THIRTY-NINE

GILMOUR, Sir Alexander, 3rd Bt. (c.1737-1792), of Craigmillar, Edinburgh. A Collection of 37 Autograph Notes & Letters to Thomas Adams of Alnwick, 1780-83

[Warkworth, London]. A total of 43 notes and letters (37 written by Gilmour; 5 by his friend John White, and 1 draft letter by Thomas Adams.) A complete transcript of all the letters (barring a few tricky words) will be included with this collection.

¶ The trajectory traced by these letters is a downward one, as their writer tries to evade his creditors, battles gout and arranges for the existence of his lovechild to be kept secret (successfully, it seems, until these letters surfaced to correct the historical record). In the process he importunes a number of friends and acquaintances, leaving a trail of aggrieved individuals, yet still seems to command the loyalty and affection of at least a handful of supporters. This collection has interest as a document of social history and as a source of insight into the pathology of an ostensibly charming but dissolute and devious aristocrat.

Sir Alexander Gilmour was the only son of Sir Charles, Second Baronet of Craigmillar in Midlothian, Scotland. He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1750 and went up to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1753. As an officer during the Seven Years’ War, he was wounded and briefly taken prisoner in France in September 1758. He was appointed Clerk of the Board of Green Cloth in 1765, while pursuing a political career as MP for the County of Edinburgh between 1761 and 1774. The Cambridge Alumni website cites a statement in The Gentleman’s Magazine (1792) that he “married at a very early age and has left at least one son”, adding that this “appears to be incorrect”. While his marital status remains moot, this correspondence is the ‘smoking gun’ concerning the latter.

Gilmour moved in James Boswell’s circle during the 1760s, becoming a rival to Boswell for the hand of one Miss Catherine Blair, though she – an heiress who perhaps had a nose for rakish spongers – evidently rejected them both.

Debts and gifts

These letters, beginning in late 1779, are written to Thomas Adams (d. 1813), his solicitor in Morpeth, near Alnwick, Northumberland, who is clearly becoming embroiled in his affairs. The first few notecards and letters are brief and couched in a third-person formal politeness (“Sir Alexr. Gilmour presents his Complimts to Mr Adams”), but the purpose is largely transactional (“the last account clear’d with Mr Warrender”), and sometimes ingratiating (“He wishes much to see Mr Adams, & will take it as a particular favour, if he will either this evening eat a roasted Mutton [or] to-morrow at ½ past two o’clock, which ever is most convenient to himself”).

These blandishments continue: Adams is presented with “Partridges”, before Gilmour cuts to the chase: “The Bailiff who brought the Summons was the same who came here with Mr Hutchinson, so Mr Adams will have an opportunity of writing by him”.

In October 1780, the third-person courtliness is dropped in favour of a rather peremptory tone, as Gilmour’s problems seem to be heating up: “A person just now called on me saying he came to me from Mr Butler, I did not chuse to see him, and he wrote the inclosed letter, to which I made answer that the debt wou’d be discharged before the 1st of Novr. that you was the person of busyness employed by me here, and wou’d if he called on you speak to him on that subject, which I hope you will do.”

Dalliance and consequence

Gilmour’s pecuniary embarrassments are well known; the same cannot be said of another imbroglio that was brewing. In a letter dated 28 October 1780, after gently chiding Adams for some oversight or other, he extends another mutton-themed invitation, adding “I am authoris’d by a Lady now sitting by me to assure you, that you shall have a warm dry Bed”.

This “Lady”, one assumes (though we cannot be completely certain), is the lover he later refers to as “Queen Mab”, probably an allusion to the ‘fairies’ midwife’ referred to in Romeo and Juliet. The second half of the letters is largely taken up with the consequences of this liaison, as Gilmour strives to keep his lovechild secret.

The correspondence yields a likely timeline for the unfolding of this saga. In a letter from London dated 27 April 1781, he thanks Adams “for your attention to those I have left behind me” (perhaps his mistress, or his creditors – or both?) and asks “that you will send the inclos’d Letters to Henry Miners and Mrs Liddel” – both of whom appear to have been engaged as accomplices. From a letter two months later we can infer that Miners and his wife have taken in Gilmour’s pregnant paramour, though things have not gone smoothly: Gilmour addresses “all the complaints against Henry Miners &c”, which has left him “extremely vex’d”. He instructs that, if Adams discovers that the Miners have “in any shape attempted to behave ill to her, I do desire that she may on no account go back to them”. He uses a few choice words regarding “Molly Miners”, whom he considers “a very violent tempered woman”, whereas the man of the house elicits his sympathies: “a good natured honest man, under Petty coat government, and when drunk now and then says things for which he is very sorry for when sober”.

