Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  There were two results followed our new friendship. Dr Gordon explained to my father the evil of our early rising and late breakfasting. It was often ten and after ten before my Mother appeared in the breakfast room. He also assured him that those stomachs that disliked milk, milk was not good for. The consequence was that we went back in rising to my Mother’s hour of seven, and that I had orders to make breakfast every morning at nine, and poor Mary partook of it; Caroline preferred remaining attached to ‘Jacques Cameron,’ Lachlan, and Johnny, who all throve on porridge or bread and milk. The other was that William, who was now fifteen, was to return no more to Eton. He was to remain at home till the College met in Edinburgh in October, when Dr Gordon consented to take charge of him. Great rejoicings followed this decision; England was so far away, the south of England, letters were long on the road; and though we had franks at command, so could write as often as we pleased,17 that did not shorten the distance, for the post used to go all the way round by Aberdeen to Inverness and on to Grantown by a runner, where another runner received our bag, a little foot page, and brought it three times a week to the Doune.

  This summer a very great improvement took place in our postal regulations. A stage coach was started to run three times a week over the hill between Perth and Inverness. Our bag was made up at Perth and dropped at Lynwilg at Robbie Cumming’s, whose little shop soon became a receiving house for more bags than ours. It was quite an event. We used to listen for the horn; on still days or when the wind set that way we could hear it distinctly, when walking on the flowdyke round the farm. At one or two breaks in the wooding we could see the coach, a novel sight that made us clap our hands, and set poor Miss Elphick a crying. She took to walking in that direction, it was so gay, so like what she remembered. The Bridge of Alvie was passed by the new coach about five o’clock, and we had to hurry home to dress for dinner. During the second course, or later on a bad evening, the boy sent for the bag returned. The Butler brought it in, unlocked it, and delivered the contents. It came, one evening in autumn, late. It had been a stormy day. We had done dinner, I dined downstairs now, I and Miss Elphick. We were sitting round the fire on which fresh logs had just been thrown, the dessert and wine were on the horse shoe table, when the bag came in. Such startling news—the Dutch revolt, the signal for rousing Europe. There had been a dearth of warlike news after the Spanish campaigns were over, and this unexpected turn of affairs in Holland excited every one.18 How very eagerly the papers were watched for many a day after.

  I do not recollect any other matter of importance happening during the remainder of this year. Lord Huntly and a set of grouse shooting friends came to Kinrara, but we did not see much of them. Some of them dined with us once or twice; Lord Huntly often came over in the morning, and he had William with him a great deal more than was good for an idle boy of his age, inclined by nature to follow a leader.19 I never like to think of the style of education given by the Aristocracy to their sons; home indulgence, School liberty, College license, and no enobling pursuits. We are then surprised that the low gratifications of the senses should during the season of the passions almost entirely supercede with our young men the higher pleasures of an exercised intellect. In one very important particular, the management of themselves, they are never in the very least instructed. At the schools it is a sort of catch who can system, get all you can, deceive all you can, conceal all you can, and for money. At Eton the boys had a great deal too much, not to be laid out by themselves for themselves, in necessaries first and indulgences afterwards; but all they could possibly want being provided for them at a cost of which they knew not one item, their ‘pouches’ were extra, to be wasted on nonsense, or worse. Some of these pouches were very heavy, great men’s sons carrying back with them from ten guineas upwards according to the number of rich friends they had seen in the holidays, every body ‘pouching’ an Eton boy. This drove the less well supplied to various expedients for raising the ‘ready,’ the private expenses of the Upper boys being very great. Supper parties with plenty of wine, punch, and cards, trips on the sly, hunting etc., bribes and so forth. One way of getting cash for all this was through the provision dealers. The boys bought their own breakfasts, that is they ordered them from these provision shops where they ran up accounts sent in every half year to the parents with the other charges. It was easy to have more rolls, more butter, more sugar etc. entered than were actually used, the accommodating dealer giving money instead of goods. Of course had this been known there would have been an end to it. When suspected all parties were well watched. As far as pounds, shillings and pence went, no great harm could be done. It was the principle that was so frightful, the breaking down of principle, the first step into the wrong, involving perhaps a lifetime of errour. There were other obliging persons at Eton who lent these children large sums, hung millstones round the necks of lads of fifteen that in many cases crushed them to the earth before they could set themselves free. William had Eton debts which he did not dare to tell of and with these weighing on his spirits, he departed for Edinburgh, where his Bond, washing and College expenses being paid, he was to be allowed a hundred a year for clothes and pocket money.

