THE GHOST OF PRINCE CHARLIE
Scotland in the autumn of the pre-war days was a very gay place. The big country houses were filled with shooting parties, and for the Autumn Meetings, Ayr races, Perth races, and games, The Inverness Gathering, etc. The dates were so arranged that one could go the round, and thus dance through several weeks. I used to go regularly to Inverness, and afterwards visit friends in the surrounding neighborhood. One of the most delightful houses to visit was Tarbat, belonging to the Countess of Cromartie. Any one who has read her unique books must have come to the conclusion that Lady Cromartie is a mystic of no ordinary type, but only those who know her intimately are aware how predominating in her character is this inborn mysticism.
I first remember the two sisters, Lady Sibell and Lady Constance Mackenzie, hanging on to their father's arms as they walked about Folkestone. They were then tiny tots, and I was staying with their mother, the beautiful Lilian, daughter of Lord Macdonald of the Isles. Beautiful was the only word to describe Lord Cromartie's wife—and Lily seemed the most suitable name that could have been bestowed upon her. She was intensely musical and interested in ghosts. Born the daughter of a Highland chieftain she understood how to live the life of a great Scottish noblewoman. She was always very kind to me, and I used to stay with her very often.
In 1893 Lord Cromartie died, and his eldest daughter, Lady Sibell, became Countess of Cromartie in her own right—the title going in the female line. As a child the young Countess had been a great reader. I remember she used often to be missing, and found in some quiet room buried in a book. To this day she has the faculty of so absorbing herself in a book that no amount of talking and noise in the room penetrates her ears. Lady Constance was quite different, devoted to out-of-door life, and I shall never forget how adoring the old people on the properties were to her, and how she loved them. One sterling and unusual quality she had. I never heard her say an unkind word of any one.
In 1899 the Countess of Cromartie married Major, now Colonel Blunt, and she has three fine children, two boys and a girl.
One of the most remarkable facts about her is her agelessness. She never alters with the years. Her white delicate skin, her girlish figure and dark glowing eyes, always retain their look of extreme youth.
I have said that her mysticism must at once become apparent to the readers of her books, but to those, who like myself have known her from childhood, her psychic powers have always been extraordinary.
I remember one autumn staying at Tarbat with only a very few other guests, I forget now who they all were. It had been a dead, still day. One of those sad, brooding days one gets so often in the north. In the afternoon, when we were out walking, Lady Cromartie said suddenly to me and a Miss Drummond, whom we were both very fond of, "There is going to be an earthquake to-night."
We received this piece of information as a joke, and I thought nothing more of the matter till tea-time, when a gorgeous sunset was illuminating the heavens. As we were standing at the window looking out at it we were all startled by a tremendous roar, more like a very loud peal of thunder than anything else, yet we knew, by the look of the sky, that it could not have been thunder. Every one offered a different opinion as to what the noise could mean, but Lady Cromartie calmly said, "The noise is in the earth, not in the sky; it is the forerunner of the earthquake."
We now began to take this earthquake business more seriously. Sibell Drummond, also very psychic, said she knew the noise came from the interior of the earth, and that very early that morning she had heard the same sound, only much more distant. We asked Lady Cromartie how she could possibly tell that an earthquake was coming. Such convulsions are not common enough in Scotland to admit of lucky guesses.
"I can tell those things of Nature; something in me is akin to them," she explained. "It is quite certain this earthquake will come before morning."
As the sun went down the quiet weather changed, and by bed-time it was blowing such a gale that we forgot all about Lady Cromartie's prophecy. At one o'clock in the morning, when we were all asleep, the earthquake arrived, and awakened us all instantly. My bed rocked, and the china clattered, and I heard a big picture near my bed move out from the wall and go back again. Some of us got up, but there was only the one sharp shock. In the morning we heard that considerable damage had been done. Several houses and stables had been razed to the ground, and some animals killed and people injured.
Another curious incident I remember happening during a visit to Tarbat.
At breakfast one morning Lady Cromartie told us that she had a very vivid dream just before daylight. She dreamed that if she went into a certain room in the house she would find some jewels that had been hidden there. She seemed to have been told this in her sleep by some one she did not know. The room was indicated, but not the spot where the jewels lay. The present Duke of Argyll, always keenly alive to psychic phenomena, was of our party, and he at once proposed that directly after we had finished breakfast we should all proceed to the room, rarely used, but formerly a business room, and make a thorough search.
