Part 13

It is nothing but an old toll-house on the north, or Scottish side of the river. But there’s the rub. It is the first spot on Scottish soil, and much virtue accordingly attached to it. The name of Gretna obscured those of all other places in the minds of strangers, but those on the spot, together with every post-boy between Carlisle and the Border, knew better; and those runaways who were so hard-pressed that the extra half-mile on to Springfield or Gretna meant all the difference between success and failure had cause to bless Sark Toll Bar, or Alison’s Bank Bar, as it is sometimes called. This was an inimical spot to parents and guardians, and a sad disillusion to all pursuers. Here fathers, hot on the heels of fugitives, were commonly foiled in the very cynthia of the minute. At the moment of triumphantly thinking they would, in that further half-mile, overtake their prey, Simon Beattie, the toll-keeper, was spiriting the fluttering young things into his innocent-looking whitewashed toll-house, and in the presence of the necessary two witnesses, including the grinning post-boy, was asking them the simple questions that sufficed: “Were they single?” and “Did they wish to become man and wife?” It was all over by the time the foaming enemy was cursing and kicking outside the barred and bolted door; and when Beattie unbolted it and introduced the newly-wed, there was nothing to do but try and look pleasant, or perhaps in extreme cases give young hopeful a horse-whipping; which, after all, was scarce politic.

Simon Beattie, between four o’clock on a Saturday morning and the Sunday evening following, in November 1842, married no fewer than forty-five couples at Sark Toll Bar, and his successor, John Murray, in one night performed the same office for sixty-one. No wonder Murray thought it possible to amass a fortune here. He reared the “Sark Bar” inn close by, on the English side of the Sark, but he had not finished it when Lord Brougham’s Act, of 1856, ruining all these fugitive proceedings, came into operation; and there was an end of his hopes.

[Sidenote: _RAILWAYS AND GRETNA GREEN_]

But it was evidently in existence in 1852, for it is referred to in an article in _Household Words_ of that year, written by Blanchard Jerrold, who describes how he left Carlisle by train and came to Gretna station, where he alighted and found a couple who alighted at the same time being “addressed eagerly by one or two men of common appearance. Are these individuals making offers for the conveyance of the couple’s luggage? The station-master looks on at the warm conference with a sardonic grin; and with a quick twitch of the head, draws the attention of the guard to the interesting group. The train goes forward, and the conference breaks up. One of the men conducts the lady and gentleman to a little red-brick hotel close by; and the others retire discontentedly. I inquire about this rivalry, and am informed that it is a clerical contest. The little red-brick hotel is the property of Mr. Murray, who also inhabits the famous toll-bar which is on the Scotch bank of the stream. Thus this sagacious toll-keeper pounces upon the couples at the station; removes them to his ‘Gretna Hotel,’ and then drives them down a narrow lane, and over the bridge to the toll-bar, where he marries them. In this way it appears Murray has contrived to monopolise five-sixths of the trade matrimonial. It is to be observed, however, that there is a Gretna station, and a Gretna Green station, and that the latter is the point which deposits happy couples opposite Gretna Hall.”

Competition was evidently most extraordinarily keen for it to have gone the length of inducing a Border marriage-monger to build an hotel on the English side of the Sark, and for his agents and others to have wrangled and disputed for business on a railway platform, like so many cab-touts. The romance of Gretna obviously departed, leaving only the sordid dregs, when the Glasgow and South-Western Railway was made, 1848-50, and linked up with Carlisle and the whole of England.

Painters and engravers found the romance of Gretna greatly to their minds, and numerous pictures exist of scenes upon the road, and at Gretna itself. Two of the most striking are those by C. B. Newhouse, showing “A False Alarm on the Road: ’Tis only the Mail,” and “One Mile from Gretna: The Governor in sight, with a Screw loose.” In the first we see the love-lorn ones, halted in front of a wayside inn, the post-boys running out with fresh horses, while with a rush the Royal Mail suddenly dashes by. They think for the moment they are overtaken, but sink back with the heartfelt ejaculation, “’Tis only the Mail.” In the second picture we have the post-boys whipping and spurring on the frantic horses, and the prospective bridegroom standing up in the chaise, holding out a further inducement to speed, in the shape of a bag which, by the size of it, would appear to contain a modest competency for life. On the summit of a distant hill the governor’s chaise appears to have met with an accident, and the chase is virtually over.

