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EARLY in July of the year
1812 my mother set out with her children for the Doune, bidding a final
adieu, though she knew it not, to England. I cannot remember whether my
father travelled with us or not. Yes, he must—for he read Childe Harold
to us; it had just come out, and made its way by its own intrinsic
merit, for popular prejudice set strong against the author. "To sit on
rocks," etc., arrested the attention even of me. I was not given to
poetry generally; then, as now, it required "thoughts that rouse, and
words that burn" to affect me with aught but weariness; but when, after
a second reading of this passage, my father closed the pamphlet for a
moment, saying, " This is poetry! " I felt that he was right, and
resolved to look the whole poem over some day at leisure. We had also
with us Walter Scott's three first poems, great favourites with us, The
Seven Champions of Christendom, Goldsmith's History of England, and his
Animated Nature, and in French, Adele et Theodore. This was our
travelling library, all tumbled into a brown holland bag kept under the
front seat of the barouche. At the inns where we had long rests, our own
horses doing but few stages in the day, we amused ourselves in spouting
from these volumes, Jane and I acting Macbeth, singing operas of our own
invention, and playing backgammon, a style of thing so repugnant to the
school ideas of propriety befitting the reign of the new governess, that
she got wonderfully grave with her unfortunate pupils. We had picked her
up as we left town, and thinking more of ourselves than of her felt
quite disposed to quarrel with any one who wept so bitterly at leaving
London and her own friends, when she was going to the Highlands amongst
ours. She was a little fat dumpling of a woman, with fine eyes, and a
sweet-toned voice in speaking, strangely dressed in a fashion peculiar
to the middle classes in England in that day, when the modes were not
studied all through society as they are now, nor indeed attainable by
moderate persons, as the expense was quite beyond the means of poorer
people. Her provision for the long journey was a paper of cakes, and a
large thick pocket-handkerchief, which was soon wetted through; not an
auspicious beginning where two such monkeys as Jane and I were
concerned. Mary and Johnnie ate the cakes. Poor Miss Eiphick! she had
troubled times. Her first grand stand was against the backgammon,
"shaking dice-boxes in a public inn!" We were very polite, but we would
not give in, assuring her we were always accustomed to shake dice-boxes
where we liked out of lesson hours. Next she entreated to be spared
Macbeth's dagger! Hamlet's soliloquies! Hecate's fury! "So masculine to
be strutting about and ranting in such loud tones," etc. etc. We were
amazed; our occupation gone! the labour of months to be despised after
all the applause we had been earning! What were we to do? sit silent
with our hands before us? Not we indeed! We pitied her, and left her,
thinking that our mother had made a most unfortunate choice in a
governess.
We entered Scotland by
the Kelso Road, we passed the field of Flodden; neither of us remembered
why it should be famous. "Miss Riphick will tell us, I am sure," I
remarked; pert unfeeling child that I was. I had taken her measure at
once, and knew full well she knew less of Flodden field than I did.
"Decidedly not," said my father, "take the trouble to hunt out all the
necessary information for yourself, you will be less likely to forget
it; I shall expect the whole history a week after we get home." Whether
suspecting the truth, he had come to the rescue of the governess, or
that he was merely carrying out his general plan of making us do all our
work ourselves, I cannot say, and I did not stop to think. My head had
begun to arrange its ideas. The Flowers o' the Forest and Marmion were
running through it. "Ah, papa," I said, "I need not hunt, it's all here
now, the phantom, the English lady, the spiked girdle and all; I'm
right, ain't I?" and I looked archly over at our governess, who, poor
woman, seemed in the moon altogether. The family conversation was an
unknown language to her. "What could have made mamma choose her?" said
Jane to me.
We went to see Melrose,
dined at Jedburgh, passed Cowdenknowes, Tweedside, Ettrick Shaws, Gala
Water, starting up in the carriage in ecstasies, flinging ourselves half
out at the sides each time these familiar names excited us. In vain Miss
Elphick pulled our frocks. I am sure she feared she had undertaken the
charge of lunatics, particularly when I burst forth in song at either
Tweedside or Yarrow braes. It was not so much the scenery, it was the
"classic ground" of all the Border country.
