Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  We were obliged to offend poor Mrs Gillio about a trip to Roslin. She had hired a carriage, and made sure of our delighted acceptance of seats in it. We were to have cold meat and strawberries and cream at Lasswade, a day of thorough enjoyment; but as Amelia’s Beaux were to have joined the party, Miss Elphick took it upon herself to say that she could not sanction the excursion. Amelia gave us a very lively description of the pleasures we had lost, concluding by a fine trick she had played her Mother. Going, Mrs Gillio had packed up all her young ladies inside the carriage with herself; two gentlemen going on the box, the rest in a gig. Returning Miss Amelia had no intention of a continuance of ‘such old fudge’; so forming a respectable league with a ‘Goldwire,’ not the ‘pawing one’ it was to be hoped, ‘off him and me set, and jumped upon the dickey box.’ Dislodgement was stoutly resisted, and so there was rather a riotous journey home. Margaret, a pretty, gentle girl, was quite innocent of all these illbreedings. She occupied herself with her masters, her needleworks and her birds, and as a child, a companion for Mary, was very much with us, improving herself in every way with Mary in the schoolroom. A little spoiled Isabella, once so pretty, growing plain, was the plague of every body.

  We did not neglect our unfortunate Cousins in the Abbey. We never failed to visit them as when my Mother ordered the visit. Miss Carr, however, did not so much care to come to us, our ways were rather dull for her; Jane spent most of her time drawing, I worked a robe in imitation point, appliquée, intended for Mary’s first Northern Meeting. We were so quiet, so orderly, so very correct in our whole conduct during the absence of the Heads of the family, that on their return my father was addressed in the Parliament House by our opposite neighbour, a Writer who lived on a flat, a second storey, high enough for good observation, and assured by him of the perfect propriety of our behaviour.

  Jane’s turn for drawing had been considerably increased by some lessons from Mr Wilson, the head of the Academy of painting, to whom Lord Eldin had most especially recommended her. She went twice a week to his painting rooms, where she worked away in earnest with several clever companions, among them poor Marianne Grant of Kilgraston, who very soon married James Lindsay., and Grace Fletcher, both of them good painters in oils. Mr Wilson sometimes read a picture or a drawing or a print with his pupils, and as I sometimes took my work and went with Jane, I came in for the lecture. He began with the general effect, went on to the grouping, the shading, the light, the distance, the peculiar propriety of certain objects in certain situations, directing our attention to an apparent trifle on which perhaps the whole beauty depended. Always afterwards, whether viewing fine scenery or examining paintings, we applied these explanations to our pictures, and found our pleasure in them heightened beyond any previous idea. It was like opening another eye, an eye with brains behind it; and we had ample opportunity for exercising our newly perceived faculty, for not only was the surrounding sea and land and our own town beautiful as art and nature could make them, but we had access to an admirable collection of paintings by the best Ancient and modern Artists, gathered from all quarters early the following winter, and exhibited at small cost to all who chose to buy a ticket. An empty house in York Place was hired for the purpose, and open every morning to the publick. Once a week in the evening the holders of season tickets were admitted; the rooms were well warmed, well lighted, and there were plenty of seats and it really was the most agreeable of assemblies, there being a paramount object to engage the attention and furnish an unfailing subject of discourse, All the possessors of good paintings had contributed to this Collection. We used to know the owners of particular gems by the air of triumph with which they stood contemplating what they were thoroughly acquainted with, instead of searching out stranger beauties. Mr Wilson frequently called us to him there, when surrounded by eager listeners to his criticisms. He and I did not always agree! I never would at any time surrender my private judgment, tho’ I had sense enough to keep my free rights to myself.

  Before my father and Mother went north, Jane and I had spent a week with them at Hermandstone, an ugly but comfortable place which Lord Gillies rented of Lord St Clair. I had been there before, and we were often there again, and when they were quietly leading a country life with only a few intimate friends visiting them, it was very pleasant. But when they had all their rich, grand, formal East Lothian neighbours, we young people hated going there. Lord Gillies was extremely fond of aristocratick company; the more grandees he could seat together at his very splendidly furnished table the better pleased he seemed to be. How often we see this in those of humble birth, as if the having risen to a place in that ‘charmed circle’ did not add a lustre to it, when talents and probity such as his had been the passport. Mrs Gillies, well born and highly bred, took her position naturally, content with what contented him. Neither of them, for all this, ever neglected the poor relations. His one prosperous brother, the doctor and authour,3 was never as kindly welcomed as poor William, and poorer, more primitive Colin. At this very time William Gillies’ three children found their home with their uncle Adam; for years they had had no other, the two girls going to the different classes while in Edinburgh, the boy placed first at the High School and then sent to the Charter House; and every Saturday when in town there was a dinner for the young family connexions, school boys and girls, and College boys, all made as welcome as the grandees, and appearing a good deal happier. Miss Bessy Clerk and others used to fear that young people like William Gillies ‘children, brought up in such society, in a house so luxurious, would be spoiled for a ruder life, should such a change, as was most likely, come to them. But it did not so turn out; the change did come, and they bore it perfectly. Robert the com factor, Mary the Authouress, and Margaret the professional painter, have followed their different employments better than if they had never had their intellects improved by their superiour education. The Authouress and the painter in particular benefited by the early cultivation of their taste, neither did I ever hear that Robert did less in Mark Lane because he was capable of enjoying in his Villa at Kensington the refinements of a gentleman’s leisure. Margaret was never agreeable, but she was very clever. She did not wait to be turned out of Lord Gillies’ house by his death or any accident. ‘Uncle Adam,’ said she one day, ‘do you mean to leave Mary and me any thing in your Will?’ ‘Perhaps a trifle,’ answered the Uncle. ‘Not an independance?’ pursued the niece. ‘Certainly not, by no means; these are strange questions, Margaret.’ ‘Necessary ones, Uncle. My father has nothing to give us; he has married a second wife. We shall have then to work for our bread some time; we had better begin now while we are young, have health, activity, and friends to help us. I go to London next week.’ She did, to her father’s, where she was not welcome; so she hired two rooms, sent for Mary, began painting dauby portraits while learning her art more thoroughly; and when I saw them in their pretty home at Highgate they told me they had never been in want, nor ever regretted the decisive step they had taken.4 The friends were at first seriously displeased; but the success of the nieces in time appeased the Uncles, and both the doctor and Lord Gillies left them legacies.

