Lillian de la Torre - The heir of douglas the scandal that rocked eighteenth-century England

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The Heir of Douglas

Lillian de la Torre

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

DEDICATION

TO

Dr. Frederick A. Pottle

My dear Sir:

Every liberal motive that can actuate an Authour in the dedication of his labours concurs in directing me to you, as the person to whom the following Work should be inscribed.

If there be a pleasure in celebrating the distinguished merit of a contemporary, mixed with a certain degree of vanity, not altogether inexcusable, in appearing fully sensible of it, where can I find one, in complimenting whom I can with more general approbation gratify those feelings?

If gratitude should be acknowledged for favours received, I have this opportunity, my dear Sir, most sincerely to thank you for the many happy and profitable hours which I owe to your kindness.

If a work should be inscribed to one who is master of the subject of it, the story of the Douglas Cause is, with the greatest propriety, dedicated to Dr. Frederick Pottle. You know best the man who best enjoyed the Cause, the inimitable James Boswell. To your deep learning and humane understanding the dramatis person are friends and the setting is home, and through your eyes I have learned to see both more clearly.

Pray be assured that this story is all true. Even the words the people speak are not invented, but faithfully reproduced from the record. I have spared no pains, during six years of research and six thousand miles of travel, to uncover the facts and arrive at the truth. If it were not so, I should think my book unworthy to be offered to you.

For all which reasons it is fitting that this new solution of the mystery that fascinated James Boswell, the mystery of the heir of Douglas, be addressed to you by

My dear Sir,

Your much obliged friend

And faithful humble servant,

L ILLIAN DE LA T ORRE

Sir, I think such a publication does good, as it does good to show us the possibilities of human life. And, Sir, you will not say that the Douglas Cause was a cause of easy decision, when it divided your court as much as it could do. No, Sir, a more dubious determination of any question cannot be imagined

(J OHNSON TO B OSWELL , A PRIL 27, 1773)

List of Illustrations

(from a portrait at Mains)

(from a portrait at Mains)

(from a portrait by Gavin Hamilton in the National Galleries of Scotland, by courtesy of the Board of Trustees)

(from a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the possession of his collateral descendant, Mrs. Stuart-Stevenson)

(from the facsimile in the Douglas Proof)

(from a portrait at Mains)

(from a portrait attributed to G. Willison, in the possession of the Duke of Hamilton)

And if she was not the mother, she was strenuously playing a part.

(O ATH BY THE L ANDLADY OF THE H TEL D A NJOU )

Chapter I

The heir of Douglas was born at Paris in the early summer of 1748. So much is certain. But under what roof he first saw the light, by means of what midwife, and even of what mother, has been matter for hot dispute ever since.

The debate centered about the lady whom the claimant called Mother. Friend and foe wondered unceasingly in what secret place she bore him, or from what street corner she stole him. She figured alternately in their briefs as a martyred saint or as a Machiavelli of duplicity. The case was tried in three countries over a period of seven years, and her character was made the decisive issue in the end.