Strange Pages from Family Papers Part 16

Although left to carry on his intrigue undisturbed, Sir William soon became a victim to gloomy reflections, feeling at times that he had not only cruelly wronged a good wife, but had been deserted by the very woman for whose sake he had brought this trouble and disgrace upon his family. Tormented by these conflicting pa.s.sions, he occasionally worked himself up into such a state of frenzy that even his new favourite was terrified, and had run away. It was when almost maddened with the thought of his evil past that he formed that fatal resolve which was a hideous ending to "the dreadful consequence of a licentious pa.s.sion not checked in its infancy." One October evening, as a housemaid was on the stairs, suddenly "the lobby was all in a cloud of smoke." She gave the alarm, and on the door being forced open whence the smoke proceeded, it was discovered that Sir William had set fire to a large heap of fine linen, piled up in the middle of the room. From an adjoining room, where Sir William had made his escape, the flames burst out with such fury that all were glad to make their escape out of the house, the greater part of which was in a few hours burnt to the ground--no other remains of its master being found next morning but the hip-bone, and bones of the back.

A case which, at the time, created considerable sensation was the murder of Thynne of Longleat by a jealous antagonist. The eleventh Duke of Northumberland left an only daughter, whose career, it has been said, "might match that of the most erratic or adventurous of her race." Before she was sixteen years old, she had been twice a widow, and three times a wife. At the age of thirteen, she was married to the only son of the Duke of Newcastle, a lad of her own age, who died in a few months. Her second husband was Thynne of Longleat, "Tom of Ten Thousand," but the tie was abruptly severed by the bullet of an a.s.sa.s.sin, set on by the notorious Count Konigsmark, who had been a suitor for her hand, and was desirous of another chance. After his death, the young widow, who was surrounded by a host of admirers, married the Duke of Somerset, and she seems to have made him a fitting mate, for when his second wife, a Finch, tapped him familiarly on the shoulder, or, according to another version, seated herself on his knee, he exclaimed indignantly:

"My first wife was a Percy, and she never thought of taking such a liberty."

It may be added that one of the most remarkable incidents in this celebrated beauty's life was when by dint of tears and supplications she prevented Queen Anne from making Swift a bishop, out of revenge for the "Windsor prophecy," in which she was ridiculed for the redness of her hair, and upbraided as having been privy to the brutal murder of her second husband. "It was doubted," says Scott, "which imputation she accounted the more cruel insult, especially since the first charge was undoubted, and the second arose only from the malice of the poet."

Another tragedy of a similar kind was the murder of William Mountford, the player. Captain Richard Hill had conceived a violent pa.s.sion for Mrs. Bracegirdle, the beautiful actress, and is said to have offered her his hand, and to have been refused. At last his pa.s.sion became ungovernable, and he determined to carry her off by force. To carry out his purpose, he induced his friend Lord Mohun to a.s.sist him in the attempt. According to one account, "he dodged the fair actress for a whole day at the theatre, stationed a coach near the Horseshoe Tavern, in Drury Lane, to carry her off in, and hired six soldiers to force her into it. As the beautiful actress came down Drury Lane, at ten o'clock at night, accompanied by her mother and brother, and escorted by her friend Mr. Page, one of the soldiers seized her in his arms, and endeavoured to force her into the coach. But the lady's scream attracted a crowd, and Captain Hill, finding his endeavours ineffectual, bid the soldiers let her go. Disappointed in their object, Lord Mohun and Captain Hill vowed vengeance; and Mrs.

Bracegirdle on reaching home sent her servant to Mr. Mountford's house to take care of himself, warning him against Lord Mohun and Captain Hill, "who she feared, had no good intention toward him, and did wait for him in the street." It appears that Mountford had already heard of the attempt to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle, and hearing that Lord Mohun and Captain Hill were in the street, did not shrink from approaching them."

The account says that he addressed Lord Mohun, and told him how sorry he was to find him in the company of such a pitiful fellow as Captain Hill, whereupon, it is said, "the captain came forth and said he would justify himself, and went towards the middle of the street, and Mr.

Mountford followed him and drew." The end of the quarrel was that Mountford fell with a terrible wound, of which he died on the following day, declaring in his last moments that Captain Hill ran him through the body before he could draw his sword. Captain Hill, it seems, owed Mountford a deadly grudge, having attributed his rejection by Mrs. Bracegirdle to her love for him--an unlikely pa.s.sion, it is thought, as Mountford was a married man, with a good-looking wife of his own, afterwards Mrs. Verbruggen, and a celebrated actress.

