Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  Far different, yet no truer or better divine, in one sense of the word, was his neighbour, our prime favourite, the Minister of Abernethy, known through all the country as Parson John. He was a little merry man, fond of good eating, very fond of good drinking, no great hand at a sermon, but a capital hand at either the filling or the emptying of a bowl of punch. He was no scholar; his brother of Duthil used to wonder how ever he got through the University, he had so little skill in the humanities—of learning. For good practical sense, honesty of purpose, kindness of heart, tender feeling combined with energetick action, Parson John could hardly have been surpassed. He found his parish a nest of smugglers, cattle stealers, idlers, every species of immorality rife in it. He left it filled by the best conducted set of people in the country. He was all the more respected for the strictness of his discipline, yet a sly joke against the minister was much relished by his flock. There was no very deep religious feeling in the highlands up to this time. The clergy were properly reverenced in their capacity of pastors without this respect extending to their persons unless fully merited by propriety of conduct. The established form of faith was determinately adhered to, but the kittle questions,5 which had so vexed the puritanick south, had never yet troubled the minds of their northern neighbours. Our mountains were full of fairy legends, old Clan tales, forebodings, prophecies, and other superstitions, quite as much believed in as the Bible. The shorter catechism and the fairy stories were mixed up somehow together to form the innermost faith of the highlander, a much gayer and less metaphysical character than his Saxon tainted countryman. Parson John therefore suited his parishioners, none the worse for his occasional lapses from the dignity befitting his station.

  The other clergyman of our acquaintance was Mr McDonald of Alvie, our nearest neighbour of the three. He was a clever worldly man, strictly decorous, not unfriendly, although most careful in his management, particular in ascertaining the highest price of meal, his stipend depending on the fluctuation of the market, the ministers being paid in kind, so many ‘bolls of victual’ —meaning corn.6 He preached well, rather at length perhaps, and made very fervent tiresome prayers and immensely long graces, and of all people in the world he was detested most heartily by our friend the minister of Duthil; his very name was an abomination, why we could never make out. He had been married twice, in neither case happily, both wives having become invalids. It never struck any one that the situation of his manse, nearly surrounded by water, could have affected the health of women not naturally strong. The second Mrs McDonald was dying at this time. We often sent her delicacies, but never saw her; indeed, we never saw any of the parsons’ wives, they seemed to keep quietly at home, like Mrs Balquhidder, ’making the honey.’ We heard, however, plenty of the wife of Parson John, an excellent, managing woman, who kept her husband in great order. They had a large family of children, the bolls of victual were not many, and the glebe lands were small. She had to keep her eyes open, and water the ash tree betimes in the morning. One of her most prolifick sources of income was her dairy. She piqued herself on what she made of it, and was accused by the minister of a very economical use of its produce in the house, in order to send the more to market. Now, of all simple refreshments Parson John loved best a drink of fine milk, well coated with cream; this luxury his wife denied him, the cream must go into the churn, the skimmed milk was the fittest for the thirsty. In spite of her oft repeated refusals and her well hidden key she suspected that the minister privately contrived to visit the dairy, sundry cogues of set milk at sundry times having the appearance of being broken into. She determined to watch; and she had not long to wait before she detected the culprit in the act, met him face to face in the passage as he closed the door. She stoutly charged him with his crime, he as stoutly denied his guilt, hard words passed; but the poor minister! he had on his hat, he had forgotten to take it off, he had put his mouth to the cogue, the brim of the hat had touched the cream—there it was fringed with her treasure! Before her eyes, an evidence of his crime, and he denying it! What Highland wife could bear such atrocity. ‘Man,’ said the daughter of Dalachapple, ten acres of moor without a house on it, ‘how daur ye! before the Lord! and you his graceless minister! see there!’ He told the story himself, with remarkable humour, over the punchbowl, when Mrs Grant was not by.