By the way, I cannot refrain here from suggesting what a wonderful book of Scottish ghost stories the Duke could give us if he chose. His repertoire was endless and most thrilling, and he knew how to tell a ghost story.
After breakfast we adjourned to the room indicated in the dream, and began our search. The only likely place seemed a large bookcase, full of books, with cupboards beneath. All the doors were locked and keyless. A pause ensued whilst keys were fetched from the housekeeper's room, and for a long time we could find nothing to fit the doors, but at last we were rewarded. The cupboards below were opened, disclosing a quantity of rubbish. Old books, estate maps, fishing tackle, every sort of thing, but no jewels.
At last the Duke, down on his knees fumbling amongst the dust, drew forth two tin japanned boxes. He shook them, and the thumping inside proved that they were not empty. The trouble was they also were locked and keyless. Again there was a scramble to fit keys. We were all on the tiptoe of excited expectation.
At last both boxes were opened, and there lay the jewels. Fine, old-fashioned pieces that had lain there, who knows for how long, and probably had belonged to Lady Cromartie's grandmother, "the Countess Duchess" 3rd Duchess of Sutherland.
Still another reminiscence of beautiful Tarbat.
Lady Cromartie asked me to join a shooting party she and Major Blunt were giving, to meet Prince Arthur of Connaught.
I arrived one evening in wild winter weather. There had been a heavy snowstorm, and the sky looked as if there was considerably more to come. I found all the other guests had already arrived, and we were a very merry party. It was Prince Arthur's first "shoot" in the far North, and his first experience of what Scotland could provide in the way of autumn weather, and he was glad to avail himself of a thick woolen sweater of mine, which I was proud to present to him. He was perfectly charming to us all, and there was, owing to his simplicity, no sense of stiffness introduced into our party. That evening, after dinner, he was strolling round the room, looking at the pictures, and he paused opposite a framed letter, written by Prince Charles Edward during the '45 to the Lord Cromartie of that time, who was his earnest supporter.
"Why!" exclaimed Prince Arthur, "that letter is written by 'The Pretender,' isn't it?"
There was no answer. A thrill of horror ran through the breasts of the ardent Jacobites present. Dead silence reigned.
Then I could stand it no longer. "Please, sir," I said, "we all call him Prince Charles Edward Stuart."
Prince Arthur turned round laughingly. "I beg his pardon and all of yours," he exclaimed in the most charming manner, and the hearts of all the outraged Jacobites warmed to him at once.
I was just about to creep into bed, very late that night, and very tired after my long, cold journey in a desperately sluggish train, when Lady Cromartie peeped in at my door. Her wonderful dark eyes were ablaze, and I knew at once she had something psychic to tell me. Her eyes looked like nothing else in the world but her eyes, when she is on the track of a ghost, or one of her "other side" experiences.
"I have just seen Prince Charles Edward," she announced.
I took her firmly by the arm. Prince Charles Edward means a very great deal to me, and I don't let anything pass me by that concerns his beloved memory.
"Tell me quick. Where did you see him?" I asked.
"I was just going to get into bed when I saw him standing looking at me, at the far end of the room. He was smiling, and as I stared back at him he slowly crossed the floor, his smiling face always turned to me, and vanished through the wall," was Lady Cromartie's answer.
Then I told her of a certain feeling I had experienced earlier in the evening. At the moment when our Jacobite hearts were stung to deep, though fleeting resentment, we had formed a thought form, powerful enough to reach the spirit of Bonny Prince Charlie on "the other side." Our spirits had called on him, and he had heard and responded. Why not? If we believe in the immortality of the soul, the soul of Prince Charles Edward surely lives. Where? On the Astral plane, where the souls of all must go to divest themselves of the lower passions of earth, and the veil between the Physical plane and the Astral plane is wearing very thin in these days.
For many of us there are rents through which we are permitted to see the old friends who are not lost but gone before, and who await us in a sphere where we in turn will await the coming of those who follow after. Indeed, the time does not now seem to be so far distant when so-called death will be pushed one stage further back, and the transference of the soul from earth to the Astral plane will no longer be treated as severance. What then will be termed the severance we now call death? It will be the passing of the cleansed soul from the Astral plane to the Heaven world, for a period of blissful rest before the life urge compels the reincarnating ego to take on once more the veil of flesh, in a transient human world.
