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WE put all our home affairs
in order for our long absence, and then we set out for Edinburgh. My
father had taken there the most disagreeable house possible; a large
gloomy No. 11 in Queen Street, on the front of which the sun never
shone, and which was so built against behind that there was no free
circulation of air through it. It belonged to Lady Augusta Clavering,
once Campbell, one of the handsome sisters of the handsome Duke of
Argyll, who had run off from a masquerade with a lover who made her
bitterly repent she ever took him for a husband. It was comfortable
within, plenty of rooms in it, four good ones on a floor, but they did
not communicate. The drawing-room was very large, four windows along the
side of it. There were, however, no convenient rooms for refreshments
for evening parties, so during our stay in it nothing could be given but
dinners, and very few of them, for none of us were in very good-humour.
It was well for me that my little bedroom was to the sunny and quiet
back of the house, and on the drawing- room floor, for I had to spend
many a week in it. A long illness beginning with a cold confined me
there during the early part of the winter, and when I began to recover I
was so weakened that dear and kind Dr Gordon, who had attended me with
the affection of a brother, positively forbade all hot rooms and late
hours. It was a sentence I would have wished him to pronounce, for I was
sick of those everlasting gaieties, and with his encouragement and the
assistance of a few other friends I was making for myself, I was able to
find employment for my time infinitely more agreeable than that round of
frivolous company.
We had two pieces of
family news to raise our spirits. Uncle Edward and Annie Grant were
married —not to each other! He in Bombay, now a Judge of the Sudder, had
married a Miss Rawlins, the daughter of an old Madras civilian, a highly
respectable connection; and she in Bengal, had become the wife of
Major-General N--, commanding at Cawnpore, a King's Cavalry officer. I
have quite forgot, I see, to mention that when we left London she had
gone on a visit to Mrs Drury, the sister of Mr Hunter, husband of one of
the Malings. Mrs Drury took such a fancy to her that she would not part
with her, at least not to a house of business. She proposed to my father
to equip her for India. She went out with Miss Stairs, sister to Lady
Bury and Mrs Vine, and she was received by Mrs Irwine Maling, from whose
house she married.
We were inundated this
whole winter with a deluge of a dull ugly colour called Waterloo blue,
copied from the dye used in Flanders for the calico of which the
peasantry made their smock-frocks or blouses. Everything new was
"Waterloo," not unreasonably, it had been such a victory, such an event,
after so many years of exhausting suffering; and as a surname to hats,
coats, trousers, instruments, furniture, it was very well —a fair way of
trying to perpetuate tranquillity; but to deluge us with that vile
indigo, so unbecoming even to the fairest! It was really a punishment;
none of us were sufficiently patriotic to deform ourselves by wearing
it. The fashions were remarkably ugly this season. I got nothing new, as
I went out so little, till the spring, then white muslin frocks were the
most suitable dress for the small parties then given. There was a dearth
of news, too, a lull after the war excitement; or my feeling stupid
might make all seem so. I know my memory recollects this as a
disagreeable winter. The lawyers were busy with a contemplated change in
the Jury Court. Trial by jury in civil cases had not, up to this date,
been the custom in Scotland. In penal cases the Scotch jury law so far
differed from the English that a majority of voices convicted the
prisoner; unanimity was unnecessary; and this, which many sagacious
lawyers considered the better rule, was not to be interfered with, it
was only to be extended to civil cases. The machinery of the Courts of
Justice had of course to be slightly altered for this change of system.
If I remember rightly, two new Barons were required, and a Chief Baron,
whom we had never had before. Sir William Shepherd, from the London Bar,
was sent in this capacity to set it all going. His very English wife
came with him, and amused us more than I can tell with her cockneyisms.
He was very agreeable. It may seem beyond the range of a girl of my then
age to have entered into so grave a subject, but this sort of topic was
becoming my business. I wrote quickly and clearly, and seldom made
mistakes; my father, though he had a clerk, frequently found it suit him
to employ me as his more private secretary. I even helped him to correct
the press for some of his pamphlets, sought out and marked his
references, and could be trusted to make necessary notes. I delighted in
this occupation, and was frequently indulged in it both in town and
country at such odd times as help was wanted. Indeed from henceforward I
was his assistant in almost all employments—work much more to my mind
than that eternal "outing."
