is much room for troublous perplexity. The editor's daily duties are not easy to discharge with unerring efficiency. It is for him to adapt and proportion to the single scheme contributions from varied pens; he has to restrain the exuberance of enthusiasm, to test facts and dates, to reconcile conflicting statements on the same topic in separate articles from different hands; to guard against the omission of details essential to the plan, but liable to be overlooked at times by his coadjutors. The contributor will not always be grateful for the attentions which the editor habitually bestows on his manuscript. But my recent editorial experiences have furnished so many proofs of contributors' ardour and magnanimity that I take leave of them at the end of this journey with a lively sense of gratitude and regard. No editor could have less reason to be niggardly in thanks to all with whom he has been associated in the conduct of the enterprise.

If the toil over this Second Supplement has been severe and strenuous for all of us-for contributors, editorial assistants, and editor-we may find some solace in a statistical inference which may be drawn from the contents of the three new volumes. Of the 1635 men and women commemorated there, almost all of whom have given proof of mental exertion and were fairly successful in the affairs of the world, the average length of life approaches seventy years. Nearly four hundred, indeed, died after their eightieth birthday, and of these four were centenarians. It cannot be unfair to conclude that sustained intellectual effort is no bar either to longevity or to a reasonable measure of happiness in the course of life's pilgrimage.

SIDNEY LEE.

4 E2

THE MYSTERY OF EISHAUSEN:

A SECRET OF THE BOURBONS

So long as the mystery of the veiled princess of the Castle of Eishausen remains unsolved, so long must we acknowledge that the history of the nineteenth century in Europe is far from complete.

It is only within the last few years that the fascination of old letters and records, yellow with age, cast its spell on me. To explain what led me to study a story as strange as, and far more romantic than, that of the Man in the Iron Mask, I must ask my readers' patience while I go back to 1903.

In that year we moved to the home of my childhood, Killincarrick House, in Wicklow. Among other tasks it fell to our lot to arrange a large quantity of family papers, at first an uncongenial piece of work to me, but by degrees one of everincreasing interest. Before long I found it impossible to handle these messengers from the past without a glow of sympathetic feeling. The actual handwriting of persons whom one knew till then only in the pages of history conveys something very different from the aloofness of print. Canning, the great Duke of Wellington, Admiral Rodney, William the Fourth, Queen Adelaide, and many others had contributed to the mass of papers we turned over. Especially noticeable were three portfolios of crimson leather, containing some five hundred letters all in the same writing. They were in French, and signed only with the interlaced initials C. S. The period they covered was 1790 to 1799, that of the French Revolution. I began to read them, and so interesting did I find them that I decided to translate and publish the greater number.

It was necessary, however, to learn something of their writer. By means of internal evidence and 'foreign titles of nobility' in Debrett, I found that they were to my great-grandmother, Lady Hawkins-Whitshed, from her grandmother, Charlotte Sophie, Countess Bentinck, widow of William, first Count Bentinck, second son of the first Earl of Portland.

Charlotte Sophie's life was eventful, and her circle of friends. among famous contemporaries was wide. Documents and letters concerning her were to be found, not only among family archives at Welbeck Abbey, and at Indio (Devonshire), but at Mid

dachten in Holland, at Helmarshausen in Germany, and in the State Archives of most European capitals. I confined myself to a comparatively short biography of twelve chapters, and left letters and diaries to supply the rest. But the material that passed through my hands was enormous, and in addition to archives I came across old published works referring to her. Among them was one which excited my curiosity.' I suppose that a mystery has mystery has an irresistible an irresistible call for most people, and the book in question combined fact and fiction so cleverly that none of the family could decide where truth ended and pure romance began. Charlotte Sophie was one of the chief characters, the hero of the story being a grandson of whose relationship to her we have thus far found no positive proof. The heroine was a beautiful princess in distress.

The novel was extremely interesting, the more so as the author, with amazing audacity, called his characters by their proper names. I met in its pages many members of my family, and it cleared up more than one obscure point of our history, but the mystery of the hero and heroine fascinated me most.

The book relates how, after many adventures, the hero, Ludwig, undertakes, while still quite a young man, the guardianship of a beautiful princess of France, who must be completely effaced and isolated from every living being but himself. They go to a remote part of Germany, Ingelfingen, from which they fly on the execution of the Duc d'Enghien, and then to Hildburghausen in Saxe-Meiningen. Three years later they settle at the Schloss of Eishausen, four miles distant. There they live from 1810 till they die, she in 1837 and he in 1845. She is buried in a garden on a hillside belonging to her guardian at dead of night, and before the coffin is placed in the grave it is opened that the few faithful servants standing by may testify that it really contained the mistress they had never before cast their eyes upon. All declared that the woman who lay within was extremely beautiful.

