CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
1820−1823
IN July then, 1820, we returned to the highlands, which for seven years remained the only home of the family. My Mother resisted all arguments for a return to Edinburgh this first winter, and they were never again employed. She had begun to lose her brave heart, to find out how much more serious than she had ever dreamed of had become the difficulties in which my father was involved, though the full extent of his debts was concealed for some time longer from her and the world. Some sort of a Trust Deed was executed this summer, to which I know our Cousin lame James Grant, Glenmoriston’s Uncle, was a party. William was to give up the Bar, and devote himself to the management of the property. Take the forest affairs into his own hands, Duncan McIntosh being quite invalided, and turn farmer as well, having qualified himself by a residence of some months in East Lothian at a first rate practical farmer’s, for the care of the comparatively few acres round the Doune. My father was to proceed as usual; London and the House in Spring, and such improvements as amused him when at home.
My Mother did not enjoy a country life; she had therefore the more merit in suiting herself to it. She had no pleasure in gardening or in wandering through all that beautiful scenery, neither had she any turn for Schools, or ‘cottage comforts,’ or the general care of her husband’s people, though in particular instances she was very kind; nor was she an active housekeeper. She ordered very good dinners, but as general overseer of expenditure she failed. She liked seeing her hanks of yarn come in and her webs come home; but whether she got back all she ought from what she sent, she never thought of She had no extravagant habits, not one; yet for want of supervision the waste in all departments of the household was excessive. Indolently content with her book, her newspaper, or her work, late up and very late to bed, a walk to her poultry yard which was her only diversion was almost a bore to her, and a drive with my father in her pretty pony carriage quite a sacrifice. Her health was beginning to give way and her spirits with it.
William was quite pleased with the change in his destiny; he was extremely fond of commanding, very active in his habits, by no means studious, and he had never much fancied the Law. Farming he took to eagerly, and what a farmer he made. They were changed times to the highland idlers. The whole yard astir at five o’clock in the morning, himself perhaps the first to pull the bell, a certain task allotted to every one, hours fixed for this work, days set apart for that, method pursued, order enforced. It was hard, up hill work, but even to tidiness and cleanliness it was accomplished in time. He overturned the old system a little too quickly, a woman would have gone about the requisite changes with more delicacy; the result, however, justified the means. There was one stumbling block in his way, a clever rogue of a grieve, by name Aitchieson, a handsome well mannered man, a great favourite, who blinded even William by his adroit flatteries. He came from Ayrshire, highly recommended by I forget who, and having married Donald Maclean the Carpenter’s pretty daughter, called Jane after my Mother, he had a strong back of connexions all disposed to be favourable to him. He was gardener as well as grieve, for George Ross was dead, and he was really skilful in both capacities, when properly guided.
The forest affairs were at least equally improved by such active superintendence, although the alterations came more by degrees. I must try and remember all that was done there, and in due order if possible. First, the general felling of timber at whatever spot the men so employed found it most convenient to them to use their axe on a marked tree, was put a stop to. William made a plan of the forest,1 divided it into sections, and as far as was practicable allotted one portion to be cleared immediately, enclosed by a stout fencing, and then left to nature, not to be touched again for fifty or sixty years. The ground was so rich in seed that no other care was requisite. By the following Spring a carpet of inch high plants would be struggling to rise above the heather, in a season or two more a thicket of young fir trees would be found there, thinning themselves as they grew, the larger destroying all the weaker. Had this plan been pursued from the beginning there would never have been an end to the wood of Rothiemurchus.
The dragging of the felled timber was next systematised. The horses required were kept at the Doune, sent out regularly to their work during the time of year they were wanted, and when their business was done employed in carting deals to Forres, returning with meal sufficient for the consumption of the whole place, or to Inverness to bring back coals and other stores for the house. The little bodies and idle boys with ponies were got rid of. The Mills also disappeared. One by one these picturesque objects fell into disuse. A large building was erected on the Druie near its junction with the Spey, where all the sawing was effected. A coarse upright saw for slabbing, that is, slicing off the outsides or backs of the logs, and several packs of saws which cut the whole log up at once into deals, were all arranged in the larger division of the Mill. A wide reservoir of water held all the wood floated or dragged to the inclined plane up which the logs were rolled as wanted. When cut up, the backs were thrown out through one window, the deals through another, into a yard at the back of the Mill, where the wood was all sorted and stacked. Very few men and as many boys got easily through the work of the day. It was always a busy scene and a very exciting one, the great Lion of the place, strangers delighting in a visit to it. The noise was frightful, but there was no confusion, no bustle, no hurry. Every one employed had his own particular task, and plenty of time and space to do it in.