In July we returned to
the Doune. We had not many visitors, so far as I recollect. The country
was filled with half-pay officers, many of them returned wounded to very
humble homes in search of a renewal of the health they had bartered for
glory. A few of these had been raised to a rank they were certainly far
from adorning; very unfit claimants got commissions occasionally in
those war days. Lord Huntly had most improperly so advanced one or two
of his servants' sons, and in the German legion there had been two
lieutenants who began life as carpenter's apprentices to Donald Maclean.
One of these, Sandy Macbean, who lived the rest of his days at Guislich
under the title of the Offislier, attended the church very smart, and
dined once every season at our table as was now his due, had helped to
alter the staircase with the same hands that afterwards held his sword.
Kinrara was very full
this season, and very pleasant. The charming Duchess, whose heart was in
the Highlands, had left orders to be buried on the banks of the Spey in
a field she had herself planted out. Lord Huntly planted a few larch
round the enclosure, but Lady Huntly laid out a beautiful shrubbery and
extended the plantation, making paths through it. The grave was covered
by a plain marble slab, but behind this rose a stunted obelisk of
granite, having on its front by way of inscription the names of all het
children with their marriages; this was by her own desire. Her youngest
son, Alexander, died unmarried before herself; Lord Huntly she left a
bachelor. Her four younger daughters had all made distinguished
connections; the eldest, and the best bred amongst them, showed to less
effect among the list of great names, but then she had two husbands to
make up for their being commoners. The first, Sir John Sinclair of
Murkie, was her cousin; they had one child only, the merry sailor son
whom every one was fond of. The second husband was a Mr Palmer of
Bedfordshire. The second daughter was Duchess of Richmond, the third
Duchess of Manchester, the fourth Marchioness of Cornwallis, the fifth
Duchess of Bedford. When the Duchess of Manchester was driven from the
house of the husband she had disgraced, she left behind her two sons,
and six daughters placed by their father under the care of a governess
to be superintended by the Dowager Duchess; the boys were at Eton. The
eldest of these girls, however, Lady Jane Montague, had almost always
lived with her other grandmother, the Duchess of Gordon. She it was who
danced the Shean Trews, and trotted over to the Doune on her pony as
often nearly as she stayed at home. My father and mother were dotingly
fond of her, for she was a fine natural creature, quite unspoiled. When
our Duchess, as we always called her, died, Lady Jane was not happy at
home with her younger sisters and their governess; she went to live with
her aunt the Duchess of Bedford, and was shortly announced to be on the
point of marriage with the second of the Duke's three sons by his first
wife— Lord William Russell. Next we heard she was very ill,
consumptive—dying—and that kind aunt took her to Nice, and attended her
like a mother till she laid her in her grave. It was a grief to every
one that knew her, particularly those who had watched the fair show of
her childhood.
The second of these
deserted girls was now of an age to be introduced into society, and Lord
and Lady Huntly brought her with them to Kinrara. No, it was the third,
Lady Susan, a beautiful creature; the second, Lady Elizabeth, was just
married to a handsome Colonel Steele, with whom she had become
acquainted through her governess. It was on Lady Susan's account that
Kinrara was made so particularly agreeable. There were plenty of morning
strolls and evening dances, a little tour of visits afterwards, all
ending in her engagement to the Marquis of Tweed- dale, a man liked I
believe by men, and it was said by some women—of extraordinary taste, to
my mind; for, thick-set and square-built and coarse-mannered, with that
flat Maitland face which when it once gets into a family never can be
got out of it, he was altogether the ugliest boxer or bruiser-looking
sort of common order of prize-fighter that ever was seen out of a ring.
Yet he had a kind manner and a pleasant smile, and he made a tender
husband to this sweet gentle creature, who accepted him of her own free
will and never regretted the union.
Neither house went to the
Tryst this year, nor to the Meeting. Lady Susan's approaching marriage
prevented any public displays from Kinrara, and my father having been
called to a distance on business the Doune did not care to exhibit
without him.
In November 1816 we
travelled back to Edinburgh to take possession of Sir John Hay's house
in George Street, an infinitely more agreeable winter residence than
Lady Augusta Clavering's very gloomy old barrack in Queen Street. It was
an excellent family house, warm, cheerful, and airy, with abundant
accommodation for a larger party than ours; but there was the same fault
of only one drawing-room and a small study off it. Perhaps my father
wanted no space for a ball. The town was much fuller than it had been
before, of course gayer, many very pleasant people were added to our
society. War was over, all its anxieties, all its sorrows had passed
away, and though there must have been many sad homes made for ever, in a
degree, desolate, these individual griefs did not affect the surface of
our cheerful world. The bitterness of party still prevailed too much in
the town, estranging many who would have been improved by mixing more
with one another. Also it was a bad system that divided us all into
small coteries; the bounds were not strictly defined, and far from
strictly kept; still, the various little sections were all there, apart,
each small set over-valuing itself and under-valuing its neighbours.