The main collection lacks any mention of the birth, but also included is a draft letter written by Thomas Adams to one Sir John Inglis on 28 May 1782, in which he states that “the Woman who lived with him ^Sir A. G. in this part County was delivered of a male child and the Child who is now at Nurse here, it is a fine little Boy and must be (?) abt 9 or 10 Months old”, indicating that the baby was born in August or September 1781.

Adams’ draft letter is the only correspondence that survives from the 21 months between September 1781 and June 1783, but from what one can glean of the often-illegible hand, Adams believes Gilmour is attempting to advance himself in London. At some point Gilmour is rejoined by his mistress, for he concludes his letter dated 13 June with “Queen Mab … begs that you wou’d now then send for little Charles to see if he is properly look’d after” (thus giving us the name of their son). In the same letter, he thanks Adams for “the trouble you took about my business with Henry Miners, inclos’d is the Bond to him” – this presumably a formal agreement concerning their guardianship of his son.

On 7 August he informs Adams that “Queen Mab has most graciously pleased to say she will deliver” his letter in person, since “Her Majesty … is gone upon a visit [to] young hopeful”, i.e. baby Charles. “She insists upon his being rechristned, and has made a point with me that I shou’d beg the favour of you, to assist at that Ceremony in the Capacity of God-father in which request I flatter myself you will indulge Her Majesty”.

It seems rather to be Adams that Gilmour is attempting to flatter, as part of a wider campaign of ingratiation and persuasion: back in February 1781 he reminds Adams to take “some steps about ^preventing Mr Saint or his brother Trumpeters from announcing the arrival of your God Son” and underlines the seriousness of the request with a report that “my poor Mother remain[s] exactly in the same melancholy state in which I found her” (Gilmour mentions his mother only twice, on both occasions mostly to elicit sympathy for his own predicament); elsewhere he complains about his gout (requiring “a Shoe large enough to contain the foot of a Patagonian”), his piles and other ailments.

By September 1783, matters have taken a turn. Gilmour writes of “the indispensible necessity of parting with Queen Mab”, though his principal concern is his son’s continued residence in Alnwick, no longer with the Miners but with someone named Hudson: “if you think the Child properly taken care of, and that there may not be some danger, of his contracting some habitudes, and hearing conversations in a public house, which I understand Hudson now keeps, which might not turn out so well for his future Advantage, I can have no objection; but precisely under this proviso, that you can obtain Queen Mab’s consent to it, as I shou’d look upon it, to be the height of cruelty to take the child from her in spite of her Teeth. … I see no necessity for it, till the Child is old enough to be sent to school, from which moment I mean he shou’d be totally under my care and direction, conceiving that from that instant, I am more capable to judge what ought to be done with him, than any Mother in the world can be.” But in a show of what he clearly considers magnanimity, he goes on: “I can see no reason for doing anything harsh or severe … I shall most willingly give my consent, that the Child shall … go with her for the present”.

Around this time, Gilmour confirms his plans for an “Allowance of £50 per ann.” to persuade “Queen Mab” to make a discreet disappearance: “I have no objection to granting her a Bond payable half yearly under the limitations I mentioned to you … she must on no account return to London”.

Shortly thereafter, a dispute arises over her refusal to “comply with my desire of returning to her Mother at Fort-William”, the only option that, Gilmour considers, “can contribute to her own future advantage, as to well as to mine and that of our Child”. In what is probably a signal of alienation, Gilmour begins to refer to her as “Mrs Moody” (her real name or an epithet?), until the final letter, in late October, when the dispute seems settled and her nickname restored, he pronounces himself “glad that Queen Mab has agreed to set out for Edinburgh”.

The letters tell nothing of the fate of little Charles and his mother, ending before Gilmour’s imprisonment in London in 1784. After a drawn-out decline in France hiding from his creditors, he died from gout in December 1792, and the baronetcy and main line of the family became extinct.

This collection of correspondence, in contrast, brings back to life a scandal that hitherto only existed as a rumour, and conveys the strenuous efforts that Gilmour took to keep it that way.