Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  The Wells were very pretty, two bubbling springs rising uncovered from small round marble basins; rows of little glasses stood on tables near, and were dipt into the fountains by neat old women, who presented them with a spring of sage to the drinkers; the sage was for rubbing the teeth, as the steel water discoloured them. I do not recollect much more of Tunbridge this visit—a toy shop I remember and the musick and the long covered walks on one side called the pantiles—all else is confused with later memories of this most enjoyable place. We soon left it this year and went to Twyford.

  The remainder of this summer of 1805 and the two following summers of 1806 and 1807, we spent entirely at Twyford, the winters in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, as I said before, never all this time going near the highlands. My father took a run to the north when he thought it necessary, but my Mother was glad to remain quiet with her children in the south, which part of the world, I think, she had begun to prefer to her more romantick home, now that the novelty of her Highland life had worn off a little. In London she had frequent opportunities of seeing many of her own relations, most of whom, at one time or another, had to pass the capital on their journeys. At Twyford she had a good house, and quiet, both of which luxuries she valued, for though there were neighbours, she saw little of them. I never remember her dining out there, and as there was plenty of accommodation, she had always some of her own friends with her.

  Twyford was about the most comfortable, modernised old residence that ever any one need wish to live in. It was ugly enough on the outside, a heavy, square, red brick building with little windows and dumpy chimneys; a small, squat dome upon the top, within which was a great church clock, and an observatory stuck up at one end like an ear, or a tall factory chimney, ending in a glass lantern. In front was a small bit of shrubbery hardly hiding the road, and beyond a short double avenue of lime trees stretching across a green field. Behind was a more extensive shrubbery and flower garden, divided by a light railing from pretty meadows dotted over with fruit trees. On one side was a walled garden and the farm offices, on the other the kitchen court, stables and stableyard, and an immense flour mill, all upon the river Stort, a very sluggish stream moving along, canal fashion, close to the premises. Barges heavily laden plied all day long backwards and forwards on this dingy water, and as there was a lock just underneath the laundry windows, scenes as merry as any that ever were known in the broom island took place on he flat banks of the lazy Stort among the bargemen, the dusty millers, and the men and maids of the kitchen court. To the elder part of the family all this commotion must have been a nuisance, to us children such noisy doings were a great delight. We had a post of observation contrived by ourselves in the middle of the wide yew hedge which bounded the back shrubbery on the riverside, and there, from what we called our summer parlour, we made many more observations than were always agreeable to the observed. There was a large establishment of servants, and no very steady head over them, for Lynch had married McKenzie, and they had gone to keep the inn at Aviemore, a melancholy change for we little people; but we had to bear a worse.