The smaller compartment of the great Mill was fitted up with circular saws for the purpose of preparing the thinnings of the birch woods for herring barrel staves. It was a mere toy beside its gigantick neighbour, but a very prerty one and a very profitable one, above £1000 a year profit being cleared by this manufacture of what had hitherto been valueless except as fuel. This circular saw Mill had been the first erected. It was planned by my father and William the summer they went north with my Mother and left us girls in Edinburgh. The large Mill followed, and was but just finished as we arrived, so that it was not in the good working order I have described till some months later. An Urquhart Gale, an oddity imported a few years before, had entire charge of it, and Sandy McIntosh gave all his attention to the woods. He lived with his father at the Dell, and Urquhart Gale lived on one of the islands in the Druie, where he had built himself a wooden house surrounded by a strip of garden bounded by the water.
Having set the staple business of the place in more regular order than it ever had been conducted in before, William turned his attention to the farm, with less success however for a year or two. More work was done and all work was better done, but the management remained expensive till we got rid of Aitchieson. In time he was replaced by a head ploughman from the Lothians, when all the others having learnt their places required less supervision, William indeed was himself always at his post, this new profession of his being his passion. The order he got that farm into, the crops it yielded afterwards, the beauty of his fields, the improvement of the Stock, were the wonder of the Country. This first year I did not so much attend to his doings as I did the next, having little or nothing to do with his operations. Jane and I rode as usual. We all wandered about in the woods and spent long days in the garden, and then we had the usual Autumn Company to entertain at home and in the neighbourhood.
Our first guest was John. Our young brother John whom we had not seen since he went first to Eton. My Mother, whose anxiety to meet her pet was fully equal to my sisters’ and mine, proposed our driving to Pitmain, thirteen miles off, where the Coach then stopt to dine. The Barouche and four was ordered accordingly and away we went. We had nearly reached Kingussie when we espied upon the road a tall figure walking with long strides, his hat on the back of his head, his hair blowing about in the wind, very short trowsers, and arms beyond his coat sleeves—in fact an object! and this was John! grown five inches! or indeed I believe six! for he had been sixteen months away. He had carried up very creditable breadth with all this height,
looking strong enough, but so altered, so unlike our little plaything of a brother, we were rather discomfited. However, we found that the ways of old had lost no charms for the Eton boy; he was more our companion than ever, promoting and enjoying fun in his quiet way, and so long as no sort of trouble fell to him, objecting to none of our many schemes of amusement. Old as we elder ones were, we used to join in cat concerts after breakfast in the dining room. My mother always breakfasted in her room, my father frequently had a tray sent to him in the Study, or if he came to us, he ate hurriedly and soon departed. We each pretended we were playing on some instrument, the sound of which we endeavoured to imitate with the voice, taking parts as in a real orchestra, generally contriving to make harmony, and going through all our favourite overtures as well as innumerable melodies. Then we would act Scenes from different plays, substituting our own words when memory failed us, or sing bits of Operas tn the same improvisatori style. Then we would rush out of doors, be off to fish, or to visit our thousand friends, or to the forest or to the Mill, or to take a row upon the lake, unmooring the boat ourselves, and Jane and I handling the oars just as well as our brothers. Sometimes we stopt short in the garden or went no further than the hill of the Doune, or may be would lounge on to the farm yard if any work we liked was going on there. Jane had taken to sketching from nature and to gardening. I had my green house plants indoors, and the linen press, made over to my case by my mother, as were the wardrobes of my brothers. We were so happy, so busy, we felt it an interruption when there came visitors, Jane excepted. She was only in her element when in company. She very soon took the whole charge of receiving and entertaining the guests. She quite shone in this capacity and certainly made the gay meetings of friends