dress was also neat and tidy. In winter she wore a pale blue pelisse, then the fashionable colour, and a light-coloured beaver with a feather. She made a great impression on young Motherwell, and that it was permanent his beautiful ballad shows. At the end of the season she returned to her parents at Alloa, with whom she resided till the time of her marriage. She is now a widow with a family of three children, all of whom are grown up, and, I believe, doing well.'[1]
It would appear from this that Motherwell was entered in the High School of Edinburgh as early as the year 1808, but his attendance at that excellent institution could not have exceeded a few months, as I find that he was placed early in 1809 at the Grammar School of Paisley, then superintended by the late Mr John Peddie. His father had not prospered in Edinburgh, and in consequence of the embarrassed state of his affairs his son William was consigned to the care of his brother, Mr John Motherwell, a respectable ironfounder in Paisley. The curriculum at the Paisley Grammar School extended over five years, and if William Motherwell completed it he must have enjoyed
- ↑ I had the pleasure of a slight acquaintance with this lady in after life as Mrs Murdoch. Her husband was a respectable merchant hi this city, and died about the year 1828. She was, when I knew her, a very elegant woman in her personal appearance, and seemed to have preserved those gentle and agreeable manners for which she had been distinguished in girlhood; but it is proper to remark, that she was wholly unconscious of the ardent interest which she had excited in the mind of her boyish admirer.
