Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  Of course we had several visits to pay from Burgie. In the town of Forres we had to see old Mrs Provost Grant and her daughters, Miss Jean and Miss—I forget what name—but she, the nameless one, died. Miss Jean, always called in those parts for distinction Miss Jean Pro, because her mother was the widow of the late Provost, was the living frontispiece to the ‘world of fashion.’ A plain, ungainly, middle aged woman, with good Scotch sense when it was wanted, occupied every waking hour in copying the new modes in dress. No change was too absurd for Miss Jean’s imitation, and her task was not a light one, her poor purse being scanty, and the Forres shops, besides being dear, were ill supplied. My mother, very unwisely, had told me her appearance would surprise me, and that I must be upon my guard and shew my good breeding by looking as little at this figure of fun as if she were quite like other people. And my father repeated the story of the Duchess of Gordon, who receiving at dinner at Kinrara some poor Dominie, never before in such a presence; he answered all her civil inquiries thus, ‘’Deed no, my Lady Duchess; my Lady Duchess, ’deed yes,’ she looking all the while just exactly as if she had never been otherwise addressed—not even a side smile to the amused circle around her, lest she might have wounded the good man’s feelings. I always liked that story, and thought of it often before and since, and had it well on my mind on this occasion; but it did not prevent my long gaze of surprise at Miss Pro. In fact, no one could have avoided opening wide eyes at the caricature of the modes she exhibited. She was fine, too, very fine, mincing her words to make them English, and too good to be laughed at, which somehow made it the more difficult not to laugh at her. In the early days, when her father, besides his little shop, only kept the post-office in Forres, she, the eldest of a whole troop of bairns, did her part well in the humble household, helping her mother in her many cares. And to good purpose, for of the five clever sons who grew up out of this rude culture to honour in every profession they made choice of, three returned ‘belted knights’ to lay their laurels at the feet of their old mother. Not in the same poor but and ben in which she reared them—they took care to shelter her age in a comfortable house, with a drawing room upstairs!, where we found the family party assembled, a rather ladylike widow of the eldest son, a Bengal Civilian, forming one of it. Mrs Pro was well bora of the Arndilly Grants, and very proud she was of her lineage, though she had made none the worse wife to the honest man she married for his failure in this particular. In manners she could not have been his superiour, the story going that in her working days she called out loud, about the first thing in the morning, to the servant lass to ‘put on the parritch for the pigs and the bairns,’ the pigs as most useful coming first.

  We went next to a very old Widow Macpherson, belonging to the Invereschie family, who had likewise two unmarried daughters living with her. Miss Maddie and Miss Bell, the greatest gossips in Forres. A third daughter, Mrs Clark, was married at Milltown in Badenoch of whom we shall hear much more ere long. Next we drove out to Kincorth, a new bare place, where dwelt another Widow Grant, with her four children, wards of my father’s, Robina and Davina, girls of my own age, and twin sons much younger, whom we often saw in after days, and to one of whom, excellent Lewis Grant, we owe a debt of gratitude it will be a pleasure to me to the end of my life to remember. He it was who saw us safe from London to Portsmouth, and on board our Indiaman, in 1827, on our melancholy way to Bombay. The little red headed Kincorth laddie was then a confidential clerk in Sir Charles Forbes’ house, and well deserving of his good fortune.

  From Burgie we went back a few miles to Moy, an old fashioned house, very warm and very comfortable, and very plentiful, quite a contrast! where lived a distant connexion, an old Colonel Grant, a cousin of Glenmoriston’s, with a very queer wife, whom he had brought home from the Cape of Good Hope. This old man, unfortunately for me, always breakfasted upon porridge. My Mother, who had particular reasons for wishing to make herself agreeable to him, informed him I always did the same, so during the three days of this otherwise pleasant visit a little plate of porridge for me was placed next to the big plate of porridge for him, and I had to help myself to it in silent sadness, for I much disliked this kind of food as it never agreed with me, and though at Moy they gave me cream with it, I found it made me just as sick and heavy afterwards as when I had the skimmed milk at home. They were kind old people these in their homely way. In the drawing room stood a curiously shaped box, through a sort of telescope end belonging to which we looked at various scenes, thus magnified to the size of nature—a very amusing pastime to me. One of these scenes depicted St Helena so accurately that, forty years after, the reality came upon me as an old friend—the town, the ravine, the shingly shore, and the steep sides of the rock as they rise inaccessible from the sea. I wonder why this particular view made so vivid an impression.

