THE LA WNMARKET. 163
gable are the initials T. G. and B. G., while on a corresponding shield to the east a
curious device occurs, not unlike an ornamental key, with the 6it in the form of a crescent.
Many such fancy devices occur on the older buildings in Edinburgh, the only probable
explanation of which appears to be that they are merchants’ marks. This house is alluded
to in the divisions of the city for the sixteen companies formed in 1634, in obedience to
an injunction of Charles I,, where the second division, on the north side of the Castle Hill,
terminates at ‘‘ Thomas Gladstone’s Land.”’
Previous to the opening’of Bank Street, Lady Stair’s Close, the fird below this old
building, waa the chief thoroughfare for foot passengers taking advantage of the halfformed
earthen mound, to reach the New Town. It derives ita name from Elizabeth,
Dowager Countess of Stair, who, as the wife of the Viscount Primrose, forms one of the
most interesting characters associated with the romantic traditions of old Edinburgh.
Scott has made the incidents of Lady Primrose’s singular story the groundwork of Aunt
Margaret’s Mirror,” perhaps the most striking of all his briefer tales ; while the scarcely
less interesting materials preserved by the latest survivors of the past generation form
some of the most attractive pages of ‘‘ Chambers’s Traditions.” This story, with nearly
all the marvellous features of Aunt Margaret’s tale, received universal credit from the
contemporaries of the principal actors in its romantic scenes, as well as from many of the
succeeding generation.
The Countess Dowager of Stair was long looked up to as the leader of fashion, and
an admission to her select circle courted as one of the highest objects of ambition among
the smaller gentry of the period. One cannot help smiling now at the idea of the leader
of ton in the Scottish capital condescendingly receiving the dite of fashionable society
in the second flat of a common stair in a narrow close of the Old Town ; yet such were the
habits of Edinburgh society in the eighteenth century, at a period when the distinctions of
rank and fashion were guarded with a degree of jealousy of which we have little conception
now.
A characteristic sample of the manners of the period is furnished in the evidence of
Sir John Stewart of Castlemilk, in the celebrated Douglas Cause, affording a peep into the
interior of Holyrood Palace about the middle of last century. Sir John Stewart states
that, being on a visit to tlie Duke of Hamilton, at his lodgings in the Abbey, the Countess
of Stair entered the room, seemingly in a very great passion, holding in her hand a letter
from Thomas Cochrane, Esq., afterwards Earl of Dundonald, to the Duke of Douglas, in
which he affirmed that the Countess of Stair had declared, that, to her knowledge, the
children said to be those of Lady Jane Douglas were fictitious ; whereupon the Countess
struck the floor three times with a staff which she had in her hand, and each time that she
struck the floor, she called the Earl a damned villain, which her ladyship said was his
own expression in his letter to the Duke. One can fancy the stately old lady in her highheeled
shoes and hoop, flourishing her cane, and crushing the obnoxious letter in her
hand, as she applied to its author the elegant epithet of his own suggestion. ’
In the same close which bears her ladyship’s name also resided the celebrated bibliographer
and antiquary, Mr George Paton, the friend and correspondent of Lord Hailes,
Gough, Bishop Percy, Ritson, George Chalmers, Pennant, Herd, and, indeed, of nearly all
Maitland, p. 285. ’ Proof for Douglas of Douglas, Esq., defender, &c. Douglas Cause.
