Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  We all loved Aunt Mary, not as we had loved Aunt Lissy—she did not merit the same unreserved affection and children know just as well as older people how to appreciate character, Aunt Lissy was thoroughly truthful, uncompromisingly truthful, she had no idea of deception of any kind. Aunt Mary was not so honestly simple. She had company manners and company temper and company conversation like my Mother, all put on with their company dress. We were never certain that either of them meant what they said on these state occasions, even though a smile of softness preceding sweet gentle words were part of the pantomime.

  To appear this that or the other, to acquit oneself well, was the Ironside endeavour, so different from the straightforward Grant way of just being what one seemed. Aunt Mary, too, kind and good and amusing as we generally found her, was not strictly just. We were punished sometimes for being in the way more than for having done wrong, her punishments were not always well advised. Amongst several similar transactions the affair of the Workbox, as Jane and I always called it, when sitting in judgement on this circumstance of my life, made a great impression to her disadvantage. Children can define the limits between right and wrong very correctly. My Uncle Frere in his courting days at Twyford had given me a workbox with a lock and key, the first key I had ever possessed—of course to the quick feelings of a sensitive child this was a treasure invaluable. The box had a sliding lid on the outside of which was painted a very full rigged ship sailing over very mountainous waves. It was divided within into many small compartments, certainly particularly suited to Aunt Mary’s favourite patch work—all those little nests she said would so exactly hold the different cuttings of her chintzes and papers. Had she asked me to lend the box, although my dolls’ rags were already in it and the lid locked safely down and the key on a ribbon round my neck, I should have been pleased to have been useful to her, proud to oblige her, but she set to work otherwise. She waited for my first fault, not long in coming I daresay, and decreed as a punishment the loss of my workbox for so many weeks—an unlimited number it proved, for it never was returned to me from the moment when in an agony of tears and sobs and stifled passion I had to deliver up my key. The patches were immediately installed in all the neat divisions and there they may have remained for years for all that I knew or cared, for my corruption rose and pride or anger prevented my ever alluding to this ‘unprincipled affair’ again. Still we loved our Aunt and soon had reason to regret her. Mrs Millar, with no eye over her, ruled again, and as winter approached and we were more in the house, nursery troubles were renewed. My father had to be frequently appealed to, severities were resumed. One day William was locked up in a small room used for this pleasant purpose, the next day it was I, bread and water the fare of both. A review of the Volunteers seldom saw us all collected on the ground, there was sure to be one naughty child in prison at home. We were flogged too for every errour, girls and boys alike, but my father permitted no one to strike us but himself. My Mother’s occasional slaps and boxes were mere interjections taken no notice of. It was upon this broken rule that I prepared a scene to rid us of the horrid termagant, whom my Mother with a gentle, self satisfied sigh announced to all her friends as such a treasure. William was my accomplice, and this was our plan.

  My father’s dressing closet was next to our sitting nursery, and he, with Raper regularity, made use of it most methodically, dressing at certain stated hours, continuing a certain almost fixed time at his toilette, very seldom indeed deviating from this routine, which all in the house were as well aware of as we were, Mrs Millar among the rest. The nursery was very quiet while he was our neighbour. It did sometimes happen, however, that he ran up from his study to the dressing room at unwonted hours, and upon this chance our scheme was founded. William was to watch for this opportunity; as soon as it occurred he secretly warned me, and I immediately became naughty, did something that I knew would be particularly disagreeable to Mrs Millar. She found fault pretty sharply, I replied very pertly, in fact as saucily as I could, and no one could do it better. This was followed as. I expected by two or three hard slaps on the back of my neck, upon which I set up a scream worthy of the rest of the scene, so loud, so piercing, that in came my father to find me crouching beneath the claws of a fury. ‘I have long suspected this, Millar,’ said he, in the cold voice that sunk the heart of every culprit, for the first tone uttered told them that their doom was sealed. ‘Six weeks ago I warned you of what would be the consequences; you can retire and pack up your clothes without delay, in an hour you leave this for Aviemore,’—and she did. No entreaties from my Mother, no tears from the three petted younger children, no excuses of any sort availed. In an hour this odious woman had left us for ever. I can’t remember her wicked temper now without shuddering at all I went through under her care. In her character, though my father insisted on mentioning the cause for which she was dismissed, my Mother had gifted her with such a catalogue of excellences, that the next time we heard of her she was nurse to the young Duke of Roxburghe—that wonder! long looked for, come at last—10and nearly murdered him one day, keeping him under water for some childish fault till he was nearly drowned, quite insensible when taken out by the footman who attended him. After this she was sent to a lunatick asylum, where the poor creature ended her stormy days; her mind had probably always been too unsettled to bear opposition, and we were too old as well as too spirited to have been left so long at the mercy of an ignorant woman, who was really a tender nurse to an infant then. In some respects we were hardly as comfortable without her as with her, the good natured highland girl who replaced her not understanding the neatnesses we had been accustomed to. And then I, like other patriots, had to bear the blame of all these inconveniences; I, who for all our sakes had borne these sharp slaps in order to secure our freedom, was now complained of as the cause of very minor evils. My little brothers and sisters, even William my associate, agreeing that my passionate temper aggravated ‘poor Millar,’ who had always been ‘very kind’ to them. Such ingratitude—‘Kill the next tiger yourselves,’ said I, and withdrew from their questionable society for half a day, by which time Jane having referred to the story of the soldier and the brahmin in our Evenings at home, and thought the matter over, made an oration which restored outward harmony; inwardly, I remained a little longer angry—another half day—a long period in our estimate of time. My Mother, however, discovered that the gardener’s young daughter would not do for us undirected, so the Coachman’s wife, an English Anne, a very nice person who had been nurse before her marriage, was raised from the housemaid’s place to be in Millar’s, and it being determined we were all to stay over the winter in the highlands, a very good plan was suggested for our profitable management. We were certainly running not a little wild as it was.