There was the fashionable set, headed by Lady Gray of Kinfauns, Lady
Molesworth unwillingly admitted, her sister Mrs Munro, and several other
regular party-giving women, seeming to live for crowds at home and
abroad. Lady Moles- worth, the fast daughter of a managing manceuvring
mother, very clever, no longer young, ran off with a boy at college of
old Cornish family and large fortune, and made him an admirable wife—for
he was little beyond a fool—and gave him a clever son, the present Sir
William Molesworth. Within, or beyond this, was an exclusive set, the
Macleods of Macleod, Cumming-Gordons, Shaw-Stewarts, Murrays of
Ochtertyre, etc. Then there was a card-playing set, of which old Mrs
Oliphant of Rossie was the principal support, assisted by her daughters
Mrs Grant of Kilgraston and Mrs Veitch, Mr and Mrs Massie, Mr and Mrs
Richmond (she was sister to Sir Thomas Liddell, Lord Ravensworth), Miss
Sinclair of Murkle the Duchess of Gordon's first cousin and the image of
her, Sam Anderson and others. By the bye, Mrs Richmond was the heroine
of the queer story in Mr Ward's Tremaine, and she actually did wear the
breeches. Then there was a quiet country-gentleman set, Lord and Lady
Wemyss, all the Campbells, Lord and Lady Murray, Sir James and Lady
Helen Hall, Sir John and Lady Stewart Hay, and so forth. A literary set,
including college professors, authors, and others pleased so to
represent themselves; a clever set with Mrs Fletcher; the law set;
strangers, and inferiors. All shook up together they would have done
very well. Even when partially mingled they were very agreeable. When
primmed up, each phalanx apart, on two sides of the turbulent stream of
politics, arrayed as if for battle, there was really some fear of a
clash at times. We were so fortunate as to skim the cream, I think, off
all varieties; though my father publicly was violent in his Whiggism he
did not let it interfere with the amenities of private life, and my
mother kept herself quite aloof from all party work.
The Lord Provost of
Edinburgh was seldom in any of these sets; he was generally a tradesman
of repute among his equals, and in their society he was content to
abide. This year the choice happened to fall on a little man of good
family, highly connected in the mercantile world, married to an
Inverness Alves, and much liked. I don't remember what his pursuit was,
whether he was a banker, or agent for the great Madras house his brother
George was the head of, but he was a kind hospitable man, his wife Mrs
Arbuthnot very Highland, and they were general favourites. He was chosen
Provost again when his three years were out, so he received the king,
George IV., on his memorable visit, and was made a baronet. Just before
him we had had Sir John Marjoribanks of Lees, mercantile too. After him,
the Town Council went back to their own degree. The name amongst us for
Sir William Arbuthnot was Dicky Gossip, and richly he deserved it, for
he knew all that was doing everywhere to everybody, all that was
pleasant to know; a bit of ill-nature or a bit of ill-news he never
uttered. After a visit from him and his excellent wife—they were fond of
going about together—a deal of what was going on seemed to have suddenly
enlightened their listeners, and most agreeably. A tale of scandal never
spread from them, nor yet a sarcasm. They, from their situation, saw a
great deal of company and no parties could be pleasanter than those they
gave.
There were very few large
balls given this winter. Lady Gray, Mrs Grant of Kilgraston, Mrs
Macleod, and a few others retained this old method of entertaining. A
much more pleasant style of smaller parties had come into fashion with
the new style of dancing. It was the first season of quadrilles, against
the introduction of which there had been a great stand made by
old-fashioned respectables. Many resisted the new French figures
altogether, and it was a pity to give up the merry country dance, in
which the warfare between the two opinions resulted; but we young people
were all bit by the quadrille mania, and I was one of the set that
brought them first into notice. We practised privately by the aid of a
very much better master than Mr Smart. Finlay Dunn had been abroad, and
imported all the most graceful steps from Paris; and having kept our
secret well, we burst upon the world at a select reunion at the White
Melvilles', the spectators standing on the chairs and sofas to admire
us. People danced in those days; we did not merely stand and talk, look
about bewildered for our vis-a-vis, return to our partners either too
soon or too late, without any regard to the completion of the figure,
the conclusion of the measure, or the step belonging to it; we attended
to our business, we moved in cadence, easily and quietly, embarrassing
no one and appearing to advantage ourselves. We were only eight; Mr
White Melville and Nancy Macleod opposite to Charles Cochrane and me,
Johnnie Melville and Charles Macleod with Fanny Hall and Miss Melville.