  From Moy we went straight to Elgin, where I only remember the immense library belonging to the shop of Mr Grant the Bookseller, and the ruins of the fine old Cathedral. On our way, by the bye, we rested a few minutes at Kinloss, the farm there being tenanted by the husband of Mr Cooper’s sister. The ruins of the old Abbey were still of some size, the remains of the monks’ garden rich in fruit trees, all planted upon a pavement, as is our modern fashion, with a sufficiency of soil above the stones for the side roots to find nourishment in. We got to Duffus to dinner, and remained there a few days with Sir Archibald and Lady Dunbar and their tribe of children. Lady Dunbar was one of the Cummings of Altyre—one of a dozen—and she had about a dozen herself, all the girls handsome. The house was very full. We went upon expeditions every morning, danced all the evenings, the children forming quite a part of the general company, and as some of the Altyre sisters were there, I felt perfectly at home. Ellen and Margaret Dunbar wore sashes with their white frocks, and had each a pair of silk stockings which they drew on for full dress, a style that much surprised me, as I, at home or abroad, had only my pink gingham frocks for the morning, white calico for the afternoon, cotton stockings at all times, and not a ribbon, a curl, or an ornament about me.

  One day we drove to Gordonstone, an extraordinary palace of a house lately descended to Sir William, along with a large property, when he had to add the Southron Gordon to the Wolf of Badenoch’s lone famed name,7 not that it is quite clear that the failing clan owes allegiance to this branch particularly, but there being no other claimant Altyre passes for the Comyn Chief. His name is on the roll of the victors at Bannockburn as a chieftain of his race indubitably. I wonder what can have been done with Gordonstone. It was like the side of a Square in a town for extent of façade, and had remains of rich furnishings in it, piled up in the large deserted rooms, a delightful bit of romance to the young Dunbars and me. Another day we went greyhound coursing along the fine bold cliffs near Peterhead, and in a house on some bleak point or other we called on a gentleman and his sister, who shewed us coins, vases, and spearheads found on excavating for some purpose in their close neighbourhood at Burghead, all Roman. On going lower the workmen came upon a bath, a spring enclosed by cut stone walls, a mosaick pavement surrounding the bath, steps descending to it, and paintings on the walls. The place was known to have been a Roman Station with many others along the South shore of the Moray firth. We had all of us therefore great pleasure in going to see these curious remains of past ages thus suddenly brought to light. I remember it all perfectly as if I had visited it quite lately, and I recollect regretting that the walls were in many parts defaced.8

  On leaving Duffus we drove on to Garmouth to see Mr Steenson, my father’s wood Agent there; he had charge of all the timber floated down the Spey from the forest of Rothiemurchus where it had grown for ages, to the shore near Fochabers where it was sorted and stacked for sale. There was a good natured wife who did me a present of a milk jug in the form of a cow, which did duty at our nursery feasts for a wonderful while, considering it was made of crockery ware; and rather a pretty daughter, just come from the finishing school at Elgin, and stiff and shy of course. These
ladies interested me much less than did the timber yard, where all my old friends the logs, the spars, the deals and my Mother’s oars were piled in such quantities as appeared to me endless. The great width of the Spey, the bridge at Fochabers, and the peep of the towers of Gordon Castle from amongst the cluster of trees that concealed the rest of the building, all return to me now as a picture of beauty. The Duke lived very disreputably in this solitude, for he was very little noticed, and, I believe, preferred seclusion.9

  It was late when we reached Leitchison, a large wandering house in a flat bare part of the country, which the Duke had given, with a good farm attached, to his natural son Colonel Gordon, our Glentromie friend. Bright fires were blazing in all the large rooms, to which long passages led, and all the merry children were jumping about the hall anxiously watching for us. There were five or six fine boys, and one daughter, Jane, named after the Duchess. Mrs Gordon and her two sisters, the dark beautiful Agnes, and fat, red haired Charlotte, were respectably connected in Elgin, had money, were well educated and so popular women. Mrs Gordon was pretty and pleasing, and the Colonel in company delightful; but somehow they did not get on harmoniously together; he was eccentrick and extravagant, she peevish, and so they lived very much asunder. I did not at all approve of the ways of the house after Duffus, where big and little people all associated in the family arrangements. Here at Leitchison the children were quite by themselves, with porridge breakfasts and broth dinners, and very cross Charlotte Ross to keep us in order. If she tried her authourity on the Colonel as well, it was no wonder if he preferred the highlands without her to the lowlands with her, for I know I was not sorry when the four bays turned their heads westward, and, after a pleasant day’s drive, on our return through Fochabers, Elgin, and Forres, again stopt at the door at Logie

