In May we removed to Charlotte Square, a house I found the most agreeable of any we had ever lived in in Edinburgh. The shrubbery in front, and the peep from the upper windows behind, of the Firth of Forth with its wooded shores and distant hills, made the look out each way so very cheerful. We were in the midst, too, of our friends. We made two new acquaintances, the Wolfe Murrays next door, and Sir James and Lady Henrietta Ferguson in my father’s old house, in which Jane and I were born. Nothing could be pleasanter than our sociable life. The gaiety was over, but every day some meeting took place among us young people. My Mother’s tea table was, I think, the general gathering point. The two Hunters were almost always with us in the evenings; they danced their Spanish dances, fandangoes and boleros, striking the castagnettes so prettily in time to the musick, Agnes Cathcart often; and for Beaux our German friends, George and Henry Lindsay, at College then, Basil Hall, and sometimes a class fellow of my brother’s. In the mornings we made walking parties, and one day we went to Roslin and Lasswade, a merry company. Another day we spent at sea.
The Captain of the frigate lying in the roads gallantly determined to make a return to Edinburgh for all the attention Edinburgh had paid him. He invited all left of his winter acquaintance to a breakfast and a dance on board. We all drove down to the pier at Newhaven in large merry parties, where now the splendid Granton pier shames its predecessors,30 and there found boats awaiting us, manned by the merry sailors in their best suits, and we were quickly rowed across the sparkling water, for it was a beautiful day, such a gay little fleet, and hoisted up on the deck. There an awning was spread, flags, etc., waving, a quadrille and a military Band all ready, and Jane, who was in high good looks, soon took her place among the dancers, having been engaged by the little monkey of a Middy who had piloted us over. The collation was below, all along the lower deck. We sat down to it at four o’clock, and then danced on again till near midnight, plentifully served with refreshments, most hospitably pressed upon us by our entertainers. Sailors are so hearty, and every Officer of the ship seemed to feel he had the part of host to play. There never was a merrier fête.
Jane always considered this her début. She was nicely dressed, was very happy, much admired, and danced so well. She and I were never dressed alike; indeed there was so little resemblance then between us that probably the same style of dress would not have become us. Her figure was not good, yet when any one with better taste than herself presided at her toilette, it could be made to look light and pleasing; her complexion was not good either, at least the skin was far from fair, but there was such a bright healthy colour in her rounded cheek, and such a pair of deep blue brilliant eyes, and such a rosy mouth which laughter suited, two such rows of even pearls for teeth, she well deserved her names, Euphrosyne and Hebe;31 and she was such a clever creature, had such a power of conversation, without pedantry or blueism, it all flowed so naturally from a well stored head and warm honest heart. The little Middy’s fancy was not the only one she touched that day. We were, like the best bred of the company, in half dress, white frocks made half high and with long sleeves. Jane’s frock was abundantly flounced, but it had no other trimming; she wore a white belt, and had a hanging bunch of lilacks with a number of green leaves in her hair. My frock was white too, but all its flounces were headed with pink ribbon run through muslin, a pink sash, and all my load of hair quite plain. A few unhappy girls were in full dress, short sleeves, low necks, white shoes. Miss Cochrane, the Admiral’s daughter,32 was the most properly dressed amongst us; she was more accustomed to the sort of thing. She wore a white well frilled petticoat, an open silk spenser, and a little Swiss hat, from one side of which hung a bunch of roses. She and the dress together conquered Captain Darling; they were married a few months after.