  In the early part of the Edinburgh summers a good many very pleasant, quiet parties went on among such of us as had to remain in town till the Courts rose in July. I remember several very agreeable dinners at this season at the Arbuthnots, foreigners generally bringing their introductions about this time of year. At the Brewsters they had foreigners sent to them too, and they entertained them now, not in the flat where we first found them, but in their own house in A thole Crescent newly built out of the profits of the Kaleidoscope,5 a toy that was ridiculously the rage from its humble beginning in the tin tube with a perforated card in the end, to the fine brass instrument set on a stand, that was quite an ornament to a drawing room. Had Sir David managed matters well, this would have turned out quite a fortune to him; he missed the moment and only made a few thousand pounds; still they gave him ease, and that was a blessing. The little dinners at
his house were always pleasant. She was charming, and they selected their guests so well and were so particularly agreeable themselves, I don’t remember any where passing more thoroughly enjoyable evenings than at their house. He was then, and is still, not only among the first of scientifick men, but in manners and in conversation utterly delightful; no such favourite every where as Sir David Brewster, except at home or with anyone engaged with him in business. Irritable as a husband, careless of his wife, thankless for her unceasing attentions, tyrannical and penurious, her life was rendered miserable; harsh, even cruel, as a father, his children were terrified by him. Nobody ever had dealings with him and escaped a quarrel. Whether he were ill, the brain overworked and the body thus overweighted, or whether his wife did not understand him, or did not know and exert himself, there is no saying. His temper has much improved since his sensible very patient daughter grew up, and since Lady Brewster died before her sister Miss Macpherson, and so put the succession to Belleville out of his head.6 I have sometimes spent the greater part of a day with them, when he would leave all his calculations and devote himself to our amusement, keeping close by the side of our worktable for hours, without giving expression to one cross word, and at dinner he would be in high spirits. Holy days poor Lady Brewster called those bright gleams in her much vexed existence.

  At one of their small dinners my father and I could not take our eyes off a Tweedside neighbour, Miss Cochrane Johnstone. The Kaleidoscope had bought a few acres near Galla Water and built a small house upon them, where the Brewsters for some years passed every summer. She was one of the loveliest creatures that ever inherited broad lands, and she became the prize of a tall, red haired, rough sailor, who did not make her happy. She had a round beautiful figure, beautiful complexion, regular features, finely formed head, and a pair of almond shaped, warm, hazel, sleepy eyes, that must have killed every man they glanced on—gently. When I was reintroduced, in 1842 was it, to the widowed Lady Napier, a little thin, prim looking body surrounded by unmistakeably their father’s daughters, I could not recall a trace of her youthful beauty. It quite grieved me. Perhaps, if she remembered me, I may have struck her as as much changed.

  Miss Cochrane Wishart was another heiress that was thought handsome in a masculine way. She married a pretty little ladylike Sir Thomas Trowbridge, a sailor. A real beauty who was no heiress was a Miss Maclean. She made a perfect hubbub, and it was so odd a story altogether, the rights of it, as they say, not known till long afterwards.