So well did we all perform, that our exhibition was called for and
repeated several times in the course of the evening. We had no trouble
in enlisting co-operators, the rage for quadrilles spread, the
dancing-master was in every house, and every other style discarded. Room
being required for the display, much smaller parties were invited. Two,
or at most three, instruments sufficed for band, refreshments suited
better than suppers, an economy that enabled the inviters to give three
or four of these sociable little dances at less cost than one ball; it
was every way an improvement. My mother gave several of these small
parties so well suited to the accommodation of our house, and at no cost
to my father, uncle Edward having sent her for the purpose of being
spent in any way she liked upon her daughter, a hundred pounds.
At our little parties
Jane came out amazingly; she was never shy, always natural and gay and
clever, and though not strictly handsome, she looked so bright, so well,
with her fine eyes and her rosy lips, she was in extreme request with
all our beaux. To the old set of the two former winters I had added
considerably during the course of this more sociable one, and Jane went
shares whenever she was seen. She carried one altogether away from me,
the celebrated Basil Hall. He had this very year returned from Loo Choo,
had published his book, brought home fiat needles, and cloth made from
wood, and a funny cap which he put on very good-humouredly, and
chop-sticks with which he ate very obligingly; in short, he did the
polite voyager to no end. Jane was quite taken with him, so was Jane
Hunter; Margaret Hunter and I used to be amused with them and him, and
wonder how they could wait on the lion so perseveringly. He was the
second son of Sir James Hall, a man not actually crazy, but not ar from
it; so given up to scientific pursuits as to be incapable of attending
to his private affairs. They were in consequence much disordered, and
they would have been entirely deranged but for the care of his wife,
Lady Helen. Sir James had lately published a truly ingenious work, an
attempt to deduce Gothic architecture from the original wigwams made of
reeds. The drawings were beautifully executed, not by himself, I fancy,
and by them he showed clearly the fluted pillars of stone copied from
faggots of osier, groined arches from the slender shoots bent over and
tied together, buds originating ornaments; a fanciful theory maybe, yet
with some show of reason in it.
Dr Hope was the professor
of chemistry, an old admirer of my aunt Mary's, and still the flutterer
round every new beauty that appeared. I preferred him to Professor
Leslie because he was clean, but not to Professor Playfair; he, old,
ugly, and absent, was charming, fond of the young who none of them
feared him, glad to be drawn away from his mathematical difficulties to
laugh over a tea-table with such as Jane and me. We were favourites too
with Dr Brewster, who was particularly agreeable, and with John Clerk,
who called Jane, Euphrosyne, and with Mr Jeffrey with whom we gradually
came to spend a great deal of time. I had Lord Buchan all to myself
though, he cared for no one else in the house. He lived very near us,
and came in most mornings in his shepherd's plaid, with his long white
hair flowing over his shoulders, to give rue lessons in behaviour. If he
were pleased he would bring out some curiosity from his pockets—a tooth
of Queen Mary's, a bone of James the Fifth—imaginary relics he set great
store by. How many flighty people there were in Scotland! Neither of his
extraordinary brothers quite escaped the taint. Lord Erskine and Harry
Erskine were both of them excited at times. At a certain point judgment
seems to desert genius. Another friend I made this year who remembered
to ask about me very lately, Adam Hay, now Sir Adam. He was Sir John
Hay's third son when I knew him. John died, Robert the handsome sailor
was drowned, so the baronetcy fell to Adam. Are not the memoirs of the
old a catalogue of the deaths of many who were young with them? Adam Hay
tried to shake my integrity; he advocated, as he thought, the cause of
his dearest friend, whose mother, dear excellent woman, having died,
their sophistry persuaded them so had my promise. We had many grave
conversations on a sad subject, while people thought we were arranging
our matrimonial excursion. He told me I was blamed, and I told him I
must bear it; I did add one day, it was no easy burden, he should not
seek to make it heavier. His own sister, some time after this, succeeded
to my place; lovely and most lovable she was, and truly loved I do
believe. Adam Hay told me of it when he first knew it, long afterwards,
and I said, so best; yet the end was not yet.