Just before we left Charlotte Square we had a visit from the whole family of Goodchild. They were on their way from their handsome old home of High Pallion to a cottage in Perthshire, very cheap, with a good garden, and quite out of the way of expense of any kind. Mr Goodchild shipped a good deal of his lime to Dundee and thereabouts, it was therefore a good situation for him. Mrs Goodchild was glad to leave her old neighbourhood. Since their misfortunes she had come out quite in a new character. All her harshness, all her sarcasms, all her follies indeed, were gone. She had put her shoulder to the wheel in earnest, and tho’ she could never make herself agreeable, she had become respectable. Still we were not prepared for the storming party by which we were assaulted; six daughters, I think, the father, mother, and two sons. The girls, all in coloured cotton frocks, close coarse cottage bonnets, thick shoes, talking loud in sharp Durham voices, chose to walk about to see the town, with the brothers and George Carr attending. They were quite at their ease in the streets, gloves off or on, bonnets untied for the heat, shop windows inspected, remarks of all sorts made, George Carr perpetrating his usual series of misdemeanours with a gay effrontery unparalleled. Jane and I deputed to escort this assemblage, rejoiced we had so few acquaintances left in town, the lawyers only remaining for the summer. I was more remarkable myself if I had but known it! My walking dress was a white gown, a pink spenser, yellow tan boots with tassels dangling, and a fine straw, high crowned, deep poked bonnet, trimmed with white satin, in the front of which were stuck up there three white tall Ostrich feathers in a Prince’s plume, nodding their tops forward with every step, unless the wind held them straight up like poplar trees. ‘Fair and feathery Artizan’ must have brought up this fashion; it was very ungraceful.
Mrs Goodchild and her younger children proceeded almost immediately on their journey. Mr Goodchild had to remain a short time on account of business. After this time he was frequently with us on his way backwards and forwards, and became quite a favourite in spite of his very strange manners, he was so cleverly original and so good natured. He took amazingly to our Germans, particularly to the Chevaleer, as he called him, and the Chevalier to him, and more especially to Bessy, the eldest daughter, whom my Mother had consented to receive for a week or so as she had occasion to see a dentist, and wished besides to remain to travel home with her father. She was a pleasant person, very amusing, but not to my mind likeable. I was forced to admire her very pretty feet, but M. Thinnfeldt could not get me any farther. To be rid of Jack was such a blessing, we cheerfully put up with his rather too lively sister. She was an addition too to the tea table and dancing, making her way with every body. Early in July we moved to a large house in Picardy Place, No. 8, with four windows in front, a great many rooms all of handsome size, and every accommodation, as the advertisements say, for a family of distinction. My father took a lease of it for three years, hiring the furniture from Mr Trotter.33 It was a sad change to us young people, down in the fogs of Leith, far from any country walk, quite away from all our friends, and an additional mile from Craigcrook too, reckoning both ways. We had got very intimate with Mr and Mrs Jeffrey, Jane and I, and we had frequently from Charlotte Square walked out to their beautiful old place on Corstorphine hill, spent the day there, and returned late when any one was with us, earlier when alone. Mr Jeffrey was enchanted with Jane, he had never seen any girl at all like her; he liked me too, but he did not find me out till long after. He left me now more to Mrs Jeffrey and their little Charlotte, a pretty child in those days.34
We had been at Craigcrook on a visit of some days, and William had come out to walk home to Picardy Place with us, looking strangely sad; and on the road he told us there was very little hope of the life of Dr Gordon. What a shock it was. Our intimacy had continued unbroken from the hour of our first acquaintance, William and I more particularly having been very much with him. He had got on in his profession as he deserved to do, and had lately got a Chair in the University35 and a very full class, and they had left the old flat in Buccleuch Place in the old town off by the meadows, and lived in a nice house in Castle Street. All was prospering with them, but he died. It was some kind of fever he had neglected the first symptoms of, and I believe he had injured himself by to
o exclusive a meat diet. He was the first physician who had ever tried checking a certain sort of consumptive tendency by high feeding; he had succeeded so well with patients requiring this extra stimulus that he tried the plan on himself, he who overstudying and under exercising should have given his system rest. Deeply we lamented him; William felt the lost most sincerely, nor did any other friend, I think, ever replace him. Mrs Gordon was left with three children, and only tolerably well off. She was unable to remain in Castle Street. She therefore removed soon to some place in Ayrshire, where there was good and cheap education to be had for her boys. Gogar, or some such name—her little boy, died; so, I think, did her pretty Jane. John only lived and was hardly a comfort to her. He has got steadier since his marriage but he is not what his father’s son should have been.