  At a mess dinner the conversation turning on beauties, their varieties, their reputations, their fashion, their merits, etc., a young officer laid a bet that he would bring any pretty girl into notice and have her cried up as a wonder, by properly preparing for her reception by the publick. The bet was taken and the plot laid. The Barrack Master at Berwick had several pretty daughters; the handsomest was selected, and very soon a whisper grew to an inquiry, and the inquiry to a strong desire to see either herself, or some one who had seen the beautiful Miss Maclean. She was very judiciously kept just long enough in retirement to excite curiosity, and then she appeared on a visit to Mrs Major somebody. The accomplices praised her to the skies, her fame increased, the few that saw her reported in exstasies. Presently crowds followed her out goings and her in comings. She lived in a mob, and so interested everybody. Mrs Major became suddenly the rage, she had more invitations for herself and her friend than there was a possibility of accepting, and in a room the rudeness of Admirers quite blocked up the poor girl’s position, every eye too fixed on her. She really was a pretty creature, with a fine clear skin, dark hair and eyes, and a modest manner. She was not to be named by the side of many who had been less noticed, however. What stamped her celebrity was the notice taken of her by the Count and Countess Flahault; they invited her to stay with them, and as they saw company in an easy way every evening, Miss Maclean was at once raised into our great world. The Countess, Miss Mercer Elphinstone by birth, Baroness Keith in expectancy, had fallen in love with this most attractive foreigner and would marry him.7 An heir to her vast fortune was of consequence, and an heir did not come; all sorts of accidents preventing it. Little Dr Hamilton was consulted, and when the next occasion presented itself Madame de Flahault was condemned to her sofa; but as her mind was to be amused she was to pass her time cheerfully. There she lay, covered with a lace overlay lined with pink silk, her hair nicely arranged, chattering at a great rate to thirty or forty guests. She was a very ugly woman and not a clever one and very far from being generally agreeable. I do not think she would have continued to attract much company, men at least, whom she greatly preferred, without some such magnet as her new protégée. Miss Maclean’s reign was short, but like Miss Manie Dreghorn’s long before, Oh!, it was glorious. She had to return to Berwick, where she married poorly enough, a lieutenant in a marching regiment, a Mr Clarke; went with him to Bombay and died; and the young Officer won his bet.

  M. de Flahault was in manner perfection, a finished frenchman, than which one can go no further in describing a gentleman; very handsome too, of a lively conversation truly agreeable. One small trait much struck me and set me thinking too. Mrs Munro had a small party, a good many young people at it, so she wished to set them dancing. Who would play? Mrs This had not any musick, and Mrs That made some other excuse. My Mother desired me to go to the instrument, which of course I did. ‘Oh, no,’ said M. de Flahault, ‘that would be too severe a punishment to the gentlemen; let me relieve you, I can keep good time.’ He played particularly well, so that it was a treat to dance to him, but what I thought over was his putting himself and his playing out of the question; his intention was to assist the amusement of the evening, make every body happy, and pay a neat compliment the while. It was all so high bred, so very un British. He behaved very well to his somewhat haughty wife, and she got on very well with him always. They had in time three daughters, one married to Lord Shelburne, I think, and one dead, but no son ever.

  Lady Wiseman came to Edinburgh this summer; she was staying with her mother’s relations the old Miss Steuarts, Annie Need’s old friends, or foes, who on retiring from business had settled in their native town. She and two sisters, Mrs Rich and Mrs Erskine, were Sir James Mackintosh’s children by his first wife. She was a clever, flighty creature, very foolish in her conduct, plain in face, but very pleasant, and a great friend of Jane’s in a short time. After parting they corresponded. Sir William Wiseman being at sea, she had been left at Hertford College with her father, where she had picked up an admirer with whom her proceedings went rather beyond discretion, and so she was sent out of his way. No heart break for she very soon replaced him, first by Basil Hall, and then by Sir James Ramsay. It is to be hoped she then found safety in numbers. Afterwards, when she joined her husband on the Jamaica Station, she did not escape so well. She had two fine little boys: Willie, the present Baronet, who went to sea, and has come through life well, and dear little clever Jamie, who went all entirely wrong and shot himself in India. What has not a mother to answer for who deserts her children. How could she ever smile as Mrs Turnball. Above all, be saucy as she was at Grandville.

  I think it was about the May or June of this year that old Mrs Siddons returned to the stage for twelve nights to act for the benefit of her grandchildren.8 Henry Siddons was dead, leaving his affairs in much perplexity. He had purchased the theatre and never made it a paying concern, altho ‘his Wife acted perseveringly, and all the Kemble family came regularly and drew good houses. His ordinary company was not good; he was a dreadful stick himself, and he would keep the best parts for himself, and in every way managed badly. She did better after his death; her clever brother William Murray conducting affairs much more wisely for her, and certainly for himself in the end, slow as she was in perceiving this. Some pressing debts, however, required to be met, and Mrs Siddons came forward. We were all great play goers, often attending our own poor third rates, Mrs Harry redeeming all else in our eyes, and never missing the stars, John and Charles Kemb
le, Young, Liston, Matthews, Miss Stephens, etc. But to see the great queen again we had never dreamed of. She had taken leave of the stage before we left London. She was little changed, not at all in appearance, neither had her voice suffered; the limbs were just hardly stiffer, more slowly moved rather, therefore in the older characters she was the finest, most natural; they suited her age. Queen Catherine she took leave in. To my dying hour I never shall forget the trial scene; the silver tone of her severely cold ’My Lord Cardinal,’ and then on the wrong one starting up, the scorn of her attitude, and the outraged dignity of the voice in which she uttered ‘To You I speak.’9 We were breathless. Her sick room was very fine too. Then her Lady Macbeth, Volumnia, Constance10 —ah, no such acting since, for she was nature, on stilts in her private life. ‘Bring me some beer, boy, and another plate,’ is a true anecdote, blank verse and a tragick tone being her daily wear.