Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  Mr Loder24 brought an Opera company with him, and gave, not whole Operas, he had not strength enough for that, but very well got up scenes from several most in favour. It was a most agreeable variety in a place where publick amusements were but scantily supplied to the inhabitants. We had de Begnis and his wife,25 and scenes from Figaro, Don Giovanni, etc.; the rest of the artistes were very fair, but I forget their names. Going into a musick shop we saw on the Counter two numbers of a new work—the opera of Don Juan arranged for two performers on the pianoforte; the first attempt in a kind that had such success, and that brought real good musick within the power of the family circle. We secured our prize, Jane and I, hurried home, tried the first Scena, were delighted, gave a week to private, very diligent study, and when we had it all by heart, the first afternoon my father came up to spend the gloaming napping in an easy chair, we arrested his sleepy fit by ‘notte e giorno,’ to his amazement.26 He liked our Opera better, I think, than ‘Sul margine dun rio’ or ‘Ninetta cara,’27 for we had so lately heard all the airs we played that we were quite up to the proper style, and had ourselves all the desire in the world to give the musick we loved the expression intended by our then favourite composer, Mozart. William also began to try a few tenor duetts with me. Mrs Lacey had taken the trouble to teach him half a dozen for love. It is surprising how well he could do both tender and buffo. His ear either was slightly defective naturally, or from want of early exercise; this made it difficult to keep his voice in order, otherwise he was a most agreeable singer, and once set out kept the key well, but after a pause might begin flat again, never sharp luckily. Really our home concerts, with Mary Dalzel’s help, were very much applauded by our partial audience.

  Edinburgh did not afford much publick amusement. Except these Operas which were a chance, a stray Concert now and then, catches and glees being the most popular, and the six Assemblies, there were none other. The Assemblies were very ill attended, the small room never half full, the large, which held with ease twelve hundred people, was never entered except upon occasion of the Caledonian Hunt Ball, when the Members presented the tickets, and their friends graciously accepted the free entertainment. The very crowded dances at home, inconvenient, and troublesome and expensive as they were, seemed to be more popular than those easy balls, where for five shillings we had space, spring, a full orchestra, and plenty of slight refreshments. I heard afterwards that as private houses became more fully and handsomely furnished, the fashion of attending the Assemblies revived. McLeod of Harris did a very sensible thing the winter he married poor, pretty little Richmond Inglis. They were living with her father and mother, and so very much invited out that he did not think Mrs Inglis ‘perpetual entertainments sufficient return for the many civilities he and his young wife had received. He therefore hired Smart’s rooms where the dancing master had his Academy, asked every one he knew far and near, contracted for a supper, and gave the best ball I was ever at in my young days; a ball that finally established waltzing among us. This much persecuted dance had been struggling on for a season, gaining far less ground than the quadrilles; but a strong band mustering on this occasion, the very ‘propers’ gave in as by magick touch, and the whole large room was one whirligig. Harris himself danced for the first time at his own ball, and beautifully; his brother Charles was the Vestris28 of our Society—acknowledged. The Laird was even more graceful in his movements. ‘Ah!’ said poor Richmond, ‘if I had ever seen my husband dance, Mama would not have found it so difficult to get me to marry him.’ She saw his perfections too late, I fancy, for she left him and seven children afterwards.

  1. E.G. does her father less than justice; during these years he spoke regularly on Ireland, the Corn trade, Army expenditure, banking and, of course, Scots Law. Boswell himself was an M.P. 1816−21.

  2. John Clerk, who took the title Lord Eldin, died in 1832. The sale of his principal pictures, held in Picardy House, was remembered because a floor of the house fell in.

  3. For a contemporary assessment of his legal reputation, see Cockburn.

  4. Thackery’s The Snobs of England by One of Themselves appeared in Punch the year after E.G. began her Memoirs.

  5. He was Scott’s staunchest friend from school and college; his father during his long life (1723−1816) was successively Professor of Natural and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh—the book referred to is his History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1782).

