Part 11 (2/2)
so as to give pain to any human being.
[33] Miss Graham's genealogy in connection with Claverhouse-the same who was killed at Killiecrankie-is as follows:-John Graham of Claverhouse married the Honorable Jean Cochrane, daughter of William Lord Cochrane, eldest son of the first Earl of Dundonald. Their only son, an infant, died December 1689. David Graham, his brother, fought at Killiecrankie, and was outlawed in 1690-died without issue-when the representation of the family devolved on his cousin, David Graham of Duntrune. Alexander Graham of Duntrune died 1782; and on the demise of his last surviving son, Alexander, in 1804, the property was inherited equally by his four surviving sisters, Anne, Amelia, Clementina, and Alison.
Amelia, who married Patrick Stirling, Esq., of Pittendreich, was her mother. Clementina married Captain Gavin Drummond of Keltie; their only child was Clementina Countess of Airlie, and mother of the present Earl.
The t.i.tle of this memorial is _Mystifications_, and in the opening letter to her dear kinswoman and life-long friend, Mrs. Gillies, widow of Lord Gillies, she thus tells her story:-
DUNTRUNE, _April 1859._
MY DEAREST MRS. GILLIES,
_To you and the friends who have partaken in these ”Mystifications,” I dedicate this little volume, trusting that, after a silence of forty years, its echoes may awaken many agreeable memorials of a society that has nearly pa.s.sed away._
_I have been asked if I had no remorse in ridiculing singularities of character, or practising deceptions;-certainly not._
_There was no personal ridicule or mimicry of any living creature, but merely the personation or type of a bygone cla.s.s, that had survived the fas.h.i.+on of its day._
_It was altogether a fanciful existence, developing itself according to circ.u.mstances, or for the amus.e.m.e.nt of a select party, among whom the announcement of a stranger lady, an original, led to no suspicion of deception. No one ever took offence: indeed it generally elicited the finest individual traits of sympathy in the minds of the dupes, especially in the case of Mr. Jeffrey, whose sweet-tempered kindly nature manifested itself throughout the whole of the tiresome interview with the law-loving Lady Pitlyal._
_No one enjoyed her eccentricities more than he did, or more readily devised the arrangement of a similar scene for the amus.e.m.e.nt of our mutual friends._
_The cleverest people were the easiest mystified, and when once the deception took place, it mattered not how arrant the nonsense or how exaggerated the costume. Indeed, children and dogs were the only detectives._
_I often felt so identified with the character, so charmed with the pleasure manifested by my audience, that it became painful to lay aside the veil, and descend again into the humdrum realities of my own self._
_These personations never lost me a friend; on the contrary, they originated friends.h.i.+ps that cease only with life._
_The Lady Pitlyal's course is run; she bequeaths to you these reminiscences of beloved friends and pleasant meetings._
_And that the blessing of G.o.d may descend on ”each and all of you,” is the fervent prayer of her kinswoman and executrix,_
_CLEMENTINA STIRLING GRAHAM._
I now beg to ”convey,” as Pistol delicately calls it, or as we on our side the Border would say, to ”lift,” enough of this unique volume to make my readers hunger for the whole.
MRS. RAMSAY SPELDIN.
Another evening Miss Guthrie requested me to introduce my old lady to Captain Alexander Lindsay, a son of the late Laird of Kinblethmont, and brother to the present Mr. Lindsay Carnegie, and Mr. Sandford, the late Sir Daniel Sandford.
She came as a Mrs. Ramsay Speldin, an old sweetheart of the laird's, and was welcomed by Mrs. Guthrie as a friend of the family. The young people hailed her as a perfectly delightful old lady, and an original of the pure Scottish character, and to the laird she was endeared by a thousand pleasing recollections.
He placed her beside himself on the sofa, and they talked of the days gone by-before the green parks of Craigie were redeemed from the muir of Gotterston, and ere there was a tree planted between the auld house of Craigie and the Castle of Claypotts.
She spoke of the ”gude auld times, when the laird of Fintry widna gie his youngest dochter to Abercairney, but tell'd him to tak them as G.o.d had gien them to him, or want.”
”And do you mind,” she continued, ”the grand ploys we had at the Middleton; and hoo Mrs. Scott of Gilhorn used to grind lilts out o' an auld kist to wauken her visitors i' the mornin'.
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