My father met us with his usual affection. Next day his manner was so stiffly dignified we were quite prepared for a summons to attend him in the study. He had changed his sitting room for our accommodation, and given up to us the part of the old hall he had fitted up for himself and which was now our Schoolroom; the room within, once the state bedroom and then my Mother’s room, was now the nursery where Johnny, the French girl, and Peggy Dawson slept, and my Mother had taken our old nursery at the head of the stairs looking over the shrubbery to Inverdruie, while the room exactly underneath was newly done up for my father. Into this lower chamber I was first ordered to appear. I had determined with Jane to tell my father boldly all our grievances, to expose to him the unsuitability of our governess, and to represent to him that it could not be expected we would learn from a person whom we felt ourselves fitted to teach. Alas, for my high resolves! There was something about my father so imposing when he sat in judgment that awe generally overcame all who were presented to him. Remonstrances would besides have been useless, as he addressed me very differently from what I had expected as I stood before him, all my courage gone, just waiting my doom in silence. I forget the exact words of his long harangue; he was never very brief in his speeches, but the purport is in my head now as clear as the day he spoke to me, for he told me what I felt was the truth. He said Miss Elphick was not exactly the sort of governess he could have wished for us, but that she was in many respects the best out of many my Mother had taken the trouble to inquire about. She had great natural talents, habits of neatness, habits of order, and habits of industry, in all of which we were deficient; all these she could teach us, with many other equally useful things. We must also by this time be aware that we had considerably improved in our various studies under her steady superinten dance, more particularly Mary who could hardly read before, was thought a dunce and was actually turning out clever. That this sort of methodical occupation was of immense importance in forming the character of young people he thought we must be aware of—it was what he and my mother had more especially taken pains to secure in a governess. A more correct knowledge of history, a more cultivated mind, would have been a great advantage certainly, but we could not expect every thing, particularly from school educated young women. What he did expect, however, was that his children should act as became the children of a gentleman, the descendants of a long line of gentlemen, and not by rude unfeeling remarks, impertinence and insubordination prove themselves to be more ill bred than those much their inferiours. A gentleman and a gentlewoman he told us were studious of the feelings of all around them; they were characterised by that perfect good breeding which would avoid inflicting the slightest annoyance on any human being. How could we expect if we forgot the dignity of our own character so far as to upbraid the lady placed over us with the deficiencies she herself must begin to be sensible of, that her temper would be proof against such extreme indelicacy—more to the same purpose in the same style, in which indeed one element of good, the highest of all was wanting, but so far as the teaching went, it could not have been better.
This lecture had considerable effect on me. I dreaded compromising my gentle blood by indecorums of any nature; I also fully believed in the difficulty of procuring a suitable governess. My conduct therefore improved in politeness, but I can’t say that I ever learned to esteem poor Miss Elphick or to consider that she was wisely selected for her situation.
Jane’s private interview with my father did not last so long as mine and it had proportionably less effect. She had never been so pert as I had been, nor so intractable, she had therefore less to reform. She said my father had quite failed to convince her that they had got a proper governess for us, she was therefore sure he had some doubts on the point himself; but as there seemed to be a determination not to part with her we could only try to bear with her, make the best of it; she and Jane got on from this time very well together; I think, at last, Jane really liked her. She improved wonderfully. Her conversation in the study lasted an hour or more, and she left it much more humble than she had entered it, this was the first step—she was beginning to ‘know herself.’ What passed never transpired, but her manner became less imperious, her assertions less dogmatick. Dictionaries, Biographies, Gazetteers, Chronologies were added to our bookcase, and these were always referred to afterwards in any uncertainty, though it was done by way of giving us the trouble of searching in order that we might remember better—for sincerity was not the fashion in those times. It would have been simpler for her to say ‘I don’t know so and so, let us look for it.’ We should have respected her the more, but this kind of candour towards children at least, was never then practised. People in general knew so little they were ashamed of their ignorance and so affected wisdom beyond their reach, tried to impose in fact and sometimes succeeded.
