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Show STORY OF ROBIN ADAIR The hero of "Robin Adair" was well known in the London fashionable circles of the last century by the sobriquet of the "Fortunate Irishman," but his parentage and exact date of his birth is unknown. He was brought up as a surgeon, but "his defection in an early amour drove his precipitately from Dublin," to push his fortunes in England. Scarcely had he crossed the channel, when the chain of lucky events that ultimately led him to fame and fortune commenced. Near Holyhead, perceiving a carriage overturned, he ran to render assistance. <br><br> The sole occupant of the vehicle was a "lady of fashion well known in polite circules," who received Mr. Adair's attentions with thanks, and being slightly hurt and hearing that he was a surgeon, requested him to travel with her in her carriage to London. On their arrival to the metropolis, she presented him with a fee of one hundred guineas, and gave him a general invitation to her house. In after life, Adair used to say, it was not so much the amount of the fee, but the time it was given that was of service to him, as he was then almost destitute. <br><br> But the invitation to her house was a still greater service, for there he met the person who decided his fate in life. This was Lady Caroline Keppel, daughter of the second Earl of Albermarle and Lade Anne Lennox, daughter of the first Duke of Richmond. Forgetting her high lineage, Lady Caroline, at the first sight of the Irish surgeon, fell desperately in love with him; and her emotions were so sudden and violent as to attract the general attention of the company. Adair, seeing his advantage, lost no time in pursuing it; while the Albermarle and Richmond families were dismayed at the prospects of such a terrible misalliance. Every means was tried to induce the lady to alter her mind, but without effect. <br><br> Adair's biographer says that "amusements," a long journal, an advantageous offer, and other common modes of shaking off what was considered by the family as an improper match, were first tried, but in vain. The health of Lady Caroline was evidently impaired, and the family at last confessed, with a good sense that reflects honor on their understanding as well as their hearts, that it was impossible to prevent, but never to dissolve, an attachment; and that marriage was the honorable and, indeed, the only alternative that could secure her happiness and life. When Lady Caroline was taken by her friends from London to her lover, she wrote, it is said, the song of "Robin Adiar," and set it to a plaintive Irish tune that she had heard him sing. Such is the story of this popular song. |