Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  We had two ponies at our command, William’s very pretty and rather headstrong and very spirited little black Sally, and the old gray my mother used to ride to the reviews, now grown milk white—he was a large size but so quiet that Mary, who was a coward always, was mounted on him. She never liked riding, so went out but seldom. Johnny, besides being so little, was much of her mind; Jane and I therefore had our stud to ourselves, and plenty of use we made of it. We rode to Belleville and back, sixteen miles, to the Dell of Killiehuntly and back about the same distance, and all over the country up and down the Spey, a very fat coachman on one of the carriage horses behind us. At the Dell of Killiehuntly lived John and Betty Campbell, doing well, but alas! not happy. His brother shared the farm, a good managing man with whom it was easy to live, but he had a wife with whom it was not easy to live. The two ladies soon disagreed, and though they parted household, John and Betty living in the farm house, Donald and Mary in rooms they fitted up in the Offices, perfect harmony never substituted until sorrow came to both.

  Donald and Mary had a fine son drowned in the Spey and John and Betty lost their only child, my Goddaughter, Eliza, in the measles. Neither bereaved Mother ever ‘faulted’ the other after these events; each had shewn so much heart on the occasion of the grief of the other, that some bond of kindness, at least of forbearance, existed evermore between them. Betty never got over her ‘puir Eliza’s’ death. She never alluded to her, never replied when any one else did, nor did she outwardly appear to be any way altered, yet it had changed her. Her hair turned gray, her manner became restless, and she never called me from that time any thing but Miss Grant, my Christian name she never uttered, nor the pet name ‘burdie’ by which she had oftenest called us both. It altered John Campbell too, wore him down somehow. What had ever brought that pair together was a problem never to be solved. John Campbell had very few words of English, it was very difficult to make out his meaning when he tried to explain himself in that foreign language, and he certainly did not understand it when spoken to him. To the end of his life he never got one bit beyond the smattering he began with. Betty, a Forres woman, spoke broad, low country Scotch, pure Morayshire, and never any thing else to her husband nor any one; she never tried the gaelick nor attempted to try it. The language she did speak was incomprehensible, any English the highlanders acquire being real good English such as they were taught by books at school, and in conversation with the Upper classes the accent being Highland enough, certainly, but the words were fit for Cockney land. Betty’s was another tongue, the low Dutch would have comprehended it as easily as did the Highlander, yet did she and John Campbell managed to understand each other and to get on together lovingly, the gray mare taking the lead, as was seemly. Both husband and wife dearly loved us; few events made either of them happier than the sight of our ponies cannily picking their steps down the brae a little piece away from their good farm house. All they had of the best was brought out for us, our steeds and our fat attendant faring equally well for our sakes; and then Betty would promise to return the visit, and she would not forget her promise either, but walk her eight or nine miles some fine day, and pay her respects all through the Duchus.

  She always reminded me of Meg Merrilies, a tall, large framed, powerfully made woman, with dark flashing eyes and raven hair, eminently handsome, though somewhat resolute looking. Her dress, though in a very different style from the gypsy’s, was extremely picturesque; a linsey gown, white handkerchief, white apron, a clear close fitting cap with a plaited lace edged border, and a bright satin ribbon to bind it on the head, and over this a high steeple cap of clearer muslin, set further back than the underneath one so that the borders did not interfere. A red plaid of the Campbell tartan, spun and dyed by herself, was thrown round her when she went out.

  She spun the wool for stockings too, and knitted them; but at fine needle works she was not expert. Indeed she was too active to sit to them. She was a stirring wife, in and out, but and ben, cooking, washing, cleaning, keeping a quick eye over all, warm tempered, and kind hearted. Every one liked her, even the silly servant lasses who got so frequent a scold from her. In her old age, when husband and child were gone, Betty got fond of money. She was free handed in happier days.

