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“For a small place, where
literature sticks out,” wrote Lord Cockburn in his Memorials, “Edinburgh
has never been much encumbered by professed literary ladies; and most of
those we have had have been exotics.” [Memorials of His Time, by Henry
Cockburn, p.268.] One of the foremost of these “professed literary
ladies” who may in a sense be termed, from Lord Cockburn’s point of view,
“an exotic,” inasmuch as, though a Scotswoman, she was not a native of
Edinburgh, was the authoress of Letters from the Mountains, a
volume which has been well described as “an interesting treasury of god
solitary thoughts.”
Mrs. Grant of Laggan was
not born to literary greatness; rather, such greatness as she achieved was
thrust upon her by the imperious hand of circumstance. She did not write
because she had something to say – a message to deliver to the world – and
thought herself inspired to express it in cold print. She wrote because
she was poor, because her children were crying for food, and because her
friends very rightly urged her to make use of those undoubted literary
gifts which she possessed to provide for herself and her family. Like
Monsieur Jourdain, who took so long to discover that he had been talking
prose all his life, Mrs. Grant reached the age of fifty before she
realised that for years she had been writing literary essays in the form
of letters to her friends, and that a volume of her collected
correspondence was worthy of a place, however humble, in the literature of
her country. The production was certainly a most flagrant example of
“book-making,” but none the less delightful on that account.
Anne Grant was the daughter
of Duncan M’Vicar, an officer in the British army, who had married a Miss
Stewart of the ancient Argyleshire family of Stewart of Invernahyle. [“A
name which I cannot write without the warmest recollections of gratitude
to the friend of my childhood [Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle] who first
introduced me to the Highlands, their traditions and their manners.” – Sir
W. Scott in Chronicles of the Canongate, p. xviii.] Shortly
after his daughter’s birth, in 1755, M’Vicar’s regiment, the 77th
Foot, was ordered off to America, and he himself was forced to accompany
it. He accordingly bade a temporary farewell to his wife and child, whom
he left behind in a small house at the east end of Glasgow.
Anne was from all accounts
a precocious infant, who, though she said very little, seems to have been
an attentive listener. For the first two years of her life she remained so
ingloriously mute that Mrs. M’Vicar was occasionally alarmed at the
child’s apparent lack of intelligence. She soon realised, however, that
this silence was only a sign of the earnest thoughts that were occupying
the baby mind, and that there was little fear of Anne suffering from an
inadequate supply of brains. The child had often heard her mother telling
the neighbours about her absent soldier father, and had seen them pointing
their fingers towards that distant land where M’Vicar’s regiment was
quartered. One Sunday evening, inspired by a sudden happy idea, she set
off, without telling a soul, to find the gallant officer and bring him
back to his deserted family. The little mite, who was then only two years
old, started out all alone from her mother’s house and walked resolutely
in a westerly direction for a distance of nearly a mile, expecting at
every moment to come across the parent whose absence was such a familiar
and depressing topic of domestic conversation. How much farther Anne would
have marched one cannot tell, for just as she had begun to realise the
difficulties of her quest and the elusiveness of absent parents, a kind
old lady, who lived at the west end of the town, happened to catch sight
of the lonely but determined little figure, questioned the child as to her
intentions, and finally succeeded in persuading her to allow herself to be
put to bed. Meanwhile, poor Mrs. M’Vicar had discovered her daughter’s
absence, and was hastening in despair to inform the local authorities of
her loss. The town-crier was at once sent out with his bell to offer a
reward for the recovery of little Anne, and on the Monday morning the
child was brought home none the worse for her adventure.
In the following spring
M’Vicar’s family joined him in New York, where they lived happily and
contentedly together for ten years. During this period of her early life,
Anne’s education was undertaken by her mother, with the occasional
assistance of an old sergeant belonging to a Scottish garrison regiment.
