I shall never forget her on the day of the funeral, the fifth day from the death. Her weeds had arrived, and remarkably well she looked in them. She, a very plain woman in her ordinary somewhat shabby attire, came out in her ‘new mournings’ really like an elderly gentlewoman. She sat in the same room, in the same chair, with the addition of just a little more dignity, and a large white pocket handkerchief. All her lady friends were round her, Miss Mary and Mrs William from the Croft, Mrs McIntosh from the Dell, Mrs Stewart from Pityoulish, two of the Miss Grants, Kinchurdy. Her own sister Miss Anne from Burnside, Miss Bell Macpherson from Invereschie. My Mother, Jane, and I. There was very little said; every gig or horse arriving caused a little stir for a moment, hushed instantly. The noise without was incessant, for a great concourse had assembled to convoy the last of McAlpine’s sons to his long home. A substantial Collation had been set out in the parlour, and another, unlimited in extent, in the kitchen. People coming from so far, waiting for so long, required abundance of refreshment. They were by no means so decorous below as we were above in the lady’s chamber, though we had our table of good things too; but we helped ourselves sparingly and very quietly. At length my father entered with a paper in his hand; it was the list of the pall bearers. He read it over to Mrs Grant, and then gave it to her to read herself. She went over the names without a muscle moving, and then, putting her finger upon one, I don’t know whose it was, she said in a low but very distinct voice, ‘I would rather Ballintomb, they were brothers in arms.’ My father bowed, and then offered her his hand, on which she rose, and every one making way they went out together, a few following. They passed along the passage to the death chamber, where on trestles stood the Coffin, uncovered as yet, and with the face exposed. The Widow took her calm last look, she then raised a small square bit of linen, probably put there by herself for the purpose, and dropping it over the countenance, turned and walked away. It was never to be raised again. Though Jane and I had been spared this solemnity, there was something in the whole proceedings that quite frightened us and when Mrs Grant returned to her arm chair and lay back in it, her own face covered by her handkerchief, and when my father’s step sounded on the stairs as he descended, and the screws were heard as one by one they fastened down the coffin lid, and then the heavy tramp of the feet along the passage as the men moved with their burden, we drew closer to each other and to good Mrs McKenzie from Aviemore, who was among the company.
Hundreds attended the funeral. A young girl in her usual best attire walked first, then the Coffin borne by four sets of broad shoulders, extra bearers grouping round, as the distance was a couple of miles at least to the kirkyard. Next came the near of kin, and then all friends fell in according to their rank without being marshalled—highlanders never presume, their innate good breeding never subjecting them to a forced descent from too honourable a place; there is even a deal of fuss at times to get them to accept one due to them. Like the Bishops, etiquette requires them to refuse at first the proffered dignity. What would either say if taken at their word.
The presbyterian Church has no burial ceremony. It is the custom, however, for the minister to attend, generally speaking, to give a somewhat lengthy blessing before the feast, and a short prayer at the grave. Mr Grant of Duthil did his part better than was expected; no one, from the style of his sermons, expected the touching eulogy pronounced over the remains of the good old Captain—not undeserved, for our great grand Uncle had died in peace with all the world, as little burdened by sin of any sort as any poor frail humanity than ever ran through life. He was long regretted, many a kind action he had done, and never a harsh word had he said of or to any one.
My father gave the funeral feast at the Doune. Most of the friends of fit degree accompanied him home to dinner, upwards of twenty there must have been and very merry they were. All sons of pleasant stories went the round with the wine bottles, clergy and all, and the Parsons of Alvie and Abernethy were both there, as well as our own Minister of Duthill, coming in to the Library to tea in high good humour. The rest of the people, who had been abundantly refreshed at Inverdruie, dispersed.
