The last representatives of our grandfather's generation having passed
away, there is no reason why the following true stories of an old
Scotch house should not be made public, for the entertainment of others
besides those members of the family to whom only they have hitherto
been known. I have slightly changed the names of persons and places,
but not a detail of the stories has otherwise been altered from the
first-hand accounts given us by those who were themselves their heroes
and heroines.
On a winter's afternoon in the year 1816 three young officers were
riding 'within a mile of Edinboro' toun;' they were pushing on in
advance of their regiment, which was that day marching into new
quarters, hoping to reach the city in time to choose lodgings for
themselves, to whom rooms in barracks had not been allotted. Suddenly
a gaunt gipsy woman of the Meg Merrilies type darted out upon them,
and laid her detaining hand upon the bridle of Lieutenant T---- (my
grandfather). He tried to shake his rein free, but without effect, and
the little cavalcade was brought to a halt by her persistence; then
addressing the gentlemen collectively, but keeping her eyes upon my
grandfather, she offered to tell their fortunes. The young men laughed
at the suggestion, and the gipsy wife waxed angry. 'Ye'll do little
good in Edinboro' or elsewhere,' she retorted roughly to the two
captains who had declined her services. 'But for ye' (speaking only to
Lieutenant T----), 'there's a bonnie bride waiting in the first house
ye enter!'
My grandfather threw her a shilling and galloped on with his
companions, enduring for some time their good-natured raillery about
the spae-wife's prediction; but when they reached the city they were
too much engaged in observing the outsides of the houses which might
afford them the desired lodgings, to think further of the prophecy. In
the dim light, one large house with closed shutters looked as if it
were untenanted and likely to suit their requirements; while a light
from a lower kitchen window shewed that some one was left in charge
who could attend to Lieutenant T----'s loud summons at the knocker.
But the young man, accounted a gallant soldier enough, who had seen
some service in the late wars, was entirely routed and discomfited
by the furious reception his modest inquiry after lodgings met with
from the stalwart maid-servant who answered the door. 'Lodgings! What
was the world coming to when a daft young fool asked if her mistress
let lodgings? The family was away in the north, and this would be a
pretty tale to tell them on their return,' stormed the cross maid; and
my grandfather, leaving a torrent of rough language behind him, made
his escape down the steps of the house over whose threshold he had
so mistakenly intruded. He remounted his horse amid the jeers of his
two friends, who reminded him of his fate predicted by the gipsy, and
begged him, if this were a sample of the 'bonnie bride's' usual temper,
to exchange into another regiment as soon as he married. Eventually the
young men found rooms to suit them, and in a few days became quite at
home in the pleasant capital of the north, which was just beginning its
gay winter season.
About a week after their arrival the officers were present at an
Assembly ball, and Lieutenant T---- lost his heart at first sight to
a lovely young _débutante_ of fifteen, with whom he danced the whole
evening. At the close of the ball he was introduced to a grand turbaned
lady, his partner's mother; and on seeing the ladies to their carriage
he asked leave to do himself the honour of calling for them next day.
This permission and their address were given him, and the latter noted
in his pocket-book. The next morning he eagerly sought out their house,
which he did not recognise as the scene of his first adventure till
Ailie, the same stalwart maid, opened the door, and this time admitted
him graciously.
This visit was followed by many others; and before a year had passed my
grandfather won the 'bonnie bride' of the spae-wife's prediction from
the very house across whose threshold he had first set foot on entering
Edinburgh. They were a very young pair; he only twenty-one and my
grandmother just sixteen at their marriage; and how their housekeeping
might have prospered or the reverse I do not know, had not Ailie
decided to take service with the young couple, and maintained their
interests during the wanderings of the next thirty years as faithfully
as she had previously guarded the honour of her mistress's house. She
was one of the now extinct race of family servants, a sort of factotum
in the house, where she did her own work and a good part of every
one else's in a wonderfully indefatigable fashion, only reserving to
herself the privilege of keeping every one in order, from the master
and mistress down to the kitchen wench.
