Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  The clergyman of our parish, a tall thin Mr Pennington, was clever in an odd way, and agreeable, but he had so very queer a wife, and such an ill brought up daughter, that his visits when accompanied by them as was mostly the case for he was intensely fond of them, were any thing but agreeable. He lives chiefly in my recollection as the donor of the first quarto volume I had ever held in my hands, and to actually read a book of this size, know it was my own, and lay it myself upon its side on the shelf in the nursery bookcase appropriated to my literary property, was a proud pleasure only equalled by another afforded me at the same time, which I will mention presently. The book was the letters of that prodigy Mrs Elizabeth Carter, with some notice of her studious life, not very interesting to me, for my turn did not lie in the scientifick line; but the lady being a relation of Mr Pennington’s, good breeding kept me silent as to my opinion of his gift.4 They lived, this thin dreamy old clergyman, his managing wife, and spoilt child, in a baby house of a parsonage standing actually in one of the shady lanes leading to Thorley, for the line of the front wall of the house was the line of the hedge that stretched along on either hand. The entrance was into the parlour without any passage or hall, and a staircase in the parlour led up to a play room over it, where we could have passed many happy hours, it was so filled with children’s treasures, had not the wayward humours of its young mistress turned it generally into a scene of strife. As we had no other acquaintance of our own age, we deplored this the more, for the walk to the parsonage, first through fields and along the shady lane, was delightful, and there were a thousand objects in that little curiosity shop which interested us. Above all, a microscope, and good Mr Pennington ever ready to let us peep into it.

  I do not remember any other neighbours of whom we saw anything. And of a low degree I recollect none, they were all stupid, cloddish drones, the peasantry thereabouts, speaking a language we could not understand, and getting vacantly through their labouring lives as if existence had no pleasures. There were no old family retainers save one ancient pair, farmer Dugard and his neat old wife, and their pretty tidy niece Nancy Raymus, who lived in a picture of a cottage close to our offices, with only the road between their little flower garden and the Grieve’s. I forget now whether their cottage was thatched or tiled, but I remember it had several gable ends with latticed windows, and high peaked roofs; and that the entrance was into a kitchen kept for shew, with sanded floor, and bright barred grate, and shelves loaded with glittering brass and pewter. Other rooms used by the family opened out of this, the glory of Nancy’s busy hands, where too she had her bird in its cage, her geraniums in the window, shaded from the summer’s sun by the white muslin curtain so daintily trimmed with a plaited frill.

  We sometimes drank tea here, a real fête, for we had syllabub made with currant wine spiced, and we helped to hold the real china bowl under the cow, whose name was Cherry. On Sundays we used to see these good friends proceed to church in real English county fashion; old Dugard always first, in his brown bob wig, large coat, and gold headed cane, with gloves on. Next came the wife in a black mode cloke and sharp pointed shoes, carrying her prayer book in a handkerchief; and last came Nancy, of whom I recollect only her rosy cheeks and bright kind eyes, and that she held both her own prayer book and her uncle’s and an umbrella. They used to whisper that one of the Miller’s men used to like attending Thorley church, and so would meet the little party at the first stile. Whether more came of this I cannot tell.

  Dear sunny Twyford! it was not always what I remember it. My father altered both house and grounds to suit the times, improved them probably, though as we have lived to see taste return in some degree towards the measured formality of our Ancestors, we might perhaps in so old and quaint a place have retained a little more of the broad yew hedge than he did.

