Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

Not only in blank verse but in lyrics does the Tennysonian tendency of our author break out, and to that tendency we owe by far the best poem in the present volume. "The Forsaken Merman," though the subject is fantastic, and though it has further the disadvantage of directly reminding us of one of Alfred's early extravaganzas, is nevertheless indicative of considerable power, not only of imagery and versification, but of actual pathos. A maiden of the earth has been taken down to the depths of the sea, where for years she has resided with her merman lover, and has borne him children. We shall let the poet tell the rest of his story, the more readily because we are anxious that he should receive credit for what real poetical accomplishment he possesses, and that he may not suppose, from our censure of his faults, that we are at all indifferent to his merits.

"Children dear, was it yesterday(Call yet once) that she went away?Once she sate with you and me,On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,And the youngest sate on her knee.She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea.She said, 'I must go, for my kinsfolk prayIn the little gray church on the shore to-day.'Twill be Easter-time in the world – ah me'And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.'I said, 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves,Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.'She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.Children dear, was it yesterday?"Children dear, were we long alone?'The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.Long prayers,' I said, 'in the world they say.Come,' I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.We went up the beach, by the sandy downWhere the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town.Through the narrow pav'd streets, where all was still,To the little gray church on the windy hill.From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,But we stood without in the cold-blowing airs.We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:'Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here.Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long alone,The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.'But, ah, she gave me never a look,For her eyes were sealed to the holy book.'Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.'Come away, children, call no more.Come away, come down, call no more."Down, down, down,Down to the depths of the sea.She sits at her wheel in the humming town,Singing most joyfully.Hark, what she sings; 'O joy, O joy,For the humming street, and the child with its toy.For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well.For the wheel where I spun,And the bless'd light of the sun.'And so she sings her fill,Singing most joyfully,Till the shuttle falls from her hand,And the whizzing wheel stands still.She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;And over the sand at the sea;And her eyes are set in a stare;And anon there breaks a sigh,And anon there drops a tear,From a sorrow-clouded eye,And a heart sorrow-laden,A long, long sigh,For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,And the gleam of her golden hair."

Had the author given us much poetry like this, our task would, indeed, have been a pleasant one; but as the case is otherwise, we can do no more than point to the solitary pearl. Yet it is something to know that, in spite of imitation, and a taste which has gone far astray, this writer has powers, which, if properly directed and developed, might insure him a sympathy, which, for the present, must be withheld. Sympathy, indeed, he cannot look for, so long as he appeals neither to the heart, the affections, nor the passions of mankind, but prefers appearing before them in the ridiculous guise of a misanthrope. He would fain persuade us that he is a sort of Timon, who, despairing of the tendency of the age, wishes to wrap himself up in the mantle of necessity, and to take no part whatever in the vulgar concerns of existence. It is absolutely ridiculous to find this young gentleman – after confiding "to a Republican friend" the fact that he despises

"The barren, optimistic sophistriesOf comfortable moles, whom what they doTeaches the limit of the just and true,And for such doing have no need of eyes," —

thus favouring the public in a sonnet with his views touching the onward progress of society: —

"Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seemRather to patience prompted, than that proudProspect of hope which France proclaims so loud —France, famed in all good arts, in none supreme.Seeing this vale, this earth, whereon we dream,Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the highUno'erleap'd mountains of necessity,Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,When, bursting through the network superpos'dBy selfish occupation – plot and plan,Lust, avarice, envy – liberated man,All difference with his fellow-man compos'd,Shall be left standing face to face with God."

What would our friend be at? If he is a Tory, can't he find work enough in denouncing and exposing the lies of the League, and in taking up the cudgels for native industry? If he is a Whig, can't he be great upon sewerage, and the scheme of planting colonies in Connaught, to grow corn and rear pigs at prices which will not pay for the manure and the hogs'-wash? If he is a Chartist, can't he say so, and stand up manfully with Julian Harney for "the points," whatever may be their latest number? But we think that, all things considered, he had better avoid politics. Let him do his duty to God and man, work six hours a-day, whether he requires to do so for a livelihood or not, marry and get children, and, in his moments of leisure, let him still study Sophocles and amend his verses. But we hope that, whatever he does, he will not inflict upon us any more such platitudes as "Resignation," addressed "to Fausta" or any sonnets similar to that which he has written in Emerson's Essays. We tender our counsel with a most sincere regard for his future welfare; for, in spite of his many faults, the Strayed Reveller is a clever fellow; and though it cannot be averred that, up to the present time, he has made the most of fair talents and a first-rate education, we are not without hope that, some day or other, we may be able to congratulate him on having fairly got rid of his affected misanthropy, his false philosophy, and his besetting sin of imitation, and that he may yet achieve something which may come home to the heart, and secure the admiration of the public.