  The minister of the united parishes of Duthil and Rothiemurchus was a curious, tall, thin, shy, worthy, and rather clever man, commonly known among us as Mr Peter of Duthil. His surname was Grant of course, his duties far from light, his cure extending for about twenty miles down along Spey side, with all the plains and Glens on either hand of the river. The births and marriages alone of all this district were work enough for one man, considering the distances he had to travel to these ceremonies. Funerals he had little to do with unless he chose to attend them out of any particular respect, the Presbyterians not requiring of necessity any form of prayer at the grave, nor in humble cases the blessings of the clergy at the preceding feast. Private exhortations were never thought of, all who could read preferring the Bible itself to man’s exposition of it; and for preaching, the Service was long enough certainly, two psalms, two prayers, and a sermon first in gaelick, then in English; but it was only once in the day, and when he officiated in the one kirk, the other kirk was closed. We were entitled to Mr Peter only once in three weeks, being given over to the heathen the other two Sundays, unless the Laird exerted himself to provide spiritual comfort for his people otherwise. There were what were called Queen Anne’s bounty clergy, a class of men ordained
but not beneficed, educated in the usual Divinity classes at Aberdeen, picking up the crumbs of such learning as was taught there, and generally of inferiour birth even to the humble class from which the Scotch clergy were then taken. One of these, good old Mr Stalker, with his poor, very poor Government allowance, and some assistance from my father, and the further help of a mob of scholars, for he kept the parish school, was then settled in a cabin not a bit better than his neighbours, and gave us Sermons on the two blank Sundays—on all, I believe, when ‘the family’ was absent, Mr Peter, honest man, indulging himself with home during the winter snows and frosts at any rate. Such a home! We used to hear him sometimes talk of it, not in complaint—he never dreamed of complaining; it used to come out that he was neglected and lonely there, and very happy at the Doune.

  Mrs Peter, or rather Mrs Grant of Duthil, for she was dignified and literary, in fact a blue stocking, had but one aim in life—to rival the fame of Mrs Grant of Laggan.11 She began by two volumes of letters, full of heather and sunsets, gray clouds and mists, and kindred feelings with the half pay officers around her and their managing wives; which volumes not succeeding, though the Clan ‘stood to her’ and bought half of the edition, she determined to try a school on the wild moor among the mountains, a school of pretention, not a sensible, practical place of improving education for the children of those of her own degree, the owners of the little farms around her. She imagined the fame of her talents would procure her distinguished pupils from a distance, whose tastes she, tasteless, was to cultivate; and she had inveigled a poor English girl, a Miss Ramsay, from Newcastle to come to act the part of principal teacher in her rather singularly conducted establishment. There was no account made of poor Mr Peter, no pleasant breakfast, nor cozy parlour, nor tidy dinner, nor well swept hearth with its good fire, nor cheerful companion for the Minister—his little closet of a study was his world, where he reigned in solitude, content with such scanty attendance as two barefooted, overworked lasses could find a moment to give him. Every body pitied poor Mr Peter, and he in his turn pitied the poor disappointed English girl, who had found, instead of a well ordered place of instruction, a most distracted sort of Bedlam; wild, rebellious, mindless girls, an ignorant fantastick Head, and not a comfort on earth. Between him and my Mother it was arranged, therefore, that when the year of her engagement at Duthil was up, Miss Ramsay should remove to the Doune, a happy change for her and a very fortunate hit for us. She was a kind, cheerful creature, not capable of giving us much accomplishment, but she gave us what we wanted more, habits of order. She employed our day busily and rationally, not interfering with our play hours or our active out of doors pursuits, on the contrary joining in them when business was over, reading to us while we worked or drew on rainy days, thus entirely banishing fretfulness from our Schoolroom. Drawing was a new pleasure, and one we took to heartily, every one of us, little Jane and all. She and I were Miss Ramsay’s pupils, waited on by Grace Grant the souter’s daughter. Mary and the baby Johnnie remained under the care of Mrs Bird.

