When Lord Hailes died, it was a long time before any will could be
found. The heir-male was about to take possession of his estates, to
the exclusion of his eldest daughter. Some months after his lordship’s
death, when it was thought that all further search was vain, Miss
Dalrymple prepared to retire from New Hailes, and also from the
mansion-house in New Street, having lost all hope of a will being
discovered in her favour. Some of her domestics, however, were sent to
lock up the house in New Street, and in closing the window-shutters,
Lord Hailes’s will dropped out upon the floor from behind a panel, and
was found to secure her in the possession of his estates, which she
enjoyed for upwards of forty years.
The literary habits of Lord Hailes were hardly those which would
have been expected from his extreme nicety of phrase. The late Miss
Dalrymple once did me the honour to show me the place where he wrote
the most of his works—not the fine room which contained, and still
contains, his books—no secluded boudoir, or den, where he could
shut out the world, but the parlour fireside, where sat his wife and
children.
[1868.—Now that the grave has for thirty years closed over Miss
Dalrymple, it may be allowable to tell that she was of dwarfish and
deformed figure, while amiable and judicious above the average of her
sex. Taking into view her beautiful place of residence and her large
wealth, she remarked to a friend one day: ‘I can say, for the honour of
man, that I never got an offer in my life.’]