It is satisfactory to find, on the most palpable evidence, that Lord Grange had sufficient poetical genius to supply this rhyme, though whether his poetic powers went any farther, we are unable, and perhaps no one will ever be able, to determine.
We must quote, unmutilated, one of Grange's conflicts with Avidien's wife. Though the scene be roughly described, it has an interest, from the unscrupulous vehemence of the principal actors, and the eminence of the little group, who cluster round it like a circle of casual passengers round the centre of disturbance, where the wife and the brother-bacchanalian compete, on the pavement, for the possession of some jovial reveller, whose half-clouded mind remains vibrating between the quiet comforts of home and the fierce joys of the tavern. There is something affecting in the vacillating miseries of the poor invalid—we wonder how much of the cruel contest can be true; for, that it is all true, it is impossible to believe—yet Lady Mary could be violent, and she could be hard, when she was attacked or baffled; and she had a rough and unscrupulous nature to combat with, in the historian of their warfare.
"Lady Mary, perceiving how things were like to go, did what I was always afraid of, and could not possibly prevent: she went in rage to her poor sister, and so swaggered and frightened her, that she relapsed. While she was about that fine piece of work, Lord Erskine happened to go to Lady Mar's; and in his presence Lady Mary continued to this purpose with her sister: 'Can you pretend to be well? Don't you know you are still mad? You shan't get out of my custody; and if Lord Grange and his confederates bring you before Lord Chancellor, I'll make you, in open court, in presence of the world, lay your hand on the Gospel, and swear by Almighty God, whether you can say you are yet well. Your salvation shall be at stake; for, remember, perjury infers damnation—your eternal damnation.' So soon as I was informed of this, I assured my lady (and so did others,) that in law no such oath could be put to, her, and that Lady Mary had only said so to fright her. But so strong was the fright, that nothing we could say was able to set her right again. And Lady Mary, having thus dismounted her came again and coaxed her, and (as I found by diverse instances) strove to give her bad impressions of her family, and everybody but Lady Mary's sweet self. Yet next day Lady Mar went and dined at Mr Baillie's in town, and there saw a deal of company, and behaved very well. And Dr Arbuthnot, who, among others, saw her there, said he thought her very well; and had not the turn happened you will presently hear of, he and Dr Monro (son to Mr Monro who, at the Revolution, was Principal of Edinburgh College, and is now physician to Bedlam,) and Dr Mead, were to have gone to her with me next day and afterwards, that they might have vouched her condition before the chancellor. I believed it best for me not to be at Mr Baillie's, that all might appear as it was, free and natural, and not conducted by any art of mine; only I went thither about seven at night, and found her in a room with Ladies Harvey, Binning, Murray, Lady Grizzel Baillie, and others. She was behaving decently, but with the gravity of one that is wearied and tired. Mr Baillie himself, and the other gentlemen and ladies, (a great many being in the next room,) now and then joined us, and she seemed not in anything discomposed, till the conversation turned on her sister's late insult, which, it was visible, gave a shock to her, and disconcerted her; and when Lady Murray and I went home with her to Knightsbridge, she was so dumpish that she scarcely said one word. When I went to her next day, I saw how strongly Lady Mary's physic wrought, and dissipated her poor returning senses. She had before urged me earnestly to proceed faster than was fit, to get her before the chancellor, and do everything needful for her liberation, that she might go to her husband and family. But now she told me she would not for the world appear before the chancellor, and that neither she nor any other must make oath as to her recovery, (at this time, indeed, it had been a very bold oath); and that she preferred her soul's salvation to all things. And, among other things, she said, what a dismal condition shall I be in if, after all, the chancellor send me back under Mary's government; how shall I pass my time after such an attempt? In short, she was bambouzled, and frighted quite. But that her head was really turned by Lady Mary's threats of damnation, farther appeared by this instance: Lady Grizzel Baillie and Lady Murray having gone to take leave of her, (their whole family is gone to Spa,) when I saw her next day, she gravely told me that Lady Murray was no more her friend, having endeavoured, when taking leave, to deprive her of all the comfort left her—the hope of heaven. And though (said she) I was bred to the Church of England, and she to that of Scotland, yet merely the difference is not so great that she must pronounce me in a state of damnation: and she asked me seriously, what Lady Murray had said to me about her being damned? Never in my life, madam, answered I, did she or any London lady speak to me about salvation or damnation; but I'm sure my Lady Murray loves you as her sister, and heartily wishes your happiness here and hereafter. Then she gave me a sealed letter to Lady Murray, begging me to deliver it and bring an answer. I read it with Lady Murray. It was long, and all expostulatory why she pronounced her to be damned; and said many odd things. Lady Murray's answer was the proper one—short and general, but very kind, which I also delivered; and Lady Mar said no more to me on that head. Before she took this turn, perceiving her so vapourish and easily disconcerted, I would not venture to put the case wholly on perfect recovery, but stated it also as I really thought it—viz., recovered from all that could properly be called lunacy, yet exceeding weak, and apt to be overturned. And I had prepared a memorial in law on that supposition, which I was to have laid before Mr Talbot, solicitor-general, and other counsel, the very day she took this wrong turn; but thereupon stopt altogether. At parting, she appeared to me as one who, fearing to provoke a worse fate by attempting to be better, sat down in a sort of sullen despairing, content with her present condition, which she (justly) called misery. Thus seemed she to be as to any sense that remained with her; but all her sense was clouded, and, indeed, fancies which now perplexed her brain were, like the clouds, fleeting, inconstant, and sometimes in monstrous shapes."[31]