This veteran taught the child to read and write, and even inspired her
with a taste for the poems of “Blind Harry” and some of the most uncouth
and rugged of the earlier Scottish minstrels. Anne’s choice of literature
was peculiar in one of her years. At the age of six she had read the whole
of the Old Testament, and was already half-way through a copy of
Paradise Lost, which one of her father’s brother officers had given
her. She learnt Dutch, too, from a Dutch family, who lived at Claverock,
near Albany, and very kindly looked after M’Vicar’s household, when he
took the field with his regiment at Ticonderoga. In later years in her
Memoirs of an American Lady, Anne Grant paid a grateful tribute
to the memory of her Dutch friends at Albany, chief among whom was the
heroine of this volume of reminiscences, a certain Madame Schuyler, of
whom the author affectionately wrote that, “whatever culture my mind
received, I owe to her.” Madame Schuyler was the daughter of a Mr. Cuyler,
who in the reign of Queen Anne gained a mild form of fame by bringing four
Iroquois chiefs to England. The visit of these “noble Redmen” naturally
created a great sensation at the time. It even inspired Addison to write
one of his Spectator essays. [April 27, 1711.] Swift had
more than once suggested to him that he should give an imaginary account
of the sensations of an Indian visiting England for the first time. The
result was this humorous article purporting to be a translation of the
journal left behind by one of the Iroquois chieftains. Cuyler was
presented to the Queen, but politely declined the knighthood which was
offered to him declaring that his democratic principles prevented him from
accepting such an honour. During the M’Vicars’ stay in America Mrs.
Schuyler became deeply attached to Anne, and her personality made such an
indelible impression upon the child, that the latter was able to describe
it many years after with an accuracy which was all the more wonderful
since it depended entirely upon the recollections of a girl of thirteen
years of age. [See Memoirs of an American Lady, by Anne Grant.
(1808).]
In 1768, the state of
Duncan M’Vicar’s health compelled him to return to England, regretfully
leaving behind him his small estate in Vermont. Part of it had been
granted to him by the Government, and the remainder purchased from brother
officers who did not share his original intention of making a permanent
home in America. He had no time before he left to make suitable
arrangements for the care of this property during his absence, and a few
years later, when the American war broke out, his plot of land was seized
and confiscated. This loss was a serious one to M’Vicar, who had invested
most of his savings in his American farm; but he still possessed a modest
private income, and on his return to Scotland was fortunate enough to
secure the appointment of barrack-master at Fort Augustus, whither he at
once removed with his family.
Anne had now reached the
marriageable age, and when the Rev. James Grant, military chaplain to the
garrison of Fort Augustus, fell in love with her at first sight, and found
that his sentiments were returned, there was nothing to prevent the
marriage, which accordingly took place as soon as the reverend gentleman
was appointed minister of the parish of Laggan in 1779.
Mrs. Grant made an ideal
minister’s wife. She set to work at once to master the intricacies of the
Gaelic tongue, in order to study the characteristics of her husband’s
Highland parishioners. The respect and affection of these folk she soon
succeeded in gaining, though at first they had been inclined to look with
some suspicion upon this Lowland woman who had intruded herself upon them.
At Laggan she lived quietly for many years, and in due course became the
mother of twelve children. During this peaceful (if not altogether idle)
period of her life, Mrs. Grant made a close study of the manners and
feelings of those with whom her lot was cast, and eventually described
them in those Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of
Scotland which were published thirty years later. But her happy life
at Laggan was fated to be interrupted by the cruel invasion of that fell
disease, consumption. Four of her children died of tuberculosis one after
the other, and finally, after a brief illness, her husband succumbed to
the same complaint, leaving a homeless and penniless widow with a family
of eight to support.
