[15]

[Footnote 15: The story, with many new documents, is discussed at
quite full length in the author's _King James and the Gowrie Mystery_,
Longmans, 1902.]

A lady has even written to inform me that she is the descendant of the
younger Ruthven, who escaped after being stabbed by Ramsay and
Erskine, fled to England, married, and had a family. I in vain replied
that young Ruthven's body was embalmed, exhibited in the Scottish
Parliament, and hacked to pieces, which were set on spikes in public
places, and that after these sufferings he was unlikely to marry. The
lady was not to be shaken in her belief.

In _The Athenaeum_ for August 28, 1902, Mr. Edmund Gosse recognises
Ramsay the Ruthven slayer as author of a Century of English Sonnets
(1619), of which Lord Cobham possesses a copy apparently unique. The
book was published at Paris, by Rene Giffart. The Scottish name,
Gifford, was at that time spelled 'Giffart,' so the publisher was of
Scottish descent.

VIII

_THE STRANGE CASE OF DANIEL DUNGLAS HOME_

The case of Daniel Dunglas Home is said, in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_, to present a curious and unsolved problem. It
really presents, I think, two problems equally unsolved, one
scientific, and the other social. How did Mr. Home, the son of a
Scottish mother in the lower middle class at highest, educated (as far
as he was educated at all) in a village of Connecticut, attain his
social position? I do not ask why he was 'taken up' by members of
noble English families: 'the caresses of the great' may be lavished on
athletes, and actors, and musicians, and Home's remarkable
performances were quite enough to make him welcome in country houses.
Moreover, he played the piano, the accordion, and other musical
instruments. For his mysterious 'gift' he might be invited to puzzle
and amuse royal people (not in England), and continental emperors, and
kings. But he did much more than what Houdin or Alexis, a conjuror and
a clairvoyant, could do. He successively married, with the permission
and good will of the Czar, two Russian ladies of noble birth, a feat
inexplicable when we think of the rules of the continental _noblesse_.
A duc, or a prince, or a marquis may marry the daughter of an American
citizen who has made a fortune in lard. But the daughters of the
Russian _noblesse_ do not marry poor American citizens with the good
will of the Czar. By his marriages Home far outwent such famous
charlatans a