We had a visitor this
spring, Colonel d'Este, whom we had not seen since the old Prince
Augustus days. He was as natural as ever, asked himself to dinner, and
talked of Ramsgate. He had not then given up his claim to royalty,
therefore there was a little skilful arrangement on his part to avoid
either assumption or renunciation. He entered unannounced, my father
meeting him at the door and ushering him into the room, my mother, and
all the ladies on her hint, rising till he begged them to be seated.
Otherwise he conformed to common usage, and perhaps did not observe that
we had no finger-glasses; which reminds me that a year or two after when
Prince Leopold was at Kinrara, Lord Huntly, precise as he was, had
forgotten to mention to his servants that nobody ever washed before
royalty, and from the moment that this omission struck him, he sat in
such an agony as to be incapable of his usual happy knack of keeping the
ball going. Luckily some of the Prince's attendants had an eye to all,
and stopped the offending crystals on their way. I don't know what
brought Colonel d'Este to Scotland at that time of year, he was probably
going to some of his mother's relations in the west. I remember Lord
Abercrombie being asked to meet him, and after accepting, he sent an
apology; "an unavoidable accident which happily would never be repeated"
set us all off on a train of conjectures wide of the truth, the
newspapers next day announcing the marriage of this grave elderly friend
of my father's.
We left Sir John Hay's
house in May; he was coming to live in it himself with his pretty
daughters; and we went for three months to the house of Mr Allan the
banker, in Charlotte Square, just while we should be considering where
to fix for a permanency. Mrs Allan was ill, and was going to some
watering-place, and they were glad to have their house occupied. Before
we moved we paid two country visits, my father, my mother, and I.
Our first visit was to
Dunbar, Lord Lauderdale's, a mere family party, to last the two or three
days my father and my Lord were arranging some political matters. They
were always brimful of party mysteries, having a constant correspondence
on these subjects. My mother had so lectured me on the necessity of
being anything but myself on this startling occasion that a fit of
Kinrara feel came over me for the first evening. I was so busy with the
way I was to sit, and the proper mode to speak the few words I was to
say, and the attention I was to pay to all the nods and winks she was to
give me, that a fit of shyness actually came on, and my spirits were
quite crushed by these preliminaries and the curious state of the
household we fell upon. In the very large drawing-room in which the
family sat there was plenty of comfortable furniture, including an
abundance of easy-chairs set in a wide circle around the fire. Before
each easy-chair was placed a stool rather higher than would have been
agreeable for feet to rest on, but quite suited to the purpose it was
prepared for—the kennel of a dog. I don't know how many of these pets
the Ladies Maitland and their mother were provided with, but a black
nose peeped out of an opening in the side of every stool on the entrance
of a visitor, and the barking was incessant. At this time four daughters
were at home unmarried, and two or three sons. One daughter was dead,
and one had disposed of herself some years before by running away with
poor, silly, and not wealthy Fraser of Torbreck, then quartered at
Dunbar with the regiment of militia in which he was a captain. This
proceeding of the Lady Anne quite changed the face of affairs iii her
father's family.
Lord Lauderdale had
rather late in his man-of-fashion life married the only child of one Mr
Antony Tod, citizen of London; pretty she had never been; she was a nice
little painted doll when we knew her, a cipher as to intellect, but her
fortune had been very large, and she was amiable and obedient, and her
lord, they said, became fond of her and of all the many children she
brought him. He was not vain, however, either of her or of them, he had
no reason; so he kept them all living in great retirement at Dunbar,
never taking any of them with him to town, nor allowing them to visit
either in Edinburgh or in their own neighbourhood, till the elopement of
Lady Anne, the only beauty. From that sore time Lady Lauderdale and her
remaining daughters lived much more in society. They had begun too to
feel their own importance, and to venture on opposing my Lord, for Mr
Tod was dead, and had left to each of his grandchildren, Sons and
daughters alike, £15,000; the rest to his daughter for her life, with
remainder to her eldest son, Lord Maitland. To his son-in-law the Earl
Mr Tod left nothing. Here was power to the weaker side, exerted, it was
said, occasionally, but they were a united happy family, fondly attached
to each other.
