SEVENTY YEARS SINCE
The last representatives of our grandfather's generation having passed away, there is no reason why the following true stories of an old Scotch house should not be made public, for the entertainment of others besides those members of the family to whom only they have hitherto been known. I have slightly changed the names of persons and places, but not a detail of the stories has otherwise been altered from the first-hand accounts given us by those who were themselves their heroes and heroines.
On a winter's afternoon in the year 1816 three young officers were riding 'within a mile of Edinboro' toun;' they were pushing on in advance of their regiment, which was that day marching into new quarters, hoping to reach the city in time to choose lodgings for themselves, to whom rooms in barracks had not been allotted. Suddenly a gaunt gipsy woman of the Meg Merrilies type darted out upon them, and laid her detaining hand upon the bridle of Lieutenant T – (my grandfather). He tried to shake his rein free, but without effect, and the little cavalcade was brought to a halt by her persistence; then addressing the gentlemen collectively, but keeping her eyes upon my grandfather, she offered to tell their fortunes. The young men laughed at the suggestion, and the gipsy wife waxed angry. 'Ye'll do little good in Edinboro' or elsewhere,' she retorted roughly to the two captains who had declined her services. 'But for ye' (speaking only to Lieutenant T – ), 'there's a bonnie bride waiting in the first house ye enter!'
My grandfather threw her a shilling and galloped on with his companions, enduring for some time their good-natured raillery about the spae-wife's prediction; but when they reached the city they were too much engaged in observing the outsides of the houses which might afford them the desired lodgings, to think further of the prophecy. In the dim light, one large house with closed shutters looked as if it were untenanted and likely to suit their requirements; while a light from a lower kitchen window shewed that some one was left in charge who could attend to Lieutenant T – 's loud summons at the knocker. But the young man, accounted a gallant soldier enough, who had seen some service in the late wars, was entirely routed and discomfited by the furious reception his modest inquiry after lodgings met with from the stalwart maid-servant who answered the door. 'Lodgings! What was the world coming to when a daft young fool asked if her mistress let lodgings? The family was away in the north, and this would be a pretty tale to tell them on their return,' stormed the cross maid; and my grandfather, leaving a torrent of rough language behind him, made his escape down the steps of the house over whose threshold he had so mistakenly intruded. He remounted his horse amid the jeers of his two friends, who reminded him of his fate predicted by the gipsy, and begged him, if this were a sample of the 'bonnie bride's' usual temper, to exchange into another regiment as soon as he married. Eventually the young men found rooms to suit them, and in a few days became quite at home in the pleasant capital of the north, which was just beginning its gay winter season.
About a week after their arrival the officers were present at an Assembly ball, and Lieutenant T – lost his heart at first sight to a lovely young débutante of fifteen, with whom he danced the whole evening. At the close of the ball he was introduced to a grand turbaned lady, his partner's mother; and on seeing the ladies to their carriage he asked leave to do himself the honour of calling for them next day. This permission and their address were given him, and the latter noted in his pocket-book. The next morning he eagerly sought out their house, which he did not recognise as the scene of his first adventure till Ailie, the same stalwart maid, opened the door, and this time admitted him graciously.
This visit was followed by many others; and before a year had passed my grandfather won the 'bonnie bride' of the spae-wife's prediction from the very house across whose threshold he had first set foot on entering Edinburgh. They were a very young pair; he only twenty-one and my grandmother just sixteen at their marriage; and how their housekeeping might have prospered or the reverse I do not know, had not Ailie decided to take service with the young couple, and maintained their interests during the wanderings of the next thirty years as faithfully as she had previously guarded the honour of her mistress's house. She was one of the now extinct race of family servants, a sort of factotum in the house, where she did her own work and a good part of every one else's in a wonderfully indefatigable fashion, only reserving to herself the privilege of keeping every one in order, from the master and mistress down to the kitchen wench.
