The reign of his son opened unpleasantly. The Shawes were very troublesome, and the Laird’s mother, the Widow of the drowned or ‘foolish Laird’ for that was what they called him in gaelick, behaved herself scandalously. She married her son’s tutor, a young man of the name of Dallas, very unsuitable in age or estate to the Lady Rothiemurchus. As she would not give him up, there was nothing left for it but to take him from her, which her sons accordingly did. I tell it as ‘twas told to me, they waylaid the poor Tutor and murdered him in the Little Dell, where the pump is in the new garden and where the smell of the blood rises every August in memory of the deed—committed in that month. Laird James had next to fight the Shawes, who of course, got the worst of it, though they lived through many a fight to fight again. At last their Chief was killed, which sobered this remnant of a Clan, but they had to bury him, and no grave would suit them but one in the kirk yard of Rothiemurchus beside his fathers’. With such array as their fallen fortunes admitted of, they brought their dead and laid him unmolested in that dust to which we must all return. But oh, what horrid times. His widow next morning on opening the door of her house at Dalnavert caught the corpse in her arms, which had been raised in the night and carried back to her. It was buried again, and again it was raised, more times than I care to mention, till Laird James announced he was tired of the play. The corpse was raised again, but carried home no more. It was buried deep down within the kirk, beneath the Laird’s own seat, and every Sunday when he went to pray he stamped his feet upon the heavy stone he had laid over the remains of his enemy.
The last battle of the Clans was in this wild Laird’s days. It took place on the Cambus More between the Grants and the remnant of the Comyns. The graves may yet be seen in the hollow just beyond the hill of the Callert. One larger than the rest is said to be the Leader’s of the hostile band. Spearheads and other warlike weapons have been found there but not in our day. Laird James took to wife a very clever woman, the daughter of McIntosh of Killachy, nearly related to the McIntosh Chief (Sir James McIntosh, the famed of our day, is that Killachy’s). Her name was Grace, but on account of her height, and perhaps of her abilities, she was always called in the family Grizel Mhór. I don’t know what fortune she brought beyond herself and the contents of a great green chest, very heavy, with two deep drawers at the bottom of it, which stood in the long garret as far back as my recollection reaches, and held the spare blankets well peppered, and with bits of tallow candles amongst them. She was the mother of McAlpine—Patrick Grant, surnamed McAlpine, I don’t well know why, the great man of our line, who would have been great in any line. He removed from the Dell to the Doune, built what was then a fine house there, and had the family arms sculptured and coloured set over the door. I remember regretting the shutting up of that old door, and the dashing over of that coat of arms with stones and yellow mortar. [His brothers were Colonel William Grant, who married in 1711 Anne, a daughter of Ludovic Grant of Grant, and was the founder of the Ballindallochs,3 and Mr John Grant, who died unmarried.] Whether he had any brothers and sisters I am not clear about but he had plenty of sons and daughters and his Wife was the daughter of the Laird of Grant, his Chief, one of whose sisters was married to Lovat. McAlpine ruled not only his own small patrimony, but mostly all the country round. His wisdom was great, his energy of mind and body untiring. He must have acted as a sort of despotick sovereign, for he went about with a body of four and twenty men, picked men, gaily dressed, of whom the principal and the favourite was his foster brother, Ian Bàn or John the fair, also a Grant of the family of Achnahatnich. Any offences committed any where this band took cognisance of. McAlpine himself was judge and jury, and the sentence quickly pronounced was as quickly executed, even when the verdict doomed to death. A corpse with a dagger in it was not infrequently met with among the heather, and sometimes a stout fir branch bore the remains of a meaner victim. I never heard the justice of a sentence questioned.
He was a great man in every sense of the word, this stout Baron of old, tall and strong made, and very handsome, and a Beau; his trews, he never wore the kilt, were laced down the sides with gold, the brogues on his beautifully formed feet were lined and trimmed with feathers, his hands, as soft and white as a lady’s and models as to shape, could draw blood from the finger ends of any other hand they grasped, and they were so flexible they could be bent back to form a cup which would hold without spilling a large table spoonful! of water. And he was an epicure, as indeed are all highlanders in their own way. They are contented with simple fare, and they ask no great variety, but what they have must be of its kind the best, and cooked precisely to their fancy. The well of which McAlpine invariably drank was the Lady’s Well at Tullochgrue, the water of which was certainly delicious. It was brought to him twice a day in a covered wooden vessel, a cogue or lippie. There is no end to the stories of McAlpine’s days—was none rather, for old world tales are wearing out in the highlands as every where else, and since we, the old race, have had to desert ‘the spot where our forefathers dwelt,’ the literal translation of our motto, Mo Duchus, there is less going to keep alive those feudal feelings which were so exclusively concentrated on the Laird’s family.
