Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  They came and dined with us, Lord and Lady Huntly, alone, there was no one with them and we were alone. She was extremely timid, just out of the schoolroom when she married and quite unfashioned and though he had taken her abroad to accustom her to her new situation before shewing her at home in it, her shyness still remained. She never had the gift of conversation; she could talk and well, on a subject that interested her, with a person she liked, otherwise she was silent, not at ease herself, she could set no one else at ease. Buonaparte would not have chosen her for the wife of one of his Maréchals; she did not shine in her reception rooms. We therefore did not get on well at this dinner, we ladies by ourselves in the drawing room. I was of no use, having only just been brought out of the Schoolroom myself, besides, it was not then the custom for young persons to speak unless spoken to. At last Lady Huntly proposed musick, and on the fine, grand pianoforte being opened she sat down to it herself to let us hear some Swiss airs she had picked up in her travels. The first chord was sufficient, the touch was masterly. In every style she played well, but her Scotch musick, tender or lively, was perfection. Sir Walter Scott immortalised this delightful talent of hers in his Halidon Hill,5 and she fully merited his highest praise. I have never heard her surpassed nor even equalled, as I don’t reckon all that wonderful finger work now in fashion as worth listening to. Her Lord, who was very little sensible of the power of harmony, was always pleased with her musick, listening to it with evident pleasure and extreme pride, particularly when she gave him the reels and strathspeys he danced so well, when he would jump up gaily and crack his fingers like a pair of castagnets and ask did ever any one hear better playing than that. Then if she went on to the marches and quick steps of the highland regiments, which she certainly did give in the most inspiring manner, he would get quite excited and declare no bard could equal her. This enchanting playing of hers rather redeemed her character with my father. My Mother could never get over her unmeaning countenance and her formality, they never suited.

  Of course we were to dine at Kinrara, a visit the idea of which frightened me out of my wits. I was not afraid of Lord Huntly, I knew him well and he was my cousin besides. But she was so stiff, and I knew there would be company, strangers, and I had never dined out in my life. Young people did not slide into society then as they do now. They strode at once from pinafores, bread and butter, and the Governess, into long petticoats and their silent, young lady place. They did not add to the general sociability, most of them could not—all unpractised as they were in what was doing, going, saying, their little word would most likely have been put in out of season. In the ordinary run of houses, Company was any thing but pleasant. Every body seemed to assume an unnatural manner; nobody followed their customary employments; the books and the needleworks and the drawings of every day’s occupation were all carefully put out of sight and we all either sat idle or busied ourselves with a bit of fine embroidery. All were put out of their way too by a grand fatigue day of best glass, best china, best linen, wax candles, plate, furniture uncovered, etc., making every thing look and feel as unlike home as possible. It was not a welcome we gave our friends, but a worry they gave us. In great houses there were skilful servants to take all this trouble and to prevent any mistakes or any fuss; in lesser establishments it was very annoying, I must say. There was very little of this sort of troublesome preparation in our house, but there was a certain degree of formality, it was the manner of the day; and happily and easily as we lived with our parents when alone, or when only very intimate friends were with them, we knew we were to keep at a respectful distance from Company.