A number of French
prisoners, officers, were on parole at Jedburgh. Lord Buchan, whom we
met there, took us to see a painting in progress by one of them; some
battlefield, all the figures portraits from memory. The picture was
already sold, and part paid for, and another ordered, which we were all
very glad of, the handsome young painter having interested us much. The
ingenuity of the French prisoners of all ranks was amazing, only to be
equalled by their industry; those of them unskilled in higher arts
earned for themselves most comfortable additions to their allowance by
turning bits of wood, bones, straw, almost anything in fact, into neat
toys of many sorts, eagerly bought up by all who met with them. We
rested a few days in Edinburgh and then journeyed leisurely by the
Highland road home, still crossing the Queensferry in a miserable
sailing boat, and the Tay at Inver for the last time in the large flat
boat. When next we passed our boundary river the handsome bridge was
built over it at Durikeld, the little inn was done up, a fine hotel
where the civillest of landlords reigned, close to the bridge, received
all travellers; and Neil Gow was dead, the last of our bards—no one
again will ever play the Scotch music as he did. His Sons in the quick
measures were perhaps his equals, they gave force and spirit and fine
execution to strathspeys and reels, but they never gave the slow, the
tender, airs with the real feeling of their beauty their father had. Nor
can any one now hope to revive a style passing away. A few true fingers
linger amongst us, but this generation will see the last of them. Our
children will not be as national as their parents—reflections made like
some puns, a loisir, for at the time we last ferried over the Tay I was
only on the look-out for all the well- remembered features of the
scenery. We baited the horses at Moulinearn, not the pretty country inn
of the rural village which peeps out on the Tummel from its screen of
fine wooding now, but a dreary, desolate, solitary stone house, dirt
without and smoke within, and little to be had in it but whisky. The
road to Blair then passed over the summit of the hills, over-looking the
river and the valley in which nestled Fascally, and allowing of a peep
at Loch Rannoch in the far distance; then on through Killiecrankie,
beautiful then as now, more beautiful, for no Perth traders had built
villas on its sheltered banks, nor Glasgow merchant perched a castle on
the rock. Hardly a cabin broke the solitude in those days, to interrupt
the awe we always felt on passing the stone set up where Dundee fell,
Bonny Dundee, whom we Highlanders love still in spite of Walter Scott.
Miss Elphick, poor soul, was undoubtedly as innocent of any acquaintance
with him as she had been with James IV., but there had been something in
my father's manner on the Flodden field day which prevented any further
display of my ill-breeding. I therefore contented myself with a verse of
the song, and a little conversation with my mother, who was a perfect
chronological table of every event in modern history.
The old inn at Blair was
high up on the hill, overlooking the Park, the wall of which was just
opposite the windows. We used to watch through the trunks of the trees
for the antlered herds of deer, and walk to a point from whence we could
see the Castle far down below, beside the river, a large, plain, very
ugly building now, that very likely looked grander before its
battlements were levelled by order of the Government after the
rebellion. Here we were accustomed to a particularly good pudding, a
regular soufflé that would have done no discredit to a first-rate French
cook, only that he would have been amazed at the quantity of whisky
poured over it. The German brandy puddings must be of the same genus,
improved, perhaps, by the burning. The "Athole lad" who waited on us was
very awkward, red-haired, freckled, in a faded, nearly threadbare tartan
jacket. My father and mother had a bedroom, Johnnie and the maid a
closet, but we three and our governess slept in the parlour, two in a
bed, and the beds were in the wall shut in by panels, and very musty was
the smell of them. So poor Miss Elphick cried, which we extremely
resented as a reflection on the habits of our country. Next day was
worse, a few miles of beauty, and then the dreary moor to Dalnacardoch,
another lone house with very miserable steading about it, and a
stone-walled sheepfold near the road; and then the high hill-pass to
Dalwhinnie very nearly as desolate. Nothing can exceed the dreariness of
Drumochter—all heather, bog, granite, and the stony beds of winter
torrents, unrelieved by one single beauty of scenery, if we except a
treeless lake with a shooting-box beside it, and three or four fields
near the little burn close to which stands the good inn of Dalwhinnie.
