By the time of Prince Arthur’s christening on 25 June at Buckingham Palace the Queen was desperate to be away to Balmoral, having heard that the estate staff were busy with alterations. John Brown and the gillies were organising dogs, ponies and country sport facilities for the two new properties. She ached for some fresh air riding ‘dear little “Lochnagar”’ with Brown at his head.
John Brown was now to be seen close to the royal party, and spectators at the Braemar Gathering on 12 September 1850 particularly noted him as the Queen and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, making her first visit to Scotland, watched ‘our gillie [Charles] Duncan’ taking part in the lung-bursting race up Craig Cheunnich hill above the Castle of Braemar.
Brown was becoming useful, too, in arranging events. The next day the royal party went to watch salmon ‘leistering’ (spearing with a barbed lance), with Brown helping Prince Albert, Colonel Charles Gordon and Lord James Murray to wade out into the Dee. After the ‘leistering’, John Brown and his companions carried Captain (later Sir) Charles Forbes of Castle Newe and his retainers over the Dee on their shoulders. Prince Albert described the day in a letter to his stepmother, Marie of Württemberg, relating that on arriving on dry land Captain Forbes removed his boot, filled it with whisky and drank a toast to Queen Victoria.8 The Queen described the actions of all as ‘very courteous, and worthy of chivalrous times’.
On 16 September Queen Victoria and a party went on a trip to Loch Muick. The Queen was in a literary mood and reflected:
The moon rose, and was beautifully reflected on the lake, which, with its steep green hills, looked lovely. To add to the beauty, poetry, and wildness of the scene, Coutts played in the boat; [John Brown and] the men, who row very quietly and well now, giving an occasional shout when he played a reel. It reminded me of Sir Walter Scott’s lines in The Lady of the Lake:
Ever, as on they bore, more loud
And louder rung the pibroch proud. [bagpipe]
At first the sound, by distance tame,
Mellow’d along the waters came,
And lingering long by cape and bay,
Wail’d every harsher note away.9
Queen Victoria subsequently returned to this 1850 entry in her Journal and wrote a footnote to highlight her mention of John Brown in her original text. What she wrote was the first piece of biographical material ever printed about John Brown; it read:
[John Brown] in 1858, became my regular attendant out of doors everywhere in the Highlands; who commenced as gillie in 1848, and was selected by Albert and me to go with my carriage. In 1851 he entered our service permanently, and began in that year leading my pony, and advanced step by step by his good conduct and intelligence. His attention, care, and faithfulness cannot be exceeded; and the state of my health, which of late years has been sorely tried and weakened, renders such qualifications most valuable, and indeed, most needful in a constant attendant upon all occasions. He has since (in December 1865), most deservedly, been promoted to be an upper servant, and my permanent personal attendant. He has all the independence and elevated feelings peculiar to the Highland race, and is singularly straightforward, simple-minded, kind-hearted, and disinterested; always ready to oblige; and of a discretion rarely to be met with. He is now in his fortieth year. His father was a small farmer, who lived at The Bush on the opposite side to Balmoral. He is the second of nine brothers, – three of whom have died – two are in Australia and New Zealand, two are living in the neighbourhood of Balmoral; and the youngest, Archie (Archibald) is valet to our son Leopold, and is an excellent, trustworthy young man.10
Queen Victoria’s Journal shows that several other of her gillies were ‘attentive’ and deserving of her thanks for good work done, but it is clear by 1850 that John Brown either saw the main chance for his own advancement and perspicaciously played up to the Queen’s need for attention, or he was just in the right place at the right time. Brown’s attentiveness increasingly allowed him to be familiar with the Queen. For instance, during one outing the Queen and her ladies were making a slippery descent of Craig Nordie. Jane, Lady Churchill, had to be picked up after falling, and Brown remarked: ‘Your Ladyship is not as heavy as Her Maa-dj-esty.’
‘Am I grown heavier do you think?’ enquired the Queen, used to his personal remarks.
‘Well, I think you are,’ replied Brown as the ladies looked away in some embarrassment.
