Inverleith.] MRS. ROCHEID OF INVERLEITH. s 95
to the estate of?his maternal grandmother, took
the name of Rocheid. His son, James Rocheid
.of Inverleith, was an eminent agriculturist, on
whose property the villas of Inverleith Row were
built.
He died in 1824 in the house of Inverleith.
He was a man of inordinate vanity and family
pride, and it used to be one of the sights of Stockbridge
to see his portly figure, in a grand old family
carriage covered with heraldic blazons, passing
through, to or from the city; and a well-known
anecdote of how his innate pomposity was humbled,
is well known there still.
On one occasion, when riding in the vicinity, he
took his horse along the footpath, and while doing
so, met a plain-looking old gentleman, who firmly
declined to make way for him; on this Rocheid
ordered him imperiously to stand aside. The
pedestrian declined,saying that the otherhad no right
whatever to ride upon the footpath. ?DO you
know whom you are speaking to ?? demanded the
horseman in a high tone. ? I do not,? was the
quiet response. ?Then know that I am John
Rocheid, Esquire of Inverleith, and a trustee upon
this road !
? I am George, Duke of Montagu,? replied the
other, upon which the haughty Mr. Rocheid took
to the main road, after making a very awkward
apology to the duke, who was then on a visit to
his daughter the Duchess of Buccleuch at Dalkeith.
He had a predilection for molesting pedestrians,
and was in the custom of driving his carriage along
a strictly private footpath that led from Broughton
Toll towards Leith, to the great exasperation of
those at whose expense it had been constructed.
It is of his mother that Lord Cockburn gives
us such an amusing sketch in the ?? Memorials of
his own Time,?-thus: ICLacly Don and Mrs.
Rocheid of Inverleith, .two dames of high and
aristocratic breed. They had both shone at first
as hooped beauties in the minuets, and then as
ladies of ceremonies at our stately assemblies ; and
each carried her peculiar qualities and air to the
very edge of the grave, Lady Don?s dignity softened
by gentle sweetness, Mrs. Rocheid?s made more
formidable by cold and severe soleinnity. Except
Mrs. Siddons, in some of her displays of magnificent
royalty, nobody could sit down like the Lady
of Inverleith. She would sail like a ship from
Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling silk,
done up in all the accompaniment of fans, earrings,
and finger-rings, falling-sleeves, scent-bottle,
embroidered bag, hoop and train, all superb, yet all
in purest taste ; managing all this seemingly heavy
rigging with as much ease as a full-blown swan
Who are you, fellow ? ?
does its plumage. She would take possession of
the centre of a large sofa, and at the same moment,
without the slightest visible exertion, cover the
whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds
seeming to lay themselves over it, like summer
waves. The descent from her carriage too, where
she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a display
which no one in these days could accomplish or
even fancy. The mulberry-coloured coach, but
apparently not too large for what it carried, though
she alone was in it-the handsome, jolly coachman
and his splendid hammer-cloth loaded with lacethe
two respectful livened footmen, one on each
side of the richly carpeted step, these were lost
sight of amidst the slow majesty with which the
lady came down and touched the earth. She presided
in this imperial style over her son?s excellent
dinners, with great sense and spirit to the very last
day almost of a prolonged life.?
This stateliness was not unmixed with a certain
motherly kindness and racy homeliness, peculiar to
great Scottish dames of the old school.
In InverleithTerrace, oneof thestreetsbuilt on this
property, Professor Edmonstone Aytounwas resident
about 1850 ; and in No. 5 there resided, prior to his
departure to London, in 1864, John Faed, the eminent
artist, a native of Kirkcudbright, who, so early
as his twelfth year, used to paint little miniatures,
and after whose exhibition in Edinburgh, in 1841,
his pictures began to find a ready sale.
In Warriston Crescent, adjoining, there lived for
many years the witty and eccentric W. R. Jamieson,
W.S., author of a luckless tragedy entitled
?Timoleon,? produced by Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham,
at the old Theatre Royal, and two novels, almost
forgotten now, ? The Curse of Gold,?? and ? Milverton,
or the Surgeon?s Daughter.? He died in obscurity
in London.
Inverleith Row, which extends north-westwards
nearly three-quarters of a mile from Tanfield Hall,
to a place called Golden Acre, is bordered by a
row of handsome villas and other good residences.
In No. 52, here, there lived long, and died on
6th of November, 1879, a very interesting old
officer, General William Crokat, whose name was
associated with the exile and death of Napoleon
in St. Helena. ?So long ago as 1807,? said a
London paper, with particular reference to this
event, ? William Crokat was gazetted as ensign in
the 20th Regiment of Foot, and the first thought
which suggests itself is, that from that date we are
divided by a far wider interval than was Sir Walter
Scott from the insurrection of Prince Charlie, when
in 1814, he gave to his first novel the title of
?Waverley, or ?Tis Sixty Years Since.? There is
96 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Inverleith.
something at once strong and startling in the
consciousness that His Royal Highness the Conimander-
in-Chief, during his recent official visit to
Edinburgh, might have shaken hands with a
veteran who landed with his regiment in Portugal
about the middle of 1808, who took part in
the battle of Vimiera, in the advance into Spain,
in the disastrous retreat upon Corunna, and in the
battle before that town in 1809. It is now (in
1879) seventy years to a day siiice Lieutenanthearts
of half-a-dozen predecessors-their orders
being that twice in every twenty-four hours they
should ascertain by ocular demonstration that the
Emperor was at Longwood.
The latter died while Captain Crokat was
installed in the office, and he was sent home by
Sir Hudson Lowe with the dispatches, announcing
that event j and after serving in India, he retired in
1830, and in spite of war, wounds, and fever, lived
for nearly half a century before he passed away at n
VIEW IN BONNINGTON, 1851. (From a Drawing by WilZiarn Chnnirrg.)
General Crokat, had ?down with fever? written
against his name in the medical report, which
told the same tale of about three-fourths of those
soldiers sent to perish at pestilential Walcheren.?
General Crokat had served in Sicily, in 1807,
before he served in Spain, and received the war
medal with four clasps for Vimiera, Corunna,
Vittoria, and the Pyrenees, where he was severely
wounded. When peace came, the 20th Regiment
was ordered to St. Helena, and with it went then
Captain Crokat, to take part in transactions to a
soldier more trying than the bullets of the recent
war, for as orderly officer he had charge of ? the
caged eagle of St. Helena,? the captive Napoleon;
a task which is said to have well-nigh broken the
green old age, in his villa at Inverleith Row, a hale
old relic of other times.
In this street are the entrances to the Royal
Botanic Gardens, on the west side thereof, when
they were first formed in 1822-4, in lieu of a previous
garden on the east side of Leith Walk, from
which establishment the shrubs and herbs were transferred
without the eventual injury to a single plant.
They are connectedwith the University, in so
far as the Professor of Botany is Regius Keeper,
and delivers his lectures in the class-room in the
gardens, which extend to twenty-seven Scottish
acres, and contain an extensive range of greenhouses
and hothouses, with a palmhouse, 96 feet
long, 70 feet high, and 57 feet broad. There is an
