The Heir of Douglas

by Lillian de la Torre

  Paris, July 22.

  Mrs. Hewit was a faithful correspondent. She wrote often. Not all the letters survived, but there were two more.

  Paris, 26th July 1748

  Dear Tiby

  Joust as I was set doun to writ to you, I got yours, writ on the same day I wrot to you, which was the 21st day, tellen you the happy neus. Inded, Tiby, I could not possably writ souner, if you now the confeushon we have been in, geeting two, when we expected on, nurses to seek; the yongst lovely dear very weak, and dorst not tell her. In short, Tiby, I have not time to tell you all I have had to do. I mind you both moch, and is thoght it 3 months senc I left you. My fot was newer out, but one with her to geet the air, so I know as letell of the place as you do. Indid, since she was broght-to-beed, Mr Stewrt and I is been oft out of town, tell we got nurces. I have hopes the yongest will still do well; but the stordy velen with hos is ten all from him, and ell lock pour man, he is had to his nurces, but is at last got a fean on, and he not a beet the worc. She is recoveret to a wonder, not indid without the greatest care. She is stell very weak, and her doctor is ordert her to be ten to the country in eight days, to make her perfctly fit for her journey home.… She minds you both kindly, and does not wonder at both your anxieties; for she wonders she is alive herself, after what she has undergone.… Adeu, dear Tiby.

  Helen Hewitt

  From the country she wrote again:

  12th August 1748

  Dear Tiby,

  I had both your letters 2 days ago, but I find you cannot read my writ; for I writ to you long ago, that the youngest boy was very small and weak, and that we was in great fears about him, but did not let your Lady know the worst. We got at the first a fine nurse for him which was no small mercy, for he had not strength to a subsisted; but she wold not go along with hos, if we would have gaven her a honder pound; so he most be lift to her care. Mr. Stewrt is seeing him jost now, and I got a leter this day, tellen he hopes he will dow very well, and that the nurse is the most carefoll womin he iver sa, and that he is now queet content to live him with her. For our dear letell man that is with hos, he has been the most unlucky pour dr in his nurses; no les has he had than five, all good milks, but base jades would not come along with us for love nor mony. We was in such a way, that Mr. Stewart was to a-gon to Reims, and brought on up with him, when luckily we got this womin, who cam from Sedan to the shiring, her hosbont and her, and she was very glad; so we have her hosbont and child to bring along with hos, and glad to do it; and in spite of all that he is the statelest lovest dear iver you sa. I may say I have been his nurse; for I have never been a whole night in my bed. Indid, Tiby, if you knew all I have had to do, you would wonder indeed how I have held out. I long moch for rist; and with all the toil I have had, is obliged to wash and dress all her letell things and my oen.… She is most anxious to be with you, though stell very weak; and indid, Tiby, you will stell geet her to coker. She minds you both kindly, as I do. Adeu dear Tiby.

  Helen Hewit

  THE FOURTH “LA MARR” LETTER

  Mr. Loch, Lady Jane’s man of business, added more definite information. Lady Jane had told him “that she was delivered in the house of Madame Le Brun, Sanbourg St. Germain, Paris, the 10th of July 1748; that Mr. Pier La Marr, a man-midwife, assisted her at the birth; Madame Le Brun and her daughter were present, a widow-lady who lodged in the house, and Mrs. Hewit.” He refreshed his memory from a note he had made; it was jotted on the back of notes for Lady Jane’s will. “Sanbourg” made no sense; but Andrew Stuart, scanning the evidence, recognized that Mr. Loch was referring to the faubourg Saint-Germain, the quarter where all the Britons in Paris resorted.

  The clinching proof the Douglas claimant offered, as Andrew Stuart remembered with a wry smile, the Hamilton agent had discovered himself. Rummaging old papers with the other lawyers, he had lit upon four letters in French. He handed them to the Douglas lawyer.

  “There,” said he, “are papers which you were not expecting.”

