[In the same stair in Hyndford’s Close lived another lady of rank, and one who, for several reasons, filled in her time a broad space in society. This was Anne, Countess of Balcarres, the progenitrix of perhaps as many persons as ever any woman was in the same space of time. Her eldest daughter, Anne, authoress of the ballad of Auld Robin Gray, was, of all her eleven children, the one whose name is most likely to continue in remembrance—yea, though another of them put down the Maroon war in the West Indies. When in Hyndford’s Close, Lady Balcarres had for a neighbour in the same alley Dr Rutherford, the uncle of Sir Walter Scott; and young Walter, often at his uncle’s, occasionally accompanied his aunt ‘Jeanie’ to Lady Balcarres’s. Forty years after, having occasion to correspond with Lady Anne Barnard, née Lindsay, he told her: ‘I remember all the locale of Hyndford’s Close perfectly, even to the Indian screen with Harlequin and Columbine, and the harpsichord, though I never had the pleasure of hearing Lady Anne play upon it. I suppose the close, once too clean to soil the hem of your ladyship’s garment, is now a resort for the lowest mechanics—and so wears the world away.... It is, to be sure, more picturesque to lament the desolation of towers on hills and haughs, than the degradation of an Edinburgh close; but I cannot help thinking on the simple and cosie retreats where worth and talent, and elegance to boot, were often nestled, and which now are the resort of misery, filth, poverty, and vice.’[225]
The late Mrs Meetham, a younger sister of Miss Spence Yeaman, of Murie, in the Carse of Gowrie, had often heard her grand-aunt, Miss Molly Yeaman, describe, from her own recollection, the tea-drinkings of the Countess of Balcarres in Hyndford’s Close. The family was not rich, and it still retained something of its ancient Jacobitism. The tea-drinkings, as was not uncommon, took place in my lady’s bedroom. At the foot of a four-posted bed, exhibiting a finely worked coverlet, stood John, an elderly man-servant, and a character, in full Balcarres livery, an immense quantity of worsted lace on his coat. Resting with his arm round a bedpost, he was ready to hand the kettle when required. As the ladies went chattering on, there would sometimes occur a difficulty about a date or a point in genealogy, and then John was appealed to to settle the question. For example, it came to be debated how many of the Scotch baronetcies were real; for, as is still the case, many of them were known to be fictitious, or assumed without legal grounds. Here John was known to be not only learned, but eloquent. He began: ‘Sir James Kinloch, Sir Stuart Threipland, Sir John Wedderburn, Sir —— Ogilvy, Sir James Steuart of Coltness’ [all of them forfeited baronets, be it observed]: ‘these, leddies, are the only real baronets. For the rest, I do believe, the Deil’——then a figurative declaration not fit for modern print, but which made the Balcarres party only laugh, and declare to John that they thought him not far wrong.]
[HOUSE OF THE MARQUISES OF TWEEDDALE—THE BEGBIE TRAGEDY.]
Tweeddale Court.
The town mansion of the Marquises of Tweeddale was one of large extent and dimensions, in a court which still bears the title of that family, nearly opposite to the mansion of John Knox.[226] When John, the fourth marquis, was Secretary of State for Scotland, in the reign of George II., this must have been a dwelling of considerable importance in the eyes of his countrymen. It had a good garden in the rear, with a yard and coach entry from the Cowgate. Now all the buildings and ‘pertinents’ are in the occupation of Messrs Oliver & Boyd, the well-known publishers.
Scene of the Begbie Murder.