‘When he [Macgregor] escaped to Bulloigne he was very poor, but Lord Strathallan etc took compassion upon him, and he knows the Old Pretender sent him £20.’
This report damaged poor James Mohr; he was dismissed, and, in a few months, died a destitute exile. General Stewart of Garth claims our sympathy for James, who ‘rejected an employment which he considered dishonourable in itself, and detrimental to the good of his country.’[148] Alas! his employers rejected James!
We now reach the crucial point of the hypothesis that Pickle personated Glengarry. ‘Whoever Pickle was, it was clearly his intention to personate Glengarry,’ says Mr. A. H. Millar.[149] Now on this point, I need scarcely recapitulate what is said at the beginning of this chapter. On September 14, 1754, we find the bereaved Pickle, an orphan now, but also a Chief, by his father’s death, in Edinburgh with Young Lochgarry, who cannot but have known Young Glengarry, his Chief. For this presence of the orphan in Edinburgh, we have not only his written word, but that of Bruce (‘Cromwell’), the ‘Court Trusty’ who accompanied him. We have his testimony to Pickle’s enhanced pride. He it is who tells us how ‘the Army people make up to Pickle, thinking to make something of him,’ how General Bland (unconscious of guile) suspects him, as a friend of Pickle’s; how Pickle is going North, to his estates, and how the Governor of Fort Augustus, hard by, is ‘to try his hand upon Pickle.’[150]
All this Pickle himself confirms, in two letters of one of which only the briefest analysis has hitherto been given.[151] But these dull confirmatory letters may be relegated to an appendix. Briefly, we learn from his letters how Pickle has hurried to Edinburgh, for some reason of his own, on the news of a death which coincides with that of Old Glengarry. Coincidently, too, Pickle’s family affairs are in great disorder. He writes again from Edinburgh (October 10, 1754), and this letter is in his feigned hand.[152] In his second epistle from Edinburgh Pickle confirms all that Bruce, the Court Trusty, has said about his approaching journey North, whence Colonel Trapaud, Governor of Fort Augustus, gives a bad account of Glengarry as swindling his wadsetters.[153] Pickle also confirms Bruce’s account of the jealousy of General Bland.
That Young Glengarry, as well as Pickle, was a week’s distance from town after his father’s death (September 1, 1754) I now confirm by the following letter to himself, where he is supposed to be interested in Old Lochgarry. It is probably from the Major Macdonald who, while he was a prisoner in 1747, persuaded him to conform to the English Government.
‘London: Sept. 12, 1754.
‘My dear Cuss,—I have duely received the Honour of yours of 3d current. I must own that the melancholly news [Old Glengarry’s death] gave me an inexpressible shock, the only thing that abates my greife is that my dear late friend is so well represented in your dear person. I pray that all the powers above may combine to make you shine even above your noble Ancestors. I hope that Hevon will long preserve and prosper you for the protection of a poor name that seems at present in a very tottering and abject condition; No doubt this accident will naturally retard your coming to this place [London] yet I can’t think otherwise than that your interest calls you hither has soon you may have settled your domestique concerns.
‘I have a line from Samer [probably St. Omer] by which I understand that the whole Coy [Corps?] seem’d determined to get ride of Loch[garry] at all events surely he’s a most incorrigible man, and if a certain person [the Prince] does not interpose he must fall a sacrafice to his enemies’ resentment and to his own folly. Mrs. Macdonald and the young folks join in compliments, our friendes of Crevan street salute you, and I ever am, My dear Cous,
‘Yours whilst J. M.
‘London: Sept. 12, 1754.