WORKING THROUGH LITERATURE.
Mr. John Hay Allen, as before stated, first appeared in literature in 1822. His volume of poems bore those names. Twenty years later, in 1842, the same gentleman edited, under the assumed name of John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart, the ‘Vestiarium Scoticum,’ the transcript from a MS. alleged to have been formerly in the Scots College at Douay; with a learned introduction and illustrative notes. This folio, at the time, made no particular sensation. It was followed, in 1845, by a work, in which the elder brother was assisted by the younger, namely, ‘Costume and History of the Clans,’ with three dozen lithographs, in imperial folio; the cheapest edition was priced at six guineas. Some were much dearer. Two years later, a work very different in intention, was published by the Roman Catholic publisher Dolman, of Bond Street, who had Blackwood of Edinburgh and London as his colleague. The title of this book was ‘Tales of the Last Century, or Sketches of the Romance of History between the years 1746 and 1846,’ by John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart. There is a dedication ‘To Marie Stuart, by her father and uncle.’
THE ROMANCE OF THE STORY.
As Sketches of the Romance of History, the writers might have meant that they were not dealing with reality. But such seemingly was not their meaning. They made a serious step towards asserting that the elder brother was rightful heir to the throne of the Stuarts; and that if Jacobites and Ultramontanists should ever be in search of such an heir, after upsetting the present ‘happy establishment,’ he was to be found at his lodgings, prepared to wear the crown, with Jacobite instincts and Ultramontane ferocity. Of course, this was not said in words. It is rather implied in the three sketches which make up the romance of ‘Tales of the Last Century.’
The Tales illustrate the claims of the Chevalier John Sobieski Stuart, after this fashion.—The ‘young Pretender’ married in 1772, Louise, Princess of Stolberg Gœdern, and grand-daughter of the Jacobite Earl of Aylesbury, who after his liberation from the Tower, in 1688, for his political principles, settled in Brussels, and there married (his second wife) a lady of the ancient family of Argentain. The daughter and only child of this marriage wedded with the Prince of Horne. Louisa of Stolberg, the youngest child of the last named union, married Charles Edward in 1772, when she was not yet twenty, and he was fifty-two. According to the ‘Tales of the Last Century,’ Louisa became the mother of a son, in 1773. The alleged event was kept a profound secret, and the child was as secretly carried on board an English man of war! commanded by Commodore O’Halleran, who, if he had his rights, was not only foster-father to the mysterious infant, but also Earl of Strathgowrie! Admiral Allen, it will be remembered, was thought to be heir to the earldom of Errol.
‘RED EAGLE.’
It may here be observed, by way of recovering breath, that if there ever had been a son of this luckless couple, the fact would have been proudly trumpeted to the world. The event the most eagerly desired by the Jacobites was the birth of an heir to the Stuarts. Had such an heir been born, to conceal the fact from the adherents of the House of Stuart would have been an act of stark madness. Such insanity would have simply authorised the House of Hanover to repudiate the claimant, if he ever should assume that character.—To return to the romance of history:—
The infant prince received by the commodore was brought up by him as his own son. The young adventurer was trained to the sea, and he cruised among the western isles of Scotland. He appears in the romance as the Red Eagle; by those who know him he is treated with ‘Your Highness’ and ‘My Lord;’ and, like Lieut. Thomas Allen himself, he contracts a marriage with a lady, which is reckoned as a misalliance by those who are acquainted with his real history. He drops mysterious hints that the Stuart line is not so near extinction as it was generally thought to be. The better to carry the race on, the Red Eagle left, in 1831, two sons, the Chevaliers John and Charles Stuart, the former being also known as the Comte d’Albanie; and both, no doubt, sincerely believing in the rigmarole story of Lieut. Thomas Allen, alias Red Eagle, alias legitimate son of Charles Edward, the young Chevalier!
‘TALES OF THE LAST CENTURY.’
The ‘Tales of the Last Century’ do not say this in as many words. The book leaves a good deal to the imagination. The hero fades out of the romance something like Hiawatha, sailing into the mist after the setting sun. There is abundance of melodramatic business and properties throughout. There is mysterious scenery, appropriate music, serious and comic actors, complex machinery, ships of war sailing over impossible waters and looking as spectral as Vanderdecken’s ghastly vessel,—with booming of guns, harmonised voices of choristers, cheers of supers, and numerous other attractions in a dramatic way. There is nothing ‘dangerous’ in the book, though one gentleman does venture on the following Jacobite outburst:—‘Oh! if I had lived when you did—or yet, if he who is gone should rise again from the marble of St. Peter’s,—I am a Highlander and my father’s son,—I would have no king but Tearlach Righ nan Gael,’—no other king but Charlie.