AFTER a very short stay in the highlands we all came up to Picardy Place the end of October 1817, to meet my father on his return from Ireland. We soon settled ourselves in our spacious house, making ourselves more really at home than we had hitherto felt ourselves to be in town, having the certainty of no removal for three years. Still we younger ones were not soon reconciled to the situation, all our habits being disturbed by the separation from the West End! Three winters we spent here, none of them worthy of particular note, neither indeed can I at this distance of time separate the occurrences of each from the others. The usual routine seemed to be followed in all. My father and his new, very queer clerk, Mr Caw, worked away in their law chambers till my father went up to London late in Spring. The second winter he lost his seat for Grimsby, a richer competitor carried all votes, and for a few months he was out of Parliament. How much better it would have been for him had he remained out, stuck to the Bar, at which he really would have done well had he not left ever so many cases in the lurch when attending the ‘House,’ where he made no figure—he seldom spoke, said little when he did speak, and never in any way made himself of consequence. Only once, when all his party censured the Speaker, he made a little reputation by the polite severity of his few words, called by Sir Alexander Boswell his bit of brimstone and butter, a witticism that ran through all côteries, almost turning the laugh against the really clever speech.1 He dined out every where with my Mother while he was in Edinburgh, but hardly ever went out in an evening. He seemed, from his daily letters to my Mother, to go a good deal into society while he was in London, dining at Holland House, Lord Lansdowne’s, Lord Grey’s, all the Whigs in fact, for he got into Parliament again. The Duke of Bedford gave him Tavistock till one of his own sons should be ready for it.
Five or six dinners, two small evening parties, and one large one, a regular rout, paid my mother’s debts in the visiting line each winter. She understood the management of company so well, every assembly of whatever kind always went off admirably at her house. In particular she lighted her rooms brilliantly, had plenty of refreshments, abundance of attendants, always a piece of matting spread from the carriage steps to the house door, and two dressing rooms with toilettes, good fires, hot water, and in the one prepared for the ladies stood a maid with thread and needle in case of accident. Every body praised, though few imitated; such preparations involved a little trouble, besides requiring more rooms than many people had to dispose of. We dined out a great deal, Jane and I taking the dinners in turns. We both went out in the evenings except when I could manage an escape, which was easier than formerly, my Mother having given me up as a matrimonial speculation, and Jane really delighting in Society. We got into rather a graver set than we had belonged to while in the sunshine of George Street and Charlotte Square, not quite giving up our gayer companions, but the distance from them was so great our easy sociable intercourse was very much broken. In our own short street we knew only John Clerk, not then a judge, and his truly agreeable sister Miss Bessy. We half lived in their house, William, Jane and I. They never gave a dinner without one of us being wanted to fill the place of an apology, and none of us ever shirked the summons feeling so at home, and meeting always such pleasant people. All the Law set of course, judges, barristers, and Writers; some of the literary, some of the scientifick, and a great many country families. The drawing rooms, four of them, were just a picture gallery, hung with paintings by the ‘ancient masters,’ some of them genuine! There were besides portfolios of prints, clever caricatures, and original sketches, these last undoubted and very valuable. John Clerk was a Collector; a thousand curiosities were spread about. He made more of his profession than any man at the Bar, and with his ready money commanded the market to a certain extent. The last purchase was the favourite always, indeed the only one worth possessing, so that it almost seemed as if the enjoyment was in the acquisition, not in the intrinsick merit of the object. A hideous daub called a Rubens, a crowd of fat lumps of children miscalled angels, with as much to spare of ‘de quoi’ as would have supplied the deficiencies of the whole cherubim, was the wonder of the world for ever so long; my wonder too, for if it was a Rubens it must have been a mere sketch, and never finished. I think I have heard that at the sale of this museum on Lord Eldin’s death, a great many of his best loved pictures were acknowledged to be trash.2
I did not like him; the immorality of his private life was very discreditable; he was cynical too, severe, very, when offended, though of a kindly nature in the main. His talents there was no dispute about, though his reputation certainly was enhanced by his eccentricities and by his personal appearance, which was truly hideous. He was very lame, one leg being many inches shorter than the other, and his countenance, harsh and heavy when composed, became demoniack when illumined by the mocking smile that sometimes relaxed it. I always thought him the personification of the devil on two sticks, a living, actual Mephistopheles. He spoke but little to his guests, uttering some caustick remark, cruelly applicable, at rare intervals, treasured up by every body around as another saying of the Wise man’s deserving of being written in gold, eastern fashion. When he did rouse up beyond this, his exposition of any subject he warmed on was really luminous, masterly, carried one away. The young men were all frightened to death of him; he did look as if he could bite, and as if the bite would be deadly. The young ladies played with the monster, for he was very gentle to us.