  The autumn and winter passed very happily away, under these improved arrangements. The following summer of 1809 was quite a gay one, a great deal of company flocking both to the Doune and Kinrara, and at midsummer arrived William whom we had not seen since that time twelvemonth—the little fellow, only ten, eleven nearly, years old then had travelled all the way south after the summer holidays from Rothiemurchus to Eton, by himself, paying his way like a man; but they did not put his courage to such proof during the winter. He spent both his Xmas and his Easter with the Freres, and so was doubly welcome to us in July. He took care of himself as before on this long journey, starting with many companions in a postchaise, dropping his friends here and there as they travelled, till it became more economical to coach it. At Perth all coaching ended, and I don’t remember how he could have got on from thence to Dalwhinnie, where a carriage from the Doune was sent to meet him.

  During the winter my father had been very much occupied with what we considered mere toys, a little box full of soldiers, painted wooden figures, and tin flags belonging to them, all which he twisted about over the table to certain words of command, which he took the same opportunity of practising. These represented our Volunteers, about which, ever since I could remember, my father, had whilst in the highlands, been extremely occupied. There was a Rothiemurchus company, his hobby, and an Invereschie company, and I think a Strathspey company, but really I don’t know enough of warlike matters—though a Colonel’s leddy—to say whether there could be as many as three. There were officers from all districts certainly. My father was the Lieutenant-Colonel; Ballindalloch, the major; the captains, lieutenants, and ensigns were all Grants and Macphersons, with the exception of our Cousin Captain Cameron. Most of the elders had served in the regular Army, and had retired in middle life upon their half pay to little highland farms in Strathspey and Badenoch, by the names of which they were familiarly known as Sluggan, Tullochgorum, Ballintomb, Kinchurdy, Bhealiott. Very soldierly they looked in the drawing room in their uniforms, and very well the regiment looked on the ground, the little active highlander taking naturally to the profession. There were fuglemen12 in those days, and I remember hearing the Inspecting General say that tall Murdoch Cameron the miller was the most superb model of a fugleman. I can see him now in his picturesque dress, standing out in front of the lines, a head above the tallest, directing the movements so accurately followed. My father on Field days rode a beautiful bay charger named Favourite, covered with goatskins and other finery, and seemingly quite proud of his housings. It was a kilted regiment, and a fine set of smart well set up men they were, with their plumed bonnets, dirks, and purses, and their lowheeled buckled shoes. My father became his trappings well, and when, in early times, my Mother rode to the ground beside him, dressed in a tartan petticoat, red jacket gaudily laced, and just such a bonnet and feathers as he wore himself, with the addition of a huge Cairngorm on the side of it, the old gray pony might have been proud in turn. These displays had, however, long been given up. I recollect her always quietly in the carriage with us bowing right royally on all sides.

