Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 736, February 2, 1878

MISS STIRLING GRAHAM.

Fifty years ago, or thereabouts, when by good fortune my brother and I were permitted to make some advance towards an acquaintance with the luminaries which at that time in a remarkable manner distinguished society in the Scottish capital, we one evening, at the house of John Archibald Murray—afterwards Lord Murray—enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing a lady who some years previously had become locally famous. She was a lively pleasant person, rather small in figure, unmarried, and had seemingly reached middle age. From her manners she evidently moved among people in the higher circles. As to her language there was the marked peculiarity that, besides a Scottish intonation, there was a pretty frequent use of the Scottish dialect—that which is best exemplified in Burns; for as yet there were still a few northern ladies of rank who in conversation did not disdain to employ incidentally words in the national vernacular. They spoke as they had been taught in early life, and as they were accustomed to speak among old and familiar friends. There was nothing coarse or vulgar in their language; the Scotch words gave an agreeable flavouring to their discourse. Lady Anne Lindsay, the writer of Auld Robin Gray, was a good specimen of this lingering class of high-born ladies, who understood and still occasionally used a Scotch seasoning in their conversation. Lord Cockburn has presented some charming reminiscences of this class of ladies, and he wrote just at the time when they had very nearly died out.

The lady who interested us on the present occasion was Miss Stirling Graham of Duntrune. As we understood, she lived mostly at the family estate in Forfarshire, with a mansion overlooking the estuary of the Tay, and commanding a distant view of St Andrews. Usually she spent her winters in Edinburgh, where she was immensely esteemed for her geniality and accomplishments. My brother, who had already written much about the disastrous troubles in Scotland in the seventeenth century, felt a peculiar interest in Miss Stirling Graham, on account of her connection by heritage with that historical personage, John Graham of Claverhouse—the terrible Claverhouse described by Scott in Old Mortality, for his persecution of the Covenanters, and who as Viscount Dundee perished by a musket-shot at the battle of Killiecrankie, 1689. Claverhouse was a Forfarshire man. Leaving no immediate heirs, his estates devolved on a cousin, David Graham of Duntrune; this person was succeeded by his last surviving son, on whose demise the property was inherited equally by his four sisters; one of these sisters was the mother of Clementina Stirling Graham, the lady to whose memory we have devoted the present paper.

Moving about at evening parties among the literati and the more eminent lawyers, Miss Stirling Graham, by her original humour and tact, may be said to have kept the town in a pleasant kind of buzz. Nature seemed to have designed her to be an actress. She possessed the power of simulation to a degree almost unexampled; also the powers of an improvisatrice which have been very rarely excelled. Her wit and her personations, however, were always exclusively employed to promote harmless mirth among her select acquaintances, and we know she would have shrunk from anything like a public exhibition. She was great in personifying and mimicking old Scottish ladies, or indeed Scottish women in the humbler ranks of life, for which her acute observation of character and her knowledge of the vernacular tongue particularly qualified her. Her deceptions were numerous, but all of an innocent kind. In her latter days, at the solicitation of friends, she gave an account of her principal personations, which was printed for private distribution, under the title of Mystifications. The book being much sought after in this country and America, the authoress was prevailed on to let it be published in the usual way (Edmonston and Douglas), 1865; yet, we doubt, after all, if this handsome volume, which was edited by Dr John Brown, is so well known as it should be, and we propose to give one or two alluring specimens of the contents.

The first Mystification in the book is that which signalised Miss Stirling Graham’s success in deceiving Mr Jeffrey, the eminent practising lawyer, and at the same time editor of the Edinburgh Review. Jeffrey had been introduced to the lady, and had heard of her cleverness in personation. Meeting her afterwards at the theatre, he said he should like to see her take in some one. A promise was given that he should have that pleasure very soon. Likely enough, the busy advocate thought nothing more of the matter. On the second evening afterwards, accompanied by Miss Helen Carnegy of Craigo as her daughter, Miss Stirling Graham, who at the time had been on a visit to Lord Gillies, stopped at Mr Jeffrey’s door, 92 George Street, between five and six o’clock, when she knew Mr Jeffrey was at home and preparing for dinner. The two ladies were ushered into the parlour appropriated for visitors. What follows we copy in a somewhat condensed form from the account in Mystifications.

‘There was a blazing fire, and wax-lights on the table; he [Jeffrey] had laid down his book, and seemed to be in the act of joining the ladies in the drawing-room before dinner. The Lady Pitlyal was announced, and he stepped forward a few paces to receive her. She was a sedate-looking little woman of an inquisitive law-loving countenance; a mouth in which [by an adroit management of the lips] not a vestige of a tooth was to be seen, and a pair of old-fashioned spectacles on her nose.... She was dressed in an Irish poplin of silver gray, a white Cashmere shawl, a mob-cap with a band of thin muslin that fastened it below the chin, and a small black silk bonnet that shaded her eyes from any glare of light. Her right hand was supported by an antique gold-headed cane, and she leant with the other on the arm of her daughter.