We have no more of this affair until the lapse of several months, when the judge, at the very moment of apparent victory, is routed by his watchful antagonist. He had obtained possession of Lady Mar—she was on her way to Scotland, "in right hands," but had not crossed the border. This was in 1733, a few months after Lady Grange had been safely conveyed to the grim solitudes of Hesker. Surely some bird of the air had whispered the matter to Lady Mary; for her measures were prompt and stern, and they draw from the baffled plotter many hard expressions and insinuations. "But on the road, she [Lady Mar] was seized by Lord Chief-Justice's warrant, procured on false affidavit of her sister Lady Mary, &c., and brought back to London—declared lunatic, and by Lord Chancellor (whose crony is Mr Wortley, Lady Mary's husband) delivered into the custody of Lady Mary, to the astonishment and offence even of all the English, (Sir Robert among the rest;) and Ilay pretended to be angry at it, yet refused to give me that relief by the king in council, which by law was undoubtedly competent."[32]
The people with whom his London connexion brought the judge in contact, display a gathering of dazzling names in the firmament of fashion and wit. Bolingbroke, Windham, and "the courtly Talbot" are casually mentioned. Grange says in passing, "I am acquainted with Chesterfield." He has something to say of "sweet Lepel," the "wife of that Lord Hervey who last winter wrote the pamphlet against Mr Pulteney, and on Mr Pulteney's answer, fought with him and was wounded." Arbuthnot, and the prince of classical collectors, Richard Mead, mix with the ordinary actors of the scene. Young Murray, not then a crown lawyer—but sufficiently distinguished for wit, eloquence, and fashionable celebrity, to have called forth the next to immortal compliments of Pope—must have been one of the brilliant circle; and in the early period of his intercourse with his brother's sister-in-law, accident would be strangely against him, if he did not sometimes meet in the ordinary circle the pale distorted youth, with noble intellectual features and an eye of fire, whose war of wit and rancour with "furious Sappho" left the world uncertain whether to laugh with their fierce wit, or lament the melancholy picture of perverted genius, exhibited by a hatred so paltry yet so unquenchable.
In his autobiographical revelations, the economical old judge leaves some traces of his consciousness that his journeys from Merlyn's Wynd to Whitehall were a decided transition from the humble to the great world. He thus describes one of these journeys, in the letter already cited, in which he gratified his humour by talking of himself in the third person.
"Lord G. is now pretty well acquainted with the ways there; his personal charges, he is sure, will be small in comparison; he will not be in expensive companies or houses, but when business requires it; nor at any diversion but what he finds necessary for keeping up the cheerfulness of his own spirit, and the health of his body. He wears plain and not fine clothes. When there last he kept not a servant, but had a fellow at call, to whom he gave a shilling a-day such days as he was to be at court or among the great, and must have a footman as necessarily as a coat on his back or a sword by his side. He never was nice and expensive in his own eating, and less now than ever; for this winter he has quite lost the relish of French claret, the most expensive article in London. He is to travel without a servant, for whom he knows not any sort of use on the road, and only has a post-boy, whom he must have, had he twenty servants of his own; and so he travelled last year."[33]
Strange indeed were the social extremes between which this journey lay. At the one end we see the brilliant assemblages of the most brilliant age of English fashion. The rays of the wax-lights glitter back from stars and sword-hilts, diamond buttons and spangles. Velvet coats, huge laced waistcoats, abundant hoops, spread forth their luxurious wealth—the air is rich and thick with perfumed powder—the highest in rank, and wealth, and influence are there, so are the first in genius and learning. Reverse the picture, and take the northern end of the journey. In an old dark stone house, at the end of a dismal alley, Lovat's ragged banditti throttle a shrieking woman—a guilty cavalcade passes hurriedly at night across the dark heath—next opens a dreary dungeon in a deserted feudal fortalice—a boat tosses on the bosom of the restless Atlantic—and the victim is consigned to the dreary rock, where year follows year, bringing no change with it but increasing age. The contrast is startling. Yet, when we read Lady Grange's diary and Lady Mary Wortley's letters together, they leave one doubtful whether most to shudder at the savage lawlessness of one end of the island, or the artificial vices that were growing out of a putrid civilisation in the other.