Part 1 (2/2)
How far matters went at this time we do not know, for Cranstoun left Henley in the autumn and did not revisit ”The Paradise” till the following summer. Meanwhile Captain D---- returned from abroad, but unaccountably failed to communicate with the girl he had the year before so reluctantly left behind him. Mary's uncles, ”desirous of renewing a courts.h.i.+p which they thought would turn much to the honour and benefit of their niece,” intervened; but Captain D----, though ”polite and candid,” declined to renew his pretensions, and the affair fell through. Whether or not he had heard anything of the Cranstoun business does not appear.
According to Miss Blandy's _Own Account_, it was not until their second meeting at Lord Mark Kerr's in the summer of 1747 that the patrician but unattractive Cranstoun declared his pa.s.sion. She also states that in doing so he referred to an illicit entanglement with a Scottish lady, falsely claiming to be his wedded wife, and that she (Mary) accepted him provisionally, ”till the invalidity of the pretended marriage appeared to the whole world.” But here, as we shall presently see, the fair auth.o.r.ess rather antedates the fact.
Next day Cranstoun, formally proposing to the old folks for their daughter's hand, was received by them literally with open arms, henceforth to be treated as a son; and when, after a six weeks'
visit to Bath in company with his gouty kinsman, the captain returned to Henley, it was as the guest of his future father-in-law, of whose ”pious fraud” in the matter of the 10,000 dowry; despite his shrewdness, he was unaware. Though the sycophantic attorney would probably as lief have housed a monkey of lineage so distinguished, old Mrs. Blandy seems really to have adored the foxy little captain for his _beaux yeux_. Doubtless he fooled the dame to the top of her bent. For a time things went pleasantly enough in the old house by the bridge. The town-clerk boasted of his n.o.ble quarry, the mother enjoyed for the first time the company and conversation of a man of fas.h.i.+on, and Mary renewed amid the Henley meadows those paradisiacal experiences which formerly she had shared with faithless Captain D----. But once more her happiness received an unexpected check. Lord Mark Kerr, a soldier and a gentleman, becoming aware of the footing upon which his graceless grand-nephew was enjoying the Blandys' hospitality, wrote to the attorney the amazing news that his daughter's lover already had a wife and child living in Scotland.
The facts, so far as we know them, were these. On 22nd May, 1744, William Henry Cranstoun was privately married at Edinburgh to Anne, daughter of David Murray, merchant in Leith, a son of the late Sir David Murray of Stanhope, Baronet. As the lady and her family were Jacobite and Roman Catholic, the fact of the marriage was not published at the time for fear of prejudicing the gallant bridegroom's chances of promotion. The couple lived together ”in a private manner” for some months, and in November the bride returned to her family, while the captain went to London to resume his regimental duties. They corresponded regularly by letter. Cranstoun wrote to his own and the lady's relatives, acknowledging that she had been his wife since May, but insisting that the marriage should still be kept secret; and on learning that he was likely to become a father, he communicated this fact to my Lord, his brother. Lady Cranstoun invited her daughter-in-law to Nether Crailing, the family seat in Roxburghs.h.i.+re, there to await the interesting event, but the young wife, fearing that Presbyterian influences would be brought to bear upon her, unfortunately declined, which gave offence to Lady Cranstoun and aroused some suspicion regarding the fact of the marriage. At Edinburgh, on 19th February, 1745, Mrs. Cranstoun gave birth to a daughter, who was baptised by a minister of the kirk in Newbattle, according to one account, in presence of members of both parents' families; and, by the father's request, one of his brothers held her during the ceremony. In view of these facts it must have required no common effrontery on the part of Cranstoun to disown his wife and child, as he did in the following year. The country being then in the throes of the last Jacobite rising, and his wife's family having cast in their lot with Prince Charlie, our gallant captain perceived in these circ.u.mstances a unique opportunity for ridding himself of his marital ties. The lady was a niece of John Murray of Broughton, the Prince's secretary who served the cause so ill; her brother, the reigning baronet, was taken prisoner at Culloden, tried at Carlisle, and sentenced to death, but owing to his youth, was reprieved and transported instead; so Cranstoun thought the course comparatively clear. His position was that Miss Murray had been his mistress, and that although he had promised to marry her if she would change her religion for his own purer Presbyterian faith, and as the lady refused to do so, he was entirely freed from his engagement. With cynical impudence he explained his previous admission of the marriage as due to a desire to ”amuse” her relatives and save her honour. In October, 1746, his wife, by the advice of her friends and in accordance with Scots practice, raised in the Commissary Court at Edinburgh an action of declarator of marriage against her perfidious spouse, and the case was still pending before the Commissaries when Lord Mark Kerr, as we have seen, ”gave away” his grand-nephew to the Blandys.
