Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  We were extremely fond of a visit to Brunswick Square; the baby cousins there, of whom there were now three, John? Lizzy, and George, were charming playthings, and all our aunt’s tall brothers in law were so very kind to us. Another particular friend was Mrs Sophy Williams, my father’s old Governess, who very often came to see us and never empty handed, and we used to go to visit her where she then lived at Kensington as companion to old Mrs Anguish, the mother or the Aunt of the Duchess of Leeds, and a relation of Mrs Raper’s. It was one of those old fashioned households now hardly remembered, where the fires were all put out, the carpets all taken up, and curtains down upon the first of May, not to be replaced in those shivery rooms until the 1st of October; where the hard highbacked chairs were ranged against the wall, and a round, club legged, darkly polished table stood quite bare in the middle of the room. In one window was a parrot on a perch, screaming ‘How d’ye do’ for ever. In the other the two old ladies with their worsted work, their large baskets, and their fat spaniel. Mrs Anguish talked a great deal of scandal to my mother about the Court of the good Queen Charlotte, the Prince and the Duchess of Devonshire, the Duke of ditto and Lady Elizabeth Forster, sundry irregularities amongst the nobles of past and present days; while dear Mrs Sophy described Twyford and Thorley, told of my Grandmother’s warm heart and wanner temper, of my father’s quaint sayings, aunt Lissy’s goodness. We used also to visit Mrs Thrale (Dr Johnson’s), who was then Mrs Piozzi—her house a son of Museum—and Lady Keith, her daughter, and Mrs Murray Aust in a beautiful villa looking on Rotten Row, whose tour in the highlands had made her rather celebrated; and dear old Mrs Raper in her melancholy back drawing room in Wimpole Street, where I never yet found her doing anything whatever, though her mind must have been well filled at some former time, for she drew upon its stores in conversation most agreeably; and Mrs Charles Ironside, and old Mrs Maling I remember. What other acquaintances my Mother called on I do not know, for we were always left in the carriage except at the foregoing houses. She generally drove out every day, and some of us were always with her. On the week days she made her visits and went shopping—to Green the glover’s in Little Newport Street, next door to such beautiful dolls, a whole shop of no other toy, some of the size of life, opening and shutting their eyes, as was then a rare virtue; to Roberts and Plowman; to Gray the jeweller; to Rundall and Bridge, so dirty and shabby without, such a fairy palace within, where on asking a man who was filling a scoop with small brown looking stones what he was doing, he told me he was shovelling in rubies; to Miss Steuart’s, our delight, cakes and flattery and bundles of finery awaiting us there; and then the three or four rooms full of hoops before the Court days, machines of Whalebone, very large, covered with silk, and then with lace or net, and hung about with festoons of lace and beads, garlands of flowers, puffings of ribbon, furbelows of all sorts. As the waists were short, how the imprisoned victims managed their arms we of this age can hardly imagine. The heads for these bodies were used as supports for whole faggots of feathers, as many as twelve sometimes standing bolt upright forming really a forest of plumage; the long train stretched out behind very narrow, more like a prolonged sashend than a garment. Yet there were beauties who wore this dress, and looked in it beautiful. We went to Churton’s for our Stockings, to Ross for my mother’s wigs—that was another queer fashion—every woman, not alone the gray and the bald, wore an expensive wig instead of her own hair; to Lowe for shoes, to St Paul’s church corner for books. I can’t remember half the places.

  On Sundays we went to Lincoln’s Inn Chapel in the morning, Sir William Grant looking kindly down upon us from his window. We dined, said our Catechism, and then all set out for Rotten Row, where the amusement consisted in one long file of carriages at a foot’s pace going one way, passing another long file of carriages at a foot’s pace going the other, bows gravely exchanged between the occupants, when any of the busy starers were acquainted. All London was engaged in this serious business. We sometimes prevailed on my Mother to make a diversion round the ring, that we might see the swans on the water, but she only now and then obliged us, much preferring that long procession up and down a mile of dusty road—the greater the crowd, the slower the move, the greater the pleasure. ‘Delightful drive in the park to-day’ meant that there was hardly a possibility of cutting into the line, or moving much above a yard in a minute. ‘Most dreadfully stupid in the park to-day’ meant that there was plenty of room for driving there comfortably.