I doubt if it is possible for an English person to comprehend what it means to be a Jacobite. One is born a Jacobite or one is not. I was born a Jacobite, and I never lose my passionate love and regret for the sufferings and sorrows of Prince Charles Edward. No female figure in the past attracts me so much as does Flora MacDonald. Had I lived during the '45 I would have worn the white cockade, and parted with my last "shift" for the love of Bonny Prince Charlie. All very ridiculous, many may say, but there it is. That is what it means to be born a Jacobite.
My grandfather was an ardent Jacobite, and consorted largely with old Jacobite families. The Sobieski Stuarts often made their home with him. Grand looking men of striking physique and good looks. Robert Chambers used to tell a story of the ghost Piper of Fingask; the property of a fine old Jacobite, Sir Peter Murray Threipland. The baronetcy is now extinct.
One night, whilst my grandfather was visiting Sir Peter, they were sitting at supper in the old dining-hall. The two old sisters of Sir Peter, Eliza and Jessie, were present. Suddenly the faint strain of the pipes was heard in the distance, surely no uncommon sound in Scotland, where every Laird has his own piper to play round the dining-table, yet a sudden silence fell upon the little party of four. All ears were listening intently, and straining eyes were blank to all but the evidence of hearing. The noise grew louder, the piper seemed to be mounting the stone staircase, yet his brogues made no sound as he ascended.
Sir Peter dropped his head down into his arms folded upon the table. He sought to hide the fear in his old eyes. The women sat as if chiseled out of granite, gray to the lips. The piper of Fingask had come for one of them. Which? Now the piper of death was drawing very near, the skirl of his pipes had nearly reached the door. In another moment, with a full blast of triumph that beat about their ears as it surged into the hall, he had passed, and had begun his ascent to the ramparts. The skirl was dying away into a wail. Miss Eliza spoke: "He's come for you, Jessie." There was no response. The piper of Fingask was playing a "Last Lament" now, as he swung round the ramparts.
True enough he had come for Miss Jessie, and very shortly after she obeyed the call.
To this day there are men and women who never forget to offer up their passionate regret for Prince Charles before they sleep. I know of one old Scottish house where his memory is an ever-present, ever-living thing. The shadowy old room is consecrated to him. On the walls hang portraits of him, and trophies of the '15 and the '45 stand round in glass cases. On one table lies a worn, white cockade, yellow with age, and a lock of fair hair clasped by a band of blackened pearls. In a tall slender glass there is always, in summer-time, a single white rose.
Above is the portrait of the idol of the present house, who gave in the past of their all in life and treasure, for the cause they hold so sacred, so dear. I cannot look upon that gay, careless, handsome face without the tears rising to my eyes. His eyes smile into mine. Involuntarily I bend before him. What was the power in you, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, that drew from countless women and men that wild unswerving devotion? Which made light of terrible hardships, which followed you faithfully through glen and corrie? What is that power which you still exert over those to whom your name is but a memory, but who still, when they think on you or look upon your pictured face, cry silently in their hearts for the lost House of Stuart? "Oh! waes me for Prince Charlie!"
One must be Scotch to understand that the Union did nothing to unite England and Scotland. To the Scottish plowman the Englishman is still a foreigner, whom he dislikes. Scotch and English servants do not work well in the same house. To us, Mary Queen of Scots lived "only the other day." When the House of Stuart passed from us our history ended.
Our old houses are full of ghosts, the atmosphere is saturated with the tragic history of the past, the very skies seem to brood in melancholy over the soil, where so many wild bloody scenes were enacted. To the Psychic, Scotland is a land not yet emerged from the dour savagery of the past. Once, on visiting an historic old castle, my host pointed out to me a group of seven old trees standing close to the entrance.
"Seven skeletons lie there," he said. "My grandfather went after a neighboring clan who had raided his cattle. He brought back seven men with halters round their necks and strung them up to those trees. Holes were dug beneath, and they all dropped into them by degrees, and then the earth was shoveled over them again."
What will become of all those grand old places in the future? They are so costly to maintain. I think of all those lying around our own Aberdeenshire home; Fyvie Castle, a great stately pile, beautiful to look upon always, but more especially so when the red fires of a winter sunset blaze upon its many windows, and turn to rose the mantling snow on battlements and towers, whilst all around is wrapped in a garment of spotless white: House of Monymusk, Craigston Castle, Craigievar.
I have just mentioned a few, all have their ghosts, and some have a curse upon them.
A friend of ours came to see us, not very long ago, and told us of a horrible experience he had been through recently.
