Anecdotes And Aphorisms.
As it is likely some of our readers have never read “Napier's Life of Montrose,” we think it may not be amiss to insert an extract descriptive of the execution of that nobleman. It need scarcely be mentioned that this is the famous Graham of Claverhouse, whom Sir Walter Scott has drawn with such fine effect in one of his best novels.
It was resolved to celebrate his entrance into Edinburgh with a kind of mock solemnity. Thus on Sunday, the 18th of May, the magistrates met him at the gates, and led him in triumph through the streets. First appeared his officers, bound with cords, and walking two and two; then was seen the Marquis, placed on a high chair in the hangman's cart, with his hands pinioned, and his hat pulled off, while the hangman himself continued covered by his side. It is alleged in a contemporary record, that the reason of his being tied to the cart was, in hope that the people would have stoned him, and that he might not be able by his hands to save his face. In all the procession there appeared in Montrose such majesty, courage, modesty, and even somewhat more than natural, that even these women who had lost their husbands and children in his wars, and were hired to stone him, were, upon the sight of him, so astonished and moved, that their intended curses turned into tears and prayers. Of the many thousand spectators only one, Lady Jane Gordon, Countess of Haddington, was heard to scoff and laugh aloud. Montrose himself continued to display the same serenity of temper, when at last, late in the evening, he was allowed to enter his prison, and found there a deputation from the Parliament. He merely expressed to them his satisfaction at the near approach of the Sunday as the day of rest.
“For,” said he, “the compliment you put upon me this day was a little tedious and fatiguing.”
Montrose told his persecutors that he was more proud to have his head fixed on the top of the prison walls than that his picture should hang in the king's bed-chamber, and that far from being troubled at his legs and arms being dispersed among the four principal cities, he only wished he had limbs to send to every city in Christendom, as testimonies of his unshaken attachment to the cause in which he suffered. When Sir Archibald Johnson of Warriston, the Clerk-Register, entered the prisoner's cell, and found him employed, early in the morning, combing the long curled hair which he wore according to the custom of the cavaliers, the visitor muttered:
“Why is James Graham so careful of his locks?”
Montrose replied with a smile:
“While my head is my own, I will dress and adorn it; but when it becomes yours, you may treat it as you please.”
Montrose, proud of the cause in which he was to suffer, clad himself, on the day of his execution, in rich attire—“more becoming a bridegroom,” says one of his enemies, “than a criminal going to the gallows.” As he walked along, and beheld the instrument of his doom, his step was not seen to falter nor his eye quail; to the last he bore himself with such steadfast courage, such calm dignity, as had seldom been equaled, and never surpassed. At the foot of the scaffold, a further and parting insult was reserved for him: the executioner brought Dr. Wishart's narrative of his exploits and his own manifesto, to hang round his neck; but Montrose himself assisted in binding them, and smiling at this new token of malice, merely said:—“I did not feel more honored when his majesty sent me the garter.”
He then asked whether they had any more indignities to put upon him, and finding there were none, he prayed for some time, with his hat before his eyes. He drew apart some of the magistrates, and spoke awhile with them, and then went up the ladder in his red scarlet cassock, in a very stately manner, and never spoke a word; but when the executioner was putting the cord about his neck, he looked down to the people upon the scaffold, and asked:
“How long shall I hang here?”
His head was afterward affixed to a spike at the top of the Tolbooth, where it remained a ghastly spectacle, during ten years.
There is another execution scene, that of the courtly and enterprising Walter Raleigh, not usually accessible to general readers.
Sir Walter Raleigh, on the morning of his execution, received a cup of sack, and remarked that he liked it as well as the prisoner who drank of St. Giles's bowl in passing through Tyburn, and said, “It is good to drink if a man might but tarry by it.” He turned to his old friend, Sir Hugh Ceeston, who was repulsed by the sheriff from the scaffold, saying:
“Never fear but I shall have a place.”
When a man extremely bald pressed forward to see Raleigh, and to pray for him, Sir Walter took from his own head a richly embroidered cap, and placing it on that of the aged spectator, said:
“Take this, good friend, to remember me, for you have more need of it than I.”
“Farewell, my lords,” he exclaimed to a courtly group, who took an affectionate leave of him; “I have a long journey before me, and must say good-by.”
“Now I am going to God,” said he, as he reached the scaffold; and gently touching the ax, continued, “This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases.”
The very executioner shrunk from beheading one so brave and illustrious, until the unintimidated knight encouraged him, saying:
“What dost thou fear? Strike, man!”
In another moment the great soul had fled from its mangled tenement.
Next shall be related the story of the Tower Ghost; “communicated by Sir David Brewster to Professor Gregory,” and authentically recorded in “Letters on Animal Magnetism?”
