THE MADNESS OF MRS BEATTIE’S FAMILY: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ‘ASSASSIN’ OF JOHN WILKES

The life of James Beattie (1735-1803). the poet, philosopher, and notable figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, was blighted by illness and family tragedy. He suffered almost constant ill-health, which he frequently said made it impossible for him to work or write, and both his sons died in early manhood. The most devastating blow, however, was his wife’s insanity, which probably became apparent within a few years of their marriage in 1767, and which was a source of unrelieved perplexity and anguish to him for the remainder of his life. The nature of Mrs Beattie’s mental illness has always been obscure, but two aspects of it have repeatedly been emphasized. It was of such a nature as to make it impossible for James Beattie and the children to go on living with her, and Beattie himself felt insecure, and even in physical danger, if she was in the same town as him. Secondly, her insanity has consistently been attributed to a hereditary predisposition, coming from her own mother. This predisposition Beattie feared would affect his sons: after Montagu’s death in 1796 he often said, ‘How could I have borne to see their elegant minds mangled with madness!” The biographies and published correspondence give little evidence for the hereditary nature of Mrs Beattie’s malady. Her mother, Mrs Dun, died in I 781 at the age of 76; as recently as I 779 she had had charge of the Beattie household on their visit to Peterhead, because Mrs Beattie was too ill to undertake it.’ The old lady can hardly have been suffering from disabling mental illness.

Nevertheless, Beattie’s anxieties about the familial nature of the mental illness, and about its violent implications, had a much stronger basis than the biographies suggest. Mary Beattie, who was the daughter of James Dun, the Rector of Aberdeen Grammar School, had two brothers, and both suffered from lasting and incapacitating mental disorder. In the case of the elder, Alexander, this had spectacular and alarming manifestations, including an alleged assassination attempt on John Wilkes (of ‘The North Briton’ and ‘Wilkes and Liberty’), threats to kill his own father, and a murderous attack on a post- boy. The evidence about the madness of the Dun family is in letters which were available to Sir William Forbes but not used in his biography, and in contemporary newspapers and magazines.

Alexander Dun and John Wilkes

On 6 December 1763, a Scottish officer named Alexander Dun called at John Wilkes’s London house and asked to speak to him ‘on particular business’. Not being admitted, he was later overheard in a coffee house saying he and ten others ‘were determined to cut off Mr Wilkes, let the consequence be what it would’. Two days later, Dun called three times at Wilkes’s house, probably in an importunate and threatening manner, the first time delivering a letter asking for an interview ‘as 1 have something of consequence to communicate to you’.

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On his third call, he was allowed in, but Wilkes having been forewarned of a possible attack, Dun was overpowered by two (or more) men. The only direct evidence that he intended to attack Wilkes was a new penknife found in his pocket, and the three different stories Dun gave of where and when he had bought it. John Wilkes, however, was already involved in his long-running legal and political battles with the government and the House of Commons; he had been prosecuted over the The North Briton, and the previous month had been injured in a duel. A few hours before Dun’s first call at his house, he had won a notable legal victory over a government minister. An attempt on his life raised the suspicion of a government plot, and the events were widely reported.3 Dun was taken into custody, on an affidavit from an apparently reluctant Wilkes and two associates. He was brought before the bar of the House of Commons on 10 December on a complaint of breach of privilege, but after hearing ‘several Persons who could prove the Lunacy of the said Alexander Dunn’ the House discharged him.4 However, he then spent some months in prison ‘for want of sureties’.5 The Sr Jumes’s Chronicle gave an account of Dun’s background which firmly links him to the Dun family of Aberdeen: We hear that the person in custody upon a supposed intention of assassinating Mr Wilkes is a Lieutenant of Marines, and we are well informed that the person who gave Mr Wilkes a hint of the above Intention has discovered an Affair of the utmost Consequence to the Nation.

Alexander Dun, the Scotchman, who was taken up on Thursday evening for an attempt on the Life of Mr Wilkes, is said to be a Native of Aberdeen, where his Father keeps a School, and from which place he came to Town to execute his Design.6

Alexander Dun is said to have been a Lieutenant of Marines on board the Bienfaisant. Capt. Balfour; where he gave such evident proofs of his insanity, that the captain was obliged to confine him. Dun was set on shore at Gibraltar, and put under the care of the Physician of the Hospital there, who considered him, during the space of six or eight Months that he was under his Management, as in a very high state of Lunacy, and indeed among the other Marks of it, he made some attempts on his own Life, insomuch that they were forced to confine him more closely. Dun was discharged from hospital as being incurable [. . .] [A few days ago], Dun’s father was so sensible of the insane state of his Son, that he wrote to a n eminent Surgeon in Town, desiring him to use his utmost endeavours to find him out, and put him in some proper place of restraint, fit for persons in his unhappy condition [. . .I Almost in the same Breath that he used Menaces against M r Wilkes’s Life [. . .] he likewise declared that it was necessary for him to save his (Mr Wilkes’s) Life.’

Alexander Dun himself wrote an account of these events. Among the Wilkes papers are two copies of a remarkable folio pamphlet, which Dun must have had printed within a week of going to prison.* It is ostensibly an advertisement for subscriptions to a book: As there is to be published, by subscription, by Lieutenant Alexander Dun of Marines, A Book entituled [sic] The History of a Reduced Pay Officer, with Advice to Half-Pay Officers, and to Officers entering the Army; A Point explained concerning the Sea and Marine Officers: Interspersed with Observations on the Fair Sex [. ..]