  The first quarter was paid and most of it went faithfully to Eton. I don’t know that he ever got another pound but he had credit and on that he drew, really, as ignorant as his little brother of how far his allowance would go, or what it would be wisest to do with it.

  1. Second generation (1772−1848) of a distinguished German musical family settling in England; he was appointed Master of the King’s Music in 1837.

  2. Oliver Goldsmith was a favourite author of the family.

  3. They knew each other well; his Edinburgh Squibs was to be published in 1 823.

  4. This refers to the system of primary education set up in Ireland in the 1830s; E.G. organised two such schools on her husband’s estate.

  5. Roman historian, author of De excellentus ducibus.

  6. See p. 213.

  7. As You Like It, III, ii, 277.

  8. Henry Siddons, Sarah’s eldest son, took a 21 year lease of the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh in 1809; his wife Harriet acted there too.

  9. No relation; Joanna Baillie (1762−1851) was well known for her ‘Plays on the Passions’.

  10. Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1578), which for the Scottish section relied heavily on Hector Boece’s Historia Gentis Scotorum, and thus provided Shakespeare with some dramatic but unhistorical possibilities.

  11. E.G. is wrong; her father was elected in 1812 and sought re-election in 1818 when he came third to Charles Tennyson (who spent £5,500 in the process) and J. N. Fazakerley.

  12. Not all of their reputations were to stand so high, although Philip Wouverman (1614−68) is remembered as a prolific Haarlem painter, Jan Steen (1626−79) has seldom been out of favour as a genre artist, and Antoine Watteau (1626−79) came back after the French Revolution to enjoy a great reputation.

  13. Russborough was the house of E.G.‘s Co. Wicklow neighbour, the fourth Earl of Milltown. Raphael’s masterpiece is more commonly known as ’La Belle Jardinière.’ It is in the Louvre and although there are further copies it is doubtful if one of them ended up at Rothiemurchus.

  14. Lely (1618−80), whose real name was van der Faes, succeeded van Dyke as principal painter to Charles 11. The most influential of Restoration portraitists, he is famous for his voluptuous Beauties at Court, and for his patriotic studies of Charles’s Admirals.