For a time Mrs. Grant tried
farming in a small way, at a little cottage lent to her by the Duke of
Gordon, but her efforts in this direction met with no success. Then some
intelligent friend suggested that she should publish a collection of the
verses which she had written from time to time for her own pleasure or for
the amusement of her numerous correspondents. [Perhaps the most famous
of her poems is the song beginning, “where and oh where is my Highland
laddie gone?”] This she reluctantly consented to do; the poems were
retrieved with some difficulty from the pigeon-holes of her acquaintances,
and in 1803 the volume was published by subscription. The Edinburgh
Review, ever a most captious critic of verse, declared that these
poems were “written with great beauty, tenderness and delicacy,” and the
zeal and importunity of her friends procured for this volume a list of
over 3000 subscribers, among whom may be mentioned Jane, Duchess of
Gordon, who was consistently kind to the author. “Silver and gold she has
not,” wrote Mrs. Grant some years later, “but what she has – her
interests, her trouble, her exertion – she gives with unequalled
perseverance.”
By this means her debts
were paid, and for a time at least she was able to live in comparative
comfort. But fresh financial difficulties lay in wait for her. Her eldest
daughter had to be sent into a home for consumptives at Bristol; her son
required an outfit for India, where he had with difficulty obtained a
civil appointment. Mrs. Grant was soon as badly in need of money as ever,
and once more, by the advice of her friends, determined to turn her
literary talents to account. She had long been a prolific letter-writer,
numbering among her correspondents such well-known people as Joanna
Baillie, Mrs. Hemans, Wordsworth, and Southey, and it was rightly thought
that a volume of her correspondence might prove popular to the reading
public. Accordingly, in 1806, she published Letters from the Mountains,
which immediately won a well-deserved success, not only by reason of its
literary charm, but also because the circumstances in which the author had
been placed naturally inspired popular sympathy. Expressions of kindly
interest reached her from every quarter. Three wealthy Scottish London
merchants, who were quite unknown to her, sent £300 as a token of their
regard for the author of the Letters, and some ladies of Boston, U.S.A.,
published an American edition of the book, and remitted £200 to Mrs. Grant
as her share of the profits. Furthermore, a number of friends in Scotland
made a collection on her behalf which amounted to over £300, on receipt of
which, as we read in one of Lady Louisa Stuart’s letters to the Duchess of
Buccleuch, she expressed herself as quite overpowered with surprise and
joy, never having seen so much money before in the whole course of her
life. [Gleanings from an Old Portfolio, containing some correspondence
between Lad Louisa Stuart and her sister, Caroline, Countess of
Portarlington, and other friends and relations, Edited by Mrs. Godfrey
Clark (D. Douglas, Edinburgh), iii. p.183.]
Two years later, Mrs. Grant
published the Memoirs of an American Lady above referred to, which
also proved financially successful, and in 1810 she moved from Stirling,
where she had been living for some time, to Edinburgh, which now became
her permanent home. Of her subsequent publications, the most successful
were a poem in two parts entitled Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen,
and a two-volume book called Popular Models and Impressive Warnings for
the Sons and Daughters of Industry, published in London in 1815.
Misfortune, however, still
dogged her footsteps. One after another all her children died, with the
sole exception of her youngest son, who survived to edit her Life and
Memoirs. But as her home joys decreased her friends grew more numerous
and appreciative. Her finances were by this time in a satisfactory
condition, and such literary success as she enjoyed enabled her to
entertain in a modest way at the little house in Edinburgh, where a
constellation of the literary and social stars of the day frequently
assembled at her invitation.
The society of Edinburgh
was at that time particularly interesting, [“L’on voit, par toutes ces
institutions, combine les letters, les sciences at les arts sont en
recommendation dans cette ville; aussi s’est-elle honorée par les grands
hommes qu’elle a produits dans presque tous les genres; aussi la célébrité
des professions a-t-elle attire dans ses murs des étrangers de toutes les
parties du monde, et a donné à cette ville un lustre at des moyens
d’aisance qui la distinguent des autres. Edinburg, par sa position et le
calme qui y regne, est un lieu proper aux sciences: elles n’aiment ni le
tumulte, ni les discussions parlementaires, ni les mouvemens bruyans du
commerce, ni les objets multiplies de distraction et de plaisir de Londres.
