Читать книгу Galatea онлайн

104 страница из 118

It was a glorious victory which Gyll enjoyed in peace for four years. Then his hour of reckoning came. A correspondent of Notes and Queries, signing himself "Anglo-Scotus," pointed out (February 24, 1866, p. 158) that the statement concerning the Gylls in Burke's Landed Gentry was erroneous; that no officer named Gyll ever held a commission in either regiment of the Life Guards; that Hamilton Flemyng was not the last (or any other) Earl of Wigtoun; and that consequently no such person as Lady Harriet Flemyng ever existed. Gyll pondered for a month and then, at last, nerved himself to write to Notes and Queries (March 24, 1866, p. 250) asserting that Hamilton Flemyng was "per legem terrae, 9th and last Earl of Wigton." His letter was thought to be too rambling for insertion: the editor confined himself to printing this crucial passage, and referred Gyll to the report of the Committee for Privileges which set forth that "the claimant (Hamilton Flemyng) hath no right to the titles, honours, and dignities claimed by his petition." This report was quoted in the same number of Notes and Queries (pp. 246-247) by an Edinburgh correspondent signing himself G., and G. went on to say that, though no Gyll ever held a commission in the Life Guards, a certain William Gill figures in the Edinburgh Almanacs for 1794-5-6 as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Life Guards. I have since verified this statement, and I find that William Gill was gazetted to the 2nd Life Guards on September 26, 1793. In spite of the interest that he took in his family history, Gyll had no accurate knowledge of his father's doings. William Gill was transferred to the Late 2nd Troop of Horse Grenadier Guards (a reduced corps receiving full pay) on March 23, 1796, and he retired on March 19, 1799 (see The London Gazette, Nos. 13,878 and 15,116). But Gyll was ever a muddler and a bungler. He informed Lipscomb that his father had "died suddenly" (op. cit., vol. iv., p. 605); while, in the History of Wraysbury (p. 121), he copies an epitaph recording William Gill's death "after a long and painful illness."