Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  Mr Nightingale left us soon after our return home to pay a visit to Mr Blair and his mother and sisters at Inchyra. We put all our home affairs in order for our long absence, and then we set out for Edinburgh, My father had taken there the most disagreeable house possible; a large gloomy No. 11 in Queen Street, on the front of which the sun never shone, and which was so built against behind there was no free circulation of air through it. It belonged to Lady Augusta Claverhouse, once Campbell, one of the handsome sisters of the handsome Duke of Argyll, who had run off from a masquerade with a lover who made her bitterly repent she ever took him for a husband.8 It was comfortable within, plenty of rooms in it, four good ones on a floor, but they did not communicate. The drawing room was very large, four windows along the side of it, There were, however, no convenient rooms for refreshments for evening parties, so during our stay in it nothing could be given but dinners, and very few of them either, for none of us were in very good humour. It was well for me that my little bedroom was to the sunny and quiet back of the house, and on the Drawing room floor, for I had to spend many a week in it. A long illness beginning with a cold confined me there during the early part of the winter, and when I began to recover I was so weakened dear and kind Dr Gordon, who had attended me with the affection of a brother, positively forbade all hot rooms and late hours. It was a sentence I would have bribed him to pronounce, for I was sick of those everlasting gaieties, and with his encouragement and the assistance of a few other friends I was making for my self, I was able to find employment for my time infinitely more agreeable than that round of frivolous company. We were spared the train of masters. Harp and Italian alone were given to us this winter, a new Italian master, a fop and an oddity, very much superiour as a Teacher to the other poor old creature. M. L’Espinasse visited as a friend, and spent many pleasant evenings with us. My Mother did not at all approve of this secluded life. In heart she loved both dress and visiting; besides, she did not wish it to be thought that I was breaking my heart, or had had it broken by cruel parents. Spectre as I was, she really believed half my illness feigned, The Roses of Holm, too, had come to town, and Charlotte was dancing every where with Mr McKenzie. I am sure my ghostlike appearance would not have brought him back to his first fancy. Still, with her peculiar hopes and fears and wishes, it was rather hard upon her, but Dr Gordon was peremptory. My father supported him, and so he, that is my father, and my mother went out to the dinners together, and declined the evening parties till I was fit to accompany them. How I enjoyed our home tea circle. M. L’Espinasse generally with us, keeping Miss Elphick in good humour, but no College friends; those little domestick scenes were over.

  Mr McKenzie and my father went up by the mail after Christmas together to attend their duties in Parliament. He had called frequently in the mornings after I was well enough to sit in the drawing room, and had once or twice dined with us. He and I were on the most friendly terms; my Mother could not understand us. We parted with the cordially expressed hope on both sides to meet soon again, I promising to cheer my cousin Charlotte’s spirits during his absence—he really admired her, she was clever, pretty, and lively, though too flippant to secure the heart of a man like him. Mr Blair and Mr Nightingale then suddenly announced their intention of making a tour on the Continent of some duration. They just remained for Mr Nightingale to get possession of a set of shirts my Mother had very obligingly offered that I should cut out for him, and then they set out, thus quite breaking up our home party.

  We had two pieces of family news to raise our spirits after all these disappointments. Uncle Edward and Annie Grant were married—not to each other! He in Bombay, now a Judge of the Sudder,9 had married a Miss Rawlings, the daughter of an old Madras Civilian, a highly respectable connexion; and she in Bengal, had become the wife of Major General Need, commanding at Cawnpore, a King’s Cavalry Officer.10 I have quite forgot, I see, to mention that when we left London she had gone on a visit to Mrs Drury, the sister of Mr Hunter, the husband of one of the Malings. Mrs Drury took such a fancy to her that she would not part with her, at least not to a house of business. She proposed to my father to equip her for India. She went out with Miss Stairs, sister to Lady Bury and Mrs Vine, and she was received by Mrs Irwine Maling, from whose house she married. The Needs belonged to Arkwright, Need, and Strutt, names we British have cause to remember.11