  It was a shorter ride to Aviemore, in quite the other direction, down the water; by no means so pleasant a visit. The old servants there had for some years after their marriage gone on most comfortably. There was no such inn upon the road; fully furnished, neatly kept, excellent cooking, the most attentive of Landlords, all combined to raise the fame of Aviemore. Travellers pushed on from the one side, stopped short on the other, to sleep at this excellent inn. Poor Lynch! how hard she worked, how much she bore, to keep it up to its reputation. She dearly loved her husband, and after his failing became apparent, what she at first concealed she continued to excuse, and after disease set in, the consequence of perpetual drunkenness, she caught at it as the cause rather than the effect, and watched him and tended him, and did his work as well as her own, and never once was heard to reflect upon him. All the years he had been with us, for he had been my father’s servant before my Mother’s marriage, McKenzie had never even been suspected of want of sobriety; he took his drams and his punch like the rest, too much whiskey was going among them, but his steadiness had never been affected. At Aviemore the poor man breathed whiskey, so many travellers, drovers, and others of that class must have the welcome cup and the parting cup and the stirrup cup. Those that staid the night required the cheerful glass or bowl, the Landlord as of course partaking with every one, so that in an unfortunately short space of time the Landlord learned to love the bite as the child did on the Milltown muir. Quickly this dreadful craving increased, till he lost all care for all else. We used to see him staggering about the stable yard when his good wife would tell us he was too busy to come in to ask us how we did. Then when he got worse, and she could not keep him away, he would talk nonsense that frightened us and grieved her, as we saw by her pale face though she never said a word. Latterly, when epileptick fits and delirium tremens came on, she seemed relieved to be able to talk of his bad health and the effect this had produced upon his intellect. She was a good creature that dear little Mrs McKenzie, a proof of what a woman with a heart can turn herself to. Her father had kept a china shop in London. She was born and bred in the City, apprenticed to a dress maker and sent out as a Lady’s maid. Her first place was with a rich merchant’s wife, my Mother’s was her second. Here she was at one end of the long moor stretching for miles from the foot of Craigellachie across the wild mountain range towards Inverness. The business of her inn sometimes overwhelming, often slack, her stores to be calculated and ordered from a distance, her fuel, not coals, but peats which she had to go to the Moss to see prepared in immense quantity; her plentiful housekeeping depending on the farm requiring her watchful management, her linen, her blanketing, most of her clothing made at home. Her nearest neighbour in Rothiemurchus three miles off. Children to educate, and that affliction of a husband to disturb all. Talk of the backwoods to a gentlewoman. Here was worse than the backwoods and the woman to go through the toil without help, taken from a class ignorant in the extreme of every practical detail, and used to every comfort. If ever I wrote a novel for the humble born, Mrs McKenzie shall be my heroine—few have had such trials, none ever bore them more cheerfully. Even during the long highland winter, her spirits never failed. She had always plenty to do—and so much to learn, she said. While her children were infants she had an old, nearly blind sister of her husband’s to take care of them, on the death of old Auntie she got a Governess for them, an excellent little woman not too fine for her place, and though there were those that thought her ‘set up wi a Governess indeed,’ even they admitted before long that a better plan for herself or for them, and a cheaper, could not have been hit on. In her little odd way, with her Cockney English and her very dressy bonnets, she had sometimes feathers in them, how much good sense her conduct shewed. She was so respected t
hat she was admitted on equal terms into society quite above her station. She dined at the Dell, the Croft, Lynwilg etc. Latterly at the table at the Doune. When my dear Mother got into bad health, long after this time though, she liked no one to have about her so much as Lynch.

  Miss Elphick returned before my father. She came by sea to Inverness, remained a day or two with the Coopers, and then came on in the gig with Mr Cooper, who had other business with William Cameron and such a dose of North Country scandal for my Mother. She liked a little bit of gossip, and she got abundance. I like gossip too, I suppose we all do, clever gossip, not Mr Cooper’s, that was unendurable: ‘The laird of this, his Bills flying about like waste paper. The lady of that, too sharp a tongue to keep a servant. Every thing under lock and key at Glen here; and open house to allcomers at Rath there, with fish bought when extravagantly high by Mrs So-and-So of New Street, while the children of Some-one in Church Lane often came in to Mrs Cooper for a “piece”.’ He had got fat by this time. The face had turned red, the hair was always red, he crossed his rather short arms before him, gave a cough to untie the string of the bag, as it were, and then out came all this rubbish. Miss Elphick extremely admired him, he was a kind, good natured man, his home was so happy and his coats fitted so beautifully. She had brought for her own wear from London a bottle green cloth surcoat, abundantly braided, quite military looking, and a regular hat, a man’s hat, a Welsh style of dress she fancied particularly becoming and suited to her, as tartans were to us, her mother being a Welshwoman. In this guise she went in the month of May, or June indeed, to pay her visit of condolence to the Widow at Inverdruie; a farewell on our part, Mrs Grant having determined to give up her farm and return to Burnside to keep house with her very old mother and her bachelour brother. We were coming back, and had reached the turn in the road under the bank of fire trees near James MacGregor’s, when a very disastrous piece of news reached us. What we called the Widows’ house at Loch an Eilein was burned to the ground.

  My father had always had a turn for beautifying Rothiemurchus with cottages; it was more that, at first the effect of the picture in the scenery, than the wish to improve the dwellings of his people, consequently his first attempts were guiltless of any addition to family comfort. A single room, thatched, with a gable end battened down at top, like a snub nose, had been stuck on the hill at the Polchar for the Gamekeeper, on the bank at the ferry for the boatman, at the end of the West gate as a lodge. They were all inconvenient as an old turf hut, and a great deal more ugly, because more pretending. Searching through our drawing books for a model for the Croft amazingly improved his ideas of cottage architecture; also, he now better understood the wants of a household. He picked out a great many pretty elevations, suggested the necessary changes, and left it to Jane and me to make correct drawings and working plans. Our first attempts were usually so full of faults, we had to try perhaps a dozen times before a sketch was sufficiently perfect to be accepted. We really became attached to the subjects. It was no wonder that all the new cottages became of such importance to us.