Oulton House, Suffolk, long known as the "Haunted House," acquired its ill-omened name from a tragic occurrence traditionally said to have happened many years ago, and the peasantry in the neighbourhood affirm that at midnight a wild huntsman, with his hounds, accompanied by a lady carrying a poisoned cup, is occasionally seen. The story is that, in the reign of George II., a squire, returning unexpectedly home from the chase, discovered his wife with an officer, one of his guests, in too familiar a friends.h.i.+p. High words followed, and the indignant husband, provoked by the cool manner in which the officer treated the matter, struck him, whereupon the guilty lover drew his sword and drove it through the squire's heart, the faithless wife and her paramour afterwards making their escape.

Some years afterwards, runs the tale, the Squire's daughter, who had been left behind in the hasty departure, having grown to womanhood, was affianced to a youthful farmer of the neighbourhood. But on their bridal eve, as they were sitting together talking over the new life they were about to enter, "a carriage, black and sombre as a hea.r.s.e, with closely drawn curtains, and attended by servants clad in sable liveries, drew up to the door." The young girl was seized by masked men, carried off in the carriage to her unnatural mother, while her betrothed was stabbed as he vainly endeavoured to rescue her. A grave is pointed out in the cemetery at Namur, as that in which was laid the body of the unhappy girl, poisoned, it is alleged, by her unscrupulous and wicked mother. It is not surprising, we are told, that the locality was supposed to be haunted by the wretched woman--both as wife and mother equally criminal.

Family romance, once more, has many a dark page recording how despairing love has ended in self-destruction. At the beginning of the present century, a sad catastrophe befell the Shuckburghs of Shuckburgh Hall. It appears the Bedfords.h.i.+re Militia were stationed near Upper Shuckburgh, and the officers were in the habit of visiting the Hall, whose hospitable owner, Sir Stewkley Shuckburgh, received them with every mark of cordiality. His daughter, then about twenty years of age, was a young lady of no ordinary attractions, and her fascinations soon produced their natural effect on one of the officers, Lieutenant Sharp, who became deeply attached to her. But as soon as Sir Stewkley became aware of this love affair, he gave it his decided disapproval. Lieutenant Sharp was forbidden the house, and Miss Shuckburgh resolved to smother her love in deference to her father's wishes. It was accordingly decided between the young people that their intimacy should cease, and that the letters which had pa.s.sed between them should be returned. An arrangement was, therefore, made that the lady should leave the packet for Lieutenant Sharp in the summer-house in the garden on a specified evening, and that on the following morning she should find the packet intended for her in the same place. The sad engagement was kept, and having left her packet in the evening, Miss Shuckburgh set out on the following morning to find her own. A servant, it is said, who saw her in the garden, was curious to know what could have brought her out at so early an hour. He followed her un.o.bserved, and on drawing near to the summer-house, "he heard the voices of the lieutenant and of the lady in earnest dispute.

The officer was loud and impa.s.sioned, the lady firm but unconsenting.

Immediately was heard the report of a pistol, and the fall of a body--another report and fall. Guessing the tragic truth, the servant raised an alarm, and the two lovers were found lying dead in their own blood." It is generally supposed that this terrible act of self-destruction was the result of mutual agreement--the outcome of pa.s.sion and despair.

"Since that hour," writes Howitt, "every object, about the place which could suggest to the memory this fatal event, has been changed or removed. The summer-house has been razed to the ground; the disposition of the garden itself altered; but," he adds, "such tragic pa.s.sages in human life become part and parcel of the scene where they occur--they become the topic of the winter fireside. They last while pa.s.sions and affections, youth and beauty last. They fix themselves into the soil, and the very rock on which it lies, and though the house was razed from the spot, and its park and pleasaunces turned into ploughed fields, it would still be said for ages: Here stood Shuckburgh Hall, and here fell the young and lovely Miss Shuckburgh by the hand of her despairing lover."

And to conclude with a romance in brief, some forty or fifty years ago, in the far north of England a girl was on the eve of being married. Her wedding dress was ordered, the guests were bidden. But, it is said that at the eleventh hour, in a fit of pa.s.sion and paltry jealousy, she resented some fancied want of devotion in her lover.

He was single-minded, loyal, and altogether of finer stuff than herself; but she was a wretched slave to such old stock phrases as delicacy, family pride, and the like, and so he was allowed to go, for she came of people who looked upon unforgiveness as a virtue.

Accordingly the discarded lover exchanged into a regiment under orders for Afghanistan. At the time, our troops were engaged there in hot fighting. The lad fell, and hidden on his breast was found a locket which his sweetheart had once given him. It came back to her through a brother officer, who had known something of his sad story, with a stain on it--a stain of his blood. When that painful relic silently told her of the devotion which she had so unjustly and basely wronged, there came, in the familiar lines:

A mist and a weeping rain, And life was never the same again.

That stain marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty years or more.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] "Vicissitudes of Families," 1863, III. Ser., 202-203.