Gordon book

The Due of the Duchess 23
Wraxall states that the Duchess "was greatly admired by persons
in lower circles of life, with whom she was at times thrown into com-
munication ; and this was in great measure owing to her
Her Grace and tac( . j n su [ t i n or ner conversation to her company." Burns,
Literature. to r '
to whom she was introduced by Henry Erskine, was
devoted to her (they came from the same corner of the country), and
she declared that, in all her experience in the most brilliant society,
no conversation had " ever so set her off her feet " as that of the poet.
Sir Walter Scott (with whom she spent some days at Abbotsford in
1802), in a letter to Lockhart, speaking of her meeting Burns, says : —
" I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was
extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or
humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard
the late Duchess of Gordon remark this." Burns and William Nicol
paid a visit to the Duke and Duchess at Gordon Castle in September,
1787, and were enthusiastic over their Graces' cordiality. " The Duke,"
he wrote, " makes one happier than ever great man did : noble, princely,
yet mild and condescending, and affable, and gay, and kind. The
Duchess — charming, witty, kind, and sensible. God bless them ! " Mrs.
Alexander Cockburn tells us that, " through the kindness of the Duchess,
the poet was introduced to all the delights of the New Assembly Rooms,
where, it is not to be wondered at, he was not seen to the best advan-
tage.
I cannot say whether the Duchess was really " literary," but she
certainly gathered literary people round her. Mrs. Grant of Laggan,
who visited her at her inn in Edinburgh in 1808, says that she then
wanted to be a patron of letters : —
Her Grace's present ruling passion is literature — to be the arbitress of
literary taste and the patroness of genius — a distinction for which her early want
of culture and the flutter of a life devoted to very different pursuits has rather
disqualified her. Yet she has strong flashes of intellect, which are, however, lost
in a formless confusion of a mind ever hurried on by contending passions and