ANNABELLA, Griselle, Phemy and Letitia crushed together at the open window of Letitia’s flat in Trongate Street. They kept giving cries of protest and horror at the scene they were witnessing in the street below. A cheering crowd had gathered into a ring in the middle of which two pugilists dressed in nothing but breeches were engaged in a bare-fisted contest. After thirty-odd rounds of pounding at one another, they had reduced their bodies to sides of raw beef and their faces to bloody masks. They were now staggering blindly about and slipping in their own blood.
Annabella stamped her foot and shouted:
‘I cannot stand any more of this. I am going down to put a stop to it.’
‘Annabella!’ the other women cried out in alarm. ‘You will be in danger. It is no place for a lady.’
‘Then, damn it all, I am no lady for I am going down there.’
Just then their attention was caught by a single gig with a speeding horse coming at full gallop from the direction of the Gallowgate. It rushed into the ring sending earth and stones spurting up and spectators scurrying away on either side. Down from the gig jumped a man in a powdered tie-wig and lime-green coat. He took up a stance between the fighters and shouted:
‘The fight is finished.’
There were immediate infuriated cries from the spectators. In answer to this, the man promptly drew a sword.
‘Whoever disagrees with me, step forward,’ he challenged. ‘I will take great pleasure in running him through.’
No one moved.
‘Then away about your business, the lot of you.’
Annabella clapped loudly and enthusiastically and called down,
‘Good for you, sir! I’m glad to find there are still civilised gentlemen in Glasgow.’ Then to the crowd, ‘Well? What are you waiting for? Do you want me to send for the military and have you flung in the Tolbooth?’
Grumbling and muttering the crowd began to disperse and the man gave Annabella a polite bow. Then he called up:
‘One of these men is my brother. He was fighting to pay off a gambling debt.’
Annabella raised her hands and eyes in sympathy and the man in the lime-green coat led his brother over to the pump and splashed him with water. But blood was still pouring from his wounds when he was helped, half conscious, into the gig and driven off.
By this time a weeping woman was tending to the other pugilist as best she could and Annabella turned away from the window followed by the other ladies.
‘Aye, that’s the sort of thing I’ll miss when we have our mansion,’ Letitia observed.
‘Mother!’ her daughters cried out in unison.
‘Tuts, I’m only telling the truth and you enjoy the street diversions the same as me. You’ll be wanting a cup of tea, I suppose, Annabella?’
‘Indeed it will be most welcome after all that excitement. I feel quite fluttered.’
‘Aye!’ Letitia was determined to press her point home. ‘There can’t be much to see from your window in the Westergate.’
She blamed Annabella for putting the idea into her son Andrew’s and her daughter Griselle’s head that they should have a mansion built outside the town. Letitia would have stuck to her guns and insisted on ending her days in Trongate Street but Andrew had said:
‘Well, Mother, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay on your own because I am having a mansion built and when it is ready I am moving into it. Everyone has games rooms now for billiards and cards, and a drawing-room for entertaining. It is most inconvenient to bring my friends here.’
‘Tuts, your father always met his friends in the tavern or the Coffee House. We entertained here in my bedroom. What was good enough for your father should be good enough for you, sir.’
She believed the new mansions were calculated for show, not convenience.
‘Times change, Mother. Times change. But no one is forcing you to leave. You can stay on here or come with us. Whatever you prefer.’
She would have preferred to stay but her sight was failing and she wasn’t nearly so spry as she used to be. It might prove a worry being on her own. Old Kate, the servant, had one foot in the grave herself and wasn’t much use to anybody any more. So she had agreed that when the time came she would move. But she had done so with bad grace.
‘Tuts, there’s far too much gaming nowadays.’ She shook her head as she poured the tea. ‘Fancy having to get yourself half-killed to pay off gambling debts. It’s disgraceful. Having a gaming-room is going to do our Andra no good at all.’
Annabella was inclined to agree with her in this. Andrew had never been very successful at anything and gaming could prove a risky diversion for him. She had already lost some money herself at hazard and far and quadrille but she didn’t believe that she would ever become obsessed like some and get herself into financial difficulties. Half the time it wasn’t like a game at all, or at least it did not coincide with her idea of a game. Too often the players were devilishly serious, huddled avidly together, eyes sharp or wary, fingers cautiously placing a card down or tossing it with affected negligence, or knuckles whitening with tension as they gripped them close. Personally, she much preferred musical entertainments and dancing and concerts and, of course, conversation. A visit to Robert Foulis’s new Glasgow Academy of Fine Arts in the Faculty Hall at the University was also most enjoyable in her opinion. She delighted in strolling around admiring the paintings, engravings and drawings and chatting and exchanging opinions with any other ladies and gentlemen who happened to be there.
