dot.” She reminded him that it was he who sent her away, and she reiterated that she would rather remain in “a hole” anywhere in the world if it were with him. She simply wanted no more pregnancies. A month after Lucy’s birth, Mary still experienced severe contractions. She was also experiencing another kind of pain.
At the beginning of February, barely two weeks after Mary had given birth to Lucy and at a time when she was physically still very frail, Robert Ferguson left London. He and Mary had grown even closer. Although he was deeply in love with Mary, he was confident that he had committed no objectionable action against his friend Lord Elgin and, in fact, believed that the Elgins would shortly be reunited. Robert had loved twice, and both of the women he had loved had been married to other men. He, once again, returned a woman he loved to the arms of her husband and proceeded with his own plans.
For years, Ferguson had wanted reform in government and had often quarreled with others, even in his own family, on behalf of his progressive views. He had never, however, put his beliefs into action. He decided to head home to Scotland to try his luck in politics. He was going to run for a seat in Parliament as a Whig to try to promote his ideas and implement those changes he thought essential toward creating a better Britain. Although Mary encouraged her friend, she secretly thought that his ideas would not be very popular with the large landowners who constituted and controlled the electorate, and she was convinced that he had very little chance of winning. The Whigs, at that time, had, in fact, gained control and had begun to exert their recently won power, flexing their muscle with all their might against the Scottish Tory leader Henry Dundas, now known as Lord Melville. Robert’s friends in Parliament accused Melville of financial misdeeds and brought impeachment proceedings against him in the spring of 1806. Lord Melville would eventually emerge victorious, but the trial dragged on a painful month and a half—enough time for Ferguson to secure his election, as opinion rested for the moment against the old Tory party boss. All of London was caught up in the unpleasant trial, and Mary wrote Elgin daily about the details.
She also wrote cheery letters to her husband of the happy home life he would return to. She resumed the lighthearted, entertaining stories and reported that she and her father had enjoyed a practical joke one day when they went shopping together, filling their carriage with cheese. They aimlessly drove around London, waving at friends, beckoning them to approach the carriage and greet them. After the friends would depart, desperately trying to pretend indifference to the awful smell
before running away, Mary and Mr. Nisbet would laugh with abandon. Her Baker Street house was full of life and the noise of children, “mad as March Horses tonight,” promising him contentment. She described the hilarious scene at Lucy’s christening in March when the aristocracy was treated to complete havoc courtesy of the Bruce children and their wild Greek paramannas. In addition, she demurely offered him the news that she had given up attending balls in favor of a new strategy: “Keeping back makes one the more sought after—I believe that is a good plan.”
In truth, she was hoping to impress Elgin with the kind of restrained behavior he could find no fault with. She was trying to walk the straight and narrow path so that when he came home he would agree to his “little Dot’s” demands. The underlying meaning was that when he came home, she would please him perfectly in every way except one. She would have no more children. The very model of the low-profile and dutiful wife, Mary had dinner at the bishop of London’s, at her grandmother’s house at “GS,” with her parents, who were footing all the bills, and with the Dowager Lady Elgin, whom Mary accompanied to the opera. She visited his marble collection at the West India Docks on June 3, and on Thursday, June 5, Lord Elgin arrived in London.
Robert Ferguson and Sir Joseph Banks had actually succeeded in getting the French to release Elgin. The cunning Talleyrand, however, made Elgin sign a pledge stating that Elgin agreed to return to France as a prisoner if requested to do so. Elgin, therefore, received his parole, and it was just that—not complete freedom, but a parole. As a man who could be recalled at any moment to live in France, there would be little chance that the British government would offer him another diplomatic post. Elgin returned to London and asked the Foreign Office to reimburse him for the huge amounts of money he had laid out. They agreed to his salary plus some small amount that fell far short of his outlay. He was furious and argued with the Foreign Office. After all the success he had enjoyed in Turkey, he felt that the British government should have paid him respect and expenses. He stubbornly resisted facing the widely accepted practice that diplomacy was a rich man’s game.
Elgin paid little mind to Mary’s letters, and he had not anticipated her absolute and complete resolve to cease sexual intercourse with him. All through June, they made public appearances, dazzling society in London. They went to dinner at Lady Durham’s house. They dined at the home of Lord Grenville, who was now prime minister. They went to the opera. They entertained Robert Ferguson, who had, to Mary’s surprise, been victorious in the election. To the outside world, they seemed like the perfect, happy couple, and indeed it all seemed perfect until July 2, when Mary took the children home to Archerfield and left her husband in London. He refused to live in a sexless marriage, and she, then, refused to live with him under the same roof.
Mary and the children lived between Archerfield and Biel for the next five months while Elgin and she existed in a tumultuous limbo. While her emotions were in a confused and strained state, Robert Ferguson decided that the moment was right to stake his own claim. He wrote passionate love letters to Mary and, perhaps to his detriment as a man of honor, actually waged a campaign of denigration against Lord Elgin, whom he now challenged as a rival. Ferguson promised devotion, fidelity, and no more children. He promised her a life free of anxiety where her every wish was his command. Aroused by his urgency, Mary felt assaulted on all fronts: she had fallen in love with Robert, and at the same time she was trying to decide which path to take with her own husband. Elgin claimed he would live with her on her own terms, and on November 30, he arrived at Archerfield to take Mary and the children to Broomhall. Above all, Mary wanted to keep her family together, and she agreed to go. Despite their efforts, events unfolded that drove them further apart. Mary and the children stayed at Broomhall through Christmas but returned to Archerfield before the New Year. Since his childhood, Elgin had mentally pictured and longed for the enviable life of the country squire; his fantasy had been to fill Broomhall with his children, with lovely things, and with an adoring wife. Mary, too, had planned for years for her return as mistress of her husband’s house. She had shopped for fabrics and furniture, she had commissioned portraits, and she had intended to spend the rest of her life as Lady Elgin, surrounded by her brood. Both of their fantasies lasted less than one month.