The square Maitland face
was not improved by the Tod connection, though the family finances
benefited by it. Sons and daughters were alike plain in face and short
in person. Even Lady Anne, with her really lovely countenance, was a
dwarf in size and ill-proportioned; but there was a very redeeming
expression generally thrown over the flat features, and they had all
pleasant manners. The second day went off much more agreeably than the
first, although I had to bear some quizzing on the subject of gambling,
and my horror of it. In the morning the young people drove, rode, or
walked; before dinner the ladies worked a little, netting purses and
knotting bags; the gentlemen played with the dogs. All the evenings were
spent at cards, and such high play, brag and loo unlimited. It was
nothing for fifty or a hundred pounds to change hands among them. I was
quite tLrrified. My few shillings, the first I had called my own for
ages, given me for the occasion in a new purse bought to hold them, were
soon gone at brag, under the management of Captain Antony Maitland, R.N.
He had undertaken to teach me the game, of which I had no knowledge, for
we never saw cards at home except when a whist table was made up for
Belleville; and as the eternal cry "Anty I Anty I" did not repair my
losses, and I sturdily refused to borrow, declining therefore to play,
and composing myself gravely to look on, they could hardly keep their
countenances; my whole fortune was such a trifle to them. It was not,
however, my loss so much as what my mother would say to it that
disturbed me. She was very economical in those little ways, and her
unwonted liberality upon this occasion would, I knew, be referred to
ever after as a bar to any further supplies, the sum now given having
been so squandered. I sought her in her room before we went to bed to
make the confession, fully believing it had been a crime. The thoughts
of the whole scene make me laugh now, though I slept all the better then
on being graciously forgiven "under the circumstances."
There was no company,
only Sir Philip Dirom, arranging his marriage settlements with Lord
Lauderdale, the guardian of the bride, the heiress Miss Henderson. He
was a handsome man, gentlemanly, and rather agreeable, not clever in the
least, and very vain. He had won honours in his profession—the navy —and
his latest acquisition, a diamond star of some order, was the single
object of his thoughts, after Miss Henderson's acres. Lord Lauderdale
laid a bet that Sir Philip would not be two hours in the house without
producing it; nor was he. In the middle of dinner, having dexterously
turned the conversation on the orders of knighthood, he sent the servant
for it, sure, he said, that some of the ladies would like to see the
pretty bauble—one of the principal insignia of the Bath I suppose it
was. Lord Maitland received and handed the little red case round with a
mock gravity that nearly upset the decorum of the company. How little,
when laughing at these foibles, did we foresee that the vain knight's
great-niece was to be my cousin Edmund's wife, or fancy that he would be
so kind, so generous, to that thoughtless pair!
The other visit was only
for the day. We did not even sleep from home, but returned very late at
night, for Almondell was twelve miles good from Edinburgh. Harry Erskine
had added to a small cottage prettily situated on the river from which
he named his retirement, and there, tired of politics, he wore away time
that I believe sometimes lagged with him, in such country pursuits as he
could follow on an income that gave him little beyond the necessaries of
life. He and Mrs Erskine had no greater pleasure than to receive a few
friends to an early dinner; they had a large--connection, a choice
acquaintance, and were in themselves so particularly agreeable that,
company or no, a few hours passed with them were always a treat.
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 at the back, of the Firth of Forth with its wooded shores
and distant hills, made the lookout so cheerful. We were in the midst,
too, of our friends. We made two new acquaintance, 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 between us young people. My mother's tea-table was, I think, the
general gathering point. In the mornings we made walking parties, and
one day we went to Rosslyn 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
drove down to the pier at Newhaven in large merry parties, where now the
splendid Granton pier shames its predecessors, and there found boats
awaiting us, such a gay little fleet, manned by the sailors in their
best suits, and we were rowed quickly across the sparkling water, for it
was a beautiful day, and hoisted up upon 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 midnight,
plentifully served with refreshments 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 fete.
Jane always considered
this her debut. She was nicely dressed, was very happy, much admired,
and danced so well. She and I were never dressed alike; indeed there was
then so little resemblance 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 toilet, 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; and
she was such a clever creature, had such a power of conversation,
without pedantry or blueisrn, 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, with 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 lilacs 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 satin shoes. Miss Cochrane,
the Admiral's daughter, 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 Dalling; they were married a few months after.
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