Memoirs of a Highland Lady

by Elizabeth Grant

  William went to town but not with Mrs Churchill, he went to play host to Colonel Smith, whom he had invited to his lodgings and who carried a note from me to Mr Robert Pennington, the medical man he meant to consult. We seemed quieter at Malshanger after all these good friends were gone; but not for long. Mrs Guthrie and Mrs Basil Hall came to welcome me home, Mrs Guthrie the same kindly and pleasant person as ever; Mrs Hall kindly too, I believe, but airified by the passing fame14 of her husband. They had come purposely to see me. It is nonsense to expect that early friendship will last under the shade of a total separation. We all declared we were all so happy to meet again, but I really fancied that they, like me, were very nearly indifferent upon the subject. I had never much taken to Margaret. After her marriage she became insufferable to every body but her sister—there was only Jane Guthrie, therefore, to try to care for her. She is to this day a most excellent person, but she is not in my line so that our intercourse is a very ghostlike semblance of the intimacy of our girlish days. Our Christian names in each other’s mouths always sounded very hollow to my ears, altho’ she and I have retained a warm interest in each other’s doings. She was living among people I had never heard of and my Indian past and Irish future were then equally removed from her sympathies. Both sisters were extremely concerned about their dress, a strange affair to my unpractised eyes. Miss Elphick, too, worn a little, not exactly prospering, just able to rub on; and Mrs Gillio, with her warm highland heart. Aunt Bourne, too, had been at Malshanger all along; her rich and happy marriage had ended in a second widowhood, and she was left the charge of a step daughter, who was to her all that her own daughter could have been. Henrietta without being a beauty was very attractive in looks and manners. She was particularly suited to my Aunt, perfectly capable of appreciating her superiourity, and modest and tractable herself. She took to us all, particularly to John Frere, who was also with us for a while, and delighted on moonlight walks in the shrubberies with an agreeable companion. I have always thought it a great pity these walks were not encouraged. My cousin Freres had not grown up handsome, besides there was a great want of grace in their manner. They were quaint, too, Frerish—that nameless oddity that runs thro’ the race. But they were thoroughly amiable, unaffected, well brought up and altogether very pleasing, my dear little Aunt queerer and dearer than ever.

  The Gardiners had taken a cottage at a pretty village three miles off down the hill, surrounded the parish church we attended; they took it for six months, and Jane and I hoped it might suit them for a longer time. It was so very comfortable, an old, good sized farm cottage, with a porch, and a draw well, and latticed windows, and a new front, with large rooms, and large windows looking on a flower garden, a well cropped kitchen garden behind. The house was furnished and the rent was low, though not a cheap country, no expensive establishment could have been kept there. They should have been tired of their wandering adventures. Their voyage in that little boat had been very boisterous. They escaped shipwreck by a mere chance; instead of landing at Liverpool they were stranded on the coast of Galloway, landed in boats, started with half their luggage for London, in post chaises, and after a London lodging and other discomforts, took a house at Ham, too near Mr Gardiner’s aunt Miss Porter at Twickenham, whose interference with their domestick arrangements made their moving again almost a necessity. They tried Cheltenham, Leamington, Matlock and then eagerly responding to Jane’s proposal of this cottage, which accidentally offered itself, they arrived at Malshanger, bag and baggage, to look at it. A few days sufficed to settle them most comfortably, having a talent for this sort of business. They looked very happy there, always cheerful, every thing nice about them, the children, neat and merry, dear little things. Jane and I often drove there in the basket cart with ‘Goody,’ and while she wandered through the village visiting all the poor people who shared her bounties, I sat quietly by Mary’s work table in the window opening on the garden, where Mr Gardiner delighted in being busy, little Janey in her short white frock and broad blue sash trotting up and down the room, and baby Tommy on my knee.

  All parties were anxious that my Colonel and I should settle in that neighbourhood; there was a very desirable place, Tangier, close to Malshanger, to be let, but we could not take it. The sharp air of these Hampshire heights quite disagreed with him. Besides that, duty and early attachments recalled him to his own green isle. In London, where he remained three weeks, he was comparatively well. Asthma attacked him directly he returned to us. Mr Pennington told him the disease was a consequence not a cause, but it was now chronick and would not cure, though it would be relieved, and his health, which was much deranged, should strengthen. He advised him to seek for an air that suited him, and stay in it and trust to time. An Indian stay anywhere; foolish Mr Pennington. It was plain he could not stay at Malshanger, so he left us for Dublin.