To three out of the four generations of our family whom she served, she
was 'old Ailie;' and her flowered chintz bedgown and mob-cap survived
unaltered far into the era of crinoline and chignon. What stories she
had to tell of Madam our great-grandmother, a very grand dame indeed,
and well-known card-player; and of a certain Mistress Jean, her
favourite heroine, whom some of us recollect as Aunt Moir, a little
soft-faced, pink-and-white lady, not so imposing to look upon as the
miniature of her powdered mamma, but a beauty nevertheless in her day.
She lived at a time when it was the acknowledged fate of all Edinburgh
belles to fall a prey to dyspeptic old East Indians, who having been
drafted off as raw lads to India, were heard of no more till they
returned as nabobs half a century later, to take their pick of the
blooming lassies for whom the Scottish capital has ever been justly
celebrated.
Aunt Moir would describe how she and her mother went every Sabbath
morning to 'sit under' Dr M'----; and how, as they mounted the high
steps to the entrance of the place of worship, the beaus young
and old--some in blue swallow-tailed coats buttoned tight across
the chest, and frilled _jabots_ like protruding fins; others with
military pigtails and riding-boots--stood on each side of the door
and criticised their figures (a lady's face in those days being
pretty well hidden by her telescopic bonnet), and more particularly
their feet and ankles, incased in sandalled shoes and silk stockings.
Aunt Moir admitted that her feet passed their examination creditably
enough, though the criticism was sometimes more severe than gallant;
and one of her young-lady friends went by the name of 'Flat-foot Meg.'
But Aunt Jean's were evidently of a different order, and were swift
and light enough to do even more than please the fastidious taste of
the Edinburgh bucks. Some years after her marriage with an old and
invalid husband, who had carried her away from Edinburgh to a country
home, Mistress Moir, little more than a girl still, one day going over
her domains started a hare from a barley-stook, and throwing all her
matronly dignity to the winds, she pursued Puss through a couple of
meadows, and eventually captured and brought him struggling to the
house. Whether she kept maukin as a pet and proof of her agility, or
converted him into the excellent soup for which she has left us her
recipe, labelled in a pointed Italian hand-writing 'Mistress Moir's
Hare Broth,' history does not relate. Let us hope the former fate was
his, for the recipe says in conclusion, 'Without the meat of _two_
hares is the broth poor and meagre.'
Aunt Moir had no children of her own; but her heart and home were
always open to the numerous members of the T---- family, her nephews
and nieces. She found queer old ornaments, Indian beads and tartan
scarfs, in her store-boxes for the girls; and the town-bred boys
found rare opportunities for healthful delightful mischief when the
High School released them for their holidays at Moir. One species of
entertainment was specially sacred to Aunt Jean's kail-yard: to mount
astride upon tall, well-grown, firm-hearted cabbages, and rock gently
to and fro, with short leather-breeched, gray-stockinged legs sticking
out straight like a cavalry officer's, until a warning crack in the
stalk, or the sudden appearance of Aunt Jean's Tam rushing round some
unexpected corner, with his climax of threats: 'I'll tell Mistress
Alice,' drove the boys from their position.
A gray-headed, cross-grained old fellow was Tam, affecting to
disapprove highly of the annual summer incursion of boys and girls into
the Moir fruit-gardens, trampling among his strawberries that were
destined for Mistress Jean's preserves, and rifling his bushes for
'honeyblobs.' But he had a soft spot in his heart for my mother, Anna
T----, who reminded him, he fancied, of his little daughter Kirsty,
dead thirty years before; and many a Sunday afternoon did Tam give
mother a helping hand through her portion of the Shorter Catechism,
imposed as a becoming exercise for the mind by Aunt Moir on each of
the children. Tam was a rigid Sabbatarian of course, and even his
favourite Anna was not exempted from blame when one Sabbath evening the
whole young party were discovered in pursuit of a marauding rabbit who
had for days past ravaged their gardens. Ananias and Sapphira, Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram were somewhat irrelevantly cited as cases in point,
or at least as fellow-sinners; but he ended by muttering to himself, as
he left the abashed T---- children to meditate over his sermon: 'An'
the Lord spare me till the morn's morn, I'll shoot that deil mysel.'