Schoolroom affairs went on much more smoothly after this settlement of knotty questions. We were certainly kept very regularly at work, and our work was sufficiently varied, the heads were properly rested for the most part, and we had battled out a fair amount of exercise. We rose at six, in the summer, practised an hour, walked an hour, and then the younger ones had breakfast, a plan Dr Combe11 would have changed with advantage. Miss Elphick and I had often to wait two hours longer before our morning’s meal was tasted, for we joined the party in the Eating room, and my father and mother were very late in appearing. We took a bit of bread always before the early walk, all of us, a walk that tired me. Study went on till twelve, when we went out again. At two we dined, and had half an hour to ourselves afterwards. We studied till five again, and spent the rest of the evening as we liked, out of doors till dark in summer, or in the drawing room afterwards for we had ‘agitated’ to get rid of learning any lessons overnight and had succeeded. In winter we rose half an hour later, without candle, or fire, or warm water. Our clothes were all laid on a chair overnight in readiness for being taken up in proper order. My Mother would not give us candles, and Miss Elphick insisted we should get up. We were not allowed hot water, and really in the highland winters, when the breath froze on the sheets, and the water in the jugs became cakes of ice, washing was a cruel necessity, the fingers were pinched enough. As we could play our scales well in the dark, the two pianofortes and the harp began the day’s work. How very near crying was the one whose turn set her at the harp I will not speak of; the strings cut the poor cold fingers so that the blisters often bled. Martyr the first decidedly sat in the dining room at the harp. Martyr the second put her poor blue hands on the keys of the grand-pianoforte in the drawing room, for in these two rooms the fires were never lighted till near nine o’clock—the grates were of bright steel, the household was not early and so we had to bear our hard fate. Mary was better off. She always, being quite a beginner practised under Miss Elphick’s own superintendance in the schoolroom, where, if Grace Grant had not a good fire brightly burning by seven o’clock, she was likely to hear of it. Our al fresco playing below was not of much use to us; we had better have been warm in our beds for all the good it did.
As we had no early walk in winter, we went out at half after eleven, and at five we had a good romp all over the old part of the house, playing at hide and seek in the long garret and its many dependencies, till it was time for Miss Elphick, who dined in the parlour, to dress. We had a charming hour to ourselves then by the good fire in the schoolroom, no candle allowed, till we had to dress ourselves and take our work down to the drawing room, where I had tea; the rest had supped upstairs on bread, Johnny and Caroline Favrin alone being able to take the milk. Poor, dear Jane, how I longed to give her one of the cups of tea I was allowed myself; she was too honest to go in with Mary to the nursery and take one from Peggy Davidson.
We learned the harp, the pianoforte, and singing after a fashion, drawing in several styles, geography, with map-making well taught, and arithmetick very well, more knowledge of the heavens than I cared for; lists of stars, and maps of the sky, and peerings of a frosty night out of the barrack
room window after Orion’s belt, his sword, and neighbours, were not in my line at all. We had chronological tables to make which delighted me, pieces of poetry to learn by heart, and French translations and exercises. And every Saturday after dinner we mended our clothes. We really soon got to like the regularity of our life. Once accustomed to its discipline we hardly felt it as such, and we got very much interested in most of our employments, quite anxious to shew our father that we were making good use of our time. We generally played to him every evening whether there were guests or no, and once a week we had each to give him something new, on the execution of which he passed his judgment, not unsparingly, for he was particular to a fault in finding fault. Once a week we had a French evening when there was no company, and we read aloud occasionally after tea, in turns, such bits as he had himself selected for us out of good authours, the same passage over and over till we had acquired the proper expression. He often read aloud himself any passage that struck him, either from books, reviews, or newspapers. We had a good command of books, a fair Library of our own, and really a good one collected by my father. It was from these silent teachers that we very much received an education. The sentiments of those excellent writings laid in our way became ours from the habit of imbibing them without our being aware that we were learning. My father always commented on the passages selected, ever in a spirit of liberality and kindness; I never heard an illnatured remark from his lips, on either dead or living, nor noticed the very slightest interest in gossip of any sort; he meddled in no man’s business, was charitable, in St Paul’s sense, in all his judgments. It was no common privilege to grow up under such a mind.
