Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  We frequently invited our castaway shipmates to partake of our shore repasts. Mrs Charles Telfer was also a frequent guest, my Colonel being perfectly well and able to enjoy our sociable ways. Our stay was varied by two country visits, one to the Governour, the other to the Secretary. The Retreat was a fine place; the gardens well laid out; the rooms large. There was a numerous suite, too, and nice children, but it was a disagreeable visit. Sir Charles was a dull man, reserved and silent, stiff to every one, but very stiff to us, for he and my Colonel had not got on altogether harmoniously during the time that he had been Commander in Chief at Bombay. His private Secretary was that gigantick Colonel Fraser, who had been such an abominable husband to poor Emmeline McLeod, and to whom therefore I could hardly contain myself to listen, particularly when he had the hardihood to speak.

  Lady Colville, one of the Muirs of Caldwell, was deranged, poor thing. She had been quite frantick and had been sent home in durance, placed in a private asylum. She was restored to her husband as cured, but was unsettled in her manners, very easily excited. One evening she was seated near me on a sofa with Mrs Churchill, who was giving a brilliant description of Ceylon merry makings. Lady Colville highly disapproved of such levities and was beginning to express herself very energetically on the subject, fidgetting on her seat too, and twisting herself, and so on, when the head servant, an Englishman, whom I remember remarking afterwards never left the room, came steadily up to her with a tray in his hand, and fixing his eye on her, he said in an odd commanding tone—‘Your Ladyship will take coffee?’ She was quiet in a moment, took the cup in silence, and we both of us felt that the less we spoke to her the better. In the mornings she was calmer always. I went to her dressing room after my breakfast, which I took in my own room, and she seemed to have great pleasure in making the discovery that patterns of her baby clothes would be useful to me. She collected a little bundle with extreme good nature, adding some fine calicoes etc. to cut up and she sent for a merchant, from whom 1 bought what else was wanting to give my neat fingers needle work enough to last thro’ the rest of the voyage.

  We felt it a relief to remove to Mr Telfer’s, where we had a kind welcome and no company but the brother, our Captain, and Dr Eckford. We slept in a pavilion in the garden, which left me at liberty for charming wanderings about the wooded hill their cottage was built on. Little Willy had been with these good people from the first, as their only child, a boy of his own age, had been delighted to have a companion.

  Here an affair was arranged of which I hardly like to speak, knowing but one side of the story. Judge of it we cannot, tho, the facts acknowledged look ill. This was to be Captain West’s last voyage, he now told us; he was to give up his ship on going home, make as much as he could of his part of her and her cargo, and then return with his wife and son and daughter to settle in the Mauritius as part owner of a sugar plantation now in the market. The two Telfers were to have shares; Charles Telfer was to be the manager, and if they could but pick up a few thousand pounds to start with, repair the buildings, purchase more slaves, etc., etc., in a year or two it would be a most remunerating concern.

  We all went to see it, an excellent plantation, canes in high order, business going on which much interested us; from the cutting of the canes in the fields, their transport on long waggons, recutting, steeping, boiling in great cauldrons, stirring, skimming, straining, drying, to the packing in the barrels, we saw the whole process, with its rum and molasses, spirit and dregs, hot and sticky, but very amusing.

  Dr Eckford was enchanted, his speculating turn quite roused, his vanity flattered by the deference paid him and the idea of proprietorship, and so, cautious and canny as he was, after grave inspection of the books, consultations, calculations and so forth, he offered to buy a share or two himself, and advance the required sum, to start with at 8 per cent—the common rate of interest in the island. I wonder that did not startle him; people must be very much in want of cash when they pay such interest for the loan of it. However he saw no risk, but to make sure of all going right he resolved to remain on the spot for the next few months instead of going on to the Cape; so we sailed without him. To end the tale now, the sugar plantation was a drain on the Doctor’s purse for some years. Captain West and the Telfers were equally unsatisfactory as partners, matters grew more than perplexing. The Doctor threatened a visit and legal advice, Charles Telfer cut his throat, the Secretary brother died, Captain West was ruined and the plantation bankrupt. On the Doctor leaving India for good, he called at Port Louis, found Captain West rich, sole owner of the plantation, which he had bought cheap on borrowed money and with £2,000 to indemnify the Doctor for the £5,000 the adventure had cost him.