A tavern and a coffee house are named ‘if any Gentleman chuse to subscribe’, and this explanation of the subscription follows: Mr Dun has had so much Encouragement already from the Nobility and Quality, both

Tlic Mudness of Mrs Beuttie’s,family I 85

in Britain and in Foreign Countries, in this Publication, that he would not have made it publick had it not been for a n Accident which happened lately, now to be explained.

The ‘Accident’ was the Wilkes affair, and the remaining two pages are taken up with justification of his behaviour, which must have been the main purpose of the pamphlet. At Wilkes’s house, five or six men had brought him down; ‘that violence was offered is evident because one of the Gentlemen had the joints of two of his fingers dislocated’. The reason for the three different stories about the penknife was that he had bought three penknives at different times for different purposes. Self-pity and martyrdom come into the account: He has often been insulted, beat, bruised, but as Justice will get the better, and Innocence will be protected, has always come off to his own satisfaction; and is not this moment afraid, although under lock and key [. . .]

He has suffered in His Majesty’s service [ . . . I he is but young and cannot therefore command Temper at every moment to put up hearing his Countrymen in Scotland abused.

He asserts that when he was in a bad fever for six months in Gibraltar, several brave and sensible officers were in a worse condition than he from the same malady - some cut their throats, and others shot themselves. His ‘Performance’ will help to unite the nation, and will be offered for the King’s perusal.

Dun sent copies of the pamphlet to Wilkes on successive days, each with a handwritten letter on the fourth (blank) page. On 16 December, he wrote that all copies issued that day would carry a note saying that ‘to let the world know that Mr Wilkes has no animosity at Mr Dun he sent his servant with money for two copies of [Dun’s] intended publication’. On I 7 December, Dun wrote that he was sending his Diploma, and a picture of himself: he asked Wilkes to return these instantly, with some franks. and to send his butler, as he wanted tn communicate some things to him.

The book which the pamphlet advertised was probably imaginary: there is no evidence that it was ever published. Parts of the pamphlet are coherent and plausible, but the overall impression it gives, particularly with the grandiose opening and Dun’s handwritten notes, is of an insecure grasp on reality. Wilkes, however, did send money to Dun during his imprisonment - a heartening touch to this extraordinary affair.9

On his coming in [to the King’s Bench Prison] he behaved in the most extraordinary Manner, abused all the people who spoke to him, took down the names of divers People who were in the Tap-House, whom, he said, he would prosecute, as he was powerfully protected, sung several very improper songs, got upon a little Horse that was there and rode about, and in short behaved so frantically, that either little doubt is to be made of his real Insanity of Mind, or that he acted the part extremely well.”

On 8 February 1764, he contrived an ingenious escape. His ‘boy’ asked leave to carry out a box of Dun’s clothes for repair: some time afterwards his keepers realized that Dun himself had also been in the box. He was only recaptured after he had eluded his pursuers in a pawnbroker’s and in the theatre.” In the next two weeks, he made two further attempts. He was found climbing over the wall ‘with a small rope and iron cramp’: when asked why he tried to escape, he said ‘not enough noise was being made about him which he intended to make’.”

Alexander Dun was a very troublesome prisoner:

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Shortly afterwards, in a more desperate and dangerous bid, he tore up the floor boards of his room, piled them up with the furniture and set fire to them.’3 He was then removed to the Surrey County Gaol for greater security. The newspaper and magazine records at this time end in May, with a terse note: ‘Alexander Dun is sent to a private mad-house’.’4

Dun’s case must have been a cause cdzbre, as indicated by the frequent reference to it in the newspapers and magazines. I5 There was even an excruciating punning epigram on Wilkes’s escaping from A. Dun (a dun).I6 Dun reappeared in a newspaper in 1767: Last Monday [ I June I 7671 was committed to the Gatehouse, by [. . .] one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace, Alexander Dunn, for violently beating and threatening to murder a Post-boy, who had just brought him out of the Country. - This is the same Person who was some time since committed to the King’s-Bench, charged with the intention of assassinating Mr Wilkes.’7

Alexander Dun, James Beattie’s Brother-in-Law

Beattie and Sir William Forbes were deeply concerned with Alexander Dun’s mental illness and behaviour in the period from September 1768 to December 1770. In the Fettercairn collection, there are twenty letters between the two men concerning the problem: twelve from Beattie and eight from Sir William Forbes.I8 In the background, and frequently mentioned, is Dr Dun, evidently at a loss to know what to do. Sir William took the most active and practical role in arranging Alexander’s care - as he was to do fifteen years later for Mary Beattie, when her mental illness became more than Beattie could cope with. These letters were wholly suppressed by Sir William Forbes in his Life, which makes no mention of Alexander Dun. They were unknown to Margaret Forbes, since the Fettercairn Collection was not discovered until 1930;‘9 they have never been published.