The old attorney was justly incensed at the unworthy trick of which he had been the victim. He had designed, indeed, on his own account, a little surprise for his son-in-law in the matter of the mythical dower, but that was another matter; so, in all the majesty of outraged fatherhood, he sought an interview with his treacherous guest. That gentleman, whose acquaintance with ”tight corners” was, doubtless, like Mr. Waller's knowledge of London, extensive and peculiar, rose gallantly to the occasion. A firm believer in the 10,000 _dot_, he could not, of course, fully appreciate the moral beauty of Mr. Blandy's insistence on the unprofitableness of deceit; but, taxed with being a married man, ”As I have a soul to be saved,”
swore he, ”I am not, nor ever was!” The lady had wilfully misrepresented their equivocal relations, and the proceedings in the Scottish Courts meant, vulgarly, blackmail. Both families knew the true facts, and Lord Mark's interference was the result of an old quarrel between them, long since by him buried in oblivion, but on account of which his lords.h.i.+p, as appeared, still bore him a grudge.
The action would certainly be decided in his favour, when nothing more would be heard of Miss Murray and her fraudulent claims. The affair was, no doubt, annoying, but such incidents were not viewed too seriously by people of fas.h.i.+on--here the captain would delicately take a pinch, and offer his snuff-box (with the Cranstoun arms: _gules_, three cranes _argent_) to the baffled attorney.
On the receipt of Lord Mark's letter, Mrs. Blandy, womanlike, believed the worst: ”her poor Polly was ruined.” But her sympathies were so far enlisted on behalf of the fascinating intended that she eagerly clutched at any explanation, however lame, which would put things upon the old footing. She proved a powerful advocate; and, in the end, Mr. Blandy, accepting his guest's word, allowed the engagement to continue in the meantime, until the result of the legal proceedings should be known. He was as loath to forego the chance of such an aristocratic connection as was his wife to part from so ”genteel” a friend; while Mary Blandy--well, the damsels of her day were not morbidly nice in such matters, more than once had the nuptial cup eluded her expectant lips, _enfin_, she was nearing her thirtieth year: such an opportunity, as Mr. Bunthorne has it, might not occur again. With the proverbial blindness of those unwilling to see, the old man did nothing further in regard to Lord Mark Kerr's communication; that n.o.bleman, annoyed at the indifference with which his well-meant warning had been received, forbade his kinsman the house, and the Blandys were thus deprived of their only means of knowledge as to the doings of their ambiguous guest.
For the movements of that gentleman from this time until the first ”date” in the case, August, 1750, we must rely mainly upon the narrative given by his fair fiancee in her _Own Account_, and, unfortunately, after the manner of her s.e.x, she is somewhat careless of dates. This first visit of Cranstoun lasted ”five or six months”--from the autumn of 1747 till the spring of 1748--when he went to London on the footing that Mary, with her father's permission, should ”stay for him” till the ”unhappy affair” with his _soi-disant_ spouse was legally determined. Pending this desired result, the lovers maintained a vigorous correspondence.
Sometime after his departure, Mrs. Blandy and her daughter went on a visit to Turville Court, the house of a friend named Mrs. Poc.o.c.k, of whom we shall hear again. While there, the old lady became suddenly, and as was at first feared fatally, ill. Her constant cry, according to Mary, was, ”Let Cranstoun be sent for,” and no sooner had that insignificant warrior posted from Southampton to the sick-room than the patient began to mend. She declared, now that he had come, she would soon be well, and refused to take her medicines from any hand but his. Mr. Blandy, also summoned in haste, was much out of humour at ”the great expense” incurred, and proposed forthwith to take his wife home, where ”neither the physician's fees nor the apothecary's journeys could be so expensive”; and whenever the invalid was able to travel, the whole party, including the indispensable captain, returned to Henley. On the strength of the old lady's continued illness, Cranstoun contrived to ”put in” another six months' free board and lodging under the Blandys' hospitable roof, until his regiment was ”broke” at Southampton, when he set out for London.