The “Deaf Postilion,” pictured by George Cruikshank, seems to have been a real person, and the incident he illustrates to have really happened. He was stone-deaf, and when furiously driving an anxious couple towards the goal of their hopes, failed to notice that, in the lurching and plunging of the chaise, the springs had broken, leaving the body behind, while he hastened on, blissfully unconscious of the disaster, with the fore-carriage.

XXVIII

[Sidenote: _INN AND REGISTRAR’S OFFICE_]

In the merry days of the road, Springfield was alert. The two inns, the “King’s Head” (as it was then) and the “Maxwell Arms,” combined the parts of registrar’s office and hostelry: the innkeepers doubling the characters of “priests” and hosts: while at Gretna Green itself stood Gretna Hall, a most comfortable, and indeed aristocratic, hotel. But, indeed, any one could, would, and did marry all who asked, anywhere. There was absolute Free Trade in it; only some were sharper than others to turn the privilege to account. Even women might perform the simple formula, although it does not appear that a woman ever did.

The inns, of course, took the pick of the business; for the convenience of coming, tired out with the long-continued excitement of being pursued out of one country into another, to be married and refreshed under one roof was so obvious that it need not be insisted upon.

Prices, naturally enough, varied. They ruled low or high, according to whether you appeared to be poor or wealthy, moderately leisured, or in a frantic haste, and marriages have been “celebrated”—the circumstances would hardly permit the use of the word “solemnised”—for the sake, at one extreme, of a glass of whiskey and a pleasant word, and, at the other extremity, for so high a fee as £100, and “D—n you, be quick about it!” There have even been times when the offer of that sum has not availed; not, we may be sure, because the keen-witted natives stood out for more, but solely on account of the excruciating circumstances. You are required to imagine such a case: the hour midnight; the more or less innocent folk of Springfield and Gretna asleep. A chaise, driven at a headlong gallop, appears, closely followed by exultant parents. The village is awake in a trice, for it sleeps always with one ear cocked; and rival “priests” are hurrying on their clothes, as quick as may be, eager to earn a fee, which, judging from the circumstances, should be a substantial one. And even as they hurry, they hear a hoarse, despairing voice exclaiming in the empty street, “A hundred pounds to the man who marries me!” It is the expectant bridegroom; but before they can reach him and his bride-elect, the pursuers have come up, and snatched the lady away.

[Sidenote: _THE “BLACKSMITH” LEGEND_]

The “blacksmith” is a myth, deriving, no doubt, from the more or less poetic idea of indissoluble bonds being forged. There were no blacksmiths’ forges here then, and despite old prints showing couples being married over the anvil, with post-boy looking on, no blacksmith seems ever to have been known as a “priest.” That term was, of course, absolutely an indefensible assumption; but there is this excuse, perhaps, for the “blacksmith” idea. It seems that, among those who conducted weddings, was one “Tom the Piper,” properly Thomas Little, of the “Maxwell Arms” inn, who, with his son, hit upon the attractive title of the “Gretna Wedding” inn, and hung out a painted sign representing the afterwards famous smithy scene.

Paisley, already mentioned as the first “priest,” was nothing more than a drunken Border thief and ne’er-do-well. Colonel Hawker, writing of him in 1812, says: “I should mention that the old man who officiated for nearly forty years, at £40, £50, and sometimes £100 a job, never was a blacksmith. Old Joe Paisley, for that was his name, was by trade a tobacconist. He was a very large, heavy man, and might have died worth a great deal of money; but from being an intolerable drunkard and a very unsteady fellow, his money went as lightly as it came, and after he had solemnised the marriages and dismissed his ‘couple of fools’ they could not possibly be more eager to follow their avocations than his reverence was to trudge off to a whisky-house.”