The Captain had made a Will. Small as his income must have been, he left his Widow comfortably provided for, his sword, pistols and snuff box to William, £500 to us younger children and my father his residuary legatee. We three girls were each to have £100 for Wedding clothes, Johnny who was his Godson the remaining £200. Where it all went to who can tell. I only know I never got my share nor any of it. I never got any Wedding clothes, except a habit from my father which he had bought from Mary who never rode, and a hat and feathers from my Mother that came out for herself and she thought too youthful. I never wore this hat but once either, the Colonel made me take it off, he could not bear it and the insects ate it all up at Poona. Mary had the wit to order for herself such extras to her outfit as she thought necessary and she gave the bills to Masserwanjee so she did get an instalment—Jane must have got all the rest, her trousseau was very handsome and very expensive. Perhaps we might have been answered as the Lady Logie answered May Anne. Miss Brodie of Lethan left May Anne a legacy, I forget the amount, not large, but enough to be grateful for at any rate, and when May Anne on growing up enquired after it, ‘your legacy, indeed,’ said her astonished Mother, little legacy you’re like to find at this time of day—you ate it, and you drank it, and you wore it, and what better would you do with it.
The funeral over, there came on a marriage. Lord Huntly, now in the decline of his racketty life, overwhelmed with debts, sated with pleasure, tired of fashion, the last male heir of the Gordon line, married.4 What would the mother who adored him have given to have seen his wedding day. All the regrets that she caused to herself and him for preventing the love of his youth from becoming her daughter in law. She actually carried this beautiful girl away with her to Paris and married her to an old merchant, while her son was away with his regiment.5 His bride was young, and rich, and good, and fair, but neither clever nor handsome. She made him, however, very happy, and paid his most pressing debts, that is her father did, old Mr Brodie of the Burn, brother to Brodie of Brodie, who either himself or somebody for him had had the good sense to send him with a pen to a counting house instead of with a sword to the battle field, where he made a really large fortune; he gave with his daughter, his only child, £100,000 down, and left her more than another at his death—and really to her husband her large fortune in money was the least pan of her value. She possessed upright principles, good clear common sense, and when by and by she began to feel her powers and took the management of his affairs, she turned out a first rate woman of business. She has got into the cant of the Methodists of late years, which sort of aberration, like any other, indeed, is a pity. She was very young at the time of her marriage, too unformed to be shewn as the fastidious Marquis ‘Bride, so while all the north was a blaze of bonfires in honour of the happy event, her Lord carried her off abroad.6 The Minister of Alvie made what was thought a very indelicate allusion to ’coming rejoicings closely connected with the present’ in a speech to the gathering round the blazing pile on Tor Alvie; and as no after events ever justified the prophecy, this incorrect allusion was never forgotten. The marriage was childless. Lord Huntly was the last Duke of Gordon.
A very unpleasant but unfortunately not a very rare occurrence in our part of the highlands about this time necessitated great changes in the family. My Mother’s maid, poor Peggy Davidson, whom we all found much changed in temper of late, asked leave to go to Inverness for a week on a visit to the Aunt who had brought her up. The week passed and Peggy not returning my Mother was annoyed. She never liked advantage being taken of her good nature. A second week going by, Peggy was written to and after some delay an answer was returned that she was unable to resume her place, that the reason of this Simon Ross the Butler would give, for he ‘had ruined her for ever.’
It was a regular thunder clap. We all much liked poor Peggy. She was very obliging, very useful, a remarkably neat dre
ss maker and plain worker and a good hair dresser and we always fancied she would remain with us for ever, as besides being exceedingly plain in face, she was slightly deformed in figure, lame in her left leg and in her right arm, the leg was a contraction that kept the heel up several inches from the ground so that she only walked on the toes of that foot and even then she halted. The arm had been broken and also dislocated at the elbow joint, which stiffened so that she never afterwards got the full use of it. As this accident happened in our service, the rumble falling off the carriage while she was in it, and throwing her away on some stones by the side of the road in the hill of Drumochter, my father and Mother considered her as a sort of charge whom they were bound to provide for. Altogether the affair happening among the upper servants was very vexatious. Ross was the gardener’s eldest son, a very superiour man, he had lived with us many years having come to us at Twyford, he had given us lessons in writing and ciphering during the summer when we had no governess. He had a good library up in his own room, often borrowed my father’s books, played extremely well on the violin and though lame from a stiff knee joint was a handsome man, had a particularly fine head. What had bewitched him so to misconduct himself and to choose such an object for his love my Mother declared herself utterly unable to comprehend. She was very much irritated and insisted on his marriage or dismissal. My father we thought inclined to be more lenient but he was over ruled. My Mother, a quiet woman in general, was not roused with impunity. This affair roused her thoroughly and she would admit of no compromise. Ross was a good servant, a good son, a clever man, a nice looking man. To these and many other perfections she assented but he was an immoral man and he had outraged decency in her house and he should not remain in it unless he made Peggy in highland fashion ‘an honest woman.’ We were constantly patching up marriages all over the place a few months after the harvest homes. It was so common a matter no one thought much about it. Betty Ross the housemaid and John Fyffe the handsome Smith had been very quickly made man and wife after the great forest ball. Their wedding necessitated two or three more by the help of the Laird’s authority, and at the farm kitchen the ‘lass’ who cooked for the lads’ was changed regularly every half year, the late incumbent moving not much too soon into a house of her own. At that distance our eyes could be pardoned for not seeing too clearly, but in this case it was very different and as Ross stoutly refused to marry this unfortunate woman, he had to leave us. This makes me recollect that I have antedated the arrival of the magnificent Gouard—he did not come back with my father till this summer now approaching, to replace Ross who was parted with immediately. My Mother requiring only the footman to attend upon her during my father’s absence, he was going as usual in the spring to London.