  We soon resumed our sea routine, but not altogether so pleasantly. The steward had been neglectful, and made a poor provision of fresh supplies; the table had therefore fallen off. We had privately supplied ourselves, as we did every where without making a fuss, that would have been useless, and so, faring well in the cabin, were independant of the Cuddy. We could afford a help to Mrs Churchill too; but the friendless and the dogged who fought for the value of their passage money were ill off and cross enough. Major Floyd consoled himself by complaining to Mrs Churchill for that flirtation recommenced vigorously; I tried to frustrate much of this, and by giving up my pleasant privacy contrived to amuse the Lady sufficiently enough to keep her a good deal from the Cuddy door. She and the Colonel played Piquet and Backgammon while I worked at my tiny wardrobe. She got confidential and told me a deal of her history, poor soul. She might have been a better woman had she been better guided. Idleness was her bane. To get thro’ the time she really compromised her character.

  On we went, into colder weather; warm wraps were wanted as we neared the Cape—the ugly Cape I must always think it, with that flat topped Table Mountain, woodless shore, and low, objectless town. Yet we were glad to reach it, for our company was ill humoured, fare bad, Captain scowling, except to me. My Colonel, since the colder weather, had been suffering from asthma; he therefore, not being able to dress mostly kept his cabin. The voyage was beginning to be dreary. I suffered a good deal myself, only, having so much to do, I had luckily very little time to think of self.

  We did not land the first day, but I bought fresh butter, bread and fruit from the boatmen. Next day the Colonel was so well he went ashore and brought many little delicacies back. He had also heard of an old brother officer being at Wyneberg, about 8 miles beyond Cape Town—Captain Wogan Browne—and had sent off a messenger to offer a day’s visit; the answer was an insistence that we should come to him and Mrs Browne for the whole time we were to stay. We gladly consented and passed five very pleasant days in the small house they occupied. Poor Captain Browne was there for health, which utterly failed on his return to his regiment at Poonah, for there he died. She was nursing her only son, a fine boy, tho’ with a red head. In the evenings they had a fire, such a charming sight—the fire side is surely more than equal to the moonlight stroll, and certainly superiour to a sofa under a punkah.

  The deep sand prevented pleasant walking; it is loose and red, very penetrating. The scenery was disappointing, flat in general, no heath or other flowers in bloom; the cool air was the pleasure and even that was only during the night, and the dawn, and the sunset; the middle of the day was very scorching, as we found when we drove to the grape garden, and walked all thro ‘among the little bushes on which the over ripe fruit was hanging; a very rich and sweet grape, no mistaking it for the Constantia. When nearly baked we were conducted to a cave as cool as a well, where biscuits and several sorts of Constantia, deliciously cooled wine were presented to us. The Colonel ordered three awms10 some of which we still have, altho’ he has always been the reverse of niggardly in his use of it. The oddest thing I saw at the Cape was the sheep going about with little cans behind them to carry their tails in. The appendages are so large, such lumps of fat, that the animals would destroy them and impede its own progress without this assistance. The enormous
waggons goods were carried in were drawn by a regular regiment of bullocks, and great noise made with the whip and the tongue of the Conductor.

  My colonel bought me a dozen large ostrich feathers here and several bunches of small ones dressed as foxtails etc. for a couple of £; he also replenished our Cabin stores, as did some others unluckily. There had been little doubt from the beginning of the voyage that Archdeacon Hawtayne was not altogether in his senses. Very strange tales of the wildest outbreaks of temper had been current about him in Bombay. His timid young wife was evidently in painful awe of him, for she hardly spoke in his presence. Among the servants it was openly said that at times he used her barbarously, even to shaking and beating her, and nobody doubted that the death in childbed of our friend Kitty was owing to some shock she had received from his violence. Two facts were known, that he had been bound over by the magistrate to keep the peace towards his own head servant and that once, on the company he had invited all assembling at his house to dinner, Mrs Hawtayne was discovered, the image of a ghost, trembling on a sofa, no lights nor attendants, nor any preparations, and the Archdeacon met them with the intelligence that all his household having run away, no dinner could be forthcoming. It was on account of health that he was returning to Europe. At first he merely appeared excited, restless, wandering in his conversation, gazing up at the stars at night, in one of which he stated that his wife was dwelling and looking down on him with pity. He was also strangely particular about the little boy, whose times of eating he regulated oddly and also had his food prepared in various singular ways—difficult enough to manage on board ship. He was sometimes foolishly indulgent of the child, sometimes harsh and unjust to him. The boy feared him more than he loved him and yet he was the unceasing object of the father’s care. He had brought a native servant from Bombay whom he dismissed for some fault at Ceylon, hiring then one of the invalid soldiers.