NEW LIGHT ON THE STORY OF LADY GRANGE

Before we offer our readers some new light on this renowned mystery, it is necessary that we should give them, in a sentence, the briefest possible outline of the oft-told tale, so far as it has been hitherto known. John Erskine, Lord Grange, a judge of the Court of Session, and a leader of the ultra-religious party in Scotland, was married to the daughter of that Chiesley of Dalry who had shot the Lord President in the High Street of Edinburgh, for giving a decision against him. The marriage was a very unhappy one. The pious leader of a religious party was scandalised in various ways, obliged to live separate from his wife, and subjected to many outrages from her. At length her death was announced, her funeral was duly attended, and the widower preserved the decorous silence of one to whom death has brought relief from what is generally counted a calamity.

This occurred in January 1732. The lapse of nearly nine years had almost consigned the remembrance of the unfortunate woman to oblivion, when strange rumours gained circulation, that she who was believed to be dead and buried was living in bondage in the distant island of St Kilda. The account she subsequently gave of her adventures, bore, that one night in her solitary lodging she was seized by some Highlanders, whom she knew to be retainers of Lord Lovat, and conveyed away, gagged and blindfolded, in the arms of a man seated in a sedan chair. It appears that she was kept in various places of confinement, and subjected to much rough usage, in the Low Country. At length she was conveyed north-westward, towards the Highland line. She passed through the grim solitudes of Glencoe, where recent murder must have awakened in the captive horrible associations, on to the western part of Lord Lovat's country, where any deed of tyranny or violence might be committed with safety. Thence she was transferred to the equally safe country of Glengarry, and, after crossing some of the highest mountains in Scotland, was shipped on the wild Loch Hourn, for ever darkened by the shadow of gigantic mountains falling on its narrow waters. She was kept for some time on the small island of Heskir, belonging to Macdonald of Sleat, and was afterwards transferred to the still more inaccessible St Kilda, which has acquired a sort of celebrity from its connexion with her strange history. In 1741, when a communication from the captive had, through devious courses, reached her friends in Edinburgh, an effort was made to release her; but it was baffled by her transference to another place of confinement, where she died in 1745.

Little did the old judge imagine, at the time when he had so successfully and so quietly got rid of his domestic curse – when the mock funeral had been performed, the family condolences acted over, and the victim safely conveyed to her distant prison, that on some future day the public, frantic with curiosity, would tear to pieces the covering of his great mystery, and expose every fragment of it to the admiring crowd. It was but a simple matter in the eyes of those who were concerned in it. The woman was troublesome – her husband was a judge, and therefore a powerful man – so he put her out of the way. Nor was he cruel or unscrupulous, according to the morality of the circle in which he lived, in the method he adopted to accomplish his end. He had advisers about him, who would have taken a shorter and a more effectual plan for ridding themselves of a troublesome woman, wife or not, and would have walked forth into the world without being haunted by any dread that rumours of remote captivities might rise up to disturb their peace. Indeed, when we remember the character of the instruments to whom Lord Grange committed the kidnapping and removal of his wife, it is only wonderful that they had patience enough to carry out so long and troublesome an operation; and that they did not, out of regard to themselves and to their employer, put a violent termination to the career of their troublesome charge, and send her at once to where the weary are at rest. Had this been her fate, the affair of Lady Grange would have been one of secondary interest. Such things were too easily accomplished in those days. The chances would have been greatly against a discovery, and if it took place, equally great against the conviction and punishment of the offenders, unless the lady had a more powerful party at her back than the daughter of Chiesley the murderer would be likely to command. It would have created, so far as it was known, great excitement, and some little horror at the time, but it would have speedily sunk to the level of the ordinary contents of the criminal records, and would never have bequeathed to the ensuing century an object which antiquarians have hunted out as religiously and zealously as if it had involved the fate of Europe.

In fact, Lord Grange was what was called in his day "a discreet man." He wished to avoid scandal, and bore a character for religious zeal, which appears to have been on occasion a very serious burden not easily borne. He dreaded scandal and notoriety, and therefore he shrouded his great act of iniquity in the most profound secrecy. Moreover, he kept a conscience – something that, like Rob Roy's honesty, might be called a conscience "after a kind." He said pretty accurately of himself in his Diary– "I have religion enough to spoil my relish and prosecution of this world, and not enough to get me to the next." We may probably believe that, even if he could have performed the deed with perfect secrecy and safety, so far as this world is concerned, he would not have murdered his wife, his conscience recoiling at the dreadful crime – his fear of the world causing him to shrink from exposure. Urged by these two conflicting motives, he adopted the expedient of the secret removal to a desolate and distant spot, believing that he had surrounded the whole project with a deep and impenetrable cloud of mystery. Never was human foresight more signally set at naught. It was this very machinery of intense mystery that, by ministering to one of the cravings of the human imagination, has made the incident one of the most notorious of human events. It is almost satisfactory to know that this dreaded notoriety visited the hoary tyrant, for after he had for nine years enjoyed in secret the success of his plot, and kept his fair fame with the world, we find him, when legal proceedings were commenced against him, bitterly saying that "strange stories were spread all over the town of Edinburgh, and made the talk of coffee-houses and tea-tables, and sent, as I have ground to apprehend, to several other places of Great Britain."20 One may notice, too, in the following discontented mumblings, the bitterness with which he contemplated the divulging of the secret, – it is in a letter to the imprisoned lady's champion, Mr Hope of Rankeillor.