  The Captain had another story of him which used to be told to us by his Mrs Grant. His sermons were mostly practical, he was unskilled in scholastick learning. Sometimes when he had gone his round of moral duties he would, for lack of matter,’ treat his congregation to a screed from the papers. They were very stirring times, revolutions and battle by sea and land. The minister was a keen politician, his people by no means unwilling to hear the news, although they very earnestly shook their heads after listening to it. False intelligence was as largely circulated then as now, it came and it spread, and it was then to be contradicted. The parson gave it as he got it, and one Sunday delivered a marvellous narrative of passing events. Finding out his errour during the week, he hastened honestly to correct it. So, on the following Sunday, after the psalm and the prayer and the solemn giving out of the text, he raised his hands and thus addressed his flock, ’My brethren, it was a’ lies I told you last Sabbath day.’ How the Minister of Duthil enjoyed this story! It was nuts and walnuts to him!

  I will now go back to our every day and introduce the rest of our acquaintance as we meet with them. The first incident that comes back on memory is the death of old George Ross, not the gardener, the henwife’s husband. He was not so very old a man but he had never been a strong one and, catching cold, inflammation came on; a bottle of whiskey, or may be more, failed to cure him, so he died, and was waked, after the old fashion shaved and partly dressed and set up in his bed, all the country side collecting round him. After an abundance of refreshments the company set to dancing, when, from the jolting of the floor, I suppose, out tumbled the corpse into the midst of the reel, and away scampered the guests screaming and running about the farm yard declaring the old man had come to life again. As the bereaved wife had not been the gentlest of helpmates, this was generally supposed to be a warning—of what however was not declared; all that was plain was that the spirit of the deceased was dissatisfied. Some of the spectators had seen his eyes roll, his hand raised, his head shake. Many extraordinary signs were spoken of, Caroline the French girl told us, for she heard a great deal more than we did from being so much with my Mother’s maid.

  Before winter we heard of the death of our cousin Patrick Grant of Glenmoriston, while walking on the banks of his own beautiful river, of disease of the heart, which complaint is an heirloom in our family. I learned a great lesson from this event. Some one told it to me, and I, all unthinking, and very sorry, for Patrick had been very kind to us, went straight to the drawing room with my sad news. My Mother immediately went off into hystericks, was carried to bed, and lost her baby; all which was represented to me by my father as a consequence of my extreme want of consideration. I was to remember never in future to tell any ill tidings to any one suddenly, but in particular not to married ladies who were frequently in a condition to be seriously injured by having their nerves startled. I had no nerves then (like the famous Duchess of Marlborough), 7 and could not myself comprehend the misery caused by their derangement. I wish I could say the same now. I was very much grieved at my thoughtlessness, however, and with many tears promised to be for ever more cautious in all cases. We had none of us had an idea that another baby was expected and the affliction in the Schoolroom was quite distressing at the disappointment—for a day.

  The next death was the Shawe. He was not the lineal heir of the old race, he was descended collaterally from a former Chief of the ruined Clan, of whose once large possessions nothing now remained but the little farm of Dalnavert on Speyside. It was on the long meadow there that the Volunteers were so frequently exercised, Mr Shawe having a commission in the Regiment. He was the Major, and, for so old a man, a good officer. He had served in the lin
e in his youth. When we went to the Reviews we always called at the house of Dalnavert, a mere black peat bothy, no better outside than the common huts of the same material, already falling into disuse about the country. It was larger, for it contained three rooms, each of which had a window of four panes, not made to open, however; and it had two chimneys, or rather only one chimney and two chimney tops, open wooden ones, for the kitchen fire place was as usual, a stone on the floor and a hole in the roof. Between the parlour and the bedroom a chimney stalk was built. Both these rooms too were wainscotted, so that they looked neat within and were extremely warm. It was the old house that had come down with the few fields around it to this only survivor of his Line, and he would not change it. He had one child, a daughter married away from him to a half pay Captain of marines, the son of a Schoolmaster up in Badenoch, and one sister near his own age who lived with him. She it was that presented my mother with the sugared whiskey, giving her the same spoon she herself had more than tasted with, and which dose my Mother escaped by preferring her whiskey plain. Well, Major Shawe died, and was buried with military honours, in the kirk yard of Rothiemurchus, by the side of ‘them that went before him,’ up close to the graves of the Grants, just outside the wall enclosing our ancestors. The Invereschie and Rothiemurchus Companies formed a very imposing part of the funeral procession, the body being borne in the midst of the soldiers, and a volley fired over the grave. My father had a neat stone slab on four short pillars placed over it afterwards with a short inscription, and so ended this ancient feud—a lesson and a sad one. I never could see any of the Shawe’s descendants, in the lowly state to which they were then reduced without an uneasy feeling, although when the male heirs were gone, the highlanders consider all gone, females being of no account with them, Chieftainships not being transmissible through daughters.

