Our particular friend, Sir Robert Ainslie, was another friend who made a long stay with us. He brought to my mother the first of those little red morocco cases full of needles she had seen, where the papers were all arranged in sizes, on a slope, which made it easy to select from them. He had with him his Swiss servant, the best valet, the best cook, the best aid to the housekeeper, the kindest companion to children that ever entered a house. William was his especial favourite, and in after years owed much at his Xmas holidays to the unfailing attentions of this excellent friend, when he spent those holidays in London which were too short to warrant the long journey to his Scotch home. It is odd I should forget the name of this favourite of ours, for he was quite our especial attendant during his stay at the Doune, up in the guigne16 trees showering down that most delicious of fruits to the expecting flock below, and excelling on the water either in rowing or fishing. How well I remember the day that we all came exulting home from a very successful expedition to the pike bay, William with an immense fish on a stick laid over his shoulder, the tail of it touching the ground! It was measured and then weighed, and turned out quite a wonder, stuffed and baked and eaten, and most surprising of all, was really good. The pike in Loch an Eilein were very uncommonly large, living there so little disturbed; but I never remember our catching another to equal to this.
This was the first season I can recollect seeing a family we all much liked, ever after, Colonel Gordon and his tribe of fine sons. He brought them up to Glentromie in a boat set on wheels, which after performing coach on the roads was used for Loch fishing in the hills. He was a most agreeable and thoroughly gentlemanly man, full of amusing conversation, always welcome to every house on the way. He was said to be a careless father, and not a kind husband to his very pretty wife, who certainly never accompanied him up to the Glen. He was a natural son of the Duke of Gordon’s, a great favourite with the Duchess! much beloved by Lord Huntly whom he exceedingly resembled, and so might have done better for himself and all belonging to him, had not the Gordon brains been of the lightest with him. He was not so flighty, however, as another visitor we always received for a few days, Lovat, the Chief of the Clan Fraser, who was indeed a connexion. The peerage had been forfeited by the wicked lord17 in the last rebellion, the lands and the Chieftainship had been left with a cousin, the rightful heir, who had sprung from the common stock before the attainder. He was an old man, and his quiet, comfortable looking wife was an old woman. They had been at Cluny, the Lady of the Macpherson Chieftain being their niece, or the laird their nephew, I don’t exactly know which; and their servants told ours they had had a hard matter to get their master away, for he was subject to strange whims, and he had taken it into his head when he was there that he was a Turkey hen, and so he had made a nest of straw in his carriage and filled it with eggs and a large stone, and there he sat hatching, never leaving his station save twice a day like other fowl, and having his supplies of food brought to him. They had at last to get the Lady Cluny’s henwife to watch a proper moment to throw out all these eggs and to put some young chickens in their place, when Lovat, satisfied he had accomplished his task, went about clucking and strutting with wonderful pride in the midst of them, running about to collect his flock, flapping the tails of his coat as the hens do their wings in like circumstances. He was quite sane in conversation generally, rather an agreeable man I heard them say, and would be as steady as other people for a certain length of time; but every now and then he took these strange fancies, when his wife had much ado to bring him out of them. The fit was quite over when he came to us. It was the year of the Jubilee when George the 3rd had reigned his 50 years. There had been great doings at Inverness, which the old man described to us with considerable humour. His lady had brought away with her some little ornaments prepared for the occasion, and kindly distributed some of them among us. I long kept a silver buckle with his Majesty’s crowned head somewhere upon it, and an inscription in pretty raised letters commemorating the event surrounding the medallion. By the bye it was on the entrance of the old king upon his 50th year of reign that the jubilee was kept, in October I fancy 1809, for his state of health was such he was hardly expected to live to complete it; that is, the world at large supposed him to be declining. Those near his person must have known that it was the mind that was diseased, and not the strong body, which lasted many a long year after this, though every now and then his death was expected, probably desired, for he had long ceased to be a popular sovereign. John Bull respected the decorum of his domestick life, and the ministerial Tory party of course made the best of him. All we of this day can say of him is, that he was a better man than his son, though, at the period I am writing of, the Whigs, among whom I was reared, were very far indeed from believing in this truism.