  6. John Gibson Lockhart’s biography of his father-in-law was published in 1837−8; he was generous enough to write that Scott’s ‘intimacy with Adam was thus his first means of introduction to the higher literary society of Edinburgh’. (I, p.153). Ferguson’s long and eventful life (1771−1855) saw him Secretary to the Governor of the Channel Islands, Captain in Portugal during the Peninsular War, a prisoner of war for two years in France and, thanks to Sir Walter, Custodian of the Crown Jewels of Scotland.

  7. This increasingly uncharitable portrait is here quite wrong. Scott and Ferguson had travelled through the territory of The Lady of the Lake (1810), for example, and four years later he joined the Commissioners for the Northern Lights in a circumnavigation of Scotland, that provided material for his Orcadian novel The Pirate (1822).

  8. The Antiquary was published in 1816 and George IV conferred the baronetcy four years later.

  9. The mysterious circumstances of the early years of Charlotte Charpentier (Carpenter) are described in Edgar Johnson Sir Walter Scott: The Great Unknown. The second Marquis of Downshire was certainly her guardian from as early as 1786, but at the time she was conceived he was a sixteen year old at Eton. Her mother was far from being ‘of low degree’; M. Charpentier had worked in the French Embassy in Constantinople and became Master of the Military Academy at Lyons. The explanation for this hostile portrait probably lies in E.G.‘s distaste for Scott’s Tory politics and social pretensions.

  10. The eldest son Walter (1801−47) married Jane Jobson, a match which was set up by the joint efforts of his father and Sir Adam Ferguson; Charlotte Sophia

  (1799−1837) married John Gibson Lockhart whose biography of his father-in-law was the cause of his literary success in London; Anne (1803−33) and Charles (1805−41) both died unmarried.

  11. Mrs Jobson was an Athole Stewart, descending from Robert 11 through Alexander, the ‘Wolf of Badenoch’ (see 1, pp. 265); another attraction for the Scotts was that the prospective bride, Jane, was heiress to the estate of Lochore in Fife.

  12. Andrew Dalzel was Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh between 1772 and 1806.

  13. E.G.’s brother William married her daughter Sally; sister Jane took as her second husband Sir James Gibson Craig of Riccarton.

  14. Thomas Francis Kennedy of Dunure and Dalquarran Castle (1788−1871), and M.P. for Ayr, was appointed by Melbourne’s Whig government to be Paymaster of the Civil Service in Ireland in 1837, a post he held until 1856. His sister Grace (1782−1825) was well known for her religious tales. For once E.G.’s memory has let her down, for Kennedy’s mother was in fact Jane Adam, a daughter of the eldest of the famous architect brothers.

  15. This was Sir Archibald Allison (1797−1867) the historian, whose father had published an Essay an the Nature and Principles of Taste in 1790. His mother was Dorothea, daughter of Dr John Gregory, author of A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters.

  16. A later mention of this learned orientalist suggests he was John Crawford (1783−1868), author of History of the Indian Archipelago, written in three volumes by 1820.

  17. James Perry (1756−1821) purchased the Morning Chronicle in 1789; it became a leading Whig party journal.

  18. David Stewart published his Sketches of the Character, Manners and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland, with details of the Military Service of the Highland Regiments in two volumes in 1822, written as propaganda against emigration; he became governor of St Lucia in 1825.

  19. The learned but gauche tutor in Scott’s Guy Mannering.r />
  20. Topham Beauclerk (1739−80) was a member of Dr Johnson’s circle.

  21. Spiced wine or sherry with hot water.

  22. An aria from Handel’s oratorio, Theodora (1755).

  23. Francesco Bianchi committed suicide in 1810; his widow married another singer, John Lacey, two years later.

  24. John David Loder (1788−1846), violinist and musical publisher.

  25. The bass Guiseppi de Begnis married the soprano Giusepina Roazi in 1816.

  26. Leporello’s opening aria in Don Giovanni.

  27. The first, an Italian Arietta, was written by Vincenzo Pucitta (1778−1861) around this year 1818; the second is probably based on one of Ninette’s arias from La gazza ludra (Thieving Magpie) which Rossini had completed the year before.