  The West gate was the first improved. It was lengthened by a room, heightened sufficiently to allow of a store loft under the steep roof, the snub nose disappeared, the heather thatch was extended over the wall by means of supporting brackets, and a neat verandah ran along the side next the road and round the gable end. We trained Ayrshire roses on the Walls, honeysuckle on the verandah, and we put all sorts of common flowers in a border between the cottage and the road. It was a very pretty cottage, particularly suited to the scenery, and when neatly kept as it was by the next occupant, was quite one of the Shows of the place. The first tenant, Sandy Cameron the tailor, brother to Jenny Dairy, should never have been put there, he had no taste for any thing he had not been used to.

  The next attempt was the Polchar, a more ambitious one, for there were a front and a back door, a long passage, staircase, pantry, kitchen, parlour, and two bedrooms above. It had a very picturesque look with its over hanging heather thatched roof, its tall chimneys, and its wide latticed windows. There was no border of flowers, only a small grass plot and a gravel walk, but there was an enclosed yard fronted by the dog kennels. A path led to a good kitchen garden laid out in a hollow close by. Another path went down to the edge of the first of the chain of the Lochans, and so on through the birch wood towards the Croft. Another path skirted the ‘little lakes’ by James MacGregor’s to the fir forest—Aunt Mary’s walk. It was truly a model for the dwelling of a highland Gamekeeper.

  Next came a cottage for four aged widows. They had been living apparently in discomfort, either alone in miserable sheilings, far away from aid in case of sickness, and on such dole as kind neighbours gave helped by a share of the poor’s box, or in families weary enough of the burthen of supporting them. My father thought that by putting them all together he could lodge them cheaply, that they might be of use to one another in many ways, and that the help given to them would go farther when less subdivided. It was really a beautiful home he built for them. Like all he later erected, there were the cantalivre roof of heather, the wide latticed windows, the tall chimneys, but he made it two storeys high, and he put the staircase leading to the upper rooms outside. It had quite a Swiss look about it. Sociable as were his intentions regarding the widows, he knew too well to make them live together except when they were inclined. Each was to have a room and a closet for herself. Two of them were to live on the ground floor with a separate entrance to their apartments, one door opening from the front of the house, the other from the back. The two above reached their abode by the hanging stairs, a balcony landing them before their several door windows. We were charmed with this creation of our united fancies, and had grand plans in our heads for suitable fittings, creeping plants, flower borders, rustick seats, and even furniture. The Lake was on one hand; the meal mill at the foot of the Ord, with the burnie, the mill race, a few cottages and small fields, on the other. The gray mountains and the forest behind; all was ‘divine’ but the spirit of woman.11 The widows rebelled; old, smoke dried, shrivelled up witches with pipes in their mouths, and blankets on their backs, preferred the ingle nook in their dark, dirty, smoke filled huts to this picture of comfort.

  Stone walls were cold, light hurt the eyes, deal floors got dirty unless they were scrubbed! The front door complained of the outside stair, it was so in the way and noisy. The back door objected to entering behind, she had as good a right to the exit of honour as her neighbour; her windows too looked on the burn, there was no road that way, she knew nothing that was doing. She equally detested the stairs, though they were not near her, people going up them and coming down them for ever, crossing them in all ways, both ground floors said, forcing them to spend a great deal of valuable time at the foot of this annoyance, expostulating with the upper windows for the ceaseless din they made.

  These more exalted ladies felt themselves quite as ill used as those beneath them. Their backs were broken carrying burdens up those weary stairs; no one could come to see them without being watched from below; they could neither go out nor come in themselves without every movement being registered. In short, they were all in despair, agreeing in nothing but hatred of their beautiful home. The fact was they were not ready for it, fit for it; it’s not at three score and ten that we can alter the habits and the feelings grown out of them. Our benevolent schemes failed in more than this one instance from our own ignorance. It was very little understood then where to begin, and how very slowly it was necessary to go on in order to reach even the first of the many resting places on the road to better ways.

  The poor Captain sealed the fate of the Widows ‘house. One day after coming in from his drive in the old low pony phaeton with the long tailed black mare, somebody asking him which way he had been, he replied,’ By Rothy’s poor house at Loch an Eilein.’ Of all things on earth the most repugnant of all names to the feelings of the highlanders. ‘Any form but that’ charity might be tolerated in, assistance being very thankfully re
ceived when more delicately proferred, but to be paraded as a recognised almshouse inmate was more than the pride of any clanswoman could bear, and so it fell out that by accident the heather thatch took fire, and that although neighbours were near, and a stream ran past the door, and the widows all alive during the burning, were active as bees removing their effects, the stairs being no hindrance, the flames raged on. Only blackened walls remained in the morning. We could not help being so far uncharitable as to believe that whether or no they had lit the spark that threw them homeless on the world, they had at least taken no trouble to extinguish it.