A highlight of the autumn Scottish holiday of 1852 was the Torch-Light Ball at Corriemulzie, a shooting lodge between Braemar and the Linn of Dee. With John Brown on the box, and accompanied by two ladies-in-waiting, the First Lord of the Treasury, the 14th Earl of Derby, and Colonel Charles Gordon as acting equerry, the Queen and Prince Albert set off in Highland garb for Corriemulzie. The host and hostess, Mr and Lady Agnes Duff (later the Earl and Countess of Fife), met them at the door of Corriemulzie. They greatly enjoyed the Ball, and similar events took place many times at Balmoral when the Queen herself acted as hostess at the new castle. Queen Victoria remembered that the location for the Ball was:
really a beautiful and unusual sight. All the company were assembled there. A space about one hundred feet in length and sixty feet in width was boarded, and entirely surrounded by Highlanders bearing torches, which were placed in sockets, and constantly replenished. There were seven pipers playing together, Mackay leading – and they received us with the usual salute and three cheers, and ‘Nis! nis! nis!’ (pronounced ‘Neesh! neesh! neesh!’, the Highland ‘Hip! Hip! Hip!’) and again cheers; after which came a most animated reel. There were above sixty people, exclusive of the Highlanders, of whom there were also sixty; all the Highland gentlemen, and any who were at all Scotch, were in kilts, the ladies in evening dresses. The company and the Highlanders danced pretty nearly alternately. There were two or three sword dances. We were upon a haut pas, over which there was a canopy. The whole thing was admirably done, and very well worth seeing. Albert was delighted with it. I must not omit to mention a reel danced by eight Highlanders holding torches in their hands.11
Angus Mackay had been appointed the Royal Piper at Balmoral in 1843, but became involved in a ‘royal scandal’ soon after the Corriemulzie Ball. His behaviour became more erratic and he started to tell people that he and the Queen were married. He was committed to the care of Dr W. Charles Hood at the Bethlehem Royal Hospital, Lambeth, in 1854. He was discharged a few months later and drowned himself in the River Nith in 1855.12
Two deaths in the autumn of 1852 were to affect Queen Victoria significantly. First the eccentric miser John Camden Neild left her the legacy which enabled Balmoral to be purchased, and then on 16 September, while at Altnagiuthasach, she received a packet from Colonel (later Sir) Arthur Phipps, Private Secretary to Prince Albert, enclosing a dispatch recording the death two days earlier of the 83-yearold Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, at Walmer Castle, Kent. Wellington had twice been Tory Prime Minister in her ‘Wicked Uncle’s’ time, and had been a trusted adviser. She wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians, on 17 September from Balmoral:
We shall soon stand sadly alone; [the Earl of] Aberdeen is almost the only personal friend of that kind we have left. Melbourne, Peel, Liverpool [all former Prime Ministers] – and now the Duke – all gone!13
The more Queen Victoria felt alone, the more she clung to the familiar. The day she heard the sad news of Wellington, John Brown and the gillies prepared the ponies for a ride to Allt-na-Dearg and the newly built shiel of the Glassalt, with a cold lunch served at their destination by Brown. The wet weather reflected the Queen’s sadness over the death of Wellington; she remarked: ‘Our whole enjoyment was spoilt; a gloom overhung all of us.’14 All the time John Brown was observing his royal mistress’s changes in moods and her need for constant support.15
All over the Balmoral estate, and the hills around, are cairns set up by the royal family over the years to remember people and events. One of the first was built on Monday 11 October 1852. The royal family climbed to the summit of Crai
g Gowan, a 1,437ft wooded hill a mile or so south-east of Balmoral, to watch the building of the cairn, ‘which was to commemorate our taking possession of the dear place’, wrote the Queen.16
John Brown had gone ahead of the royal party to help pull down the existing old cairn, and to prepare the base for the new one. Mackay piped the party to the top and the Queen placed the first stone to be followed by the others in order of rank, until finally all the assembled estate workers and their relatives surged forward to place a stone to make the cairn a lucky place. It took an hour to complete the cairn, while whisky was drunk and reels danced. The Queen had a special treat for ‘Monk’ – Sir Robert Gordon’s old dog that she had acquired with the estate – and Prince Albert climbed to the top of the 8ft tall cairn while the assembled company cheered. It was so gemütlich. The ‘delightful day’ was completed with walks and Prince Albert shot a stag. Alas Princess Victoria, the Princess Royal, upset the happy equilibrium by sitting on a wasps’ nest ‘and was much stung’.