We felt so near home there that we liked the lonely place, and were
almost sorry we were to sleep at Pitmain, the last stage on our long
journey. We never see such inns now; no carpets on the floors, no
cushions in the chairs, no curtains to the windows. Of course polished
tables, or even clean ones, were unknown. All the accessories of the
dinner were wretched, but the dinner itself, I remember, was excellent;
hotch-potch, salmon, fine mutton, grouse, scanty vegetables, bad bread,
but good wine. A mile on from Pitmain were the indications of a
village—the present town of Kingussie—a few very untidy-looking slated
stone houses each side of a road, the bare heather on each side of the
Spey, the bare mountains on each side of the heather, a few white-walled
houses here and there, a good many black turf huts, frightful without,
though warm and comfortable within. A little farther on rose Belleville,
a great hospital-looking place protruding from young plantations, and
staring down on the rugged meadow-land now so fine a farm. The birch
woods began to show a little after this, but deserted the banks about
that frightful Kincraig where began the long moor over which we were
glad to look across the Spey to Invereshie, from whence all the
Rothiemurchus side of the river was a succession of lovely scenery. On
we went over the weary moor of Alvie to the loch of the same name with
its kirk and manse, so singularly built on a long promontory, running
far out into the water; Tor Alvie on the right, Craigellachie before us,
and our own most beautiful "plain of the fir trees" opening out as we
advanced, the house of the Doune appearing for a moment as we passed on
by Lynwilg. We had as usual to go on to the big boat at Inverdruie,
feasting our eyes all the way on the fine range of the Cairngorm, the
pass of the Larrig between Cairngorm and Brae-Riach, the hill of
Kincairn standing forward to the north to enclose the forest which
spread all along by the banks of the Spey, the foreground relieved by
hillocks clothed with birch, fields, streams, and the smoke from the
numerous cottages. Our beloved Ord Bain rose right in front with its
bald head and birch-covered sides, and we could point out our favourite
spots to one another as we passed along, some coming into sight as
others receded, till the clamour of our young voices, at first amusing,
had to be hushed. We were so happy! we were at last come home; London
was given up, and in our dearly loved Rothiemurchus we now fully
believed we were to live and die.
We found the Doune all
changed again, more of the backwater, more of the hill, and all the
garden gone. This last had been removed to its present situation in the
series of pretty hollows in the birch wood between the Drum and the
Milltown muir; a fashion of the day, to remove the fruit and vegetables
to an inconvenient distance from the cook, the kitchen department of the
garden being considered the reverse of ornamental. The new situation of
ours, and the way it was laid out, was the admiration of everybody, and
there could not well have been anything of the sort more striking to the
eye, with the nicely-managed entrance among the trees, and the
gardener's cottage so picturesquely placed; but I always regretted the
removal. I like to be able to lounge In among the cabbages, to say
nothing of the gooseberries; and a walk of a quarter of a mile on a hot
summer's day before reaching the refreshment of fruit is almost as
tormenting to the drawing-room division of the family as is the sudden
want of a bit of thyme, mint, or parsley to those in authority in the
offices, with no one beyond the swing- door idle enough to have half an
hour to spare for fetching some. A very enjoyable shrubbery replaced the
dear old formal kitchen garden, with belts of flowering trees, and gay
beds of flowers, grass plots, dry walks, and the Doune Hill in the midst
of it, all neatly fenced from the lawn; and so agreeable a retirement
was this piece of ornamental ground, that I can't but think it very bad
taste in my brother John and the Duchess of Bedford to take away the
light green paling and half the dressed ground, and throw so large an
open space about that ugly half-finished house: for I am writing now
after having been with my husband and my children and three of my
nephews in the Highlands, a few really happy weeks at Inverdruie;
finding changes enough in our Duchus, as was to be expected after an
absence of twenty years; much to regret, some things to praise, and many
more to wish for. In my older age it was the condition of the people
that particularly engaged me; in 1812 it was the scenery.
It has always seemed to
me that this removal to Rothiemurchus was the first great era in my
life. All our habits changed—all connections, all surroundings. We had
been so long in England, we elder children, that we had to learn our
Highland life again. The language, the ways, the style of the house, the
visitors, the interests, all were so entirely different from what had
been latterly affecting us, we seemed to be starting as it were afresh.