One day in December, a badly addressed envelope, written by a servant, arrived at Broomhall. The envelope read simply “M. Elgin.” This abbreviation spelled disaster. Lord Elgin, decoding the shorthand to mean “Milord,” as he had just been a prisoner in France, and not Mary, opened the note only to discover that he was not its intended recipient. The letter contained passionate explosions of sentiment and ardor for his wife from Robert Ferguson:
my Mary loves me more than ever—will love me … till she sinks into the grave … most adored of beings … we shall for ever, and long already we have enjoyed that delight, that happiness, which only hearts united like ours can feel, in the blessed certainty of loving and adoring one another, in the perfect, total conviction that to one another we eternally belong
and:
we shall now enjoy that feel of belonging to one another with a love, with an adoration never surpassed; united by the tenderest ties of the human heart, by every feeling of our natures … ever repeat to me, that my Mary lives but in me—loves me beyond example, and will ever, ever prove it—will effectuate her escape the moment she can, and then we shall venture to look forward to bliss unheard of.
Elgin was stunned. He and Mary had an explosive confrontation, and he further learned that various friends, like his former secretary Alexander Straton, had assisted in passing notes between Ferguson and his wife. Elgin felt the profound sting of betrayal from the two people he had trusted most, and began to question many things about their life. In one letter that was discovered, Mary had told Ferguson that she felt as though William had been theirs. Elgin then charged: if this affair had been going on for years, was it possible that William and Lucy were not his own children? Although Mary swore to Elgin that the children were his, the seeds of doubt were now planted so firmly in his mind that he decided he would tear Mary out of his life forever and give her the separation she and her lover seemed to desire. In January, Lord Elgin went to London and began a plan propelled by anger and jealousy, placing his own wife in an adversarial position. Overcome with rage and jealousy, Elgin determined that if she would have no more children with him and would allow another man to love her, he would divorce the Countess of Elgin.
There had been other aristocratic separations in the past where money had exchanged hands in order to keep all parties quiet. Though on the one hand Mary did, in fact, love Robert Ferguson, she was horrified at the thought of an actual divorce. She fought back with whatever ammunition she possessed in order to avoid losing her children and her reputation, so she offered Elgin money; Elgin, at that point, agreed that if Mary’s trustees would relieve some of his debt, he would not pursue a public trial. She arranged for the money; he used it and duped her. He left for London, after having received a good deal of money from her trustees, stayed at the Nisbets’ house on Portman Square, ostensibly to oversee some business about his marble collection—which was partially true—but at the same time he began divorce proceedings in London against his wife. As she had accused him in the past of being a secretive “Scot,” he proved that he was, in fact, quite able to keep a secret. Mary knew nothing of his double-dealing until June 22, 1807, when the sheriff arrived on Mary’s doorstep with an order to remove her children from her custody. He then took the children to Broomhall and formally charged Mary with being an adulteress and unfit mother; until proven otherwise in a court of law, Mary would no longer be permitted to see her own children.
Robert Ferguson, unhappy that Mary was suffering, but for his own cause quite thrilled with Elgin’s decision, stepped in, writing Mary beautiful love notes, referring to her as “adored angel”; he appeared at Archerfield and Biel, and offered marriage the very moment Mary was free.
/> Once Elgin’s lawyers began their motions and depositions, it was clear that he was not turning back. In August 1807, Mary’s lawyers responded to the charges that Elgin had learned of Ferguson’s attraction to the Countess of Elgin but that he held her blameless, living with his wife for months after the discovery of these letters. The Nisbets’ lawyers stated that Elgin
did also solicit and obtain from her, an order upon her trustees for a very large sum of money. … It was in this manner and on these terms that they lived together after the pretended discovery of her infidelity upon which this action is founded, during the months of December and January last [1807]—and in this course of conduct he persevered till he set off for London on the 20th of that month, after passing sometime in her bed chamber and bidding her adieu with many affectionate embraces. He desired her to enquire at the same time whether it would be convenient for him to lodge at her father’s house in London—and left his four children with her, and entirely under her management, where indeed they were allowed to remain till this action had been several months in defendence.
In other words, Mary’s lawyers recriminated, Elgin had falsely trumped up the infidelity charge, stating that he had continued to live with her and allow her contact with their children for months after his knowledge of a so-called love affair and that his reasons for suing for divorce had nothing really to do with adultery. Mary believed that Elgin would have forgiven her if she had agreed to have more children, but on that subject she stood firm. If there were to be a separation, she wanted it on her terms; instead, she was put in the position of having the courts decide her future. She now had to face the prospect that whereas in the past, her difficulties had always remained private, this time she would have no protection from public scrutiny. Divorce in the early nineteenth century was uncustomary and irregular, and even worse for Mary, divorce among the envied aristocracy was fodder for everyone’s imagination.