She was the daughter of John Campbell, of Mamore, and the sister of John Duke of Argyle, the friend and patron of Duncan Forbes; and she had been, by Lovat's introduction, for some time a companion of his first wife.[215] Lord Lovat, about the year 1732, became a widower. He then cast his eyes upon the ill-fated Miss Campbell, and sought her in marriage. The match was of great importance to him, on account of the family connection; and Lord Lovat had reason to believe, that whatever the young lady might think of it, her friends were not opposed to the union. She was staying with her sister, Lady Roseberry, when Lovat proffered his odious addresses. She to whom they were addressed, knew him well: for she entertained the utmost abhorrence of her suitor, and repeatedly rejected his proposals. At last, he gained her consent to the union which he sought, by the following stratagem. Miss Campbell, while residing still with her sister in the country, received a letter, written apparently by her mother, and, beseeching her immediate attendance at a particular house in Edinburgh, in which she lay at the point of death. The young lady instantly set out, and reached the appointed place: here, instead of beholding her mother, she was received by the hated and dreaded Lovat.[216] She was constrained to listen to his proffers of marriage; but she still firmly refused her assent. Upon this, Lord Lovat told the unhappy creature that the house to which she had been brought was one in which no respectable woman ought ever to enter;—and he threatened to blast her character upon her continued refusal to become his wife. Distracted, intimidated by a confinement of several days, the young lady finally consented. She was married to the tyrant, who conveyed her to one of his castles in the North, probably to Downie, the scene of his previous crimes. Here she was secluded in a lonely tower, and treated with the utmost barbarity, probably because she could neither conceal nor conquer her disgust to the husband of her forced acceptance. Yet outward appearances were preserved: a lady, the intimate friend of her youth, was advised to visit, as if by accident, the unhappy Lady Lovat, in order to ascertain the truth of the reports which prevailed of Lord Lovat's cruelty. The visitor was received by Lovat with extravagant expressions of welcome, and many assurances of the pleasure which it would afford Lady Lovat to see her. His Lordship then retired, and hastening to his wife, who was secluded without even tolerable clothes, and almost in a state of starvation, placed a costly dress before her, and desired her to attire herself, and to appear before her friend. His commands were obeyed; he watched his prisoner and her visitor so closely, that no information could be conveyed of the unhappiness of the one, or of the intentions of the other.[217] This outrageous treatment, which Lord Lovat is reported, also, to have exercised over his first wife, went on for some time. Lady Lovat was daily locked up in a room by herself, a scanty supply of food being sent her, which she was obliged to devour in silence. The monotony of her hapless solitude was only broken by rare visits from his Lordship. Under these circumstances, she bore a son, who was named Archibald Campbell Fraser, and who eventually succeeded to the title. In after years, when he frowned at any contradiction that she gave him, Lady Lovat used to exclaim, "Oh, boy! Dinna look that gate—ye look so like your father." These words spoke volumes.
The character of the lady whose best years were thus blighted by cruelty, and who was condemned through a long life to bear the name of her infamous husband, was one peculiarly Scotch. Homely in her habits, and possessing little refinement of manner, she had the kindest heart, the most generous and self-denying nature that ever gladdened a house, or bore up a woman's weakness under oppression. The eldest son of Lord Lovat, Simon, was a sickly child. His father, who was very anxious to have him to his house, placed him under Lady Lovat's charge; and, whenever he went to the Highlands, left her with this pleasing intimation, "that if he found either of the boys dead on his return, he would shoot her through the head." Partly through fear, and partly from the goodness and rectitude of her mind, Lady Lovat devoted her attentions so entirely to the care of the delicate and motherless boy, that she saved his life, and won his filial reverence and affection by her attention. He loved her as a real parent. The skill in nursing and in the practical part of medicine thus acquired, was never lost; and Lady Lovat was noted ever after, among those who knew her, as the "old lady of the faculty."
Family archives, it is said, reveal a tissue of almost unprecedented acts of cruelty towards this excellent lady. They were borne with the same spirit that in all her life guided her conduct,—a strict dependance upon Providence. She regarded her calamities as trials, or tests, sent from Heaven, and received them with meek submission. In after years, during the peaceful decline of her honoured life, when a house near her residence in Blackfriars Wynd, Edinburgh, took fire, she sat calmly knitting a stocking, and watching, occasionally, the progress of the flames. The magistrates and ministers came, in vain, to entreat her to leave her house in a sedan; she refused, saying, that if her hour was come, it was in vain for her to think of eluding her fate: if it were not come, she was safe where she was. At length she permitted the people around her to fling wet blankets over the house, by which it was protected from the sparks.
She seems, however, to have made considerable exertions to rid herself from an unholy bond with her husband. Like many other Scottish ladies of quality, in those days, her education had been limited; and it was not until late in life that she acquired the art of writing, which she then learned by herself without a master. She never attained the more difficult process of spelling accurately.