  Miss Jean Shawe did not long survive her brother; when she died the niece and her husband, Captain and Mrs Clarke, left the farm they had rented at Invernahavon and came with their large and wonderfully handsome family to Dalnavert, where they built a small stone and lime house, and from their connexion with Belleville! the old Shawe blood raised its head a bit. A change indeed was coming over the old feudal feelings. Belleville was the son of Ossian, of the Mr Macpherson who pretended to translate Ossian, and made a fine fortune out of the Nabob of Arcot’s debts. Who this Macpherson was I do not rightly know. A lad of parts, however, though of very lowly birth, not even a little farmer’s son.8 His sister was married to the Schoolmaster Clarke, whose son, the marine, married the Shawe’s daughter. Ossian Macpherson, highland to the very heart, helped his sister, educated her son, bought land around his birth place, and built the fine house on the heights near Kingussie, which for many a year looked so bleak, and so bare, and so staring, while the planting on the hill sides was young and is now really improving, rising from the shelter of skreens of hard wood overlooking the plain and backed by mountains. He never married. But he had four acknowledged children brought up most carefully. To his eldest son, James, our friend, he left his large estates in land. The second, Charles, he sent to the Civil Service in India, where he died. His two daughters he portioned handsomely. Our Belleville, who had also been in India, returned to take possession of his highland property about the year 1800. He married the summer my sister Mary was born, and brought a young Edinburgh wife home to the two London sisters, none of the three very particularly easy to live with. Juliet Macpherson, the youngest sister, very pretty and very clever, soon provided another home for herself, she married Dr, afterwards Sir David Brewster.9 The more intractable Anne continued to battle on through many a long year of struggle against the somewhat despotick authority of her sister in law, till not very lately her brother died, and she herself became the Lady Belleville, when she certainly repaid with usury the slights of former days.

