Redgauntlet: A Tale Of The Eighteenth Century

by Walter Scott

  CONCLUSION, BY DR. DRYASDUST

  IN A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY

  I am truly sorry, my worthy and much-respected sir, that my anxiousresearches have neither, in the form of letters, nor of diaries or othermemoranda, been able to discover more than I have hitherto transmitted,of the history of the Redgauntlet family. But I observe in an oldnewspaper called the WHITEHALL GAZETTE, of which I fortunately possess afile for several years, that Sir Arthur Darsie Redgauntlet waspresented to his late Majesty at the drawing-room, by Lieut.-GeneralCampbell--upon which the editor observes, in the way of comment, thatwe were going, REMIS ATQUE VELIS, into the interests of the Pretender,since a Scot had presented a Jacobite at Court. I am sorry I have notroom (the frank being only uncial) for his further observations, tendingto show the apprehensions entertained by many well-instructed persons ofthe period, that the young king might himself be induced to become oneof the Stuarts' faction,--a catastrophe from which it has pleased Heavento preserve these kingdoms.

  I perceive also, by a marriage-contract in the family repositories, thatMiss Lilias Redgauntlet of Redgauntlet, about eighteen months after thetransactions you have commemorated, intermarried with Alan Fairford,Esq., Advocate, of Clinkdollar, who, I think, we may not unreasonablyconclude to be the same person whose name occurs so frequently inthe pages of your narration. In my last excursion to Edinburgh, I wasfortunate enough to discover an old caddie, from whom, at the expenseof a bottle of whisky and half a pound of tobacco, I extracted theimportant information, that he knew Peter Peebles very well, and haddrunk many a mutchkin with him in Caddie Fraser's time. He said 'thathe lived ten years after King George's accession, in the momentaryexpectation of winning his cause every day in the session time, andevery hour in the day, and at last fell down dead, in what my informercalled a 'perplexity fit,' upon a proposal for a composition being madeto him in the Outer House. I have chosen to retain my informer's phrase,not being able justly to determine whether it is a corruption of theword apoplexy, as my friend Mr. Oldbuck supposes, or the name of somepeculiar disorder incidental to those who have concern in the courts oflaw, as many callings and conditions of men have diseases appropriate tothemselves. The same caddie also remembered Blind Willie Stevenson, whowas called Wandering Willie, and who ended his days 'unco beinly, in SirArthur Redgauntlet's ha' neuk.' 'He had done the family some good turn,'he said, 'specially when ane of the Argyle gentlemen was coming down ona wheen of them that had the "auld leaven" about them, and wad hae taenevery man of them, and nae less nor headed and hanged them. But Willie,and a friend they had, called Robin the Rambler, gae them warning, byplaying tunes such as "The Campbells are coming" and the like, wherebythey got timeous warning to take the wing.' I need not point out to youracuteness, my worthy sir, that this seems to refer to some inaccurateaccount of the transactions in which you seem so much interested.

  Respecting Redgauntlet, about whose subsequent history you are moreparticularly inquisitive, I have learned from an excellent personwho was a priest in the Scottish Monastery of Ratisbon, before itssuppression, that he remained for two or three years in the family ofthe Chevalier, and only left it at last in consequence of some discordsin that melancholy household. As he had hinted to General Campbell, heexchanged his residence for the cloister, and displayed in the latterpart of his life, a strong sense of the duties of religion, which inhis earlier days he had too much neglected, being altogether engaged inpolitical speculations and intrigues. He rose to the situation of prior,in the house which he belonged to, and which was of a very strict orderof religion. He sometimes received his countrymen, whom accident broughtto Ratisbon, and curiosity induced to visit the Monastery of ------. Butit was remarked, that though he listened with interest and attention,when Britain, or particularly Scotland, became the subject ofconversation, yet he never either introduced or prolonged the subject,never used the English language, never inquired about English affairs,and, above all, never mentioned his own family. His strict observationof the rules of his order gave him, at the time of his death, somepretensions to be chosen a saint, and the brethren of the Monasteryof ------ made great efforts for that effect, and brought forward someplausible proofs of miracles. But there was a circumstance which threwa doubt over the subject, and prevented the consistory from accedingto the wishes of the worthy brethren. Under his habit, and secured ina small silver box, he had worn perpetually around his neck a lockof-hair, which the fathers avouched to be a relic. But the Avvocato delDiabolo, in combating (as was his official duty) the pretensions ofthe candidate for sanctity, made it at least equally probable that thesupposed relic was taken from the head of a brother of the deceasedprior, who had been executed for adherence to the Stuart family in1745-6; and the motto, HAUD OBLIVISCENDUM, seemed to intimate a toneof mundane feeling and recollection of injuries, which made it at leastdoubtful whether, even in the quiet and gloom of the cloister,Father Hugo had forgotten the sufferings and injuries of the House ofRedgauntlet.

  June 10, 1824,