  In the summer of 1806 Aunt Lissy married. Her particular friend was a Miss Susan Frere, who had been her favourite companion at the celebrated school in Queen’s Square where she had been educated. Miss Frere’s father, a gentleman of consideration in the County of Norfolk, had seven sons, and it was his fourth son, George, who was lucky enough to gain the heart of one of the best of women. The courtship had been begun by means of letters through the sister; it had been carried on at the Hanover Square Concert rooms at rare intervals, for no one was aware of the progress of this seldom noticed lover till the engagement was announced. My Mother thought the pair had met in Wimpole Street, and Mrs Raper was sure he visited in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and both houses felt amazed at such an affair having been managed unknown to either. The first time that I became aware of what was going on was one day in the spring shortly before our removal to Twyford in 1806. I was sitting near an open window in the front drawing room beside my Aunt Lissy, who had been ill, and was only sufficiently recovered to be nursed up carefully. Some humble friend had called to see her, and while they were conversing on their charity affairs, I was amusing myself watching the progress down along the dead wall which supported the terrace walk of the Lincoln’s Inn gardens, of the tall Mr Frere who had lately begun to appear among us, and whose nankins always attracted me. As I expected, he was lost to sight for a moment only to emerge the brighter, for he soon appeared round the corner of the Giffin Wilsons’ garden, and across our court yard up to the door. His knock brought the colour into my aunt’s pale face; she also dismissed the humble friend, telling her she was too tired for further conversation, and then, forgetting me, for I could be very quiet, she rose up briskly to receive Mr Frere, and told him laughing how she had sent away an inconvenient third. Of course my turn soon came too, but I was so busy arranging all my conjectures that they had twice to bid me run away and play before I recollected to obey. When I gained the nursery I announced without more ado the impending marriage, which soon after was officially proclaimed when both bride and bridegroom set about the preparations for their change of condition in a quiet, straight forward, business like manner that much amused my Mother and my Aunt Mary. Mr Frere took a house in Brunswick Square, which Aunt Lissy went with him to see. After due consideration they decided on buying all the furniture left in it by the late proprietor, to which my Aunt added a great deal belonging to herself from the stores at Twyford of beautiful Indian wares, and all that she had gathered together for her own Comfort while her home was with us. Her bedroom looked very bare when all in it belonging to her had left it; and the back drawing room we usually lived in, deprived of pictures, flower stands, bookcases, china and other pretty things, with really a pretty collection of books, was nearly empty, and it never quite recovered the loss, for my Mother had no turn for adornments. She kept a clean house, a good table, a tidy room, always putting in the stitch in time, but she did not care for knick knacks, at least she did not care to buy them; parting with them was a different affair; she was angry enough at the loss of what she had been used to see around her, and while my imperturbable Aunt Lissy day by day continued her dismantlings and her careful packings, my Mother’s surprise grew to indignation, as Jane and I were quick enough to find out by means of certain never ending mysterious conversations between her and our Aunt Mary, They fancied that the low tone of voice in which they spoke and the curious language they employed effectually veiled the meaning of their gossip. Instead, therefore, of sending us away when they had private communications to make to one another, they merely bid us go to some other part of the room, while they tried to conceal the subject of their whisperings by the ingenious addition of ‘vus’ to every word they spoke, as ‘Didvus youvus evervus hearvus ofvus anyvus thingvus sovus queervus asvus,’ etc. etc. At first we supposed this was another Continental language different from French, which we were ourselves learning, but the proper names sometimes unwisely employed instead of ‘hevus shevus’ they generally used gave us a clue to the cypher, which soon enabled us to translate all the oddities attributed to the Aunt we loved so dearly.

  The marriage took place at Twyford in the month, I think, of August, and my father was not present at it, for I remember that some of the wedding cake was kept for him; he was in the North canvassing busily for the representation of Morayshire, a dissolution of parliament being expected. Who gave his only sister away I don’t recollect, I suppose it must have been Mr Matthew Raper, the then Head of the family. An old Mr Pickering performed the ceremony in Thorley Church; he had christened both my Aunt and my father, and his sisters had had the charge of my Aunt for some years before she went to Queen’s Square. It was a very private wedding, Aunt Mary and Harriet Grant Glenmoriston the bridesmaids, and one or two of the brother Freres to attend them. The bride and bridegroom drove off in a carriage and four to make a lazy journey of it to Roydon, the father’s place in Norfolk, and we were all left in spi
rits the very reverse of gay to think over their departure.

  Our first summer at Twyford had been very happy. Both our aunts, Mary and Lissy, were with us, and cousin James Griffith, who was a great favourite. The queer old house particularly pleased us. There was the long garret under the roof, a capital place for romping, and such hiding-places!—The great clock chamber, turrets and turret stairs and back stairs and the observatory and crooked corners, and odd closets, it was all charming. Then such a yew hedge, a famous gravel Walk beside it, a garden so well stocked, such an orchard, fruits hardly known by more than sight showering down their treasures when we shook the trees. Another good amusement of that first year was the bat hunts; the house had been so long shut up, so little looked after, that the cellars and even the kitchen offices were actually swarming with bats; they hung down from the rafters in hundreds, and were infinitely more difficult to dislodge than the mice in the highlands. We were so used to them flapping about our ears within and without after dark, that even the servants gave up complaining of them, and only that they were unpleasant to the sense of smell, vigorous war would hardly have been waged against them, disgusting as they were. We had merry walks, too, through the fields, a firm pathway, and stile after stile all the way to Bishop’s Stortford; and in the autumn such nutting parties, the hedges full of blackberries, sloes, nuts, bullaces,15 and then the walnuts we were stained to the colour of gipsies merely picking off the husks. The second summer was even happier, for good Mr Beekvelt came for a month or more. He took us long walks all over the country, to Thorley Wood and Thorley Hurst, and among the pretty shady lanes abounding in every direction. We greatly preferred him to the nursery maids, for he really had no pleasure but ours.