There was but one way to learn something more of this strange story, and in September 1911 I went to Hildburghausen. As the train dawdled along the charming valley towards my destination my excitement grew ever greater. I was, however, quite prepared to hear that the story had no foundation in fact, and that the people it concerned had never lived at Hildburghausen. I considered the fruitlessness of my journey so likely that I left my luggage at the station and drove up to the town, wondering if the first person I spoke to would think me crazy. For the book had been published more than half a

1 Der Dunkelgraf, by Ludwig Bechstein. I hope to publish an English translation before long.

century before, is difficult to obtain, and practically forgotten

now.

Arrived in the town I walked into a book shop, intending to open the subject by inquiring if I could buy a copy of the Dunkelgraf. I am sure my voice must have been unsteady when I put this question to a boy behind the counter. To my surprise he briskly said Yes, and to my utter amazement he handed me a totally different book with the same title!

Then, in a flash, I realised that I had come to the right place, and hardly knowing what I said, remarked, I think the Dunkelgraf was a member of my family.' The boy opened his mouth and his eyes very wide, stared hard at me for an instant, and then dashed to fetch his father! It was not long till I heard that the story was absolutely true2 so far as the life of the mysterious pair in that neighbourhood was concerned, and that the writer of the volumes which had just been put into my hands had made a life-study of the subject and lived in the place. His name was Kirchenrat Dr. Human, and the bookseller advised me to call on him, which I did at once.

Dr. Human's researches led him to believe that the Dunkelgraf was a Dutchman, by name Van der Valk, and that the lady was Marie Thérèse Charlotte of France, daughter of Louis the Sixteenth. The former suggestion I do not agree with. The latter startling idea I gradually came to think might be correct. It threw a new light on the question of the escape of the Dauphin from the Temple, for if the Duchesse d'Angoulême was a changeling, and if Naundorff' really was Louis the Seventeenth, no wonder she refused to see him! He would certainly have unmasked the intrigue.

Many scraps of evidence tend to make the hypothesis not unlikely. The change in the voice of the Princess after leaving the Temple; the astonishing precautions taken for so many years lest anyone should see the features of the Eishausen lady or hear her voice; the recognition of the child who saw her unveiled for an instant in the early days, and exclaimed on seeing a portrait of Madame Royale soon after (that painted by stealth on the journey from prison by a young artist who disappeared and was never heard of afterwards): 'There is my beautiful princess'; the unstinting expenditure on her ménage; the strange language'-doubtless French-she was said to speak at

2

Except that it was not a love story but one of politics. Bechstein's heroine is a daughter of the Duc d'Enghien and Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort, but this seems obviously not the case. It is unlikely that he knew the identity of the lady, and if he did know it, as the trusted librarian of the Grand Duke of Meiningen, he would certainly not have revealed it.

Contemporary memoirs remark this change, and account for it by the long silence of Madame Royale while in prison.

4

first; her religion-she was a Roman Catholic; the protection of the Grand Duke and Duchess of Hildburghausen (a sister of the beautiful Queen Louise of Prussia), in whose domains the mysterious couple lived; the three fleurs de lys on certain garments found after her death, and the Prayer Book printed in Vienna a year after Marie Antoinette's birth; Kühner's remark in his book, that it would be easy to trace the mystery to the foot of a throne, though I am the last man who would do so'; the sale of a piano Louis the Eighteenth had purchased for his niece but got rid of, as he was told that, after all, she did not care for music, and the rumour that when the party escorting the Princess arrived at Vienna, the lady with them was not the prisoner of the Temple!

5

If there was an exchange, the girl substituted for Marie. Thérèse Charlotte may have been Mademoiselle Ernestine Lambriquet, who, with her father, was attached to the household of Monsieur, and was thus familiar with court life.

6

Her father perished in the Terror, and she was never heard of again! It may have happened that at first no substitution was intended. But let us for a moment imagine what would be Madame Royale's state of mind, if, on taking leave of her, Gomin' confirmed her suspicions of the fact that her brother had escaped from the Temple! Would she not, in all probability, at once tell the Prince de Gavre this stupendous secret? And he, deep in the confidences of the Austrian Emperor, would immediately isolate his charge from her surroundings, and make all ready for an exchange, so that never again should the Princess have a chance of opening her lips on the subject. We know almost for certain, from the correspondence of Lady Atkyns, discovered only a few years ago, that the procès-verbal of the Dauphin's escape was placed among the most secret archives of Vienna. We know from a letter in the archives of the Department for Foreign Affairs in Vienna that the Emperor wished Madame Royale to be accompanied by Mademoiselle Lambriquet, a young person with whom she has been brought up, and of whom she is particularly fond.' What more likely than that the Comte de Provence should devise an appalling intrigue

The Duchess told the late Count Bentinck's mother that she knew the secret, but did not, of course, disclose it to her.

Madame Royale was very musical. So was the Princess of Eishausen. The latter had a piano at the Schloss, and one day when she began not only to play, but to sing, the Dunkelgraf silenced her, no doubt to prevent possible recognition of her voice.

"Of course this happened in other cases after the Revolution. Still, it is worth noting.

'Jailer of the Temple Prison.

A Friend of Marie Antoinette, by Frédéric Barbey. The letters prove beyond all doubt that the evasion of the Dauphin took place.