  My sisters and I had a subject of anxiety in William’s engagement to Sally Siddons; about this time she came on a visit to Mary, her sister Elizabeth followed to Malshanger; William, of course, was with his affianced. The news of their engagement had not reached Bombay when we sailed. I met it in England, I must say, with dismay. I feared it would really overset my father and that my Mother would give way to a violence of disapproval that would make all concerned very uncomfortable. For myself, I had yet to find out that worth would, and should, outweigh quarterings, that good sense and high principles in a woman are worth to her family more than all the more brilliant qualities, which are more attractive, and that no rank in life honourably supported ought to place a bar between a gentleman and a gentlewoman. So, liking her father and admiring her mother, our near connexion was a bitter pill. Very anxiously we all awaited our Indian letters, Jane, Mary, and I were grave, William in a fever, Sally calm. Mrs Siddons had written to my father detailing the whole progress of the attachment, which, when mentioned to her, she would not sanction without this consent. She touched on William’s faults of character, but believed them to have been redeemed by the way in which he had supported adversity, which belief alone could have induced her conditionally to consent to give him such a daughter, knowing too, that she must lose her for their destination was to be Calcutta. William was keeping his terms at the Temple, Lord Glenelg having obtained permission for him to proceed as a barrister to Bengal. The last paragraph of Mrs Siddons’ letter probably did no harm; it stated that Sally’s fortune would at the least be £10,000.

  My father received this letter alone and alone he determined to consider it before venturing to inform my Mother. This naive admission sufficiently explained his own feelings. He passed a sleepless night, and when at dawn he made up his mind to rouse his sleeping partner with the news, he found he might have saved himself all his perturbation. My Mother had heard nothing for a long while that had given her so much pleasure. A most cordial invitation to William and his Wife accompanied the consent to the marriage; Jane gave a grand dinner, the daily ones were small enough, Colonel Penning-ton produced champaign, and an evening of happy family cheerfulness followed. My Mother was very wise. She made the best of it, not her usual way.

  It was a fine summer. I thought I should have enjoyed the power of wandering out in the open air at every hour after the imprisonment of India—and so perhaps I might, but I had not the power, for I was ill, very uneasy and not able to exert myself. I had had to hire a little maid to wait upon myself in order to secure some attendance in my room, Jane in that immense large house having but two women servants and an old Molly, who came in after weeding the shrubbery to wash up dishes. There was always company in the house, additions frequently at dinner, besides one or two regular parties of the neighbours, and two of the little Penningtons, Charles and Annie, were living there. Georgina came afterwards, and the father and mother, neither of whom I liked. I therefore fared but badly as to attendance. So I proposed to Jane to hire a maid, to wait entirely on me, do out my room etc., and to pay her board so that she would cost her nothing. Jane was charmed. She knew a young woman that wou
ld exactly suit. She would arrange it all, the plan was excellent. I hoped so, for as it was I was rather miserable. Poor little Sarah, on the 29th. May, Royal oak day, we went all to lunch with Mary and to see the villagers dance upon the green, the queen, footing it merrily in her white dress with her garland of oak leaves round her straw hat, was pointed out to me as my future maid, which not a little startled me, and Mary advised me to cry off. But as the engagement was made, and only conditional, I did not like to disappoint either Jane or her protégée, as she could easily be left when we moved if she did not suit me. But she was the nicest creature possible, a good housemaid, quick and neat at her needle, clearstarched well, was always busy and always merry and I felt sure that when I had her to myself, we should get on admirably.

