To the President, whom he always addressed with some allusion to his brief military service,--"My dear General." "Your own Lovat." In 1716 such professions as these are made to Mr. John Forbes.
"My dearest Provost (we must give you your title, since it is to last but short), my dear General's letter and yours are terrible; but I was long ere now prepared for all that could happen to me on your illustrious brother's account: I'll stand by him to the last; and if I fall, as I do not doubt but I will, I'll receive the blow without regret. But all I can tell you is this, that we are very like to see a troublesome world, and my Generall and you will be yet useful; and I am ready to be with you to the last drop, for I am yours eternally, Lovat." His frequent style to the President was thus,--"The most faithfull and affectionat of your slaves." It is indeed evident, in almost every letter, what real obligations Lovat received from both Culloden and his brother; and how strenuously they supported his claim against Fraserdale.[225]
At the hospitable house of Culloden he was a frequent guest,--"a house, or castle," says the author of "Letters from the North," written previous to the year 1730, "belonging to a gentleman whose hospitality knows no bounds. It is the custom of that house, at the first visit or introduction, to take up war freedom, by cracking his nut, as he terms it; that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds a pint, filled with champagne, or such other sort of wine as you shall chuse. You may guess, by the introduction, of the contents of the volume. Few go away sober at any time; and for the greatest part of his guests, in the conclusion, they cannot go at all."
"This he partly brings about artfully, by proposing, after the public healths (which always imply bumpers), such private ones as he knows will pique the interest or inclination of each particular person of the company, whose turn it is to take the lead, to begin it in a brimmer; and he himself being always cheerful, and sometimes saying good things, his guests soon lose their guard, and then--I need say no more."[226]
In this hospitable house, a strange contrast to the penuriousness and despotic management of Castle Downie, Lord Lovat was on the most intimate footing. His professions of friendship to the laird were unceasing. "I dare freely say," he observes in one of his characteristic letters, "that there is not a Forbes alive wishes your personal health and prosperity more than I do, affectionate and sincerely; and I should be a very ungrateful man if it was otherways, for no man gave me more proofs of love and friendship at home and abroad than John Forbes of Colodin did.