  He had gone ashore at the Cape, and among other things had laid in a great store of water in bottles—the supply from the Mauritius not having kept. A hamper at a time he got up from the hold, any Thursday he required. The Mate once or twice remarked that the Archdeacon had got on to drink a great deal of water. We all remarked that his manner was becoming much more extraordinary, there were frequent quarrels with his servant, loud disputes with the man, and scolding and punishment of the poor child. One day the little creature, who was fond of slinking up to our Cabin and playing quietly with Willy Anderson, rushed up in an agony of terrour, sobbing and screaming out ‘hide me, hide me’—and after him the Archdeacon in his shirt and drawers with a whip, rushing about to strike at him. The gentlemen were all on deck. I took the boy in and closed the Cabin door, then opening the looking glass panel, which, as in Mrs Churchill’s Cabin, communicated with the small one next to us, which was Willy’s, I bid Mary call the Captain. The result of all this was the discovery that the bottles contained rather strong waters, under the influence of which this poor half madman became wholly mad. The Captain from hence forward prohibited any such wares entering that cabin, he possessed of all remaining bottles and after a conference with the Ship Surgeon, a Soldier, Serjeant of superiour character, was appointed to attend upon the poor man with a regular charge upon him, which indeed had become necessary if only to protect the little boy. That night he slept on cushions in Willy’s cabin, there was no persuading the poor little thing to go below. I had certainly good nerves then.

  The next scene was enacted by the younger Stalker, who now began to have epileptick fits, during which he foamed at the mouth and very much distorted himself. One of them he took while I was seated in the Cuddy near him. I remember gratefully the extreme consideration of all the rest of the party closing round him till they had got me to move away. The unfortunate young man’s intemperate habits heightened his disease; how much his good brother suffered under this affliction.

  These events carried us on to St Helena, where we were promised fresh provisions and a cow; the one brought from India was said to milk ill, it had therefore been parted with at the Cape. Another had been procured there, the Captain said, but by the most extreme mischance we had sailed without her—the fault of the Steward as before—so were the salt, bad butter, the old biscuit, and the many other deficiencies; a little hard to believe, thought most of us, and very hard to bear. Coarse tea, without milk, brown sugar full of insects, rancid butter, and maggoty biscuits were not Indiaman’s fare. At dinner the meat was fresh certainly, but there were no vegetables, with the exception of pumpkin pie. Neither the Colonel nor I could attempt the breakfast. We made Malek prepare us rice and curry or kabobs and we flavoured water with apples or lemon, or claret afterwards. I felt this much, being generally ill enough in the mornings at this time.

  There were two goats on board expected to kid shortly, which was the hope held out to the discontented—a poor one, as we proved. No wonder so much ill humour prevailed and that the officers and others declined, from the day that we left the Cape, to drink wine with the Captain.

  Mrs Churchill got her soldier’s wife to make her soup and apple dumplings, and such dishes as her own locker supplied materials for; but really it was very uncomfortable, not unlike starvation. She, and we, had bought tea, coffee, sugar, butter, apples, potatoes, portable soups etc. all in small quantities at the Cape from a sort of forewarning, and well it was that we did so. No body should ever go to sea with a Captain on his last voyage.