In 1791 Paisley, who up to that time lived in a cottage on the Green, removed to Springfield, a little nearer the Border, where he took the “King’s Head” inn. With his removal his business largely increased. He was long an object of curiosity to travellers. At the time of his death, about 1814, he was an overgrown mass of fat, weighing at least thirty-five stone; and was grossly ignorant in his mind and insufferably coarse in his manner. Although an habitual drunkard, he was seldom or never seen “the worse for” drink, and was accustomed during the last forty years of his life to drink a Scots pint, equal to three English quarts, of brandy a day.

[Sidenote: _JOE PAISLEY_]

On one occasion a fellow spirit, one “Ned the Turner,” sat down with him on a Monday morning to an anker of strong cognac, and before the evening of the succeeding Saturday they kicked the empty cask out of the door; neither of them having been drunk, nor had the assistance of any one in drinking. Paisley was celebrated for his stentorian lungs and almost incredible muscular powers. He could with ease bend a strong poker over his arm, and had frequently been known to straighten an ordinary horse-shoe in its cold state.

It was told of him that he had once, when two couples at the same time required his services, married the wrong brides and bridegrooms. They were dismayed, but not Paisley, “Weel, then, ye can jist soort yersels,” said he. He was no ideal Cupid’s officer, for he was used cynically to remark that, although well paid for performing marriages, his fortune would be made in a week if he could with equal ease pronounce divorces.

We are not to suppose that eloping pairs just went off quietly to the Border and were allowed to take their time on the journey. Not at all; and they usually, knowing that parents and guardians would soon be swiftly on their track, made what haste they could. Whether pursuers or pursued first reached the Border made all the difference, for although the Scots law would not help parents and guardians forbidding the ceremony, it was always possible for the choleric father of a sentimental young lady to seize her and to give young Lochinvar the taste of a horse-whip.

Some of the races for Gretna Green were so near that the betting on the contendants was even amongst the excited spectators of the chase. A pedestrian on the English high-road within a mile of the Scotch boundary would be overtaken by a light travelling chariot, drawn at the rate of sixteen miles an hour by four of the fleetest post-horses that the host of Carlisle’s chief inn could afford. Each postilion would give his whip-hand horse a cut with his whip at every bound of the infuriated creature, whilst as frequently he plunged his spurs into the reeking flanks of the animal he bestrode. And as the riders passed him at their perilous speed, pale as death in their faces, whilst they flogged and spurred like jockeys at the finish of a neck-and-neck Derby, he would see the bridegroom’s head at the front window of the vehicle, and hear him screaming frantically, “Go it! Go it! We are getting away from them! Fifty guineas to each of you if we get there in time!” Another five minutes and the pursuers—two red-faced elderly gentlemen, whirled along at the same mad pace in a similar chariot, drawn by equally fleet horses—would dash past him. “How far ahead? Shall we catch them?” “Five minutes before you—not more.” The response would scarcely have been shouted out when the spectator would see the chase ended abruptly by the fall of a horse, the breaking of a trace, the upset of the carriage, or some other mishap that might just as well have befallen the fugitives and given the victory to their pursuers.

[Sidenote: _ROBERT ELLIOT_]

The oldest-established and most famous “priest” after Paisley was Robert Elliot, who married Paisley’s grand-daughter, Ann Graham, at the beginning of 1811, and lived at the former “King’s Head” from that date. When he published his “Memoirs” in 1842, he claimed that he had for the twenty-nine years past been the “sole and only parson of Gretna Green”; an impudent falsehood disproved by the existence to this day of the registers kept by David Lang, who from 1792 until 1827 married a great number of people and was particularly famous as having married Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Miss Ellen Turner, whom he abducted in 1826. David Lang had been in his youth an itinerant draper. On his journeys southward, through Lancashire, he was spirited away by the Press Gang, to serve aboard His Majesty’s ships. After many adventures, including that of being captured by Paul Jones, the pirate, he settled down here, and was in the course of time succeeded by his son, Simon, who died in 1872, and was described by Blanchard Jerrold, who visited Gretna in 1852, as “a spare old man, dressed with some pretensions to gentility.” He in turn was succeeded by his son, William Lang, who was the local postman, and had some faint claims to be considered a “priest”; whatever such claims may be worth in a place where, as already shown, any one has an undisputed right to marry any one else.