At the trial of Queen Caroline, in 1821, the guards of the Tower were doubled; and Colonel S——, the keeper of the Regalia, was quartered there with his family. Toward twilight one evening, and before dark, he, his wife, son, and daughter were sitting, listening to the sentinels, who were singing and answering one another, on the beats above and below. The evening was sultry, and the door stood ajar, when something suddenly rolled in through the open space. Colonel S—— at first thought it was a cloud of smoke, but it assumed the shape of a pyramid of dark thick gray, with something working toward its centre. Mrs. S—— saw a form. Miss S—— felt an indescribable sensation of chill and horror. The son sat at the window, staring at the terrified and agitated party; but saw nothing. Mrs. S—— threw her head down upon her arms on the table, and screamed. The Colonel took a chair, and hurled it at the phantom, through which it passed. The cloud seemed to him to revolve round the room, and then disappear, as it came, through the door. He had scarcely risen from his chair to follow, when he heard a loud shriek, and a heavy fall at the bottom of the stair. He stopped to listen, and in a few minutes the guard came up and challenged the poor sentry, who had been so lately singing, but who now lay at the entrance in a swoon. The sergeant shook him rudely, declared he was asleep at his post, and put him under arrest. Next day the soldier was brought to a court-martial, when Colonel S—— appeared on his behalf, to testify that he could not have been asleep, for that he had been singing, and the Colonel's family had been listening, ten minutes before. The man declared that, while walking toward the stair-entrance, a dreadful figure had issued from the doorway, which he took at first for an escaped bear on its hind legs. It passed him, and scowled upon him with a [pg 350] human face, and the expression of a demon, disappearing over the Barbican. He was so frightened that he became giddy, and knew no more. His story, of course, was not credited by his judges; but he was believed to have had an attack of vertigo, and was acquitted and released on Colonel's S——'s evidence.
That evening Colonel S—— went to congratulate the man, but he was so changed that he did not know him. From a glow of rude health in his handsome face, he had become of the color of bad paste. Colonel S—— said to him:
“Why do you look so dejected, my lad? I think I have done you a great favor in getting you off; and I would advise you in future to continue your habit of singing.”
“Colonel,” replied the sentry, “you have saved my character, and I thank you; but as for any thing else, it little signifies. From the moment I saw that infernal demon, I felt I was a dead man.”
He never recovered his spirits, and died next day, forty-eight hours after he had seen the spectre. Colonel S—— had conversed with the sergeant about it, who quietly remarked:
“It was a bad job, but he was only a recruit, and must get used to it like the rest.”
“What!” said Colonel S——, “have you heard of others seeing the same?”
“Oh, yes,” answered the sergeant, “there are many queer, unaccountable things seen here, I assure you, and many of our recruits faint a time or two; but they get used to it, and it don't hurt them.”
“Mrs. S—— never got used to it. She remained in a state of dejection for six weeks, and then died. Colonel S—— was long recovering from the impression, and was reluctant to speak of it; but he said he would never deny the thing he had seen.”
What explanation Sir David Brewster has given of this singular apparition, the present writer does not happen to know. We quote it for its strangeness, and leave the reader to make of it what he can. We proceed with a curious instance of mental absence:
Lessing, the German philosopher, being remarkably absent, knocked at his own door one evening, when the servant looking out of the window, and not recognizing him, said:
“The professor is not at home!”
“Oh, very well!” replied Lessing, composedly walking away; “I shall call another time.”
There is an anecdote of successful coolness, of earlier date, which will serve very well to accompany the foregoing:
Charles II., after his restoration, appears, according to custom, to have neglected his most faithful adherent, Lord St. Albans, who nevertheless was a frequenter of the court. One day, when a gentleman had requested an interview of his majesty to ask for a valuable office then vacant, the king in jest desired the Earl of St. Albans to personate him, which he did before the whole court; but, after hearing the stranger's petition with an air of dignified authority, he said that the office was by no means too great for so deserving a subject. “But,” added the earl, gravely, “I have already conferred it on my faithful adherent, Lord St. Albans, who constantly followed my father's fortunes and my own, having never before received any reward.” The king was so amused by this ready jest that he instantly confirmed the gift to his clever representative.
But we have yet a cooler thing (though somewhat different in character) than either of the preceding to bring forward, and which, if true, is really one of the strangest incidents that could happen in a man's experience.
Barthe, a writer of French comedies, hearing that his intimate friend Colardeau was on the point of death, instantly hastened to the sick man's chamber, and finding him still in a condition to listen, addressed him thus:
“My dear friend, I am in despair at seeing you in this extremity, but I have still one favor to ask of you; it is that you will hear me read my 'Homme Personnel.'”
“Consider,” replied the dying man, “that I have only a few hours to live.”
“Alas! yes; and this is the very reason that makes me so desirous of knowing what you think of my play.”
His unhappy friend heard him to the end without saying a word, and then in a faint voice, observed, that there was yet one very striking feature wanted to complete the character which he had been designing.
“You must make him,” said he, “force a friend who is dying to listen to a comedy in five acts.”
Our collector has treasured up two or three tolerable anecdotes of that artfullest of “dodgers,” Talleyrand, which, though not new to every body are likely to have a novelty for some, and there fore may bear quoting.
After the Pope had excommunicated him, he is reported to have written to a friend, saying, “Come and comfort me; come and sup with me. Every body is going to refuse me fire and water; we shall therefore have nothing this evening but iced meats, and drink nothing but wine.” When Louis XVIII., at the restoration, praised Talleyrand for his talents and influence, the latter modestly disclaimed the compliment, but added, with an arch significance, “There is, however, some inexplicable thing about me which prevents any government from prospering that attempts to set me aside.” The next is exquisitely diplomatic. A banker, anxious about the rise or fall of stocks, came once to Talleyrand for information respecting the truth of a rumor that George III. had suddenly died, when the statesman replied, in a confidential tone, “I shall be delighted if the information I have to give be of any use to you.” The banker was enchanted at the prospect of obtaining authentic intelligence from so high a source; and Talleyrand, with a mysterious air continued, “Some say the King of England is dead; others, that he is not dead; for my own part, I believe neither the one nor the other. I [pg 351] tell you this in confidence, but do not commit me.” No better parody on modern diplomacy could easily be written.