1. He was to become Lieutenant Governor of Bengal and Governor.
2. He was to have six sons and six daughters; for her reaction to his assassination when Prime Minister in 1812 see 1, p. 199.
3. John Hookham Frere (1769-1846): Fellow of Caius College Cambridge, M.P. for Westloo, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1799, Envoy to Lisbon 1800 and Madrid 1802 and 1808. As a minor poet (Whistlecraft), his use of ottava rima influenced Byron. Bartle Frere the statesman was his nephew (1815–84).
4. The Provok’d Husband or A Journey to London, by Sir John Vanbrugh.
5. Annabella Milbanke married Lord Byron on 1.1.1815; a tempestuous year of marriage ended with the birth of their daughter, Augustus Ada, on 10.12.1815; they separated a month later and never met again.
6. The opening lines of Byron’s A Sketch for Private Life (written on 30 March, 1816): Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred, Promoted thence to deck her mistress’ head.
7. ‘The Tiger of Mysore’ (1749-99), who opposed British expansion in Central India.
8. First century B.C. Roman actor and friend of Cicero. See Hamlet, 11, ii, 419.
9. Slough Mouich (on the previous page) is Gaelic for ‘pass of the wild boars’.
10. The first marriage of the fifth Duke was childless and eight days after his wife died he married again; nine years later, when he was eighty, his only child, the sixth Duke (1816–1879) was born (The Scots Peerage, Volume vii).
11.1755 to 1838: left a Minister’s widow with eight children to support, she turned to writing and her Letters from the Mountains (1806) is a celebrated forerunner to the Memoirs of a Highland Lady.
12. An expert soldier placed in front of the regiment as an example to the others in their exercises.
13. When young William, Duke of Manchester, had been painted as Cupid by Reynolds; he married Susan, daughter of the Duchess of Gordon.
14. Colonel Henry Cadogan died at the battle of Vittoria in 1813.
15. Diabolo: a wooden double cone worked on a string between two sticks.
16. Scots gean, the wild cherry.
17. This was Simon, the eleventh Lord Lovat, whose colourful career ended in his eightieth year on the execution block after the ’45.
CHAPTER SIX
1809
I CAN’T recollect whether it was in this year of the jubilee, 1809, or the year before, that of Aunt Mary’s marriage, that the whole world blazed up, like a tap o’ tow,1 on account of the doings of Mrs Mary Anne Clarke and Colonel Wardle. She was a worthless woman, who in the course of her professional life became for a while the mistress of the Duke of York, and during her reign of power made use of his name to realise large sums of money by the sale of Army patronage.2 Colonel Wardle, disappointed like many others, for she did not always manage to get the commissions she had been paid for promising, was yet the only one bold enough to shew her and himself up, by bringing the matter before the publick. The pleasure of finding royalty in half a dozen scrapes, made this said world wonderfully patriotick, and of course virtuous. Colonel Wardle’s own delinquencies were quite overlooked, the sin of having tried his own luck by these very dirty back stairs was shrouded by the glory of coming forward to throw such a set of b
ones upon the publick arena. He was made a hero of, addresses voted to him from every where. Meetings to praise him held all over the country—even at Inverness—it was quite a rage. My father and a stout band of Whigs attended our highland demonstration, and superlatived the Duke’s infamy in great style, his folly would have been the juster term, for of actual criminality nobody accused him as far as his honour as Commander in Chief was concerned. As a Christian man and a husband there was no justifying his immoral life, though from what clean hands the stones so heartily thrown at him could come, we might leave to the rigid to discover. The outcry was so violent the ministry was obliged to deprive the Duke of his office, although it was not very long before there was as great an outcry to have him back again, everything having gone wrong at the Horse guards without him. Colonel Wardle was discovered and dethroned, Mrs Clarke and her influence forgotten, and after judgments pronounced that throughout the whole transaction only one person had behaved well, and that was the little quiet, trifling, generally insignificant Duchess of York, who for the most part living separate from her husband in the retirement of Oatlands, with her rouge, her flowers and her poodles, upon this occasion came to his house in London, drove out daily with him, and gave him her countenance in every way possible. There was a deal of low party spirit at the bottom of the hubbub; party governed all actions. The exposure, however, did some good, it put an end to the system of jobbing which had been the scandal of the profession hitherto. And the Duke, wise enough to profit by the lesson, so effectually reformed the service when he returned to power, that he is always considered the best Chief ever placed authourity. in authourity.3 The wants of the common soldiers he more particularly attended to; they got to speak of Him as their best friend, and justly. But during the Wardle epidemick his character in all respects was sadly maligned. Every now and then people hunt up a scapegoat, and load him well before they are done with it.