  28. Born Lucia Elizabeth Mathews, Madame Vestris (1797−1856), was a well-known actress.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  1818−1819

  THE first summer we were in Picardy Place, 1818, we younger ones, or rather we girls remained there protected by Miss Elphick during the whole of it. When the fine weather came on in Spring we had resumed our excursions to Craig Crook, and it was then we got so intimate with Basil Hall. We could not have been acquainted with him while we lived in George Street, because he only returned from his Loo Choo cruise late in the Autumn of 1817. During the following winter we saw a good deal of him both before he went to London, and after they had tried to spoil him there, for he was made such a wonder of there, it was a miracle his head kept steady; but it was at Craig Crook that we became such friends. Cruel Lord Jeffrey limited his two young favourites to friendship; the Halls and the Selkirks were all so crazy that he forbid any warmer feelings, closetting Jane in his pretty Cabinet, and under the shades of the wood on Corstorphine Hill, to explain all the melancholy particulars. And then Basil went off to sea. The Jeffreys generally went out on Friday evenings, or, at any rate, on Saturdays, to a late dinner at Craig Crook, and came back to town on Monday morning, till the 12th of July released him from law labours. Jane and I frequently went with them, sometimes only to them for one day, returning in the evening. We never met any lady there but Mrs George Russell occasionally; a clever woman, not to my mind agreeable. The men were John Murray, now and then his elder brother, Tommy Thomson, Robert Graeme, Mr Fullerton till he married, James Keay till he married, William Clerk very seldom, Mr Cockburn always, John Jeffrey, the Moreheads now and then, chance celebrities, and a London friend at intervals. It was not a big wig set at all.1 My father, Lord Gillies, and such like dignitaries would have been quite out of place in this rather riotous crew; indeed, the prevailing free and easy tone did not altogether suit me. Individually, almost all of our party were agreeable, cleverly amusing. Collectively, there was far too much boisterous mirth for my taste. I preferred being with Mrs Jeffrey, that naturally charming woman, not then by any means sufficiently appreciated by those so much her inferiours. She and I spent our time gardening, she was a perfect florist, playing with little Charlotte, to whom all my old nursery tales and songs were new, preparing for the company, and chattering to one another. My gentleman friends were William Murray of Henderland, and Robert Graeme of Lynedoch; they used to find Mrs Jeffrey, chatty and stout, where we were weeding our borders, and often carry us off up the hill, Jane remaining queen of the bowling green. How much she was admired by all those clever heads.

  The dinners were delightful, so little form, so much fun, real wit sometimes, and always cheerfulness. The windows open to the garden, the sight and the scent of the flowers heightening the flavour of repasts unequalled for excellence. Wines, all our set were famous for having of the best and in startling variety—it was a mania; their cellars and their books divided the attention of the husband; the wife, alas, was more easily satisfied with the cookery. Except in a real old fashioned Scotch house, where no dish was attempted that was not national, the various abominations served up in corner dishes under French names were merely libels upon housekeeping. Mrs Jeffrey presented nothing upon her table but what her Cook could dress; her home fed fowl and home made bread, and fine cream and sweet butter, and juicy vegetables, all so good, served so well, the hot things hot, the fruits, creams, and butter so cold, gave such a feeling of comfort every one got good humoured, even cranky William Clerk. They were bright days, those happy summer days at Craig Crook.

