‘I should indeed be very ungrateful were I to leave this country without publicly expressing my gratitude to the inhabitants of Dumfries. From the moment of my arrival in Scotland, the vexations indispensable in the situation of a prisoner have disappeared before me. I have been two years and five months in this town, prisoner on my parole of honour; and it is with the most lively emotion that I quit a place where I have found so many alleviations to my melancholy situation. I must express my thanks to the generous proceedings with which I have been loaded by the most part of the inhabitants of Dumfries during my captivity, proceedings which cannot but give an advantageous opinion of the Scottish nation. I will add that the respectable magistrates of this town have constantly given proofs of their generous dispositions to mitigate the situation of the prisoners; and that our worthy Agent, Mr. Shortt, has always softened our lot by the delicate manner in which he fulfilled the duty of his functions. It is then with a remembrance full of gratitude, esteem, and consideration for the honest inhabitants of Dumfries, that I quit the charming banks of the Nith to return to the capital of France, my beloved country, from which I have been absent seven years.’
For the following romantic incidents I am indebted to Mr. William McDowell’s Memorials of St. Michael’s, Dumfries.
Polly Stewart, the object of one of Burns’s minor poems, married a Dumfries prisoner of war. She lived at Maxwelltown, and her father was a close friend of Burns. A handsome young Swiss prisoner, Fleitz by name, loved her and married her, and when Louis XVIII came to the French throne, he, being in the Swiss Guard, took her to France. When Louis Philippe became king, the Swiss body-guard was disbanded, and Mr. and Mrs. Fleitz went to Switzerland. It is said that poor Polly had an unhappy married life, but at any rate nothing was heard of her for thirty years, when she returned to Scotland, and not long after her husband died and she went to a cousin in France. Here her mind gave way, and she was placed in an asylum, where she died in 1847, aged 71.
On the tombstone, in St. Michael’s churchyard, of Bailie William Fingass, who died in 1686, is an inscription to a descendant, Anna Grieve, daughter of James Grieve, merchant, who died in 1813, aged 19, with the following lines subjoined:
‘Ta main, bienfaisante et chérie,
D’un exil vient essuyer les pleurs,
Tu me vis loin de parens, de patrie,
Et le même tombeau, lorsque tu m’as ravie,
Renferme nos deux cœurs.’
The story is this. One of the French prisoners on parole at Dumfries fell in love with pretty Anna Grieve, and she regarded his suit with kindness. Had she lived they would probably have been married, for he was in a good position and in every way worthy of her hand. When she died in the flower in her youth, he was overwhelmed with grief, and penned the above-quoted epitaph. After a lapse of about forty-six years, a gentleman of dignified bearing and seemingly about seventy years old, entered St. Michael’s churchyard, and in broken English politely accosted Mr. Watson, who was busy with his chisel on one of the monuments. He asked to be shown the spot where Mademoiselle Grieve was buried, and on being taken to it exhibited deep emotion. He read over the epitaph, which seemed to be quite familiar to him, and it was apparent that it was engraved upon the tablets of his memory, he being none other than the lover of the lady who lay below, and for whom, although half a century had elapsed, he still retained his old attachment.