OUR LADIES.

Saturday Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 123, 17 November 1877, Page 17

OUR LADIES.

THE OLD SCHOOL OF SCOTTISH LADIES. A DESCENDANT OF “ BONNIE DUNDEE.”

The grave has recently closed over the remains of perhaps the last and best specimen oE the old sehool of Scottish ladies—Miss Stirling Graham, who died in her ninetysixth year. Her father, Mr Patrick Stirling, was a highly-respected Dundee merchant, who married nearly a century ago the heiress of Duntrune, a fine property in the vicinity of Broughty Ferry. The Grahams of Duntrune were the representatives of the family to which the notorious John Graham of Claverhouse belonged. Among other articles connected with the “ Bloody Ciavers ” preserved in Duntrune House are his marriage contract, his commission as Colonel of Horse and Major-General of all the Forces in Scotland, and the patent creating him Viscount Dundee. Claverkouse’s estate was in the immediate vicinity of the town from which he took his title, and his mansion of Dudhope has now been converted into barracks. Fifty years ago Miss Graham was one of the most delightful members of that brilliant coterie which included Sir Walter Scott, Jeffrey, the two Clerks (John and William), Cockburn, Murray, and the other literary and legal luminaries, who, during a quarter of a -century, adorned our northern metropolis. She possessed All the characteristic qualities, but with higher cultivation and greater refinement, of the “excellent old Scottish ladies ” described by Lord Cockburn as “ a deliglxful set, strong-headed, warm-hearted, and high-spirited, sense, humour, affection, and spirit being their prominent qualities.” Miss Graham’s strong understanding, wit, invention, fine humour, and her goodness and warmth of heart made her worthy to be ranked with the best of the “ strong-brained and strong-hearted” men and women of these days, and caused her to be a universal favourite with the race of intellectual giants among whom the years of her youth and middle age were spent. Her powers of personification were very remarkable, and so perfectly did she exhibit in manner and talk the various characters she assumed that she was completely successful in taking in her most intimate friends, including Jeffrey, William Clerk, Sir Daniel Sandford, Count Flahault, and many others. An account of the mode in which she victimised Jeffrey m 1821, in the-character of the widow Lady Pitlyal, who “came to tak’ a word o’ law frae ” the celebrated advocate, found its way into Blackwood and first made Miss

Graham’s powers known to. the general public. Numerous other personifications followed, . equally good and successful, at one of which, in the house of Lord Gilles, Sir Walter Scott was present; The great novelist, describes the scene in one of his journals, and dwells on the appearance and manners of the lady—her . “face of the Scottish cast, with good expression in point of good sense and good humour,’-’ another shrewd and sensible conversation. “Her dress and behaviour (in the character af an old Scottish lady) were admirable, and the conversation unique. I was in the-.secret, of course, and did .my. best to keep up the ball, but she cut me out of all feather. The prosing account she gave of her son, the antiquary, who found an aiild wig in a slate quarry, was extremely ludicrous; and slie puzzled the Professor of Agriculture with a merciless account of'the succession of crops in the parks around her old mansion-house.” On taking leave, Sir Walter,. bending down, whispered in Miss Graham’s ear, “ Awa! awa ! the deil’s ower grit wi’ you.” Miss Graham’s friends for years urged her to print for them her notes of the “ Mystifications," and she at last consented to do so in.; 1859, for private circulation. Four years later she was persuaded, not without difficulty, to let the public as well as her friends enjoy them. They were accordingly published with a characteristic preface by the author of “Rab and his Friends,” Miss Graham’s “ kind physician and friend,” and have now reached a fourth edition. Appended to the “ Mystifications ” are delightful sketches from Miss Graham’s pen of four worthies of bygone days—one of them, the notice of Miss Menie Trotter, whose character has been delineated both by Lord Cockburn and Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, is singularly beautiful and affecting-

All that was mortal of the above gifted lady was consigned to the dust in the spot selected by herself eight years ago, in the picturesque old churchyard of Mains, which forms part of the romantic Den of Mains* and is surrounded, but not overshadowed, by venerable oaks. The body was enclosed in a wooden coffin lined with lead, which again was enclosed in another of polished oak. On the outer coffin was a massive silver-plate containing v the simple inscription, “ Clementina Stirling Graham, born May 4th, 1782 ; died, August 23rd, 1877.” The funeral services were conducted by Rev. Dr Maekness, of Broughty Ferry Episcopal Church. From the hearse to the place of interment, the coffin was carried on the shoulders of six men, followed by the chief mourner, Mr John Edmund Lacon, nephew to the deceased, and heir to the estat q.—Renfrewshire Gazette.

FAIR ROSAMOND. There is a pretty 'story told of Fair Rosamond. It relates how a king doted on Fair Rosamond, who was the loveliest girl in all the world; and how he had a beautiful bower built for her in a park at Woodstock ; and how it was erected in a labyrinth, and could only be found by a clue of silk. How the bad Queen Eleanor, becoming jealous of Fair Rosamond, found out the secret of the clue, and appeared before her, one day, with a dagger and a cup of poison, and left her to the choice between those deaths. How Fair Rosamond, after shedding many piteous tears and offering many useless prayers to the cruel queen, took the poison and fell dead in the midst of the beautiful bower, while the unconscious birds sang gaily all around her. Now, there was a fair Rosamond, and she was (I dare say) the loveliest girl in all the world, and the king was certainly very fond of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made jealous. But lam afraid— I say afraid, because I like the story so much —that there was no bower, no labyrinth, no silken clue, no dagger, no poison. I am afraid that fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford, and died there, peaceably ; her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery over her tomb, and often dressing it with flowers, in remembrance of the youth and beauty that had enchanted the king when he was too young, and when his life lay fair before him. It was dark and ended now; faded and gone. Henry Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church of Fontevraud, in the fiftyseventh year of his age—never to be completed—after governing England well for nearly thirty-five years. —Household Words