My Mother, when in health, was an example of industry. She kept a clean and tidy house, and an excellent table, not doing much herself, but taking care to see all well done. She was very kind to the poor, and encouraged us to visit them and work with them, and attend to them when sick. She was a very beautiful needlewoman, and she taught us to sew and cut out, and repair all our own, our father’s, brothers‘, and family linen. She had become highland wife enough to have her spinnings and dyings, and weavings of wool and yarn, and flax and hanks, and she busied herself at this time in all the stirring economy of a household ’remote from cities,’ and consequently forced to provide for its own necessities. Her evening readings were her relaxation; she was very well read, thoroughly read in English Classicks, and she possessed a memory from which neither fact nor date once entered ever escaped. We used to apply to her, when idle, and never found her wrong. She used to employ us to go her errands among the people, and we soon got Miss Elphick broken in to like the long wanderings through the fir wood. We had two ponies, which we rode in turns; a tent in the shrubbery in the summer, the garden in the autumn, the poultry yard in the spring, the farm yard at all times, with innumerable visits to pay to friends of all degrees. Such was our highland home; objects of interest all round us, ourselves objects of attention all round, little princes and princesses in our Duchus, where the old feudal feelings get paraded all in their deep intensity. And the face of nature so beautiful—rivers, lakes, burnies, fields, banks, braes, moors, woods, mountains, heather, the dark forest, wild animals, wild flowers, wild fruits; the picturesque inhabitants, the legends of our race, fairy tales, the raids of the Clans, haunted spots, the cairns of the murdered—all and every thing that could touch the imagination, there abounded and acted as a charm on the children of the Chieftain who was so adored; for my father was the father of his people, loved for himself as well as for his name.
1. To sit on rocks—to muse o’er flood and fell
To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene …
This is not solitude —’tis but to hold
Converse with Nature’s charms and view
her stores unrolled.
Canto 11, stanza xxv
2. The Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendom (c. 1597) by Richard Johnson; Goldsmith’s An History of the Earth and Animated Nature (1774); Adèle et Théodore (1782) by Madame de Genlis.
3. The famous song about Flodden by Jean Elliot (1727-1805). Scott’s Marmion (1808) is sub-titled ‘A Tale of Flodden Field’ and, with The Lay of the Last Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake, was part of the Grants’ ‘travelling library’.
4. All his five sons were accomplished players; Nathaniel came closest to his father’s achievement, according to Groves.
5. Major-General John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, led the first Jacobite rising in 1689; Scott’s poem was ‘Bonnie Dundee’.
6. The Ordnance Gazeteer of Scotland (1894), explains that after the ’45 the castle was ‘docked of two upper stories, and white-washed’ so that for Queen Victoria, one hundred years later, it was merely ‘a large, plain, white building.’
7. The Duke of Clarence (1765–1837), later William iv, lived here with the famous actress Dorothea Jordan between 1790 and 1810; she had ten FitzClarence children, whilst continuing her career on stage.
8. Well known as an antiquary and poet, he died in a famous duel in 1822. See Cockburn’s Memorials.
9. Sarcastic (S.N.D.).
10. Caliph of Baghdad, through whom Charlemagne was trying to protect the Eastern Christians; the exchange of ambassadors and presents took place in 801.
11. Dr Andrew Combe (1797–1847), physician and phrenologist, author of The Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy (1840).
