Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  A permanent member of our family at this time I must not forget, for I bore her great affection. She was indeed very kind to us, and very careful of us the few years she remained in the household. She was a natural daughter of my Grandfather’s, born long after his Wife’s death and had been brought up by his sister the Lady Logie. When this great Aunt of mine died, ‘Miss Jenny’ removed as matter of course to the family asylum, as I may call my father’s house. She was entrusted with the storeroom keys, and was employed as a general superintendent of the family business till she married, which event, luckily for her, poor thing, was not very long delayed. A red haired Forres beau, a Mr Arthur Cooper, learned in the law, thought the connexion would make his fortune and her little money set him up, which they did and so relieved my Mother of one of her burthens. It was indeed a strange mixture of ranks and positions and interests that she was the Head of and I don’t imagine that all was always harmony among them. My parents were both too young, too inexperienced, to be very patient with such an heterogeneous assemblage. It might do very well in the bright summer weather when an outdoor life in the pure air occupied all the day and produced a glow of spirits for all the night, but there were wintry weeks in this gay sphere of theirs, clouds and storms and chills, when annoyances gloomed into grievances, and worry brought on ill humour. I have the recollection of many a tart word that had better have been left unsaid, of eyes red and swollen with weeping, of gaiety repressed and happiness checked and constraint engendered—temper—temper—take every gift we covet most, take health and wealth and skill and talent, take all that all most long for, leave me but temper—temper to bear and temper to forbear and where that Christian temper is even in one member only of a household, there will be comfort, comfort attainable by each of us, requiring less of energy than we expend on things that by comparison with it are valueless, A little self controul for one week and we ensure the happiness of ourselves and all depending on us. In those days, unluckily, education had not extended to the temper. My Mother’s family cares were principally confined to such as she could reach with her needle, in the use of which she was very dexterous. As for the rest, after the dinner was ordered and the windows opened, matters were very much left to the direction of the chances.

  My father was a much more active person, very despotick when called on to decide, yet much beloved. An eye every where, nursery, kitchen, farm, stable, garden, tenantry, but not a steady eye, no prevention in it, fitful glances seeing sometimes too much, and very summary in the punishment of detected offences. He was principally occupied at this time with his mason and carpenter, as he was making great changes in and about the Doune. These changes, indeed, employed him all his life, for he so frequently altered in the present year what had been executed the year before, that neither he nor his allies, Donald McLean and the Collys, were ever out of work.

  The changes effected up to this period, the autumn of 1803, when we all reached our beloved highland home from Scarborough and Houghton, were of some importance. My Grandfather’s outrigger had been heightened and lengthened, and carried back beyond the old house, the windows in it had all been changed and enlarged, and ornamented with cut granite; in fact, a very handsome modem wing appeared in place of an ill contrived ugly appendage. It was intended at no very distant time to have matched it with another, and to have connected the two by a handsome portico, all in front of the old house, which would have been entirely concealed, and being single, was to have had all its windows turned to the back, looking on a neat square of offices, some of which were now in progress. My Grandfathers new dining room was thus made into a pleasant drawing room, his turning stair was replaced by an easier one in a hall which divided the drawing room from a new dining room, and in which was the door of entrance to this modern pan of the house. Above were the spare bedrooms and dressing rooms, and over them two large atticks, barrack rooms, one for the maids, the other for visiting maidens, young ladies who in this primitive age were quite in the habit of being thus huddled up in company. In the old part of the house my father’s study, the ancient reception hall, had been cut short by a window to give him a dressing room and the black kitchen outside had vanished, much to the satisfaction of my Mother and Mrs Lynch, who declared no decent dinner could by possibility be dressed in it. It was indeed a rude apology for a set of kitchen offices. A mouse one day fell into the soup from the open rafters, a sample merely of an hundred such accidents.