  The Rapers are an old Buckinghamshire family of Norman descent, as their name anciently spelt Rapier attests. Where they came from, or when they came, or what they were, I really do not know, but so strange a leaven of puritanism pervaded the Christian names of the family, that I cannot but think they were known in the days of the Commonwealth for more stirring deeds than suited them in after times. They descended to us as scientifick men, calm, quiet, and retired, accomplished oddities. How any of them came to settle in Hertfordshire was never explained, but it so happened that two brothers established themselves in that County within a mile of one another; Matthew at Thorley Hall, John at Twyford, Moses the elder remaining on the family inheritance. Matthew never married, John took to wife Elizabeth Beaumont, the sister if I mistake not of the wife of Chief Justice Hailes, descended in the direct line from Sir John Beaumont, the authour of Bosworth Field and the elder brother of the dramatist.5 I remember mentioning this with no little pride to Lord Jeffrey6 when he answered quietly he would rather himself be able to claim kindred with Fletcher; and soon after he announced in one of his Reviews that Beaumont was but the French polish upon the fine sound material of Fletcher—or something to that effect; which may be, though at this distance of time, I don’t see how such accurate division of labour could be tested; and what would the rough material have been unpolished. I myself believe that Beaumont was more than the varnish, he was the edge tool too and I request of you children to feel like me, proud of such parentage, and to value the red bound copy of Bosworth Field with my great great grandmother’s name in it, and the little silver sugar basket with the Lion of England in the centre of it, which she brought with herself into the Raper family.

  She must have been a person of rare acquirements too, for her death so affected her husband that he was never seen out of his own home afterwards. I do not know how he managed the education of his only child, his daughter, my grandmother; for she was well educated in a higher style than was common then, and yet he lived on at Twyford alone almost, except for visits from a few relations. His horses died in their stables, his carriages decayed in their coach house, his servants continued with him till their death or marriage, when the supernumeraries were not replaced, and he lived on year after year in one uniform round of dulness till roused by the arrival of his Grandchildren.

  Aunt Lissy did not remain long with him, but my father was his charge till his death. He did not appear to have devoted himself to his charge, and yet the boy was very constantly his companion within doors, for all the old man’s queer methodical ways had impressed themselves vividly on the boy’s mind. When altering the house my father would permit no change to be made in the small room on the ground floor of the hall, which had been his grandfather’s dressing room, and which was now his own.

  We generally attended on my father towards the end of his toilette, on the third ringing of that startling bell—a sound that acted through our house like the ‘Sharp’ in the Royal palaces, sending every one to their duty in all haste—and there we found the same oddly contrived wardrobe which had been made so many years ago. Two or three broad shelves were below, and underneath the bottom one a row of small pegs for hanging boots and shoes on; at top were innumerable pigeon holes, employed by my father for holding papers, but which in Raper days had held each the proper supply of linen for one day—shirt, stock, stockings, handkerchief, all along in a row, tier above tier. My Great Grandfather began always at No. I and went on regularly through the pigeon holes, the washerwoman refilling in proper time those he had emptied. This methodical habit pervaded all his actions; he walked by rule at stated times, and only in his garden, and for a definite period; so many times round the formal parterre, bounded by the yew tree hedge. He did not, however, interrupt his thoughts to count his paces, he filled a pocket of his flapped waistcoat with so many beans, and each time that he passed the door he dropped a bean into a box placed upon the sill of the window for the purpose of receiving them. When the beans had all been dropt the walk was done.

  He was a calm and placid man, and acted like oil on waves to the impatient spirit he had to deal with. Some baby fury had excited my father once to that degree, he took a fine new
handkerchief that had been given to him and threw it angrily upon the fire, then seeing the flames rise over it, he started forward as suddenly to rescue what he had valued. ‘No, Jack,’ said his Grandfather, ‘let it burn, the loss of a handkerchief is little, the loss of temper is much; watch it burning and try to remember what irremediable mischief an uncontrolled temper works.’ My father said this scene constantly recurred to him and checked many a fit of passion, fortunately, as his highland maid Christy and others did their best to spoil him.

  The Thorley brother, Matthew, was equally as eccentrick as my Great Grandfather. They were much together, and he it was who built the observatory at Twyford, that when he dined there and took a fancy to consult the stars, he need not have to return home to spend an hour with them, for he was a true lover of learning. He had built a large room to hold his books at Thorley. The best of those we loved so much at the Doune came from thence, and the maps and prints and volumes of rare engravings, mathematical and other instruments, coins and curiosities.