  Ossian had left his affairs in some confusion. He had got entangled in several lawsuits and there was some claim made against him by the Directors. Our Belleville inherited many vexations, knowing little of business he left it too much to his different Law Agents. Believing his resources inexhaustible he lived ostentatiously—open house—a crowd of servants—handsome equipages—and tours of pleasure. A thunderclap at his elbow would have startled him less than the announcement received by post the morning that his accompt at his banker’s had been overdrawn. Often in our confidential conversations of after times, Mrs Macpherson described the effect of this shock on her husband—his amazement, his horrour, his despair, the difficulty of rousing him to meet his position. But it was done—and both putting their shoulders at once to the wheel they were set agoing again after some years of comparative poverty. They gave up Belleville, let the farm, shut up the house, sold the stock, and thus furnished with small funds, removed to a lodging in the neighbourhood of London, where in two or three rooms with one highland maid they watched the unravelling of their tangled skeins. Almost all their law difficulties were over in this year I am writing of. They had returned to Belleville before the winter to practise the most severe economy, he to farm, she to save, and thus to try again to get their heads above water. From this time they were our kindest neighbours, living like ourselves, winter and summer, in our highland homes. We became mutually dependant on the resources of each other; never a shadow of disagreement came between us. Upon us young people, the intimacy had a most favourable effect. Belleville, though a weak man, was thoroughly a gentleman, his tastes were refined, his desultary reading extensive, his kindness unfailing. There was a harshness in the character of Mrs Macpherson that we could have wished to soften; her uncompromising integrity was applied to weaker vessels sternly. Her activity, and her energy, and her industry, all admirably exerted in her own sphere of duties, rose up against any tolerance of the shortcomings in these respects of less vigorous temperaments. She measured all by her own rigid rules, her religious feelings partaking of this asperity. She was her own sister to old Mause in the strength and the acrimony of her puritanism.10 I used so to wish her to say to herself, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ But she had no idea then that there was a doubt of her being justified. She was right in principle, though ungentle, and so unchristian, in practice. She had learned no better in the house of her odious Mother. And this fault apart, a better woman never existed, anxious to help all around her of all degrees. She had a clear understanding, good quick abilities, and a warm heart. We owed much in many ways to Mrs Macpherson, and we ended the year with her, my father and Mother, and Jane and I, spending the Christmas new style with these good neighbours. We ourselves, who did every thing highland fashion, always kept the old style at home.

  We had three harvest homes to keep in Rothiemurchus: a very small affair indeed at the Croft; a luncheon in the parlour for us children only, and a view of the barn prepared for the dinner and dance to the servants. It was a much merrier meeting at the Dell; my father and mother and all of us, stuffed into the carriage, or on it, drove there to dinner, which was served in the best parlour, my father at the head of the table, Duncan McIntosh at the foot, and those for whom there was not room at the principal board went with at least equal glee to a side table. There was always broth, mutton boiled and roasted, fowls, muirfowl—three or four pair in a dish—apple pie and rice pudding, such jugs upon jugs of cream. Cheese, oatcakes and butter; thick bannocks of flour instead of wheaten bread, a bottle of port, a bottle of sherry, and after dinner no end to the whiskey punch. In the kitchen was all the remains of the sheep, more broth, more mutton, haggis, head and feet singed, puddings black and white, a pile of oaten cakes, a kit of butter, two whole cheeses, one tub of sowans,11 another of curd, whey and whiskey in plenty. The kitchen party, including any servants from house or farm that could be spared so early from the Croft, the Doune, or Inverdruie, dined when we had done, and we ladies, leaving the gentlemen to more punch, took a view of the kitchen festivities before retiring to the bed chamber of Mrs McIntosh to make the tea. When the gentlemen joined us the parlour was prepared
for dancing. With what extasies we heard the first sweep of that masterly bow across the strings of my father’s Cremona. It had been my grandfather’s. A small very sweetly toned instrument lent to Mr McIntosh to be kept in order. He thought it wanting in power, his reels could not be given with spirit from it, so he enlarged the S holes. What became of this valuable instrument I know not. It had been spoiled. The first Strathspey was danced by my father and Mrs McIntosh; as the principal personages. The other pair to form the foursome was of less consequence. If my mother danced at all, it was later in the evening. My father’s dancing was peculiar; a very quiet body and very busy feet, they shuffled away in double quick time steps of his own composition, boasting of little variety, sometimes ending in a turn about which he imagined was the fling; as English it was altogether as if he had never left Hertfordshire. My Mother did better, she moved quietly in highland matron fashion, ‘high and disposedly’ like Queen Elizabeth and Mrs McIntosh, for however lightly the lasses footed it, Etiquette forbade the wives to do more than ‘tread the measure.’ William and Mary moved in the grave style of my Mother; Johnny without instructions danced beautifully; Jane was perfection, so light, so active, and so graceful; but of all the dancers there, none were equal to little Sandy, the present Factor, the son of Duncan McIntosh, though no son of his wife.