[Illustration: Mylne’s Court, where some of the Mylne family resided.]
This eminent person—a cadet of the ancient house of Mar (born 1680,
died 1763)—had his town mansion in an obscure recess of the High
Street called Mylne Square,[173] the first place bearing such a
designation in our northern capital: it was, I may remark, built by
one of a family of Mylnes, who are said to have been master-masons to
the Scottish monarchs for eight generations, and some of whom are at
this day architects by profession.[174] Lord Alva’s residence was in
the second and third floors of the large building on the west side
of the square. Of the same structure, an Earl of Northesk occupied
another _flat_. And, to mark the character of Lord Alva’s abode,
part of it was afterwards, in the hands of a Mrs Reynolds, used as a
lodging-house of the highest grade. The Earl of Hopetoun, while acting
as Commissioner to the General Assembly, there held viceregal state.
But to return to Lord Alva: it gives a curious idea of the habits of
such a dignitary before the rise of the New Town that we should find
him content with this dwelling while in immediate attendance upon the
court, and happy during the summer vacation to withdraw to the shades
of his little villa at Drumsheugh, standing on a spot now surrounded
by _town_. Lord Lovat, who, on account of his numerous law-pleas, was
a great intimate of Lord Alva’s, frequently visited him here; and Mrs
Campbell of Monzie, Lord Alva’s daughter, used to tell that when she
met Lord Lovat on the stair he always took her up in his arms and
kissed her, to her great annoyance and horror—_he was so ugly_. During
one of his law-pleas, he went to a dancing-school ball, which Misses
Jean and Susanna, Lord Alva’s daughters, attended. He had his pocket
full of _sweeties_, as Mrs Campbell expressed it; and so far did he
carry his exquisitely refined system of cunning, that—in order no
doubt to find favour with their father—he devoted the greater share
of his attentions and the whole of his comfits to them alone. Those
who knew this singular man used to say that, with all his duplicity,
faithlessness, and cruelty, his character exhibited no redeeming trait
whatever: nobody ever knew any good of him.
In his Mylne Square mansion Lord Alva’s two step-daughters were
married; one to become Countess of Sutherland, the other Lady
Glenorchy. There was something very striking in the fate of Lady
Sutherland and of the earl, her husband—a couple distinguished as
much by personal elegance and amiable character as by lofty rank. Lady
Sutherland was blessed with a temper of extraordinary sweetness, which
shone in a face of so much beauty as to have occasioned admiration
where many were beautiful—the coronation of George III. and his queen.
The happiness of the young pair had been increased by the birth of a
daughter. One unlucky day his lordship, coming after dinner into the
drawing-room at Dunrobin a little flushed with wine, lifted up the
infant above his head by way of frolic, when, sad to tell, he dropped
her by accident on the floor, and she received injuries from which she
never recovered. This incident had such an effect upon his lordship’s
spirits that his health became seriously affected, so as finally to
require a journey to Bath, where he was seized with an infectious
fever. For twenty-one successive days and nights he was attended by his
wife, then pregnant, till she herself caught the fatal distemper. The
countess’s death was concealed from his lordship; nevertheless, when
his delirium left him, the day before he died, he frequently said: ‘I
am going to join my dear wife;’ appearing to know that she had ‘already
reached the goal with mended pace!’ Can it be that we are sometimes
able to penetrate the veil which hangs, in thick and gloomy folds,
between this world and the next; or does the ‘mortal coil’ in which
the light of mind is enveloped become thinner and more transparent by
the wearing of deadly sickness? The bodies of the earl and countess
were brought to Holyrood House, where they had usually resided when in
town, and lay in state for some time previous to their interment in
one grave in the Abbey Chapel. The death of a pair so young, so good,
and who had stood in so distinguished a position in society—leaving
one female infant to a disputed title—made a deep impression on the
public, and was sincerely lamented in their own immediate circle. Of
much poetry written on the occasion, a specimen may be seen in Evans’s
_Old Ballads_. Another appears in Brydges’s _Censura Literaria_, being
the composition of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto:
‘In pity, Heaven bestowed
An early doom: lo, on the self-same bier,
A fairer form, cold by her husband’s side,
And faded every charm. She died for thee,
For thee, her only love. In beauty’s prime,
In youth’s triumphant hour, she died for thee.
