1212 FEATURE

A

n old Georgian villa in the

east of Edinburgh called

Marionville which lends

its name to the district, a

few streets and a fire

station is quite

unremarkable in the

capital - until you find out about the place’s

history.

It was built between the 1760s and 1780s by

the Misses Ramsay of Old Lyon Close, milliners

renowned in the burgh for their ribboned hats,

and about 1786 it passed to one James Macrae

of Holmains Esq. who liked to be known as

Captain Macrae on account of his service in the

6th Dragoon Guards (Irish Carabiniers).

By all accounts he was both a sophisticated,

cultured charmer and an arrogant, pompous

“Goth” and it was Macrae who renamed the

house, calling it after his wife, Maria Cecile le

Maistre. With a quick temper and an

overinflated sense of his own status, Macrae

was nicknamed “The Fortunate Duellist” on

account of his propensity to call for satisfaction

• and on not being dead as a result. He
  practised by firing at a barber’s block kept
  specially for the purpose.
  The Macraes soon built up a reputation as a
  home of the “gayest private theatricals, perhaps
  in Britain“ and they had a 150-seat private
  theatre built, complete with stage, curtain and
  scenery in the house where the couple
  themselves took the starring roles. The great
  and the good of Edinburgh were invited and
  the shows were a hot ticket in town, being well
  reviewed in the papers.
  Macrae was highly regarded in the right
  circles, but his pomposity and temper would be
  his unravelling. After an incident in which he
  threw a messenger of the law over a stairwell as
  he tried to arrest his debtor cousin, the
  Reverend John Cunningham, Earl Glencairn,
  Macrae had to make an apology and paid 300
  guineas compensation to settle the matter.
  On 7 April, 1790, Captain Macrae had been
  out at the Theatre Royal, which stood opposite
  the General Register Office. He was helping a
  lady to get a sedan chair to convey her home
  (the principal form of public transport for the
  moneyed classes) when a liveried footman
  appeared and seized one of the poles of the
  chair to reserve it for his mistress. The outraged
  Macrae rapped the impertinent servant’s

knuckles with his cane.

The footman denounced Macrae as a

scoundrel and punched him in the chest.

Macrae responded by striking him across the

head with his cane. An almighty fracas ensued,

before the conflict was defused and the lady

was spirited to safety. There it might have

ended until Macrae learned the footman in

question was an employee of his dear friend,

Sir George Ramsay.

Ramsay informed him that the servant was

recently engaged by his wife and he felt that he

had no hand in the matter. Macrae insisted that

he would apologise to the lady at once and

hurrying to Ramsay’s house on St Andrew

Square, he found her sitting for an up and

coming artist, one Henry Raeburn. Theatrically

Andy Arthur explores the history of a house that thread built and which

was home to a volatile character dubbed the “Fortunate Duellist”

Theatric past

of Marionville

Right - Uniforms of

horsemen of the Irish

Carabiniers

Below - Marionville Photo

Wikipedia Commons Kim

Traynor