Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  Early in the morning we all went down to the sands to bathe, not in Seaham fashion, but in a respectable business like manner, suited to a crowded watering place. A little table on which lay a great book stood within a railing enclosing all the bathing machines. Each party, on entering the gate of this enclosure, set their names down in the book, and in their turn were conducted to a bathing machine, roomy boxes upon wheels, at one end shaded by a large canvas hood that reached the water when the horse at the other had proceeded with it to a sufficient depth; the driver then turned his carriage round with the hood to the sea, and unhinging his traces went in search of another fare, leaving the bathers to the care of a middle aged woman in a blue flannel jacket and petticoat and a straw bonnet, who soon waded into view from a neighbouring machine, and lifting up the balance of the canvas shade stood ready to assist the fearful plunge. The shock of the dip was always an agony both to Mary and me; that over, we would have ducked about much longer than the woman let us. Jane delighted in the whole, and Annie Grant bore it; Johnny always bathed in the machine with my Mother. It was rather frightful bathing when the waves were high, at least to the timid ones. Some people really went into the sea when they might have been carried away by it, when they and the women had to keep hold of ropes while the waves went over them. We never emulated these heroines; but certainly Jane sometimes urged us all on with her when the rest would rather have turned back. Either in going or returning we encountered our friend the little Princess walking right royally before her very strange looking elderly maid, Mrs Deadman. Annie used to be amused at the dignity with which she used to approach the little table and dash down a very flourishing ‘P,’ the single letter that served to mark her name; then she would smile most courteously upon us, but never came near or spoke on these publick occasions.

  We all breakfasted together, then studied for three hours, dined early with my father and mother, and drank tea with them late. In the intervals we were either next door, or on the downs, or on the sands. The sands were very firm, and of considerable extent when the tide was out; there was a charming subterranean passage by which we reached them without going round by the steep hill near Albion Place; it had been excavated by a strange sort of man who had built a Castle on the Cliff—a castle with battlements and towers, and a curtain flanked by turrets, and a moat, and what not. A prose Walter Scott who could not see the absurdity of defences when there were no longer any assailants, he thought the style suited to the scenery. This passage he made for the purpose of bringing up manure to his fields; it was quite dark about the middle of the descent, a particular merit to us. Annie and I used to take books down to the sands and sit on the rocks with them in our hands, but we never read; watching the waves, listening to them, looking at the crab hunters and the shrimpers, and far out at sea straining our eyes after the shipping, little boats, larger craft, huge merchantmen, all moving over the face of the waters, and the Downs in the distance—all this was book enough, at least for a dreamy nature. Mary and Johnny were often with us, and sometimes my mother, who, however, rather objected to such idling; and as Jane was almost always with the Princess, quite as great a favourite with the Duchess as with her daughter, a plan was struck out for the better employment of my time, that was acted on immediately.

  Mrs Peter Grant, the widow of one of my great Uncle Sandy’s sons, who had had charge of Anne Grant of Glenmoriston, and lived in a small house at Ramsgate, had been found so competent to the task of superintending the education of young ladies, that she had been prevailed on by first one friend and then another to receive their delicate children. At last her house became too small for her family. She took a larger one in Albion Place, engaged a clever governess, to whom she was shortly obliged to give an assistant, and soon had quite a flourishing school. She limited the number of pupils to eighteen, and generally had applications waiting for a vacancy. She was an honest hearted kind person, a little given to ‘sentiment,’ well read for her day and accomplished, having been originally intended for a governess by her parents, in whose house her husband had lodged while walking the hospitals in London; her beauty, much of which still remained, had changed her destiny—whether for better or worse, who can say. She fondly cherished the memory of her young husband, lost soon after her marriage by some accident at the Cape; he was Surgeon in a man of war. To Mrs Peter Grant’s school I was to be sent every day for so many hours, ostensibly to learn flower painting, and be kept up in french and singing; but in reality to take down a deal of conceit which unavoidably sprung up in the mind of a quick girl without the means of fairly testing her abilities by an equal standard. Jane was so much younger, and naturally so slow, her attempts in all our occupations were of course very inferiour to mine, and as we had no companions except at play hours, I could not find out that, clever as I thought myself, there were girls of my own age very much more advanced. This I learned very quickly at Albion Place, where three or four of my new friends were very far beyond me. We were taught flower painting by a very pretty Mrs Abrams, a celebrated artist, the daughter of a Landscape painter and the wife of an architect, who had come to Broadstairs to give sea bathing to her pictures of children, and thought she might as well try to earn what would pay the expenses of the trip. She had taught at Mrs Pope’s School in Bloomsbury Square, where Harriet Grant had gone when Anne went to Ramsgate; she afterwards gave Harriet lessons at our house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so that I knew her quite well, and was delighted to see her again and be taught her pretty art, which, however, I never afterwards pursued. Yet it was of great use to me. Brought my drawing into order, accuracy of outline, minuteness of detail, delicacy in shading, and close observation of nature both as to form and colouring were all essential in this minute style of painting—the mixing of the colours and the undertinting for the several shades opened a new range of ideas that in after times was the source of unfailing pleasure. We mostly prepared our own colours, that is from the few primitive ones we mixed the rest according to the hues of the flowers we were representing, attending to blue as yellow greens, blue as pink lilack etc. till these slight apparently differences became quite interesting, enhancing to us the beauty of the commonest flowers.

