Elcho, David Wemyss, Lord
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- Elcho, David Wemyss, Lord
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(1721 - 87), e. s. of 5th E. of Wemyss [S]; educ. Angers 1739 - 40; attainted 1746; sty. Ld. Elcho - 1756 when suc. fa. and assumed sty. E. of Wemyss; army officer in the French service; m. 1776 dau. of B. d'Uxhull (d. 1777).
1740 - 1 Turin (by 4 Oct.), Genoa, Milan, Florence ( - Oct.), Rome (late Oct. 1740 - Apr. 1741), Bologna, Venice (May - 12 Jun.) with visit to Padua on 4 Jun.
1746 - 7 Venice (Dec. 1746 - Jun. 1747), Padua (by Jul. - Sep.)
1755 - 6 Padua (by 28 Jul. 1755), Venice (Dec. 1755 - Mar. 1756)
1761 Padua (Oct.)
1766 - 7 Rome (7 Nov. 1766 - Sep. 1767), Naples (Sep.), Venice (Nov.)
A Protestant with strong Jacobite principles, Lord Elcho studied for a year at the Angers Academy before setting out early in 1740 'with three brother academicians and a tutor' for southern France and Italy.1 He crossed Mont Cenis and went through Turin (where he met Joseph Spence2), Genoa and Milan to Florence, where Horace Mann thought him 'a vast fool'.3 He left Florence with James Stuart Mackenzie in October for Rome, where he arrived on 25 October and took lodgings in the Strada della Croce.4 He had two interviews with the Pretender, being 'introduced into his apartments ... by a trap door under the table',5 and went hunting with Prince Charles Edward, whom he thought less friendly than his brother, Henry Benedict. Elcho's portrait, attributed to Antonio David (Gosford; probably by Dupra, according to RBF) was presumably painted at this time, and he probably met Batoni, whose Iphigenia, commissioned in 1740 by Lord Mansell, he had acquired by 1742 (Gosford, on loan to SNG from 1978; Clark/ Bowron 59). He left Rome in April, travelling via Bologna to Venice, where he spent a month and was befriended by George, Lord Hervey (later 2nd Earl of Bristol),3 leaving on 12 June for Paris with Samuel Dashwood.6
He joined Prince Charles in the '45 but became estranged from him after a disagreement over the abandonment of the campaign. He escaped to France to spend the rest of his life in exile, during which he made at least four visits to Italy.
In December 1746 Elcho joined the Earl Marischal at Venice, where he remained until the following June; Sir James Gray, the British resident, tried vainly to have them expelled. Elcho gambled with some success before the Earl Marischal restrained him. They moved to Padua for a further three months and left in September with a Mr Hunter of Burnside 'to saunter across Europe northwards to Cleves'; Elcho also took a mistress, Mlle Vigano, who accompanied him for some time and bore him a child.
He returned to Italy in 1755. He was in Padua on 28 July and his presence was signalled to London by John Murray, the British resident in Venice: 'if he stays at Padua, to be out of the way of Bustle, and means no mischief I don't think he can possibly be in a more inoffensive place'. In December Elcho moved to Venice, staying at the Scudo di Francia: 'it is an excellent place', wrote Elcho, 'for a man that can content himself with amusements and public spectacles. Everything is cheap'. In March 1756 he moved to Neufch?tel.
He was again in Padua in October 1761 when Christopher Hervey met him; 'a melancholy person has been walking up and down the great hall adjoining to my room. At times he retired a little to his own apartment and played upon the German flute. The patheticness of the airs and the Scotch turn they had, made me enquire who it was, and I found it to be lord Elcho, banished for ever from his native country for one rash step, and condemned to be a perpetual vagabond upon the face of the earth, and dependent upon the charity of foreigners'.7
His last journey to Italy was made in 1766. Prompted by the death of the Pretender in January, Elcho sought from Prince Charles, the Young Pretender, repayment of the 1500 guineas which he had lent him during the '45, and had unsuccessfully claimed ever since. He arrived in Rome in November, lodging near the Trinita dei Monti, but he was again unsuccessful in his demand; the Prince acknowledged the debt but said he would not repay it until he was on the British throne, and the Pope (with whom Elcho obtained an audience) declined to interfere. He stayed on in Rome until the summer of 1767, shunned by British travellers, before moving in September to Naples. There he met the French ambassador, the duc de Choiseul, and enjoyed the city's gaiety. In November he travelled back to Venice for the last weeks of the Carnival and then set out for France.
1. See Elcho, Short Account, 18 - 33, 114 - 22, 155 - 62, 198 - 209. 2. Spence Letters, 421. 3. Wal.Corr., 19:148. 4. AVR SA, S.Lorenzo in Lucina. 5. W. Fraser, Melvilles and the Leslies, 1:359n. 6. Pomfret Corr., 3:224. 7. C. Hervey, Letters from Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany, [1785], 3:472.