She liked to read too but literature was not a matter of widespread interest in a trading community like Glasgow. There were few books to be had. They were sold in little shops that concentrated mostly on chap-books, sealing-wax, stationery and fishing rods. Displayed alongside these items were college classics in grey pasteboard covers, devout works like The Balm of Gilead, Rutherford’s Letters, Boston’s Fourfold State, and Gray’s Sermons.
Of course one could also get books from Robert Foulis who printed the classics and works of poets, or via the cadger from Edinburgh. But it was seldom now that anyone had to wait for special articles from Edinburgh. No one even needed to rummage through a miscellany of articles in an ill-lit booth to find what they wanted, although there were still plenty of booths supplying shoes, lanterns, stay-laces, silks and a hotchpotch of other bits and bobs. Now there were new shops in the Trongate. There was a silversmith, a haberdasher, a shoemaker, a mantua-maker, a shop that sold gloves and a shop that sold breeches. The walls of the shops were erupting with signboards. Dangling and creaking in the air from poles were red lions, blue swans, cross keys, golden fleeces, golden breeches and golden gloves. There was also a shop in which a mechanic who called himself an optician mended and sold spectacles, fiddles, fishing rods and tackle.
Annabella also enjoyed the normal gossip of ladies over the teacups and attended many merry and light-hearted tea parties and supper parties and entertained in similar fashion in Mungo House.
‘I wonder who those gentlemen were?’ she asked now as she sipped at the cup of tea Letitia had handed to her. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen them before. Of course I couldn’t see the pugilist’s face for all that monstrous blood. But I didn’t recognise the other.’
Griselle said to Phemy,
‘Is he not the old Laird of Meadowflat’s son? Did we not meet the family at an assembly while Annabella was away?’
Phemy eagerly nodded her pocked beaky face.
‘Yes, I remember. My gudeman was with me that night and he and the old Laird had such a pleasant talk.’
‘Are you catched by him, Annabella?’ Griselle helped herself to another piece of cake. Tall and long-boned like her mother, she had become heavier of late with puffy purple cheeks and a quivering double chin.
‘Heavens no!’ Annabella laughed. ‘I was just curious. I thought I’d already met all the men worth meeting in the town.’
Letitia eyed Annabella disapprovingly.
‘It’s high time you were married again, mistress, instead of flitting about like a butterfly from one to the other.’
‘Gracious heavens! Flitting from one to the other? You make it sound as if I’m enjoying a large number of lovers but I am not.’
‘You’ve had your fair share,’ said Griselle primly.
‘I happily agree. And I hope I’ll continue to have my fair share until I’m a very old lady. Indeed until the day I die.’
Letitia shook her head.
‘Tuts, Annabella, have you no shame?’
‘None at all,’ Annabella confessed cheerily. ‘But I must remind you that it is possible to have friends of either sex without needing to cultivate affairs of the heart.’
‘I still say it’s time you were safely married before you lose your looks and your chances.’
‘Pooh!’ Annabella said disdainfully. ‘No woman with wit, a racy tongue and a capacity for enjoying life, need fear the coming of wrinkles and grey hairs.’
‘I keep telling our Grizzie the same thing,’ said Letitia, keeping to her original point. ‘It’s time she was married again.’
‘It’s manners to wait till you’re asked, Mother.’
‘Tuts, I’m sure our Andra could arrange a match.’
Grizzie cast her eyes upwards.
‘Mother, Andrew hasn’t been able to arrange a match for himself.’
Letitia sniffed.
‘Any woman would be lucky to have our Andra. He’s been well-placed since his father passed on. The only trouble is he’s a wee bit shy at the courting.’
‘What he needs,’ said Annabella, ‘is a spirited woman to take the initiative.’
Letitia sighed.
‘If something isn’t done soon I can see me with all three of my bairns at a loose end. Phemy’s gudeman’s on his last legs. It’ll no’ be long till she’s a widow woman.’
‘Mother!’ Phemy wailed.
‘Facts are facts, mistress. The Earl o’ Glendinny’s old enough to be your father and the Lord gathered your father in years ago.’
Just then the door creaked open and old Kate creaked in. She always wore her tartan plaid in the house now because she suffered acutely from the cold. It was draped over her head and hunchback and round her leathery long-nosed face and crossed over and fastened at her chest.
‘Aye,’ Letitia added when she saw the old servant, ‘and here’s another one living on borrowed time.’
‘I’ll maybe outlive yersel’ yet,’ Kate cackled. ‘Hurry up and finish yer tea. I’m waitin’ to rinse oot the dishes.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Letitia snapped. ‘These are my best china cups and saucers. I’ll wash them myself.’ Then turning to Annabella, ‘Could you go another wee drop?’