  Mrs Grant herself taught us singing, in a class. We stood behind her, all intoning the scales at once, and then executing the turns, runs, shakes, etc., in succession. A little ugly Miss Hodges had the finest voice, and so we let her do most of the work, Mrs Grant, busy with her accompaniment, not always detecting the tricks we played her. Miss Wishart the governess was not so easily deceived. Her Schoolroom lessons were difficult to evade; so when I tired of her grammar, and history, and french dictations, I used to get up a little fun to break the dulness of the morning. Poor Miss Wishart! She bore a good deal from me; many half hours of funny songs, droll stories, laughing, dancing, acting, mimicking, her own anger and Mrs Grant’s melancholy remonstrances being done to the life before them. She often banished me to a certain back parlour where distressed members of the establishment were wont to expiate their offences in solitude, declaring it was impossible either to learn or teach while that flighty little creature was in the study; and then she would recall me herself, and say she had punished me only for my good, in a voice and manner she was sure to hear and see next day, the first offence that was committed amongst us so that I am not quite sure that I derived much benefit from my schooling after all. Sarah Backhouse, one of the elder pupils, whose roses and crocuses far surpassed mine, did her utmost to tranquillise my volatile nature. I liked her extremely, as I did a Miss Wintle; we kept sight of one another for several years, though we were far parted.

  Lord Cochrane was at Deal this summer;7 he came to see our friend the Duchess, and prevailed on her to go to sea with him for a day; he brought the barge, very nicely fitted up for her and her party, which, as a matter of course, included Jane. He had a Collation on board his ship for her and presented every lady with french gloves; a pair or two fell to me, as compensation, I suppose, for being left b
ehind. But my turn came. Admiral Raper,8 then a captain commanding the Bellerophon, arrived in the Downs; it was just before the old ship was broken up. My father, my mother, and William who was with us for the holidays, and I, all went to Deal to see him. Harry was there too, on a visit to his father for a day or two. How much I was struck with the parlour we were shewn into at the Inn. It was called the Dolphin, and it had a bow window actually built out into the sea; it had all the effect of looking out from the stern cabin, of course much admired by ‘all in the Downs.’ From this bow window we had perfect command of the beach, and were able to observe with admiration the wonderful dexterity of the Deal men in landing passengers from their clumsy shaped boats. The beach is so steep that it is deep water immediately, and whether coming in or going out, the boats always appeared to stand almost up on end just as they neared or left the shore. None of them ever upset, however difficult as it would seem to be to prevent it. I think it was in one of these that we made our start, and yet I have a perfect recollection of the Captain’s gig and the smart boatscrew which manned it. We dined on board, and then proceeded to inspect the ship, one of the most interesting sights in the world. The ingenious comforts of the Cabins, the light, airy, cheerful aspect of the Captain’s in particular, the excessive cleanliness, every board so white, every bit of a metal so brightly polished, the order, the quiet, the neatness, the most made of each small space, the real elegance of some of the arrangements,—ail altogether produced an effect on persons unaccustomed to the interiour of a man of war, that every one of us were loud in expressing our surprise at. All I demurred at was the lamps in the cockpit, no daylight penetrating to the abode of the middies down below on the third deck; and yet Harry persisted in going to sea, because, as he said, he should rise in time to where his father stood; which he did not, for taking some disgust at the usual ill usage of the Admiralty he retired from the service a lieutenant.9 He was, by the bye, on board the ship that carried Lord Amherst to China for the purpose of declining to make all the bows to the Emperour customary by the Etiquette of that queer country, 10 and he was wrecked near Loo Choo! lost all his beautiful drawings, scientifick Memoranda, etc.; for he was a true Raper, even to their eccentricities: but at this time a fine merry boy, full of spirits and hope.