  As it was, I had her not, or very little. Jane expected her to be obliging, the housemaid begged for help, the Cook Nelly! insisted upon help, the little Penningtons were given over to her. So what with dressing them, and waiting on them, cleaning other rooms than mine, going messages, shelling pease, basting meat etc., I was nearly as forelorn as before. I might ring but was I answered? Sarah had just stept out to the farm for eggs, to the garden for parsley or had gone with Master Charles to lead his donkey. I daresay it was very good for me to try to wait upon myself, however, as Mr Workman of Basingstoke, who was to attend me, was not easy about me, as he told Jane, a proper monthly nurse was sent for to town, and down came Mrs Stephens, the usual assistant of Mrs Guthrie. Under her government, Sarah had to mind her own mistress, as the mistress herself, much to her own benefit, had to mind the nurse. She was a skilful person, and I do believe by her care of me she prepared me so properly for what I had to go thro‘, that she was the principal means of saving my life and Janey’s. It was a case similar to the Princess Charlotte’s, whatever that was, for I am sure I don’t know.15 I took ill on the last day of June, Saturday, the day King George the 4th. died. On Tuesday the 3rd. of July that little blessing to her parents saw the light about 9 o’clock in the morning. Poor Jane, who never left me, had given me over. The clever little strange Doctor, however, brought us both thro’—there never was a better recovery either, altho’ the nurse had to leave us in 10 days being engaged elsewhere.

  Before I left my room, I had a peep of my husband on his way from Dublin to London, and he returned only to take me away, being ordered by his doctor to Cheltenham for a long course of the waters. He came back in a very pretty britchska16 he and William had chosen for me; Annie Need and these two travelling together in it. After a few days we packed up and packed off, and then indeed I felt I was gone out from among my own kindred, and had set up independently—a husband—a baby—an end indeed of Eliza Grant.

  And here I think I’ll leave my Memoirs for the present. You know, dear children, what my Irish life had been, the friends we found, the friends we made, the good your dear father did. Ten months in Dublin sufficed to shew us a town life was not then suited to us. We resolved to settle among our own people, your father finding in his own old neighbourhood all those companions of his youth whom he had left there more than thirty years before. A very happy life we led there. First in the pretty cottage at Burgage which we improved without, and within, and made so comfortable, and then in our own fine house built by ourselves, such a source of happy occupation to the Colonel for years and the means of raising his tenantry from debt and apathy and wretchedness to the thriving condition in which we now have them. It would take a volume to describe our slow but regular march of improvement, never wearying in well doing, bearing patiently with ignorance and all its errours, and carefully bringing up our own dear children to follow us in doing likewise. One only trouble assailed our happy home, the want of health—that miserable asthma breaking him and breaking me and stepping in between us and many enjoyments. The purse, though never heavy, was never empty, our habits being simple. On looking back I find little essential to regret and much, Oh so much, to be truly thankful for.

  Dublin, February 1854

  E.S.

  1. Sir Hudson Lowe (1769-1844) was Governor of St Helena (1815-21) until Napoleon’s death; from 1821-31 he was second in command in Ceylon.

  2. Barry Edward O’Meara (1786-1836) was a surgeon on the Bellerephon taking Napoleon into exile; he was persuaded to stay by Napoleon as his physician and quarrelled bitterly with Sir Hudson, the Governor, who forced his departure in 1818. O’Meara’s revenge was Napoleon in Exile; or a voice from St Helena, published in 1822, a copy of which was in E.G.’s father’s library.

  3. See 1, pp. 115-6.

  4. A popular name for the Royal Kalender, or Complete. Annual Register.

  5. Courtrai was the headquarters of the Allies’ army of occupation in France after the war but this had been withdrawn in 1818.

  6. Mauritius.

  7. Bernardin de St Pierre (1737-1814), disciple of Rousseau and novelist, visited the island (1768-70) and wrote this famous novel in 1 787.

  8. Opera (1825) by Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834) based on Sir Walter Scott’s two novels, Guy Mannering and The Monastery.

  9. Cafés noted for dining and dancing.

  10. Dutch measure of 41 English wine gallons.

  11. There was another case of piracy in these waters at this time involving the schooner St Helena, which was boarded on 9 April 1830, shortly after this incident.

  12. Narcotic drug prepared from the Thorn Apple (Datura Stramonium).

  13. Sir John Michel (1804-86) married Louise Anne, only daughter of Major General H. Churchill C.B., Quarter Master General of the troops in India (D.N.B.).