We went late to the highlands and staid very quietly there. Kinrara was deserted this season, Belleville less gay than usual, and we did not go to the Meeting. My mother was not in spirits, my father was away; he went to Ireland to defend some rebels, trials that made a great stir at the time, being made quite a political battle field. The junior Counsel was little Erskine Sandford, the Bishop’s son,36 who went with us by the name of Portia, as it was his gown Mrs Henry Siddons37 borrowed when she acted that character; it fitted her well, for he was only about her size, and she did not look unlike him, for he was handsome, though so small. They were some weeks absent. While in the north of Ireland my father took up his quarters in the house of an old acquaintance, the Marquis of Donegal, whose brother, Lord Spenser Chichester, my mother was once expected to marry. The Marquis was in some perplexity about his own marriage; he was ultimately obliged to go to the serious expense of having an act of parliament passed to legalise it, the Marchioness having been under age at the time it was celebrated. She was a natural child, so without a parent, consequently the Chancellor was her guardian. She had been brought up, indeed adopted, by a worthy couple somewhere in Wales; they supposed their consent sufficient, but it was not.38
I spent most of the Autumn rubbing dear Jane’s ankle, on the Oxford Mr Grosvenor’s plan.39 We sat under the large ash tree, while I rubbed and she read aloud to me. We got through many interesting books this way. She had hurt herself dancing so very much on board the frigate. We rode too; Paddle was gone back to Inchyra, but a big Bogtrotter was there instead, on which Jane, who knew not fear, was mounted. Mr Blair had returned from abroad, and had not come near us, and my Mother bore it well, for after hearing that he had asked the Due de Berri to drink wine with him, she had given him quite up. At a publick dinner in Paris this Prince had paid an unusual compliment to some of the English by proposing to ‘troquer’ with them in their fashion; he was certainly unprepared for the civility being returned.40 Mr Nightingale could not get over this and a few other such instances, so they parted company. Mr Nightingale had come home too; we heard from him once or twice, and then we heard of him. He was married to his old love, Fanny Smith.
1. Sir William Molesworth, the politician (1810−55). His mother Mary Brown from Edinburgh married Sir Arscott-Ourry Molesworth, the seventh baronet, whose family had been of influence in Cornwall since the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
2. Robert Plumer Ward’s Tremaine, or the Man of Refinement was to be published in 1825.
3. George Arbuthnot (1772−1843) founded this famous merchant company.
4. He was Provost from 1815−17 (when he was praised for setting up public works, such as the construction of a road round the King’s Park, to help relieve distress) and then again from 1821 to 1823; George IV knighted him after the Town Council banquet in Parliament House.
5. His father had been a wine merchant in Bordeaux.
6. George Cranstoun became a judge in 1826; one sister, Jane Anne, did marry the Count of Purgstall, and the other, Helen D’Arcy, married Professor Dugald Stewart. See Cockburn’s Memorials for an interesting portrait.
7. Dugald Stewart (the distinguished figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, 1753−1828) was appointed to the Chair of Moral Philosophy in 1785.
8. John Dunning, first Lord Ashburton (1731−83); his son Richard married Ann Cunningham; the title died with him in 1823.
9. The name given to several French dances, including the quadrille.
10. Journal of a Residence and Travels in Columbia during the years 1823 and 1824 by Captain Charles Stuart Cochrane of the Royal Navy (1825). Columbia, he wrote presents the gratifying spectacle of a nation successful in the vindication of its rights, and triumphant over the mean and mistaken policy that would have condemned it to a perpetuity of sloth, ignorance, bigoted superstition and slavery’. It was dedicated to Simon Bolivar.
11. This seems to be an uncharacteristic error as, according to the D.N.B., he married Jane Spencer-Wilson.
12. Basil Hall (1788−1844) published his book Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Islands in 1818 not 1817.
13. In fact Margaret married Basil Hall in 1825; she was the daughter of Sir John Hunter, a diplomat.
14. Sir James Hall, Bart. (1761−1832), made many contributions to geological studies; this book, entitled Essay on the Origin, History and Principles of Gothic Architecture, was published in 1813.
15. Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk (he succeeded after the deaths of six elder brothers) organised a successful colonising expedition to Prince Edward’s Island and one, fraught with controversy, to Red River in Manitoba.
16. Helen, daughter of the fourth Earl of Selkirk, had, in fact, three sons and three daughters; the eldest son may have been ‘a fool merely’ but he was also according to the D.N.B. an F.R.S.; Basil, the second son’s end was indeed ‘miserable’ for he became insane in 1842 and died two years later in Haslar Hospital.
17. See 11, p. 6.
18. Sir John Leslie (1766−1832): with the versatility of the Enlightenment, he succeeded Playfair to the Chair of Mathematics in 1805 when he moved to that of Natural Philosophy; and he in turn followed Playfair to that Chair on his death in 1819; Sir John was to be knighted in the year of his death.
19. Although Sir David Brewster was clearly suspected of Tory sympathies, he with Jeffrey and Clerk were ‘the intimate friends of my father’, and ‘among the cleverest of the Whigs’ (see 11,p. 2), Euphrosyne was one of the Three Graces.
20. See I, p. 143.
21. Sir Adam Hay (1795−1867) was M.P. for Linlithgow burghs (1826− 30). This tantalising hint as to the identity of E.G’s lover (see 11, pp. 14−22), alas, does not appear to fit any of his four married sisters.
22. Leith Walk was formed in 1774 and tolls were only abolished in 1835.
23. The Palace, its precincts and the Park were (until the ending of imprisonment for debt) a sanctuary for debtors so long so they only ventured out on Sunday; the peak numbers were 116 in 1816 (John Harrison, History of Holyrood).
24. See 1, pp. 182−3; as late as 1831 he is reported as filing a Bill in chancery to prove the validity of his parents’ marriage.
25. His mother’s family were the Earls of Dunmore and Galloway.
26. This visit to the eighth Earl (1759−1839) might be explained by Cock burn’s description of him as ‘the chief of the Whig party in Scotland.’
27. ‘Secretary to the G.P.O.’ (Scots Peerage).
28. After Lady Anne’s marriage, three of the four remaining daughters were to marry.
29. Brag is an early form of poker; Loo was a version of whist where any player failing to take a trick pays an agreed sum or ‘loo’ to the pool.
30. Newhaven pier was destroyed by a storm in 1797 and replaced in 1812 by a slip; the new Granton pier was where Queen Victoria landed in 1842.
31. Hebe was a daughter of Zeus, seen as the personification of Youth.
32. See 1, p.187.
33. The Trotter family were well-known for the quality of the furniture they supplied to the houses of this early stage of the development of the New Town of Edinburgh; Picardy Place, on the edge of one of its
most fashionable areas, is scarcely in ‘the fogs of Leith’.
34. For Lord Jeffrey see I, p. 76; the D.N.B. commented he was ‘chivalrous to women, with whom he liked to cultivate little flirtations’.
35. Dr Gordon (see 1, p. 298), whose Chair was Anatomy, died in June 1818; for Henry Cockburn his death ‘clouded our city’.
36. Erskine Sandford (1793−1861), son of the bishop of Edinburgh, was to become Sheriff of Galloway.
37. Daughter-in-law to Sarah Siddons.
38. George Augustus, second Marquess and sixth Earl of Donegal (1769−1844), married Anna May, illegitimate daughter of Sir Edmund May, Bart., in 1795. Until the act of Parliament, this brother was the rightful heir.
39. John Grosvenor (1742−1823): ‘for long the most noted practical surgeon in Oxford … he was specially successful in his treatment of stiff and diseased joints by friction.’ ( D.n.b.)
40. If E.G. ‘s mother shared her husband’s Whig principles then she would not have cared for the Due de Berry, nephew to Louis XVIII and great hope of the ’ultra’, legitimist faction in restoration France; he was assassinated in 1820. The verb ‘troquer’ (to barter) should be ‘triquer’ (to toast) … a rare error for E.G.
CHAPTER TWENTY
1817−1818
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 47