  We remained all night at Deal, and next day drove to a pretty parsonage in the close neighbourhood, where lived the father of my new friend, Miss Backhouse. He was in some way connected with the House of ‘Forster, Cooke, and Frere,’ had a son in it I think, and so made acquaintance with us. He was an agreeable man with a large family of well brought up children and a kind wife, and he lived in a picture of a country clergyman’s house, all overgrown with honeysuckles, jasmines, roses, and vines, large clusters of grapes hanging down round the dining room windows, out of which we leaned to gather them. This pan of Kent is very rich, a good soil and mild climate combining to make the vegetation very luxuriant. Beyond this sort of beauty and the sea there is however no fine feature in the scenery; of its sort it is however perfect, with its neat hamlets, church spires, old wooding, and such hedges! very high, twelve or even fifteen feet in some places, trimmed like green walls, not a break in them; little narrow cross roads running between two of these shady boundaries in all directions. Along such we drove to Walmer Castle and home by Sandgate; a sunny excursion that was cherished for many a day in a bright corner of my memory.

  The next incident that rests there is the very exquisite singing of a Miss Walker, a young person not otherwise prepossessing, nor much known in Ramsgate, where they had come for the health of Mrs Walker, a fantastick woman, rather superiour in manner to her underbred husband; his forwardness was against the progress of the family rather. They were introduced to us by Mrs Peter Grant, and most certainly the eldest daughter’s very remarkable talent made many of our summer evenings pass delightfully. Her voice was both sweet and powerful, of great extent, and I heard my father say wanted only practice to make it flexible and that she only wanted to hear better musick than had yet fallen in her way to be a really fine singer. She had hitherto been taught by one of the Choir of a Cathedral town in which they lived, her style was therefore the Sacred, and very beautiful. Quite extraordinary for so young a girl. I never heard what became of her—it was a voice with which much might have been done. Another fresh acquaintance was an old dashing Mrs Buckley, who made up to my Mother, I hardly know how; she had the remains of a great beauty, but was bold and noisy. She had two handsome daughters, and a fine looking son, a Lieutenant Colonel of a regiment of Cavalry, quartered at Canterbury. One of the daughters was dark, the other fair, to suit either taste in the market they were diligently prepared for; they were models of the class shabby genteel. Their aim was to appear what they were not, rich and fashionable, and to achieve this make believe reputation every energy of their clever heads was employed, and every moment of their busy day. They darned net to look like lace, they dyed, and turned, and revived, and remade; bought cotton satin and cotton velvet, made one dress do duty for three by varying the slip, the trimming, or the body, wore calico gloves, painted pasteboard for fans; every sort of expedient inexhaustible ingenuity could devise was resorted to, in order to make £10 effect an appearance which would have required £100 to have been expended on realities. The result of which hard labour was to give them the look of ladies any thing but respectable. The mother was seldom seen in the morning. She was generally occupied darning, clear starching, and cooking, for they gave evening parties at an expense they could not have afforded had a confectioner been employed to furnish the refreshments. It was for the benefit of the world at large that all this toil was gone through, or rather for two, any two, members of the world at large who were men, and bachelours. Whether two such ever rewarded the indefatigable endeavours of this Mother and daughters we, at least, never knew. A very different specimen of the military was introduced to us by the Malings; Colonel and Mrs Gossipp also from Canterbury. He was a fine soldierly looking man, she a plain woman, but so nice, kind, gentle, merry, clever, quite a soldier’s wife. She had four healthy, happy boys, and three gowns, a ‘heightem, a tightem, and a scrub,’ with which she perambulated the world, none of the wardrobe department likely to be hurt by her travels if we were to judge of the inferiour degrees by a comparison with the ‘heightem,’ the one always exhibited at Ramsgate. But no matter what Mrs Gossipp wore she always looked like a lady, and she was so lively and agreeable it was always a white day when the Colonel’s dog cart, his wife by his side and a boy or two parked up behind, drove up to the door of our small house on Albion Cliff.