  They were letters from this Pier La Marr, the man-midwife. The first three were trumpery enough communications, dealing with the excellence of Sholto’s nurse and his childish difficulties, in this manner:

  Paris, September 18, 1749

  Sir,

  I received the honour of yours, of the 10th current; and, according to your desire, having examined, and well considered the state of the health of your dear child, as well as that of the nurse, I found it proper to wean the child. You must not be surprised, if he was put a little out of order by the change of diet; it is what I expected. He has had a little sort of fever, which lasted only three days; at present he eats and sleeps well. I caused him take a little rhubarb, which has had the best effect imaginable; and according to all appearance, he is at present out of danger of all the consequences of the weaning. I have always found the nurse so careful, that I judged it proper to continue the child in her hands, knowing that no body could have a more tender care. I am much persuaded, that you will be quite satisfied on seeing him, which you make me hope will be soon. Expecting which honour, Sir, I have that of being with respect, your most humble, and most obedient servant,

  Pier La Marr.

  To Mr Stewart, a Scotch gentleman, at Reims in Champagne.

  The fourth letter was as good as a birth certificate:

  Paris, June 9. 1752

  Sir,

  “I received yours some time ago; by which, I am glad to learn, that the twin-brothers, of whom I had the good fortune to deliver Madam, your dear spouse, on the 10th July 1748, are well; especially the youngest, Sholto-Thomas, for whom there was so much fear, having come into the world so weak, that I was obliged to perform also the office of the priest, lest he should have departed for the other world, without that ceremony so essential. I beg you would be pleased to make my most humble compliments to Madam Stewart, your most dear spouse, and to Mademoiselle Hewit, my assistant, and be persuaded, Sir, that I have the honour to be, your most humble, and most obedient servant,

  Peir La Marr.

  P. S. Since your departure, I have made the tour of Italy, and a stay of ten months at Naples, which has done a great deal of good to my breast; and I found the sulphureous air of Naples so balsamic in relieving my breast, that I am determined to return thither soon. I only wait the favourable occasion of finding a friend to accompany me in the journey.

  This letter will be delivered to you by Monsieur Du Bois, my intimate friend, who goes to settle at London to paint in miniature; if you can assist him to find employment, you will do me, Sir, a sensible pleasure. To Colonel Stuart at London

  To find this man-midwife, then, Andrew Stuart set forth in the labyrinth of Paris. For help he went to the police. They were famous for the minute way in which by strict regulation and continual spying they kept track of citizens and visitors alike. Their records were elaborate. The Lieutenant of Police graciously allowed the Duke of Hamilton’s representative to search them, and assigned an assistant, M. Buhot, to help him. M. Buhot was the police official charged with keeping track of aliens. He probably thought his assignment a good way of keeping track of Andrew Stuart; but he soon became genuinely interested and helpful.

  Together the Scotch lawyer in the black coat and the French policeman in his red and gold turned over the records for the year 1748. There was no landlady named Le Brun, then or since, in the faubourg Saint-Germain. There was no such person in the tax rolls. Mesdames Le Brun were as common as sparrows, but not in that calling.

  M. Buhot also helped in the search for some trace of Archie and Sholto in the records. There was no list of births, but each parish had its register of baptisms. Sholto had been baptized at birth, and the law strictly required that a child thus baptized, if he lived three days, must be reported to the parish priest for rebaptism. Buhot and Stuart scanned the parish registers, and found nothing.

  They also scanned the lists of surgeons privileged to practise in 1748. Pier La Marr was not among them. At the hospital of Saint-Cosme they made inq
uiries. Buhot’s own physician introduced them to M. Menager, and M. Menager had a great deal to say. His topic was his friend Louis Pierre Delamarre, journeyman surgeon, and the difficult and secret deliveries he had made. Andrew Stuart produced the four letters signed La Marr. Could these have been written by his friend? M. Menager shrugged. Louis Pierre had certainly never absented himself from Paris long enough to make the tour of Italy and a stay of ten months at Naples. M. Menager, a facetious man, suggested that his friend was referring to the “Italian disease” (which Andrew Stuart would have called the “French disease”), and that the tour of Italy was really a course of mercury. From this piece of nonsense Andrew Stuart derived considerable amusement.

  M. Menager sent them to Louis Pierre’s widow. She knew next to nothing about her husband’s medical affairs; but she was certain he had never visited Italy. Once more the investigators had reached a blank wall.

