According to her Wikipedia article, that has a link to this image, "Jane had a nasty accident as a 14 year-old when playing in the High Street in Edinburgh. She somehow got a finger of her right hand jammed in the wheel of a cart which moved away and tore her finger off. There is at Monreith House a letter written, left handed, by her after the accident explaining how it happened. After this, whenever possible, she wore gloves in which a wooden finger replaced the one missing. One of these wooden fingers is still at Monreith House. In later life she used to explain the loss of the finger by saying it was a coaching accident."
According to Regency History, "In 1808, La Belle Assemblée declared: 'It would be impossible to select any living female character who has made a more distinguished figure in the fashionable world than the Duchess of Gordon.' Jane was not as successful as the Duchess of Devonshire at setting fashion, but she did make tartan popular in 1791 after she wore a Gordon tartan dress to a Drawing Room. Horace Walpole called her 'one of the Empresses of Fashion.' She introduced Scottish dancing to the ton. Nathaniel Wraxall wrote: 'She first introduced the custom of dancing at routs, an agreeable innovation on the interminable carding, and moreover, with patriotic zeal, she introduced Scotch dancing, till then unheard of in the fashionable world.'”
