]
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.
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