henceforward very different from the formal parties of former times. Our guests this autumn of 1820 were Charles and Robert Grant (names ever dear to me), Sir David and Lady Brewster, and Mrs Marcet the clever authoress,2 brought to us by the Bellevilles. We gave her a luncheon in our Cottage at Loch an Eilein, which much pleased her. This cottage had been built by General Grant of the diamond ring for his old mother—on her death it had remained untenanted till it was bestowed on us. Our kind father repaired and improved it and built us a back kitchen and made us a flower garden and my mother gave us some furniture. Our cousin Edmund was with us this summer; he helped us to fit it up, whitewashing, staining, painting, etc. One of the woodmen’s wives lived in it and kept it tidy. We had a pantry and a store room, well furnished both of them, and many a party we gave there, sometimes a boating and fishing party with a luncheon, sometimes a tea with cakes of our own making, and a merry walk home by moonlight. Doctor Hooker3 also came to botanise and the Sportsmen to shoot. Kinrara filled, and Uncle Ralph and Eliza passed the whole summer with us. Mrs Ironside was at Oxford, watching with aunt Mary the last days of Dr Griffith. Uncle Ralph was the most delightful companion that ever dwelt in a country house. Never in the way, always up to every thing, the promoter of all enjoyment, full of fun, full of anecdote, charming by the fire on a wet day, charming out of doors in the sunshine, enthusiastick about scenery, unrivalled in weaving garlands of natural flowers for the hair, altogether such a prose poet as one almost never meets with; hardly handsome, yet very fine looking, tall and with the air and the manners of a prince of the blood. He had lived much in the best society and had adorned it. Eliza was clever, very obliging, and her playing on the pianoforte was delightful. She had an everlasting collection of old simple airs belonging to all countries, which she strung together with skill, and played with expression. We had great fun this Autumn; poney races at Kingussie and a ball at the cattle tryst, picnics in the woods, quantities of fine people at Kinrara, Lord Tweeddale and his beautiful Marchioness (Lady Susan Montague), the Ladies Cornwallis, kind merry girls, one of them, Lady Louisa, nearly killing uncle Ralph by making him dance twice down the Haymakers with her; Mrs Rawdon and her clever daughter, Lady William Russell, who I do not think much liked her little shabby looking Lord; Lord Lynedoch at 80 shooting with the young men; Colonel Ponsonby, who had gambled away a fine fortune or two and Lady Harriet Bathurst’s heart, and being supposed to be killed at Waterloo, had had his body, when he had swooned, built up in a wall of corpses, as a breastwork before some regiment to shoot over. Mrs Rawdon, rather a handsome flirting widow, taking Uncle Ralph for a widower, paid him very tender attentions and invited Eliza to visit her in London.
This was the summer of Queen Caroline’s trial;4 the newspapers were of course forbidden to all us young people; a useless prohibition, for while we sat working or drawing, my Uncle and my Mother favoured us with full comments on these disgusting proceedings. ‘Good God, Jane’, said my Uncle, ‘the woman must be a beast, just listen … did you ever hear of any thing so utterly abominable …’; ‘Not near so bad Ralph as her exhibition before the Banker at …’; and so they would go on skimming the rich filth of the dirt the papers were polluted with. In September the poor creature died. None of the grandees in our neighbourhood would wear mourning for her. We had to put on black for our Uncle Griffith, and the good natured world said that my father, in his violent Whiggery, had dressed us in sables, when, in truth, he had always supported the king’s right to exercise his own authority in his own family. So tales rise and spread, Mrs Ralph remained at Oxford to assist Aunt Mary in selecting furniture, packing up some, selling the rest, and giving up the lodgings to the new Master, Dr Rowley, our old friend of the pear tree days. The two ladies then set out for Tennochside, where Aunt Mary was to pass her year of Widowhood, Uncle Ralph and Eliza hurrying back to meet them as soon as we had returned from the Northern Meeting in October. We enjoyed it much, and brought Duncan Davidson back with us in his kilt, still a fine boy though much spoiled. He was quite in love with Jane, and she seemed for a while to respond, but they fell out one rainy day and he departed. We never could make out exactly what the disagreement had been, perhaps some historical subject—a failure as to dates or facts or something had caused her to dismiss a bold dragoon, Tom Walker of the Scots Greys, a nephew of General Need’s, an excellent young man, good looking, rich and gentlemanly but not literary. She was hard to please, for Mr Crawfurd (Archipelago) was as learned as a professor, but sticking a fork into the potatoes, lost by his ill manners all that his learning had gained him.5