‘No, I’ll have to be away. I want to have a stroll down by the hiring fair before I get a chair home.’
‘Very well. Kate, you can take the pot. I know fine it’s the pot you’ve got your eye on. There’s plenty left to give you and Tam a drink so there’s no need to fash yourself.’
‘Did you ever!’ Griselle said after Kate had gleefully departed with the tea pot. ‘Mother is insisting on bringing that vile old witch and old Tam with us when we move to our mansion. Isn’t it diabolical?’
Letitia suddenly rapped Griselle’s knuckles with her fan.
‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, mistress. I’m maybe putting up with your big-headed notions of mansion houses but I will not countenance all the good old customs to be so lightly tossed aside.’
Griselle snatched up her own fan, snapped it open and agitated it in annoyance.
‘Good old customs. What are those, pray?’
‘Having a sense o’ loyalty and some respect for a lifetime of devoted service. Old Kate and Tam have been good enough servants in their day.’
‘You have given them their keep all these years, mother, and a good home.’
‘Aye, and my home will be their home, mistress, until the day I die and I’ll have none o’ your snash. I get enough snash from them. I couldn’t get rid o’ the old devils even if I wanted to. They’re that stubborn they just wouldn’t go. Tuts, I’ve tried often enough. The last time I told her in no uncertain manner. We must part, Kate, I said, and she said, “Aye, mistress, and where are ye goin’? Ye’d be better to stay at home at your age.” ’
Annabella laughed but Griselle sighed and tutted and flicked her fan. She knew that nothing would ever change her mother. Her mother had been cast in the same stubborn mould as old Kate and Tam.
Phemy, who was a kind and gentle soul, ventured:
‘Surely Mother is right? It would be unkind to turn Kate and Tam out now. Where would they go?’
‘You’re always the same, Phemy.’ Griselle’s chins bounced with annoyance. ‘Why should we care about them?’
Annabella’s laughter rippled out again.
‘I dare swear I often ask myself that about my Betsy and Tib, not to mention Big John. Betsy is the most monstrous tearful prophet of doom you could ever imagine and the touchy vanity of Tib Faulds is downright impertinent at times. I’m looking for a personal maid now. I’m hoping I might see someone at the Fair today. You’ll need more servants too when you’re in your mansion, Grizzie. Do you fancy a stroll down Stockwell Street to have a look at some?’
‘No, I think I’ll wait till nearer the time. It’ll be a good few weeks yet before we can move.’
They all rose with Annabella to see her to the door and Letitia called a warning before Annabella waved goodbye and disappeared down the spiral stair.
‘You watch your reticule, mistress. Half o’ that crowd at the Stockwell are no’ Glasgow folk, remember. Thieves and vagabonds come flocking into the town for the Fair.’
Stockwell Street was across the road from the Shawfield Mansion in which Prince Charles Edward Stuart had stayed during his invasion of Glasgow. The street was the western boundary of the city and it formed the leading thoroughfare to the only bridge that spanned the River Clyde at Glasgow.
Fashionable tenements, some two storeys high, some three, some four, graced the head of the street and at the foot near the river there were quaint irregular-shaped thatched dwellings with outside stairs and rickety wooden banisters. Mixed in with the handsome tenements and humble cottages there was also the South Sugar House and the rope works. The street was regarded as a most desirable town residence and many leading merchants and notabilities of the city were born and bred in the tenements in this locality cheek by jowl with the humble occupants of the cottages. It was always fairly busy with folk going to and from Trongate Street at one end, or Bridge Street which curved from the other. On Fair days however it was jam-packed. There was the horse and bestial Fair when there were endless rows of restive horses and neighing stallions or bulls and cows lowing. Or there was the Hiring Fair when ploughmen came in from the surrounding countryside and took the opportunity of enjoying much whisky and ale and merrymaking and courting of cherry-cheeked dairymaids. The country servants for hire were usually to be seen at the Trongate Street end of the Stockwell and the city servants could be viewed at the bridge end.
Annabella hadn’t made up her mind, as she left her friend’s close and emerged onto Trongate Street, whether she wanted to hire a country or a city servant. Country servants usually looked healthier and cleaner but she had heard that they could be very naive and more of a worry than anything else in the city.
Although the sun was shining, there was a cool breeze and Annabella was glad of her cloak. The wind frisked around her, tugging and flapping at her cloak and swaying her panniered skirts as she picked her way lightly along. A heavy cart rumbled past, then the stage coach to Edinburgh packed with loudly baaing lambs to be delivered at some stage on the journey. She stopped and waited under the pillared walkways until a confused drove of animals on their way to be slaughtered crushed by. Then she tripped across Trongate Street towards Stockwell Street.
