Recollections
and
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Recollections and Impressions
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Recollections
and
Impressions
BY
V A
E. MrSELLAR
FOURTH IMPRESSION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMVII
All Rights reserved
iJBRAftf
MAY 1970
^
SSfrffitfS
CT
188
TO
MY CHILDREN,
MY GRANDCHILDREN,
AND GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN.
NOTE.
IN giving these Recollections and Impressions to
the public, I feel some sort of explanation is due,
and the explanation is, that they were written
at long intervals during the last four or five
years, entirely for my grandchildren, and are
therefore of a more domestic character than if
a larger audience had been anticipated. I have
never kept a diary, and am conscious that what
I have written is often very desultory, and at
all times it is difficult to keep reminiscences
from being a dry catalogue of names. Had I
even suppressed the personal note, the sketches
of well-known people who came into our life
might appear too like detached portraits, lacking
a frame. Such as they are, I shall feel grate-
ful and pleased if my readers find some little
interest in any of them. If they fail to attract,
Vlll NOTE.
the liberty of skipping always remains. Since
writing the above, I have received the following
post - card from a dear and witty old friend,
"If Mr Blackwood wants a second title for your
book, how would ' Cobwebs from an old Cellar '
do ? " The name is too funny and appropriate to
be lost, though I can scarcely ask Mr Blackwood
to give it a more prominent place !
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
My birth My father, mother, and brothers My uncle's elec-
tion in Glasgow Life at Golfhill and Lagarie
CHAPTER II.
1850.
W. Y. Sellar's birth Early education Academy and Glasgow
University Balliol scholar Fellow of Oriel Takes Pro-
fessor Ramsay's work in Glasgow for sessions of 1851-1852
Our engagement . . . . . .21
CHAPTER III.
1851.
Mr Jowett's letter to W. Y. S. Mr Binning Monro's letter-
Marriage 1st June 1852 Visit Selkirk Go abroad
Homburg Meet Mr and Mrs Theodore Martin and Pro-
fessorf Aytoun Ardtornish Mr W. Smith, M.P. Florence
Nightingale Norman Macleod Glasgow College . . 30
CHAPTER IV.
1853.
Tennyson's visit to Ardtornish with Mr Francis Palgrave
Original rhymes . . . . . .52
X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
1853 (continued}.
Early days in St Andrews Professor Terrier and family
Sir Hugh Playfair Sir David Brewster Mr de Quincey
and daughters Mr Jowett Herbert Spencer . . 58
CHAPTER VI.
1854.
A. C. Sellar and his brothers Mr Lancaster and Sheriff
Gordon Dr John Brown Ardtornish . . .84
CHAPTER VII.
1855-1857.
Principal Tulloch Mrs Oliphant Mr and Mrs Lushington
Family visits to Ardtornish . . . . ,99
CHAPTER VIII.
1859.
Sir John Skelton and Principal Story Life at The Hermitage
Mr Froude and Mr Huxley Harehead Mr Lancaster
Professor Fraser . . . . . .117
CHAPTER IX.
1859-1861.
Principal Shairp . . . . . . .133
CHAPTER X.
1877.
Mr T. C. Sandars Barrister ' Institutes of Justinian ' . .142
CHAPTER XL
1880.
Matthew Arnold and William Arnold . 151
CONTENTS. xi
CHAPTER XII.
1861.
Harehead Yarrow Eeturn to St Andrews . . . 159
CHAPTEE XIII.
1863.
Settle in Edinburgh The University Some of the Professors
Distinguished students . . . . .170
CHAPTER XIV.
1864.
Social Edinburgh Graham Murray Mrs Tod and daughters
Mr Davidson Noel Paton R. L. Stevenson Professor
and Mrs Fleeming Jenkin Lake country Tullymet
Mr T. H. Green . . < . . .186
CHAPTER XV.
1868.
Bonn Rome Horace's villa Wayside poet Chateau d'Oex
Mr Benn Death of Mrs Hall Henry Hall Lord Bowen . 207
CHAPTER XVI.
1870-1875.
Germany and Switzerland Franco -Prussian War Mull
Dunvegan Family bereavements .... 224
CHAPTER XVII.
1872.
Galloway Kenmure Castle Gordon family Robert Burns's
day at New Galloway Craigenputtock Knocknalling
Glenlee The Holme Dairy Kenbank . . .237
Xll CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
1873-1889.