She now, however, contrived to make herself understood by her friends in this her dire distress: and to acquaint them with her situation and injuries, by rolling a letter up in a clue of yarn, and dropping it out of her window to a confidential person below. Her family then interfered, and the wretched lady was released, by a legal separation, from her miseries. She retired to the house of her sister, and eventually to Edinburgh. When, in after times, her grand nephews and nieces crowded around her, she would talk to them of these days of sorrow. "Listen, bairns," she was known to observe, "the events of my life would make a good novel; but they have been of sae strange a nature, that I'm sure naebody wad believe them."[218]
But domestic tyranny was a sphere of far too limited a scope for Lord Lovat: his main object was to make himself absolute over that territory of which he was the feudal chieftain; to bear down everything before him, either by the arts of cunning, or through intimidation. Some instances, singular, as giving some insight into the state of society in the Highlands at that period, have been recorded.[219] Very few years after the restitution of his family honours had elapsed, before he happened to have some misunderstanding with one of the Dowager Lady Lovat's agents, a Mr. Robertson, whom her Ladyship had appointed as receiver of her rents. One night, during the year 1719, a number of persons, armed and disguised, were seen in the dead of night, very busy among Mr. Robertson's barns and outhouses. That night, the whole of his stacks of corn and hay were set on fire and entirely consumed. Lord Lovat was suspected of being the instigator of this destruction; yet such was the dread of his power, that Mr. Robertson chose rather to submit to the loss in silence than to prosecute, or even to name, the destroyer.
A worse outrage was perpetrated against Fraser of Phopachy, a gentleman of learning and character, and one who had befriended Lord Lovat in all his troubles, and had refused to join with Fraserdale in the Rebellion of 1715. Mr. Fraser had the charge of Lord Lovat's domestic affairs, more especially of his law contests, both in Edinburgh and in London. When accounts were balanced between Lord Lovat and Mr. Fraser, it was found that a considerable sum was due to the latter. Among his other peculiarities Lord Lovat had a great objection to pay his debts. As usual, he insulted Fraser, and even threatened him with a suit. Mr. Fraser, knowing well the man with whom he had to deal, submitted the affair to arbitration. A Mr. Cuthbert of Castlehill was chosen on the part of his Lordship; the result was, a decision that a very considerable sum was due to Fraser. Lord Lovat was violently enraged at this, and declared that Castlehill had broken his trust. Not many days afterwards, Castlehill Park, near Inverness, was invaded by a party of Highlanders, armed and disguised; the fences and enclosures were broken down, and a hundred of his best milch-cows killed. Again the finger of public opinion pointed at Lovat, but pointed in silence, as the author of this wicked attack. None dared to name him; all dreaded a summary vengeance: his crimes were detailed with a shudder of horror and disgust; their author was not mentioned.
Lord Lovat, moreover, instantly commenced a law-suit against Fraser, in order to set aside the arbitration. This process, which lasted during the lifetime of the victim, was scarcely begun when one night Fraser's seat at Phopachy, which, unhappily, was near the den of horrors, Castle Downie, was beset by Highlanders, armed and disguised, who broke into the house and inquired for Mr. Fraser. He was, luckily, abroad. The daughters of the unfortunate gentleman were, however, in the house; they were bound to the bed-posts and gagged; and, doubtless, the whole premises would have been pillaged or destroyed, had not a female servant snatched a dirk from the hands of one of the ruffians; and although wounded, defended herself, while by her shrieks she roused the servants and neighbours. The villains fled, all save two, who were taken, and who, after a desperate resistance, were carried off to the gaol at Inverness; they were afterwards tried, and capitally convicted of housebreaking, or hamesaken, as it is called in Scotland, and eventually hung. It appeared, from the confession of one of these men to a clergyman at Inverness, that the same head which planned the destruction of Mr. Robertson's stacks had contrived this outrage, and had even determined on the murder of his former friend, Mr. Fraser. But the hour was now at hand in which retribution for these crimes was to be signally visited upon this disgrace to his species.[220]
One more sufferer under his vile designs must be recorded, the unhappy Lady Grange. In that story which has been related of her fate, and which might, indeed, furnish a theme for romance, she is said to have ever alluded to Lord Lovat as the remorseless contriver of that scheme which doomed her to sufferings far worse than death, and to years of imbecility and wanderings.[221] The subtlety of Lord Lovat equalled his fierceness; it is not often that such qualities are combined in such fearful perfection. He could stoop to the smallest attentions to gain an influence or promote an alliance: a tradition is even believed of his going to the dancing-school with two young ladies, and buying them sweeties, in order to conciliate the favour of their father, Lord Alva.
His habitual cunning and management were manifested in his discipline of his clan. It was his chief aim to impress upon the minds of his vassals that his authority among them was absolute, and that no power on earth could absolve them from it; that they had no right to inquire into the merits or justifiableness of the action they were ordered to engage in; his will ought to be their law, his resentment a sufficient reason for taking his part in a quarrel, whether it were right or wrong.