GRETNA GREEN

Northern Advocate, 18 June 1925, Page 3

GRETNA GREEN

THE STERN PARENT

TRAGIC END TO BARONET'S

CHASE OF LOVERS.

(By Warren Henry.)

We do not need to go back to the eighteenth century-—to those "good old days" which were often so unspeakably bad—to find example after example of the stern, unbending parent. He is with ns in the present year of grace. If one regards the matter properly, there is no more justification, or raison d'etre, for this variety of parent than there is for corns, common colds, and chilblains; ond the same causes underlie their permanence. Civilised humanity, in a word, is too lazy to think out the means of doing away with th>in. So, for our sins, we may read of this Midland baronet, and consider if he was not, after all, mo rely a tvpical excresence in the sell em & of things.

"If money go before, nil ways do lie open"; .■)iid tlie baronet had never discouraged his daughter from receiving the addresses of the son of a certain

neighbouring eonntv gentleman, because on the face of it, there was money enough and to spare in the suitor's family. Moreover, the maid and the man had been brought up together almost, and Heaven was called to witness, time and again, how meet it was that the pair should marry and strengthen the bonds which already united their excellent, families.

So far, then, everything was as it should " e; a sufficiently long courtship was about to be brought to its due end on the rltar steps, and the county thrilled with anticipation of so seemly a ceremony as this particular marriage should provide. BANNING THE BANS. The maid's father was a gentleman —in parrs. When news got abroad, but a short time before the wedding day, that the young fellow's father had landed himself into an extremity of financial embarrassment, the baronet was beside himself. That part of him which yvas a gentleman argued that this would never do. If the money wasn't there —well, the other fellow's son couldn't expect to marry a gentleman's daughter. The part of him which was not a gentleman roundly declared that he'd be hanged—only more so—if he'd allow this nonsense to go on any longer. He was quite resolved within himself, therefore, that there were to be no marriage banns, and his next immediate action was to forbid his daughter's suitor even to show his face inside the house.

The o'.d squire, father of this unhappy young man, had only himself and his passion for gambling to thank for the wholesale disasters that "had befallen him; and he received as much sympathy as, doubtless, he deserved—no more and no less. He. was overwhelmed, however, to find this son consenting find, indeed, insisting that the squire should realise the largest portion of the family estates in . order to pay his creditors, and this without an unfilial murmur. Indeed, the son, out of the goodness of his heart, went further than this; made over to the old man much of his own separately-vested property, and then, and not till then, did he take himself to the baronet's home to explain what he had done, only to see the door slammed in his face. Thus were the lovers confronted with the dread intimation that they might, respectively, remodel their lives nnder the new condition?.. The banns were, "down"; and money had won, most handsomely. YOUTH IN REVOLT. It may be that we cannot ,these nearly two hundred years later, shed more than the thought of a tear upon the misery of the lovers. The baronet, or that part of him, once more, which was not a gentleman, was all in favour of approved remedies; and it was the obvious thina'. from his point of view, to present his daughter with a new lever to efface the memory of the old. "But man, proud man! Drest in a little brief authority— Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essencc —like an angry ape— Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep."

A little of Shakespeare's spirit—but a very little indeed —might have made this "angry ape" pause before he acted. Instead, however, he enjoined the maid to think, no more about her first lover, and to prepare to receive one of his choosing. Similarly, he invited the newcomer to commence his courtship immediately; and conveyed the intelligence of all these dispositions through an intermediate party to the squire's son, to show the latter how emphatically he meant what he had said.

Here it was, then, that revolt began. The girl and her lover still managed clandestinely to correspond. Thej r even contrived to meet occasionally; find upon an evening when the new suitor,

like a parcel of showy goods on ap

proval, reported himself to the baronet's house to pay his first premeditated addresses, his daughter and the son of the bankrupt squire were, as we should say it today, "away with it>> —.jvway to the north, post-haste—to Gretna over the border —to Gretna and freedom —freedom, and an honest union. SANCTUARY! If Mr. Joseph Paisley had not told the story; and if he had not been the "priest" to perform the ceremony: and if his account of it all had not been substantiated in every detail by the other priest, Robert Elliott, who suc-r-coded him —if these things had not been so, it should be better to leave the ■ i'torv where it is—with the runaways 011 the road, and the baronet and his guest (the new husband-designate) both firmed in hot pursuit of them. But it is history, and it must run its course.