Miss Elphick’s mother, an old woman, having had a serious illness during the winter, and wishing to see her daughter, it was determined that we should have holiday for six weeks, and that our Governess should travel under my father’s escort to town, Caroline the French girl going with them to preserve the ‘propers.’ She was not to return, my Mother disapproving of her grimaces with Jacques Cameron, and also believing she knew more of the late nursery business than so young a person ought to have been acquainted with. Caroline was misjudged. She was very innocent and very timid, this prevented her understanding or speaking and as for her flirtation with our most loutish cousin, it was the mere manner of her country women—was exercising her little talent of coquetry on the only object within her reach. She had been very useful to us in the way of naturalizing her language among us. People may read a foreign language well, understand it as read, sufficiently, even write it well, idiom and all. But speak it, carry on the affairs of every day life from mere grammar and dictionary learning, I really do not believe to be possible. A needlefull of thread was my first example in point. We were all at work, and I asked for ‘du fil pour mon aiguille.’ ‘Ah, hah,’ said Caroline, ‘une aiguillée de fil; tenez, Mademoiselle;’ and so on with a thousand other instances, never forgotten, for those eighteen months during which her Parisian french was our colloquial medium the greater part of the day made us all thoroughly at home in the language; and though rusted by years of disuse, a week in France brought it back so familiarly both to your Aunt Mary and me that the natives, as you may remember, could not believe we had not been brought up in their country. My father was much pleased at his plan succeeding so well; he however forbade any mixture of tongues. When we wrote and spoke french no English was to be interlarded. When we spoke or wrote English, there were to be no French words introduced. English was rich in expletives, he said, there could be no difficulty in finding fit expressions in it, able to convey any meaning, and he would send us to Dryden, Milton, Bolingbroke and Addison in proof of this.7 Were we to alter any sentences of theirs by changing an English for a French word we should enfeeble the style, probably alter the signification.