De tout tems les Muses ont fixé leur sejour sur une colline, au bord d’une
fontaine solitaire.” –Voyage en Angleterre, en Écosse et aux îlés
Hebrides, par B. Faujas-Saint-Fond, vol. ii. p.281. (1797.)] and
in the brilliant gatherings of distinguished persons there to be found,
women, (as we have seen), figured conspicuously. Captain Topham, the
traveller, has described the ladies of the Scottish capital as being both
physically and mentally beyond all praise. “Nature has been liberal to
them on decorating their external parts, as in ornamenting their minds,”
he says, “and I believe as few nations excel them in beauty as in
advantages derived from disposition and education.” “No women understand
better the rules of decorum,” he continues, “nor are they rivalled by the
French in the talent of agreeable conversation; for which they seem to be
better calculated, as well from their superior knowledge of the world, as
from their more extensive acquaintance with books and literature.”
[Letters from Edinburgh, written in the years 1774-1775.] In such society
as the gallant soldier thus describes Mrs. Grant did not feel out of
place. [“Went to breakfast with Mrs. Grant on Princes Street. She holds
a mist respectable rank in the literary society of the place, and is much
visited by stranger…She speaks with a strong Scotch accent, as do many of
the females with whom I have conversed. The brogue is quite a national
trait, and in the middling and lower classes it is no recommendation to be
without it…The openness and simplicity of her manners are no less
attractive than the graces of her understanding. She has none of the
flimsy wisdom about her, which is said to distinguish the blue
stockings of this city, and which qualifies them to converse with
anybody on any subject; but especially with politicians and philosophers.
She has a strong and enlightened mind, cultivated by study and
observations, and is blessed with an ample share of that, first of
national endowments, good sense.” – The Contrast, or Scotland as it
was in the Year 1745 and Scotland in the Year 1819. (1825).] Her
son tells us, in a preface to his mother’s Memoirs, that her chief charm
lay, not so much in the extensive range of information that she possessed
on every subject as in her uniform cheerfulness and equanimity. Her
conversation was so natural and unaffected, and seemed to emanate from her
well-stored mind with so little effort, that her liveliest sallies
appeared as if they had been struck off at the moment without any previous
reflection. [Memoirs and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, vol. i.
p.26.] Once, when Walter Scott was leaving a brilliant assembly, where
he had been surrounded by the usual crowd of fashionable admirers, “Mr.
Scott always seems to be like a glass,” said Mrs. Grant, “through which
the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of
paper which lies beside it will presently be in a blaze – and no wonder.”
[Lockhart’s Life of Walter Scott, p.206.]
When among intimates she
frequently claimed the privilege of age to speak with perfect candour, but
her home-truths were free from any suspicion of malice, and never gave the
least offence. We have already heard of her meeting Walter Scott at the
Duchess of Gordon’s house in 1809. “I think Mr. Scott’s appearance very
unpromising and commonplace indeed,” she says, “yet tho’ no gleam of
genius animates his countenance, much of it appears in his conversation,
which is rich, various, easy, and animated.” [Memoirs and Correspondence,
vol. i. p.199.]
Mindful of the kindnesses
she had received in early life from her friends in New York, she always
kept open house to any Americans who happened to visit Edinburgh. One of
these, George Ticknor, the author, has described his hostess as “an old
lady of such great good nature and such strong good sense, mingled with a
natural talent, plain knowledge, and good taste, derived from English
reading alone, that when she chooses to be pleasant she can be so to a
high degree,” [Life and Letters of George Ticknor, vol. i. p.278.
(Sampson Low, Searle & Rivington, 1876.)] – and Mrs. Grant generally
“chose to be pleasant.”
She was one of the numerous
literary persons who were at one time or another suspected of having
written Waverley. In a letter to an American friend, disclaiming
any share in the composition of this masterpiece, she spoke with such
assurance of Scott’s authorship that her correspondent concluded that Mrs.
Grant had been Sir Walter’s confidante. A report of this reached the
novelist, and made him very angry. “As for honest Mrs. Grant,” he wrote to
Miss Edgeworth, [Feb 3, 1824 (Lockhart’s Life of Scott, p.517.)]