In the parliament house, as the Courts of Justice are called in Scotland, he was a very tiger, seizing on his adversary with tooth and nail, and demolishing him without mercy, often without justice, for he was a true Advocate, heart and soul, right or wrong, in his client’s cause. Standing very upright on the long leg, half a dozen pair of spectacles shoved up over his forehead, his wickedest countenance on, beaming with energy, he poured forth in his broad scotch a torrent of flaming rhetorick too bewildering to be often very successfully opposed. There was a story went of his once having mistaken a case, and so in his most vehement manner pleading on the wrong side, the Attorneys, called writers with us, in vain whispering and touching and pulling, trying in their agony every possible means of recalling his attention. At last he was made to comprehend the mischief he was doing. So he paused—for breath, readjusted his notes, probably never before looked at, held out his hand for the spectacles his old fat clerk Mr George had always a packet of ready, put them on, shoved them up over all the series sent up before, and then turning to the Judge resumed his address thus, ‘Having now, my lord, to the best of my ability stated my opponent’s case as strongly as it is possible for even my learned brother’—bowing to the opposite Counsel with a peculiar swing of the short leg—‘to argue it, I shall proceed point by point to refute every plea advanced, etc. etc.’; and he did, amid a convulsion of laughter. As a consulting lawyer he was calm and clear, a favourite Arbitrator, making indeed most of his heavy fees by chamber practice.3
The sort of tart things he said at dinner were like this. Some one having died, a man of birth and fortune in the West country, rather celebrated during his life for drawing pretty freely with the long bow in conversation, it was remarked that the heir had buried him with much pomp, and had ordered for his remains a handsome monument: ‘wi’ an epitaph,’ said John Clerk in his broadest border dialect; ‘he must hae an epitaph, an appropriate epitaph, an’ we’ll change the exordium out o’ respect. Instead Here lies, we’ll begin his epitaph wi’ Here continues to lie wish I could remember more of them; they were scattered broadcast, and too many fell by the wayside. The sister who lived with him and kept his house must in her youth have been a beauty. Indeed she acknowledged this, and told how to enhance it, she had when about fifteen possessed herself of her mother’s patch box, and not content with one or two black spots to brighten her complexion, had stuck on a whole shower, and thus speckled had set out on a very satisfactory walk, every one she met staring at her admiringly. A deal of such quiet fun enlivened her conversation, adding considerably to the attracti
on of a thoroughly well bred manner. She painted a little, modelled in clay beautifully, sometimes finishing her small groups in ivory, and her busts in stone or marble. She was well read in French and English Classicks, had seen much, suffered some, reflected a good deal. She was a most charming companion, saying often in few words what one could think over at good length. She was very proud—the Clerks of Eldin had every right so to be—and the patronising pity with which she folded up her ancient skirts from contact with the snobs, as we call them now,4 whom she met and visited and was studiously polite to, was often my amusement to watch. She never disparaged them by a syllable individually, but she would describe a rather fast family as ‘the sort of people you never see in mourning,’ ‘persons likely to make the mistake of being in advance of the fashion—so busy trying to push themselves into a place and not succeeding,’ added with a smile a trifle akin to her brother’s.
There was a younger brother William who, likewise a bachelour, had some office with a small salary and lived in lodgings, dining out every day, for no party was complete without him. He was less kindly than John, but his manner concealed this. He was as clever, if not cleverer, but too indolent to make any use of his great natural abilities. He had never practised at the Bar, and was quite content with his small income and his large reputation, though I have heard say, when wondering at the extent of his information, that his memory was regularly refreshed for society, it being his habit to read up in the morning for his display in the evening, and then dexterously turn the Conversation into the prepared channel. He told a story better than any one in the world, except his friend Sir Adam Ferguson. He one dark winter’s evening over the fire gave us a whole murder case so graphically that when he seized me to illustrate the manner of the strangling, I and the whole of the rest of us shrieked. I never trembled so much in my life.
