The Heir of Douglas
Page 10
They explained the necessary steps. There would be a complaint or “Plainte” presented on behalf of the Duke of Hamilton before the Tournelle of the Parliament of Paris. A “Recolement” or hearing would follow. If Andrew Stuart could make good the accusation, the accused would be ordered to appear, or laid by the heels. They would be put to the question, possibly physically. If found guilty, they would be executed. If they avoided appearing, they would be banished from France. Whatever the outcome, the evidence of Andrew Stuart’s witnesses would be taken upon oath and preserved among the court records. It seemed like a good idea. On December 17 Stuart and Dalrymple signed the Plainte.
What to do? The Douglas party in their turn consulted French lawyers. They got the same answer: start a suit. They should lodge a counter-complaint against Hamilton for suborning perjurers to destroy Archie’s birthright. Alexander Murray assented.
Then he thought it over. The suit in Scotland was what counted. Why should they become embroiled in the French courts? He stopped the French lawyers before they started. In this the young lawyer beat Andrew Stuart at his own game. His determination not to meddle or make in the French courts paid off in legal and moral advantage for years.
His next step was neither legal nor moral, but it was eminently practical. He went to the banker and drew out three thousand livres; “to expedate the Buisness,” he scribbled in his diary. The Buisness to be expedated was downright bribery and corruption. With it he bought of some venal clerk copies of the evidence the Stuart witnesses were giving before the Tournelle.
Instead of legal action the Douglas faction resorted to intrigue. They carried out hot-head Murray’s threat to appeal to the great ones. Their lawyers deprecated the attempt; they said the King himself could not stop a suit once started. They were perfectly right; but the stouthearted Duchess tried it, and failed.
Meanwhile Andrew Stuart was hustling his witnesses before the court in batches, and putting in documents in bundles, and causing official researches.
A catch-poll was told off to search for Madame Le Brun. In accordance with what Sir John had told the Scotch court, he went up from the Pont Neuf to the Luxembourg by the rue de la Comédie, and prowled into every court and turning. He found no one who had ever heard of a landlady named Le Brun.
The Douglas faction threw a wider net for Madame Le Brun. They were forced to admit that there was no such landlady. As to landladies the police lists were conclusive. But they got up a theory that she might have been a sick nurse, or a midwife, or even the keeper of a nursing home. They searched desperately for a likely one. Some of the understrappers even fished for her with golden bait, putting out the story that her erstwhile patient had left her a legacy. Of course they found a superfluity of Le Bruns. Some were midwives, some were charwomen, some were widows of independent means; some, not to mince words, were bawds. Some were alive and findable, some were dead or moved away. The most interesting was a Madame Le Brun of the rue de la Comédie, who would clean your house or do your sewing or care for your sick or do any similar odd job. The neighbours had seen her within these three weeks; but when the searchers began to look for her, she vanished. But neither she nor any other discoverable Madame Le Brun had had, in July 1748, any such suite of rooms as could have accommodated the Steuart party; and no findable Madame Le Brun would say that she had lodged them.
The non-existence of Madame Le Brun was one of the points Andrew Stuart presented before the Tournelle. He likewise undertook to prove that Pier La Marr was a chimera. This shadowy figure of an accoucheur was fabled to have made a tour of Italy and a ten-months stay at Naples. Furthermore, Sir John said he had first made his acquaintance at Liége in 1721, when La Marr had already been surgeon to a Walloon regiment, and perfected himself in midwifery. No trace of such a surgeon had been found.
True, there was Louis Pierre Delamarre, deceased. His birth certificate, however, proved that in 1721 he was no marching surgeon, but a half-grown boy. His wife came into court and proved he had never spent any time in Italy.
His friend M. Menager was not called. Stuart and D’Anjou thought he ought to be, but Doutremont persuaded them that this mountebank’s gabble about Delamarre was nothing to the purpose, and they allowed themselves to be dissuaded.
