OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street. 250
Sleat, and so named probably from the vast resort
and slaughter of seals formerly made on its bleak
and desolate rocks. Few or none, we are told, who
have not seen the black deep bosom of Loch Hourn,
its terrific rampart of mountain turrets, and the
long, narrow gulf in which it sleeps in the cradle of
its abyss, can conceive its profound and breathless
stillness when undisturbed by the wild gusts of the
coires, or gales, that sweep through its narrow
gorge. i t was in such an interval of peace that
Lady Grange embarked, and for nine days her
vessel lay becalmed. Two miserable years she
abode in Heiskar.
In June, 1734, a sloop, commanded by a Macleod,
came to Heiskax to convey the victim of all
these strange precautions to the most remote portion
of the British Isles, St. Kilda, ?far amid the
melancholy main,?? where she was placed in a
cottage composed of two small apartments, with a
girl to wait upon her, and where, except for a short
time in the case of Roderick Maclennan, a Highland
clergyman, there was not a human being who
understood the language she spoke.
No newspapers, letters, or intelligence, came
hither from the world in which she had once dwelt,
save once yearly, when a steward came to collect,
in kind, birds? feathers and so forth, the rent of the
poor islanders. In St Kilda she spent seven years,
and how she spent them will never be known, yet
they were not passed without several mad and futile
efforts to escape.
Meanwhile all Edinburgh knew that she had
been forcibly abducted from Niddry?s Wynd by
order of her husband, but the secret of her whereabouts
was sedulously kept from all; but now the
latter had resigned his seat on the bench, and
entered political life, as a friend of the Prince of
Wales and opponent of Sir Robert WaIpole.
At length, in the gloomy winter of 1740-1, a
communication from Lady Grange for the first time
reached those in Edinburgh, who had begun to
wonder and denounce the singular means her
husband had taken to ensure domestic quiet. It
was brought by the minister Maclennan and his wife
Katharine MacInnon, both of whom had quitted
St. Kilda in consequence of a quarrel with the
steward of Macleod of that ilk. hlaclennan was
provided with letters for Lady Grange?s law-agent,
Mr. Hope, of Rankeillor, who made all the necessary
precognitions, including those of people at
Polmaise and elsewhere; after which he made
application to the Lord Justice-clerk for warrants
empowering a search to be made, and the Laird of
Macleod and others to be arrested ; and when Mr.
John Macleod, advocate, was cited, he declared
that he had no authority to appear for Lord
Grange, ? but repelled the charges against his chief
and clansmen, claiming that no warrant should be
granted upon the evidence of such scandalous and
disreputable persons as Maclennan and his wife ;?
and Rankeillor was ordered to produce letters of
evidence that those shown were actually written
by Lady Grange, and being found to be in the
writing of hlaclennan, they were dismissed as insufficient,
and warrants were refused.
Undeterred by this, Hope, on the 12th of February,
fitted out a sloop, commanded by N?illiani
Gregory, with twenty-five well-armed men, and sent
him, with Mr. lllaclennan on board, ?to search
for and rescue Lady Grange wherever she could be
found ;? but Macleod, on hearing of the dqarture
of the sloop-which got no farther than Horse Shoe
Harbour, in Lorn (where the master quarrelled with
his guide, Mrs. Maclennan, and put her ashore)
-had Lady Grange removed, and secluded in
Assynt, at a farm-house, closely watched. There she
became enfeebled in mind and body, the result of
violent passions, intoxication, and latterly sea-sickness,
which produced settled imbecility ; and the
unhappy lady thus treated was the wife of a man
who, ?not to speak of his office of a judge in
Scotland, moved in English society of the highest
character. He must have been the friend of
Lyttelton, Pope, Thomson, and other ornaments
of Fredenck?s Court ; and, as the brother-in-law of
the Countess of Mar, who was sister of Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, he would figure in the brilliant
circle which surrounded that star of the age of the
second George. Yet he does not appear to have ever
felt a moment?s compunction at leaving the mother
of his children to fret herself to death in a halfsavage
wilderness.?
In a letter of his, dated Westminster, in June,
1749, in answer to an intimation of her death, he
wrote thus callously :-?? I most heartily thank you?
my dear friend, for the timely notice you gave me
of the death of that person. It would be a ridiculous
untruth to pretend grief for it; but as it
brings to my mind a train of various things for
many years back, it gives me concern. . . . I
long for the particulars of her death, which you are
pleased to tell me I am to have by the next post.?
After her removal to Skye her mind sunk to
idiocy. She exhibited a restless desire to ramble,
and no motive now remaining for restraint, she
was allowed entire freedom, and the poor wanderer
strolled from place to place, supported
by the hospitality and tenderness which, in the
Highlands, have ever given a sacred claim to the
idiot poor. In this state she lingered for seven
High Street I ST. CECILTA?S HALL. 25 I
years, and in June, 1749, died in a cottar?s humble
dwelling at Idragal, seventeen years after her abduction
on that evening of January from her house
in Niddry?s Wynd.