During this visit, says Mary, her father was sometimes ”very rude”
to his guest, which, in the circ.u.mstances, is not surprising.
Meanwhile, on 1st March, 1748, the Commissary Court had decreed William Henry Cranstoun and Anne Murray to be man and wife and the child of the marriage to be their lawful issue, and had decerned the captain to pay the lady an annuity of 40 sterling for her own aliment and 10 for their daughter's, so long as she should be maintained by her mother, and further had found him liable in expenses, amounting to 100. The proceedings disclose a very ugly incident. Shortly after leaving his wife, as before narrated, Cranstoun wrote to her that his sole chance of promotion in the Army depended on his appearing unmarried, and with much persuasion he at length prevailed upon her to copy a letter, framed by him, to the effect that she had never been his wife. Once possessed of this doc.u.ment in her handwriting, the little scoundrel sent copies of it to his own and his wife's relatives in Scotland, whereby she suffered much obloquy and neglect, and when that unhappy lady raised her action of declarator, with peculiar baseness he lodged the letter in process. Fortunately, she had preserved the original draft, together with her faithless husband's letters thereanent.
This judgment was, for the gallant defender, now on half-pay, a veritable _debacle_, and we may be sure that the confiding Blandys would have heard no word of it from him; but Mrs. Cranstoun, having learned something of the game her spouse was playing at Henley, herself wrote to Mr. Blandy, announcing the decision of the Commissaries and sending for his information a copy of the decree in her favour. This, surely, should have opened the eyes even of a provincial attorney, but Cranstoun, while admitting the fact, induced him to believe, the wish being father to the thought, that the Court of first instance, as was not unprecedented, had erred, and that he was advised, with good hope of success, to appeal against the judgment to the Court of Session. Finally to dispose of the captain's legal business, it may now be said that the appeal was in due course of time dismissed, and the decision of the Commissaries affirmed. Thus the marriage was as valid as Scots law could make it. True, as is pointed out by one of his biographers, he might have appealed to the House of Lords, ”but did not, as it seldom happens that they reverse a decree of the Lords of Session!”
Nowadays, we may a.s.sume, Cranstoun would have taken the risk. The result of this protracted litigation was never known to Mr. Blandy.
In the spring of 1749, ”a few months” after Cranstoun's departure, Miss Blandy and her mother went to London for the purpose of taking medical advice as to the old lady's health, which was still unsatisfactory. They lived while in town with Mrs. Blandy's brother, Henry Stevens, the Serjeant, in Doctors' Commons. Cranstoun, with whom Mary had been in constant correspondence, waited upon the ladies the morning after their arrival, and came daily during their visit. On one occasion, Mary states, he brought his elder brother, the reigning baron, to call upon them. This gentleman was James, sixth Lord Cranstoun, who had succeeded to the t.i.tle on the death of his father in 1727. What was his lords.h.i.+p's att.i.tude regarding the ”perplexing affair” in Scotland she does not inform us; but Mr.
Serjeant Stevens refused to countenance the attentions of the entangled captain. Mrs. Blandy wept because her brother would not invite Cranstoun to dinner, and it was arranged that, to avoid ”affronts,” she should receive the captain's visits in her own room.
But her friend Mrs. Poc.o.c.k of Turville Court had a house in St.
James's Square. ”Hither Mr. Cranstoun perpetually came,” says Mary, ”when he understood that I was there;” so they were able to dispense with the Serjeant's hospitality. One day she and her mother were bidden to dine at Mrs. Poc.o.c.k's, to meet my Lord Garnock (the future Lord Crauford). Cranstoun and their hostess called for them in a coach, and in the Strand whom should the party encounter but Mr.
Blandy, come to town on business. ”For G.o.d's sake, Mrs. Poc.o.c.k, what do you with this rubbish?” cried the attorney, stopping the coach.
”Rubbis.h.!.+” quoth the lady, ”Your wife, your daughter, and one who may be your son?” ”Ay,” replied the old man, ”They are very well matched; 'tis a pity they should ever be asunder!” ”G.o.d grant they never may,” simpered the ugly lover; ”don't you say amen, papa?” But amen, as appears, stuck in Mr. Blandy's throat: he declined Mrs.
Poc.o.c.k's invitation to join them, and shortly thereafter returned to Henley.