At the end of this year my sisters and I had to manage amongst us to replace wasteful servants and attend to my Mother’s simple wants. The housekeeper went, in bad health, to the Spa at Strathpeffer, where she died; the fine cook married the Butler, and took the Inn at Dalwhinnie, which they partly furnished out of our lumber room! My Mother placed me in authority, and by patience, regularity, tact and resolution, the necessary reforms were silently made without annoying any one. It was the beginning of troubles the full extent of which I had indeed little idea of then, nor had I thought much of what I did know till one bright day, on one of our forest excursions, my rough pony was led through the moss above Auchnahartenich by honest old John Bain. We were looking over a wide, bare plain, which the last time I had seen it had been all wood. I believe I started. The good old man shook his gray head, and then, with more respect than usual in his affectionate highland manner, he told me all that was said, all that he feared, all that some one of us should know, and that he saw ‘it was fixed’ that Miss Lizzie should hear, for though she was ‘lightsome’ she would come to sense when it was wanted to keep her Mama easy, try to get her brothers on and not refuse a good match for herself, or her sisters should it come their way. Good, wise John Bain—‘A match for me!’ that was over, but the rest was easy, could at least be tried. ‘A stout heart to a stiff brae’ gets up the hill. I was ignorant of household matters, My kind friend the Lady Belleville was an admirable economist, she taught me much. Dairy and farmkitchen matters were picked up at the Deli and the Croft, and with books of reference, honest intentions, and untiring activity, less mistakes were made in this season of apprenticeship than could have been expected. And so passed the year of 1821. Few v
isitors that season, no Northern Meeting, a dinner or two at Kinrara, and a good many visits at Belleville. William busy with the forest and the farm.
1822 was more lively; William and I had got our departments into fair working order. Whether he had diminished expenses, I know not; I had, beyond my slightest idea, and we were fully more comfortable than we had ever been under the reign of the housekeepers. Sir David and Lady Brewster were with us for a while, and Dr Hooker, and the Grants of course, with their quaint fun and their oddities and their extra piety, which, I think, was wearing away. In the early part of the year 1822 Aunt Mary came to us from Tennochside, escorted by my father on his way home from London. She found me very ill. I had gone at Xmas on a visit to our Cousins the Roses of Holm, where I had not been since Charlotte’s marriage to Sir John, then only Colonel Burgoyne. There had been no Company in the house for some time; I was put into a damp bed, which gave me such a cold, followed by such a cough that I had kept my room ever since; the dull unhealthy barrack room, very low in the roof, just under the slates, cold in winter, a furnace in summer, only one window in it. We three girls in it, my poor sisters disturbed all night with my incessant cough. Dr Smith, kind little man, took what care he could of me, and Jane, who succeeded to my ‘situation,’ was the best, the most untiring of nurses, but neither of them could manage my removal to a fitter apartment. Aunt Mary effected it at once. We were all brought down to the white room and its dressing room, the best in the house, so light, so very cheerful; I had the large room. The dear Miss Gumming Gordons sent up from Forres House a cuddy, whose milk, brought up to me warm every morning, soon softened the cough. Nourishing soups restored strength. In June I was on my poney; in August I was well. Weak enough, how much I owed to our dear, wise Aunt Mary. She never let us return to the barrack room. She prevailed on my father to have us settled in the old Schoolroom and the room through it, which we inhabited ever after; had we been there before I should not have been so ill, for my mother lived on the same floor, and would have been able to look after us. She was very ill herself, in the Doctor’s hands, rose late, never got up the garret stairs, and was no great believer in the danger of a mere cold.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 58