  15. Angelica Kaufmann (1741−1807) was one of the 36 original members of the Royal Academy.

  16. It was his drawings that illustrated his popular book on the Moray floods of 1829.

  17. As an M.P. her father would enjoy this privilege.

  18. The Peninsular War effectively ended with the battle of Vittoria in June 1813; the Dutch revolted in November.

  19. Lord Huntly himself had been at Eton between 1780 and 1786; he was 28 years older than her brother.

  C
HAPTER FIFTEEN

  1813−1814

  THE winter of 1814 set in extremely cold; we had the Spey frozen over early in January. The whole country was hung with frost, the trees looking like so many feathers sparkling with diamonds in the sunshine. The harvest homes and the forest ball, and the Xmas at Belleville, and the Xmas at the Doune had all taken place in due order. Our fete being remarkable by the opening of the Library, now at last completed. The walls were distempered in french gray relieved by panelling in black. The bookcases, finished by handsome cornices, and very high, looked, when quite filled with books, very comfortable. All along upon the top were busts, vases, Indian arrows, old warlike weapons, curious horns, any objects indeed that were suited to the situation. The old puritan in the ruff was over the mantel piece, plenty of easy chairs, little tables, a sofa, a large writing table, a cosy tea table, all the Thorley telescope, microscope, theodolyte, and other instruments of scientifick value. A large atlas, portfolios of prints, ditto of caricatures, and a very fair collection of useful books amounting to three or four thousand volumes. There was not a subject on which sufficient information could not be gathered from amongst them. There were some little old Elzevirs, Aldines, Basker-villes,1 and a Field Bible, to rank as Curiosities. A valuable shelf of huge folios, the Architecture of Italy, Balbec, Palmyra, and other engravings, as I may well know, for I wrote the catalogue. My father and I were months at this pleasant work, during the progress of which I really think my somewhat frivolous mind learned more of actual worth to me than it had taken in, in all the former years of my young life.

  The first point he insisted on, preparatory to my new employment, was that I should write a hand that could be read. On giving up half text on lines, I had got into the wavy unmeaning scribble then in fashion, pretty enough to look at, but extremely difficult to decipher, none of the letters being accurately formed, the c, the e, the legs of the m and the n, and the w and the u were all so like that except for the pop over the i, and the connexion of the sentences, it was quite impossible to say which was which. He therefore recommended an hour or so a day spent in forming letters that could not be mistaken. I was to write large, and slow, and carefully, gradually quicken the movement of the pen but not diminish the size of the writing. I was making an abstract of English history for him, and long before we got to the Crusades a very legible hand was formed, some what stiff perhaps, but easily read. The catalogue was written on folio paper, ruled for the proper headings; the books were classed, the size, edition, place of printing, number of volumes all mentioned; a column left for occasional remarks, and the place in the Library indicated by letters referring to the Divisions of the bookcases, and by numbers referring to the shelves, for the books were arranged according to size. When we came to putting them up we had to get Jane to help us; indeed she would have been the fitter assistant all through, her very decidedly studious turn of mind peculiarly qualifying her for the kind of work. That was I believe the reason my father did not employ her. She did not require sitting at any one’s feet to acquire knowledge; I did.

  James Craig,2 who at the sale bought some of the books, has now I believe our poor old Catalogue. It was bound in blue morocco, with gilt leaves, and lay always for reference on the large oval table. Beside it was a little marble covered volume, in which I entered the names of all who borrowed, the name of the work lent, and the number of volumes that were taken away, with the date of the loan. My father thought a Library kept for self was only the talent hid in a napkin, and that any loss or damage, rarely occurring, was to be balanced against the amount of good distributed. His books were a blessing, far and near. How curiously we get attached to what we have the care of. I was actually as proud of all those books as if I had written them. I missed one from its place in a moment. I could now, I think, almost put them all back where I used to see them. I have the Library as a whole perfectly before me; I think I could very nearly make that catalogue again from memory. Individually I knew and loved each volume and bitter tears I shed when that useful collection was dispersed. The Biblical knowledge gained during the progress of this labour of love has often since been of infinite use to me.

  We were still in the middle of our books when the poor old Captain died. He had been subject for many years to violent attacks of the tic in some of the nerves of the face. He had had teeth drawn, been up to Edinburgh to have a nerve cut, undergone treatment both surgical and medical, to no purpose. Twice a year, in the spring and fall, violent paroxysms of pain came on, lasting with intervals of care for many weeks. The only relief he got was from heat; he had to live in a room like an oven carefully stopped from every breath of air. During the fit he could not bear to see any one, the pain at times being so excruciating as to force him to cry out, a failing he considered unmanly. It once or twice happened that either before he took ill, or after he thought he was well, he felt a twinge approaching while we young people were with him. He turned us out in a hurry, quick march in a minute. His good wife was so tender of him at these times; what a mass of comforts she collected round him. He had been longer than usual without an attack. We were in hopes he was to be relieved during his decline from such agony as was scarce endurable and so he was, but how, by a stroke of paralysis. It took him in the night, affected one whole side, including his countenance and his speech. He never even partially recovered, and was a truly piteous spectacle sitting there helpless, well nigh senseless, knowing no one but his wife, and not her always, pleased with the warmth of the fire and sugar candy; the state of all others he had had the greatest horrour of ever failing into. He always prayed to preserve his faculties of mind whatever befell the failing body, and he lost them completely; not a gleam of reason ever more shot across his dimmed intellect, fortunately. This melancholy condition lasted eight months, and then the old man died quietly in the night, either 84 or 86 years of age.

