Partner
Antoine Clement
Queer Places:
Murthly Castle, Perth PH1 4HP, UK
Sir
William Drummond Stewart, 7th Baronet (26 December 1795 – 28 April 1871) was a
Scottish adventurer and British military officer. He travelled extensively in
the American West for nearly seven years in the 1830s. In 1837 he took along
the American artist, Alfred Jacob Miller, hiring him to do sketches of the
trip. Many of his completed oil paintings of American Indian life and the
Rocky Mountains originally hung in Murthly Castle, though they have now been
dispersed to a number of private and public collections.
After his older brother John Stewart died childless in 1838, William
inherited the baronetcy and returned to Scotland. In 1842 he returned to
America, and in the summer of 1843 hosted a private rendezvous-style party at
a remote lake in the Rockies (now called Fremont Lake). On that trip Jean
Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
was hired to care for the mules. The so-called "pleasure trip" ended in a
dispute that split the party and caused Stewart to return to Scotland earlier
than he had planned. Stewart has recently been portrayed for adding a
homosexual dimension to the frontier.[1]
Born at Murthly Castle, Perthshire, Scotland, Stewart was the second son
and one of seven children of Sir George Stewart, 17th Laird of Grandtully, 5th
Baronet of Murthly and of Blair. The family decided that William would go into
the Army (as his older brother would inherit his father's estate and title).
After his seventeenth birthday in 1812, William asked his father to buy him a
cornetcy in the 6th Dragoon Guards. After his appointment was confirmed on 15
April 1813 he immediately joined his regiment and began a programme of
rigorous training.
Stewart was anxious to participate in military action; on 22 December 1813
his father purchased for him an appointment to a Lieutenancy in the 15th
King's Hussars, which was already in action during the Peninsula Campaign. The
appointment was confirmed on 6 January 1814 and Stewart joined his regiment,
subsequently seeing combat during the Waterloo campaign in 1815. On 15 June
1820 Stewart was promoted to a Captain and soon thereafter retired on half
pay.
By a servant, Christian Marie Battersby, he had an illegitimate son,
William George Drummond Stewart, born in 1831. He acknowledged the boy, known
as "Will", as his, and assumed full financial responsibility for both mother
and son. He never lived under the same roof as Christian, but he did marry her
later in life to legitimise Will for purposes of inheritance.[2]
Will Drummond Stewart had an illustrious career in the British Army and was
awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions in relieving the Siege of Lucknow
during the Indian Mutiny. He predeceased his father, however, succumbing to
injuries sustained during a drunken attempt to demonstrate sword swallowing.
Seeking adventure, Stewart travelled to St. Louis, Missouri in 1832, where
he brought letters of introduction to William Clark, Pierre Chouteau Jr.;
William Ashley and other prominent residents. He arranged to accompany Robert
Campbell, who was taking a pack train to the 1833 rendezvous of mountain men.[3]
The party left St. Louis on 7 May and attended the Horse Creek Rendezvous in
the Green River Valley of Wyoming. Here Stewart met the mountain men Jim
Bridger and Thomas Fitzpatrick, as well as Benjamin Bonneville, who was
leading a governmental expedition in the area. At the rendezvous Stewart met
the French Canadian-Cree hunter Antoine Clement, with whom he had a homosexual
relationship[4]
that lasted for nearly a decade. The relationship is detailed in Stewart's two
autobiographical novels. With some of the men, Stewart visited the Big Horn
Mountains, wintered at Taos, and attended the next rendezvous at Ham's Fork of
the Green River. Later that year, he journeyed to Fort Vancouver, 90 miles up
the Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean.
Stewart attended the 1835 rendezvous at the mouth of New Fork River on the
Green and reached St. Louis in November. Finding that his finances were
curtailed because he brother had failed to forward his share of the estate
left by their father, Stewart went to New Orleans, speculated in cotton to
recoup, and wintered in Cuba. In May, he joined Fitzpatrick's train to the
Rockies for another rendezvous on Horse Creek. He wintered in 1836–37 and
1837–38 at New Orleans, where he speculated again in cotton. In 1838 he
learned that his childless older brother John had died of an undisclosed
disease (probably cancer). William Stewart would become the seventh baronet of
Murthly.
For the rendezvous of 1837, Stewart took along an American artist, Alfred
Jacob Miller, whom he hired in New Orleans. Miller painted a notable series of
works on the mountain men, the rendezvous, American Indians, and Rocky
Mountain scenes. In 1839 he delivered finished oils to Stewart, who hung the
works in Dalpowie Lodge on the Murthly estate. Working from watercolor
sketches he had made during their trip to the Rockies, Miller painted many
canvases while an artist in residence on the estate.
Stewart
returned to Scotland and Murthly Castle in June 1839 with his partner
Antoine Clement, and the couple
lived in Dalpowie Lodge, while entertaining in Murthly Castle. Clement was an
half-breed, his father was a Canadian, his mother an Indian, and he was one of
the noblest specimiens of a Western hunter; during an expedition he killed
about 120 Buffalo; his temper however, when aroused, was uncontrollable.
Stewart explained Clement's presence by at first referring to him as his
valet, then as his footman. Because Clement was restless and unhappy in
Scotland, the couple spent many months travelling abroad, including an
extended visit to the Middle East.[6]
Stewart's elder brother had incurred extensive debts in constructing a new
Murthly Castle. When attempts to earn extra income by hosting hunting parties
proved disappointing, Stewart finally sold one the family's estates,
Logiealmond Castle. The sale provided him with enough money to pay off his
brother's debts and to allow him to return to the United States for an
extended, lavish party held in the Rockies.
Stewart returned to North America in late 1842, and in September 1843 he
and a large entourage travelled to what is now Fremont Lake.[7]
Stewart brought with him a large array of velvet and silk Renaissance costumes
for his all-male guests to wear during the festivities. Fur trader William
Sublette co-hosted the party with Stewart. Though there had been no rendezvous
since 1840, the party had many elements of the old Rocky Mountain gatherings.
Stewart had planned to spend the winter of 1843–44 in New Orleans, and visit
Taos and Santa Fe the following spring, but the Renaissance pleasure trip
ended in a scandal that led him to leave for Scotland immediately, never to
return to the United States.
Stewart's later life was one of turmoil and alienation from his family. His
son William George Drummond Stewart died from a self-inflicted
sword-swallowing injury in 1868. In 1856 Stewart's friend Ebenezer Nichols,
his wife, and three sons, visited from Texas. When it came time to leave
Scotland, the Nichols's middle son, Franc, declined to return home. He instead
stayed on with William Drummond Stewart at Murthly Castle, eventually being
adopted by Stewart and becoming his primary heir. Stewart died of pneumonia on
28 April 1871.
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Drummond_Stewart