  It was a distasteful word, and the having to encounter all it meant in a strange house among strangers was far from agreeable. I went in the blue muslin frock, the first artificial flowers I had ever worn in my hair, wild roses, and I should have been more at my ease had I been let alone after dressing, but my own anxious Mother thought it necessary to read me a long lecture on proper behaviour, so the fear of transgressing in any particular deprived me of all self possession. I was thoroughly uncomfortable during an evening that might otherwise have afforded me pleasure. Lord Huntly, too, encreased this agitation by calling attention to me most unpleasantly. It was during dinner, that great long table filled with guests, covered with plate, brilliantly lighted, and a servant behind every chair. He was the greatest fidget on earth. All military men and naval too, for that matter, appear unable to resist acquiring a sort of unceasing nervous attention to trifling things. It is to be hoped they are equally occupied with particulars of importance—probably the one involves the other, is a necessity, a duty, a virtue, a profession of principle, but they might leave it there for these very minute interferences are really annoying in every day life. He had a set of rules for his household, any infringement of which was visited by rigorous punishment, certain penances for first and second offence, dismissal for the third without hope of forgiveness. He used to be up himself to call the maids in the morning, in the kitchen at odd times to see what was doing; at no hour of the day, or the night indeed, was the family safe from the bright, very bright, eyes of my Lord, peering here, there, and everywhere. A thread on the carpet would make him ring the bell. A messenger left in the hall would cause a ferment. So during the dinner he was glancing about all round the room, talking, laughing, apparently only intent on being agreeable; yet he knew all that was going on at the sideboard behind him better than Wagstaffe who presided there. The gentlemen sportsmen between whom I was placed found very little to interest them in the shy replies made by a young girl, hardly beyond childhood, to their few civil speeches. They busied themselves elsewhere and left me to the use of my eyes, and for them there was abundant amusement. I was accustomed to long dinners with all their tiresome courses, therefore bore the tedium of this very patiently. At last we reached the ‘sweets,’ and I took some jelly; not finding a fork beside my plate I asked my attendant for one, very gently too—I hardly heard my own voice. But Lord Huntly heard it right well—out he burst: ‘No fork for Miss Grant! A fork for Miss Grant Rothiemurchus! Directly! Wagstaffe, pray who attends to these things. Who sees the covers laid. Great inattention somewhere. This must not happen again. Lizzy, have you got your fork, ha, ha, ha (that extraordinary laugh of his as if shook out through a comb). Now for the jelly, ha, ha, ha! Extremely careless.’ How I wished I had made shift with the spoon. I would gladly have sunk under the table, for the storm had pushed every voice and turned every eye on poor me. I hardly ever remember feeling more miserable. Certainly bashfulness is very near akin to vanity. Jane would have gone through the whole unmoved, and would have thought Wagstaffe and suite fully deserving of the reproof they got. I was not often troubled afterwards with such a degree of shyness. It wore away like other feelings as soon as I came to understand my own position. I should not have been half as awkward from the very first if my Mother had let me alone. We nervous tempers can only be strengthened by ourselves.

  My next public appearance was much happier. It was the housewarming at the Croft. The family had already taken possession of the pretty new Cottage, and the old had been turned into offices and Mr Cameron had promised us a dance at the harvest home to commemorate the change; he now determined to give a dinner first, a dinner superintended by Mrs William, who had just been invested by her father in law with all power over the new premises. The great bunch of keys was made over to her, and poor Miss Mary, after so many years of rule, was displaced. Most surely the comfort of the whole family was much improved by this alteration. Mrs William was a most admirable housekeeper, active herself, very skilful, very managing, clean to a nicety, and economical without being stingy. She had found her vocation, and her temper, naturally none of the best, now less chafed since she had plenty to do and could take her own way to do it, became very much easier to live with. She paid a degree of respect to the old people she had never hitherto shewn them, exerting herself particularly to render the old lady comfortable, and though Miss Mary, piqued of course, wo
uld wonder sometimes at the wastry when she saw the table day after day so bountifully spread, Mr Cameron, finding his outgoings no larger, while his incomings were increased, and a warm look of plenty surrounded him, soon silenced rebellious murmurings.

  My father and mother and William went up to the dinner, the rest of us followed to tea in our favourite equipage, a cart filled with hay. We always went in a cart to the Dell when we could manage it because of the seven streams of Druie we had to ford; it was so charming to be so near the water and to hear ourselves rumble over the stones; the hay prevented our being hurt by the jolting, and plenty of plaids kept us warm. Even Miss Elphick enjoyed this manner of visiting. We generally sang all the way, bursting into screams of laughter when a big stone under the wheel cut short a holding note. We had a rough enough way to the Croft, turning off the Loch an Eilein road, a mere cart track past the fairy’s knowe to the Moss of Riachan, and so into the birchwood. William Cameron afterwards made a good approach to his house by this route, admired by every one but me; I had something of my Aunt Lissy in me, and liked it all in the wild state. The gates were all open for us—a lucky thought, as they had no hinges; they were merely tyed by two withes6 on one side and one on the other, and had to be pulled back by a strong arm.