He had been visiting a great house in the North, noted in Scottish history. The new Laird had only entered into possession during the last few years, on the death of a near relative, who had died from excessive drinking, the Scotchman's curse. Our friend had heard that this dead Laird "walked," but he had not met any one who had actually seen his ghost. After spending a pleasant evening with his host, and going through many reminiscences of his former visits to the house, and to the late Laird, who in spite of his fatal propensities had been a gallant gentleman and a great sportsman, our friend retired to bed.
The room he slept in was a large one, and the bed faced the door, and a washstand stood on one side of it. He remembered the room, having slept in it on former occasions. He was roused in the night by some one rather noisily fumbling at the handle of his door, which was not locked. He sat up in bed and called out, "Who is it?"
There was a full moon riding in a clear, frosty sky, and the room was only in semi-darkness. He stared at the door, which at that moment burst open, and standing in the aperture was a man, the dead Laird. Outside, was a long corridor with several windows, through which the moonlight poured. Against this silvery background stood the huge figure of the late Laird. He leaned forward, supporting himself by holding with both hands to the framework of the door, and with a glowering, half-drunken stare his eyes were fixed on the startled occupant of the bed.
A panic seized our friend, who felt that if that menacing figure advanced into the room he would go mad. There was only one door, and no other means of escape, and very stealthily he slid to the opposite side of the bed, and reaching out, seized the water-bottle on his washstand.
This action did not pass unnoticed by his terrible visitor. Suddenly relaxing his hold on the doorposts, he dropped down on his knees, and began rapidly crawling on all fours towards the bed, his inflamed eyes blazing with anger.
Our friend did not wait for his arrival. With a blood-curdling yell he hurled the water-bottle full at his old friend, and leaping from the other side of the bed tore to the door and fled down the passage, as if pursued by a pack of devils. Hardly knowing what he did, he battered with his hands on the door of the room he knew to be occupied by his host and hostess, shouting out at the same time a call for assistance. Then he heard the voice of the wife saying to the husband, "It's Charlie. Open the door. I believe he's seen poor Angus."
He had indeed seen "poor Angus," and for the last time, he assured us. Old friendship could not stand the test of so horrible an apparition. The room was empty when he returned to it with his host. Angus had gone back again to the land of the shadows, and only the scattered fragments of the water-bottle remained as a souvenir of his visit.
Several servants had seen Angus, and it was difficult to keep the house staffed. One old housemaid, who had been in the family many years, had seen him frequently, and had even ventured to remonstrate with her former master, bidding him go back to his shroud and sleep peacefully in his grave like a respectable man, but apparently to no purpose. Angus preferred to "walk" and to terrify all to whom he had the power to show himself.
Speaking of the Duke of Argyll has reminded me of some curious occurrences in connection with Lord Colin Campbell. At one time of my life, soon after my father's death, I saw a good deal of him. He was then studying law and intended later to practice in India. This plan he carried out, and in India he died, the result of a chill.
Lord Colin was a very interesting man, a keen geologist and something of an artist. There were few subjects he was not interested in, and though somewhat shy of the subject, he had a decided aptitude for ghosts.
One day in London he brought to my house a small gold cross fixed to a slab of gray marble, and asked me if I would keep it for him. He explained that it was an exact reproduction of the old stone cross of Inverary. He was then living in Argyll Lodge, Campden Hill, and I said I should have thought there was room enough for it there. I could not understand why he brought it to me. He looked uneasy and said he wished to get rid of it out of the house. When pressed to say why, he confessed that there was something uncanny about it. He thought it made him "see things," and he added, "Garry hates it."
Garry was a fine, sable collie, devoted to his master and he to it. Garry had the misfortune to break his leg, and this caused Lord Colin acute distress. The leg was set, and the dog lay in a large clothes basket, and eventually got well. Garry was just recovering when Lord Colin brought me the cross.
He became more expansive in a few moments, and said that he had seen a figure bending over the cross, as if to examine it. The figure had a hood, and he thought it must be the ghost of a monk. He had seen this many times, and Garry often growled, and his hair bristled at the very moment when his master caught sight of the apparition. Anything that distressed the dog must be removed, and knowing how interested I was in ghosts he had brought the cross to me.
Of course I was delighted to have a chance of witnessing psychic phenomena of any kind, but alas, though I kept the cross for years, and only sent it lately to the present Duke, I never saw anything in connection with it.
I did, however, see something interesting in connection with Lord Colin.
One hot June evening, in London, I was sitting alone by the open window. The day had been very exhausting; it was one of those hot spells that come so often before regular summer sets in, and I was glad to rest quietly and do nothing.