  They had only one crumb of certainty. The records of the coach-office showed that Mr. Steuart had had three places in the coach that left Rheims on July 2, 1748, and arrived at Paris on July 4. From that day they seemed to have gone underground.

  Andrew Stuart was half inclined to give up and go home. In that mood he went off to dine with Principal Gordon at the Scots College. Father Gordon, a tall stately man, sensible and obliging, was the patron of every Scot who visited Paris. When he learned Andrew Stuart’s errand, he told him something to his advantage. Stuart was not the first to inquire into Archie’s birth. In the year 1756 inquiries had been set on foot. The inquiries had failed; but Principal Gordon still had the information they were based on. Colonel John Steuart had been pressed to furnish details of Archie’s birth, and had made a jotting in French. When translated, it ran:

  Monsieur la Mar man-midwife

  Chez Madame Michelle

  faubourg St Germain at Paris

  in the month of July toward the

  commencement of the month 1748

  Monsieur and Madame Steuart

  lodged where Madame Steuart

  lay in of twins

  present the hostess, and her girl Marie,

  Monsieur la Mar man-midwife

  and Madamoy selle Huette

  this memorandum given to Mistres Napier

  the 13 of May 1756 by Jo: Steuart

  Andrew Stuart lost no time in seeking Madame Michelle. He found her at once. She was still at the Hôtel d’Anjou, and she vividly remembered Milord the Englishman and his gracious and beautiful wife, his hungry child and his useless wet-nurse, even as if they were before her at that moment. The child had certainly not been born in her hotel; they had fetched him from somewhere in the country.

  Whence had they come? Madame shrugged.

  “I cannot say; but I remember that the gentleman complained much that his head had been almost split with the noise he had endured at another hotel before coming to lodge here; and I think he named the Hôtel de Chalons.”

  The Hôtel de Chalons was the big coaching-inn where the Rheims coach put up. No wonder it was noisy; and no wonder that the Steuart party, arriving from Rheims, lodged there before moving on.

  Inn-keepers were required by law to keep a register of their lodgers for police inspection. M. Buhot asked to see it. Reliable Madame Michelle produced it at once, turned to the year 1748, and put her finger on an entry.

  Mos. fluratl Escossois et Sa famille entre le 8 juillet1748

  Andrew Stuart looked at this outlandish alias, and persuaded himself that it was in the handwriting of his father’s old correspondent Colonel John Steuart.

  He got no help, at the time, from the clue of the Hôtel de Chalons. Neither a Steuart nor a Fluratl was listed in their books.

  At the Hôtel d’Anjou, however, he was put in touch with a wealth of corroborative detail about the Steuart-Fluratl stay there. The maid Marie was not there to tell them it was she who wrote the name Fluratl in the book. She was dead. The daughter Marie was dead too. But the landlord was there, and the son-in-law, to recall the charming foreigners. So was the caterer who had brought in the meals. The widow-woman from the provinces was easily found. So was the good nurse.

  The good nurse now held a distinguished post, being housekeeper to Madame Pompadour; but she willingly took a few days off and came to Paris to confer with Andrew Stuart. She liked the handsome young Scotchman at once. She formed an impression from his name that he was the boy’s uncle, and from his looks that he was Lady Jane’s brother. She told him everything she could remember.

  “Did you, madame, nurse a stranger child in the year 1748?”

  “Ah, mon Dieu, oui! It was the child of an English Milord, I nursed him for about three weeks at that time, and assuredly I missed my fortune by refusing to go with them to Rheims, for I have heard they made the fortune of the nurse whom they took in my place.”

  “This investigation,” said Buhot sternly, “touches that child very nearly. He is in good health, and perhaps you will see him again, so you must tell the truth, and all the circumstances you can remember.”

  “How happy I shall be,” cried she, “to see that child!—and it will be singular enough if I have lived so long as to see him at the age of thirteen!”