Sir Adam Ferguson was the son of the ‘Roman Antiquities’;5 another idler. He was fond in the summer of walking excursions in two or three localities where he had friends, in the Perthshire highlands, along the coasts of Fife and Forfar, and in the border country, the heights along the Tweed, etc. Mark the points well. His acquaintance were of all ranks. He had eyes, ears, observation of all kinds, a wonderful memory, extraordinary powers of imitation, a pleasure in detailing—acting, in fact, all that occurred to him. He was the bosom friend of Walter Scott; he and William Clerk lived half their time with the ‘great novelist,’ and it was very ungenerous in him and Mr Lockhart to have made so little mention of them in the biography, for most undoubtedly Sir Adam Ferguson was the ‘nature’ from which many of these lifelike pictures were drawn.6 We, who knew all, recognised our old familiar stories, nay, characters, and afterwards accounted for the silence on the subject of the friends from the desire to avoid acknowledging the rich source that had been so constantly drawn on. Walter Scott had never crossed the Firth of Forth as far as I know.7
Waverley came out, I think it must have been in the autumn of 1814, just before we went first to Edinburgh. It was brought to us to the Doune, I know, by ‘little Jemmy Simpson,’ as that good man, since so famous, was then most irreverently called. Some liked the book, he said; he thought himself it was in parts quite beyond the common run, and the determined mystery as to the Authour added much to its vogue. I did not like it. The opening English scenes were to me intolerably dull, so lengthy, and so prosy, and the persons introduced so uninteresting, the hero contemptible, the two heroines unnatural and disagreeable, and the whole idea given of the highlands so utterly at variance with truth. I read it again long afterwards, and remained of the same mind. Then burst out Guy Mannering, carrying all the world before it, in spite of the very pitiful setting, the gipsies, the smugglers, and Dandie Dinmont are surrounded by. Here again is the copyist, the scenery Dumfries and Galloway, the dialect Forfar. People now began to feel these works could come but from one Authour, particularly as a few acres began to be added to the recent purchase of the old tower of Abbotsford, and Mrs Scott set up a carriage, a Barouche landau built in London, and which from the time she got it she was seldom out of, appearing indeed to spend her life in driving about the streets all day. I forget which came next, the Baronetcy or the Antiquary—the one was very quickly succeeded by the other8 —and were followed by the Castle at Abbotsford, that monument of vanity, human absurdity, or madness, William Clerk used to speak of this most melancholy act of folly almost with tears.
I was never in company with Walter Scott; he went very little out, and when he did go he was not agreeable, generally sitting very silent, looking dull and listless, unless an occasional flash lighted up his heavy countenance. In his own house he was another character, especially if he liked his guests. His family were all inferiour. I have often thought that this was the reason of the insipidity of his ideal gentlemen and ladies—he knew none better. Lady Scott,9 a natural daughter of a Marquis of Downshire, her mother French of low degree, herself half educated in Paris, very silly and very foolish, was a most unfortunate mate for such a man. When I saw her she had no remains of beauty, dressed fantastically, spoke the greatest nonsense in her broken English—and very frequently had taken too much wine. I recollect one evening at the Miss Pringles’, she was actually unconscious of her actions, poor Anne Scott vainly trying to conceal her condition, till catching sight of William Clerk they got her to go away, The excuse was Asthma, a particular Asthma tick affection, which a glass or more of Madeira relieved. Such a Mother could scarcely do much for or with her children. The eldest son, Walter, was a mere good-natured goose forced into a marriage he hated and never able to get over the annoyance his unsuitable partner gave him. The younger, Charles, was thought more of, he died on his travels before being in any way brought to notice. Sophy, Mrs Lockhart, was an awkward, very ignorant girl, not exactly plain yet scarcely otherwise, her husband did a great deal with her. She was liked in London, her manner remaining simple after it was softened. Anne was odious—very ugly and very pretending and very unpopular, which she should not have been, would not, had she been less exacting, less irritable, for she was a good daughter in different ways to both parents.10 It was odd, but Sir Walter never had the reputation in Edinburgh he had elsewhere—was not the Lion, I mean. His wonderful works were looked for, read with avidity, praised on all hands, still the Authour made far less noise at home than he did abroad. The fat, very vulgar Mrs Jobson, whose low husband had made his large fortune at Dundee by pickling herrings, on being congratulated at the approaching marriage of her daughter to Sir Walter’s son, said the young people were attached, which was not true, otherwise her Jane might have looked higher. It was only a baronetcy, and quite a late creation.11