“I cannot conceive why the deuce I should have selected her for a
mother-confessor; if it had been yourself, or Joanna [Baillie], there
might have been some probability in the report; but good Mrs. Grant is so
very cerulean, and surrounded by so many fetch-and-carry mistresses and
misses, [Young ladies of good family were sent to her to be instructed
in deportment, and she acted as their chaperone or companion at concerts
and assemblies.] and the maintainer of such an unmerciful
correspondence, that though I would do her any kindness in my power, yet I
should be afraid to be very intimate with a woman whose tongue and pen are
rather overpowering. She is an excellent person notwithstanding.” The
author of Letters from the Mountains was certainly a trifle
“cerulean,” but she always had the good taste not to sacrifice the
feminine to the literary character, and Lord Jeffrey may have had her in
his mind when he said that there was no objection to a blue-stocking so
long as the petticoat came low enough down to hide it.
In 1825 it was thought
advisable by many of Mrs. Grant’s friends that her affairs should be
placed upon a sound financial basis, and her old age secured from the
worries of discomfort and debt. A petition was accordingly drawn up by a
number of eminent persons, begging the Government to grant the old lady a
suitable pension. Sir Walter Scott, by way of showing that he would “do
her any kindness in his power,” joined in subscribing to this memorial,
thinking that Mrs. Grant certainly merited a pension, even more by the
“firmness and elasticity of men with which she had borne a succession of
great domestic calamities” than by her works as an authoress. [The Journal
of Sir Walter Scott, vol. i. p.28. (D. Douglas, 1890.)] Many famous
men appended their names to this application, among other Mackenzie, the
“Man of Feeling,” and Lord Jeffrey. Unfortunately, there was only a sum of
£100 available upon the pension list, and Lord Melville, the minister in
charge of such matter, decided to divide this sum between Mrs. Grant and a
distressed lady, the granddaughter of a forfeited Scottish nobleman.
Thereupon Mrs. Grant, “proud as a Highlandwoman,” as Scott tells us, “vain
as a poetess, and absurd as a blue-stocking,” [Ibid.] resented this
partition, and demanded that her claims should be submitted to the King.
Lord Melville was much annoyed by the tone of the old lady’s
correspondence, and sent it to Sir Walter Scott, asking rather
peremptorily to be informed whether Mrs. Grant would or would not accept
her £50. Scott handed the matter over to Henry Mackenzie, and did his best
to pacify the indignant minister. That Mrs. Grant would consent to take
the pension offered was a foregone conclusion. “Your scornful dog will
always eat your dirty pudding,” wrote Sir Walter in his Journal, and, sure
enough, Mrs. Grant eventually intimated her willingness to accept the
proffered £50, and expressed contrition for her earlier refusal. She need
not have been so proud, for she suffered in good company. The poet Hood
only received £100 a year from the Civil List in his old age, and
Campbell’s pension barely amounted to double that sum. Southey and
Wordsworth were allowed but little more when their failing faculties
rendered them dependent upon the nation for support. In our own time
“Ouida’s” services to literature were recognised by the grant of a modest
annuity of £150, and the granddaughters of Robert Burns must be satisfied
with even less. Mrs. Grant did not realise how difficult it is to secure
any official recognition of deserving literary merit, or perhaps she would
have been less difficult to please. To obtain a pension is, as Sir Walter
Scott declared, like hunting a pig with a soaped tail, which is “monstrous
apt to slip through your fingers.”
