Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/111

 322), and, stirred by that startling news, they entered the service of the ‘eagle monarch’ Napoleon, and fought in 1813 at Dresden and at Leipzig, where ‘S—t swam the wave and Poniatowski sank.’ Napoleon's own hand, they assert, pinned an eagle on the ‘throbbing breast’ of the ‘child of battles;’ and for Napoleon both brothers claim to have fought once again at Waterloo, attired in ‘dolmans green, pelisse of crimson dye’ (Lays, i. 121, and ii. 325; Poems, pp. 72, 73, 189, 193). When ‘the great Imperial sun had gone down,’ they betook themselves to London, learned Gaelic there of Donald Macpherson [q. v.], compiler of ‘Melodies from the Gaelic,’ and in 1817 or 1818 came by sea to Edinburgh. Argyllshire—probably Inveraray—was their principal home for three or four years, and to the seventh Duke of Argyll ‘John Hay Allan, esq.’ dedicated his ‘Bridal of Caölchairn, and other Poems’ (London, 1822). Its forty-two Scott-like pieces contain several allusions to descent from the Hays (pp. 120, 168, 205, 337), a reference to Prince Charles Edward as ‘the last of Albyn's royal race’ (p. 169), a suggestion that the author belonged to the English church (p. 253), but no hint of Napoleonic campaigns. ‘Stanzas for the King's Landing’ (A Historical Account of his Majesty's Visit to Scotland, Edinburgh, 1822, pp. 62–4) must have been written by one of the brothers, and Charles and his father were perhaps the ‘Allans’ presented at Edinburgh to George IV. It may have been then that Scott ‘saw one of these gentlemen wear the [Erroll] Badge of High Constable of Scotland’ (Journal, ii. 298). John says he was absent from Scotland during 1822–1826 (Reply to the Quarterly, p. 4); but Miss Louise Macdonell speaks of having often seen both brothers at Glengarry between 1822 and 1828, where the first date perhaps is erroneous (Blackwood's Mag. April 1895, pp. 523–4, 530). In London, on 9 Oct. 1822, ‘Charles Stuart, youngest son of Thomas Hay Allan, esq., of Hay,’ married Anna (b. 1787), widow of Charles Gardiner, esq., and youngest daughter of the Right Hon. John Beresford, the Earl of Tyrone's second son, and brother to the first Marquis of Waterford (ib. November 1822, p. 691). From about 1826 to 1838 the brothers were living in Elginshire, first at Windy Hills (now Milton Brodie) in Alves parish, and then, from 1829, at Logie House, in Edinkillie parish. The Earl of Moray gave them the full run of Darnaway Forest, where they built their ‘forest hut’ of moss beside the Findhorn, and during this period they continued protestants, for, dressed as always in full Highland garb, they attended the presbyterian worship in the parish kirks. But from their settling in 1838 on Eilean Aigas, a lovely islet in the river Beauly, where Lord Lovat built them an antique shooting lodge, they seem to have been devoted catholics. Eskadale, where they are buried, is two miles above their islet, and every Sunday they used to be rowed up to mass, with a banner flying, which was carried before them from the riverside to the church door. In 1829 they had come to style themselves Stuart Allan. In 1841 the ‘New Statistical Account’ (xiv. 488) speaks of ‘Messrs. Hay Allan Stuart, said to be the only descendants of Prince Charles Edward;’ and in 1843 a Frenchman, the Vicomte d'Arlincourt, first published their claims to royal ancestry. In 1847 the brothers themselves put forth their own ‘Tales of the Century,’ which tells how in 1773 the Countess of Albany gave birth unexpectedly to a son, who three days afterwards was handed over, for fear of assassination by Hanoverian emissaries, to the captain of an English frigate, ‘Commodore O'Haleran,’ rightful ‘Earl of Strathgowrie;’ how later that son, as ‘Captain O'Haleran’ or the ‘Iolairdhearg’ (Gaelic, red eagle) was himself in command of a frigate off the west coast of Scotland; and how in 1790 he married, under romantic circumstances, an English lady, ‘Catharine Bruce.’ O'Haleran (in M. d'Arlincourt ‘Admiral Hay’) here stands plainly for Allen or Allan—Erroll is in Strathgowrie; and the centenarian ‘Dr. Beaton,’ on whose testimony the alleged secret of their royal birth turns mainly, may be safely identified with Robert Watson, M.D. (1746–1838) [q. v.], the discoverer of the Stewart papers, with whom the brothers are known to have had some dealings. But the tale is demonstrably false. Admiral (then Captain) John Carter Allen, the brothers' genuine grandfather, who figures in the narrative as Commodore O'Halleran, was not on active service, but on half-pay, from 14 Aug. 1771 to 8 Nov. 1775. At the same time Bishop R. Forbes's ‘Lyon in Mourning’ (Scot. Hist. Soc. 1896, iii. 329), under date 21 Sept. 1774, has a curious passage telling how ‘lately a Scots gentleman, son of a noble family, and captain of a ship-of-war in Britain,’ met Prince Charles Edward at the opera in Rome. But then, through Robert Chambers, this passage is sure to have been known to the brothers, and may have suggested much that they admitted to their ‘Tales.’ In ‘The Heirs of the Stuarts’ (Quarterly Review, June 1847), Professor George Skene of Glasgow made a pitiless onslaught