M. Menager was much disappointed. He liked to mix in important litigations. Ten years later he mixed in one too many, and got himself thrown into gaol for perjury. It wasn’t much perjury; on behalf of an indicted aristocrat he had merely volunteered an oath consisting of a perfectly veracious narrative cunningly larded with a few important inventions. A detailed report of this affair was made, too late, to Andrew Stuart, and still lies among his papers.
M. Menager was a kind of kitchen surgeon to a French Prince. While the Prince was listening to the romance of Hippolyte Count de Douglas, his surgeon was thereby reminded to retail to him the particulars of this new Douglas romance, as he had picked them up from Stuart and Buhot and connected them with his friend Delamarre. On the wings of rumor his tale soon came to the ears of the Duchess of Douglas.
Before long M. Menager had the pleasure of telling his story to those who wanted to hear it. He said that his friend Louis Pierre Delamarre had bragged to him of his feat in delivering of twins a lady pretty much advanced in years. The delivery had been at the house of Madame Le Brun, with whom Louis Pierre had been much, perhaps too much connected; but like the surgeon, the lady and her daughter were dead.
In November hot-headed Alexander Murray had told Andrew Stuart that he knew the accoucheur of Lady Jane, who was then alive and in Paris. By January, he had forgotten him or burked him, for he told his namesake that he knew nothing of the matter. But he did not put much stock in this new candidate. He regarded the talkative M. Menager with a jaundiced eye. His story had a disturbing perfume, and Murray was inclined to think it might be a trick of the Hamiltons to keep the Douglas faction distracted from more fruitful researches. Young lawyer Murray saw his point. They got the man cross-examined; the Prince himself sifted him. Menager stuck to his story. The lady was a foreigner from beyond sea, and last from Rheims, and he, Menager, had been invited to assist at her bedside, but most unfortunately he missed the rendezvous.
Soon M. Menager was dining with the Duchess, and enriching his tale. The widow Delamarre enjoyed the same privilege, and got above herself. She told Andrew Stuart, preening, that she knew very well how to present herself before distinguished company. She became a nuisance to him. She took to remembering the name of Steuart in her husband’s papers, and also, she volunteered, that of Du Bois (the painter in miniature). She put her books in the Duchess’s hands, and to get them for his suit Stuart had to send a catch-poll. It turned out the papers with the important names were no longer extant.
Louis Pierre Delamarre was altogether a nuisance to Andrew Stuart. He had certainly existed. First and last they asked more than a dozen of his colleagues and relations about him. He had been an interne at the Hôtel-Dieu in the forties, and not a very orderly one. He was addicted to wine, and was often seen flustered, though never gris. In 1747 he had been turned off for bringing into God’s Hotel a brace of poules. He had certainly been bragging to his fellow internes. “A man may be addicted to Gasconade,” remarked one of his friends dryly, “without being a Gascon.” He had bragged of a difficult delivery, of a foreign lady of advanced years. Only M. Menager was able to remember that he had delivered her of twins.
As time went on, nothing better than M. Menager turned up. In the end the Douglas faction had to put their faith in him.
All these fatigues were too much for one twenty-six-year-old lawyer, no matter how many French and Jacobite auxiliaries he commanded. On January 26 Alexander Murray wrote home hinting at another lawyer, and they sent him a mighty one. Francis Garden was notable for his classical attainments, his command of the French language, and his high regard for pigs. Legend has it that an early caller, entering Garden’s darkened bed-room, stumbled over something that emitted a terrible grunt. �
�Och,” said Garden, “it is just a bit sow, poor beast, and I laid my breeches on it to keep it warm all night.” Legend further has it that the bit sow had only been relegated to the floor when she became too unwieldy to share the bed.
The arrival of this patron of porkers eased things somewhat. With him young Murray was able to dine and take his pleasure at the French comedy; he even managed to take in the bal masque.
Garden brought with him for delivery in France a curious letter from Sir John Steuart in Scotland. Sir John wanted a friend to find out the names of M. Godefroi’s servants in the ’48, without the landlord knowing about it; he hoped they might be findable, at no matter what price. He did not say what he wanted of them. It was Godefroi’s servants who directed him to Le Brun’s; perhaps he wanted them to tell, or not tell, where it was.