On the east side of Niddry?s Wynd, at the foot
thereof, and resting on the Cowgate, was St.
Cecilia?s Hall, an oval edifice, having a concave
ceiling, and built in 1762 by Robert Mylne, the
architect of Blackfriars Bridge (lineal descendant
of the royal master-masons) ?after the model
of the opera at Yarma,? says Kincaid. The orchestra
was placed over the north end, and therein
was placed a fine organ. It was seatqd for 500
persons.
The Musical Society of Edinburgh, whose weekly
concerts formed one of the most delightful entertainments
in the old city, dated back to the otherwise
gloomy era of 1728. Yet from ? Fountainhall?s
Decisions ? we learn that so far back as 1694
an enterprising citizen named Beck ?erected a
concert of music? somewhere in the city, which
involved him in a lawsuit with the Master of the
Revels. Even before I 7 28 several gentlemen, who
were performers on the harpsichord and violin, had
taken courage, and formed a weekly club at the
Cross Kys tavern, ?kept,? says knot, ?by one
Steil, a great lover of musick, and a good singer
of Scots songs.? Steil is mentioned in the Latin
lyrics of Dr. Pitcairn, who refers to a subject of
which he was fully master-the old Edinburgh
taverns of Queen Anne?s time. At Pate Steil?s the
common entertainment consisted in playing the
concertos and Sonatas of Corelli, then just published,
and the overtures of Handel. A governor, deputygovernor,
treasurer, and five directors, were annually
chosen to direct the affairs of this society, which
consisted of seventy members. They met in St.
Mary?s Chapel from 1728 till 1762, when this hall
was built for them.
Fc: some years the celebrated Tenducci, who is
mentioned in O?Keefe?s ? Recollections? in 1766 as
a famous singer of Scottish songs, was at the head of
the band ; and one great concert was given yearly
in honour of St. Cecilia, when Scottish songs were
among those chiefly sung. When the Prince of
Hesse came over, in 1745, with his 6,000 mercenaries,
to fight against the Jacobites, he was specially
entertained here by the then governor of the
Musical Society, Lord Drummore, Hugh Dalrymple.
The prince was not only a dilettante, but.a good
performer on an enormous violoncello. ?? Few
persons now living,? says Dr. Chambers in 1847,
? recollect the elegant concerts that were given
many years ago in what is now an obscure part of
our ancient city, known by the name- of St.
zecilia?s Hall,? and still fewer may remember them
On the death of Lord Drummore, in 1755, the
iociety performed a grand concert in honour of his
nemory, when the numerous company were all
lressed in the deepest mourning.
In I 7 63 the concerts began at six in the evening ;
n 1783 an hour later.
To the concertos of Corelli and Handel in the
iew hall, were added the overtures of Stamitz,
Bach, Abel, and latterly those of Haydn, Pleyel,
ind the magnificent symphonies of Mozart and
Beethoven. The vocal department of these old
:oncerts consisted of the songs of Handel, Arne,
;luck, and Guglielmi, with a great Infusion o f
jcottish songs, for as yet the fashionables of Ediniurgh
were too national to ignore their own stirring
nusic, and among the amateurs who took the lead
is choristers were the wealthy Gilbert Innes of
stow, Mr. Alexander Wight, advocate, Mt. John
Russell, W.S., and the Earl of Kellie, who on one
Iccasion acted as leader of the band when perbrming
one of six overtures of his own composition;
and though last, not least, Mr. George
rhomson, the well-known editor of the ? Melodies
>f Scotland.?
A snpper to the directors and their friends
it Fortune?s tavern always followed an oratorio,
where the names of the chief beauties who had
yaced the hall were toasted in bumpers from
;lasses of vast length, for exuberant loyalty to beauty
was a leading feature in the convivial meetings of
those days.
?Let me call to mind a few of those whose
lovely faces at the concerts gave us the sweetest
test for music,? wrote George Thomson, who died
in 1851, in his ninety-fourth year :-??Miss Cleghorn
of Edinburgh, still living in single blessedness ;
Miss Chalmers of Pittencrief, who married Sir
CVilliam Miller of Glenlee, Bart. ; Miss? Jessie
Chalmers of Edinburgh, who married Mr. Pringle
of Haining; Miss Hay of Hayston, who married
Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Bart. ; Miss
Murray of Lintrose, who was called the Flower of
Strathmore, and upon whom Burns wrote the song,
Brjhe, hlythe, and merry was she,
Blythe was she but and ben;
And blythe in Glenturit glen?
low.
Blythe by the bank? of Earn,
She married David Smith, Esq., of Methven,
one of the Lords of Session; Miss Jardine of
Edinburgh, who married Home Drunimond of
Blairdrummond, their daughter, if I mistake not,
is now Duchess of Athole; Miss Kinloch of Gilmerton,
who married Sir Foster Cunliffe of Acton