Tall grey stone tenements seemed to ripple as sun chased shadow and shadow chased sun. Trongate Street was busy with people too and there was a happy festive air because it was Fair day. Gaggles of gossiping ladies with shopping baskets clung on to hats and hoods. Tobacco lords, in their curled wigs and three-cornered hats and sparkling shoe-buckles and scarlet capes swirling and billowing, strolled up and down the plainstones, the special paved part of Trongate Street reserved solely for themselves. Past the equestrian statue of King William of Orange they sauntered, keeping to the right when going westwards and to the left when returning eastwards as was customary.
Other fine gentlemen in brocade coats with large cuffs and buttons astride handsome horses cantered along amid the noisy street-criers.
‘Pots to mend! Pots to mend!’ A man rollicked along with pots slung over his shoulders and one in his hand on which he was banging energetically with a hammer.
A woman in a white apron and gown tucked up was balancing a basket on her head and singing,
‘Cherries, fair cherries!’
Another older woman awkwardly clutching her wares pleaded hoarsely,
‘Buy a fork or a fire shovel?’
A man was whipping a barrel-laden mule along chanting,
‘Lily-white vinegar!’
Hoards of children danced and pranced around and barking dogs added to the din, especially on the east side of Stockwell Street where in front of one group of thatched cottages there were piles of empty casks and barrels belonging to a cooper who lived there. A little old woman who sold sweeties was also a great attraction.
It was in this area of Stockwell Street that Annabella caught sight of Mungo cavorting about and having a hilarious time along with a motley band of other boys.
‘Mungo!’ she angrily called to him. He was supposed to be in school diligently studying and it had never occurred to her that he would act in such a grossly deceitful and disobedient manner. Immediately he saw her, instead of coming in answer to her cry, he hared away in the opposite direction and was immediately swallowed up by the crowd. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that Mungo was in need of a father’s stern hand. Her own Papa was far too indulgent with him.
She afterwards discovered that Mungo had not been near the school the whole day. First he and some other boys had thrown stones at sparrows perched on trees in the vitriol dealer’s yard, until the vitriol dealer, a thin curious-looking man with long legs like a spider and a face like an owl, had hastened menacingly out and chased them away. Then they had gone bird-nesting behind Virginia Street and watched a man shoot hares and partridges. From there they’d gathered in the yard of the Black Bull Inn where there was a draw-well. The well-cover was a huge oblong wooden box painted blue. Two tremendous leaden arms fixed near the top of the box hung vertically, and when water was drawn, moved from side to side like a pendulum. A thick curved spout projected from each side of the well and it was a favourite sport of boys to stop the mouth of the spout with the palm of the hand and squirt jets of water around. The well handles had great round knobs at the bottom and made a popular swing for the boys who cared nothing for the water they wasted in the process. Eventually they had been chased away by townsfolk arriving with wooden pails to collect their supplies of water. The boys had scampered from the Black Bull to Stockwell Street and the Fair.
That night Annabella soundly boxed Mungo’s ears and sent him to bed without any supper. She hoped that when he went on to University, and he would be going soon now that he was twelve, he would settle down and take his studies more seriously. If he did not, she hardly knew what to do with him. He was a big sturdy lad who could be serious and sensible at times but at others could cause her much consternation with his wild and rowdy ways. She wondered if Harding had been like that when he was a child. No doubt he would have known how to deal with Mungo, but as it was she had to cope with him as best she could herself.
She decided it might be safer to take him with her when she went to stay at the Duke of Dalgleish’s estate for a few days. They travelled in a new chariot and six she had bought and Big John in splendid scarlet livery sat up front. Standing at the back was Donald, the new manservant, also in a scarlet coat and white breeches.
As they galloped up the drive towards the Dalgleish mansion Annabella temporarily forgot her worries about Mungo. He was a splendid-looking young man with his richly embroidered coat and his three-cornered hat and his hair tied back and his hand resting on a gold-topped cane that her Papa had had specially made for him. When they reached the enormous residence of the Duke, Mungo jumped out and helped her to alight, and it was hard to imagine that he could ever be anything other than a perfect gentleman.
She equalled him in splendid appearance as her hair was padded and powdered and she wore patches and a luxurious fur-lined hooded velvet cloak over her wide gown of gold silk.
Both she and her son gazed in admiration at the Duke’s splendid house and grounds. In their faces were visions of the balls and the banquets they would enjoy there and the riding and the hunting.
Then Mungo raised his hand with confidence and authority, and led her towards the open door.