  By the end of February, this winter of 1816, I was able to indulge my Mother with my company even to a Ball or two. Though received by the world with as much indulgence as before, I had the prudence to dance little, generally sitting by Mrs Rose, or walking about with my steadiest of Admirers, the Colonel; my mother having the gratification of interrupting us frequently by bearing petitions from numerous partners for just one dance before the early hour at which we now retired. There was one I seldom refused—no lover, but a most true and agreeable friend, the best dancer in Edinburgh, Campbell Riddell, who, the a younger son and very little likely to make a living at the Bar, a profession quite unsuitable to him, was the favourite of all the belles, and more than tolerated by the mothers. We were very happy, he and I, together, I was hardly so intimate with any other young man, and long years after when we met in Ceylon we both recollected with equal pleasure the days of our innocent flirtation. The Roses were a great addition to us; we saw a great deal of them; she was kind, and clever, he was charming, and I liked both the girls, tho’ they were coheiresses and far from faultless. Old Miss Lawrence, who had just given herself brevet rank, and was to be Mrs Lawrence in future, came on a visit this year to the Man of Feeling.12 I saw her for the first time, and thought her most extraordinary. She was greatly taken up with a poem old Mr McKenzie had made on me, and reminded me of it afterwards at Studley. Dr Ogle, of Oxford, an old Etonian, also made us out—he brought with him a very fine musical box he had bought at Geneva, a toy not common then.

  A very singular set of persons, Nesham cousins, appeared to us about this time; Mr and Mrs Goodchild, and their son Jack. My mother’s cousins in Durham were really innumerable. In one family, her Uncle John Nesham’s, there had been nine handsome daughters, all married, and two sons. Mrs Goodchild was, I think, the third daughter. Her husband was a man of great wealth, deriving his income principally from the valuable lime quarries on his estates. He was rude, boisterous, and strangely ignorant of every gentlemanly acquisition, yet there was a natural frankness and kindness and clever fun, very redeeming, particularly when we knew him better. The wife was a very noisy, underbred, overdressed woman, evidently imbued with the idea that her money lifted her over the heads of almost every body. The son was worse than Tony Lumpkin13, worse than Miss Jenny’s booby of a brother, for to their ignorance and coarseness and loutishness he added a self sufficiency that kept him completely at his ease, while he was shocking all listeners. ‘Well, coosin,’ said he to me after sitting a while, ‘got any prog? my stomach’s been crying cupboard this hour.’ We were delighted to shut such a mouth so easily. My Mother said these Goodchilds had always been remarkable for an affectation of vulgarity; from long practice it seemed to me to have become natural. They were only passing through, so we saw no more of them at this time.

  We were inundated this whole winter with a deluge of a dull ugly colour called Waterloo bleu, copied from the dye used in Flanders for the calico of which the peasantry make their smock frocks or blouses. Every thing new was Waterloo, not unreasonably, it had been such a victory, such an event, after so many years of exhausting suffering. And as a surname to hats, coats, trowsers, instruments, furniture, it was very well—a very fair way of trying to perpetuate the return of tranquillity; but to deluge us with that vile indigo, so unbecoming even to the fairest! It was really a punishment. Our Albert blue of this day is worth the wearing but that Waterloo was an infliction, none of us were sufficiently patriotick to deform ourselves by trying it. The fashions were remarkably ugly this season. I got nothing new, as I went out so little, till the spring, when white muslin frocks were the most suitable dress
for the small parties then given. There was a dearth of news, too, a lull after the war excitement; or my feeling stupid might make all seem stupid. I know my memory recollects this as a disagreeable winter. The Lawyers were busy with a contemplated change in the Jury Court. Trial by jury in Civil cases had not, up to this date, been the custom in Scotland. In penal Cases the Scotch Jury law so far differed from the English that a majority of voices convicted the prisoner; unanimity was unnecessary; and this, which many very sagacious lawyers considered as the better rule, was not to be interfered with, it was only to be extended to Civil cases. The machinery of the Courts of Justice had of course to be slightly altered for this change of system. If I remember rightly, two new Barons were required, and a Chief Baron, whom we had never had before. Sir William Shepherd, from the London Bar, was sent in this capacity to set it all agoing. His very English wife came with him, and amused us more than I can tell with her Cockneyisms. He was very agreeable.