  My sisters were dressed in their best white frocks, the two largest of those got for the Persian Ambassador. I had a blue satin body to mine made by myself, and a number of frills at the bottom of the skirt. The bunch of roses in my hair. None of the expensive dresses ordered for me afterwards in London gave me more pleasure than I felt in wearing this, nor do I know whether any real ball ever saw me happier. Between parlour, kitchen, and barn we had nearly all Rothiemurchus at the Croft house warming; Duncan McIntosh playing his best, his son Johnny in tartan, and our Johnny in his frightful shortwaisted nankin frock and trowsers, dancing the fling with all their hearts and cracking their small fingers. Old Mr Cameron danced too, and called for his tune The Auld wife ayont the fire, and went up and kissed the old lady instead of his partner, where she sat by the side of the hearth in the old chair, and in the bonnet and shawl and the green shade as usual, neither graver nor gayer than was her wont. We were all so merry except her. Even Miss Mary reeled away after her fashion.

  My father in laying out the new cottage had been careful of the habits of the dear old people; a door from the common parlour opened to the kitchen and to the family bedroom. They had no farther to go to either apartment than they had been used to. The best parlour was quite distinct, no visitor could ‘get their ways ben’ without permission. The young people and their children, and the strangers’ room, were all upstairs, with such views from the windows! Of the sort, I don’t think in the world I know a prettier place then the Croft; so peculiar in its beauty too, very wild, yet so very lovely, the solitude around being so peaceful.

  This merry dance there was the end of the old times. Whether the old lady had caught cold the time she moved, or whether her ailing frame had simply been worn out, she never seemed to thrive after leaving the little but and ben she had so long lived in. Before the winter set in Mrs Cameron died without any encrease of illness or any suffering. She was buried with the rest of us in the small enclosure in the kirk yard, her husband attended the funeral, appearing in the house, and at the refreshment table, and walking after the corpse just as if it had been any other person’s departure. He came in to visitors afterwards with his calm manner unaltered; there was no change in him to common eyes, nor in the proceedings of the family. There was only her empty chair, and a shade over his benignant countenance never left it. Before the Spring he was laid beside her. The immediate cause of his death was a fall he got, a broken shin never rightly healed, but this accident merely hastened his end, he never could have lived the twelve month out with that subdued manner, telling plainly of a broken heart. We were far away when we lost him. Many many years have passed since I last heard him try Crochallan, he never touched the ‘trump’ after his widowerhood, but I shall never forget Mr Cameron, a real highland gentleman. Loving us with the love of kin, teaching us all wisdom, piety and a lively fancy glowing through his clear, sound sense. His son, a good man, was of a different species.

  Before these melancholy events took place we proceeded this pleasant Autumn with the usual merry makings. There was more company at the Doune, though I cannot remember who they all were, and there were more dinners at Kinrara, no longer formidable, and there was a party at Belleville remaining there some days, when for the first time to my recollection I saw him whom by courtesy for many years we continued to call young Charles Grant. Writing that once familiar name again is pleasant to me, recalling so much that was so enjoyable, and some little that awakes regret. He was no ordinary man, with all his weaknesses, and to be so thoroughly estranged from one who had been quite a son of the house, a dear elder brother, is cause for grief in a world where few of us ever suit sufficiently for intimacy. There was no fault on either part. It was merely our paths through life lay differently. The father had been with us most summers; he was our County member, so had to come to look after political interests. He was now intending to introduce his son to the Electors against the time when he should himself, from age or weariness, disincline to continue in parliament. The north country owed him much; we got canals, roads, bridges, cadetships, and writerships in almost undue proportion. My father, his firm friend, his most useful supporter, seldom applied in vain for any thing in the old Director’s power to give. We have reason to be grateful for all his many kindnesses, but he was never to any of us the delightful companion that we found his son.7