Beattie had married Dr Dun’s daughter, Mary, in June I 767; their first child, James Hay Beattie, was born in November 1768. When this series of letters began in September 1768, Lieutenant Dun was being looked after in the house of a Mr Devey, probably in or near London, and Sir William had visited him there. In November, the Secretary to the Admiralty had written that Lieutenant Dun had recovered his reason, but according to Beattie he was ‘as irrational as ever’.2o It was being suggested that Dun should go to ‘St Luke’s Hospital’; by January I 769 this had proved impossible, and Sir William was exploring another hospital at Musselburgh.zl Eventually he arranged for Alexander to be in the care of a Mr and Mrs Campbell in Inveresk, close to Musselburgh (both near Edinburgh, where Sir William lived); he also arranged Alexander’s journey to Scotland, where he arrived in May. On 9 June Sir William visited him at the Campbell’s: like a good ‘care manager’, he arrived unexpectedly on a Sunday evening. The tone of his account to Beattie is that of a visit to someone incapable of looking after himself: He looks very well, & the only alteration I could observe in his appearance was, that he seem’d not quite so chearful, as when I had used to see him in London. Mr and Mrs Campbell say he has been very quiet since he came to their house, and only sometimes

The Muclness of Mrs Beattie’s fumilj’ 187

expresses a n impatience to be at Aberdeen, where he still thinks he is going how soon an opportunity shall offer. I was very glad to see that they had him very clean & in good order, altho they had no previous notice of my visit; he is, I think, in a neater and more commodious appartment than when he lived at Mr Devey’s. They tell me that he stands in need of some stockings & handkerchiefs. The first I fancy will be got cheapest & best at Aberdeen. I shall send him, in the meantime, a few coarse handkerchiefs.22

There is a break in the extant correspondence until December, when Dr Dun inquired anxiously through Beattie if his son was worse. In reply, Sir William wrote a long account of Alexander’s mental state:

I d o think he is changed considerably since he came to Scotland, & more particularly since I saw him last, something more than two months ago; He spoke to me on Saturday [ I S December 17691 of his Confinement in a way that he had never done before: he seem’d sensible that it was occasion’d by his melancholy state of health; but said if his friends would take him home, he would live quietly; as he was convinced of the impropriety of all the follies he had formerly committed; but which he would not now fall into so readily, as he was older, & his blood grown cooler: he [imprest] me much to remove him of myself, as he said he knew the charge of him is left with me; but this I told him 1 had no authority to do. As I knew he had believ’d while he was at Mr Devey’s that he was confined by Authority of Government, I wisht to see if he entertaind that notion still, & 1 askt him if he thought he could be taken away without a permission of the Secretary of State; he replied that i t was a Joke; and that altho he had been apprehended in consequence of his having knock’d down a post-boy, that affair had been terminated long ago. I believe I inentiond to you that he had appeard not so chearful since he has been in Scotland as he used to d o when I saw him in London [...I On making enquiry at his Landlady about his behaviour, & particularly about the depression of his Spirits, she told me she has several times seen him, unperceiv’d, laughing by himself, & committing a great many fooleries. from which he has instantly desisted, and appear’d grave again on her going into the room [...I

I confess that day’s conversation moved me very much, & affected me more than any I have ever had with him: I would fain flatter myself that it may please the Almighty to have mercy upon him & to restore to him the invaluable blessing of Reason.’3

Sir William went on to suggest, with diffidence, and at some length, that Beattie should show this letter to Dr Dun if he saw fit, and that they should consider giving Alexander another trial at home, if he could be ‘kept quiet & sober at home, under the direction of a careful servant’.

This suggestion was eventually followed, and worked out disastrously. Once again Sir William made the arrangements. The departure of the sloop which was to take Alexander from Leith to Aberdeen was delayed by contrary winds; Alexander drank excessively while waiting, and also on the voyage itself, which was further prolonged by unfavourable winds. He cannot have been home more than a week when Beattie wrote despairingly to Sir William:

He had not been twenty-four hours in his Father’s house, when he gave full proof that the hardships of a three years confinement had wrought no manner of change on his temper and principles. The same selfishness, obstinacy, ill-nature, and boyish vanity, he has brought back, which he carried away with him in May 1767 [...I In the course of many days I could not have time to tell you what miseries he has brought upon his parents within a dozen years. The expense he has made them incur is incredible [. . .] but this is nothing to the anxiety, the sorrow, the provocation with which he has been the means of afflicting them, and which (though they both have good bodily constitutions)

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cannot fail to shorten their days [...I they are satisfied that while he stays with them they have no chance of passing one day in q ~ i e t . ~ 4

Alexander had remained all this time on half-pay from the Admiralty; one of his grounds for ‘grumbling insinuations’ was that this had been sequestered by his father and Sir William to pay for his accommodation and confinement. In September, Beattie reported that ‘A. D. [. . .] behaves quietly and discreetly enough’, but the lull was temporary, and the return home ended in disaster. On 10 November I 770, Beattie wrote to Sir William: Al. Dun has at last thrown off the masque. I will not shock you wt. a detail of particulars. He is now and has been these three weeks in prison. His father found it necessary to swear the peace against him. And indeed were he to be bailed on that score, he would immediately be committed again in the same way at my instance; for none of his near connections can think themselves in security (after what has happened) while he is permitted to live in this town at large. I never imagined so much wickedness and such complete depravity had possessed any heart, as I find there is in his. ~ But what is to be expected from a wretch who can threaten the life of a father; which he has done again and again.