The Douglas team was further strengthened in March by the arrival of Alexander McKonochie, W.S. “God save us!” cried a bewildered nobleman, hearing the name for the first time, “Mac-a-ho-acock-hock-a! Pray, how is it spelled?” It was spelled every which way; but the owner of it signed it “McKonochie.” His name was the most sensational thing about McKonochie. He was a shrewd and solid little man of business, of unrelenting application and no genius, and he could be counted on to serve the interests of Archie Douglas and suffer no lapses and no inspirations. Once he took the field, he held it to the end, enabling the advocates, Murray, Garden, and others, to shuttle from court to field and back again as the Douglas occasions required.
McKonochie was probably in London on March 22 to see the splendid medieval panoply of the heralds and the pageants that attended them as they wended their way into the City to proclaim, at long last, the peace. He was in France before the month ended.
Shortly after he arrived, Andrew Stuart departed. He took with him would-be heir Sir Hew, lawyer D’Anjou, and a recruit to his forces, his close friend William Johnstone, advocate. Johnstone was warm-hearted and ambitious, the threadbare third son of a poor Scotch family, and though he later heired one of the wealthiest men in England, and changed his name to Pulteney, he never changed his shabby turn-out nor his regard for Andrew Stuart. The four Hamilton partisans were on their way to England with a commission from the French King to take evidence for the Tournelle.
Left master of the field, Mr. McKonochie directed the Douglas forces in further futile sallies after news of the landlady and the accoucheur. After the latter he sent as far as sulphureous, balsamic Naples; the Old Pretender’s secretary, Andrew Lumisden, was told off for these researches, and reported no success.
Meanwhile McKonochie touched off a more successful inquiry. He settled down to prove that my Lady Jane in the ’48 had certainly been pregnant. There was plenty of evidence to be had. Mrs. Hewit and Isabel Walker had seen it all, and talked freely about it, and sworn it on oath when Archie was served heir. Then too, written evidence had come to hand. The Aix landlady had received Colonel John’s letter from London, after all, and had sent back a batch of affidavits to the pregnancy. They came by a round-about route, and stalled half-way; but when the thing began to make a noise, they were finally produced. The landlady was dead by now, but her oath was there, and was closely confirmed by living memories. Living memories held the testimony of others who had died, the young maid Effie Caw and a close friend at Rheims, Lord Crawfurd. Many were still alive who remembered my Lady’s pregnancy—landladies and travelling companions, friends from home, acquaintances abroad. The Douglas investigators set out to collect all the evidence.
It put the indefatigable Duchess on the road. She determined to visit the cities where Lady Jane had sojourned, and she marshalled her forces for the trip. She lined up young lawyer Murray, Miss Primrose the interpreter, and Carnegie of Boysack, the Jacobite exile. She strengthened the French department by enlisting Abbé Colbert, Scotch-born, French-educated cousin of David Hume, the famous philosopher. She posted McKonochie to cover the rearguard at Paris, and sallied forth.
From Aix to Liége to Sedan to Rheims to Paris they traced my Lady. People remembered her, and most remembered that she had been pregnant. From such memories the Duchess pieced together a full account.…
It is February 1748, at Aix. My Lady Jane has certainly no notion of pregnancy, real or assumed, for she is still concealing her marriage, and on occasion she flatly denies it. But she is conscious of malaise. She writes home about a “cold” that has plagued her for some time; a “cold” covers many odd symptoms. She is often nauseated, and complains of bile on her stomach. The landlady begins to notice the symptoms, and Isabel Walker, dressing and undressing her, soon sees her figure change. “If that is bile in your stomach,” she remarks dryly, “it is living bile, for I perceive you are with child.” When my Lady excuses her indisposition as tooth-ache, Lord Crawfurd laughs in her face. “The effect of that tooth-ache,” says he, “will prove a pleasure to every person that is concerned with you.”