To three out of the four generations of our family whom she served, she was 'old Ailie;' and her flowered chintz bedgown and mob-cap survived unaltered far into the era of crinoline and chignon. What stories she had to tell of Madam our great-grandmother, a very grand dame indeed, and well-known card-player; and of a certain Mistress Jean, her favourite heroine, whom some of us recollect as Aunt Moir, a little soft-faced, pink-and-white lady, not so imposing to look upon as the miniature of her powdered mamma, but a beauty nevertheless in her day. She lived at a time when it was the acknowledged fate of all Edinburgh belles to fall a prey to dyspeptic old East Indians, who having been drafted off as raw lads to India, were heard of no more till they returned as nabobs half a century later, to take their pick of the blooming lassies for whom the Scottish capital has ever been justly celebrated.
Aunt Moir would describe how she and her mother went every Sabbath morning to 'sit under' Dr M' – ; and how, as they mounted the high steps to the entrance of the place of worship, the beaus young and old – some in blue swallow-tailed coats buttoned tight across the chest, and frilled jabots like protruding fins; others with military pigtails and riding-boots – stood on each side of the door and criticised their figures (a lady's face in those days being pretty well hidden by her telescopic bonnet), and more particularly their feet and ankles, incased in sandalled shoes and silk stockings. Aunt Moir admitted that her feet passed their examination creditably enough, though the criticism was sometimes more severe than gallant; and one of her young-lady friends went by the name of 'Flat-foot Meg.' But Aunt Jean's were evidently of a different order, and were swift and light enough to do even more than please the fastidious taste of the Edinburgh bucks. Some years after her marriage with an old and invalid husband, who had carried her away from Edinburgh to a country home, Mistress Moir, little more than a girl still, one day going over her domains started a hare from a barley-stook, and throwing all her matronly dignity to the winds, she pursued Puss through a couple of meadows, and eventually captured and brought him struggling to the house. Whether she kept maukin as a pet and proof of her agility, or converted him into the excellent soup for which she has left us her recipe, labelled in a pointed Italian hand-writing 'Mistress Moir's Hare Broth,' history does not relate. Let us hope the former fate was his, for the recipe says in conclusion, 'Without the meat of two hares is the broth poor and meagre.'
Aunt Moir had no children of her own; but her heart and home were always open to the numerous members of the T – family, her nephews and nieces. She found queer old ornaments, Indian beads and tartan scarfs, in her store-boxes for the girls; and the town-bred boys found rare opportunities for healthful delightful mischief when the High School released them for their holidays at Moir. One species of entertainment was specially sacred to Aunt Jean's kail-yard: to mount astride upon tall, well-grown, firm-hearted cabbages, and rock gently to and fro, with short leather-breeched, gray-stockinged legs sticking out straight like a cavalry officer's, until a warning crack in the stalk, or the sudden appearance of Aunt Jean's Tam rushing round some unexpected corner, with his climax of threats: 'I'll tell Mistress Alice,' drove the boys from their position.
A gray-headed, cross-grained old fellow was Tam, affecting to disapprove highly of the annual summer incursion of boys and girls into the Moir fruit-gardens, trampling among his strawberries that were destined for Mistress Jean's preserves, and rifling his bushes for 'honeyblobs.' But he had a soft spot in his heart for my mother, Anna T – , who reminded him, he fancied, of his little daughter Kirsty, dead thirty years before; and many a Sunday afternoon did Tam give mother a helping hand through her portion of the Shorter Catechism, imposed as a becoming exercise for the mind by Aunt Moir on each of the children. Tam was a rigid Sabbatarian of course, and even his favourite Anna was not exempted from blame when one Sabbath evening the whole young party were discovered in pursuit of a marauding rabbit who had for days past ravaged their gardens. Ananias and Sapphira, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were somewhat irrelevantly cited as cases in point, or at least as fellow-sinners; but he ended by muttering to himself, as he left the abashed