The family decided Alexander must return to England. Beattie wrote him a severe letter offering a small amount of financial help, and an attempt to reconcile him with his father, if he remained in England and beha~ed.~5 On I December, Alexander was still in prison, but expecting to sail any day; on 24 December, Beattie told Sir William that Alexander had gone away and his ship had arrived in the Thames. In the summer of I 771, Beattie was in London and being warmly received by the leading literary figures, including Samuel Johnson. He suggested that he should make contact with Alexander, but Dr Dun advised against thisz6 Thereafter, Alexander disappears entirely from the Beattie corre- spondence until his death in 1785, but he makes a final appearance in the Wilkes papers, with another brazen letter to Wilkes on 15 October 1772: I have presumed to write you my sentiments with respect to the affair betwixt you & me in the year 1763. I was entirely innocent [...I the usage I received in your house you cannot be blamed for [...I and I must own on the whole your behaviour to me at that time was entirely as a Gentleman on that account since my Residence in London last being almost Two Years I have in every Company expressed myself of the same sentiments. The Principal Reason of my writing at present is to know whether or not you will patronize my Performance now ready for the Press and to which you are a subscriber for Two Copies for which I was paid 10 sh. & 6d.27 and like wise should you succeed as Lord Mayor of which 1 have no doubt I hope for your favours in point of interest kowing [sic] my own Innocence and your good nature.28

Beattie briefly reported Alexander Dun’s death in 1785, by which time Mrs Beattie was confined at Musselburgh because of her mental illness: Dr Dun seems to be perfectly reconciled to the present plan [about Mrs Beattie]. His son’s death was a great relief to him. I had some difficulty indeed to hinder him from putting on mourning: however, I prevailed by telling him, that by announcing what had happened it would give occasion to people to revive the remembrance of some disagree- able events, which were now probably in great measure forgotten, and which ought never more to be thought 0f.’9

The Mudness of Mrs Beuttie’sfumilv I 89

The Biography of Alexander Dun

Though the Wilkes affair is never specifically mentioned in the Beattie-Forbes correspondence, there can be no doubt that the Alexander Dun who threatened Wilkes in 1763, and Alexander, the son of Dr James Dun, about whom Forbes and Beattie were corresponding in I 768- I 770, were one and the same. It would be an astonishing coincidence if in one decade there were two half-pay lieutenants of the Marines named Alexander Dun, both of whom were Scotsmen, mentally disordered, and given to antisocial behaviour and violence which had led to imprisonment and confinement for madness. However, two other very specific features clinch the identification. Each was a native of Aberdeen, and had a father who was head of a school there. Each had attacked a post-boy, and been imprisoned for this. A final point is that at every time when accounts of locations and movements of the Alexander Duns can be compared, they are entirely consistent.

Having established that all the accounts and events refer to the same Alex- ander Dun, a fragmentary biography can be constructed. He was probably born about 1738. Beattie’s letter of 17 January 1770 suggests that Dun had then passed the age of thirty, but probably done so in the last year or ~ 0 . 3 ~ Alexander is likely to have attended Marischal College like his father and brother: an ‘Al. Dun’ was in the Arts class there from I 752- I 756.3’ If he went there at the usual age of around fourteen, this would also suggest a date of birth around 1738. Between I 756 and I 763 he joined the marines, went abroad, and developed the illness for which he was in hospital in Gibraltar. The date of that episode is uncertain, but by July 1770 he had been causing misery and expense to his parents for a dozen years ~ since about I 758. In I 763 he returned to Aberdeen, as indicated in the St James’s Chronicle rep0rt3~ and a letter from Beattie to Dr Dun in June of that year.” In December 1763, Alexander was back in London, made the attempt on Wilkes’s life, and was in prison until May 1764, when he went to the ‘private madhouse’. At some time in the next three years he returned to Aberdeen, since Beattie recalls him leaving there in May 1767. On or just before I June 1767 he attacked the post-boy who had brought him from the country: this was very likely his actual arrival from Aberdeen.

This chronology has Alexander returning to Aberdeen on two occasions before I 768, after episodes of confinement for mental illness. He may have had other periods at home during this time: Beattie wrote before his disastrous return in 1770: On these assurances [of living cautiously and soberly] he has been once and again taken home, behaved very well for a week or two, then gradually fallen to keeping company and drinking, till a t last he has brought back his disorder, and run himself into scrapes which have given infinite trouble and distress to his friends, who were then fain to have him secured and remitted back to confinement.34

In June 1767, after the attack on the post-boy he was in prison, but subse- quently went to ‘Mr Devey’s’, which sounds like a private mental establishment. He was certainly continuously in confinement from then until the stay with the Campbells which Sir William arranged in 1769: in July I770 Beattie refers to ‘three years of confinement’. There followed the events in Aberdeen, and

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Alexander’s enforced exile to London where he arrived in late December I 770. In September 1771, Dr Dun was advising Beattie, then on a visit to London, not to see Alexander. In October 1772, Alexander told Wilkes he had been in London almost two years. Though there is no further direct information until his death fourteen years later, it seems unlikely that he had been rehabilitated socially or professionally: his death was a ‘great relief to Dr Dun.

Alexander Dun’s family had difficulty in deciding whether to treat him as primarily deranged or delinquent: Beattie’s final letters about him in 1770 suggest that he now regarded Alexander as wicked. Alexander’s letters to Wilkes show grandiose and unrealistic ideas; Sir William Forbes’s account indicates periods of depression. A precise psychiatric diagnosis is difficult, though a manic-depressive psychosis is a possibility. It is unclear whether he really had murderous intentions towards Wilkes in December I 763; his subsequent statements suggest that he was unsure himself about his motivation.

The Case of John Dun

In the autumn of 1769, in the middle of the discussions between Sir William Forbes and Beattie about plans for Alexander Dun, his brother John Dun developed alarming symptoms: Mr Dun’s second son John is about 28 years of age. He lodges in his father’s house, and is one of his Ushers in the School [. . .] He has had all his life an invincible attachment to solitude [. . . I About the middle of last October he complained a little of a headach, toothach, shaking of his hand and violent thirst; but we did not much mind it, further than by desiring him again and again to allow a physician to be called, to which however nothing could prevail with him to give consent [...I However he began a t last to grow extremely inattentive, spoke little or nothing, and whenever his meal was finished hurried away to his room as fast as possible [. . .] towards the end of the month, he shut himself quite up, refused all sustenance, from a suspicion as he said of its being poisoned, and would not on any account go to bed. He continued in this state for a week, and was reduced to a skeleton. [After a short improvement] he became silent and stupid as before. All possible methods were taken to make him take medicines, and the best physicians here were consulted, but [...I it seems to be a principal part of this disease to have an insuperable aversion to every thing to which he is advised [. . .]. He has never yet attended his business; he has still has a dislike t o company, keeps much by himself, speaks little, and eats voraciously. He [...I is silent and low-spirited, sometimes laughs to himself or speaks [to himself].