Almost a year later another significant event took place. On 28 September 1853, in the pouring rain, the royal family set out to the planned site of the new Balmoral Castle to lay the foundation stone. As they gathered at the site the sun came out. Among John Brown’s possessions was found a ‘Programme of the Ceremony’:
The stone being prepared and suspended over that upon which it is to rest, (in which will be a cavity for the bottle containing the parchment and the coins):
The workmen will be placed in a semicircle at a little distance from the stone, and the women and home servants in an inner semicircle.
HM the Queen, and HRH the Prince accompanied by the Royal Children, HRH the Duchess of Kent, and attended by Her Majesty’s guests and suite, will proceed from the house.
Her Majesty, the Prince, and the Royal Family, will stand on the South side of the stone, the suite behind and on each side of the Royal party.
The Revd. Mr. Anderson will then pray for a blessing on the work. Her Majesty will affix her signature to the parchment, recording the day upon which the foundation stone was laid. Her Majesty’s signature will be followed by that of the Prince and the Royal Children, the Duchess of Kent, and any others that Her Majesty may command, and the parchment will be placed in the bottle.
One of each of the current coins of the present reign will also be placed in the bottle, and the bottle having been sealed up, will be placed in the cavity. The trowel will then be delivered to Her Majesty by Mr. [William] Smith [City Architect] of Aberdeen . . . and the mortar having been spread, the stone will be lowered.
The level and square will then be applied, and their correctness having been ascertained, the mallet will be delivered to Her Majesty by Mr. Stuart (the Clerk of Works), when Her Majesty will strike the stone and declare it to be laid. The cornucopia will be placed upon the stone, and the oil and wine poured out by Her Majesty.
The pipes will play, and Her Majesty, with the Royal Family, will retire.
As soon after as it can be got ready, the workmen will proceed to their dinner. After dinner, the following toasts will be given by Mr. Smith:
‘The Queen’.
‘The Prince and the Royal Family’.
‘Prosperity to the house, happiness to the inmates of Balmoral’.
The workmen will then leave the dinner-room, and amuse themselves upon the green with Highland games till seven o’clock, when a dance will take place in the ballroom.17
With the high wind flapping their clothes, the royal party carried out their duties. After observing the workmen at their dinner, Prince Albert went off to slaughter some ‘black game’, before joining the Queen once more in the evening to watch the evening dancing.
The royal family moved into the new Balmoral Castle on 7 September 1855, two years after the Queen’s penultimate child, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, was born. The Queen declared of her new Scottish home ‘the house is charming, the rooms delightful, the furniture, papers, everything, perfection’.18 And in Europe another piece of ‘perfection’ was enacted. Three days after the royal family had taken up residence in their new home the Queen was closeted with the Minister in Attendance, the 2nd Earl of Granville, to discuss the great news. Sebastopol, the Crimean port that had been besieged in October 1854, had at last fallen to the Allies. The Crimean War would not end until April 1856, but on the strength of this news John Brown lit a celebratory bonfire while Grant and Macdonald fired rifles in the air and the new Royal Piper, Ross, blew a selection of suitable pibroch tunes.
On 21 September 1855 Prince Albert wrote from Balmoral to the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Clarendon, concerning a royal ‘strict secret’ that only one more person, Prime Minister Palmerston, was to be told. Prince Frederick William of Prussia had arrived at Balmoral to seek the hand in marriage of fifteen-year-old Princess Victoria, the Princess Royal, nine years his junior.19 The princess had no idea why he was visiting, but the German-speaking servants quickly guessed and gossip began to flow to all levels of the Balmoral domestic and estate staff. Such a match was an important part of Prince Albert’s ‘Coburg Plan’, which included inter alia the unification of Prussia with the smaller German states under a British-style constitutional monarchy.