  He played both on the violin and violincello. Our poor cousin George Grant took possession of the violincello, on which I have heard he was a proficient. The violin was lent to Duncan McIntosh, who enlarged the sound holes, as he thought the tone of this true Cremona too low for the proper expression of Highland musick!

  There was an observatory at Thorley too, from whence my great Uncle surveyed the earth as well as the heavens—a favourite occupation of his being the care of some grass walks he was very particular in defending from the feet of passengers. He had planted a wood at a short distance from his house, laid out a kind of problem in action; an oval pond full of fish for centre, and gravel walks diverging from it at regular intervals towards an exteriour square; the walks were bordered by very broad turf edging, and thick plantations of young trees were made between. It was a short cut through this mathematical plantation from one farm house to another, and in rainy weather the women in their pattens destroyed the grass borderings when they disobeyed the order to keep to the gravel path. From his tower of observation Matthew Raper detected every delinquent, and being provided with a speaking trumpet, no sooner did a black gypsey bonnet and red cloke beneath it appear on the forbidden edge, than ‘Off with your pattens’ echoed in rough seaman’s voice to the terrour of the sinners, who hearing such a voice as they never heard before, and seeing no one, thought the devil lay hid among the bushes.

  These two old brothers, the one a bachelour, the other a widower, had their hearts set upon the same earthly object, my Great Grandfather’s only child, my grandmother. To judge of her from the fragments of her journals, her scraps of poetry, some copied, some original, her pocket books full of witty memoranda, her receipt books, songs and the small library, in each volume of which her name was beautifully written, she must have been an accomplished woman and passing clever, with rather more than a touch of the coarseness of her times.7

  She had a temper! for dear, good Mrs Sophy used to tell us, as a warning to me, how every one in her household used to fly from her presence when it was up, hiding in any corner till the brief storm was finished. She was not handsome, short in figure, with the Raper face, and undecided complexion; yet she had lovers. In early youth a cousin Harry figured in her private MS., he must have been the Admiral’s father,8 and after came a more serious business, an engagement to Bishop Horsley,9 an illness delayed the ceremony, and when the heiress recovered she married her Doctor!—my grandfather10—whether with or without the consent of her family I do not know; it certainly was not with their approbation, for they looked on my grandfather as a mere Scotch adventurer, and never thoroughly forgave my grandmother for years; not till my great Uncle Rothy, with his graceful wife, came to London to visit their brother the Doctor, when the Raper connexion was relieved to see that the honour of the alliance was at least mutual.

  Although my grandfather lived to get into great practice as a physician, his income at the time of his marriage was not considerable; the Raper addition to it was extremely welcome. Her father allowed Mrs Grant a guinea a day, paid punctually to herself in advance on the first of the month in a little rouleau containing thirty gold pieces, or thirty one, or twenty eight or nine as the case might be. As I understood, this was never promised, but never failed. The Uncle at Thorley, too, kindly assisted the housekeeping. On new year’s day he regularly gave or sent his niece a piece of plate and a hundred pounds, so regularly that she quite reckoned on it, unwisely; for one day the Uncle, being with her talking confidentially upon the Doctor’s improved ways and means, trusting matters were really comfortable; ‘Oh dear, yes,’ replied his niece; ‘fees are becoming plenty, and the Lectures bring so much, and my father gives so much, and then, uncle, there’s your hundred pounds.’ ‘True, niece,’ answered the odd Uncle, and to the hour of his death he never gave her again a guinea. He saved the more for my father, little thinking all his hoards were destined for that odious Sandy Grant and the electors of Great Grimsby

  My Grandfather and grandmother were married twelve years before they had a child, then came my father, and four years after, my aunt Lissy; in giving birth to her, her mother died. The highlanders saw the hand of a rewarding providence in the arrival of these children to a lonely home, my grandmother having signally approved herself in their eyes by her behaviour on a memorable occasion; I don’t know how they accounted for the poor woman’s early death, in the midst of these blessings, on the same principles.

