Fishwife

I am still tantalised by the tale of the fishwife - C19, 18? - who was clever and eloquent and somehow scraped together an education and was courted by a gentleman. When his mother scotched the engagement the fishwife retorted with splendid invective, ending, "your heart is as cold as your bottom is reputed to be!"

So, can I find any trace of this fascinating woman? I am sure it was in a literary supplement some twenty, thirty years ago, and the feeling I am left with is that it wasn't fiction, she did exist, and wrote too. Was she east or west coast of Scotland? A feather of recollection says east.

She had a series of family tragedies in that hard life, and when her favourite brother was lost at sea her mind shattered "as irrevocably as butter-dish", and she spent the rest of her life sequestered.

That is all I can remember, except that unlikely as it may sound, her never-to-be mother-in-law was the Countess of Dundee, or Aberdeen. Maybe.