Bring water from the brook, and roses spread
O’er their pale limbs; for ne’er did wedded love
To one sad grave consign a lovelier pair,
Of manners gentler, or of purer heart!’
Lady Glenorchy, the younger sister of Lady Sutherland, was remarkable
for her pious disposition. Exceedingly unfortunate in her marriage, she
was early taught to seek consolation from things ‘not of this world.’
I have been told that nothing could have been more striking than to
hear this young and beautiful creature pouring forth her melodious
notes and hymns, while most of her sex and age at that time exercised
their voices only upon the wretched lyrics imported from Vauxhall and
Ranelagh, or the questionable verses of Ramsay and his contemporaries.
She met with her rich reward, even in this world; for she enjoyed
the applause of the wealthy and the blessings of the poor, with that
supreme of all pleasures—the conviction that the eternal welfare of
those in whose fate she was chiefly interested was forwarded, if not
perfected, by her precepts and example.[175]
[Illustration: Old Risps.]
It is not unworthy of notice, in this record of all that is old and
quaint in our city, that the Lord Justice-clerk’s house was provided
with a _pin_ or _risp_, instead of the more modern convenience—a
knocker. The Scottish ballads, in numberless passages, make reference
to this article: no hero in those compositions ever comes to his
mistress’s door but he _tirles at the pin_. What, then, was a pin? It
was a small slip or bar of iron, starting out from the door vertically,
serrated on the side towards the door, and provided with a small ring,
which, being drawn roughly along the serrations or nicks, produced a
harsh and grating sound, to summon the servant to open. Another term
for the article was a _crow_. In the fourth eclogue of Edward Fairfax,
a production of the reign of James VI. and I., quoted in the _Muses’
Library_, is this passage:
‘Now, farewell Eglon! for the sun stoops low,
And calling guests before my sheep-cot’s door;
Now _clad in white, I see my porter-crow_;
Great kings oft want these blessings of the poor;’
with the following note: ‘The ring of the door, called a _crow_, and
when covered with white linen, denoted the mistress of the house was
in travel.’ It is quite appropriate to this explanation that a small
Latin vocabulary, published by Andrew Simpson in 1702, places among
the parts of a house, ‘_Corvex—a clapper or ringle_.’ Hardly one
specimen of the pin, crow, or ringle now survives in the Old Town. They
were almost all disused many years ago, when knockers were generally
substituted as more stylish. Knockers at that time did not long remain
in repute, though they have never been altogether superseded, even by
bells, in the Old Town. The comparative merit of knockers and pins was
for a long time a controversial point, and many knockers got their
heads twisted off in the course of the dispute. Pins were, upon the
whole, considered very inoffensive, decent, old-fashioned things, being
made of a modest metal, and making little show upon a door; knockers
were thought upstart, prominent, brazen-faced articles, and received
the full share of odium always conferred by Scotsmen of the old school
upon tasteful improvements. Every drunken fellow, in reeling home at
night, thought it good sport to carry off all the knockers that came
in his way; and as drunken gentlemen were very numerous, many acts
of violence were committed, and sometimes a whole stair was found
stripped of its knockers in the morning; when the voice of lamentation
raised by the servants of the sufferers might have reminded one of the
wailings of the Lennox dairy-women after a _creagh_ in the days of
old. Knockers were frequently used as missile weapons by the bucks of
that day against the Town-guard; and the morning sun sometimes saw the
High Street strewed with them. The aforesaid Mrs Campbell remembered
residing in an Old Town house, which was one night disturbed in the
most intolerable manner by a drunken party at the knocker. In the
morning the greater part of it was found to be gone; and it was besides
discovered, to the horror of the inmates, that part of a finger was
left sticking in the fragments, with the appearance of having been
forcibly wrenched from the hand.