Edinburgh notes

The new official jobbie, if I sign a contract, has meagre pay for a woman of my accomplishments but a beautiful building circa 1830? in which to work. The office I've selected looks onto the back gardens between the big house and the mews (stable block) behind. From a desk in front of the sash window I can contemplate the neighbours' gardens in which reside Lawson cypress, silver birch, hazel with catkins, rhododendron, elderflower and honeysuckle, and be insulated in a location in a busy town centre untainted by traffic noise. While discussing the contract, the sole perk I've requested is a key to the private gardens to the front, out-of-bounds to the hoi-polloi except (potentially) me. In my lunch hours, I shall saunter under the trees in an empire-line dress trimmed with silk-satin ribbon, compose chloraesthenic governess poetry and plot revolution.

Edinburgh street plan (1817 & 1831) courtesy National Library of Scotland