  It may seem beyond the range of a girl of my then age to have entered into so grave a subject, but these sort of topicks were becoming my business. I wrote quick and clearly, and seldom made mistakes; my father, though he had a Clerk, frequently found it suit him to employ me as his more private Secretary. I even helped him to correct the press for some of his pamphlets,14 sought out and marked his references, and could be trusted to make necessary notes. I delighted in this occupation, and was frequently indulged in it both in town and country at such odd times as help was wanted. Indeed from henceforward I was his assistant in almost all employments—work much more to my mind than that eternal ‘outing.’

  In July we returned again to the Doune. We had not many visitors, so far as I recollect: Miss Baillie on her way to Logie, Alexander so far with her on her return. Two brothers of the name of Davies, friends of Mrs Gumming’s, one a merchant, the other a barrister, recreating themselves by a tour in the highlands, with the hope of a day or two’s shooting here and there. Their first essay of the moors was with us, and a failure, for they waited for the late breakfast, came in dress coats to it, and were so long afterwards fitting on all the astonishing variety of their sportsman accoutrements, the day was too far advanced by the time they were completely equipped for the keepers to be able to take them to the best ground, although they rode ponies for the first half dozen miles. They were stupid specimens, and an elder brother whom we knew afterwards, a Colonel and an M.P., was positively disagreeable. The country was filled with half pay Officers, many of them returned wounded to very humble homes in search of a renewal of the health they had bartered for glory. A few of these had been raised to a rank they were certainly far from adorning; very unfit claimants got commissions occasionally in those war days. Lord Huntly had most improperly so advanced one or two of his servants and several of his servants ‘sons, and in the German legion there had been two lieutenants who began life as carpenters’ apprentices to Donald Mclean. One of these, Sandy McBean, who lived the rest of his days at Guislich under the title of the Offisher, attended the church very smart, and dined once every season at our table, as was now his due, had helped to alter the staircase with the same hands that afterwards held his sword. Wagstaffe’s son rose to be a Major. When he got his Company the father resigned his Stewardship, and received some situation from the Marquis more suited to the son’s position.

  Kinrara was very full this season, and very pleasant. The charming Duchess, whose heart was in the highlands, had left orders to be buried on the banks of the Spey in a field she had herself pointed out. Lord Huntly planted a few larch around the enclosure, but Lady Huntly laid out a beautiful shrubbery and extended the plantation, making paths through it. The grave was covered by a plain marble slab, but behind this rose a stunted obelisk of granite, bearing on its front by way of inscription the names of all her children with their marriages; this was by her own desire. Her youngest son, Alexander, died unmarried before herself; Lord Huntly she left a bachelour—her four younger daughters had all made distinguished connexions. The eldest, and the best bred amongst them, shewed to less effect among the list of great names, but then she had two husbands to make up for their being commoners. The first, Sir John Sinclair of Murkle, was a cousin of her own; they had one child only, the merry sailor son whom every one was fond of. The second husband, a Mr Palmer of Bedfordshire, it was supposed took her for the connexion as she was very oddly spoken of. The second daughter was Duchess of Richmond,15 the third the Duchess of Manchester, the fourth the Marchioness of Cornwallis, the fifth the Duchess of Bedford. When the Duchess of Manchester was driven from the house of the husband she had disgraced, she left behind her two sons, and six daughters placed by their father under the care of a governess to be superintended by the Dowager Duchess; the boys were at Eton. The eldest of these girls, however, Lady Jane Montague, had almost always lived with her other Grandmother, the Duchess of Gordon. She it was who danced the chantreuse, and trotted over to the Doune on her poney, as often nearly as she staid at home. My father and mother were dotingly fond of her, for she was a fine natural handsome creature, quite unspoiled. When our Duchess, as we always called her, died, Lady Jane was not happy at home with her younger sisters and their governess. She went to live with her aunt the Duchess of Bedford, and was shortly announced to be on the point of marriage with the second of the Duke’s three sons by his first wife, Lord William Russell. Next we heard she was very ill, consumptive—dying—and that kind aunt of hers took her to Nice, and attended her like a mother till she laid her in her grave. It was a real grief to every one that knew her, particularly those who had watched the fair show of her childhood.