  The visit that the Laird and the Lady of Rothiemurchus had paid to Doctor and Mrs Grant at their large house in Lime Street in the City of London was to be returned, but, after repeated delays, his professional business quite preventing the Doctor from taking such a holiday. His Wife was to go north alone, that is without him, but with his younger brother, Alexander the clergyman, who was then Curate at Henley, where he had been for some time with his Wife and her sister Miss Neale. Besides his clerical duties, my great Uncle Sandy at this time took pupils, who must have been at home for their midsummer holidays, when he could propose to escort his wife and his sister in law to the highlands. My great Uncle Rothy was unluckily living at Elgin, his delicate wife having fancied the mountain air too keen for her, but the object of the journey being principally to see Rothiemurchus, the English party proceeded there under the charge of their cousin, Mr James Cameron, of Kinrara, Kainapool, and latterly, in my remembrance, of the Croft.

  My grandmother rode up from Elgin on a pillion behind Mr Cameron. She wore high heeled, pointed toed shoes, with large rosettes, a yellow silk quilted petticoat, a chintz sack or fardingale bundled up behind, and a little black hat and feather stuck on one side of her powdered head. She sang the Beggar’s Opera through during the journey with a voice of such power that Mr Cameron never lost the recollection of it. I fancy the sound was rather close for pleasant effect for he was a highlander and musical. One of the scenes they went to view was that from the churchyard. The old church is beautifully situated on a rising ground in a field not far from the house of the Doune, well backed by a bank of birch wooding, and commanding a fine prospect both up and down the valley of the Spey. My grandmother looked round in admiration, and then, turning to Mr Cameron, she lamented in simple good faith that the Laird had no son to inherit such a property. ‘Both a loss and a gain,’ said Mrs Alexander in a blithe voice, ‘the parson and I have five fine sons to heir it for him.’ Where are they now? she might have added not many years after, for she outlived them all, poor woman! and my Grandmother the following year produced the delicate boy, whose birth ended all their expectations.

  The Doctor and his rather eccentrick, true Raper Wife lived happily together, barring a slight occasional coolness on his part, and a little extra warmth now and then on hers. From the time of her death, Mrs Sophy told us, he never entered her drawing room, where all remained precisely as she had left it; her harpsichord on one side of the fireplace, and her japan cabinet on the other, both remained locked: her bookcases were undisturbed; a small round table that
held a set of real egg shell china out of which her favoured guests had received their tea, had been covered with a cambrick handkerchief by his own hand, and no one ever ventured to displace the veil. All her wardrobe, which was very rich, and her trinkets which were very handsome, were left as she had left them, never touched till they were packed in chests when he left London, which chests were never opened till Aunt Lissy came of age, and then the contents were fairly divided between her and my handsome father.

  More than all, he laid aside his violin. They had been many years married before she knew he played. She had seen the violin hanging up in its case, and often wondered what it did there. At last she asked, and was surprised and pleased to find him no mean performer. How very odd, how individualised were those odd people of those old days. On the death of her whom he had never seemed to care to please, he laid aside the instrument he was really fond of, nor ever resumed it till he retired to the Doune, when my father remembered his often bringing sweet musick from it in an evening. I can’t tell why, but I was always much interested in those old world days—my father never liked speaking of his childhood, it had probably not been happy. He was ever exceedingly reserved, too, on all matters of personal feeling. Not till I had nearly grown up did I ever hear much from him of his boy hood, and even then it was drawn from him by my evident pleasure in the answers this cross questioning elicited. He had one only recollection of his mother, seeing her dressed in long diamond earrings on some company occasion, and sleeping with her by an accident when, tired out with his chattering, my silent father!, she invented a new play—a trial of who should go to sleep first. Her voice, he said, was like Aunt Lissy’s, low and sweet. Aunt Lissy was quite a Raper, and she loved Twyford, and after her marriage tried to live there, but before the railway crossed the orchard, the distance was great from chambers for so complete a man of business as uncle Frere, and after that thundering iron way cut the farm yard in two, it became quite disagreeable as a residence so it is let to some one belonging to the Line.