I look back on it even now as a point to date up to and on from; the
beginning of a second stage in the journey. Our family then consisted of
my father and mother, we three girls and our governess, and our young
French companion Caroline Favrin, William during the summer holidays,
Johnnie, and a maid between him and my mother, poor Peggy Davidson.
Besides her there were the following servants: Mrs Bird the coachman's
wife, an Englishwoman, as upper housemaid and plain needlewoman; under
her Betty Ross, the gardener's youngest daughter; Grace Grant, the
beauty of the country, only daughter of Sandy Grant the greusiach or
shoemaker, our schoolroom maid; old Belle Macpherson, a soldier's widow
who had followed the 92nd all over the world, and had learned to make up
the Marquis of Huntly's shirts remarkably well at Gibraltar,
box-plaiting all the frills—he never wore them small-plaited, though my
father did for many a long day after this! She was the laundrymaid. The
cook and housekeeper was an English Mrs Carr from Cumberland, an
excellent manager; a plain cook under her from Inverness; and old
Christie as kitchenmaid. The men were Simon Ross, the gardener's eldest
son, as butler, and an impudent English footman, Richard, with a
bottle-nose, who yet turned all the women's heads; William Bird the
coachman, and George Ross, another son of the gardener's, as groom. Old
John Mackintosh brought in all the wood and peats for the fires, pumped
the water, turned the mangle, lighted the oven, brewed the beer, bottled
the whisky, kept the yard tidy, and stood enraptured listening to us
playing on the harp "like Daavid"! There was generally also a clerk of
Mr Cooper's, my father requiring assistance in his study, where he spent
the greater part of his time managing all his perplexed affairs.
At the farm were the
grieve, and as many lads as he required for the work of the farm under
him, who all slept in a loft over the stables, and ate in the farm
kitchen. Old George Ross No. I—not the gardener— had a house and shop in
the offices; he was turner, joiner, butcher, weaver, lint-dresser,
wool-comber, dyer, and what not; his old wife was the henwife, and had
her task of so many hanks of woo' to spin in the winter. Old Jenny
Cameron, who had never been young, and was known as Jenny Dairy, was
supreme in the farm kitchen; she managed cows, calves, milk, stores, and
the spinning, assisted by an active girl whom I never recollect seeing
do anything but bake the oaten bread over the fire, and scour the wooden
vessels used for every purpose, except on the washing and rinsing days
(called by the maids ranging), when Jenny gave help in the laundry, in
which abode of mirth and fun the under- housemaid spent her afternoons.
Besides this regular staff, John Fyffe, the handsome smith, came twice a
week to the forge with his apprentices, when all the maids were sure to
require repairs in the ironworks; and the greusiach came once a week for
the check he carried in his bosom to the bank at Inverness, walking the
thirty-six miles as another man, not a Highlander, would go three, and
the thirty-six back again, with the money in the same safe hiding-place.
My father at this time paid most of the wages in cash. There were also
the bowman, who had charge of the cattle, named, I suppose, from the
necessity of arming him in ancient times with the weapon most used, when
he had to guard his herd from marauders. John Macgregor was our bowman's
name, though he was never spoken of but as John Bain or John the Fair,
on account of his complexion. He was married to George Ross the
orraman's daughter (orraman means the jobber or Jack-of-all- trades),
and, like almost all the rest of them, lived with us till he died. The
gardener, and those of his family who were not married or in our
service, lived in the pretty cottage at one entrance of the new garden,
which also served as lodge to the White Gate. The gamekeeper, tall,
handsome John Macpherson, had an ugly little hut at the Poichar. The
fox-hunter, little, active Lewie Gordon, had part of the Kinapol house;
the principal shepherd, John Macgregor, known as the muckle shepherd
from his great stature, had the remainder; the under-shepherd, also a
Macgregor, lived nearer the mountains. The carpenter, Donald Maclean,
had another part of Kinapol; he had married my mother's first cook,
Nelly Grant, she who could make so many puddings, ninety-nine, if I
remember right. The Colleys, the masons, were at Riannachan; far enough
apart all of them, miles between any two, but it little mattered; we
were slow coaches in our Highlands; time was of little value, space of
no account, an errand was a day's work, whether it took the day or only
an hour or two. Three or four extra aids, Tam Mathieson the carrier, Tam
M'Tavish the smuggler, and Mary Loosach and the Nairn fisherwives, with
their creels on their backs, made up the complement of our Highland
servitors.
