High Street.] MISS NICKY MURRAY. 243
in the charter room of the burgh, dated 1723, is
described as being ?that big hall, or great room,
now known by the name of the Assembly House,
twice upon it in one night, and often the most
beautiful girls in the city passed it, as inere spectators,
which threw serious duties on the gentlemen
There it was that the Honourable Miss Nicky
Murray reigned supreme as lady-directress and
goddess of fashion, for many years during the
middle of the eighteenth century. She was a
sister of the Earl of Mansfield, and was a woman
possessed of much good sense, firmness, knowledge
of the world, and of the characters of those by
whom she was surrounded. With her sisters she
lived long in one of the tenements at the head of
Bailie Fyfe?s Close, where she annually received
whole broods of fair country cousins, who came to
town to receive the finishing touches of a girl?s education,
and be introduced to society-the starched
and stately society of old Edinburgh.
The Assembly Room was in the close to which
it gave its name. It had a spacious lobby, lighted
by sconces, where the gilded sedans set down their
powdered, hooped, and wigged occupants, while
links flared, liveried valets jostled, and swords were
sometimes drawn; and where a reduced gentleman-
a claimant to the ancient peerage of Kirkcudbnght-
sold gloves, for which he was rather
ungenerously sneered at by Oliver Goldsmith.
From this lobby the dancing-hall opened at
once, and up-stairs was a tea-room. The former
had in its centre a railed space,-within which were
the dancers ; while the spectators, we are told, sat
on the outside, and no communication was permitted
between the different sides of this sacred
pale. Here it was that in 1753 Goldsmith first
saw, with some astonishment, the formalities of
the old Scottish balls. He relates that on entering
the dancing-room he saw one end of it taken up
by the ladies, who ?sat dismally in a group by
themselves. ?On the other end stand their
pensive partners that are to be, but no more
intercourse between the sexes than between two
countries at war. The ladies, indeed, may ogle,
and the gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is laid on
any closer commerce.?
The lady directress occupied a high chair, or
species of throne, upon a dais at one end, and
thereon sat Miss Nicky Murray in state. Her
immediate predecessors there had been Mrs.
Browne of Colstoun, and Lady Minto, daughter
of Sir Robert Stuart of Allanbank.
The whole arrangements were ofa rigid character,
iartner for the whole year! The arrangements
were generally made at some preliminary ball or
Ither gathering, when a gentleman?s cocked hat
was unflapped and the ladies? fans were placed
;herein, and, as in a species of ballot, the beaux
hew forth the latter, and to whomsoever the fan
3elonged he was to be the partner for the season,
I system often productive of absurd combinations
md many a petty awkwardness. ? Then,? as Sir
Alexander Boswell wrote-
? The Assembly Clbse received the fair-
Order and elegance presided there-
Each gay Right Honourable had her place,
To walk a minuet with becoming grace.
No racing to the dance, with rival hurry-
Such was thy sway, 0 famed Miss Nicky Murray !
Each lady?s fan a chosen Damon bore,
With care selected many a day before ;
For, unprovided with a favourite beau,
The nymph, chagrined, the ball must needs forego,
But previous matters to her taste arranged,
Certes, the constant couple never changed ;
Through a long night, to watch fair Delia?s will,
The same dull swain was at her elbow still.??
With sword at side, and often hat in hand, the
gallants of those days escorted the chairs of their
partners home to many a close and wynd now the
ibode of squalor and sordid poverty; for much
Df stately and genuine old-fashioned gallantry prevailed,
as if it were part of the costume, referred
to by the poet :-
? Shades of my fathers ! in your pasteboard skirts,
Your broidered waistcoats and your plaited shirts,
Your formal bag-wigs, wide extended cuffs,
Your five-inch chitterlings and nine-inch ruffs.
Gods! how ye strut at times in all your state,
Amid the visions of my thoughtful pate ! ?
Those who attended the assemblies belonged
exclusively to the upper circle of society that then,
existed in Edinburgh ; and Miss Murray, on
hearing a young lady?s name mentioned to her for
approval, was wont to ask, ?? Miss-of what? ? and,
if no territorial or family name followed, she might
dismiss the matter by a wave of her fan, for,
according to her views, it was necessary to be
??a lady 0? that ilk;? and it is well known, that
?upon one occasion, seeing at an assembly a
wan who had been raised to wealth in some