McAlpine had by his first wife, the Lady Grace or Marjorie, several sons—James who succeeded him, Patrick who went into the army, married some one whose name I forget, and retired after some years of service to Tullochgrue, and John, surnamed Corrour, from having been born at the foot of the rock of that name up in the hill at Glen Einich. The young cattle were always sent up in the summer to eat the fine grass in the glens, and the lady having gone up at this time to the Sheiling (a mere but and ben which the herds inhabited), either to bleach her linens, the water there having priceless qualities, or for mere change of air, was suddenly taken ill in that wilderness. Without nurse or doctor she got as suddenly well, and brought her fine young son back with her to the Doune. The army was Corrour’s destination of course; he saw a good deal of Service, and I believe died somewhere abroad, a distinguished officer, though he began life by fighting a running duel, that is, challenging two or three in succession, rather than acknowledge his highland ignorance. He had brought with him to the south, where he joined his regiment, a horse accoutred; the horse died, and John Corrour went about looking about for another to fit the saddle, which he insisted was the correct method of proceeding, and any one who questioned this had to measure swords with him. He had never seen asparagus; some being offered him he began to eat it at the white end, which provoking a laugh at the mess table, he laid his hand on the hilt of that terrible sword, and declared his undoubted right to eat what best pleased him. It is said that to his dying day he put aside on every occasion all the tender green points of asparagus. What marriages all the daughters of McAlpine made I never heard; one I know married Cameron of Glenevis.
A few years after the death of Lady Marjorie, when her family had long been grown up and settled, McAlpine, then in his 78th year, made what was considered to be a very low connection, although this second Bride of his was a handsome woman, the daughter of Grant of Tullochgorum, a respectable Tacksman. She bore him four sons, who were younger than some of his grandsons, Colonel William Grant, Captain Lewis Grant, George who was a sailor, a very uncommon profession for a highlander, and who died at sea, and Alexander who died young. Colonel William had been a good deal abroad, he had been in the West Indies, Canada, etc. He married in Ireland a Widow of the name of Dashwood, who died childless, and the Colonel soon after retired to the Croft, where he lived happily, but not altogether respectably, to a good old age, for his very handsome housekeeper, Jenny Gordon, bore him two children, our dearly loved Annie Grant and her brother Peter Me Alpine Grant, whom my father sent out as a Cadet to India. Being the eldest living member of the family, Colonel William was tacitly elected to conduct my Mother to the kirk on her arrival as a Bride in Rothiemurchus. On this occasion he dressed himself in full regimentals, sash, belt, sword and all, etc., and wore a queue tyed with very broad
black ribbon and which nearly reached down to his chair when he was seated. With cocked hat beneath his arm, he led her by the point of a finger, and walking backwards on tiptoe up the aisle in the face of the congregation, relinquishing her with a bow so low as made her feel much smaller than the little man who thus honoured her. He was the man of fashion of the circle, excelling in those graces of manner which belonged to the Beau of his day. He piqued himself on the amount of noise he made when rinsing out his mouth after dinner, when he squirted the water back into his finger glass in a way that alarmed all his neighbours. I have no recollection of the Colonel, he must have died when I was very young, but Captain Lewis I remember perfectly.