Poor Miss Elphick!
nothing could reconcile her at first to the wild country she had got
into. Between the inns and bleak moors and the Gaelic she had been
overpowered, and had hardly articulated since we crossed Drumochter. She
had yet to awake to the interest of the situation, to accommodate
herself besides to manners so entirely different from any she had been
accustomed to. How our mother could have taken a fancy to this strange
little woman was ever an enigma to Jane and me; she was uneducated, had
lived amongst a low set of people, and had not any notion of the grave
business she had undertaken. Her temper was passionate and irritable; we
had to humour, to manage her, instead of learning from her to discipline
ourselves. Yet she was clever, very warmhearted, and she improved
herself wonderfully after being with us a little time. Her father, of
German extraction, had been bailiff to the Duke of Clarence at Bushley
Park; he lived jollily with a set of persons of his own station,
spending freely what was earned easily, and so leaving nothing behind
him. His son succeeded him in his place; his elder daughters were
married poorly; this one, the youngest, had nothing for it but the usual
resource of her class, go out as a governess, for which responsible
situation she had never been in the least prepared. Her childhood had
been chiefly passed under Mrs Jordan's eye, among all her Fitz-Clarences;
she then went to a third-rate school, and at eighteen went to keep her
rather dissipated brother's house during the interval between his first
and second marriage. We got on better with her after a while, but at
first her constant companionship made us very miserable. Oh, how we
regretted Annie Grant!
It was the intention of
my father and mother to remain quietly at the Doune for the next two
years, that is, my father intended the Doune to be the home of his wife
and children. He could himself be with us only occasionally, as he had
to carry his election, and then in the proper season take his place in
Parliament. I cannot bring to mind whether he wrote M.P. after his name
this year or the next, but in either the one or the other Great Grimsby
was gained—at what cost the ruin of a family could certify. Whether he
were with us or no, visitors poured in as usual; no one then ever passed
a friend's house in the Highlands, nor was it ever thought necessary to
send invitations on the one part, or to give information on the other;
the doors were open literally, for ours had neither lock nor bolt, and
people came in sure of a hearty welcome and good cheer. The Lady Logic I
remember well; I was always fond of her, she was so fond of me; and her
old father, and her sister Grace Baillie, whom I overheard one morning
excusing my plain appearance to my mother—"pale and thin certainly, but
very ladylike, which is always sufficient." No Mr Macklin with his
flute.—he was in India, gone as a barrister to Bombay, and recommended
to the good graces of my uncle Edward. Burgie and Mrs Dunbar Brodie paid
their regular visit. She measured all the rooms, and he played the
flageolet in the boat upon the lake not badly, though we young people
preferred hearing Mrs Bird, the coachman's wife, sing the "Battle of the
Nile" in that situation. Then we had poor Sir Alexander Boswell, not a
baronet then, Bozzy's son, his wife, wife's sister and quiet husband, Mr
Conyngham -new acquaintances made through the Dick Lauders, who lived
near them; they were also with us, and all the old set. Amongst others,
Sir William Gordon- Cumming, newly come to his title and just of age;
some of his sisters with him. He was the queerest creature, ugly, yet
one liked his looks, tall and well made, and awkward more from oddity
than ungracefulness; extraordinary in his conversation between
cleverness and a kind of want of it. Everybody liked Sir Willie, and
many years afterwards he told me that at this time he very much liked
me, and wanted my father to promise me to him in a year or two; but my
father would make no promises, only just a warm welcome on the old
footing when this oddity should return from his continental travels. He
was just setting out on them, and I never heard of this early conquest
of mine, for he fell in love with Elizabeth Campbell at Florence; "And
ye see, Lizzy, my dear," said he to me, as he was driving me in his
buggy round the beautiful grounds at Altyre, "Eliza Campbell put Eliza
Grant quite out of my head!" We had no Kinrara; that little paradise had
been shut up ever since the death of the Duchess of Gordon, except just
during a month in the shooting season, when the Marquis of Huntly came
there with a bachelor party.