I cannot [...I describe to you the distress of his parents. His father is apprehensive his present disorder will fix at last into a settled Idiocy; [but] I endeavour to convince him that his son’s low spirits are only the consequence of a nervous fever which he seems to have had, when we first observed him affected; & that he will come to himself gradually [. . .] there is no probability of the disease being constitutional, none of his relations either by the father or the mother having ever had any disease of this kind except his brother who partly brought his on himself by intemperance.35

The last statement is surprising in view of what Sir William Forbes said, and has since been frequently repeated: that Mrs Beattie’s insanity was inherited from her m0ther.3~ However, Beattie may have been trying to reassure himself as much as Dr Dun.

John must have been sent to Laurencekirk, for a convalescence in the country,

TIici Mtrdtiess of Mrs Beattie‘s fuinily I 9 I

probably with Beattie’s brother David who lived there. The Beatties visited him in July 1770 on their way to Edinburgh: We just now arrived [at Brechin] from Laurencekirk where we saw John and our other Friends. He is not much changed since we saw him last, only seems for the present to be rather better. He has written a letter to you [. . .] it is very sensible, and he asks that you will allow him to remain in the country all the winter. as he says he likes it better than the town [. . .] We must have patience awhile; there is, I think, no sort of reason to despair of his recovery, though it should not happen these many months. The people about Laurencekirk have very good hopes of him; for they say they have known many who grew perfectly well after having been in this way for upwards of a year.37

In I 796, the Town Council conducted an enquiry into the state of Aberdeen Grammar School. It emerged that ‘Mr John Dun has not personally attended to or discharged any of the Duties of [his] office, for upwards of Twenty Years past [...I on account of the particular situation of his health both in Body and Mind ~ of which there yet appears no hopes of his recovery’.@ He had continued to draw his salary, but not the class fees. It was recommended that he should resign ‘with some reasonable Pension’.

In summary, John was probably born in I 742. He attended Marischal College from 1756-1760,39 and was appointed under master at Aberdeen Grammar School in 1760, in succession to Beattie. He may not have undergone the usual demanding examination for candidates, since the benefaction to the school by Dr Patrick Dun specified that the examination should be waived if the candidate’s surname was D ~ n . 4 ~ John apparently performed the duties satisfactorily for nine years, though having a notably withdrawn personality. At the age of twenty-eight he developed a severe mental illness, with some schizophrenia-like features, and he remained permanently unable to work. He was still alive in 1 799.41

The Madness of Mrs Beattie

Over sixty of Beattie’s letters in the Aberdeen and Fettercairn collections show a major concern with Mrs Beattie’s health, and many others refer to it in passing. Yet it is remarkably difficult to form a coherent picture of what was the matter with her and of the progress of her mental disorder. Beattie often wrote in such anguish and perplexity about this that, though he would often give a great deal of detail, he never produced anything like the clear, straightfor- ward and illuminating account he wrote of John Dun’s illness.

At first, Beattie’s concern was with Mary’s physical health; within a week of his marriage, and expressing his happiness, he told Robert Arbuthnot ‘My Wife has many excellent qualifications, but I am sorry to say that for some months past a good state of health has not been among the number’. Sixteen months after their marriage, their first child, James Hay, was born, apparently without diffi~ulty.4~ In 1772, Mrs Beattie gave birth to a boy who breathed for an hour and then died; an event wholly unrecorded in any biography, but one which may have had severe repercussions on her mental health.43 For the remainder of the 1770s there is constant reference to the ill-health of both James and Mary Beattie, but hers seems to have taken a marked turn for the worse after the birth of their son, Montagu. in July 1778, with a long period of almost

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complete physical incapacity and ‘alarming symptoms’.44 The first mention in the correspondence of insanity is in a letter of 8 August I 780 to Lady Newhaven: After undergoing, for the space of 15 months, almost every variety of bodily distress, Mrs Beattie became, about the beginning of last winter, incapable of sleep [...I The consequence was, a sensible decay of her mental faculties, which ended in the loss of reason. Such has been her condition ever since December [. . .]

1 will not tell you [...I what hours I have spent in solitary sorrow approaching to despair; how unwilling I was for many months to believe what I too plainly saw; what efforts I havc made to conceal my anguish from the world [...I I find it now impossible to live any longer in my own house; where every object reminds me of something dreadful or painful, and where Mrs B‘s complaining voice assails my ear every moment [. . .] it is now four months since I saw poor Mrs Beattie.45

Three years later, when Mrs Beattie’s behaviour had become much more hostile, Beattie dated the onset of her mental illness to a much earlier period: As my Friends are now under no restraint, they inform me [. . . I that the disorder of Mrs B’s mind was a common topick of conversation in this town seven or eight years ago, at a time when I thought nobody suspected such a thing, but myself [...I though I carefully concealed my suspicion from the world, and endeavoured to conceal it even from myself. Ever since the year I 770 this malady seems to me to have been gaining ground: at least, from that period, her behaviour has been at times so very perverse and absurd, that I know not how to account for it in any other ~ a y . 4 ~

In this letter, Beattie describes Mrs Beattie’s anger, ‘violence’, and belief that she has been persecuted: Her letters are full of absurdity, rancour, and falsehood [. . .] I live in daily, nay in hourly, apprehension of her coming, and violently taking possession of my house [. . .] Her pride, and vanity, and sanguinary passions, give strength to her mind [...I her spirits now seem as high, as formerly they were low.