  To make room for the new range of servants’ rooms, part of the end of the hill had to be cut away, spoiling entirely the boat shape of our Doune. The soil thus removed was thrown into the nearest channel of the backwater, it being my father’s intention to fill these up by degrees; an improvement to which William and I were decidedly opposed, for on the broom island, the largest of the group amidst this maze of waters, our very merriest hours were spent. A couple of wide, well worn planks formed the bridge by which we crossed to our elysian field; two large alder trees grew close to the opposite end of this charming bridge, making the shallow water underneath look as dark and dangerous as ‘Annan Water’ did to Annie’s lover; an additional delight to us. Between the two large alders hung in gipsy fashion the large caldron used for the washing; a rude open shed, just sufficient to protect the officiating damsels from the weather; tubs, cogues,3 lippys, a watering pot and a beetle, a piece of wood, bottle shaped, with which the clothes were thumped, Indian and French fashion, lay all about among the yellow broom under the alders and hazels on this happy island, the scene of as much mirth and as much fun as ever lightened heavy labour, for be it remembered the high stable was in very close neighbourhood. William and I were never failing parts of the merry group, for our time was pretty much at our own disposal, Jane only joining us occasionally. We two elder ones were of an age to say our lessons every day to my Mother, and we always faithfully learned our twelve words, that is, I did, out of a red marble covered book filled with columns of words in large, black print. But my Mother was not often able to hear us—sometimes she was ill, and sometimes she was busy, and sometimes she was from home, and sometimes she had company at home, and sometimes she was not up, so our lessons had often time to be got pretty perfect before we were called upon to say them. But we had plenty of story books to read on rainy days, and we had pleasure in reading to ourselves, for even Jane at three years old could read her ‘Cobwebs to catch flies’ and she or I read to William. I was fond, too, of dressing my doll by the side of Mrs Lynch, and of learning to write of McKenzie. On fine days we were always out, either by ourselves or with a son of the old gardener’s, George Ross, to attend us. There was also a highland nursery maid and Mrs Acres, the baby’s nurse, superintending. Amongst them they did not take very good care of us, for William was found one sunny morning very near the Spey, sailing away in a washing tub, paddling along the backwater with a crooked stick in his hand for an oar, and his pocket handkerchief knotted on to another he had stuck up between his knees for a flag. A summerset into the rapid river stream, had he reached it, would have made an end of him, but for my voice of rapturous delight on the bank where I stood clapping my hands at his progress, which directed some one to our doings, and thus saved the young Laird from his perilous situation.

  So passed our summer days. We grew strong and healthy, and we were very happy, revelling among the blackberries on the Doune till we were tattooed, frocks and all, like the American Indians; in the garden, stung into objects by the mosquitoes in the fruit bushes; in our dear broom island, or farther off sometimes in the forest, gathering cranberries and lying half asleep upon the fragrant heather, listening to tales of the fairy guardians of all the beautiful scenery around us. I was a tall, pale, slight, fair child to look at, but I seldom ailed anything. William, fat and rosy and sturdy, was the picture of a robust boy. Jane was the beauty, small and well formed; with a healthy colour and her Ironside eyes, she was the flower of the little flock, for Mary was a mere large, white baby, very inanimate, nor anyway engaging to any one but my Mothe
r, who always made the youngest her favourite.

  In winter we returned to Lincoln’s Inn Fields and then began our sorrows. Two short walks per day in the Square, sauntering behind a new nurse, Mrs Millar, who had come to wean the baby; an illness of my Mother’s, whose room being just beneath our nursery, prevented all the noisy plays we loved; and next, a governess, a young pretty timid girl, a Miss Gardiner, quite new to her business, who was always in a fright lest neither we nor herself were doing right, and whom we soon tyrannised over properly; for my father and my Mother and my Aunts went to Bath to meet Mr and Mrs Leitch, and we were left with this poor Miss Gardiner, who from the beginning had always lived up in the schoolroom with us, and never entered the drawing room unless invited.

  How well I remember the morning after her arrival. She had charge of William, Jane, and me. We were all brought in by Mrs Millar and seated together upon a low sofa without a back which had been made for us. Our schoolroom was the large front nursery, curtained anew and carpeted. There were besides the sofa, four chairs, two tables, one in the middle of the room, one against the wall; a high fender, of course, two hanging bookcases, six framed maps, one on Mercator’s projection, which we never could understand; a crib in which William slept—I slept in my mother’s dressing room, Jane in the nursery—and between the two windows a large office desk, opening on each side, with two high stools belonging to it. To encrease the enjoyment of this prospect, into my hands was put the large edition of Lindley Murray’s grammar,4 William was presented with ‘Geography by a Lady for the use of her own Children,’ not one word of which he was capable of reading, and Jane, who had fine easy times of it in our eyes, though I question whether at three years of age she thought so, had a spelling book given to her. Such was the commencement to us of the year 1804. We were soon as thoroughly miserable as our anxious parents from this method of instruction could expect. The lessons were hard enough and numerous enough, considering the mere infants who had to learn them, but for my part, though I would rather not have had them, they were very little in my way, although the notes of the whole musick gamut were included, with the names of all the keys and the various times, etc., all at a blow, as it were. It was never any trouble to me to have to get whole pages off by rote; I was not asked to take the further trouble of thinking about them. No explanations were either asked or given, so that the brain was by no means overexcited, and the writing and cyphering and piano forte lesson which followed the drier studies of the morning pleased me extremely. Hook’s easy lessons5 were soon heard in great style, played by ear after the first painful reading, without any one but the performer being the wiser. But what we wanted was our fun, flying from crib to crib on awaking in the morning, dancing in our night clothes all about the room, making horses of the overturned chairs, and acting plays dressed up in old trumpery. We had only sedate amusements now. How delighted I was to escape sometimes to my Aunts, from one of whom, my Aunt Mary, I heard stories, sometimes real, now fabulous, always containing some moral, however, which I had wit enough to apply silently, as occasion offered. By my Aunt Lissy I was diverted and instructed through the contents of the big box full of every sort of object likely to interest a child.