Tam had been with Aunt Moir's parents at Portcorry before they migrated
southwards to Edinburgh, to settle the boys in life and the girls in
marriage. She had a queer story to tell us of her childhood connected
with Tam's wife Kirsty, who lived as nursery-maid in her father's
house, and had somewhat indifferently, and in the spirit of the lass
who sang,
If it's ordained I maun tak him,
Wha will I get but Tam Glen?
married Tam the 'gairdner lad,' and retired with him to the lodge.
When her little Kirsty was born, however, she gladly accepted the post
of wet-nurse to the contemporaneous baby just arrived at the house,
and returned to her old position in the nursery, bringing all her
newly awakened maternal love, as well as her boundless devotion and
respect for 'the family,' to lavish upon little weakly Uncle Donald.
Baby Kirsty at the lodge flourished upon oatmeal porridge administered
by Tam's clumsy hands, and was soon 'creeping' about everywhere with
the big collie dog as her sole attendant; while up at the house Master
Donald took all the devotion of two mothers to rear him, and was
all-sufficient to Mrs Kirsty, who forgot husband, child, and home in
her tendance of her foster-son.
At last, almost a year afterwards, the boy being weaned and fairly
strong, it was thought time to dismiss the foster-mother to her home
duties; and accordingly, after a violent and distressing parting, she
tore herself away from the child and returned to the lodge for good.
That same night Aunt Jean, a child of nine, who slept in the same room
occupied by the head-nurse and the baby brother, woke suddenly without
any particular reason, and saw by the dim light of the nursery lamp,
Kirsty's well-known figure walking to and fro through the room with the
little white bundle of a Donald in her arms. Presently she laid the
quieted child down in his cot again; and then catching the wide-open
eyes in the next bed, she made a sign to be silent, turning her head
in the direction of the sleeping head-nurse. Aunt Jean, well aware of
various little nursery jealousies between Mrs Macnab and Mrs Kirsty,
gave a nod of acquiescence, and lay quite still, watching Kirsty as she
softly bent over the little boy, settled him comfortably, and kissed
him again and again. She was still there hovering round the cot with
noiseless footsteps when the little girl fell asleep again.
Next morning, the first news that came to the house was that poor
Mistress Kirsty had died suddenly in the night in her own bed of a
sudden attack of heart complaint; brought on, the doctor said, by the
excessive grief to which she gave way on parting from her adopted
son. Tam and little Kirsty did not miss her much, I believe; nor,
sad to say, did the little lad for whom she had spent her strength
so willingly; but Aunt Jean held persistently to her story of the
'vision;' and the tale of 'faithful Kirsty' is still a beloved
tradition in our nursery. Thanks to her care, Uncle Donald grew up a
strapping lad, and when only fifteen served at the battle of Waterloo,
and was present at the entry of the allied powers into Paris. There is
still extant a funny etching, executed by some wit of the regiment, in
which Ensign Donald is represented 'looting' a confectioner's shop,
with drawn sword in one hand and immense half-demolished _brioche_ in
the other; the young ladies of the counter, attired in the classical
costumes of the First Empire, flying every way from the onslaught of
this hero from the Land o' Cakes.
They were a kindly race these Scotch relations of ours; less
extravagant in their habits, customs, and ways of thought than their
descendants of the present generation; handsomer and healthier too,
perhaps, if we judge from the bright eyes and rosy smiling faces of
the portraits they have left us; though even in these degenerate days,
a return to the early hours, simple habits, and oatmeal porridge of
the last century might yet make our lads and lassies, who inherit the
friendly Scottish nature, as handsome, healthy, and happy as their
grandfathers and grandmothers were seventy years since.