She also had delusions of grandeur - several years previously she had affirmed that all the honours conferred on Beattie in England were through her merits. Beattie’s letters leave no doubt of the distress, fear and perplexity which his wife’s illness and behaviour had caused him over many years, and of his genuine concern to make arrangements for her which were as kind and comfortable as possible.47 What is lacking is detail of what she actually did and how she behaved. The most specific story is Alexander Dyce’s wholly undocumented one of her arranging china jars on the parlour door so that they would fall on Beattie’s head when he opened it.48

In June 1784, Mrs Beattie was taken into care in a private house in Mussel- burgh, arranged by Sir William Forbes in much the same way as he had done for Alexander Dun fifteen years earlier. Three days before she left Aberdeen she wrote, but did not send, a very mad letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds. She said she was travelling to England, because Olivieri, the violinist, had told her she was the greatest musician in the world: ‘You play like angel, I like man. You may make what money you please to demand’.‘@

Beattie probably never saw Mrs Beattie again after her departure for Mussel- burgh, but in I 793 he was deeply dismayed that Dr Dun had arranged to bring her back to Aberdeen without his consent or knowledge. He moved out of Dun’s house when she moved in, but ‘since she was brought home I live in

continual alarm’.5O Relations between Dun and Beattie were now extremely strained: I am still teased, and likely to be so all my life. with the whims, dotages, and obstinacy of Mrs B’s father [. . .] I remember the time when he was neither absurd nor disagreeable, and when he had a very good opinion of me. He has told me often, that I had been more attentive to his Daughter than he ever would have been [...I But now he thinks meanly of every person who is attached to me; and he has been endeavouring of late to seduce Montagu’s [Beattie’s surviving son, now aged fifteen] affections from me, by representing me as a weak and unreasonable man.5’

Shortly after Dun’s death, Beattie wrote a bitter final assessment of him: In his conduct to me he was an ill-natured, unreasonable and ungrateful man [. . .] many a time has he added to my afflictions [ . . . I I could mention instances of this that are hardly credible. You may wonder what could make him so foolish in regard to me, who was certainly one of the best friends his Family ever had, and was particularly attentive to him. I could perhaps solve this difficulty, but it would require a great deal of writing on a most disagreeable subject.s2

Mrs Beattie still ‘survived in the same melancholy condition’ when Sir William Forbes published his Life: she died in November 1807.53

Conclusion

It is tempting to attempt psychiatric diagnoses for the members of the Dun family. Alexander showed many features of a manic depressive psychosis (now usually termed ‘bipolar affective disorder’), with periods of melancholy alternat- ing with those of manic behaviour and delusions of power and grandeur. John could have been schizophrenic, or have suffered primarily from severe psychotic depression. Mrs Beattie’s disorder is harder to categorize, because the clinical information, though greater in quantity, seems less objective, Some parts of Beattie’s account suggest a manic depressive disorder, and some paranoid schizophrenia. Her worsening after Montagu’s birth in I 778 hints at an element of postnatal depression or psychosis.

Both schizophrenia and manic depressive psychosis have some tendency to run in families, but this propensity is not strong, and the chances of all three siblings in a family being affected are very small. The most strongly inherited form of insanity is Huntington’s chorea, in which, if a parent were affected, there would be a one-in-eight chance of all three children inheriting the disease. However, the stories do not suggest this disorder. It seems more likely that the Dun siblings did not all have the same disease, and there are even hints that Alexander’s and John’s may have begun with a feverish illness, suggesting an infection. Alexander’s behaviour would be consistent with tertiary syphilis, but he lived far too long for this to be likely.

Intriguing as these medical conjectures may be, any medical diagnoses must remain wholly speculative, and it is not useful to pursue that matter further. The more important issue is the way the Dun family’s mental derangement appeared to Beattie, and the effect it had on him. The belief that there was madness in the family (reported by Sir William Forbes and presumably shared by Beattie) becomes wholly understandable when the histories of John and Alexander are known. It may well be significant that, in retrospect, Beattie

194 Roger Robinson

dated the onset of Mrs Beattie’s malady and ‘perverse behavior’ to 1770 ~ the year in which he and Sir William Forbes were so closely concerned with the problem of Alexander, when his behaviour became too dangerous and disruptive for him to be allowed to live in the same country as the Duns and Beatties, and also the year in which John’s illness was causing such deep concern. What Beattie must have feared most was that he was seeing in Mrs Beattie’s behaviour a re-run of Alexander’s mental derangement, with its strongly, and very publicly, antisocial tendencies, and its destructive effects on family tranquillity. The language in which he wrote about Alexander after he had ‘thrown off the masque’ in 1770, and his fear of being in the same town, strongly resemble the terms in which he would describe Mrs Beattie’s behaviour, and the fears it caused him, thirteen years later. Dr Dun himself became increasingly eccentric in his behaviour towards the end of his life, at least if Beattie’s account can be taken at face value. Old age, and the understandable distress that all three of his children had been disabled by mental illness, probably contributed to this. The earlier relationship between Beattie and Dr Dun had been close and friendly, and Dr Dun was a loving and valued grandparent. Mental illness seems to have destroyed relationships in this previously happy extended family, even among those not affected by i t .