  We came very suddenly on St Helena. A huge lump, rising out of the sea. A flat top and steep sides, inaccessible they seemed as we coasted round, no way of landing, apparently, till all at once a gully appeared. A zigzag slit thro’ the mass of land, running down from high up inland to the sea. A small plain at the bottom just held a little close packed town, and up the steep rock on one side was a set of steps like a ladder leading to a fort upon the top, very pretty, very strange, a want of breadth about it. Several ships were in the roads, boats of all sizes and a few people wandering along the shore. The whole scene struck me as familiar; then I recollected the show box at Moy, at old Colonel Grant’s, where I got the porridge breakfast, which the old Lady let me amuse myself with; prints were slid in behind, and, viewed thro’ the magnifying peephole, had quite the effect of real scenes. One of these represented St Helena, and very true to nature it must have been to have fixed itself so tenaciously in a childish memory.

  We landed in boats on a very loose shingle, thro’ which I really could not get; unused to walking for so long, and with more to carry than was convenient, lifting the feet up out of those yielding pebbles was really too much, and at last, nearly fainting, down I lay. The poor Colonel! half a mile more of the same dreadful shingle before us under a hot sun, and no help anywhere; the rest of our party had got on far ahead. There was nothing for it but patience, the very quality in which we were, some of us, deficient. I was so distressed and tried to rouse up, but failed, so began crying. Fortunately—there generally is a fortunately if one waits for it—a second boat landed Mary the maid, to whom I was consigned and by whose stout help after many stoppages in about two hours I reached the boarding house, where the Colonel had engaged a room; there I fainted right off and passed the remainder of the day on a mattress on the floor till sufficiently revived by dinner.

  It was a good house in the only street, which consisted of large and small dwellings and some shops on either side of the road that led up thro’ the gully; the rock rose up pretty straight behind the row opposite. Our row had a rushing river between it and the side of the mountain, with a steep bank down to the water, which made the look out from the back windows rather pretty. Our host was also a merchant, and a gentleman, it being the custom in this little place for all the inhabitants to keep a sort of inn. Colonel Francis Grant did not, therefore, marry a mere lodging house keeper’s daughter. Mr Dunn was a trader and made money by receiving boarders, like others.

  Our hostess was a little woman, rather crooked, and not young. She had been a beauty and possessed a voice extraordinary for
power and compass; her songs were therefore of a manly cast. All Braham’s ‘Angel of Life’ and such like; the sweetness of tone was gone, but the spirit was there still. I did not like so much noise myself, and thought her style would have been better suited to the top of a mosque, from whence she could have been heard far and near to call the folk to prayers. Each evening we were there, she had an Assembly of the inhabitants in addition to the home party, which consisted of half a dozen from the Childe Harold and a whole dozen from another Indiaman, after whose comforts we indeed sighed, for they had cows, new laid eggs, fresh bread, a good cook, and plenty of every thing.

  To buy a cow at St Helena was impossible or a goat even; milk was very scarce, and all the butter used in the island came in crocks from the Cape. Every thing was monstrously dear here; 2s. 6d. a pound for sago, 9s. for tea; a bit of ribbon for my bonnet the price of the bonnet itself elsewhere. Our bill at the boarding house was something astonishing, £3 a day, I think, for the maid, the child, the Colonel and me and no separate sitting room, wine extra and beer, and £5 for a carriage we clubbed to take for the morning to visit the Lions of the place—the Briars, the cabin where Napoleon died (the beautiful house near it he never occupied), and his tomb.

  The road wound up by the side of the stream, rising at times very suddenly, turning sharp corners as suddenly, frequently high above the water, so that the occasional steepness and the precipice together made timid nerves quake. It was pretty, tho ‘there was not much wooding and the trees were low, like bushes. The Briars was a cluster of small buildings on a knoll below the road near the river that should have passed as some small farmer’s cottage had it not been pointed out to us. Upon the table land we saw the plantations round Government House, where we had been civilly invited to dine by I forget who was the Governour—for we did not go—and then, having ascended the last rise, we looked round on an immense plain bounded by the Ocean. The plain is varied by little heights, little hollows, and some wooding; drives thro’ it are agreeable from more variety than one would suppose; the air is delightful. There is no access but by the one precipitous zig zag we had come, along the banks of the only river in the island, and that is a mere brook, or rather torrent; there may be rivulets but we did not see them, there are a few springs. It might be monotonous as a residence; it was certainly grand as a view. The hut Napoleon would not leave was in part fallen from decay; his own room remained, a closet 10 foot square or so, with one small window, dingy green walls. Very wretched.