‘Let them say I am romantic; so is every one said to be that either admires a fine thing or does one. On my conscience, as the world goes, ’tis hardly worth anybody’s while to do one for the honour of it. Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill paid as other just debts; and neither Mrs Macfarlane for immolating her lover, nor you for constancy to your lord, must ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia.’—Pope to Lady Mary W. Montagu.

Pope here alludes to a tragical incident which took place in Edinburgh on the 2nd of October 1716. The victim was a young Englishman, who had been sent down to Scotland as a Commissioner of Customs. It appears that Squire Cayley, or Captain Cayley, as he was alternatively called, had become the slave of a shameful passion towards Mrs Macfarlane, a woman of uncommon beauty, the wife of Mr John Macfarlane, Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh. One Saturday forenoon Mrs Macfarlane was exposed, by the treachery of Captain Cayley’s landlady, with whom she was acquainted, to an insult of the most atrocious kind on his part, in the house where he lodged, which seems to have been situated in a close in the Cowgate, opposite to what were called the Back Stairs.[232] Next Tuesday Mr Cayley waited upon Mrs Macfarlane at her own house, and was shown into the drawing-room. According to an account given out by his friends, he was anxious to apologise for his former rudeness. From another account, it would appear that he had circulated reports derogatory to the lady’s honour, which she was resolved to punish. A third story represents him as having repeated the insult which he had formerly offered; whereupon she went into another room, and presently came back with a pair of pistols in her hand. On her bidding him leave the house instantly, he said: ‘What, madam, d’ye design to act a comedy?’ To which she answered that ‘he would find it a tragedy if he did not retire.’ The infatuated man not obeying her command, she fired one of the pistols, which, however, only wounded him slightly in the left wrist, the bullet slanting down into the floor. The mere instinct, probably, of self-preservation caused him to draw his sword; but before he could use it she fired the other pistol, the shot of which penetrated his heart. ‘This dispute,’ says a letter of the day, ‘was so close that Mr Cayley’s shirt was burnt at the sleeves with the fire of one of the pistols, and his cravat and the breast of his shirt with the fire of the other.’[233] Mrs Macfarlane immediately left the room, locking the door upon the dead body, and sent a servant for her husband, who was found at a neighbouring tavern. On his coming home about an hour after, she took him by the sleeve, and leading him into the room where the corpse lay, explained the circumstances which had led to the bloody act. Mr Macfarlane said: ‘Oh, woman! what have you done?’ But soon seeing the necessity for prompt measures, he went out again to consult with some of his friends. ‘They all advised,’ says the letter just quoted, ‘that he should convey his wife away privately, to prevent her lying in jail, till a precognition should be taken of the affair, and it should appear in its true light. Accordingly [about six o’clock], she walked down the High Street, followed by her husband at a little distance, and now absconds.

‘The thing continued a profound secret to all except those concerned in the house till past ten at night, when Mr Macfarlane, having provided a safe retreat for his wife, returned and gave orders for discovering it to the magistrates, who went and viewed the body of the deceased, and secured the house and maid, and all else who may become evidence of the fact.’

Another contemporary says: ‘I saw his [Cayley’s] corpse after he was cereclothed, and saw his blood where he lay on the floor for twenty-four hours after he died, just as he fell; so it was a difficulty to straight him.’

A careful investigation was made into every circumstance connected with this fatal affair, but without demonstrating anything except the passionate rashness or magnanimity of the fair homicide. Mr Macfarlane was discharged upon his own affirmation that he knew nothing of the deed till after it had taken place. A pamphlet was published by Mrs Murray, Mr Cayley’s landlady, who seems to have kept a grocery shop in the Cowgate, vindicating herself from the imputation which Mrs Macfarlane’s tale had thrown upon her character; but to this there appeared an answer, from some friend of the other party, in which the imputation was fixed almost beyond the possibility of doubt. Mrs Murray denied that Mrs Macfarlane had been in her house on the Saturday before the murder; but evidence was given that she was seen issuing from the close in which Mrs Murray resided, and, after ascending the Back Stairs, was observed passing through the Parliament Square towards her own house.

It will surprise every one to learn that this Scottish Lucrece was a woman of only nineteen or twenty years of age, and some months enceinte, at the time when she so boldly vindicated her honour. She was a person of respectable connections, being a daughter of Colonel Charles Straiton, ‘a gentleman of great honour,’ says one of the letters already quoted, and who further appears to have been entrusted with high negotiations by the Jacobites during the reign of Queen Anne. By her mother, she was granddaughter to Sir Andrew Forrester.

Of the future history of Mrs Macfarlane we have but one glimpse, but it is of a romantic nature. Margaret Swinton, who was the aunt of Sir Walter Scott’s mother, and round whom he and his boy-brothers used to close to listen to her tales, remembered being one Sunday left by her parents at home in their house of Swinton in Berwickshire, while the rest of the family attended church. Tiring of the solitude of her little nursery, she stole quietly downstairs to the parlour, which she entered somewhat abruptly. There, to her surprise, she beheld the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, sitting at the breakfast-table making tea. She believed it could be no other than one of those enchanted queens whom she had heard of in fairy tales. The lady, after a pause of surprise, came up to her with a sweet smile, and conversed with her, concluding with a request that she would speak only to her mamma of the stranger whom she had seen. Presently after, little Margaret having turned her back for a few moments, the beautiful vision had vanished. The whole appeared like a dream. By-and-by the family returned, and Margaret took her mother aside that she might talk of this wonderful apparition. Mrs Swinton applauded her for thus observing the injunction which had been laid upon her. ‘Had you not,’ she added, ‘it might have cost that lady her life.’ Subsequent explanations made Margaret aware that she had seen the unfortunate Mrs Macfarlane, who, having some claim of kindred upon the Swinton family, had been received by them, and kept in a secret room till such time as she could venture to make her way out of the country. On Margaret looking away for a moment, the lady had glided by a sliding panel into her Patmos behind the wainscot, and thus unwittingly increased the child’s apprehension of the whole being an event out of the course of nature.