  The second of these deserted girls was now of an age to be introduced into society, and Lord and Lady Huntly brought her with them to Kinrara. No, it was the third, Lady Susan, a beautiful creature; the second, Lady Elizabeth, was just married to a handsome Colonel Steele, whom she had become acquainted with through her Governess. It was on Lady Susan’s account Kinrara was made so particularly agreeable. There were plenty of morning strolls and evening dances, a little tour of visits afterwards, all ending in her engagement to the Marquis of Tweeddale, a man liked I believe by men, and it was said by some women—of extraordinary taste, to my mind; for, thick set and square built and coarse mannered, with that flat Maitland face which when it once gets into a family never can be got out of it, he was altogether the ugliest boxer or bruiser looking sort of common order of prize fighter that ever was seen in or out of a ring. Yet he had a kind manner and a pleasant smile, and he made a tender husband to this sweet gentle creature, who accepted him of her own free will and never regretted the union.

  Neither house went to the Tryst this year, nor to the Meeting. Lady Susan’s approaching marriage prevented any publick displays from Kinrara, and my father having been called to a distance on business the Doune did not care to exhibit without him.

  We had had some troubles in our usually quiet Duchus this autumn. Urquhart Gale, the principal Saw miller, and George McIntosh, one of the returned officers, had each got into an unpleasant scrape. Urquhart Gale’s backsliding was only suspected as yet, but George McIntosh’s was a most miserable business; the young man was in the jail of Inverness for murder. Mrs McIntosh, as I am sure I must have mentioned16 was one of the two very pretty daughters of Steuart of Pityoulish, an old tacksman on the Gordon property, very superiour in station to his forester son in law. He was devotedly attached to all of Gordon blood, but particularly so to the family of his Grace, and he insisted on his first grand child, a boy, being called after our Prince of Wales of the north, the Marquis of Huntly. At a proper age this piece of respect got George McIntosh a Commission. He had never joined his regiment in the field, but he had been away and come home, and finding other young officers in the country they one unlucky day entered the publick house at the Boat of Inverdruie, and ordering whiskey drank to one another till they fell to quarrelling. Very hard words passed between George McIntosh and one of the company; the rest took part against poor George,
and Duncan Cameron the Landlord, fearing for unpleasant consequences, rushed amongst these half mad boys, as he said, to prevent mischief. A frightful scuffle ensued, at the end of which George McIntosh’s first opponent was picked up senseless. Nor did he ever speak again. He died in a few hours without apparent injury except a small triangular wound near the temple, which, on the Doctor probing, was found to run deep into the brain. The whole party were taken up, lodged in prison, and indicted for murder, they could not, however, be tried till the Spring circuit, and the connexions had all to wear away the winter in this dreadful anxiety. Mr and Mrs McIntosh were completely overwhelmed by this calamity, the end of which I may as well tell now as keep it over to its proper season.

  My father, feeling quite unable to conduct such a cause himself, engaged George Joseph Bell17 to defend George McIntosh and Duncan Cameron, and he sent a very clever writer body, a regular rogue of the name of Lyon, to assist Mr Cooper in preparing the evidence. The friends of the other young men spared no means of assisting them, and they all got off easily, having been on the side of the poor murdered lad; his opponent and the Rothiemurchus man who had rushed in to help him were in a very different position. Nothing, however, transpired to criminate George McIntosh; he was acquitted; but the Landlord—he was by trade a tailor, and the wound had the appearance of having been made by closed scissors; this persuasion saved him; it was proved that it could not be scissors; neither was it—he had done it with the snuffers. The verdict was manslaughter, and he was transported for life. We all felt the whole affair as a disgrace to Rothiemurchus. My father was quite depressed by such an occurrence happening. Jane and I talking it over a year afterwards with Belleville, he said the fault lay with those who had put young men who were not gentlemen into a position only fit for gentlemen; had these lowly born. uneducated youths been at the plough, they would neither have had time nor inclination for such a scandal.