Why did Sir William Forbes suppress the whole story of the madness of Alexander and John Dun? He not only had all the correspondence about it when he wrote his Life, but had been personally and deeply involved with Alexander’s care. The correspondence around I 783- I 784 indicated that a party in Aberdeen believed Beattie had behaved harshly and unreasonably in separat- ing Mrs Beattie from her family, and Beattie was aware of this. His later bitter complaints about Dr Dun seem to have been partly based on Dun making the same accusation. James Mercer, a life-long friend of Beattie, wrote to Sir William on I 5 October I 803, a month after Beattie’s death, urging him to write the Life, which would not only be a literary monument to Beattie’s talents and virtues, but also ‘vindicate him from some very foul aspersions which have gone abroad on the subject of his domestic misfortunes’.54 To do this was certainly part of Sir William’s agenda, and he gave a brief account of Mrs Beattie’s caprices, folly and melancholy, which ‘at last broke down into downright insanity which rendered her seclusion from society absolutely necessary’. He eulogized Beattie’s care and kindness to her.55 To have brought in the stories of Alexander and John could not have harmed Beattie’s reputation; he and Sir William had acted commendably in their efforts to help the Dun family. The natural reaction to hearing the full story would have been one of sympathy with Beattie for having married into an insane family.

One reason for Sir William’s silence may have been fear that disclosure of the Dun family’s problems might provoke an unfavourable reaction from a Dun party, which still existed after Dr Dun’s death: shortly after the Life was published, he wrote: ‘I have some curiosity to know how it will be received by those who took the part of Dr Dun against Dr Beattie’. More probably, he simply did not want to stir up the memory of old unhappy events; one of the lasting impressions from reading the letters in the Fettercairn collection is that he was an exceptionally kind and generous man, of whom the many encomiums

The Muciiirss of Mrs Beattie's,fuinily I 95

written after his death, including the moving one by Scott in the introduction to the fourth canto of Marmion, were entirely justified. Nevertheless, his silence left an important gap in the Beattie biography, prevented the different parts in the extraordinary story of Alexander Dun from being joined together, and suppressed information which clarifies a mysterious episode in the life of John Wilkes.

Roger Robinson University of Aberdeen

I .

2 .

3.

4. 5 . 6 .

7. 8.

9. 10.

1 1 .

12.

( 3 .

I 6.

17. IS .

19.

20.

21.

2 2 .

Sir William Forbes. A n Account oj r h 1 ~ Life unti Writings qfJan7es Beuttie, LL. D., 2nd edn. 3 vols (Edinburgh. 1807). 111. 143 (hereafter Lqc). Margaret Forbes, Beattie and his friend^ (London. 1904; reprinted Altrincham, 1990). p. I 55: James Beattie's Day-hook 1773-17~8. ed. by Ralph S. Walker (Aberdeen, 1948), p.88: James Beattie's London Diary 1773. ed. by Ralph S. Walker (Aberdeen, 1946). p.136; Beattie to Sir William Forbes, n.p., 27 September 17x1 (Fettercairn Box 94), reports that he has just that moment heard of Mrs Dun's death. which had been long expected. John Almon. Tl7e Correspondence of the lutc John Wilkes, with his ,friend.s [, . .] in which are introduc,ed h4emoir.s qf his Life. 5 vols (London. 1805), I. 165-75; Horace Bleackley. Life uf' Juhn Wilkes (London, 1907). pp. 140-41; Charles Chevenix Trench, Portrait of' a Patriot: A Biography of John Wilkrs (Edinburgh. 1962). pp.160, 164-65. (The page references are to the accounts of the Dun affair.) Journuls oJthe House of Commons, 29 (19 May I 761 to 30 October I 764). 70 I . 702. Sr Jaines's Chronicle. 20-22 December I 763 St James's Chronicle, 8- I o December I 763 Si James's Chronicle, 1o-r3 December 1763. British Library Add. MS 30,867, folios 237-41. London Chronicle, I 8-2 I February I 764; Lon(low Mags-ine, 33 (February I 764), I 07 St James's Chronicle, 20-22 December 1763. Puhlic Advertiser. 10 February 1764; Giwtleniutl',s Maguzinc,, 34 (February 1764), 94. London Chronicle, 16- I 8 February I 764. London Chronicle, 18-21 February 1764, These events are also reportcd iii the London Magazine. 33 (February 1764) 107. London Mugazine. 33 (May 1764). 267. In addition to the references given. there were accounts in the Scots Magurine, 26 (January 1764), 51. and the Annual Register ( I 763). p.145-46. St Jan7es's Chronicle, 20-22 December I 763. Puhlic .4dverti,ser, 5 June I 767. National Library of Scotland, ACC. 4796. The Beattie-Forbes material is in Boxes 91-100 of the Fettercairn collection, and is referred to by Box number. Claude Colleer Abbott, A Cuta log i~~~ of PUIJWS relating to Boswell, Johnson & Sir Willium Forbesfoundat Fettercairn Housc A Rt~sicftvrce (!/'the R t . Hon. Lord Clinton 1930- 1931 (Oxford. 1936), xiii-xxiv, Beattie to Sir William Forbes, Aberdeen. 28 November 1768 (Fettercairn Box 91).

Beattie to Sir William Forbes, Aberdeen, 14 January 1769 (Fettercairn Box 94) Sir William Forbes to Beattie, Edinburgh, 13 June 1769 (Fettercairn Box 98).

