38 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [canomgate.
IN the map of the city engraved in 1787 for the
quarto edition of ? Arnot?s History ? there is shown,
.on the west side of the Horse Wynd, adjoining the
Abbey Close, an edifice called Lothian Hut, surbordered
on madness, and, indeed, prior to her
niarriage she had been confined in a strait-waistcoat.
Her beauty has been celebrated coarsely
by Pope, and her irrepressible temper by Prior :-
? Thus Kitty, beautiful and young,
And wild as colt untarncd,
Bespoke the fair from whom she sprung,
By little rage inflamed:
Inflamed with rage at sad restraint,
Which wise mamma ordained ;
And sorely vexed to play the saint
Whilst wit and beauty reigned.?
After the duke and duchess had embroiled themselves
with the Court in 1729, in consequence of
patronising the poet Gay, they came to Queensberry
House, and brought himwith them. Tradition used
to indicate an attic in an old mansion opposite,
as the place where-appropriate abode of a poet-
Gay wrote the ? Beggar?s Opera ?-? an entirely gratuitous
assumption,? says Mr. Chambers. I? In the
history of his writings nothing of consequence
occurs at this time. He had finished the second
part of the opera some time before, and after his
return to the south he is found engaged in new
writing a damned play, which he wrote several years
before, called ? The Wife of Bath,? a task which he
accomplished while living with the Duke of Queensberry
in Oxfordshire, during the ensuing months of
August, September, and October.?
The Duchess Catharine disliked the Scots and
their manners, particularly the use of a knife in
lieu of a fork, on which she would scream out and
beseech them not to cut their throats. ?To the
lady I live with,? wrote Gay to Swift in 1729, ?I
o ve my life and fortune. Think of her with respect,
value and esteem her as I do, and never more
despise a fork with three prongs.? When in Scotland
she always dressed herself as a peasant-girl,
to ridicule the stately dresses and demeanour of the
Scottish dames who visited Queensberry House or
Drumlanrig, and this freak of costume led to her
being roughly repelled at a review. Her eldest
rounded by trees. This was the small but magnificently
finished town mansion of the Lothian
family, and was built by William, the third Marquis,
about the year 1750, when Lord Clerk Register Qf
son, the Earl of Drurnlanrig, was altogether mad,
and contracted himself to one lady while he married
another, a daughter of the Earl of Hopetoun.
He served two campaigns under the Earl of Stair,
and commanded two battalions of Scots in the
Dutch service. But in 1754 the family malady
proved so strong for him, that during a journey
to London he rode on before the coach in which
the duchess travelled, and shot himself with one of
his pistols. It was given out that it had gone off
by accident His brother Charles, after narrowly
escaping the earthquake at Lisbon in 1755, died
in the following year.
On the death of their father, in 1778, the titp
and estates devolved on his cousin, the Earl of
March, an old debauchee, better known as ? Old
Q.? In his time, and before it, Queensberry
House had other occupants than the Douglases.
In 1747 the famous Marshal Earl of Stair died
there; and in 1784 it was the residence of the
Right Hon. James Montgomery of Stanhop, Lord
Chief Baron of Exchequer-the first Scotsman who
held that office after the establishment of the Court
at the Union. Prior to his removal to Queensberry
House (of which the duke gave him gratuitous use)
he had occupied the third flat of the Bishop?s Land,
formerly occupied by the Lord President Dundas.
In 1801 the blast! ?? Old Q. ? ordered Queensberry
House to be stripped of its decorations, and
sold. With fifty-eight fire rooms, and a noble
gallery seventy feet long, besides a spacious garden,
it was offered at the singularly low upset price of
A900, and was bought by Government as a barrack.
It is now, and has been since 1853, a House of
Refuge for the Destitute, in which upwards of
12,000 persons are relieved every year, or an
average of thirty-three nightly for the twelvemonth,
while during the same period nearly 40,000 meals
of broth and bread are issued from the soup kitchen.
A very handsome building, in baronial style, called
Queensberry Lodge, adjoins it, for the reception
and treatment of inebriates-but ladies only.