It was this autumn that a very great pleasure was given to me. I was taken on a tour of visits with my father and mother. We went first to Inverness, where my father had business with his Agent, Mr Cooper. None of the Lairds in our north countrie managed their own affairs, all were in the hands of some little writer body,4 who to judge by consequences ruined most of their clients. One of these leeches generally sufficed for ordinary Victims. My dear father was preyed on by two or three, of which honourable fraternity Mr Arthur Cooper was the most distinguished for iniquity. He had married Miss Jenny and made her a very indulgent husband; there was nothing to say of him on that score; her few hundreds and the connexion might have been her principal attractions, but once attracted, she retained her power over him to the end. She was plain but ladylike, she had very pretty, gentle manners, a pleasing figure, beautiful hand, dressed neatly, kept a very comfortable house, and possessed a clear judgment, with high principles and a few follies; a little absurd pride, given her perhaps by my great Aunt, the Lady Logic, who had brought her up and was very fond of her. Who he was, nobody rightly knew. Betty Campbell always declared his father was a shoemaker ‘in a good way of business, who had given a fine education’ to his only son, and set him up first in Forres, his native place, whence he afterwards removed to Inverness. He was a most vulgar body, short and fat and red haired, and a great beau, clever enough, I believe, very plausible and so full of a quaint kind of really amusing gossip, that he made his way even with my Mother. We were all very fond of Mrs Cooper, and so was my father and she adored him. While we were at Inverness we paid some morning visits too characteristick of the highlands to be omitted in this true chronicle of the times; they were all in the Clan. One was to the Miss Grants of Kinchurdy, who were much patronised by all of their name, although they had rather scandalised some of their near relations by setting up as Dressmakers in the County town. Their taste was not perfect, and their skill was not great, yet they prospered. Many a comfort earned by their busy needles found its way to the fireside of the retired Officer their father, and their helping pounds bought the active Officer, their brother, his Majority. We next called on Mrs Grant, late of Aviemore, and her daughters, who had set up a school, no disparagement to the family of an innkeeper although the blood they owned was gentle, and last we took luncheon with my great Aunt, the Lady Glenmoriston, a handsome old lady with great remains of shrewdness in her countenance. I thought her cakes and custards excellent; my mother, who had seen them all come out of a cupboard in the bedroom, found her appetite fail her that morning. Not long before we had heard of her grandson our cousin Patrick’s death, the eldest of my father’s wards, the Laird. She did not appear to feel the loss, yet she did not long survive him. A ‘clever wife,’ as they say in the highlands, she was in her worldly way. I did not take a fancy to her.