"Any of the smallest discretion will see what a worthy part he acts towards me and mine, and many others, and even towards the person pretended to be cared for, who, in such an occasion, begins by spreading through Great Britain strange stories, unexamined and unvouched, and not so much as communicated to us concerned; and next, when offered satisfaction, yet proceeds to fix such on public records, and to force others to bring on record sad and proved truths, which he himself knows and formerly has acknowledged to be truths, and that ought for ever to be sunk. This cannot be construed to be anything but an endeavour to fix, as far as in him lies, a lasting blot on persons and families. The first was defamation, and the next would be the same, under a cover of a pretended legal shape, but in itself more atrocious. One cannot doubt that this is a serious thing to many more than me, and cannot but be laid to heart."21

The text from which we are at present discoursing, is a bundle of confidential letters from Lord Grange, printed in the Miscellany of the Spalding Club, and not the least valuable and curious of the many contributions made by that useful and spirited institution, to the elucidation of Scottish history and manners. At the foot of the high conical hill of Bennochie, in a small group of forest trees, there nestles one of those quaint small turreted mansions of old French architecture so frequently to be seen in the north of Scotland. The owner of this mansion was an Erskine; he was related to Erskine of Grange, and it so happened that this relative was the person in whose ear he poured his secret sorrows, as a disappointed and morbid politician. Such confidential outpourings are not the most interesting of communications, even when one has the fortune to be so far connected with the wailer as to be the chosen vessel into which he pours the anguish of his heart. Some of these letters are portentous – they are absolute pamphlets – in their spirit as yellow and mildewed with discontent, as their outward aspect may have been by the cold damp air of Bennochie, when they were discovered in the worm-eaten chest. It requires a little zeal to peruse the whole series; but, unless we are greatly deceived, we think we can present our readers with a few plums picked out of the mass, which they may find not unacceptable. And here, by the way, let us observe, how great a service is done by those who ransack the repositories of our old Scottish houses, and make their contents accessible to the public. We are convinced that in dusty garrets, in vaults, in musty libraries, and crazy old oak-chests, there is still an almost inexhaustible wealth of curious lore of this description. The correspondence of the old Scottish families is generally far more interesting than that of English houses of the same rank. Since the civil wars of the seventeenth century, England may be said to have been internally undisturbed, and no private papers contain matters of state, save those of the great families whose ancestors have been high in office. But in Scotland, the various outbreaks, and the unceasing Jacobite intrigues, made almost all the country gentlemen statesmen – made too many of them state offenders. The Essex squire, be he ever so rich, was still but the lord of a certain quantity of timber and oxen, grass and turnips. The Highland laird, be he ever so poor, was a leader of men – a person who had more or less the power of keeping the country in a state of war or danger – a sort of petty king reigning over his own people. Hence, while the letters of the last century one might pick up in a comfortable old English mansion, would relate to swing-gates and turnpike roads, game preserves and tithes, those found hidden behind the wainscoat of a gaunt old cheerless Scottish fortalice, would relate to risings at home, or landings from abroad – to the number of broadswords and targets still kept in defiance of the Arms Act – to communications received through French Jesuits, or secret missions "across the water."22

We believe that the passages from these documents, on which we are now to comment, in the first place exhibit to us pretty plainly the motive of Lord Grange for the deportation of his wife; and, in the second place, prove that he entertained designs of a similar character against another female with whom he was nearly connected.

