This is a fairly dated piece in terms of when it was written, but the issues, themes and the story are all timeless.
Indeed, it's actually quite relevant right now, as a new film, Belle - which tells something of this story - is due for release sometime this year.
ELEGANT and perfectly poised, the young lady sits in all her finery with a book laid open on her lap, her dusky companion by her side.
Lady Elizabeth Murray's hand reaches out to the pretty young woman, gently touching her gown.
On the surface, it's a fascinating image of two young women born in the same era but surely separated in society and status by the mere colour of their skin.
One has been delivered into 18th-century aristocracy. The other, presumably, can be little more than her slave.
It is a striking painting but the assumption that this is a lady and her subservient maid couldn't be more misguided.
For in an era of slavery, when many of African descent could only look forward to a life of service and misery bereft of basic human rights, when even Edinburgh banks were involved in the owning of ships transporting slaves, Dido Lindsay was the rare exception to the rule.
Born the illegitimate daughter of a liaison on the high seas between a Scots aristocratic naval officer and the black slave he captured, Dido enjoyed privileges, wealth and a social status that her contemporaries in the latter half of the 1700s could only wish for.
But there was more to Dido than simply being lucky enough to be born into an enlightened and loving family who refused to allow the colour of her skin to relegate her to a life below stairs.
In fact, the graceful, elegant and enigmatic Dido may well have been the spur which prompted her great-uncle, the First Earl of Mansfield, William Murray, to deliver a historic ruling that led to freedom for thousands of those less fortunate than her.
With her portrait going on public display for the first time at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh (FEB 2002), interest in her remarkable story has been reawakened.
"Her story is fascinating," agrees Margo Norris, archivist at Scone Palace, ancestral home of the Earls of Mansfield. "Her role was unusual - most black people in Britain at the time would have been employed as servants, pageboys or footmen - she was treated as a member of the family.
"And she went on to become reasonably wealthy in her own right."
The picture, by one of England's best artists of the late 18th century, Johan Zoffany, is among the most thought-provoking items at the Great Houses of Scotland exhibition currently running at the Portrait Gallery in Queen Street.
Curator at the time James Holloway says the very fact Dido's image appears in a painting, which would have cost her family thousands of pounds to commission at the time, indicates her elevated status.
The portrait is among a beautiful collection of works contributed by Scone Palace, including a magisterial painting of William Murray, dubbed "the greatest lawyer of all time", resplendent in the robes of the Lord Chief Justice of England.
Born at Scone in 1705, he had left post-Union Scotland and Jacobite turbulence in the hope of establishing his career south of the Border. He was called to the English bar in 1730, quickly earning a reputation as a brilliant lawyer and the nickname "Silver-tongued Murray" for his public speaking gift.
He would go on to become the only man to serve as Lord Chief Justice for 32 years. He was also an MP, Solicitor General of Scotland - during which time he and his family lived in Edinburgh - Chancellor of the Exchequer and was on good terms with many figures in the intellectual movement Scottish Enlightenment.
But the legal tangle which confirmed his position in history was a landmark decision to emancipate the slave James Somerset by declaring in 1772 that his master had no right to sell his freedom.
His decision sent shock waves through the land. It spelled the beginning of the end of a shameful chapter in British history and gave hope to thousands of black people who had been driven out of their native homes, on to slave cargo ships in horrific conditions and sold into a life of slavery, lining the pockets of their wealthy owners.
That would probably have been the fate awaiting Dido's mother. Wrenched from her homeland, she was crammed into the hold of a Spanish slave ship for what would have been a terrifying and life-threatening journey across the Atlantic. Conditions would have been horrific: many were doomed to die on board from outbreaks of smallpox, dysentery, scurvy or from sheer terror. Some jumped overboard.
Those who refused food would be forced to their knees and a red-hot coal pressed to their mouth to make them scream. Their jaws would be wedged open and food emptied down their gullet.
But the Spanish slave ship was captured during the siege of Havana by William Murray's nephew, Rear Admiral Sir John Lindsay. His eye was clearly caught by one young woman in particular, and remarkably he refused to abandon her when she inevitably fell pregnant.
Instead, he brought her home and organised a job below stairs as a housekeeper at his uncle William's mansion, where Dido was eventually born.
But, as John Cairns, professor of legal history at Edinburgh University who has studied the 18th-century black population in Britain, explains, the childless Murrays had no desire to relegate this "bastard" infant to the kitchens.
"We have to remember that these people were aristocrats with a high sense of their own importance," he says. "It was of tremendous significance to have aristocratic blood in your veins - and Dido had aristocratic blood. The blood of William Murray's nephew, Lindsay, flowed in her."
Although she may not have had the entire run of the house, and it is not known whether she travelled north to Edinburgh when Murray did, Dido certainly enjoyed an elevated status.
"She had particular responsibility for running the dairy and poultry," says Ms Norris. "But judging by her fine clothes and the fact she had a reasonable income - especially after her father's death when he left her GBP 1000 - it's highly unlikely she ever got her hands dirty.
"She grew up with the other young woman in the painting, Elizabeth, the Second Earl of Mansfield's daughter, and would have been her playmate. Dido was treated a little bit like a nanny governor - neither below stairs but not quite completely above the stairs."
Certainly her presence among an aristocratic family did not impress everyone who came to visit, or attract their approval. American Thomas Hutchison, Governor-in-Chief of Massachusetts Bay, seemed to question the motives behind William Murray's affection for her when he wrote: "A Black came in after dinner. She had a very high cap and her wool (hair) was much frizzled in her neck, but not enough to answer the large curls now in fashion. She is neither handsome nor genteel. They call her Dido. He (William Murray) knows he has been reproached for showing fondness for her - I dare say not criminal."
Dido's role within the family may have remained little more than a curiosity, but for one particular court case which came before her great uncle in 1772. He was by this time Lord Mansfield and his ruling would have ramifications on both sides of the Atlantic.
It's not clear just what influence Dido's presence in Kenwood House may have had as he ruminated over the case of a negro called James Somerset, whose desperate bid to escape the chains of slavery had posed the groundbreaking legal question over his right to freedom.
However, Lord Mansfield found in Somerset's favour, and set him free. It was a ruling that created mayhem in Britain and America, as downtrodden slaves saw the Somerset finding as a sign that their term of imprisonment was finally at an end.
They gathered up what few possessions they had, and deserted their masters in droves.
Cutting the chains
EXACTLY what influence Dido Lindsay may have had over her great uncle's finding in a landmark legal case is lost in the mists of time.
But what is clear is the profound impact Lord Mansfield's Somerset finding had - not only on the slave trade but on Britain's relationship with America.
Somerset had been brought to England from Massachusetts in 1769 by his master, a Scotsman called Charles Stewart.
He absconded but was recaptured, put in irons and placed on board a ship bound for Jamaica where he was to be sold into slavery.
Anti-slavery campaigners, seeking a test case, decided to challenge Stewart's right to buy and sell his servant's liberty.
Although Lord Mansfield's decision referred specifically to Somerset's case, his finding that "No Master was ever allowed here to take a Slave by force to be sold abroad because he had deserted from his Service" was seen as a fatal blow to the future of slavery. The case was cited as ending the slave trade in Britain on both sides of the Atlantic, prompting slaves to desert their masters and, citing the Somerset case, seek independent employment.
But there was a further side-effect of Lord Mansfield's ruling.
American colonists fighting for white colonists' freedom from Britain were quick to use it to boost their own argument: that if all men are created equal, why then should they remain "enslaved" to a country thousands of miles away?
First published Edinburgh Evening News February 2002.
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