  To prepare himself for command, my father, as I have said, spent many a long evening manoeuvring all his little figures; to some purpose, for his Rothiemurchus men beat both Strathspey and Badenoch. I have heard my Uncle Lewis and Mr Cameron say there was little trouble in drilling the men, they had their hearts in the work; and I have heard my father say that the habits of cleanliness, and habits of order, and the sort of waking up that accompanied it, had done more real good to the people than could have been achieved by many years of less exciting progress. So we owe Napoleon thanks. It was the terrour of his expected invasion that roused this patriotick fever amongst our mountains, where, in spite of their distance from the coast, inaccessibility, and all other advantages of a hilly position, the alarm was so great that every preparation was in train for repelling the enemy. The men were to face the foe, the women to fly for refuge to Castle Grant. My Mother was all ready to remove there, when the danger passed; but it was thought better to keep up the volunteers. Accordingly they were periodically drilled, exercised, and inspected till the year ‘13, if I remember rightly. It was a very pretty sight, either on the moor of Tullochgorum or the beautiful meadows of Dalnavert, to come suddenly on this fine body of men and the gay crowd collected to look at them. Then their well executed manoeuvres with such exquisite scenery around them, and the hearty spirit of their cheer whenever the Leddy appeared upon the ground; the bright sun seldom shone upon a more exhilarating spectacle. The Laird, their Colonel, reigning in all hearts. After the ’Dismiss,’ bread and cheese and whisky, sent forward in a cart for the purpose, were profusely administered to the men, all of whom from Rothiemurchus formed a running escort round our carriage, keeping up perfectly with the four horses in hand, which were necessary to draw the heavy landau up and down the many steeps of our hilly roads. The officers rode in a group round my father to the Doune to dinner, and I
recollect that it was in this year 1809 that my Mother remarked she saw some of them for the first time in the drawing room to tea—and sober.

  Miss Ramsay occupied us so completely during this summer, we were much less with the autumn influx of company than had been usual with us. Happy in the schoolroom, still happier out in the forest, with a pony among us to ride and tie, and our luncheon in a basket, we were indifferent to the more dignified parties whom we sometimes crossed in our wanderings. To say truth, my father and mother did not understand the backwoods, they liked a very well cooked dinner, with all suitable appurtenances in their own comfortable house. Neither of them could walk, she could not ride, there were no roads for carriages, a cart was out of the question, such a vehicle as would have answered the sort of expeditions they thus seldom went on was never thought of, so with them it was a very melancholy attempt at the elephant’s dancing. Very different from the ways of Kinrara. There was a boat on Loch an Eilein, which was regularly rowed over to the old ruined Castle, then to the pike bay to take up the floats that had fish to them, and then back to the echo and into the carriage again; but there was no basket with luncheon, no ponies to ride and tie, no dreaming upon the heather in pinafores all stained with blaeberries. The little people were a great deal merrier than their elders, and so some of these elders thought, for we were often joined by the ‘lags of the drove,’ who perhaps purposely avoided the grander procession. Kinrara was full as usual. The Duke of Manchester was there with some of his children, the most beautiful statue like person that ever was seen in flesh and blood.13 Poor Colonel Cadogan, afterwards killed in Spain,14 who taught us to play the devil, which I wonder did not kill us; certainly throwing that heavily leaded bit of wood from one string to the opposite, it might have fallen upon a head by the way, but it never did.15 The Cummings of Altyre were always up in our country, some of them in one house or the other, and a Mr Henville, an Oxford clergyman, Sir William’s Tutor, in love with the beautiful Emilia, as was young Charles Grant, now first seen among us, shy and plain and yet preferred; and an Irish Mr Macklin, a clever little, flighty, ugly man, who played the flute divinely, and wore out the patience of the Laundry-maids by the number of shirts he put on per day; for we washed for all our guests, there was no one in all Rothiemurchus competent to earn a penny in this way. He was a ‘very clean gentleman,’ and took a bath twice a day, not in the river, but in a tub—a tub brought up from the washhouse, for in those days the chamber apparatus for ablutions was quite on the modem French scale. Grace Baillie was with us with all her pelisses, dressing in all the finery she could muster, and in every style; sometimes like a flower girl, sometimes like Juno; then she was queen like, then Arcadian, then corps de ballet, the most amusing and extraordinary figure stuck over with coloured glass ornaments, and by way of being outrageously refined; the most complete contrast to her sister the Lady Logie. Well, Miss Baillie coming upstairs to dress for dinner, opened the door to the left instead of the door to the right, and came full upon short, fat, black Mr Macklin in his tub! Such a commotion! we heard it in our Schoolroom. Miss Baillie would not appear at dinner, Mr Macklin, who was full of fun, would stay upstairs if she did; she insisted on his immediate departure, he insisted on their swearing eternal friendship. Such a hubbub was never in a house before. ‘If she’d been a young girl, one would a’most forgive her nonsense,’ said Mrs Bird, the nurse. If she had had common sense,’ said Miss Ramsay, ‘she would have held her tongue; shut the door and held her tongue, then no one would then have been the wiser.’ We did not forget this lesson in presence of mind, but no one having ventured on giving even an idea of it to Miss Baillie, her adventure much annoyed the ladies, while it furnished the gentlemen with an excuse for such roars of laughter as might have almost brought down the ceiling of the dining room.