We left Inverness nothing loth, Mrs Cooper’s small house in the narrow, dull street of that little town not suiting my ideas of liberty; and we proceeded in the open barouche and four to call at Nairn upon our way to Forres. At Nairn, comfortless dreary Nairn, where no tree ever grew, we went to see a sister of Logie’s, a cousin, a Mrs Baillie, some of whose sons had found 31 Lincoln’s Inn Fields a pleasant resting place on the road to India. Her stepson—for she was a second wife—the great Colonel Baillie of Bundelcund!5 and of Leys, often in his pomposity, when I knew him afterwards, recalled to my mind the very bare plenishing of this really nice old lady. The small, cold house chilled our first feelings. The empty room, uncurtained, half carpeted, with a few heavy chairs stuck formally against the walls, and one dark coloured, well polished table set before the fireplace, repressed all my gay spirits. It took a great deal of bread and marmalade, and scones and currant wine, and all the kind welcome of the little, tidy, brisk old lady to restore them; not till she brought out her knitting did I feel at all at home—a hint remembered with profit. Leaving this odious fisher place very near as quick as King James did, we travelled on to dine at five o’clock at Burgie, a small, shapeless square of a house, about two miles beyond Forres, one of the prettiest of village towns, taking situation into the account. There is a low hill with a ruin on it, round which the few streets have clustered; trees and fields are near, wooded knolls not far distant, gentlemen’s dwellings peep up here and there; the Moray firth, the town and Souters of Cromartie,6 and the Ross-shire hills in the distance; and between the village and the sea extends a rich flat of meadow land, through which the Findhorn flows, and where stand the ruins of the ancient Abbey of Kinloss, my father’s late purchase. I don’t know why all this scene impressed me more than did the beautiful situation of Inverness. In after years I did not fail in admiration of our northern Capital, but at this period I can’t remember any feeling about Inverness except the pleasure of getting out of it, while at Forres all the impressions were vivid because agreeable; that is I, the perceiver, was in a finer fame of mind for perceiving. How many travellers, ay, thinkers, judges, should we sift in this way, to get at the truth of their relations. On a bilious day Authours must write very tragically.
The old family of Dunbar of Burgie, said to be descended from Randolph, Earl of Moray—though all the links of the chain of connexion were far from being forthcoming—had dwindled down rather before our day to somebody nearly as small as a bonnet Laird; his faraway collateral heir, who must have been a most ungainly lad, judging from his extraordinary appearance in middle age, had gone out to the West Indies to better his fortunes, returning to take possession of his inheritance just a little before my father’s marriage. In figure something the shape of one of his own sugar hogsheads, with two short thick feet standing out below, and a round head settled on the top like a picture in the penny magazine of one of the old English punishments, and a countenance utterly indescribable—all cheek and chin and mouth, without half the proper quantity of teeth; dressed too like a mountebank in a light blue silk embroidered waistcoat and buff satin breeches, and this in Pitt and Fox days, when the dark blue coat, and the red or the buff waistcoat, according to the wearer’s party, were indispensable. Mr Dunbar presented himself
to my father, to be introduced by him to an Edinburgh Assembly. My father, always fine, then a Beau, and to the last very nervous under ridicule. But Burgie was a worthy man, honest and upright and kind hearted, modest as well, for he never fancied his own merits had won him his wealthy bride; their estates joined, and ‘that,’ as he said himself, ‘was the happy coincidence.’ The Lady Burgie and her elder sister, Miss Brodie of Lethan, were co-heiresses. Coolmenie, a very picturesque little property on the Dulnan, was the principal possession of the younger when she gave her hand to her neighbour, but as Miss Brodie never married, all their wide lands were united for many a year to the names and titles of the three contracting parties, and held by Mr and Mrs Dunbar Brodie of Burgie, Lethan and Coolmenie during their long reign of dulness; precedence being given to the gentleman after some consideration. They lived neither at very pretty Coolmenie, nor at very comfortable Lethan, nor even in the remains of the fine old Castle of Burgie, one tall tower of which rose from among the trees that sheltered its surrounding garden, and served only as storehouse and tool house for that department; they built for themselves the tea cannister like lodge we found them in, and placed it far from tree or shrub, or view of any object but the bare moor of Macbeth’s witches. My spare time at this romantick residence was spent mostly in the tower, there being up at the top of it an apple room, where some little maiden belonging to the household was employed in wiping the apples and laying them on the floor in a bed of sand. In this room was a large chest, made of oak with massive hasps, several padlocks, and a chain; very heavy, very grand looking, indeed awful, from its being so alone, so secured, and so mysteriously hidden as it were. It played its part in after years, when all that it did and all that was done to it shall take the proper place in these my memoirs, if I live to get so far on in my chroniclings. At this time I was even afraid to allude to it, there appeared to be something so supernatural about the look of it.
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