196 Roger Robinson

23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

30.

3’.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37- 38.

39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44.

45. 46.

Sir William Forbes to Beattie, Edinburgh, 18 December 1769 (Fettercairn Box 98). Beattie to Sir William Forbes, Aberdeen, 21 July 1770 (Fettercairn Box 94). A draft of Beattie’s letter, dated November 1770, and much corrected. is in Aberdeen University Library, MS jo/z1/19. It must have puzzled many readers since it has no indication of the addressee, but it is undoubtedly to Alexander Dun. and is referred to in Beattie’s letter to Forbes of 20 November 1770 (Fettercairn Box 94), where he says he had written a long letter to Dun the previous evening. James Dun to Beattie, Aberdeen. 4 September I 771 (Aberdeen University Library MS 30/2/62): ‘You mentioned your intention to write to Sandy [...I If you write him at all it should be when you leave the place.’ fo.525 sterling. British Library Add. MS 30.871, folio 145.

Beattie to Sir William Forbes, Aberdeen, 7 February 1785 (Fettercairn Box 92). Part of this letter is in Forbes’s Life (11, 359). but without the reference to Alexander Dun’s death. Beattie to Forbes. 17 January 1770 (Fettercairn Box 94): ‘His blood should now be cooler than formerly. When one passes thirty. he is generally thought to be in less danger of committing these extravagancies, than before that period.’ Fasti Academiae Mariscallnnae Abercionensis: Selections from the Records of the Marisclial College and Univrrsity MDXCff f -MDCCCLX, ed. by Peter John Anderson, vol. 2. ‘Officers, Graduates, and Alumni’ (Aberdeen, I 898). 323. See note 5. Beattie to Dr James Dun, London, 9 June 1763 (Aberdeen University Library MS 30/12/2). Beattie was on his first visit to London and was writing to Dr Dun in Aberdeen: ‘I want still to know some more particulars of your Son’s case. Pray. was you not much surprised when he arrived? [. . .] When I heard of his being gone to Scotland, I was somewhat afraid lest the surprise of his unexpected arrival, and the hurry of passions that such an event must necessarily occasion, should injure Mrs Dun’s or Miss Mally’s health.’ The ‘son’ must be Alexander. since Dr Dun only had two sons, and the correspondence indicates that John was in Aberdeen throughout the period in question. ‘Mally’ was Mary Dun, Beattie’s future wife. See note 30. Beattie to Sir William Forbes, Aberdeen. 17 January 1770 (Fettercairn Box 94). Life, I , 137; 111. 176. Beattie to Dr James Dun, Brechin, 31 July 1770 (Aberdeen University Library MS 30/12/9).

H. F. Morland Simpson, Bon Record: Records and Reminiscences oJAberdeen Grammar School froin the Earliest Times by Manv Writers (Aberdeen, 1906). p. 180. Fasti (see note 31), 327. Bon Record, p.120. Beattie to Sir William Forbes, Aberdeen, I February 1799 (Fettercairn Box 94) refers to Mrs Beattie continuing to lodge in the same house as her brother, under the terms of her father’s will. ‘My Wife was safely delivered of a Son about five weeks ago. The Mother & the Child are both in a good way’ (Beattie to Thomas Blacklock. Aberdeen, 10 December I 768; Aberdeen University Library MS 30/1/16). Beattie to Mrs Elizabeth Montagu, Aberdeen, 18 August 1772 (Fettercairn Box 91). In an incompletely dated letter to Thomas Blacklock, which must belong to 14 September 1772 (Aberdeen University Library MS 30/1 1/8), Beattie says Mrs Beattie’s recovery in the month since this death has been slow. and she has not yet been out in the open air. Beattie from Aberdeen to Lady Newhaven. 26 September 1778. and to Mrs Montagu, I February 1779 (Aberdeen University Library MS 30/1/152 & 162). From Peterhead (Aberdeen University Library MS 3o/1/1 83). Beattie to Mrs Montagu. Aberdeen. 10 December 1783 (Aberdeen University Library MS 30/1/236).

The Mudness of Mrs Beuttie’sfumily 197

47.

48.

49.

51.

52.

53.

54. 55.

At least by the standards of the day, and probably rather better. Nevertheless, Mrs Beattie’s confinement may have added to her mental disorder and feelings of persecution. The refusal to allow her any contact with her sons. even by letter, seems harsh (Beattie to the Duchess of Gordon, Aberdeen, 29 January 1784; Fettercairn Box 92). Part of this letter is reproduced misdated in Life (11, 31o), but without the relevant passage. ‘Memoir of Beattie’, in The Poeticui Works of James Beuttie, Aldine Edition of the British Poets (London, 1831) , xvi. Mrs Beattie’s letter was written on 1 7 June 1784. Beattie found it in 1788, and quoted it in full in a letter to Sir William Forbes, Aberdeen. 3 1 May 1788 (Aberdeen University Library MS 30/1/283). Beattie to Lady Newhaven. Aberdeen. 14 October 1793 (Aberdeen University Library MS

Beattie to Mrs Montagu, Aberdeen. 3 1 January 1794 (Aberdeen University Library MS

Beattie to Sir William Forbes. Aberdeen. I February 1799 (Fettercairn Box 94). George Glennie to Sir William Forbes Junior (son of Beattie’s biographer). Aberdeen, 14 April 1808 (Aberdeen University Library MS 30140). From Aberdeen (Fettercairn Box 95). Life. 111. 176-77

30/ 1/34 I ).

30/1/345).