When Lady Grange's strange history was first communicated to the public, it was believed that the cause of her abduction was not merely her violent temper, but her possession of certain secrets which would enable her to compromise the safety of her husband and his friends, by proving their connexion with the Jacobite intrigues of the period. The view more lately taken of the mystery, has been that she was merely a mad woman, and that her abduction, with all its laborious mystery, was only an attempt to accommodate the judge with a resource in which Scotland was then deficient – a lunatic asylum for insane relatives. Though, as we shall presently see, his confidential communications give other and darker revelations, this was the light in which Lord Grange wished the matter to be viewed, after his plot had been discovered; and in his controversial letter to Mr Hope, already referred to, he gives an account of her frantic outbreaks, which certainly affords a picture of one likely to have been a most distressing partner in life to a grave judge, having a few secrets to conceal which required him to be peculiarly circumspect in his walk; and holding a high, but a rather precarious position, in the opinion of the religious world. After stating that she had agreed to a separation, he continues —

"Then it was hoped that I and the children (who she used to curse bitterly when they went dutifully to wait on her) would be in quiet; but she often attacked my house, and from the streets, and among the footmen and chairmen of visitors, cried and raged against me and mine, and watched for me in the streets, and chased me from place to place in the most indecent and shameless manner, and threatened to attack me on the bench, which, dreading she would do every time I went to it, made my duty there very heavy on me, lest that honourable Court of Session should be disturbed and affronted on my occasion. And not content with these, and odd and very bad contrivances about the poor children, she waited on a Sunday's afternoon that my sister, Lady Jane Paterson, with my second daughter, came out of the Tron Church, and on the street, among all the people, fell upon her with violent scolding and curses, and followed her so down Merlin's Wynd, till Lady Jane and the child near the bottom of it got shelter from her and being exposed to the multitude in a friend's house. You also know, and may well remember, that before you and the rest advised the separation, and till she went from my house, she would not keep herself in that part of it (the best apartment) which was assigned her, but abused all in the family, and when none were adverting, broke into the room of ane old gentlewoman, recommended to me for housekeeper, and carried off and destroyed her accompts, &c., and committed outrages, so that at length I was forced to have a watch in my house, and especially in the night time, as if it had been in the frontier of an enemy's country, or to be spoiled by robbers."23

This was doubtless the truth, but not the whole truth. Founding apparently on these statements, which are Lord Grange's vindication of himself, the editor of the collection of letters says – "The letters now printed must considerably impair the mystery of the reasons which led to the abduction of Lady Grange. They may be held conclusively to refute the supposition that the affair had any connexion with the political intrigues of the period." On the contrary, we cannot read the confidential portion of the correspondence without feeling that it almost conclusively establishes the fact, that the affair had a "connexion with the political intrigues of the period;" and that the reason why so many people of rank and political influence aided the plot, why the removal was conducted with so much secrecy, and the place of seclusion was so remote and inaccessible, was because Lady Grange was possessed of dangerous secrets, which compromised her husband and his friends. The general tone of the letters, and their many cautious and mysterious, yet unmistakeable references to the proceedings of friends across the water, show that the judge confided to the owner of the old mansion at the foot of Bennochie some things which it would be dangerous for an enemy to know. But we shall cite just one passage, which we consider sufficient of itself to support our position. It is taken from a letter dated 22d March 1731, just ten months before his wife was seized and carried off. There is something very peculiar in the structure of the letter; and, whether in pursuit of some not very appreciable joke, or to waylay the penetration of any hostile party who, might take the liberty of opening the packet on its journey, the writer speaks of himself during the most curious and important part of it, in the third person. Talking of a very difficult and hazardous project in which he is about to be engaged, he thus passes a neat commendation on himself, – "but I am sure he never yet was frightened from what was right in itself, and his duty towards his friends, by his own trouble or danger, and he seems as little frighted now, as ever in his life." He then approaches the subject of his wife's character and intentions, like a man treading on the verge of a frightful pitfall. "I have found that, in such a case, there is no bounds set to such mischief, and it is pushed on though it should go the length of your utter ruin, and of Tyburn itself, or the Grassmarket," – the one being the place where the gibbet of London, the other where that of Edinburgh stood. From such portentous associations he passes immediately to his wife and her proceedings. To make the passage more distinct, we fill up the names, of which the letter contains only the first and last letters; it will be remarked that he still assumes the third person, and that he himself is the person about to depart for London.

"Then I am told that Lady Grange is going to London. She knows nothing of his going, nor is it suspected here, nor shall be till the day before he goes off, and so she cannot pretend it is to follow him. She will certainly strive to get access to Lady Mary Wortley, Lady Mar's sister, (whom she openly blesses for her opposition to our friends,) and to all where her malice may prompt her to hope she can do hurt to us. You will remember with what lying impudence she threatened Lord Grange, and many of his friends, with accusations of high treason and other capital crimes, and spoke so loud of her accusing directly by a signed information to Lord Justice-Clerk, that it came to his ears, and she was stopped by hearing he said, that, if the mad woman came to him, he would cause his footmen turn her down stairs. What effect her lies may have, where she is not so well known, and with those who, from opposition to what Lord Grange is about, may think their interest to encourage them, one cannot certainly know; but if proper measures be not fallen on against it, the creature may prove troublesome; at any rate, this whole affair will require a great deal of diligence, caution, and address."24