She, I was loosed at all.”
Fondness prevailed, mamma gave way;
Kitty, at heart’s desire,
Obtained the chariot for a day,
And set the world on fire!’
It is an undoubted fact that, before her marriage, she had been confined in a strait-jacket on account of mental derangement; and her conduct in married life was frequently such as to entitle her to a repetition of the same treatment. She was, in reality, at all times to a certain extent insane, though the politeness of fashionable society and the flattery of her poetical friends seem to have succeeded in passing off her extravagances as owing to an agreeable freedom of carriage and vivacity of mind. Her brother was as clever and as mad as herself, and used to amuse himself by hiding a book in his library, and hunting for it after he had forgot where it was deposited.
Her grace was no admirer of Scottish manners. One of their habits she particularly detested—the custom of eating off the end of a knife. When people dined with her at Drumlanrig, and began to lift their food in this manner, she used to scream out and beseech them not to cut their throats; and then she would confound the offending persons by sending them a silver spoon or fork upon a salver.[262]
When in Scotland her grace always dressed herself in the garb of a peasant-girl. Her object seems to have been to ridicule and put out of countenance the stately dresses and demeanour of the Scottish gentlewomen who visited her. One evening some country ladies paid her a visit, dressed in their best brocades, as for some state occasion. Her grace proposed a walk, and they were of course under the necessity of trooping off, to the utter discomfiture of their starched-up frills and flounces. Her grace at last pretended to be tired, sat down upon the dirtiest dunghill she could find, at the end of a farmhouse, and saying, ‘Pray, ladies, be seated,’ invited her poor draggled companions to plant themselves round about her. They stood so much in awe of her that they durst not refuse; and of course her grace had the satisfaction of afterwards laughing at the destruction of their silks.
When she went out to an evening entertainment, and found a tea-equipage paraded which she thought too fine for the rank of the owner, she would contrive to overset the table and break the china. The forced politeness of her hosts on such occasions, and the assurances which they made her grace that no harm was done, &c., delighted her exceedingly.
Her custom of dressing like a paysanne once occasioned her grace a disagreeable adventure at a review. On her attempting to approach the duke, the guard, not knowing her rank or relation to him, pushed her rudely back. This threw her into such a passion that she could not be appeased till his grace assured her that the men had all been soundly flogged for their insolence.