Nancy Stair A Novel

Excerpt

PREFACE BY LORD STAIR

Two excellent accounts of the beautiful Nancy Stair have already been published; the first by Mrs. George Opie, in the Scots News, giving a detailed account of the work on the burnside, and a more recent one by Professor Erskine, of our own University, which is little more than a critical dissertation upon Nancy as a poet; the heart of the matter with him being to commend her English verses, as well as those in "gude braid Scot."

With these accounts to be secured so easily it may seem presumptuous, as well as superfluous, for me to undertake a third. I state at the outset, therefore, that it is beyond my ambition and my abilities to add a word to stories told so well. Nor do I purpose to mention either the work on the burn or Nancy's song-making, save when necessary for clearness.

For me, however, the life of Nancy Stair has a far deeper significance than that set forth by either of these gifted authors. My knowledge of her was naturally of the most intimate; I watched her grow from a wonderful child into a wonderful woman; and saw her, with a man's education, none but men for friends, and no counselings save from her own heart, solve most wisely for the race the problem put to every woman of gift; and with sweetest reasoning and no bitter renouncings enter the kingdom of great womanhood.

To tell this intimate side of her life with what skill I have is the chief purpose of my writing, but there are two other motives almost as strong. The first of these is to clear away the mystery of the murder which for so long clouded our lives at Stair. To do this there is no man in Scotland to-day so able as myself. It was I who bid the Duke to Stair; the quarrel which brought on the meeting fell directly beneath my eyes; I heard the shots and found the dead upon that fearful night, and afterward went blindfolded through the bitter business of the trial. I was the first, as well, to scent the truth at the bottom of the defense, and have in my possession, as I write, the confession which removed all doubt as to the manner in which the deed was committed.

The second reason is to set clear Nancy's relation to Robert Burns, of which too much has been made, and whose influence upon her and her writings has been grossly exaggerated. Her observation of natural genius in him changed her greatly, and I have tried to set this forth with clearness; but it affected her in a very different manner from that which her two famous biographers have told, and I have it from her own lips that it was because of the Burns episode that she stopped writing altogether.

If it be complained against me that the tale has my own life's story in it, I would answer to the charge that only a great and passionate first love could have produced a child like Nancy, and I believe that the world is ever a bit interested in the line of people whose loves and hates have produced a recognized genius. Then, too, the circumstances attending her birth had more influence on her after life than may at first be seen, giving me as they did such a tenderness for her that I have never been able to cross her in any matter whatever....