LADY LOVAT.
The widow of the rebel Lord Lovat spent a great portion of a long widowhood and died (1796) in a house at the head of Blackfriars Wynd.
Her ladyship was a niece of the first Duke of Argyll, and born, as she herself expressed it, in the year Ten—that is, 1710. The politic Mac Shemus[197] marked her out as a suitable second wife, in consideration of the value of the Argyll connection. As he was above thirty years her senior, and not famed for the tenderest treatment of his former spouse, or for any other amiable trait of disposition, she endeavoured, by all gentle means, to avoid the match; but it was at length effected through the intervention of her relations, and she was carried north to take her place in the semi-barbarous state which her husband held at Castle Downie.
Nothing but misery could have been expected from such an alliance. The poor young lady, while treated with external decorum, was in private subjected to such usage as might have tried the spirit of a Griselda. She was occasionally kept confined in a room by herself, from which she was not allowed to come forth even at meals, only a scanty supply of coarse food being sent to her from his lordship’s table. When pregnant, her husband coolly told her that if she brought forth a girl he would put it on the back of the fire. His eldest son by the former marriage was a sickly child. Lovat therefore deemed it necessary to raise a strong motive in the step-mother for the child being taken due care of during his absence in the Lowlands. On going from home, he would calmly inform her that any harm befalling the boys in his absence would be attended with the penalty of her own death, for in that event he would undoubtedly shoot her through the head. It is added that she did, from this in addition to other motives, take an unusual degree of care of her step-son, who ever after felt towards her the tenderest love and gratitude. One is disposed to believe that there must be some exaggeration in these stories; and yet when we consider that it is an historical fact that Lovat applied to Prince Charles for a warrant to take President Forbes dead or alive (Forbes being his friend and daily intimate), it seems no extravagance that he should have acted in this manner to his wife. Sir Walter Scott tells an additional story, which helps out the picture. ‘A lady, the intimate friend of her youth, was instructed to visit Lady Lovat, as if by accident, to ascertain the truth of those rumours concerning her husband’s conduct which had reached the ears of her family. She was received by Lord Lovat with an extravagant affectation of welcome, and with many assurances of the happiness his lady would receive from seeing her. The chief then went to the lonely tower in which Lady Lovat was secluded, without decent clothes, and even without sufficient nourishment. He laid a dress before her becoming her rank, commanded her to put it on, to appear, and to receive her friend as if she were the mistress of the house; in which she was, in fact, a naked and half-starved prisoner. And such was the strict watch which he maintained, and the terror which his character inspired, that the visitor durst not ask, nor Lady Lovat communicate, anything respecting her real situation.’[198] Afterwards, by a letter rolled up in a clew of yarn and dropped over a window to a confidential person, she was enabled to let her friends know how matters actually stood; and steps were then taken to obtain her separation from her husband. When, some years later, his political perfidy had brought him to the Tower—forgetting all past injuries, and thinking only of her duty as a wife, Lady Lovat offered to come to London to attend him. He returned an answer, declining the proposal, and containing the only expressions of kindness and regard which she had ever received from him since her marriage.
The singular character of Lord Lovat makes almost every particular regarding him worth collecting.
Previous to 1745, when the late Mr Alexander Baillie of Dochfour was a student at the grammar-school of Inverness, cock-fights were very common among the boys. This detestable sport, by the way, was encouraged by the schoolmasters of those days, who derived a profit from the beaten cocks, or, as they were called, fugies, which became, at the end of every game, their appropriated perquisite. In pursuit of cocks, Mr Baillie went to visit his friends in the Aird, and in the course of his researches was introduced to Lord Lovat, whose policy it was, on all occasions, to show great attentions to his neighbours and their children. The situation in which his lordship was found by the schoolboy was, if not quite unprecedented, nevertheless rather surprising. He was stretched out in bed between two Highland lasses, who, on being seen, affected out of modesty to hide their faces under the bedclothes. The old lord accounted for this strange scene by saying that his blood had become cold, and he was obliged to supply the want of heat by the application of animal warmth.
It is said that he lay in bed for the most part of the two years preceding the Rebellion; till, hearing of Prince Charles’s arrival in Arisaig, he roused himself with sudden vehemence, crying to an attendant: ‘Lassie, bring me my brogues—I’ll rise noo!’
One of his odd fancies was to send a retainer every day to Loch Ness, a distance of eight miles, for the water he drank.
His intimacy with his neighbour President Forbes is an amusing affair, for the men must have secretly known full well what each other was, and yet policy made them keep on decent terms for a long course of years. Lovat’s son by the subject of this notice—the Honourable Archibald Campbell Fraser—was a boy at Petty school in 1745. The President sometimes invited him to dinner. One day, pulling a handful of foreign gold pieces out of his pocket, he carelessly asked the boy if he had ever seen such coins before. Here was a stroke worthy of Lovat himself, for undoubtedly he meant thus to be informed whether the lord of Castle Downie was accustomed to get remittances for the Chevalier’s cause from abroad.