Still my Lady conceals her person. She wears a little hoop, as round before as behind, and covers her swelling bosom with a large fichu. She borrows a mantle to make calls of state, feeling that without it, passing as a single woman, she would make a very indecent appearance. She sends out her stays to be widened, two fingers at a time. Those stays, more properly called jumps, are the kind that lace at the sides for easy enlarging. Later Effie Caw imparts the secret of slitting and lacing to another pregnant mistress.
Now she is getting too bulky for concealment. Everyone notices it. The Hamilton faction take no stock in this symptom.
“How do you know?” they demand of one witness, a young priest who adored my Lady. “Who told you that it was not rags which she had about her? Did you feel her?”
The young priest had attempted no such intimacy, but others had. Lord Crawfurd rallies her affectionately:
“You are very fat.”
“No, I am rather lean.”
“What,” inquires the Earl, drolling, “is all this here?”
He puts his hand upon the prominence in question, and feels life move against it. Effie Caw, putting on the Lady’s gown, feels life too. Shy Lady Jane reddens, and pushes her away. “My Lady could not be more bashful,” Effie disrespectfully remarks to Isabel Walker, “if she were with child of a bastard.”
Those who see her intimately have cause to say that it is not rags. Mrs. Hewit, Isabel Walker, Mrs. Hepburn, little Miss Primrose, the friendly landlady, all are at her bedside to observe her without her hoop, and notice how belly and breasts swell as the days go on. To Isabel Walker, who remembers how flat she used to be, it conjures up the idea of twins. My Lady is now so bulky she cannot climb into the high fourposter bed, but must be helped with the aid of a stool.
A whole convent of nuns are gossipping about her. They notice her bulk, and the appetite of pregnancy that drives her to the refectory to ask for bread and butter. When they learn she is married to the Colonel, they feel free to pray for her, and she asks their prayers, and offers a chaplet to their patroness St. Anne, who is also the patroness of easy childbirth.
Others see the look of pregnancy in her thin face and great eyes, in the breast swelled or “plus enfoncée” (more sunk), in the way the shifted center of gravity shows in the gait, the heavy tread on the stair, the difficulty in sitting down and rising.
A couple of ancient gentlemen, and one very young one, stare at her and notice nothing. Other males are told the news, and then confirm it with their eyes. But the women, and particularly the married women, notice every symptom with sympathetic attention.
Rising prices drive my Lady’s household into successively meaner lodgings, and they determine to depart. Some friends think she should go home for a labour as public as a Queen’s, but she will not. She says she is sick to death at sea, and dares not risk that danger to the unborn child. She tells her landlady that if she bears a daughter only, she will still conceal her marriage. She says despondingly to Mrs. Hewit that there is no use bespeaking a wet-nurse, for she does not hope to bear a living child.
On the 21st of May, 1748, they set out. The trip is easy to follow. The Duchess has seen a notebook of Lady Jane’s, with the details summarized:
We set out from Aix-la-Chapelle the 21st of May. 1748.
We arrived at Liege the 21st of May, between 7 and 8 at night; lodged at the Black Eagle.
We set out from Liege the 25th May and arrived at Sedan the 27th, lodged at the Trois Rois, next day we took up our quarters at the sign of the Hart, where we remained nine days.
We set out from Sedan the fifth of June and arrived at Rheims, the seventh, the day following took up our lodgings at Mons. Hibert fauxbourg St Dennis vis a vis les Jacobin.
We set out from Riems the 2d July
Stayed the first night at Soissons
The next at … [my Lady could not remember]
And came to Paris the fourth of the same month.”
At Liége they tarry with friends. With a Douglas kinsman Colonel John discusses the pregnancy. The clansman advises the Colonel to carry his Lady to Paris for the best advice. “I incline much to do so,” replies Colonel John, “but I fear I shall lack money.” Upon this prelude to a touch, the Douglas forthwith mounts his horse and rides away. Colonel John gives his words some thought.