Elliot, however, was by way of being a literary character, and in history writ about Gretna Green bulks large, because of his printed spoutings: the printed word being, even among those who ought to know better, sacred. The sheer truth of it is that, at one and the same time, there were no fewer than four prominent establishments devoted to the marrying trade. The fact is scarcely remarkable, when we consider the number of them that committed matrimony at Gretna or Springfield; at that time averaging four hundred annually. Elliot was but one. He gives a return of the numbers he married, beginning in 1811 with 58, and ending in 1840 with 42. His busiest years were from 1821 to 1836, and the busiest 1824 and 1825, when he married 196 and 198 couples. In all, he married no fewer than 3,872 couples.

[Sidenote: _JOHN LINTON_]

Elliot, in his “Memoirs,” has a view of his inn, which he, with characteristic effrontery, styles “The Marriage House.” Now if there was pre-eminently one marriage-house far and away superior to any other, it certainly was that of Gretna Hall, built in 1710 by one of the Johnstone family, whose elaborately sculptured coat of arms still remains over the doorway, even though the Johnstones vanished more than a century ago, and though in the interval the property has many times changed hands, and has been an inn and has reverted again to the condition of a private residence. It was about 1793 that Gretna Hall became an inn: a very superior inn, indeed, with three avenues approaching it: an inn where the neatest of “neat post-chaises” were kept, and where the coaches halted. So it remained until 1851. John Linton became landlord of Gretna Hall in 1825, and ruled for twenty-six years. He had been valet to Sir James Graham of Netherby, and was generally considered a superior man. He did not personally marry his guests, who were naturally gleaned from the front rank of fugitives; but generally employed David Lang, and when that worthy died replaced him by one who was by trade a shoemaker, and thus perhaps predisposed to join two ardent souls together. He paid his journeymen small sums for their journey-work, just as your dignified clergy pay curates for their labours. Notwithstanding this personal abstention on Linton’s part, he was generally known as “the Bishop.” The nickname at once shows the superior estimation in which he and his establishment were held, and carries an implied satire upon Right Reverend Fathers in God. An account rendered by John Linton to his guests would be a curiosity, if itemised. A handsome sum was, doubtless, set down for being married, among the insignificant items for food and lights. Although he did not officiate, he kept the registers of marriages at his house; and they are still in existence at Annan.

[Sidenote: _THE WAKEFIELD CASE_]

A marriage that was really an abduction, and, as such, became a matter of extraordinary notoriety, to match the amazing audacity of the man who perpetrated it, was that of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Ellen Turner, in 1826. The form of marriage was performed at Gretna Hall, on March 8th. Wakefield was at the time a widower, aged thirty. He had been educated at Westminster School, and by the influence of his first wife’s family had been given an appointment at the British Legation in Turin. This he resigned, and was living on his wits in Paris when he chanced to hear of Miss Turner, a beautiful girl sixteen years of age, and heiress to a great fortune. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant—afterwards M.P. for Blackburn, 1832-41—living at Pott Shrigley, in Cheshire, and was at the time at a boarding-school in Liverpool. Wakefield invented an ingenious and plausible story for marrying the girl and so securing her money. Coming to England, he called at the school in Liverpool with a letter purporting to be in her father’s handwriting, stating that he was ill and she was to return home in company with the bearer of the letter. No suspicions were awakened, and the girl was allowed to depart with him. During the journey by post-chaise, Wakefield, who seems to have been a scoundrel of wonderful address, told her that her father’s illness was really assumed, and that he was then, a ruined man, flying from his creditors to Scotland. They were to meet him at Carlisle and cross the Border together. At Carlisle, of course, no father was to be found, and Wakefield then declared that affairs were so serious that only a marriage with himself would save her parent from the horrors of a debtors’ prison. If she married him, he would at once advance her father £60,000. The story seemed of the crudest and most unconvincing kind, but it imposed upon Ellen Turner, and she agreed, in order to save her father, to marry Wakefield at Gretna.