In her youth Mrs. Grant was
tall and slender, but in late life she fell downstairs, injuring her leg
so severely that she was kept a prisoner in her house till the end of her
days, and became in consequence somewhat stout. Lord Cockburn tells us
that she was always under the influence of an affectionate and delightful
enthusiasm which, “unquenched by time or sorrow, survived the wreck of
many domestic attachments, and shed a glow over the close of a very
protracted life.” [Memorials of His Time, p.269.] She was a hater
of Whigs as well as a lover of kings, and Mrs. Fletcher, in her well-known
autobiography, describes how, on the occasion of George IV.’s visit to
Edinburgh in 1842, Mrs. Grant replaced her habitual black dress by a robe
of salmon-coloured satin, took her seat at a shop window in Princes
Street, and waved her handkerchief wildly when the royal procession passed
by. [Autobiography of Mrs, Fletcher, p.151. (Edmonton & Douglas:
Edinburgh, 1875.)] Her kindness of heart was proverbial. De Quincey
was particularly touched by her flattering attentions to himself, and
retained a lasting impression of the “benignity that she – an established
wit and just then receiving incense from all quarters” – showed in her
manner to the young author, at that time wholly unknown. [De Quincey’s
Literary Reminiscences, vol. i. p.55. (Boston, 1859)] She also
befriended John Wilson (“Christopher North”), and when that eccentric
young poet and his wife set out on a walking tour through the Western
Highlands, gave him letter of introduction to her various acquaintances at
Inverness and elsewhere. [A Memoir of John Wilson, by Mrs. Gordon,
p.193. (1862.)] Later on, in 1820, when Wilson sought to obtain the
Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, he successfully
applied to her for a testimonial.
Mrs. Grant was an extremely
religious woman, and made a habit of reading a chapter of the Bible to her
guests every morning after breakfast. Once, when the poet John Pinkerton
sneered at sacred things in her presence, she was so indignant that a
scene was only averted by the tact of their mutual hostess. [Memoirs of a
Literary Veteran, by R.P. Gillies, vol. i. p.132.]
As a story-teller she was
unrivalled. She had a rich fund of anecdote at her command: her mind was a
crowded storehouse of fable and legend. One of her favourite stories was
that of the haunted glen of Laggan. A man of low degree had won the heart
of a chieftain’s daughter, whose family discovered the intrigue, and had
the unfortunate lover seized and bound naked on one of the large ants’
nests common to Highland forests. The victim of this cruel punishment died
in agony, while his mistress became demented and roamed wildly about the
glen until her death, when her ghost, unable to rest, haunted the scene of
her lover’s torture with such persistence that the natives of Laggan
shunned the road by day as well as by night. Mrs. Grant always asserted
that her late husband had exorcised the “Red Woman” – as the phantom was
called – by holding a religious service in the glen. But Dr. Macintosh
Mackay, [The famous Gaelic scholar, and editor of Rob Donn’s poems.]
who succeeded the Rev. James Grant as minister of Laggan, declared to
Walter Scott that the ghost was banished more effectually by the
construction of a branch of the parliamentary road running through the
glen than by the prayers of his predecessor. [Journal of Sir Walter Scott,
vol. i. p.407.]
No one has time, nowadays,
one may suppose, to read such an old-fashioned book as Letters from the
Mountains. But whoever takes the trouble to do so will find it a work
of great charm, written by one who was a lover of nature as well as a keen
student of humanity, with a rare gift for portraying Scottish peasant
life. Composed amidst scenes of misfortune and privation, Mrs. Grant’s
work is written at once with simplicity and force. It bears the stamp of a
pure and healthy mind, and is coloured with that patience and fortitude
which the author practised continuously, and which she recommends so
earnestly to her readers. Her writings have always been deservedly popular
in her own country, where they are still remembered, while those of Mrs.
Hamilton, Mrs. Brunton, and Lady Anne Halket are forgotten. “Addressing
themselves to the national pride of the Scottish people” – to quote from
the petition drawn up by Mrs. Grant’s friends at the time when she was
applying for a pension – “they breathe at once a spirit of patriotism and
of that candour which renders patriotism unselfish and liberal.” As the
outpourings of a simple and vigorous mind, they can safely be relied upon
to stand the test of time, and prove a worthy memorial of a delightful
type of old Scottish lady which is by no means extinct to-day.
Anne Grant lived to the age
of eighty-four. She died on November 7, 1838, and was buried in St.
Cuthbert’s churchyard, Edinburgh.
Memoirs and
Correspondence of Mrs Grant of Laggan
An article from Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (pdf)
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