BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 69
parish. He still took a hearty glass ; as a proof of this, he drank an equal share
of eight bottles of strong ale one evening with his limner and a friend. He at
that period had a brother in life, only two years younger than himself, whose
wife was then bearing children.
One of his sons happening to be present, in the course of conversation
asked the company ‘‘ What age they supposed him to be 1” From his juvenile
appearance and ruddy complexion, they guessed him at thirty-four, and were
not a little astonished when he informed them that he waa thirty years older !
No. XXXII.
ANGEL0 TREMAMONDO, ESQ.,
RIDING-MASTER,
AS his almost unpronounceable name indicates, was a native of Italy. He came
to Edinburgh about the year 1768, and was the first public teacher of riding in
Scotland, having been appointed “ Master of the Royal Riding Menage,” for
which he had a salary from Government. The people of Scotland are proverbial
for a hatred to long names; so in their hands Angelo dwindled down to
plain (‘ Aimlie,” and Tremamondo was unceremoniously discarded. ‘I Ainslie ”
lived in Nicolson Square, and was reputed to be wealthy, Having accidentally
got a small piece of steel inta one of his eyes, nearly all the physicians
in Edinburgh were consulted, but without effect. At last Tremamondo
was directed to Miller, the famous oculist, who succeeded in restoring his
sight; but, unfortunately for the Italian, he succeeded also in becoming his
son-in-law very soon after. The Doctor, perhaps, loved Miss Tremamondo
well enough, but it afterwards appeared he had likewise “cast an eye” on her
papa’s purse; and, thinking that the old fellow did not “tell out” fast
enough, a lawsuit was the unhappy consequence. Like all other lawsuits,
where there is anything like a fat goose to be plucked, it waa carried on for
a length of time with various success. Kay’s MS. mentions that when Tremamondo
received the first summons from his friend of the lancet, he was transported
into a regular tornado of passion. : He tore down a picture of his daughter
which hung in the parlour, and, dashing it in pieces, threw it into the fire. While
the old Italian and his son-in-law were thus pulling and hauling, the daughter,
like a too sensitive plant, died of a “broken heart” Tremamondo died at
Edinburgh, in April 1805, aged eighty-four.
Of the Riding-Master‘s early history very little is known ; but from a work
It might have been a mere monntebank name of his own assumption-it meam a trembling of
the world-an universal earthquake.
