Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 736, February 2, 1878

No. 736.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1878.
Fifty years ago, or thereabouts, when by good fortune my brother and I were permitted to make some advance towards an acquaintance with the luminaries which at that time in a remarkable manner distinguished society in the Scottish capital, we one evening, at the house of John Archibald Murray—afterwards Lord Murray—enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing a lady who some years previously had become locally famous. She was a lively pleasant person, rather small in figure, unmarried, and had seemingly reached middle age. From her manners she evidently moved among people in the higher circles. As to her language there was the marked peculiarity that, besides a Scottish intonation, there was a pretty frequent use of the Scottish dialect—that which is best exemplified in Burns; for as yet there were still a few northern ladies of rank who in conversation did not disdain to employ incidentally words in the national vernacular. They spoke as they had been taught in early life, and as they were accustomed to speak among old and familiar friends. There was nothing coarse or vulgar in their language; the Scotch words gave an agreeable flavouring to their discourse. Lady Anne Lindsay, the writer of Auld Robin Gray , was a good specimen of this lingering class of high-born ladies, who understood and still occasionally used a Scotch seasoning in their conversation. Lord Cockburn has presented some charming reminiscences of this class of ladies, and he wrote just at the time when they had very nearly died out.
The lady who interested us on the present occasion was Miss Stirling Graham of Duntrune. As we understood, she lived mostly at the family estate in Forfarshire, with a mansion overlooking the estuary of the Tay, and commanding a distant view of St Andrews. Usually she spent her winters in Edinburgh, where she was immensely esteemed for her geniality and accomplishments. My brother, who had already written much about the disastrous troubles in Scotland in the seventeenth century, felt a peculiar interest in Miss Stirling Graham, on account of her connection by heritage with that historical personage, John Graham of Claverhouse—the terrible Claverhouse described by Scott in Old Mortality , for his persecution of the Covenanters, and who as Viscount Dundee perished by a musket-shot at the battle of Killiecrankie, 1689. Claverhouse was a Forfarshire man. Leaving no immediate heirs, his estates devolved on a cousin, David Graham of Duntrune; this person was succeeded by his last surviving son, on whose demise the property was inherited equally by his four sisters; one of these sisters was the mother of Clementina Stirling Graham, the lady to whose memory we have devoted the present paper.