  The news was brought early to the Doune in the morning, and my father and mother immediately set out for Inverdruie. They remained there the greater part of the day. and in the evening my father and I were occupied in writing the funeral letters, and then the orders to Inverness for mourning.

  Next day Jane and I were taken to Inverdruie. We had never seen a corpse, and the Captain had died so serenely, his vacant expression had so entirely disappeared, giving place to a placidity amounting to beauty, there was his old sweet smile about the mouth even; he lay there, so as if sleeping, that it was judged no less startling first view of death could be offered to young people. But the impression was fearful; for days I did not recover from it. Jane, who always cried abundantly when excited, got over it more easily. The colour, the indescribable want of colour, rather, the rigidity, the sharp outline of the high nose (he had piqued himself on the size and shape of this aristocratick feature), the total absence of flexibility. It was all horrour, him and not him. I longed to cry like Jane, but there only came a pain in my chest and head. My father preached a little sermon on the text before us. I am sure it was very good, but I did not hear it. He always spoke well, feelingly, and the people around seemed much affected; all my senses were absorbed by the awful image on that bed. We were led away, and then, while conversation was going on in the chamber of the Widow, my mind’s eye went back to the scene we had left, and things I had not thought I noticed appeared as I must have seen them.

  The body lay on the bed in the best room; it had on a shirt well ruffled, a night cap, and the hands were crossed over the breast. A white sheet was spread over all, white napkins were pinned on all the chair cushions, spread over the chest of drawers and the tables, and pinned over the few prints hung on the walls. Two bottles of wine and a plate of seed cake were on one small table, bread, cheese, butter, and whiskey on another, offered according to the rank of the numerous visitors by the one solitary watcher beside the corpse, a decent comely woman, a natural daughter of the poor Captain’s who was respectably married to a farmer in Strathspey. A great crowd was gathered in and about the house; the name of each new arrival
was carried up immediately to Mrs Grant, who bowed her head in approbation; the more that came the higher the compliment. She said nothing, however, she had a serious part to play—the highland Widow, and most decorously she went through it. Every body expected it from her, for when had she ever failed in any duty; and every body must have been gratified, for this performance was faultless. She sat on the Captain’s cornered arm chair in a spare bedroom, dressed in a black gown, and with a white handkerchief pinned on her head, one side pinned round the head, and then all the rest hanging over it like, I must repeat myself, ‘the kerchief on the head of some of the prints of our Henry of Bolingbroke.’ Motionless the Widow sat during the whole length of the day, silent and motionless. If addressed, she either slowly nodded or waved her head, or, if an answer were indispensible, whispered it. Her insignia of office, the big bright bunch of large house keys, lay beside her, and if required, a lady friend, first begging permission, and ascertaining by the nod or the wave which key was the proper one, carried off the bunch, gave out what was wanted, and then replaced it. All the directions for the funeral were taken from herself in the same solemn manner. We were quite awe struck, the room was full, crowded up by comers and goers, and yet a pin could have been heard to drop in it. The short question solemnly asked in the lowest tone audible, the dignified sign in reply, alone broke the stillness of the scene—for scene it was. Early in the morning, before company hours, who had been so busy as the Widow. Streaking the corpse,3 dressing its chamber, settling her own, giving out every bit and every drop that was to be used upstairs and down by gentle and simple, preparing the additional supplies in case of need afterwards so quietly applied for by the friendly young lady, there was nothing, from the merest trifle to the matter of most importance, that she had not, her own active self, seen to.