I have seen a warrant, signed in the holograph of Normand Macleod—the same insular chief who, a few years after, lost public respect in consequence of his desertion of the Jacobite cause, and showing an active hostility to Prince Charles when in hiding. The document is dated at Dunvegan, February 17, 1741, and proceeds upon a rumour which has reached the writer that a certain gentlewoman, called Lady Grange, was carried to his isle of St Kilda in 1734, and has ever since been confined there under cruel circumstances. Regarding this as a scandal which he is bound to inquire into (as if it could have hitherto been a secret to him), he orders his baron-bailie of Harris, Donald Macleod of Bernera (this was a gallant fellow who went out in the ’Forty-five), to proceed to that island and make the necessary investigations. I have also seen the original precognition taken by honest Donald six days thereafter, when the various persons who had been about Lady Grange gave evidence respecting her. The general bearing of this testimony, besides establishing the fact of her confinement as a prisoner, is to the effect that she was treated well in all other respects, having a house forty feet long, with an inner room and a chimney to it, a curtained bed, arm-chair, table, and other articles; ample store of good provisions, including spirits; and plenty of good clothes; but that she was addicted to liquor, and liable to dreadful outbreaks of anger. Evidence was at the same time taken regarding the character of the Maclennans, upon whose reports Mr Hope had proceeded. It was Mr Erskine’s interest to establish that they were worthless persons, and to this effect strong testimony was given by several of the islanders, though it would be difficult to say with what degree of verity. The whole purpose of these precognitions was to meet the clamours raised by Mr Hope as to the barbarities to which Lady Grange had been subjected. They had the effect of stopping for a time the legal proceedings threatened by that gentleman; but he afterwards raised an action in the Court of Session for payment of the arrears of aliment or allowance due to the lady, amounting to £1150, and obtained decreet or judgment in the year 1743 against the defender in absence, though he did not choose to put it in force.
The unfortunate cause of all these proceedings ceased to be a trouble to any one in May 1745. Erskine, writing from Westminster, June 1, in answer to an intimation of her death, says: ‘I most heartily thank you, my dear friend, for the timely notice you gave me of the death of that person. It would be a ridiculous untruth to pretend grief for it; but as it brings to my mind a train of various things for many years back, it gives me concern. Her retaining wit and facetiousness to the last surprises me. These qualities none found in her, no more than common-sense or good-nature, before she went to these parts; and of the reverse of all which, if she had not been irrecoverably possest, in an extraordinary and insufferable degree, after many years’ fruitless endeavours to reclaim her, she had never seen these parts. I long for the particulars of her death, which, you are pleased to tell me, I am to have by next post.’
Mr Hope’s wife and daughters being left as heirs of Lady Grange, an action was raised in their name for the £1150 formerly awarded, and for three years additional of her annuity; and for this compound sum decreet was obtained, which was followed by steps for forcing payment. The Hopes were aware, however, of the dubious character of this claim, seeing that Mr Erskine, from whatever causes, had substituted an actual subsistence since 1732. They accordingly intimated that they aimed at no personal benefit from Lady Grange’s bequest; and the affair terminated in Mr Erskine reimbursing Mr Hope for all the expenses he had incurred on behalf of the lady, including that for the sloop which he had hired to proceed to St Kilda for her rescue.
It is humbly thought that this story casts a curious and faithful light upon the age of our grandfathers, showing things in a kind of transition from the sanguinary violence of an earlier age to the humanity of the present times. Erskine, not to speak of his office of a judge in Scotland, moved in English society of the highest character. He must have been the friend of Lyttelton, Pope, Thomson, and other ornaments of Frederick’s court; and as the brother-in-law of the Countess of Mar, who was sister of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he would figure in the brilliant circle which surrounded that star of the age of the second George. Yet he does not appear to have ever felt a moment’s compunction at leaving the mother of his children to pine and fret herself to death in a half-savage wilderness—
‘Placed far amidst the melancholy main;’
for in a paper which expresses his feelings on the subject pretty freely, he justifies the ‘sequestration’ as a step required by prudence and decency; and in showing that the gross necessaries of life were afforded to his wife, seems to have considered that his whole duty towards her was discharged. Such an insensibility could not be peculiar to one man: it indicates the temper of a class and of an age. While congratulating ourselves on the improved humanity of our own times, we may glance with satisfaction to the means which it places in our power for the proper treatment of patients like Mrs Erskine. Such a woman would now be regarded as the unfortunate victim of disease, and instead of being forcibly carried off under cloud of night by a band of Highlanders, and committed to confinement on the outskirts of the world, she would, with proper precautions, be remitted to an asylum, where, by gentle and rational management, it might be hoped that she would be restored to mental health, or, at the worst, enabled to spend the remainder of her days in the utmost comfort which her state admitted of.
[1868.—About the middle of Cant’s Close,[185] on the west side, there exists a remarkable edifice, different from all others in the neighbourhood. It is two stories in height, the second story being reached by an outside stone stair within a small courtyard, which had originally been shut in by a gate. The stone pillars of the gateway are decorated with balls at the top, as was the fashion of entrances to the grounds of a country mansion. The building is picturesque in character, in the style of the sixteenth century in Scotland. As it resembles a neat, old-fashioned country-house, one wonders to find it jammed up amidst tall edifices in this confined alley. Ascending the stair, we find that the interior consists of three or four apartments, with handsome panelled walls and elaborately carved stucco ceilings. The principal room has a double window on the west to Dickson’s Close.[186]