  Beautiful Logie! a few miles up the Findhorn, on the wooded banks of that dashing river, wooded with beech and elm and oak centuries old; a grassy holm on which the hideous house stood, sloping hills behind, the water beneath, the Darnaway woods beyond, and such a garden! such an orchard! well did we know the Logie pears, large hampers of them had often found their way to the Doune; but the Logie guignes could only be tasted at the foot of the trees, and did not my young cousins and I help ourselves. Logie himself, my father’s first cousin, was a tall, fine looking man, with a very ugly Scotch face, sandy hair and huge mouth, ungainly in manner yet kindly, very simple in character, in fact a sort of goose; much liked from his hospitable ways, respected for his old Gumming blood (he was closely related to Altyre), and admired for one accomplishment, his playing on the violin. He had married rather late in life one of the cleverest women of the age, an Ayrshire Miss Baillie, a beauty in her youth, for she was Burns’ ‘Bonnie Leslie,’10 and a bit of a fortune, and she gave herself to the Militia Captain before she had ever seen the Findhorn! And they were very happy—he looked up to her without being afraid of her, for she gave herself no superiour wisdom airs, indeed she set out so resolutely on St Paul’s advice to be subject to her husband, that she actually got into a habit of thinking he had judgment; and my Mother remembered a whole roomfull of people hardly able to keep their countenances, when she, giving her opinion on some disputed matter, clinched the argument as she supposed, by adding, ‘It’s not my own conviction only, but Mr Gumming says so.’ She was too southron to call the Laird ‘Logie.’ Logie banks and Logie braes—how very very lovely ye were on those bright autumn days, when wandering through the beech woods upon the rocky banks of the Findhorn, we passed hours, my young cousins and I, out in the pure air, unchecked of any one. Five sons and one fair daughter the Lady Logie bore her Laird; they were not all born then at the time I write of. Poor Alexander and Robert, the two eldest, fine handsome boys, were my companions in these happy days; long since mourned for in their early graves. There was a strange mixture of the father’s simplicity and the mother’s shrewdness in all the children, and the same in their looks; only two were regularly handsome, May Anne and Alexander, who was his mother’s darling. Clever as she was she made far too much distinction between him and the rest; he was better dressed, better fed, more considered in every way than the younger ones, and yet not spoiled. He never assumed and they never envied, it was natural that the young Laird should be most considered. A Tutor, very little older than themselves, and hardly as well dressed, tho’ plaiding was the wear of all, taught the boys their humanities—he ate his porridge at the side table with them, declining the after cup of tea, which Alexander alone went to the state table to receive. At dinner it was the same system still, broth and boiled mutton, or the kain fowl11 at the poor Tutor’s side-table. And yet he revered the Lady; everybody did; every one obeyed her without a word, or even, I believe, a thought, that it was possible her orders could be incorrect. Her manner was very kind, very simple, though she had an affected way of speaking; but it was her strong sense, her truthful honesty, her courage—moral courage, for the body’s was weak enough—her wit, her fire, her readiness that made her the queen of the intellect of the north countrie. Every one referred to her in their difficulties; it was well that no winds wandered over the reeds that grew by the side of the Lady Logie. Yet she was worldly in a degree, no one ever more truly counselled for the times, or lived more truly up to the times, but so as it was no reproach to her. She was with us often at the Doune with or without the Laird, Alexander sometimes her companion, and he would be left with us while she was over at Kinrara, where she was a great favourite. I believe it was intended by the families to marry him, Alexander, to Mary, they were very like and of suitable ages, and he was next heir of entail, presumptive, to Rothiemurchus after my brothers. It had also been settled by the seniors to marry first Sir William Gumming and afterwards Charles, to me. Jane oddly enough was let alone, though we always understood her to be the favourite with every body.

  My father had a story of Mrs Gumming that often has come into my head since. He put her in mind of it now, when she declined going on in the carriage with him and my mother to dine at Relugas, where we were to remain for a few days. She had no great faith in four in hands on highland roads, at our English Coachman’s rate of driving. She determined on walking by the riverside, that lovely mile with Alexander and the girlie, me, as her escort. Her dress during the whole of our visit, morning, noon, and night, was a scarlet cloth gown made in habit fashion, only without a train, braided in black upon the breast and cuffs, and on her head a black velvet cap, smartly set on one side, bound with scarlet cord, and having a long scarlet tassel, dangling merrily enough, as my father reminded her of what he called the passage of the Spey. It seemed that upon one occasion when she was on a visit to us, they were all going together to dine at Kinrara, and as was usual with them then, before the ford at our offices was settled enough to use when the water was high, or the road made passable for a heavy carriage up the bank of the Bogach, they were to cross the Spey at the ford below Kainapool close to Kinrara. The river had risen very much after heavy rain in the hills, and the ford, never shallow, was now so deep that the water was up above the small front wheels and in under the doors, flooding the footboard. My Mother sat still and screamed. Mrs Gumming doubled herself up orientally upon the seat, and in a commanding voice, though pale with terrour, desired the Coachman, who could not hear her, to turn. On plunged the horses, in rushed more water, both ladies shrieked. My father attempted the masculine Consolation of appealing to their sense of eyesight, which would shew them ‘returning were as tedious as going o’er,’12 that the next step must be into the shallows. The Lady Logie turned her head indignantly, her body she could not move, and from her divan like seat she thus in tragick tone replied—‘A reasonable man like you, Rothiemurchus! to attempt to appeal to the judgment of a woman while under the dominion of the passion of fear!’