He had fought at the siege of Gibraltar, and was I daresay an excellent Officer, a little, handsome, dapper man, very gentlemanly, gay in manner, neat in habits, and with all the pride and spirit of his race. He had been given Inverdruie by my father when he resolved to make the Doune his own residence, and there I remember him from our earliest days till the autumn of 1814, when we lost him. His first wife, a Duff from Aberdeenshire, a pretty little old lady, had lived very unhappily with him, particularly since the death of their only child, a son, who had also gone into the army. They lived together for many years without speaking, though occupying the same rooms and playing backgammon together every night; when either made a disputed move the adversary’s finger was silently pointed to the mistake, no word was ever spoken. My Mother and my Aunts rather liked the Captain’s lady. She was a picture of a little old gentlewoman, riding every Sunday to church in a green Joseph4 and black bonnet, her pony led by a little maiden in a jacket and petticoat, plaid and snood. She also wore the hat perpetually, in the house and out of it. The Joseph was her habit of ceremony, put on when she made her calls or dined with the Laird, She wore a sort of shirt beneath the Joseph with neatly plaited frills and ruffles. The Captain made a much happier second choice, the wife I remember, Miss Grace Grant, Burnside, an elderly and a plain woman who had for some years kept house for her uncle, McPherson of Invereschie, and whom the Captain had always liked and had toasted, as was the fashion of his day, whenever after dinner he had proceeded beyond his second tumbler. She was installed at Inverdruie when we came back in 1812 to make our real home of Rothiemurchus; and at the Croft, instead of the Colonel was the cousin James Cameron, the grandson of McAlpine, his mother having been the Lady Glenevis; and he had married his cousin, the grand daughter of McAlpine, her father being Peter or Patrick Grant of Tullochgrue, a brother of Laird James.
But we must return to McAlpine himself, who died at 92, of some sore in his toe which the Doctors wished to amputate; but the Laird resolved to go out of the world as he had come into it, perfect, so the foot mortified. His eldest son James succeeded him; he was called the Spreckled Laird on account of being marked with the small pox which prevented his having turned out what nature intended, a very handsome man. He had some of the sternness of his grandfather James, the cruel Laird, and some of the talent of McAlpine, for in very troubled times he managed to steer clear of danger and to transmit his property unimpaired. He had married highly, a Gordon, a niece of the Duke’s, who brought him a little money, and a deal of good sense, besides beauty. She was of course a Jacobite, sent help to Prince Charlie, secreted her cousin Lord Lewis, the Lewie Gordon of the ballad5 in the woods, and fed him and his followers secretly, setting out with her maids in the night to carry provisions up to the forest, which, while she was preparing them, she persuaded the Laird were for other purposes. Mr Cameron showed us the very spot near Tullochgrue where the rebels were resting when an alarm was given that the soldiers were in pursuit; they had just time to go through the house at Tullochgrue, in at one door and out at the other, and so got off to a different part of the forest, before the little pursuing detachment came up to the fire they had been seated round, the embers of which were still burning.
The Lady Jean, though so fast a friend, could be, highland like, a bitter enemy. She was systematically unkind to the widowed Lady Rachel, whose marriage indeed had been particularly disagreeable, not only to the family but to the people; and she upon every occasion slighted the four young sons of McAlpine’s old age, who were some of them younger by a year or two than the Lady Jean’s own boys, their nephews. Poor Lady Rachel, not the meekest woman in the world, bore this usage of her children with little placidity. Once after the service in the Church was over she stept up with her fan in her hand to the corner of the kirk yard where all our graves are made, and taking off her high heeled slipper she tapt with it on the stone laid over her husband’s remains crying out through her tears, ‘Oh McAlpine McAlpine! rise up for ae half hour and see me richted!’ She had indeed, poor body, need of some one to act as her protector if all tales be true that were told of the usage she met with. Her sons, however, were honourably assisted by their half nephews, and helped by them all, well on in the world. The Spreckled Laird keeping clear of family disputes, as of publick disagreements.
Three sons and two daughters were born to the Spreckled Laird and the Lady Jean; Patrick, called the White Laird from his complexion, always known to us as our uncle Rothy; he married a daughter of Grant of Elchies, a good woman and a pretty one, though nicknamed by the people the yellow yawling, their name for the little bird the yellow hammer, because her very pale skin became sallow as her health gave way; they had no children. The second son, William, the Doctor, was my Grandfather. Alexander, the third, and quite his Mother’s favourite, with his Gordon name, was a clergyman, married as I think I mentioned to an English Miss Neave. She bore him seven sons, who all died before their parents. Grace, the eldest daughter, married Gumming of Logie, Henrietta, the younger, and a great beauty, married Grant of Glenmoriston; both had large families, so that we had highland cousins enough; but of the elder set, all that remained when we were growing up were Mr Cameron, his Wife, and her sister Mary, and our great grand Uncle Captain Lewis.