  The peasantry were uninteresting, so after a few Cottage visits we gave up any attempt at acquaintance in that sphere, but the fields were charming. We went to church at Thorley always, sitting in the old Raper pew, and so pretty was that old church, so very pretty the old Raper Hall in which my father’s tenant Mr Voules lived, that we used to wonder we did not live there ourselves. Mr Frere came frequently to see us, and sometimes a tall brother with him. These were our gala days, for they played bat and ball, battledore and shuttlecock, cricket, hunt the slipper, puss in the corner, and a hundred other games, which they had the knack of making every one, young and old, join in out on the lawn in the back shrubbery, under the shade of a fine chestnut tree. They seldom came either without a little cargo of presents for the children; the Clan Frere therefore was so much in favour that we hardly felt the parting from our kind Aunt, little understanding then how much our childish happiness had depended on the little quiet woman who seemed to be of no account with any one.

  Our dear Aunt Lissy had never interfered with the baby, little Mary. She was now at three years of age Mrs Millar’s principal charge and my Mother’s pet. We three elder ones had been her care, and how she had managed us we only found out by comparing it with the mismanagement that followed. Having few lessons and no employment but such as we contrived for ourselves, our play hours were so many as to tire us, our tempers suffered, and Mrs Millar, not possessing the best herself, sadly annoyed ours. I was active, pert, violent, Jane indolent and sulky, William impracticable, never out of humour, but quietly and thoroughly self willed. One mode was applied to all; perpetual fault finding, screams, tears, sobs, thumps, formed the staple of the nursery history from this time forward. We were as little upstairs as we could help, though we were not always much better off below, for if my Mother or our Aunt Mary were not in the vein for hearing our lessons, they had very little patience either with our mistakes or our enquiries; my Mother would box our ears well with her pretty white hand that sometimes had the book in it and Aunt Mary had a spiteful fillup with the thimble finger which gave a very painful sting to the tender skin of a child. Bursts of crying, of course, followed, when the delinquents were despatched to dark closets, where they were sometimes forgotten for hours. There was no kind Mrs Lynch to watch us, steal to our prison door and carry us off to her room to be employed and so amused and kept from mischief She was as great a loss to us as our Aunt Lissy, in one particular,—a very serious matter to me, my breakfast—she was a greater. Our nursery breakfast was ordered, without reference to any but Houghton customs, to be dry bread and cold milk the year round, with the exception of three of the winter months, when in honour of our Scotch blood we were favoured with porridge. The meal came up from the highlands with the kegs of butter and barrels of eggs and bags of cheese, etc., but it was boiled by the English maids in anything but our north country fashion. Had we been strong children this style of food might probably have suited us, many large healthy families have thriven on the like; but though seldom ailing much, we inherited from my father a delicacy of constitution demanding the most fostering care during our infancy. In those days it was the fashion to take none. All children were alike plunged into the coldest water, sent abroad in the worst weather, fed on the same food, clothed in the same light manner. From the wintry icy bath Aunt Lissy had saved us; our good nurse Herbert first, and then Mrs Lynch, had always made us independant of the hated milk breakfast; but when they were gone and the conscientious Mrs Millar, my Mother’s ‘treasure,’ reigned alone, our life was one long misery, at least to William and me who were not favourites. In town, there was a large, long tub stood in the kitchen court, the ice on the top of which had often been broken before our horrid plunge into it. We were brought down from the very top of the house, four pair of stairs, with only a cotton cloak over our night gowns, just to chill us completely before the dreadful shock. How I have screamed, how I have begged, prayed, entreated to be saved from such horrour, half the tender hearted maids in tears beside me; all no use, Millar had her orders—so had our dear Betty, but did she ever mind them when they revolted her! Nearly senseless I have been taken to be dried in the housekeeper’s room at hand, which was always warm; there we dressed, without any flannel, and in cotton frocks with short sleeves and low necks. Revived by the good fire, we were enabled to endure the next bit of martyrdom, an hour upon the low sofa without a back, so many yards from the nursery hearth, our books in our hands, while our cold breakfast was preparing. My stomach utterly rejecting milk, bread and tears generally did for me, a diet the consequences of which soon manifested themselves. From being a plump, bright, merry, though slight, child, I became thin, pale and peaky, and wofully changed in disposition, slyness being added to my natural violence, as I can recollect now with shame on many occasions. William told fibs by the dozen, because he used to be asked whether he had done, or not done, so and so, and did not dare answer truthfully on account of the extreme severity of the punishments to which we were subjected. We began our ill behaviour soon after our Aunt Lissy’s marriage. On my father’s return from his canvas in Morayshire he received bad accounts of our misconduct.