  On Sunday evenings my father took his tea upstairs. Other evenings we carried him down a large breakfast cup full of very strong tea to his study, where he was always seated immersed in papers with his Secretary, little horrid Sandy Grant, whose strange voice sounded as if he spoke through a paper covered comb. It was not Law business that occupied them; the poor clerk in the outer office had but an idle time. Lawsuits of his own, dreams of political influence,3 money loans, and all the perplexities and future miseries consequent on these busy evenings were being prepared in that study where we carried the cup of tea. How kindly my poor father smiled on his young messengers, how bright his room looked, how warm his fire. We liked to go there, and we loved to linger there. Even Sandy Grant was a favourite.

  We were very seldom allowed to go to children’s parties, nor did my Mother ever give any for us at home. One ball only I remember at the Walsh’s in Harley Street, where I danced all night with two partners, Henry Ward and Abercrombie Dick, the first rather a great man now among a secondary set,4 the last a Lieutenant Colonel at twenty seven; and another at Mr Blake’s, our dancing Master, where I so far forgot the orthodox English style of regular four in a bar style of evenly goosestepping the scotch reel, as in our happy excitement to revert to good Mr Grant’s Strathspey fashion, of springing through in time to the musick, at which, as both my sister Jane and myself were exceedingly admired by the elders of the company, no remark was made either by Mr Blake or his assistant; but we received a sufficient lecture during our next lesson at home for so disgracing his teaching. We went very often to the Play, we three elder ones, and to Sadler’s Wells and Astley’s, and to some of the Concerts. Also this spring for the first time in my life I went to the Opera. At the Hanover Square Concerts Saloman was the Leader,5 the singers were Bartleman, Braham, Kelly, the Knyvetts, Mr and Mrs Vaughan, Mrs Bianchi—afterwards my teacher—and Mrs Billington. Mrs Mountain I heard, but not there. The first song I ever heard Mrs Billington sing was Handel’s ‘Sweet Bird that shunn’st the noise of folly,’6 accompanied on the violin by Saloman. I was sitting next to my father, behind whom I slunk, holding down my head to conceal the soft tears whose shedding relieved my heart. We were always taught to restrain all such exhibitions of feeling, which indeed my Mother would have characterised as mere affectation, and therefore I was ashamed of the overpowering sensations which made me so utterly full of delight; something exquisite in the feeling there was which I have not yet forgotten. How I practised my own shakes and runs and holding notes, for the two following days only, giving up from despair of ever pleasing myself. She was the enchantress of my first Opera too. We were all in the Square one afternoon, at a grand game of Tom Tickler’s ground, when one of my playmates told us that the white flag, our homeward signal, was flying from our high windows. We ran off at once and were met at the gate by the footman, who said that I only was wanted. I was to dress as quick as possible in my best white frock to go to the Opera. How old was I that happy night?—thirteen within a week or two. My dress was a plain white frock with plenty of tucks at the bottom, a little embroidery on the waist, white calico long gloves, and a cropt head, the hair brushed bright with rose oil, which to me made the toilette complete. The Opera was ‘II fanatico.’ Naldi the father, with his full low notes, Mrs Billington his pupil daughter.7 She sang her solfeggi, all the exercises, and ‘Uno trillo sopra là’—nothing ever was so beautiful, even the memory of those sounds, so clear, so sweet, so harmonious, that voice that ran about like silver water over pearls. There is no enjo
yment equal to good musick, simple or complicated, so as it be truthfully, earnestly given; it has ever afforded to me the most intense pleasure I am capable of receiving, and how little I have heard, and how very vilely I made it.