Another family in the Clerk set and ours were the Dalzels; they lived in a small house just behind Picardy Place, in Albany or Forth Street. They were a Professor’s Widow,12 her sister, and her sons and daughters, reduced in the short space of a few years to the one son and one daughter who still survive. Mary Dalzel played well on the piano forte; there was no other talent among them. The Professor had been a learned but a singularly simple man. He had been tutor to either Lord Lauderdale or to his eldest son, and they had a story of him which Lady Mary told us, that at dinner at Dunbar—a large party—a guest alluding to the profligacy of some prominent political character, Mr Dalzel burst in with, ‘There has not been such a rogue unhanged since the days of the wicked Duke of Lauderdale.’ John Dalzel was a great companion of my brother William’s; they had gone through College, and were now studying for their Civil Law trials together. He was dull but persevering, and might have risen to respectability at least in his profession had he lived.
In York Place we had only the old Miss Pringles, chiefly remarkable for never in the morning going out together—always different ways, that when they met at dinner there might be the more to say; and Miss Kate Sinclair; and two families which, all unguessed by us, were destined to have such close connexion with us hereafter, Mrs Henry Siddons and the Gibson Craigs.13 Mrs Siddons was now a Wido
w living with her two very nice daughters and her two charming little boys, quietly as became her circumstances. She acted regularly, as the main prop of the Theatre on which the principal part of her income depended. She went a little into society. She had pleasure in seeing her friends in a morning in her own house, and the friends were always delighted to go to see her, she was so very agreeable. The girls were great friends of my sister Mary’s. The little boys were my Mother’s passion, they were with us for ever, quite little pets. The Gibsons, who were not Craigs then, we got more intimate with after they moved to a fine large house Mr Gibson was building in Picardy Place when we went there. There were two sons, and seven daughters of every age, all of them younger than the brothers. Mr Shannon, the Irish chaplain of the Episcopal chapel we attended, the fashionable one, lived in York Place, and the Gillies’s, with whom we were as intimate as with the Clerks, and on the same easy terms; we young people being called on when wanted, and never loth to answer the call, Lord Gillies being kind in his rough way, and Mrs Gillies then, as now, delightful, Their nieces Mary and Margaret at this time lived with them.
Jane and I added to our private list of so called friends Mr Kennedy of Dunure, whose sister wrote Father Clement, whose Mother, beautiful at eighty, was sister to the Mother of Lord Brougham, who himself married Sir Samuel Romilly’s daughter and held for many years a high situation here in Ireland.14 Archy Allison, now Sir Archibald, heavy, awkward, plain, and yet foredoomed to greatness by the united testimony of every one sufficiently acquainted with him. His father, one of the Episcopal Chaplains and author of a work on Taste, had married Mrs Montague’s Miss Gregory, so there was celebrity on all sides.15 Willy and Walter Campbell, Uncle and nephew the same age. Willy Campbell of Winton was really a favourite with all the world, and most certainly would have shone in it had he been spared; he died in Greece, bequeathing his immense fortune equally between his two sisters, Lady Ruthven and Lady Belhaven; they were all three the children of a second marriage of old Campbell of Shawfield’s with the heiress of Winton, Robert Hay, Captain Dalzel who lent us the whole of M. Jouy’s then published works beginning with L’hermite de la Chaussée d’Antin, and the Scots Greys, completed our first winter’s List. There was always a Cavalry regiment at the barracks at Piers Hill, and in this fine corps was a nephew of General Need’s, Tom Walker, who was the means of introducing us to the rest of the Officers.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 48