We girls saw little of
all this company, old friends as some of them were, as, except at
breakfast where Miss Elphick and I always appeared, we never now left
our own premises. We found this schoolroom life very irksome at first,
it was so different from what we had been accustomed to. Governess and
pupils slept in one large room up at the top of the new part of the
house, the barrack-room where I so well remembered Edwina Cumming
combing her long yellow hair. We had each of us a little white-curtained
bed, made to fit into the slope of the roof in its own corner, leaving
space enough between the bedstead and the end wall for the
washing-table. The middle of the room with its window, fireplace,
toilettes, and book table, made our common dressing-room; there were
chests of drawers each side of the fireplace, and a large closet in the
passage, so that we were comfortably lodged. Miss Elphick began her
course of instruction by jumping out of bed at six o'clock in the
morning, and throwing on her clothes with the haste of one escaping from
a house on fire; she then wiped her face and hands, and smoothed her
cropped hair, and her toilet was over. Some woman, I forget who, telling
Sir William Cumming, who was seated next her at breakfast, that she
never took more than ten minutes to dress in the morning, he instantly
got up, plate and cup in hand, and moved off to the other side of the
table. He would not then have sat beside me, for Miss Elphick considered
ten minutes quite sufficient for any young lady to give to her toilet
upon week-days. We could "clean ourselves" properly, as she did, upon
Sundays. She could not allow us time for such unnecessary dawdling. We
must have an hour of the harp or the pianoforte before breakfast, and
our papa chose that we should be out another; therefore, we must give
ourselves a "good wash" on Sundays, and make that do for the week. We
were thoroughly disgusted. Her acquirements were on a par with this
style of breeding; she and I had a furious battle the first week we
began business, because during a history lesson she informed dear Mary
that Scotland had been conquered by Queen Elizabeth, and left by her
with her other possessions to her nephew, King James! I was pert enough,
I daresay, for the education we had received had given us an extreme
contempt for such ignorance, but what girl of fifteen, brought up as I
had been, could be expected to show respect for an illiterate woman of
very ungovernable temper, whose ideas had been gathered from a class
lower than we could possibly have been acquainted with, and whose habits
were those of a servant? She insisted also that there never had been a
Caliph Haroun al Raschid—our most particular friend—that he was only a
fictitious character in those Eastern fairy tales; and when, to prove
his existence, we brought forward the list of his presents to
Charlemagne, we found she did not believe in him either! Yet she could
run off a string of dates like Isabella in The Good French Governess. I
thought of her historical knowledge a good many years afterwards, when
visiting General Need's nephew, Tom Walker, at Aston Hall, in
Derbyshire; we had known him very well in Edinburgh when he was in the
Scots Greys. He was public-school and college bred, had been a dozen
years in the army, was married to a marquis's grand-daughter, and had a
fortune of £3000 a year. He was showing us a collection of coins, some
of them of the reign of Elizabeth, and after calling our attention to
them, he produced some base money which she had coined on some
emergency—in plain terms, to cheat the public. "And here, you see,"
added he, picking up several other base pieces, "Philip and Mary,
following her bad example, cheated the public too."
It was not to be supposed
that we could get on very comfortably with poor Miss Elphick; we were
ungovernable, I daresay, but she was totally unfit to direct us; and
then, when we saw from the windows of our schoolroom, a perfect prison
to us, the fine summer pass away, sun shining, birds singing, river
flowing, all in vain for us; when we heard the drawing-room party
setting out for all our favourite haunts, and felt ourselves denied our
ancient privilege of accompanying it, we, who had hitherto roamed really
"fancy free," no wonder we rebelled at being thus cooped up, and
detested the unfortunate governess who thus deprived us of liberty. Miss
Elphick determined to leave; she felt herself quite unequal to the
Highlands and the Highland children, so she went to make her complaint
to my mother. She returned after a long conference, seemingly little
improved in temper by the interview. However she had fared, we fared
worse; she was, to all appearance, civilly treated, which we were not. I
was first sent for, and well reproved, but not allowed to speak one word
to excuse myself; called impudent, ignorant, indolent, impertinent,
deprived of all indulgences, threatened with still heavier displeasure,
and sent back to my duties in such a state of wrath that I was more
decided than ever on resisting the governess, and only regretted my
powers of annoyance could not be brought to bear also on my mother. Jane
then had her maternal lecture, which gave her a fit of tears, so bitter
that she had to be sent to bed ; she was silent as to what had passed,
but she was more grieved than I was. My father had been from home during
this commotion, but I suppose he was informed on his return of what had
taken place, for an entire reform in every way was the result of this
"agitation." Until he came back we were miserable enough; Miss Elphick
never spoke to Jane or me, threw our books, pens, and pencils at us,
contradicted our every wish, to make us know, she said, that she was
over us. She doubled our lessons, curtailed our walks, and behaved
altogether with vulgarity. My mother soon forgave Jane; I, who was never
a favourite, was rather unjustly kept out of favour—not an improving
treatment of a naturally passionate temper.