Speed, lavishness of money for fresh horses and boys, the savage determination of the pursuers; not these, nor the wen pons they carried, availed them to stop the runaways from getting married. Skilfully organised in advance, their elopement of itself was a complete triumph. The desperate pair had reached Gretna well in advance of the two men; had summoned Mr. Paisley in hot haste; had stood before him and before proper witnesses; and had become married in perfectly legal form.

It is related that Mr. Paisley pronounced these two the handsomest an 1 best matched couple who ever appeared before him. Influenced, perhaps, by their more than usually romantic appearance, he lent a willing .ear, when the ceremony was over, to the troubles of the bridegroom; and, learning from him that the couple were almost certainly being pursued (with an extraordinary malice in the pursuit), he gave them what he judged to be the best, and what a commonly infallible, counsel for their deliverance. Robert Elliott, in his "Memoirs" has recorded it in these words!*—

"I believe Mr. Paisley's prudential consideration had more influence with the timid, blushing girl than the pleadings of her young husband and she a$ length suffered herself to be conducted to the nuptial chamber, as it was always called, it being the custom for parties dreading immediate pursuit to retire there soon after the performance of the ceremony in order that the consummation of the marriage might be added as an additional bar to their separation, or any endeavour to set it aside."

This, then, was the procedure which the lovers followed... It was orthodox. -,ound, intensely logical. It was calculated to outwit finally and decisively — as it had always done —the most exasperated parent who ever followed an insubordinate daughter to Grfetna. SOMEONE HAD BLUNDERED. But every rule on this impterrect earth has its exception, it seems. The landlord of the inn into whose > care Paisley had handed the lovers, was either too stupid or too frightened — or both —to play his part as it was expected of him On the sudden arrival,-

j at the top of their speerl, of a chaise 1 arid four hor.se- 1 ,, t'lis landlord lost his r.crve. The old baronet and his friend gut out and hammered at the door and shutters, in a fury, with the butts of the pistols. The landlord opened the door. The bride, upstairs, was in terror. The bridegroom was preparing to face her father in an endeavour to appease him. The old man, enraged, was threatening the landlord that he would shoot him like a dog unless Ua immediately took him to the room in which the fugitives were to be found. So ap the stairs they went, the landlord moving si owl j' to gain wlrat time he might; and the baronet cursing himseli livid. And on the landlord's choosing that moment to explain what had taken place—that moment in which rhe baronet was incapable ui reasoning or weighing tli; in any form — 'lie consequent;ds were sealed beyond

■; question

For the baronet had gained the landing .-vhen the landlord used this fateful argument to deter him; and 7 lie effect of it was to send him rushing, like a human battering-ram, at the woodwork of the door. It burst t pen with his weight, and in the same second, his pistol was levelled at the bridegroom's breast. The bride flung herself between the two . . . too late; the shot rar.g out. She threw liersell upon the lifeless body of the husband —her husband of an hour. It was all over. . . . Stupidly gazing at his terrible work, the baronet would have been seized by one of the crowd of alarmed domestics who had by this time gathered on the landing. But there was trueulence and venom enough in him still to ward them all off at the point of the pis-t-01. And all that remained for him to do Avas, with t*he assistance of his frieiuls, to up the insensible form of the little widow; wrap some clothes about the blood-soaked nightdress that she wore; carry her into the chaise, and drive away with her. .

Paisley arrived to find the parent gone. His life-long regret, so it has been stated, was that he himself was not. within call, for he would not have h(.;-it<ited to take the life, if need bi, of this murderous baronet.

Rumour, report, and version. These are all that we have with us today of the outcome of a fond parent's heroic indulgences. He was tried, some say; pleaded "self defence," and escaped scot free. He absconded to the Continent, say others, and passed the rest of his days wandering in many cities and towns, but all, for him, named Coventry. And his daughter—the widow-girl? Died soon after, of a broken heart. . . The Angry, Ape had won. ket him, by all means, be otherwise nameless for the rest of time. i

(All Rights Eeserved.)