During this visit to town Mary Blandy states that Cranstoun proposed a secret marriage ”according to the usage of the Church of England”--apparently with the view of testing the relative strength of the nuptial knot as tied by their respective Churches. Mary, with hereditary caution, refused to make the experiment unless an opinion of counsel were first obtained, and Cranstoun undertook to submit the point to Mr. Murray, the Solicitor-General for Scotland.
Whatever view, if any, that learned authority expressed regarding so remarkable an expedient, Mary heard no more of the matter; but in Cranstoun's _Account_ the marriage is said to have taken place at her own request, ”lest he should prove ungrateful to her after so material an intimacy.” How ”material” in fact was the intimacy between them at this time we can only conjecture.
Mrs. Blandy seems to have made the most of her visit to the metropolis, for, according to her daughter, she had contracted debts amounting to forty pounds, and as she ”durst not” inform Mr. Blandy, she borrowed that sum from her obliging future son-in-law. By what means the captain, in the then state of his finances, came by the money Mary fails to explain. Being thus, in a pecuniary sense, once more afloat, the ladies, taking grateful leave of Cranstoun, went home to Henley.
We hear nothing further of their doings until some six months after their return, when on Thursday, 28th September 1749, Mrs. Blandy became seriously ill. Mr. Norton, the Henley apothecary who attended the family, was sent for, and her brother, the Rev. John Stevens, of Fawley, who, ”with other country gentlemen meeting to bowl at the Bell Inn,” chanced then to be in the town, was also summoned. It was at first hoped that the old lady would rally as on the former occasion but she gradually grew worse, notwithstanding the attentions of the eminent Dr. Addington, brought from Reading to consult upon the case. Her husband, her daughter, and her two brothers were with her until the end, which came on Sat.u.r.day, 30th September. To the last the dying woman clung to her belief in the good faith of her n.o.ble captain: ”Mary has set her heart upon Cranstoun; when I am gone, let no one set you against the match,”
were her last words to her husband. He replied that they must wait till the ”unhappy affair in Scotland” was decided. The complaint of which Mrs. Blandy died was, as appears, intestinal inflammation, but, as we shall see later, her daughter was popularly believed to have poisoned her. However wicked Mary Blandy may have been, she well knew that by her mother's death she and Cranstoun lost their best friend. An old acquaintance and neighbour of Mrs. Blandy, one Mrs. Mounteney, of whom we shall hear again, came upon a visit to the bereaved family. Mrs. Blandy, on her deathbed, had commended this lady to her husband, in case he should ”discover an inclination to marry her”--she already was Mary's G.o.dmother; but Mrs. Mounteney was destined to play another part in the subsequent drama.
Miss Blandy broke the sad news by letter to her lover in London, and pressed him to come immediately to Henley; but the gallant officer replied that he was confined to the house for fear of the bailiffs, and suggested the propriety of a remittance from the mistress of his heart. Mary promptly borrowed forty pounds from Mrs. Mounteney, fifteen of which she forwarded for the enlargement of the captain, who, on regaining his freedom, came to Henley, where he remained some weeks. Francis Blandy was much affected by the loss of his wife. At first he seems to have raised no objection to Cranstoun's visit, but soon Mary had to complain of the ”unkind things” which her father said both to her lover and herself. There was still no word from Scotland, except a ”very civil” letter of condolence from my Lady Cranstoun, accompanied by a present of kippered salmon--apparently intended as an antidote to grief; but though the old man was gratified by such polite attentions, his mind was far from easy. He was fast losing all faith in the vision of that splendid alliance by which he had been so long deluded, and did not care to conceal his disappointment from the person mainly responsible.
On this visit mention was first made by Cranstoun of the fatal powder of which we shall hear so much. Miss Blandy states that, _apropos_ to her father's unpropitious att.i.tude, her lover ”acquainted her of the great skill of the famous Mrs. Morgan,” a cunning woman known to him in Scotland, from whom he had received a certain powder, ”which she called love-powders”--being, as appears, the Scottish equivalent to the _poculum amatorium_ or love philtre of the Romans. Mary said she had no faith in such things, but Cranstoun a.s.sured her of its efficacy, having once taken some himself, and immediately forgiven a friend to whom he had intended never to speak again. ”If I had any of these powders,” said he, ”I would put them into something Mr. Blandy should drink.” Such is Mary's account of the inception of the design upon her father's love--or life. There for the time matters rested.
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