  Young Charles was at this time deeply in love with Emilia Cumming. She was a lovely looking woman—not a regular beauty by any means but much more attractive than many handsome persons. Old Charles Grant had reasons for forbidding a marriage between them, and they were good ones, acquiesced in by his son, yet he had not the resolution to avoid her society, strength of character was not one of his character is ticks. Year after year he dangled about her till her youth and her beauty went, and he found absence no longer a difficulty. Neither of them ever married though he did not remain single for love of her. Mrs Macpherson, who really was absurdly attached to him, she had known him from childhood, was extremely anxious we should make an agreeable impression on one another. I don’t remember that he spoke ten words to me, not more certainly nor looked a second time at the childish girl quite overpraised to him. On my part, half a look was enough for me; I thought him hideous, tall, thin, yellow, grave, with sandy hair and small light eyes, and a shy awkward manner, though very nearly as old as my father and already of some note among clever men. These were the dear friends of after days. We have often laughed over our introduction, he positively forgot he had ever met me this autumn at Belleville.

  Then came the Pitmain Tryst. It was an old custom in our district to hold a cattle market yearly in the month of September on a moor between Kingussie and Pitmain. Our highland cattle dealing is so different from what you have all been accustomed to see in this grazing country that it may be well to tell you about it. Instead of the gentlemen flying about on cars to fairs, dressed in old dirty clothes and with an inside pocket full of bank notes to buy a lot of beasts from the small rearing farmers, choosing them here and there according to their fitness for the quality of grass they are destined to be fatted on, our Highland proprietors rear large stocks of young cattle, regularly disposed of once a year at the current price. The Lairds would think that jobbing style of business quite unsuitable to their dignity. Belleville had 100 cows, every year 100 stots, or two year olds sold generally for from 7 to 8£ apiece. If any died on his fine stretch of meadows along the Spey during their period of growth he made his number up again by buying from the cotter farmers, the only way these little bodies had of disposing of their single beast. Balnespick kept up 50 store cows, my father 30. There was great emulation among them as to which reared the finer cattle. I must say again though we boasted of our superiour breeding, gr
eat pains having been taken to improve the stock, Belleville generally got the top price for his at the Tryst. The buyers were the Drovers, such men as Walter Scott most faithfully describes in Rob Roy. It was a separate trade. The Drovers bought, and paid, and carried off their purchase in large herds to the South, either to be privately disposed of or resold at Falkirk for the English market. A few substantial yeomen farmers were gradually establishing themselves in the country, some of whom were also Drovers, or connected with Drovers and who tried hard by patient industry to rival the produce of the Laird’s fuller purse. They probably made more of the business in the end. Our fine Staffa bull that was choked by an uncut turnip cost fifty guineas at three years old, his price swallowed up a deal of profit. Those who bought his yearling calves at six or eight, and waited, improved their stock at less expense in time.

  After the market in the morning, there was a dinner in the evening, Drovers, farmers, and lairds all meeting in the large room at Pitmain to enjoy the best good cheer the country afforded. Lord Huntly always presided, and sent a stag from Guaick forest. My father was Croupier,8 and very grand speeches he and others made after the punch began to circulate. This year it was proposed that the Ladies should be invited to shine on the assemblage—not to join the dinner, but to prepare tea in another room, which would break up the punch party earlier, and allow of the larger apartment being meanwhile prepared for dancing. Both my father and Lord Huntly were promoters of these sort of mixed meetings, so consonant to the spirit of feudalism still cherished throughout our mountains. They were themselves the life and soul of such assemblages, courteous to all, gay in manner, and very gallant to the fair. The Ball was received with much favour, and in future always followed the Tryst, doing a deal more in the way of improving the country than any one at first sight would suppose. Besides the renewal of intercourse between the ranks, leading to a continuance of kind feelings, a sort of stimulus was given to the spirits of those whom Belleville called ‘the bodies.’ They had hardly finished talking over the pleasure of the one Meeting before the preparations had to be begun for the next. Husbands were proud of producing handsome wives nicely dressed at this general gathering. Mothers looked forward to bringing pretty modest daughters to be introduced to grander friends. The dress and the manners of the higher portion of the Company had a sensible effect on the lower. Mrs John Macnab’s first cap was greatly moderated on her second appearance, and Janet Mitchell’s very boisterous dancing fined down into a very sprightliness of movement not unbecoming.