  Another country house we were very much in was one the Gibsons had a lease of, Woodside. It was six miles from town, a good ride. We went out early, staid all day, and came back in the cool of the summer evening. They were kind people, the father and mother very little in our way, the sons not much, the seven daughters of all ages our great friends. Mrs Kaye and Jane drew most together, Cecilia and I; the little ones were pets, and very pretty ones. We rode a good deal, one at a time, with the Coachman attending. We had struck up a friendship with a Captain and Mrs Bingham through the medium of their three fine little boys. He commanded the frigate in the Roads, had succeeded Captain Dalling. In winter, they lived in lodgings in the town; in summer, took a small house close to the sea at Newhaven. They gave a very pretty party in town, towards the end of a winter, inviting people simply to spend the evening. We found tea, and a good many friends, and a very hearty Sailor’s welcome. After tea, said the Captain, ‘Couldn’t we get up a dance, don’t you think, for the young people,’ and pulling out a whistle gave a shrill call, on which in skipt half a dozen smart young sailors in their best, who wheeled out the tables, lifted up the carpet, settled the seats round the room, and then ushered in a Band. It had all been prepared before, but it was nicely done and a surprise, and put us all in high spirits. The sailors brought in supper at the proper time, and whilst we were enjoying our refreshments in the one room, they danced us a hornpipe in the other. When we rode to see them at Newhaven our luncheon was strawberries and cream. More than once we afterwards rowed to the frigate, and they gave us one little fête there on board; a dozen friends and a collation; the boats took us up the Forth for an hour instead of any dancing.

  Captain Bingham’s ‘impromptu fait à loisir’ party puts me in mind of Johnny Bell’s. He was the celebrated Surgeon,2 a morsel of a man married to a Wife as small, and they lived in rooms proportioned to their size, in a flat in George Street. He was extremely musical, of course collected a musical society about him; his instrument, the bass viol or double bass, bigger a great deal than himself; his hands could just meet on it, the bow producing sounds from those thick strings a giant could only have emulated. It was a Grace Baillie affair, their single Concert, the return for all they went to; their whole apartment thrown open, kitchen and bedroom and all, made to communicate not only by doors but by windows, oval windows cut in the walls, filled by book shelves at ordinary times and opened on this state occasion, having all the effect of mirrours, spectators fancying at first that the moving mob seen through these openings was a reflexion. The many tiny rooms were by this means really made into one large enough for the company, nearly all of whom met the eye at any spot, by turning round the head. Some one wondering where the little couple slept on this gala night, Lord Jeffrey gravely answered, ‘In the case of the bass viol.’ A brother, George Bell, a barrister, was a great friend of my father’s, a very first rate man; it was he who helped poor Duncan Cameron so well out of his scrape.

  In August my father and Mother and William went to the highlands. Johnny accompanied M. L’Espinasse to France. The little monkey had a turn for languages, was making good progress in French, so as a reward this pleasant trip was arranged for him. We three young ladies were left to amuse ourselves—and Miss Elphick. John Dalzel was good enough to take us long walks frequently, sometimes as far as Portobello, where Mrs Gillio had taken lodgings for sea bathing. She had been in considerable difficulties, poor woman, on account of her children. Amelia was very unmanageable, a forward flirting girl, by no means pleased when found fault with. George, her only son, had run away; after a search of some days he was discovered on board a collier, b
ent on going to sea. He made stipulations before consenting to return home, one of which was that he should no more attend the High School. One of her Indian friends placed him some where in England under a Tutor, who prepared young men for Cadetships; he got his appointment in proper time, and went out to Bombay, where he died. Just as he left Edinburgh the mother broke her leg, and it was to recover her strength that she was sent to the seaside. Nobody could be kinder than she ever was to us, and in every way by attention on our pan we tried to repay her warmth of feeling, but we could not go the length of having Amelia much with us, or of at all forming part of Amelia’s own society. She had picked up a very under set of girl acquaintance, with Beaux of manners agreeable to them, principally young medical students, as a Class, the lowest of all at college. She had a ‘Morris’ and a ‘Turnbull’ she called them all thus by their plain surnames, and ‘two Goldwires,’ and I really forget how many more, with whom she seemed to be equally intimate; for, by her account, extraordinary personal liberties seemed to be taken by these young men with those young ladies without much offence, though she confessed she did not approve of all proceedings. She ‘hated,’ she said, ‘pawing men.’ ‘Morris was not a pawing man, nor one of the Goldwires’s, but the other was, and so was Hogg, and it was quite unpleasant,’ she thought, ‘to have a great hot hand feeling all over one.’ We used to wonder at what School in Bath this girl could possibly have been educated.