  We had had a great fright this year by the very severe series of illnesses that attacked poor William. He brought the whooping cough with him from Eton at Xmas, which we all caught from him, and a pleasant time we had, condemned to one side walk in the Square, from any approach to which all other children were strictly forbidden. It was not very bad with us, and towards the end we became rather attached to our visitor, for we had no lessons, no milk, delicious tea breakfasts, and dinners of puddings and such good things, with long daily drives far out into the country. William had not been long returned to school when he took the measles; this turned to scarlet fever, and my Mother went down to nurse him, with very faint hopes at one time of bringing him through. When he could be moved he was taken to Kensington to be under the care of Mrs Mary Williams, the elder sister of Sophy, who, with a blind sister, Anne, lived in a very neat house not far from the gardens. My Mother went every day to see him, taking care to take off the dress she wore before allowing any of the rest of us to come near her, while any risk of infection was thought to remain; and yet both Jane and I got, not the measles, but the scarlet fever and severely too; the younger ones escaped.

  It was about this time that I began to take more notice of any remarkable persons occasionally dining at my father’s. The three eccentrick brothers, Lord Buchan, Lord Erskine, and Harry Erskine, by far the most brilliant of the three, stand out foremost.8 It was a real treat to the whole family when this last with his agreeable wife came for a few weeks from Scotland, as we always saw a good deal of them. The Duchess of Gordon I remember with her loud voice, and Lady Madelina Sinclair, talking of Rothiemurchus and Kinrara. Lord Gillies and Mrs Gillies, in his Advocate days, when Appeal cases brought him to London, The Redfearns, whom I never saw, the sight of me recalling her lost boy (with the drum) so vividly that she could not bear the shock: so no children appeared when she did—no great disappointment to us. There were the Master of the Rolls and some few English Lawyers, Mr Ward (Tremaine), Sir Giffin Wilson, and William Frere; and upon one occasion his intended. Miss Gurdon, who sang with a voice and in a style only equalled by Catalani.

  This year, after all the sickness, we went early to Tunbridge, my Mother having suffered herself severely in consequence of her fatigue and anxiety. A large dull house, but a very comfortable one, was taken for us at the top of Sion Hill. It belonged to Mr Canning’s mother,9 and had a really good garden, with a fine clump of shady trees in it, under which we children used to pass our day. My Mother had some dislike to this place which suited all the rest of us so admirably, so, in the fiery month of June, we removed from this quiet, roomy, old fashioned house to a smartened up Grosvenor Lodge, a new bow windowed villa on the London road, a full mile from the Wells, where the sun shone on us unmolested till we in the atticks were nearly grilled; but we were in the world as well as in the sunshine, and the dust besides. Every evening we went out in the open carriage and four, driving in every direction all round that beautiful country, where well wooded hills and dales, with fields, lanes, villages, peeping spires, and country seats, combined to present a succession of views of surpassing richness, wanting only water to make the style of scenery perfect. We made parties to the Rocks, to the Repository on the heath, to Frant,, and many other places, and we often walked up and down the pantiles listening to a very respectable Band. There was something so very pretty about those simple Wells; they struck me again, as they struck me before, as so much more to be admired—the pure water just bubbling up fresh as it sprung, merely caught in small marble basins into which the clear glasses were dipt, and then offered to the drinkers by a few tidily dressed old women—than the pump room style of Cheltenham and other places, where from a row of brass cocks flows no one knows what sort of mixture, served by flaunty girls from behind a long counter. Then the water was so pleasant, clear and sparkling and very cold, the taste of iron far from disagreeable, and I at least, like my Mother, so strengthened by it, that I love the very name of the Wells to this day. It was a dry bracing climate that suited me; I felt as if I could have jumped over the moon there.

  Aunt Leitch spent a short time with us at Grosvenor Lodge, and Annie Grant and Miss Maling. Mrs Giffin Wilson, our neighbour, was in the next house to us for a while, attending the death bed of her sister Lady Edward O’Brien. A pleasant cousin James Blackburn, rather sweet we thought upon Aunt Leitch, was also of our party. Aunt Leitch had been for some time a Widow. She had given up Kilmerdinney to her husband’s heir for a consideration, and had joined in housekeeping with Uncle Ralph, who had determined on letting Tennochside and coming South for a few years, in order better to educate his two children. We had our highland neighbours, Belleville and Mrs Macpherson, also here; of them we saw a great deal, having from first to last been always on the most friendly terms with them. My brother John, then Johnny, a little creature in a nankin frock, and Belleville were so inseparable, that people soon began to look for them as one of the Shows of the place, for they walked together the greater part of the day in rather a singular manner. Belleville went first with his hands crossed behind his back, holding out his long stick, the end of which was taken by the child, who trotted on thus for hours, few words passing between the pair. Mrs Macpherson, who preferred the carriage, generally went an airing with us, my Mother calling for her at her lodgings near the pantiles. We were really very happy this season at Tunbridge Wells, and so set up by the fine air that we could not have looked more healthy had we been in our own Duchus.

