Lady Lovat was
daily locked up in a room by herself, a scanty supply of food being sent
her, which she was obliged to devour in silence. The monotony of her
hapless solitude was only broken by rare visits from his Lordship.
Under these circumstances, she bore a son, who was named Archibald
Campbell Fraser, and who eventually succeeded to the title. In after
years, when he frowned at any contradiction that she gave him, Lady
Lovat used to exclaim, "Oh, boy! Dinna look that gate--ye look so like
your father." These words spoke volumes.
The character of the lady whose best years were thus blighted by
cruelty, and who was condemned through a long life to bear the name of
her infamous husband, was one peculiarly Scotch. Homely in her habits,
and possessing little refinement of manner, she had the kindest heart,
the most generous and self-denying nature that ever gladdened a house,
or bore up a woman's weakness under oppression. The eldest son of Lord
Lovat, Simon, was a sickly child. His father, who was very anxious to
have him to his house, placed him under Lady Lovat's charge; and,
whenever he went to the Highlands, left her with this pleasing
intimation, "that if he found either of the boys dead on his return, he
would shoot her through the head." Partly through fear, and partly from
the goodness and rectitude of her mind, Lady Lovat devoted her
attentions so entirely to the care of the delicate and motherless boy,
that she saved his life, and won his filial reverence and affection by
her attention. He loved her as a real parent. The skill in nursing and
in the practical part of medicine thus acquired, was never lost; and
Lady Lovat was noted ever after, among those who knew her, as the "old
lady of the faculty."
Family archives, it is said, reveal a tissue of almost unprecedented
acts of cruelty towards this excellent lady. They were borne with the
same spirit that in all her life guided her conduct,--a strict
dependance upon Providence. She regarded her calamities as trials, or
tests, sent from Heaven, and received them with meek submission. In
after years, during the peaceful decline of her honoured life, when a
house near her residence in Blackfriars Wynd, Edinburgh, took fire, she
sat calmly knitting a stocking, and watching, occasionally, the progress
of the flames. The magistrates and ministers came, in vain, to entreat
her to leave her house in a sedan; she refused, saying, that if her hour
was come, it was in vain for her to think of eluding her fate: if it
were not come, she was safe where she was. At length she permitted the
people around her to fling wet blankets over the house, by which it was
protected from the sparks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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