The street was wonderfully quiet at that hour, nine o'clock, when all the world of fashion was dining, and the daylight was strong enough to read by, had I so desired. Suddenly my attention was attracted by a slight noise behind me, and glancing round at the open door I saw that Lord Colin and his dog had just entered the room, as was their habit, unannounced. In his hand he carried a huge bunch of white and mauve lilac blossoms. I had not expected him that evening, but I was very pleased to see him, and exclaimed, "Why, Colin, what a glorious bouquet! I can smell it already."
He was smiling as he and his dog moved up the long room towards me, but he said nothing. I had risen and held out my hand, but when about halfway across the floor both he and the dog vanished entirely and quite suddenly.
I shall never forget my utter amazement and consternation. I could not disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, for I was absolutely certain I could still smell the lilac, and I had no doubt whatever that I had seen Lord Colin and his dog.
I sat down again and fell to considering the extraordinary circumstance. I was perfectly well and normal, I had not been thinking of Lord Colin, and yet in the midst of other thoughts a sound had attracted my attention, and looking round I had seen him enter with his dog. For the space of quite two minutes both had been visible. I got up again and timed the whole affair by my wrist watch. The room I sat in was very long. I was at one end, and the door at the other. It took me just one minute to walk leisurely forward over the ground they had covered, before they vanished from my sight.
I sat down again and began to wonder if Lord Colin was ill, or was he dead, and why was he carrying lilacs? 'Phones were uncommon things in those days; I had no means of communication with Argyll Lodge.
For an hour I sat considering the wonderful vividness of my curious experience. The daylight had faded into a close, soft twilight, but I wanted no artificial light. Then just as ten o'clock was striking I heard a voice in the hall below; a voice I was sure was Lord Colin's, and he was answered by one of my servants. Steps sounded on the stairs, and in another moment in he walked with Garry, and in his hand he carried a big bunch of white and mauve lilacs.
I stood staring at him in the dim twilight. Was this the real man and dog at last?
"I know it's awfully late to pay a call, but I thought you would like some lilac," he exclaimed; "it's so lovely in our garden just now," and he held out the flowers.
I took them and bade him be seated. Garry came to me and rested his nose on my lap. For a moment I could not speak.
"Aren't you well?" asked Colin.
Then I recovered myself, but I did not tell him what had happened only an hour before. As we talked I discovered that he had intended to come at nine o'clock, and was just starting when a relative arrived and detained him.
On another occasion he told me of a curious dream he had as a boy.
Queen Victoria came to Inverary to pay a visit to the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, Lord Colin's parents, and it was arranged that the young sons of the house should act as pages to Her Majesty. The night of the day on which the Queen arrived, Colin dreamed that some one whom he did not know came to him and said, "To-morrow the Queen will give you twenty shillings."
When the boy wakened up in the morning he remembered this dream, and all day long he was on the outlook for its fulfillment. The hours passed, but though he was often in her presence and kept as close to her as he dared, the Queen never produced her purse. Just before reëntering the house towards evening, she suddenly turned to John Brown, her constant attendant, and said something which Colin did not catch. What was his joy on perceiving that surly henchman extract from a shabby old purse a filthy Scotch one pound note, which he handed to Her Majesty.
"My little Colin, here is a present for you," said the Queen, and making his best bow the boy accepted the gift. His dream had come true.
John Brown was the terror of all the great nobles whom the Queen was pleased to visit. Her Majesty took him everywhere with her, and he was her closest attendant. Born of the humblest Scotch parents on the Estate of Balmoral, he died in the position of a potentate in a royal residence. His manners were terribly rough and objectionable, and his behavior to the gentlemen with whom he constantly came into contact was insulting to the last degree. He had one invariable habit. When the Queen paid a visit naturally her honored host was in waiting to hand her out of her carriage. Brown contrived to nip down from his perch at the back of the carriage, just at a certain moment, and with a violent push thrust aside the prince, duke or peer who sought to do honor to the Sovereign.
Some of the gentlemen about the Court paid him very liberally, not for civility, but simply to desist from his habitual insults, and it has been said that Disraeli discovered some method of conciliation, but Brown took an absolute pleasure in insulting all who had occasion to approach Her Majesty. Latterly he drank very heavily, and when he died, to the unutterable relief of all and sundry he bequeathed all his savings and possessions, even the watch he wore, to Her Majesty. His many poor relatives living in cottages on the estate never saw a penny of his money, nor so much as a button from his doublet.