‘Mr Jeffrey bowed, and handed the old lady to a chaise longue on one side of the fire, and sat himself down opposite to her on the other. But in his desire to accommodate the old lady, and in his anxiety to be informed of the purport of the visit, he forgot what was due to the young one, and the heiress of the ancient House of Pitlyal was left standing in the middle of the floor. She helped herself to a chair, however, and sat down beside her mother. She had been educated in somewhat of the severity of the old school, and during the whole of the consultation she neither spoke nor moved a single muscle of her countenance.

“_Well!_” said Mr Jeffrey as he looked at the old lady, in expectation that she would open the subject that had procured him the honour of the visit.

“Weel,” replied her Ladyship, “I am come to tak’ a word o’ the law frae you.

“My husband, the late Ogilvy of Pitlyal, among other property which he left to me, was a house and a yard at the town-end of Kirriemuir, also a kiln and a malt-barn.

“The kiln and the barn were rented by a man they ca’d John Playfair, and John Playfair subset them to anither man they ca’d Willy Cruickshank, and Willy Cruickshank purchased a cargo of damaged lint, and ye widna hinder Willy to dry the lint upon the kiln, and the lint took low and kindled the cupples, and the slates flew aff, and a’ the flooring was brunt to the ground, and naething left standin’ but the bare wa’s.

“Now it wasna insured, and I want to ken wha’s to pay the damage, for John Playfair says he has naething ado wi’ it, and Willy Cruickshank says he has naething to do it wi’, and I am determined no to take it off their hand the way it is.”

“Has it been in any of the Courts?”

“Ou ay; it has been in the Shirra Court of Forfar; and Shirra Duff was a gude man, and he kent me, and would ha’ gien’t in my favour, but that clattering creature Jamie L’Amy cam’ in, and he gave it against me.”

“I have no doubt Mr L’Amy would give a very fair decision.”

“It wasna a fair decision when he gae it against me.”

“That is what many people think in your circumstances.”

“The minister of Blairgowrie is but a fule body, and advised me no to gae to the law.”

“I think he gave you a very sensible advice.”

“It was onything but that; and mind, if you dinna gie’t in my favour, I’ll no be sair pleased.”

‘Mr Jeffrey smiled, and said he would not promise to do that, and then inquired if she had any papers.

“Ou ay, I have a great bundle of papers, and I’ll come back at any hour you please to appoint, and bring them wi’ me.”

“It will not be necessary for you to return yourself; you can send them to me.”

“And wha would you recommend to me for an agent in the business?”

“That I cannot tell; it is not my province to recommend an agent.”

“Then how will Robert Smith of Balharry do?”

“Very well; very good man indeed; and you may bid him send me the papers.”

‘Meantime her Ladyship drew from her pocket a large old-fashioned leather pocket-book with silver clasps, out of which she presented him a letter directed to himself. He did not look into it, but threw it carelessly on the table. She now offered him a pinch of snuff from a massive gold box, and then selected another folded paper from the pocket-book, which she presented to him, saying: “Here is a prophecie that I would like you to look at and explain to me.”

‘He begged to be excused, saying: “I believe your Ladyship will find me more skilled in the law than the prophets.”

‘She entreated him to look at it; and on glancing his eyes over it, he remarked, “that from the words Tory and Whig, it did not seem to be a very ancient prophecy.”

“Maybe,” replied her Ladyship; “but it has been long in our family. I copied these lines out of a muckle book entitled the Prophecie of Pitlyal, just before I came to you, in order to have your opinion on some of the obscure passages of it. And you will do me a great favour if you will read it out loud, and I will tell you what I think of it as you go on.”

‘Here, then, with a smile at the oddity of the request, and a mixture of impatience in his manner, he read the following lines, while she interrupted him occasionally to remark upon their meaning:

When the crown and the head shall disgrace ane anither, And the Bishops on the Bench shall gae a’ wrang thegither; When Tory or Whig, Fills the judge’s wig; When the Lint o’ the Miln Shall reek on the kiln; O’er the Light of the North, When the Glamour breaks forth, And its wild-fire so red With the daylight is spread; When woman shrinks not from the ordeal of tryal, There is triumph and fame to the House of Pitlyal.

“We ha’e seen the crown and the head,” she said, “disgrace ane anither no very lang syne, and ye may judge whether the bishops gaed right or wrang on that occasion; and the Tory and Whig may no be very ancient, and yet never be the less true. Then there is the Lint o’ the Miln—we have witnessed that come to pass; but what the ‘Light of the North’ can mean, and the ‘Glamour,’ I canna mak’ out. The twa hindmost lines seem to me to point at Queen Caroline; and if it had pleased God to spare my son, I might have guessed he would have made a figure on her trial, and have brought ‘Triumph and fame to the House of Pitlyal.’ I begin, however, to think that the prophecie may be fulfilled in the person of my daughter, for which reason I have brought her to Edinburgh to see and get a gude match for her.”