I
A tall, broad-shouldered, powerful man, a man six feet four inches in height, sitting on “the largest horse ever seen in Scotland.” “Mr. Bruce ... is the tallest man you ever saw gratis,” said laughing Fanny Burney. Not a colossus or a Hercules like Belzoni, but a kind of eighteenth-century adult Olympian quite aware of the prestige of height and fine carriage, with the tolerant and humorous eye of an observer of life, and something of the pride and composure of a well-born Scottish gentleman.
The children of the folk who lived upon his estate used to stare at the huge man on the giant black horse. Their fathers had told them that the laird had visited the strangest kingdom in all the world, and that he had loved a great queen who was fair as the lady of Sheba in the Bible, and wore a golden crown. Sometimes at the “great house,” he would sit for hours in a chair, clad in magnificent robes, and the serving folk would whisper among themselves that the master was thinking of the old days and the great queen.
Sometime in the middle years of the eighteenth century, an extraordinary letter arrived at the house of His Majesty’s Prime Minister. It was addressed to “Mr. Pitt, Vizir of England”; its sender was the Dey of Algiers, and its message was terse and to the point. “Your consul in Algiers,” said the missive, “is an obstinate person and like an animal.” “Dear me,” said Mr. Pitt, “who is His Majesty’s consul at Algiers?”
A look at some great ledger, full of the brim of clerkly penmanship, and a question or two among the staff, soon elicited an answer. The consul at Algiers was Mr. James Bruce, a young Scot of excellent family, who had been recommended to the post by the honourable Lord Halifax. This young man was the son of David Bruce of Kinnaird in Stirlingshire, he had had an English education from tutors in London and at Harrow school, and he was interested in travel and archæological research. “Humph,” says Mr. Pitt, “anything else.” Yes, there was more to the story; he had married the daughter of a prosperous London wine merchant, taken over the business and then resigned it to his brother on the death of his wife scarce a year after the marriage. He had travelled in Spain, studied Arabic at the Escorial, was said to be “extremely good tempered and a good scholar.” And here was the Dey of Algiers saying that he was “like an animal.”
JAMES BRUCE