  In many interviews like this they pieced out the story, and filled in the details of the picture.…

  The lady at the Hôtel d’Anjou, in July 1748, is frail; they all understand that she is just recovering from her in-lying. She does not stay in bed, but she keeps her chamber, and sees no visitors—no, not even a doctor. She comforts her convalescence with drafts of “warm liquor” from a silver cup the pastry-cook has provided. (Andrew Stuart, a fellow Scot, recognizes this warm liquor as tea.) She keeps her windows scrupulously closed against the fetid summer air. While the handsome Colonel rambles to the parks and the coffee-houses, she hangs in fondness over her sturdy child.

  The child is well developed and strong; they judge him to be about two months old. He was born in the country. Madame Michelle thinks it was near Versailles. The good nurse understands, probably from the gentleman, who alone is fluent in French, that the birth was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. She also understands that the child is especially dear to them, because he is the only survivor of twins, and that one day he will be very rich. They dress him in little short coats of white and pink, after the custom of their country, with fine laces on hems and caps. Underneath are less suitable garments, which surprise the nurse. Instead of being diapered in fustian and flannel, like a child of quality, he wears swathe-bands of coarse quilted stuff and heavy blanketing.

  There is a sharp disagreement between parents and nurse. The nurse (like Dr. Johnson) wants to wash him in warm water to please him, not in cold water to give him pain. The parents hold out for cold water, thinking (like Boswell) that warm water will wrinkle his skin. The British are great believers in cold water. My Lady is displeased, too, because the child’s hair grows low on his forehead; she puts it back with a band of linen.

  In spite of foibles, these charming English people engage the affections of everyone. They are generous and well-spoken. They give the nurse new clothes, a striped flannel petticoat and a skirt of linen, in the country style. They had bought them for the bad nurse. She had had time to make up the skirt, but the petticoat is still in the piece. The good nurse rather looks down on these countrified garments. Her husband fares better. Milord the Englishman gives him the very coat off his back, the chestnut-coloured coat he arrived in.

  The landlord is by trade a wig-maker. M. l’Anglois patronizes him by ordering a new wig; the landlord’s son-in-law, as his journeyman, sets up his wig-block to the gentleman’s measure and starts on the wig. It is true the gentleman finally goes off without paying for the wig, and without the wig; but when the journeyman catches up with him, he completes the transaction willingly enough.

  The widow-lady from the provinces is especially enchanted with the fascinating foreigners. She runs their errands. Milord keeps ready money in a cloak-bag, whence he pays cash for whatever they
have; from it he takes a golden guinea for the shopping, and when she brings back the goods, the bill, and the change, he takes the goods with a smile, shreds the bill, and gives her the change. She thinks this open-handed attitude very obliging.

  When the Scotch party arrange a jaunt, they condescendingly invite the widow-lady to make one; Milady, squeezing her hand, intimates that she is very glad to procure her that little pleasure. They ride out in a hired coach, and visit Versailles and the squares of Paris. The widow-lady notes approvingly that the handsome Englishman has for his lady all the devotion of a lover for his mistress, and when in the walks fatigue overtakes the lady, he supports her tenderly on his arm.

  Toward the widow-lady the pair are very winning. The companion is silent as a stone, and the lady’s French will not serve, but the gentleman speaks words of friendship, telling her as from the lady that her face pleases much. Will she go with them into England? She will not, but they persist in taking her address, writing it down in a little note-book: “Madame Blainville, at Peronne.”

  Madame Blainville has retold this story so much that it has become rather inflated as to time; she thinks there were two sight-seeing expeditions. The Michelles make it clear there was but one. Documents subsequently confirm the Michelles.

  One other detail the widow-woman imparts with gusto to Andrew Stuart. She is very fluent on the episode of the dry wet-nurse, “meagre, ugly, black, picked up at random on the street, and so little in a condition to be a wet-nurse, that she was obliged to have a young dog by whom she caused herself to be nursed, not because she had too much milk, but to form a nipple, she having none, which made an obstacle to the child’s taking the tit.” Andrew Stuart brushed off this bit of nonsense; but it is worth noting that Mrs. Hewit, independently, retained a cloudy memory of some such transaction involving a young whelp.

  Soon after the Versailles expedition, it becomes understood that the lady has been prescribed country air, and the good nurse recommends her home town of Dammartin. She leaves her own baby at Paris, and goes there with them. She never sees him again; he dies before her return.