One of his favourite exercises for us was the making us read aloud passages from his favourite Authours to impress them on our memories, besides giving us a just style of declamation; he himself had been taught by Stephen Kemble, and he certainly read beautifully. Jane was an apt pupil. She sometimes mouthed a little, only sometimes in general she in her round clear voice gave the musick, as it were, to the subject, expressed so perfectly by the gentle emphasis she employed. William was not bad either, by no means. I was wretched, they did nothing but make fun of me. I don’t think I was then capable of feeling much so could not interpret any, my mind being in some respects uncommonly slow of coming to maturity. They told an abominable story of me, at least half a dozen times a year, how that Jane, having got grandly through the mustering of all the devils in hell, alias fallen angels, and ended magnificently with ‘He called so loud that all the hollow deep of hell resounded,’ as did our library, I began in what William called my ‘childish treble,’ ‘Princes, Potentates,’ in a voice a mouse at the fireside could have imitated! Milton did not suit me, but Sterne was worse; nobody ever could read Sterne, I am certain—my father couldn’t. That ass, and the Lieutenant’s death, and the prisoner,—who could read them aloud, or without tears, in any way.8
To finish the tale of poor Peggy. Her stern Aunt at Inverness declined to keep her after the scandal she had brought on a decent name. So she was boarded in the neighbourhood till she weaned her baby, Ross being made to leave funds for her support. He then placed the child with one of his sisters at Kincairn. The Mother never saw him more. She went to London by the help of friends and staid there with our old Coachman William Bird and his nice wife who had set up hackney coaches. My father having told her story to Alderman Atkins, she was taken into that good man’s family to attend upon his invalid wife, a service she faithfully performed and remained in till her own death. She died of consumption some years after this, most carefully nursed, poor thing, by those kind people who had become quite attached to her. My Mother promoted the housemaid, Christy Eason, to be her own maid. A Kingussie girl who began life as the attendant of one of the Montague children, their Grandmother the Duchess of Gordon, happened to have with her at Kinrara. Lord Francis, a delicate boy, became so fond of her and throve so well under her care that she was sent back with him to Kimbolton, and when he went to school she was made stillroom maid there till the Establishment was broken up on the Duke of Manchester going out as Governour to Jamaica. She came back to Badenoch an unspoiled pretty brunette and was glad after a while to leave an uncomfortable home for harder work at the Doune. She was a general favourite in the house, her promotion therefore pleased every one. She was much attached to us all, especially to my Mother, who liked her in turn. After some years, love led Christy far away from us, the love did not prosper, though she herself did, and curiously enough in the old age of both she returned to my Mother’s service in Jane’s house in Edinburgh and there she is now waiting on her faithfully,
Simon Ross got a good place with Colonel and Lady Charlotte Drummond. He left them to push his fortunes in London, from which time he ceased
to hold any communication with his family. At long last came a letter to an elder sister married near Kilravock to say that she would receive in a few days a trunk containing some articles of value he would trust to her disposing of for the benefit of his son, that he bade her and all the rest of his relations farewell for of him no one would ever hear more. Not one trunk but two arrived filled with quite handsome wearing apparel, books, the gold watch with the chain and enormous bunch of seals we used so to admire as children, a fine breastpin and a few other trinkets, evidently the man’s whole possessions. What had become of him remains to this day a mystery, no trace of him was ever recovered. Had he emigrated he would have required his wardrobe, had he been in distress he must have parted with it, had he died a felon’s death it would have escheated to the crown. The only remaining probability was that he had contemplated and committed suicide. Why or wherefore no one will ever know. It was all a very melancholy story and had it come on at once would have excited more distressing feelings than it did when we heard it after a lapse of years. None of that old gardener’s children turned out well. There must have been something wrong in the rearing of them. To return from this episode. My father, Miss Elphick, and Caroline happily off, we bade adieu to the restraints of the Schoolroom. We did not neglect our studies, but we shoved them aside sometimes, and we led an easy son of half busy, whole merry life, more out of doors than in, all the fine bright weather of the springtide. Jane looked after Mary’s lessons, I carried Johnny on through his. We all four agreed that the Governess was quite a supernumerary—yet we owed her much. She was tidiness itself, a beautiful needlewoman, mended old things, like Burns’s Cottar’s Wife,9 to look like new, and taught her art to us. She never allowed one atom to be put off till to-morrow that ought to be done to-day. She made us obedient to rule, careful of time, steady to business. Really with Mary she had done wonders; not much at first, very little at a time but by methodical perseverance she had roused her mind to exertion; Touchstone had been a great help. Jane and I were quite surprised to find the child who a year before would not count to ten, able to work any sum in the simple rules. She played neatly on the pianoforte giving great expression to the easy airs she had learned. She had waked up to ask questions and to be interested in the answers, could laugh and be merry and enjoy her walks, and though, from her great size for her age, her intellect remained slow till her growth of body was over, she was never again the stupid thing Miss Elphick found her. Jane and she got on very lovingly. Johnny was so easy to teach he and I worked in the sunshine. He was the dearest little fellow ever was in the world, not pretty, rather plain, except for fine eyes, small, slight, very quiet and silent, but full of fun, full of spirit, clever in seeing and hearing and observing and understanding all going on around, preferring to learn in this practical way rather than from books. He grew to be fond of reading, but he had found the mastering of the mere mechanical part so difficult that he had rather a distaste for the labour then. Jack dear,10 you often put me in mind of Uncle John.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 36