Ladies Sutherland and Glenorchy—The Pin or Risp.

This eminent person—a cadet of the ancient house of Mar (born 1680, died 1763)—had his town mansion in an obscure recess of the High Street called Mylne Square,[173] the first place bearing such a designation in our northern capital: it was, I may remark, built by one of a family of Mylnes, who are said to have been master-masons to the Scottish monarchs for eight generations, and some of whom are at this day architects by profession.[174] Lord Alva’s residence was in the second and third floors of the large building on the west side of the square. Of the same structure, an Earl of Northesk occupied another flat. And, to mark the character of Lord Alva’s abode, part of it was afterwards, in the hands of a Mrs Reynolds, used as a lodging-house of the highest grade. The Earl of Hopetoun, while acting as Commissioner to the General Assembly, there held viceregal state. But to return to Lord Alva: it gives a curious idea of the habits of such a dignitary before the rise of the New Town that we should find him content with this dwelling while in immediate attendance upon the court, and happy during the summer vacation to withdraw to the shades of his little villa at Drumsheugh, standing on a spot now surrounded by town. Lord Lovat, who, on account of his numerous law-pleas, was a great intimate of Lord Alva’s, frequently visited him here; and Mrs Campbell of Monzie, Lord Alva’s daughter, used to tell that when she met Lord Lovat on the stair he always took her up in his arms and kissed her, to her great annoyance and horror—he was so ugly. During one of his law-pleas, he went to a dancing-school ball, which Misses Jean and Susanna, Lord Alva’s daughters, attended. He had his pocket full of sweeties, as Mrs Campbell expressed it; and so far did he carry his exquisitely refined system of cunning, that—in order no doubt to find favour with their father—he devoted the greater share of his attentions and the whole of his comfits to them alone. Those who knew this singular man used to say that, with all his duplicity, faithlessness, and cruelty, his character exhibited no redeeming trait whatever: nobody ever knew any good of him.

In his Mylne Square mansion Lord Alva’s two step-daughters were married; one to become Countess of Sutherland, the other Lady Glenorchy. There was something very striking in the fate of Lady Sutherland and of the earl, her husband—a couple distinguished as much by personal elegance and amiable character as by lofty rank. Lady Sutherland was blessed with a temper of extraordinary sweetness, which shone in a face of so much beauty as to have occasioned admiration where many were beautiful—the coronation of George III. and his queen. The happiness of the young pair had been increased by the birth of a daughter. One unlucky day his lordship, coming after dinner into the drawing-room at Dunrobin a little flushed with wine, lifted up the infant above his head by way of frolic, when, sad to tell, he dropped her by accident on the floor, and she received injuries from which she never recovered. This incident had such an effect upon his lordship’s spirits that his health became seriously affected, so as finally to require a journey to Bath, where he was seized with an infectious fever. For twenty-one successive days and nights he was attended by his wife, then pregnant, till she herself caught the fatal distemper. The countess’s death was concealed from his lordship; nevertheless, when his delirium left him, the day before he died, he frequently said: ‘I am going to join my dear wife;’ appearing to know that she had ‘already reached the goal with mended pace!’ Can it be that we are sometimes able to penetrate the veil which hangs, in thick and gloomy folds, between this world and the next; or does the ‘mortal coil’ in which the light of mind is enveloped become thinner and more transparent by the wearing of deadly sickness? The bodies of the earl and countess were brought to Holyrood House, where they had usually resided when in town, and lay in state for some time previous to their interment in one grave in the Abbey Chapel. The death of a pair so young, so good, and who had stood in so distinguished a position in society—leaving one female infant to a disputed title—made a deep impression on the public, and was sincerely lamented in their own immediate circle. Of much poetry written on the occasion, a specimen may be seen in Evans’s Old Ballads. Another appears in Brydges’s Censura Literaria, being the composition of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto:

Lady Glenorchy, the younger sister of Lady Sutherland, was remarkable for her pious disposition. Exceedingly unfortunate in her marriage, she was early taught to seek consolation from things ‘not of this world.’ I have been told that nothing could have been more striking than to hear this young and beautiful creature pouring forth her melodious notes and hymns, while most of her sex and age at that time exercised their voices only upon the wretched lyrics imported from Vauxhall and Ranelagh, or the questionable verses of Ramsay and his contemporaries. She met with her rich reward, even in this world; for she enjoyed the applause of the wealthy and the blessings of the poor, with that supreme of all pleasures—the conviction that the eternal welfare of those in whose fate she was chiefly interested was forwarded, if not perfected, by her precepts and example.[175]

It is not unworthy of notice, in this record of all that is old and quaint in our city, that the Lord Justice-clerk’s house was provided with a pin or risp, instead of the more modern convenience—a knocker. The Scottish ballads, in numberless passages, make reference to this article: no hero in those compositions ever comes to his mistress’s door but he tirles at the pin. What, then, was a pin? It was a small slip or bar of iron, starting out from the door vertically, serrated on the side towards the door, and provided with a small ring, which, being drawn roughly along the serrations or nicks, produced a harsh and grating sound, to summon the servant to open. Another term for the article was a crow. In the fourth eclogue of Edward Fairfax, a production of the reign of James VI. and I., quoted in the Muses’ Library, is this passage:

with the following note: ‘The ring of the door, called a crow, and when covered with white linen, denoted the mistress of the house was in travel.’ It is quite appropriate to this explanation that a small Latin vocabulary, published by Andrew Simpson in 1702, places among the parts of a house, ‘Corvex—a clapper or ringle.’ Hardly one specimen of the pin, crow, or ringle now survives in the Old Town. They were almost all disused many years ago, when knockers were generally substituted as more stylish. Knockers at that time did not long remain in repute, though they have never been altogether superseded, even by bells, in the Old Town. The comparative merit of knockers and pins was for a long time a controversial point, and many knockers got their heads twisted off in the course of the dispute. Pins were, upon the whole, considered very inoffensive, decent, old-fashioned things, being made of a modest metal, and making little show upon a door; knockers were thought upstart, prominent, brazen-faced articles, and received the full share of odium always conferred by Scotsmen of the old school upon tasteful improvements. Every drunken fellow, in reeling home at night, thought it good sport to carry off all the knockers that came in his way; and as drunken gentlemen were very numerous, many acts of violence were committed, and sometimes a whole stair was found stripped of its knockers in the morning; when the voice of lamentation raised by the servants of the sufferers might have reminded one of the wailings of the Lennox dairy-women after a creagh in the days of old. Knockers were frequently used as missile weapons by the bucks of that day against the Town-guard; and the morning sun sometimes saw the High Street strewed with them. The aforesaid Mrs Campbell remembered residing in an Old Town house, which was one night disturbed in the most intolerable manner by a drunken party at the knocker. In the morning the greater part of it was found to be gone; and it was besides discovered, to the horror of the inmates, that part of a finger was left sticking in the fragments, with the appearance of having been forcibly wrenched from the hand.