CHAPTER XII WOMEN OF LETTERS IN the ... - Electric Scotland

SCOTTISH MEN OF LETTERS
windows were seen glancing the waters of the Tweed, and the heights of Yarrow.
[Craig-Brown’s Selkirkshire, i. 553.] As a girl she was renowned as one of the fairest in that
Assembly where beauty was so common, and she was the toast of beaux in the
taverns. She had her loves - the fondest being for John Aikman, son of William
Aikman, the artist. Why this did not end in marriage is not known; but when only
nineteen she married Patrick Cockburn of Ormiston, an advocate, and they lived in
the household of his father, the Lord Justice Clerk - an old Presbyterian of the
deepest dye, who condemned cards, plays, and dancing as ungodly. [Tytler and Watson’s
Songstresses of Scotland, i. 175.] In deference to this austere householder, the sprightly girl
eschewed worldly diversions, though none had loved dancing more or had danced
better in that familiar room, to which every week she saw from her window the
sedan-chairs bear their bright freights, and young men in their satin coats and
powdered wigs with clinking swords hurrying along.
Bred a Whig, and married into a Whiggish family, when the Rebellion broke
out her sympathies were not with Prince Charlie. Brimful of humour, her fancy took
the mirthful view of things. The Prince had issued his royal proclamation, and Mrs.
Cockburn wrote her smart parody thereon beginning:
Have you any laws to mend,
Or have you any grievance
I’m a hero to my trade,
And truly a most leal prince.
Would you have war, would you have peace
Would you be free from taxes
Come chapping to my father’s door,
You need not fear of access.
With this dangerous squib in her pocket, she was stopped one day as she was
driving from Ravelston, by the Highland guard at the West Port, and she would have
been searched had not the arms on the coach been recognised as belonging to a
family who were Jacobite beyond suspicion.
When the old Judge died, she escaped from restraint, but the income was
small, and on £150 a year, even in those simple days, one would not live
luxuriously. Four years spent in rooms at Hamilton Palace [Mrs. Cockburn’s Letters, edit. by
Craig-Brown, p. 3.] kept her still longer out of gaiety. There Patrick Cockburn with £200
a year (“rooms and coals included”) acted as Commissioner to the spendthrift Duke
of Hamilton, who, after squandering and gambling abroad, married one night the