  Poor Miss Gardiner! She was neither reasoning nor reasonable, too young for her situation, without sufficient mind, or heart, or experience for it, a mere school girl, which at that time of the day meant a zero. Her system of restraint therefore became intolerable, when from the absence of the heads of the family we had no relief from it—for about this time my father and Mother had gone to meet Mr and Mrs Leitch at Bath. Still a certain awe of a person placed in authority over us had prevented our annoying her otherwise than by our petulance, till one day that she desired us to remain very quiet while she wrote a letter, rather a serious business with her. It was to my mother to give an account of our health and behaviour. She took a small packet of very small pens from a box near her, and a sheet of very shiny paper, and after some moments of reflexion she began. I observed her accurately. ‘What do you call those pretty little pens?’ said I. ‘Crow quills, my dear,’ said she, for she was in manner very kind to us. ‘William,’ said I in a low aside, ‘I don’t think we need mind her any more, nor learn any more lessons, for she can’t really teach us. She is a fool, I shan’t mind her any more.’ ‘Very well,’ said William, ‘nor I, nor I shan’t learn my lessons—he never yet had learned one, for a more thorough dunce than this very clever brother of mine in his childish days never performed the part of booby in a village school, but it was very disagreeable to him to have to try to sit quiet behind a book for half an hour together two or three times a day, poor child! He was but five years old and he was of course satisfied with any suggestion that would release him.

  Some weeks before, my mother had received a note in my father’s absence, which appeared greatly to irritate her. The contents were never made known to me, but on my father’s return home she imparted them to him with some lively comments to the disparagement of the writer. ‘I always knew she was a fool,’ cried she, for she spoke strongly enough when excited; ‘but I did not expect such an extreme proof of her folly.’ ‘My dear,’ replied my father, in his quietest and calmest voice, ‘what did you expect from a woman who writes on satin paper with a crow quill!’ In my corner with my doll and pictures I saw and heard a great deal that passed beyond it, Miss Gardiner fell her proud height on the day she wrote her letter, and she never regained a shadow of authority over us, for I led all, even ‘the good little Jane.’ Like Sir Robert Peel, Louis quatorze and other dictators, ‘je fus l’état, moi!’6 and respect for our poor governess had vanished. The next time the crow quills and satin paper occupied her, William and I provided with the necessary strings got ready beforehand, tied her by her dress and her feet and the hair of her head to the legs of the chair and the table, so that as she rose from her engrossing composition the crash that ensued was astounding, the fright and even pain not small. She was exceedingly agitated, almost angry, but so gentle in her expostulations that, like Irish servants, we were encouraged to continue a system of annoyance that must have made her very uncomfortable. We behaved very ill, there was no doubt of it, and she had not the way of putting a stop to our impertinence. When Mrs Millar found out these proceedings and remonstrated, I told her it was of little consequence how we acted, as I knew my Papa would send her away when he came home; which he did. She was not supposed to be equal to the situation and her father came to take her home. The state of anarchy the schoolroom exhibited was perhaps as much against her remaining as the finely penned account of it, but I have since thought that her extreme beauty and my Uncle Edward’s very undisguised admiration of it had as much to do with her departure as the crow quills. We heard a few years afterwards that she had married very happily and had a fine set of children of her own who would be all the better managed for the apprenticeship she had served with us.

  Uncle Edward was now studying at Woolwich, expecting to proceed to India as a Cadet. Fortunately old Charles Grant was able to change his appointment and give him a writer-ship,7 so he came to us to prepare his equipment. Being quite a boy, full of spirits and not the least studious, he romped with his little nephew and nieces to our hearts’ content, particularly after the departure of the governess, when William and I resumed our spellings with my Mother, and Jane roamed ‘fancy free.’ Lindley Murray and Geography by a Lady retired from our world, but a Mr Thompson who was teaching Uncle Edward mathematicks was engaged to continue our lessons in writing and cyphering. A young Mr Jones took charge of my musick, in which I really progressed, though I never practised. I rattled away so mercilessly, wrong notes or right ones, as it happened that I was considered to have great execution, and brilliant fingers and I was actually not ashamed to receive this most undeserved praise when in point of fact I deserved censure for extreme incorrectness—the fingers rattled away at a great rate but the listeners had to be indebted to the ear belonging to them for the few wrong notes they touched; as to t
he number missed out, no one took any account of them. I had a turn for drawing, too, as was discovered by the alterations I made one rainy day in my young Uncle’s designs. He had been studying fortifications; his plans were said to be very neatly executed, but they were not sufficiently finished to please me. I therefore extended the patches of colour laid on here and there, round the whole works, filled up vacant spaces, etc., and I wonder now when I know all the mischief I did how my good natured Uncle could ever have forgiven me, for he had been much flattered on his skill as a draughtsman. He blamed himself for having left his plans within my reach and for having given me leave to amuse myself with his paint box.