Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dick, Anne

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1217100Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 15 — Dick, Anne1888Jennett Humphreys

DICK, ANNE, Lady (d. 1741), verse writer, was a daughter of a Scotch law lord, Sir James Mackenzie (Lord Royston), a son of George Mackenzie, first earl of Cromarty. The date of Anne's birth does not appear, nor the date of her marriage to William Cunyngham, who adopted the name of Dick, and became Sir William Dick of Prestonfield, bart., in 1728, on the death of his maternal grandfather without male issue. Lady Dick made herself notorious by many unseemly pranks. She was in the habit of walking about the Edinburgh streets dressed as a boy, her maid with her, likewise in boy's attire. She also was known as a writer of coarse lampoons and epigrams in verse, which drew upon her the reproof of friends who admired her undoubted gifts and desired her to turn them to better purpose. Three specimens of her verse are in C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe's ‘Book of Ballads.’ She died in 1741, childless; and her husband, who survived her till 1746, was succeeded in his baronetcy by his brother, Sir Alexander Dick, physician [q. v.] A portrait of Lady Dick in a white dress at Prestonfield is mentioned by C. K. Sharpe.

[Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 33; Sharpe's Ballad Book, pp. 118, 121, 131, 139.]

J. H.