  The recapitulation of all our offences to my father drove us to despair, for we loved him with an intensity of affection that made his good opinion essential to our happiness. We also dreaded his sternness, all his judgments being à la Brutus, nor did he ever remit a sentence once pronounced. The milk rebellion was immediately crushed. In his dressing gown, with his whip in his hand, he attended our breakfast—the tub at this season we liked, so he had no occasion to superintend the bathing—but that disgusting milk! He began with me. My beseeching look was answered by a sharp cut, followed by as many more as were necessary to empty the basin. Jane obeyed at once and William after one good hint. They suffered less than I did. William cared less, he did not enjoy this breakfast with the whip accompaniment, but he could take it. Jane always got rid of it, she had therefore only hunger to endure. I, whose stomach was either stronger or weaker, it little mattered to me which, had to bear an aching head, a heavy, sick often painful feeling which spoilt my whole morning, and prevented any appetite for dinner, where again we constantly met with sorrow. Whatever was on the table we were each to eat, no choice was allowed us. The dinners were very good
, one dish of meat with vegetables, one tart or pudding. On broth or fish days no pudding, these days were therefore not in favour; but our two maigre days in the week during summer, we delighted in, fruit and eggs being our favourite dishes. How happy our dinner hour was while Aunt Lissy presided. A scene of distress often afterwards. My Mother never had had such an idea as that of entering her nursery, I never remember her shadow in it. When she wanted either her children or her maids she rang for them; Aunt Mary, of course, had no business there. The cook was pretty sure of this, the broth got very greasy, the vegetables were heavy with water, the puddings were seldom brown. Mrs Millar allowed no oughts, our shoulders of mutton—we ate up all the shoulders—were to be cut fair, fat and lean, and to be eaten fair, a hard task for either Jane or me. The stomachs which rejected milk could not easily manage fat except when like the West Indian Negroes we were under the lash, then indeed the fat and the tears were swallowed together; but as my father could not always be found to act overseer, we had sometimes a good fight for it with our upright nurse, a fight ending in victory as regarded the fat, which we would not touch, though we suffered in another way the pains of defeat, as on these occasions we were always deprived of our pudding; and then when I was saucy and Jane in a sulky fit, the scene often ended in the dark closet where we cried for an hour or more, while William and little Mary finished the pudding. This barbarity only lasted a short time, owing to my ingenious manufacture of small paper bags which we concealed in our laps under the table, and took opportunities of filling with our bits of fat; these we afterwards warily disposed of, at Twyford through the yew hedge into the river, in town elsewhere.