My father met us with his
usual affection, but next day his manner was so stiffly dignified we
were prepared for a summons to attend him in the study. I was first
ordered to appear. I had determined with Jane to tell my father boldly
all our grievances, to expose to him the unsuitability of our governess,
and to represent to him that it could not be expected we would learn
from a person whom we felt ourselves fitted to teach. Alas, for my high
resolves! There was something so imposing about my father when he sat in
judgment that awe generally overcame all who were presented to him.
Remonstrances besides would have been useless, as he addressed me very
differently from what I expected as I stood before him, all my courage
gone, just waiting my doom in silence. I forget the exact words of his
long harangue; he was never very brief in his speeches, but the purport
is in my head now, for he told me what I knew was the truth. He said
Miss Elphick was not exactly the sort of governess he could have wished
for us, but that she was in many respects the best out of many my mother
had taken the trouble to inquire about. She had great natural talents,
habits of neatness, order, and industry, in all of which we were
deficient; all these she could teach us, with many other equally useful
things. A more correct knowledge of history, a more cultivated mind,
would have been a great advantage certainly, but we could not expect
everything; what he did expect, however, was that his children should
act as became the children of a gentleman, the descendants of a long
line of gentlemen, and not by rude unfeeling remarks, impertinence, and
insubordination put themselves on a par with their inferiors. Gentlemen
and gentlewomen were studious of the feelings of all around them; they
were characterised by that perfect good-breeding which would avoid
inflicting the slightest annoyance on any human being.
This lecture had
considerable effect on me. I dreaded compromising my gentle blood; I
also believed in the difficulty of procuring a suitable governess. My
conduct therefore improved in politeness, but I cannot say that I ever
learned to esteem poor Miss Elphick. Jane's private interview with my
father did not last so long as mine; she had never been so pert nor so
intractable as I had been, therefore she had less to reform. She said my
father had quite failed to convince her that they had got a suitable
governess for us, she was therefore sure that he had some doubts on the
point himself; but as there seemed a determination not to part with her
we had to make the best of it; and from this time Miss Elphick and Jane
got on very well together; I think, at last, Jane really liked her. She
improved wonderfully. Her conversation in the study lasted an hour or
more, and she left it much more humble than she had entered it. What
passed never transpired, but her manner became less imperious, her
assertions less dogmatic. Dictionaries, biographies, gazetteers,
chronologies were added to our bookcase, and these were always referred
to afterwards in any uncertainty, though it was done by way of giving us
the trouble of searching in order to remember better.
Schoolroom affairs went
on more smoothly after this settlement. We were certainly kept very
regularly at work, and our work was sufficiently varied, but the heads
were properly rested for the most part, and we had battled out a fair
amount of exercise.
