XI
THE CASE AGAINST GLENGARRY
Of all the companions of Pickle, the most inseparable was Glengarry. Now, since the appearance of ‘Pickle the Spy,’ the author has been denounced before the Gaelic Society! Amidst ‘applause’ a Celtic gentleman, the news-sheets say, accused me of bringing a charge of an odious nature, without any proofs. Of course, if I have no proofs, nobody who thinks so need argue against what I, myself, regard as a chain of irrefragable circumstantial evidence. Nor am I aware that any arguments, beyond clamour, have been advanced, in favour of Glengarry’s innocence, except those which I shall presently examine. But first I must meet the charge of wresting facts to suit my ‘prepossessions.’
I had no prepossessions: how should I? If I knew so much as that there was any young Glengarry, before I read the Pickle letters, it was the limit of my information. These documents were pointed out to me, several years ago, by Sir E. Maunde Thompson, when I was in search of a manuscript to print for the Roxburghe Club. I began to read them, where they are to be found, scattered through five or six volumes of the Pelham Papers, in the British Museum. They are not all in sequence in one volume, nor in chronological order. On a first hasty examination, nothing appeared to indicate their author. I therefore had transcripts made of the Pickle Letters, and, after reading them, arranged them chronologically, being helped, where dates failed, by their allusions to public events: such as the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the death of Henry Pelham, and so forth.
On a first glance at the originals, I had no hope of detecting the spy called Pickle. He might be a servant, secretary, or retainer of any Jacobite family. But indications as to his identity kept occurring, when once the papers were sorted, and the hunting instinct awoke in the reader, the fever of the chase. Pickle was apparently no ‘paltry vidette,’ for he was in close relations with the Prime Minister, Henry Pelham, and, later, with the Duke of Newcastle. Now a lacquey may, as Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s dispatches show, report to an Ambassador, but a Prime Minister is less easy of access. Next, Pickle was, or had succeeded in persuading Pelham that he was, a person of the first importance in the Highlands. A critic has replied that, of course, a spy would pretend to be important, and, naturally, would be accepted as such. Ministers are scarcely so gullible. They do not accept a casual stranger’s identity without inquiry.
Presently it appeared, from a letter of the Court Trusty, or Secret Service man, Bruce,[121] who attended Pickle in Edinburgh, that he now, by his father’s death, was head of a great clan. Pickle’s father’s death occurred in September 1754. Now, on examination, it appeared that Old Glengarry, and no other Chief, died on September 1, 1754, in Edinburgh, where we find Pickle, with Young Lochgarry, in mid September. Pickle, writes Bruce, the Court Trusty (signing ‘Cromwell’) is adulated by military society in Edinburgh, where he stays for at least a month. He is to be observed, when he goes North, by the Governor of Fort Augustus, near which lie Glengarry’s lands. The Governor (Trapaud) writes unfavourably of the new Glengarry (December 13, 1754), and Pickle writes that he will, if not permitted the use of arms, prevent officers from shooting over his lands.
Pickle then is, or affects to be, a young Chief, just come, by his father’s death at Edinburgh, in September, into estates near Fort Augustus. He is also, or pretends to be, the chief of the Macdonnells, for he says (April 1754), ‘there could be no rising in Scotland without the Macdonnells: he is sure that he shall have the first notice of anything of the kind; and he is sure that the Young Pretender would do nothing without him.’ Finally (as stated on p. 209), writing to the Duke of Newcastle (Feb. 19, 1760), he speaks of Pickle in the third person, says that he is ready to raise a Highland regiment (which only a Chief could do), and ends, ‘Direction’ (of reply) ‘To Alexander Mackdonnell, of Glengary, by Foraugustus.’ Before I read that line, I had said to a Highland friend, ‘The traitor is a Macdonald.’ ‘Not Clanranald, I hope,’ he answered, and then Pickle’s last letter gave me the clue to Glengarry.
Thus there was, and could be, no ‘prepossession’ on my part. The circumstances all pointed direct to Glengarry, or to a personator of his, and to no one else. Thus it became a ‘working hypothesis’ that Pickle either was, or was personating, Glengarry: a Chief on terms of perfect intimacy with Prince Charles. He was, or affected to be, a Macdonnell, a Chief, with lands near Fort Augustus, to which he succeeded by his father’s death in September 1754, the date of the death of Old Glengarry.
Taking Pickle’s identity, natural or feigned, with Young Glengarry, as a working hypothesis, it became necessary to trace the career of that chief. At every stage, in every detail and date, after 1750, whatever was true of Young Glengarry was found to be true of Pickle. Every gleam of light that revealed the long forgotten incidents of Young Glengarry’s career, after 1750, fell also on the sinister features of Pickle. My hypothesis thus ‘colligated’ all the facts. New facts from MSS. came into view after my book was published; my hypothesis colligated these also. Everything fell into its place: everything coincided in the identification of Pickle with Young Glengarry.
To upset the evidence of a long series of coincidences, all pointing in the same direction, some hypothesis other than the hypothesis that Pickle is Glengarry must be advanced. Only one alternative suggestion has been ventured, as far as I am aware—namely, that Glengarry was personated throughout, for ten years, by some unknown ‘inward’ or close intimate, calling himself ‘Pickle.’ That hypothesis I shall prove to be not only morally but physically impossible, to demand a physical and moral miracle. We are left, then, with the equation, Pickle = Glengarry.[122]
To the a priori objection, that it is morally inconceivable that a Highland Chief, of character hitherto unsuspected, should sink so low, I need hardly reply. Too many Chiefs, from the death of Malcolm MacHeth, had been in the same galère. Young Glengarry, moreover, was suspected by several independent witnesses. We have also read the story of Barisdale, Glengarry’s cousin. A priori improbability there is none. We therefore proceed to examine the career of Young Glengarry, and to show how his comings and goings, his entrances and exits, the changes in his fortunes, his unconsidered private letters, his spelling, and his handwriting, all combine to identify him with the author of the Pickle Correspondence.