Annotation:Miss Rochead's Minuet
X:1 T:Miss Rochead’s Minuet M:3/4 L:1/8 R:Minuet B: Daniel Dow – Twenty Minuets and Sixteen Reels or Country Dances (c. 1775, p. 17) B: https://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/archive/106036221 Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:F F4 AG|F2A2c2|f4 cd|c2B2A2|G2 GBAG|FA c2 fc| dcB2A2|A2 G4|F4 AG|F2A2c2|f4 cd|c2B2A2| G2 GBAG|FAc2 fc|(3dcB A2G2|1 F6:|F4|| |:c2|{f}e4 f2|gfed c2|g2 (g>f/2g/4)|afcA F2|(3fga g2f2| {f}e2 de c2|defdc=B|c4 (3cde|f2 cccc|{B}A2 GA F2| GABAGF|(E>DE)CDE|F2 FFFF|AFcAfc|(3dcB A2G2|1F4:|2F6||
MISS ROCHEAD'S MINUET. Scottish, Minuet (3/4 time). F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Lord Cockburn, a skilled observer and and distiller of character, wrote about one of the Rochead women, Mrs. Rochead of Inverleith:
They [Mrs. Rochead and Lady Don] had both shone, first as hooped beauties in the minuets, and then as ladies of ceremonies, at our stately assemblies; and each carried her peculiar qualities and air to the very edge of the grave; Lady Don's dignity softened by gentle sweetness, Mrs. Rochead's made more formidable by cold and rather severe solemnity.
Except Mrs. Siddons in some of her displays of magnificent royalty, nobody could sit down like the lady of Inverleith. She would sail, like a ship from Tarshish, gorgeous in velvet or rustling in silk, and done up in all the accompaniments of fan, ear-rings, and finger-rings, falling sleeves, scent bottle, embroidered bag, hoop and train--all superb, yet all in the purest taste; and managing all this seemingly heavy rigging, with as much ease as a full-blown swan does its plumage, she would take possession of the center of a large sofa, and at the same moment, without the slightest visible exertion, would cover the whole of it with her bravery, the graceful folds seeing to lay themselves over it like summer waves.
The descent from her carriage, too, where she sat like a nautilus in its shell, was a display which bo one in these days could accomplish or even fancy. The mulberry-coloured coach, spacious, but apparently not too large for what it carried--though she alone was in it; the handsome, jolly coachman and his splendid hammercloth loaded with lace; the two respectful liveried footman, one on each side of the richly-carpeted step; these were lost sight of amidst the slow majesty with which the lady came down and touched the earth. She presided, in this imperial style, over her sons' excellent dinners, with great sense and spirit, to the very last day almost of a prolonged life.[1]
- ↑ Lord Henry Cockburn, Memorials of His Time, 1856, p. 63, quoted in Edward Verrall Lucas, Her infinite variety: a feminine portrait gallery, 1908, pp. 338-339.