Mr Cameron, though only a lieutenant, had seen some service; he had been at the battle of Minden,6 and had very often visited my grandfather in London, who seemed to have been strongly attached to this cousin. I have several of my grandfather’s letters to Mr Cameron, charming in themselves from the spirit of benevolence which shines through them, and proving a perfect affection, founded on similarity of disposition, to have existed between them. They were considered to have strongly resembled each other in countenance, person, and manner. If so, my grandfather, with his superadded undoubted abilities, must have been a very irresistible person. Poor Mrs Cameron was nearly blind, worn down too by the afflicting loss of all her children save one, a merchant in Glasgow. Miss Mary, therefore, managed the establishment, a very primitive one, and kept the household from stagnating, as very likely would have been the case had the easy master and mistress been left to conduct the affairs of the Croft.
The Dell was after a very different style, the largest farm of any, but only tenanted by the forester, a handsome, clever, active little man of low degree. He had gained the heart of one much above him, the very pretty daughter of Steuart of Pityoulish, a tacksman on the Gordon property, of some account in the country, who made many a wry face before he could gulp down as a son in law the thriving Duncan McIntosh. The marriage turned out very happy; she was another Mrs Balquhidder for management—such spinnings, and weavings, and washings, and dyings, and churnings, and yearnings7 and knittings, and bleachings, and candle makings, and soap boilings, and brewings, and feather cleanings, never were seen or written of even in these days, as went on in those without intermission at the Dell. And this busy guidwife was so quietly gentle, so almost sleepy in manner, one could hardly suppose her capable of thinking of work, much less of doing an amount of actual labour that would have amazed any but a Scotchwoman.
I have written these memoirs so much by snatches, never getting above a few pages done at a time since the idle days of Avranches, that I can’t but fear I often repeat myself, so many old recollections keep running through my head when I set
about making notes of them, and not always in the order of their occurrence either. The two years and a half we spent in Rothiemurchus after giving up England don’t always keep quite clear of the summer visits to the dear old place afterwards, and about dates I am sure I am sometimes incorrect, for there are no memoranda of any sort to guide me, and such a long life to look back through now, the later years passed in such different scenes, I can only hope to give you a general impression of my youth in the highlands. It was well we were so very happy within ourselves, had so large an acquaintance of all ranks of our own people, for except during the autumn months, when we were certainly in a bustle of gaiety, we had very little intercourse with any world beyond our own, having at this time hardly a neighbour even at the great distances we were accustomed to go to them. Up the river there was Kinrara deserted; Mr McPherson Grant, afterwards Sir George, who had succeeded his uncle at Invereschie, never lived there; Kincraig, where dwelt Mr and Mrs McIntosh of Balnespick, we had little intercourse with. They were not rich, had a large family, he was a zealous farmer, and she a very stiff reserved woman. Belleville and Mrs Macpherson were in England, Miss Macpherson in Edinburgh, Clunie and his wife nobody knew. Down the river Castle Grant was shut up, the old General at Ballindalloch dead, and his heir, also the heir of Invereschie, we were never very cordial with, although he was married to the sister of Mrs Gillies. Having none, therefore, of our own degree almost to associate with, we were quite thrown upon the little bodies, of whom there was no lack both up and down the Spey. They used to come from all parts ostensibly to pay a morning visit, yet always expecting to be pressed to stay to dinner, and even all night. The ‘Little Laird,’ for so my father was called—in the gaelick Ian Beag8—and his ‘foreign lady’ were great favourites. My Mother, indeed, excelled in her entertainment of this degree of company, acted the highland hostess to perfection, excelled in the conversation suited to her guests, leading it to such topicks as they were most familiar with, as if she had primed herself for the occasion. If they merely paid a visit, she reconducted them on their homeward way, quite like the French of these times, to the door, or the outer door, or the gate according as was necessary. If they staid to dinner, she heaped up their plates with delicacies long after their solemn assurances of being already satisfied and her table was so well provided, her self so handsome at the head of it, they certainly would have been ill to please had they been fault finders.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 27