[226] ‘During this peaceable time [1668-1675], he [John, Earl of
Tweeddale] built the park of Yester of stone and lime, near seven miles
about, in seven years’ time, at the expense of 20,000 pound; bought
a house in Edinburgh from Sir William Bruce for 1000 pound sterling,
and ane other house within the same court, which, being rebuilt from
the foundation, the price of it and reparations of both stood him
1000 sterling.’—Father Hay’s _Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale_
(Edinburgh, 1835), p. 32.
[227] The notes are thus described in the _Hue and Cry_: £1300 in
twenty-pound notes of Sir W. Forbes and Company; £1000 in twenty-pound
notes of the Leith Banking Company; £1400 in twenty, ten, and five
pound notes of different banks; 240 guinea and 440 pound notes of
different banks—in all, £4392.
[228] It was in this part of the High Street also that Robert
Lekprevick, the Scottish printer, lived before he removed to St Andrews
in 1571.
[THE LADIES OF TRAQUAIR.
Lady Lovat was at the head of a genus of old ladies of quality, who,
during the last century, resided in third and fourth _flats_ of Old
Town houses, wore pattens when they went abroad, had miniatures of the
Pretender next their hearts, and gave tea and card parties regularly
every fortnight. Almost every generation of a Scottish family of rank,
besides throwing off its swarm of male cadets, who went abroad in
quest of fortune, used to produce a corresponding number of daughters,
who stayed at home, and for the most part became old maids. These
gentlewomen, after the death of their parents, when, of course, a
brother or nephew succeeded to the family seat and estate, were
compelled to leave home, and make room for the new laird to bring up
a new generation, destined in time to experience the same fate. Many
of these ladies, who in Catholic countries would have found protection
in nunneries, resorted to Edinburgh, where, with the moderate family
provision assigned them, they passed inoffensive and sometimes
useful lives, the peace of which was seldom broken otherwise than by
irruptions of their grand-nephews, who came with the hunger of High
School boys, or by the more stately calls of their landed cousins and
brothers, who rendered their visits the more auspicious by a pound of
hyson for the caddy, or a replenishment of rappee for the snuff-box.
The _leddies_, as they were called, were at once the terror and the
admiration of their neighbours in the stair, who looked up to them as
the patronesses of the _land_, and as shedding a light of gentility
over the flats below.
In the best days of the Old Town, people of all ranks lived very
closely and cordially together, and the whole world were in a manner
next-door neighbours. The population being dense, and the town small,
the distance between the houses of friends was seldom considerable.
When a hundred friends lived within the space of so many yards, the
company was easily collected, and consequently meetings took place
more frequently, and upon more trivial occasions, than in these latter
days of stately dinners and fantastic balls. Tea—simple tea—was then
almost the only meal to which invitations were given. Tea-parties,
assembling at four o’clock, were resorted to by all who wished for
elegant social intercourse. There was much careful ceremonial in the
dispensation of those pretty, small china cups, individualised by the
numbers marked on each of the miniature spoons which circulated with
them, and of which four or five returns were not uncommon. The spoon
in the saucer indicated a wish for more—in the cup the reverse. A few
tunes on the spinnet, a Scotch song from some young lady (solo), and
the unfailing whist-table furnished the entertainment. At eight o’clock
to a minute would arrive the sedan, or the lass with the lantern and
pattens, and the whole company would be at home before the eight
o’clock drum of the Town-guard had ceased to beat.
In a house at the head of the Canongate, but having its entrance from
St Mary’s Wynd, and several stairs up, lived two old maiden ladies of
the house of Traquair—the Ladies Barbara and Margaret Stuart. They
were twins, the children of Charles, the fourth earl, and their birth
on the 3rd of September, the anniversary of the death of Cromwell,
brought a Latin epigram from Dr Pitcairn—of course previous to 1713,
which was the year of his own death. The learned doctor anticipated for
them ‘timid wooers,’ but they nevertheless came to old age unmarried.
They drew out their innocent, retired lives in this place, where,
latterly, one of their favourite amusements was to make dolls, and
little beds for them to lie on—a practice not quite uncommon in days
long gone by, being to some degree followed by Queen Mary.[229]
I may give, in the words of a long-deceased correspondent, an anecdote
of the ladies of Traquair, referring to the days when potatoes had as
yet an equivocal reputation, and illustrative of the frugal scale by
which our ‘leddies’ were in use to measure the luxuries of their table.
‘Upon the return one day of their weekly ambassador to the market, and
the anxious investigation by the old ladies of the contents of Jenny’s
basket, the little morsel of mutton, with a portion of accompanying
off-falls, was duly approved of. “But, Jenny, what’s this in the bottom
of the basket?” “Oo, mem, just a dozen o’ ’taties that Lucky, the
green-wife, wad ha’e me to tak’—they wad eat sae fine wi’ the mutton.”
“Na, na, Jenny; tak’ back the ’taties—we need nae provocatives in this
house.”’