SCOTTISH WOMEN.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12406, 23 November 1908, Page 4

SCOTTISH WOMEN.

Very lively reading is to bo found in "A Group of Scottish Women," a book by Captain H. Graham, dealing chiefly with eighteenth, century celebrities. Gay's mend, the Dueiiess of Quoensbury, is included, as, although born on the wrong side of the Tweed, she was connected with Scotland both by marriage and affection. Her story is distinctly amusing. We are told that she "made a point of wearing at all times the garb of a Scottish peasant woman," and that when the lord-in-waiting refused to admit her in an apron to ihe Queen's draw-ing-room, she tore off that garment and "flung it in his lordship's astonished face." On one occasion she drove post-haste out of town to communicate to a friend an important piece of news, which turned out to be a recipe for the cooking of beetsteak. One achievement of hers; however, ought to be read with admiration by the milit-ant women who are just now besieging St. Stephen s. Her Grace headed a raid of ladies on the House of Lords in order to take possession of a gallery which luuT long been reserved for their use, but was then assigned 'io members of the House of Commons. Provisioned from a neighbouring cookshop, and encouraged by popular applause,, these ladie.s subjected the Upper House to ] a whole day's siege. Stratagem proved more effectual than blockade, and the gallery was carried with a rush when the Lord Chancellor, concluding from half -an-hour's silence, that the assailants had withdrawn, ordered the doors to bo unlocked. Another high-spirited peeress portrayed in this book was the Duchess of Gordon, who had, as agirl, danced in i.he oyster cellars of Edinburgh, and oven, it is said, ridden a pig down tho Hinh-stveet. Slio seems to have mediated between George 111. and the Prince : of Wales, intrigued indefatigably on behalf of plain and dull daughters, and succeeded in capturing' three dukes and a marquis as her sons-in-law. This lady it was who* raised the 92nd Regiment, or Gordon Highlanders, recruiting the men with kisses. -