Chapter XVI
Ladies of the Old School—Anecdotes told by Scott, Dr. Carlyle, and Lord Cockburn—Their Speech—‘Suphy’ Johnston—Anecdote of Suphy and Dr. Gregory—Miss Menie Trotter—Her Dream—Views of Religion.
Speaking of the society manners of the old generation, Scott more than hints that the upper classes in Scotland had only just emerged from a very rough and socially ignorant condition. He tells an anecdote of ‘a dame of no small quality, the worshipful Lady Pumphraston, who buttered a pound of green tea, sent her as an exquisite delicacy, dressed it as a condiment to a rump of salt beef, and complained that no degree of boiling would render those foreign greens tender.’ One of the most extraordinary passages in Carlyle’s book is a description of a tour he made in his boyhood—it was in the summer of 1733—with his father and another clergyman, Jardine, minister of Lochmaben. They visited Bridekirk, the family seat of the Carlyles. The laird was from home, but the lady came to the door, and with boisterous hospitality ordered the party to alight and come in. She is described as a very large and powerful virago, about forty years of age. Her appearance naturally startled the boy. A gentlewoman like this he had never seen, and the picture fixed itself in his memory for life. ‘Lady Bridekirk (he says) was like a sergeant of foot in women’s clothes; or rather like an over-grown coachman of a Quaker persuasion. On our peremptory refusal to alight, she darted into the house, like a hogshead down a slope, and returned instantly with a pint bottle of brandy—a Scots pint, I mean—and a stray beer-glass, into which she filled almost a bumper. After a long grace said by Mr. Jardine—for it was his turn now, being the third brandy-bottle we had seen since we left Lochmaben—she emptied it to our healths, and made the gentlemen follow her example: she said she would spare me as I was so young, but ordered a maid to bring a ginger-bread cake from the cupboard, a luncheon of which she put in my pocket. This lady was famous, even in the Annandale border, both at the bowl and in battle: she could drink a Scots pint of brandy with ease; and when the men grew obstreperous in their cups, she could either put them out of doors, or to bed, as she found most convenient.’ In the latter half of the century, however, the typical lady of rank was a very great improvement on Lady Bridekirk. Like that hospitable virago, she was distinctly Scottish in speech and in dress. ‘They all dressed (says Cockburn), and spoke, and did, exactly as they chose; but without any other vulgarity than what perfect naturalness is sometimes mistaken for. They were a delightful set; strong-headed, warm-hearted, and high-spirited; the fire of their tempers not always latent; merry even in solitude; very resolute; indifferent about the modes and habits of the modern world; and adhering to their own ways, so as to stand out, like primitive rocks, above ordinary society.’
There is no doubt they had an individuality and distinction, which the universal adoption of Southern customs and speech has since made impossible. They were, like Scott’s Mrs. Bethune Baliol, of ‘real old-fashioned Scottish growth,’ and their dialect was the same. ‘It was Scottish, decidedly Scottish, often containing phrases and words little used in the present day. But the tone and mode of pronunciation were as different from the usual accent of the ordinary Scotch patois, as the accent of St. James’s is from that of Billingsgate. The vowels were not pronounced much broader than in the Italian language, and there was none of the disagreeable drawl which is so offensive to modern ears. In short, it seemed to be the Scottish as spoken by the ancient court of Scotland, to which no idea of vulgarity could be attached.’ The Countess of Eglinton, to whom Allan Ramsay dedicated his Gentle Shepherd, was the ideal type of this generation in Scott’s estimation (see Note G to Highland Widow).
Miss Sophia, or ‘Suphy,’ Johnston, of the family of Hilton, was perhaps even more deserving of the choice. Her picture has been drawn by Lady Anne Barnard and by Lord Cockburn, who as a boy knew ‘Suphy’ in her old age. Her character was just as independent as is possible. She had ‘her own proper den’ in Windmill Street. One female servant was all the attendance she required. This privileged person generally left her alone all the Sunday, when by Miss Suphy’s orders she locked the door upon her mistress and carried away the key. Thus the old lady was saved the trouble of rising to admit visitors, but she had a hole through which she could easily see who was at the door and even have a little talk when she felt inclined; with this very considerable advantage that, whenever she had had enough, she could tell the caller to go away. This remarkable woman, owing to her father’s eccentricity, had been brought up without education and passed her youth ‘in utter rusticity.’ She made herself a good carpenter and smith, and even when past middle age she would still occasionally shoe a horse. Lady Anne calls her a droll, ingenious fellow, and says she was by many people suspected of being a man. She was a great reader, having taught herself to read and write after she came to woman’s age. Cockburn, who saw her first at Niddrie, the house of the Wauchopes, near Edinburgh, when she was about sixty, did not think her ‘Amazonian,’ but his description of her appearance seems to suit the epithet. ‘Her dress was always the same—a man’s hat when out of doors and generally when within them, a cloth covering exactly like a man’s greatcoat, buttoned closely from the chin to the ground, worsted stockings, strong shoes with large brass clasps.’ Such peculiarities, in those simpler and more natural times, did not affect her welcome in society. She was prized by the most fashionable and aristocratic persons for her excellent disposition and her rare intellectual powers, for her racy talk, spiced with anecdote and shrewd, often sarcastic observation; and for the originality of her views, which she never hesitated to express with refreshing pith and freedom of speech. Her natural cheerfulness was never impaired either by the loneliness of her life or by the narrowness of her fortune. When shall we find again in a noble lady’s drawing-room so picturesque a figure ‘sitting, with her back to the light, in the usual arm-chair by the side of the fire, in the Niddrie drawing-room, with her greatcoat and her hat, her dark wrinkled face, and firmly pursed mouth, the two feet set flat on the floor and close together, so that the public had a full view of the substantial shoes, the book held by the two hands very near the eyes?’
Suphy and her contemporaries were all as stout of heart as some of them were strong of arm. They had no fear of death, and, though they enjoyed life and took a deep interest in affairs around them, they had no hankering concern to ward off the inevitable. When Suphy’s strength was giving way, the famous Dr. Gregory cautioned her to leave off animal food, saying she must be content with ‘spoon meat’ unless she wished to die. ‘Dee, Doctor; odd! I’m thinking they’ve forgotten an auld wife like me up yonder.’ Next day the doctor called, and found her at the spoon meat—supping a haggis!
Of a little later date was Miss Menie Trotter, of the Mortonhall family, with whom Lord Cockburn’s sketches end:—
‘She was of the agrestic order. Her pleasures lay in the fields and long country walks. Ten miles at a stretch, within a few years of her death, was nothing to her.... One of her friends asking her, not long before her death, how she was, she said, “Very weel—quite weel. But, eh, I had a dismal dream last nicht; a fearful dream!” “Ay, I’m sorry for that; what was it?” “Ou, what d’ye think? Of a’ places i’ the world, I dreamed I was in heaven! And what d’ye think I saw there? Deil hae ’t but thoosands upon thoosands, and ten thoosands upon ten thoosands, o’ stark naked weans! That wad be a dreadfu’ thing, for ye ken I ne’er could bide bairns a’ my days.”’
The great memoirist concludes his sketches of the old Scottish ladies with a criticism on their religion which has an interest now as revealing the religiosity that characterised his own time. He declares that from the freedom of their remarks and their free use of religious terms, they would all have been deemed irreligious in his day. We are happily far removed now from the time when cheerfulness and freedom of expression on sacred subjects would excite the horror of the pious.