The day following the marriage, Wakefield hurried her with him across England, and to Calais. From that strategic point he proposed to communicate with the girl’s father, and come to terms, but Wakefield very soon found himself arrested by the French police and sent over to England, to stand his trial at the Lancaster Assizes, for abduction, Mr. Turner in the meanwhile claiming his daughter.

Wakefield and a brother who had aided him were awarded the very light sentence of three years’ imprisonment apiece. In the following month the marriage was annulled by a special Act of Parliament. A curious point was raised during the trial, Serjeant Cross, for the prosecution, stating that “Had the offence been committed on English ground, the defendants would in the course of the law have been condemned to an ignominious death.”

Wakefield afterwards emigrated to Australia, and in 1838 acted as secretary to Lord Durham, in Canada. Apologists have stated that he redeemed his early faults by usefulness in the Colonies, but to most it will seem that he was an extremely dangerous man, only too leniently dealt with. He died in 1862.

XXIX

[Sidenote: _THE EARL OF WESTMORELAND_]

Elliot’s most romantic clients were the Earl of Westmoreland and Miss Child, who eloped in 1782. The father of the young lady was the famous London banker, whose great fortune, and the prospect of marrying it, dazzled the Earl quite as much as the beauty of his daughter and heiress. She fell in love with the noble suitor, whose proposal did not, however, commend itself to the banker. “Your blood, my lord, is good,” said he, “but money is better”; and he refused his consent. But the disappointed suitor was not disheartened, and the lovers eloped in a four-horse chaise; his canny lordship having arranged beforehand for relays of horses all the way: prudently, at the strategic point of Shap, hiring every horse to be found there. Mr. Child, enraged, lost no time in following. Using every effort that money could procure, he at last came up with the fugitives changing at High Hesket; and, leaping from his chaise, drew a pistol and shot one of the leaders of their conveyance. At the same moment, one of the Earl’s servants ran behind Mr. Child’s carriage and cut the leather braces suspending the body. The Earl and his love proceeded with three horses, with the father pursuing. Not for long, however, for presently the body fell over, and pursuit became a laggard and hopeless rearguard. One hundred guineas was the fee paid to the fortunate Elliot by the Earl. Mr. Child died within a year of the affair, it is supposed from disappointment and anger at his daughter’s disobedience. Rowlandson has, in his caricature, “Filial Affection,” drawn a more or less close commentary upon this incident. The banker took excellent care that neither of them should have his money, which he devised to any issue of the marriage. Lady Westmoreland died in 1793, leaving six children, and the Earl married again, at which one is instinctively revolted.

The elder daughter of Lord and Lady Westmoreland, Lady Sophia Fane, inherited the fortune, and married the Earl of Jersey; and their daughter, the Lady Adela Corisande Maud Villiers, followed the example set by her grandparents; eloping in 1845, at the age of seventeen, with the youthful Captain Ibbetson, of the 11th Hussars. It was a November night when the ardent pair flitted from the lady’s home at Middleton Park, Bicester. They did not patronise Elliot, but went to Gretna Hall. They reached Mr. Linton’s establishment on the 6th, and were duly married, as the surviving register shows. Lady Adela died fifteen years later, but Captain Ibbetson survived until 1898.

Jack Ainslie, of the “Bush,” Carlisle, was a sworn enemy to parents and guardians. He was perpetually signing his name as a witness to marriages, and was in fact quite a consulting counsel to love-lorn squires and damsels. To have him, in his yellow jacket, on the near wheeler was worth as many points to them as it was for attorneys to retain a leading K.C. When pushed hard, Jack knew of cunning bye-lanes and woods to hide the pursued couples in, and had occupation-roads across farms, and all that sort of geography, at his fingers’ tips.