Although Queen Victoria indicated her approval of the proposed nuptials, the princess was as yet too young for marriage. Prince Frederick William could return in eighteen months time with a full proposal. In the meantime a betrothal could be contemplated. John Brown accompanied the Queen and the royal party when on the ‘engagement day’, 29 September, they rode out to Craig-na-Ban, and witnessed the exchange of loving glances and a ‘Scottish token’.
Dropping behind the main party, Prince Frederick William and Princess Victoria had dismounted; picking a sprig of white heather, the Prince handed it to the Princess with a kiss and a wish for her to live with him in Prussia. When the royal party regrouped at Glen Girnoch, the Queen knew by the couple’s demeanour that Prince Frederick William ‘had declared himself’. Thus was set in motion an extraordinary sequence of events. Their marriage would lead to the birth of a son in 1859 who would become Emperor William II of the united Germany Prince Albert wished for – but who, as ‘Kaiser Bill’, would plunge Europe into disastrous war.
Each year brought several changes and new features at Balmoral. In the year that the Queen’s ninth and last child Princess Beatrice was born, on 14 April 1857, a new bridge was opened over the Linn of Dee and the Queen settled down to a regular annual routine of visiting the poor of Crathie parish, an enterprise that John Brown would organise in future years. This year, with her new lady-inwaiting Jane, Lady Churchill, who would serve the Queen constantly until her death in 1900, she bought goods at a local Crathie store to distribute to parish octogenarians.
The year 1858 was a significant one in John Brown’s career. On 25 January Princess Victoria married Prince Frederick William at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, and Queen Victoria was left in a depressed and anxious state after surrendering her first-born to an older man. The Queen was shaking so much during the formal wedding picture that she appears blurred on the daguerreotype. The Queen’s state had not improved when the royal family arrived at Balmoral that September. Although Queen Victoria was publicly criticised for leaving London while parliament was still in session and the Indian Mutiny was raging, Prince Albert knew that the Queen was approaching one of her ‘depressions’ and he was determined to get his Liebes Frauchen away.
On John Brown
‘[John Brown] was shrewd, a great reader, and was capable of giving a considered opinion on most matters . . . Though Brown had a bluff manner, I never saw him intentionally rude.’
11th Marquis of Huntly,
Captain Gentlemen-at-Arms
Although it had snowed heavily, the Queen drove round the estate on 18 September with her Commissioner in Scotland Dr Andrew Robertson to view the latest housebuilding and in the afternoon rode out in her carriage. To get a better view of Prince Albert, off searching fo
r deer, when their carriage stopped at a likely place for hunting, the Queen was carried in a plaid gripping the shoulders of John Brown and Keeper Duncan over the slippery wet grass to a favourite picnic spot by the Corrie Burn. When she returned home she wrote: ‘All the Highlanders are so amusing, and really pleasant and instructive to talk to – women as well as men – and the latter so gentlemanlike.’20
By this holiday it was clear that Prince Albert’s Highland Jäger Archibald Fraser Macdonald was not well. He had developed the Victorian curse of consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis) and was no longer able to carry out his duties. Macdonald eventually died at Windsor Castle in May 1860. Who was to take his place? Prince Albert had for some time been observing John Brown, since he was promoted to riding on the box of the Queen’s carriage. Yes, Brown had all the qualities necessary; there was no equal in knowledge of the terrain around Balmoral; no one could light a picnic fire with damp wood like Brown; and he was skilled in amusing the Queen while the prince disappeared into the plantations to look for deer. Brown was thus promoted with the Queen’s approval. She wrote to Princess Victoria at the Kronprinzpalais in Berlin:
Brown has had everything to do for me, indeed had charge of me and all, on all those expeditions, and therefore I settled that he should be specially appointed to attend on me (without any title) and have a full dress suit . . . He was so pleased when I told him you had asked for him.21
‘Fascinating Johnny Brown’ was also now privy to royal secrets and the Queen told him Princess Victoria was pregnant. And he was becoming much in demand with other members of the royal family. Prince Arthur requested that Brown go with him and his party on an expedition. ‘Unmöglich’ [‘not possible’] said the Queen; ‘Why, what should I do without him? He is my particular gillie!’22
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