  14. For an explanation of Basil Hall’s passing fame, see 11, pp. 49-50.

  15. She had given birth to a still-born boy and died shortly afterwards.

  16. An open carriage with removable folding top and space for reclining when used for a journey.

  Index

  Abbotsford 1, 2

  Abercromby, Lord 1, 2

  Adam, Jane 1, 2

  Agassiz, Mr 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  Ainslie, Captain 1, 2, 3

  Ainslie, Miss 1, 2, 3

  Ainslie, Sir Robert 1, 2, 3, 4; 5, 6

  Aitchieson (grieve at the Doune) 1, 2, 3

  Aix la Chapelle, visit to 1, 2

  Allan, Robert 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Allison, Sir Archibald 1, 2

  Alloway, Lord 1, 2

  Altyre, Cummings of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; 6, 7

  Altyre, Lady Gumming of 1, 2

  Alva, Duke of 1, 2

  Amherst, William Pitt, Lord 1, 2

  Amsterdam, visit to 1, 2

  Anderson, John 1, 2

  Anderson, Mr 1, 2

  Anderson, Sam 1, 2

  Anderson, Willy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  Anguish, Mrs 1, 2

  Anne (servant of Aunt Griffith) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Anstruther, General 1, 2

  Antwerp, visit to 1, 2

  Arbuthnot, Lady 1, 2

  Arbuthnot, Mrs 1, 2

  Arbuthnot, Sir William 1, 2

  Argyle, Duchess of 1, 2

  Argyll, 6th Duke of 1, 2

  Arkwright, Mr 1, 2

  Arkwright, Sir Richard 1, 2, 3

  Armidale, Lord 1, 2

  Arnheim, visit to 1, 2, 3

  Artevelde, Philip von 1, 2

  As You Like It (Shakespeare) and theatricals 1, 2, 3

  Ascension Island 1, 2, 3

  Ashburton, Lady 1, 2

  Ashburton, Mr Dunning, Lord 1, 2

  Augusta, Princess 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  Augustus, Prince (later Colonel d’Este) 1, 2, 3; 4, 5

  Aust, Hon. Mrs Murray 1, 2, 3, 4

  Baedeker, 1, 2, 3

  Baillie, Grace 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; 6, 7 in Edinburgh 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  Baillie, Joanna 1, 2

  Baillie, Mrs John 1, 2

  Balfour, Mary (Mrs Meynell) 1, 2; 3, 4

  Barnes, Lady 1, 2

  Barnes, Sir Edward 1, 2, 3

  bathing, at Ramsgate 1, 2

  Bax, Mr 1, 2, 3, 4


  Bax, Mrs 1, 2, 3

  Bedford, Duchess of 1, 2, 3; 4, 5, 6, 7

  Bedford, Duke of 1, 2, 3; 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  Beekvelt, Mr (tutor) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Belgium see Brussels

  Bell, George Joseph 1, 2, 3

  Bell, Johnny 1, 2

  Bellerephon, H.M.S. 1, 2, 3, 4

  Belleville 1, 2 Christmas at (1813) 1, 2

  see also Macpherson,Belleville

  Bernadotte, Desirée Clary, Queen of Sweden 1, 2

  Berry, Due de 1, 2

  Bianchi, Francesco 1, 2

  Bianchi, Mrs 1, 2

  Billington, Elizabeth 1, 2, 3, 4

  Bird, Dr 1, 2, 3, 4

  Birkbeck, Dr Morris 1, 2

  Blackburn, Great Aunt 1, 2

  Blackburn, James 1, 2

  Blair, Anderson 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

  Blake, Mr (dancing master) 1, 2, 3

  Blakeney, Sir Edward 1, 2

  Boece, Hector 1, 2

  Bombay, see India

  books cataloguing of, at the Doune 1, 2 in childhood 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  for evening reading 1, 2

  in India 1, 2

  reading by parents 1, 2, 3

  of saw mill workers 1, 2

  Boswell, Sir Alexander 1, 2, 3; 4, 5, 6

  Bourne, Dr Richard 1, 2, 3

  Bourne, Henrietta 1, 2, 3

  Bourne, Mary (aunt, formerly Ironside and Griffith) 1, 2; 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 see also Griffith, Mary; Ironside, Mary