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1570–1813
ROTHIEMURCHUS at this period contained four large farms only, the Doune, where we lived ourselves, to which my father was constantly adding such adjoining scraps as circumstances enabled him now and then to get possession of; Inverdruie, where lived his great Uncle Captain Lewis Grant, the last survivor of the old race; The Croft, where now was settled his cousin James Cameron; and The Dell, occupied by Duncan McIntosh, the forester, who had permission to take in as many acres of the adjacent moors as suited his husbandry. Quantities of smaller farms, from a mere patch to a decent steading, were scattered here and there among the beautiful birch woods, near swiftly running streams, or farther away among the gloom of the fir forest, wherever an opening afforded light enough for a strip of verdure to brighten the general carpet of cranberries and heather. The Carpenter, the Smith, the Foxhunter, the Sawmillers, the Wheelwright, the few Chelsea pensioners, each had his little field, while comparatively larger holdings belonged to a son of yeomanry coeval with our own possession, or even some of them found there by our Ancestor the Laird of Muckrach, the second son of our Chief, who displaced the Shawes, for my father was but the ninth Laird of Rothiemurchus. The Shawes reigned over this beautiful property before the Grants seized it, and they had succeeded the Comyns, lords not only of Badenoch but of half our part of the north besides.
The forest was at this time so extensive there was little room for tillage through the wide plain it covered. It was very pretty here and there to come upon a little cultivated spot, a tiny field by the burnside with a horse or a cow upon it, a cottage often built of the black peat mould, its chimney, however, smoking comfortably, a churn at the door, a girl bleaching linen, or a guid wife in her high white cap waiting to welcome us, miles away from any other spot equally tenanted. Here and there upon some stream a picturesque saw mill was situated, gathering its little hamlet round; for one or two held double saws, necessitating two millers, two assistants, two homes with all their adjuncts, and a larger wood yard to hold, first the logs, and then all they were cut up into. The Wood manufacture was our staple, on it depended our prosperity. It was at its height during the war, when there was a high duty on foreign timber; while it flourished so did we, and all the many depending on us; when it fell, the Laird had only to go back to black cattle again ‘like those that were before him.’ It was a false stimulus, said the political economists. If so, we paid for it.
Before introducing you, dear children, to our Rothiemurchus Society, we must get up a bit of genealogy, or you would never understand our relationships or
our manners or our connections in the north countrie.1 In the reign of the English popish Mary and of the Scotch Regencies, I fancy during the nonage2 of our beautiful and unfortunate queen, in the year 1556, I think, but am not sure, the Chief of the Clan Grant presented his second son Patrick with the moor of Muckrach in Strathspey, on which he built a tower. The mother of Patrick was a Lady Steuart, daughter to the Earl of Athole, and cousin to the Queen. Whom he married I forget, but I rather believe his wife was a daughter of Fraser of Lovat. He had been a clever enterprising man, for the Shawes having displeased the Government by repeated acts of insubordination, a common offence in those times, their lands were confiscated, and the Rothiemurchus portion presented to the Laird of Muckrach—‘gin he could win it’—which without more ado he did, and built himself a house at the Dell, the door stone of which he brought from his tower on the moor, and to this day there it is, with the date cut deep into it. The Shawes, though subdued, remaining troublesome, he repaired the ruins of an old Castle of the Comyns on an Island in Loch an Eilein in case of any extraordinary mishap, and he pulled down and quite destroyed an old fort of the Shawes on the Doune hill, leaving his malediction to any of his successors who should rebuild it. He must have had stirring times of it, yet he died peaceably in his bed, and was succeeded by sons, for some generations of no great note, a Duncan, a James, a Patrick, etc., none of them remarkable except Duncan, who was surnamed of the Silver Cups from possessing two valuable drinking vessels, probably a rare piece of splendour in a highland household. A second James, the fifth Laird, inherited more of the qualities of the first Laird; his father, whose name I am not sure of, was but a poor body; he let the Shawes get rather ahead again, married badly, and was altogether so unfit to rule that his rather early death was not regretted. He either fell over a rock or was drowned in a hunting party—nobody ever inquired into particulars.
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