  Upon looking over the doings of this year so far, I find I have forgotten to mention quite a remarkable circumstance. Some time before we left town Mrs Charles Grant, the old Director’s wife, invited we three little girls to accompany my father and mother to a great party she was giving in Russell Square—a rout—and we went. It was to meet the Persian Ambassador, the same who was Mr Morier’s friend, and who got on in every way so well in this country that many years afterwards he was sent here again. I can’t at this moment recollect his name—he was a tall handsome man, not very dark, he spoke English quite well enough to be understood, and turned all the women’s heads with his beautiful eastern dress and flatteries. He was remarkably fond of children, always liked to have some in the room with him, which was the reason we had been distinguished by this invitation. There was wonderful commotion in the green room which Jane and I shared in common, little Mary venturing to shew herself there, as she had been included among the company. Our dancing shoes, drab jean, were to do quite well, and cotton stockings, but we got new frocks of soft clear muslin, very full, with several deep tucks and open behind. All the three heads were fresh cropt and oiled, and as our toilettes were completing my Mother entered, so beautifully dressed in white spotted muslin over strawcoloured silk, holding in her hands three pairs of white kid gloves, and three cairn gorm crosses dangling to gold chains. Duncan McIntosh10 had given us the stones which had been found on our own hills and she had had them set for us purposely to wear this evening. The Persian Ambassador took a great deal of notice of us and of our sparkling crosses, Jane, of course, be most distinguished, her bright eyes and her rosy cheeks, and her lively natural manner equally free from forwardness or shyness, always ensured her the attention of strangers. Both she and I behaved extremely well, we were told next day. Papa and Mama quite satisfied with us, and with our propriety in the cake line, just helping ourselves once, as we had been told, and no more. Mary was suspected of more frequent helpings, also she tired and fell asleep on Belleville’s knee, for he and Mrs Macpherson were there. Mrs Macpherson said laughing to my Mother when the great Mirza (I am sure now one of his names was)11 was occupied so much with Jane, not very far from where sat an elderly Miss Perry, another Director’s daughter, with an enormous turban on her head, and a fine cachemire on her shoulders: ‘What wo
uld she give to be the object of such attention?’ the shawl and turban having been adopted, it was said, to attract the stranger, who had a wife and one little girl at home.

  Aunt Mary had invited me to be present at a great solemnity at Oxford, the Installation of Lord Grenville as Chancellor of the University, which ceremony was to take place in the month of July of this summer, 1810.12 It was quite an era in my life, the first indeed of any moment, and it filled my young heart with a tumultuous pleasure I was for some days unable to controul. It was lucky for me that my father was from home, as he would have been very likely to have kept me there for shewing myself so utterly unfit to be trusted with my own conduct. We were never to annoy others with any excess of emotion, probably a good rule for such very excitable children, and yet it might have made us artificial, and it did afterwards make me appear affected, the struggle between feeling and fearing. I certainly did run a little wild on receiving Aunt Griffith’s letter—she liked us to call her by her husband’s name. To visit alone! To go to the Theatre! Concerts, Inaugurations! See degrees conferred! Among such a crowd of great and noble, in classick Oxford, where stood Great Tom! It really half turned a head not then very steady. We had been reading Miss Porter’s Scottish Chiefs,13 to initiate us into the realities of life and the truth of history; and such visions of display had been brought before us, of plumed helmets, coats of gilded mail, kings, queens, trains, escorts, etc., that, my Aunt indulging a little in poetical anticipations of the splendid scenes she was asking me to witness, I took my seat beside my father in his post chariot, with some idea that I had grown suddenly six feet high, twenty years older, and was the envy of every one. My father had come to us for a week’s holiday after my first transport had cooled a little. The parting with them all made me grave enough, and it was soon quite unnecessary to caution me about repressing any exuberance of spirits.