In the summer we rose at
six, practised an hour, walked an hour, and then the younger ones had
breakfast, a plan Dr Combe would have changed with advantage. Miss
Elphick and I had often to wait two hours longer before our morning's
meal was tasted, for we joined the party in the eating-room, and my
father and mother were very late in appearing. We each took a bit of
bread before the early walk, a walk that tired me greatly. Studies went
on till twelve, when we went out again. At two we dined, and had half an
hour to ourselves afterwards. We studied again till five, and spent the
rest of the evening as we liked, out of doors till dark in summer, or in
the drawing-room, for we had " agitated" to get rid of learning lessons
overnight and had succeeded. In winter we rose half an hour later,
without candle, or fire, or warm water. Our clothes were all laid on a
chair overnight in readiness for being taken up in proper order next
morning. My mother would not give us candles, and Miss Elphick insisted
on our getting up. We were not allowed hot water, and really in the
Highland winters, when the breath froze on the sheets, and the water in
the jugs became cakes of ice, washing was a very cruel necessity. As we
could play our scales in the dark, the two pianofortes and the harp
began the day's work. How very near crying was the one whose turn set
her at the harp I will not speak of; the strings cut the poor cold
fingers. Martyr the first sat in the dining-room at the harp, martyr the
second put her poor blue fingers to the keys of the grand pianoforte in
the drawing-room, for in these two rooms the fires were never lighted
till near nine o'clock. Mary was better off. She being a beginner
practised under Miss Elphick's superintendence in the schoolroom, where,
if Grace Grant had not a good fire burning brightly by seven o'clock,
she was likely to hear of it. Our alfresco playing below was not of much
use to us; we had better have been warm in our beds for all the good it
did us. As we had no early walk in winter, we went out at half after
eleven, and at five we had a good romp all over the old part of the
house, playing at hide- and-seek in the long garret and its many
dependencies, till it was time for Miss Elphick, who dined in the
parlour, to dress. We had a charming hour to ourselves then by the good
fire in the schoolroom, no candle allowed, till we had to dress
ourselves and take our work down to the drawing-room, where I had tea;
the rest had supped upstairs on bread, Johnnie and Caroline Favrin alone
being able to take the milk. Poor, dear Jane, how I longed to give her
one of the cups of tea I was allowed myself; she was too honest to go
into the nursery and get one from Peggy Davidson.
We really soon got to
like the regularity of our life. Once accustomed to the discipline we
hardly felt it as such, and we got very much interested in most of our
employments, anxious to show our father that we were making good use of
our time. We generally played to him in the evening whether there were
guests or no, and once a week we had each to give him something new, on
the execution of which he passed judgment, not unsparingly, for he was
particular to a fault in finding fault. Once a week we had a French
evening when there was no company, and we read aloud occasionally after
tea, in turns, such bits as he had himself selected for us out of good
authors, the same passage over and over till we had acquired the proper
expression. He often read aloud himself any passage that struck him,
either from books, reviews, or newspapers. We had a good command of
books, a fair library of our own, and a really good one collected by my
father. My father always commented on the passages selected, ever in a
spirit of liberality and kindness; I never heard an ill- natured remark
from his lips, on either dead or living, nor noticed the very slightest
interest in gossip of any sort; he meddled in no man's business, was
charitable, in St Paul's sense of the word, in all his judgments. It was
no common privilege to grow up under such a mind.
My mother, when in
health, was an example of industry. She kept a clean and tidy house, and
an excellent table, not doing much herself, but taking care to see all
well done. She was very kind to the poor, and encouraged us to visit
them and work for them, and attend to them when sick. She was a
beautiful needle- woman, and taught us to sew and cut out, and repair
all our own, our father's, brothers', and family linen. She had become
Highland wife enough to have her spinnings and dyeings, and weavings of
wool and yarn, and flax and hanks, and she busied herself at this time
in all the stirring economy of a household "remote from cities," and
consequently forced to provide its own necessities. Her evening readings
were her relaxation; she was very well read, thoroughly read in English
classics, and she possessed a memory from which neither fact nor date
ever escaped. When idle, we used to apply to her, and never found her
wrong. She used to employ us to go her errands among the people, and we
got Miss Elphick broken in at last to like the long wanderings through
the fir wood. We had two ponies, which we rode in turn; a tent in the
shrubbery in summer, the garden in autumn, the poultry-yard in spring,
the farm-yard at all times, with innumerable visits to pay to friends of
all degrees. Such was our Highland home; objects of interest all round
us, ourselves objects of interest to all round, little princes and
princesses in our Duchus, where the old feudal feelings still reigned in
their deep intensity. And the face of Nature so beautiful— rivers,
lakes, burnies, fields, banks, braes, moors, woods, mountains, heather,
the dark forest, wild animals, wild flowers, wild fruits; the
picturesque inhabitants, the legends of our race, fairy tales, raids of
the clans, haunted spots, cairns of the murdered—all and everything that
could touch the imagination, there abounded and acted as a charm on the
children of the chieftain who was adored; for my father was the father
of his people, loved for himself as well as for his name. |