Kenbank Lochinvar Visitors to Kenbank Entertainments
in village ....... 252
CHAPTER XIX.
1874-1879.
Some Balliol memories The Master Professor Henry Smith
M. Tourgue'nief Lord Sherbrooke Mr and Mrs Fawcett
Mr Cumin Lord Sandford Mr Strachan-Davidson Mr
Evelyn Abbott . . . . . . .272
CHAPTER XX.
1870.
The Crosses and George Eliot Carlyle Lord Rector in Edin-
burgh Mrs Carlyle's death Last visit to Carlyle shortly
before his own death . . . . . . 290
CHAPTER XXI.
1884.
Celebration of the Tercentenary of Edinburgh University Mr
and Mrs Max Miiller Mr Munro Sir Robert Morier The
Master of Balliol Browning Sir A. Grant's death Sir
William Muir's appointment as Principal . . . 299
CHAPTER XXII.
1885-1886.
Lucerne Axenf els Seelisberg Mr Mackail's visit Sir
Edward Burne- Jones His daughter, Mrs Mackail, and
family 314
CHAPTER XXIII.
1890.
Perugia Assisi Propertius's birthplace Wildbad Paris
Dublin Kenbank Sir L. Grant's marriage Finis . .322
LIST OF POETEAITS.
E. M. SELLAR .....
From a photograph by W. Crooke, Edinburgh, 1907.
MRS DENNISTOUN AND HER CHILDREN JAMES, ROBERT,
ALEXANDER, AND ELEANOR . . .10
From, an oil-painting by a French artist at Havre, 1832.
ALEXANDER DENNISTOUN OF GOLFHILL . . . 16
From a photograph by Rodger, St Andrews, 1854.
ELEANOR M. DENNISTOUN . .' . . 34
From an oil-painting by Thomas Faed, 1851.
PATRICK SELLAR OF ARDTORNISH . . .44
From an oil-painting by Sir Daniel Macnee, 1851.
WILLIAM Y. SELLAR . . . . .86
From a photograph by Rodger, St Andrews, 1854.
MRS SELLAR ...... 232
From a photograph by Rodger, St Andrews, 1856.
WILLIAM YOUNG SELLAR, PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, 1863 TO 1890 . 322
From an engraving by James Faed, 1890.
ST JOHN'S OF DALRY, GALLOWAY, 1900 . . 334
Recollections and Impressions,
CHAPTER I.
11 Time unrevoked has run
His wonted course, yet what I wished is done.
By contemplation's help, not sought in vain,
I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again."
COWPBR.
" I wish that aged persons would write down some recollections of people
whom they have known." B. JOWBTT.
OF what was best and deepest in one's own life
I cannot speak.
" 'Tis human fortune's happiest height to be
A spirit melodious, lucid, poised and whole ;
Second in order of felicity
I hold it to have walked with such a souL"
And this was my happy fate.
But before entering on the experiences of my
married life, my grandchildren may care to hear
a little of my childhood and youth, and of my
parents and relations who had passed away before
2 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
they appeared on the stage. Like Tennyson's
" Eleanore,"
" My dark eyes opened not ... to English air,"
for I was born on September 19, 1829, at Havre
de Grace, in Normandy, where there was, for a
time, a branch of my father's business, and where
the family remained for nearly four years.
My brother Walter was also born there. I had
three brothers older than myself, James, Robert,
and Alexander, and one younger, Walter. No
doubt I was a good deal spoilt. I was called
Eleanor Mary, after my two grandmothers. When
I was nine months old I was taken to Paris with
my parents and grandmother, and thus came in
for the "three glorious days of July 1830"; and
I remember my grandmother telling me of the
consternation they were in when the bullets were
raining down the streets, and how she clung on
to my father's coat-tails to prevent him exposing
himself to danger. When we left France we went
to Germiston, a place not far from Golfhill, near
Glasgow, belonging to Mr Lockhart, the father
of Sir Walter Scott's son-in-law, and of Violet
Lockhart, who was called the "Pocket Venus,"
and was much admired by one of my uncles.
It was here my sister Elizabeth was born in
1833. I have often wished to revisit the place
A "CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY." 3
and see if it is at all like my shadowy recollec-
tion of it, the most distinct remembrance being
a broad staircase, down which I used to fly when-
ever I heard my father's footsteps, knowing he
would release me from the hated task of hemming
pocket-handkerchiefs, daily demanded of me by
my grandmother, Mrs Thomson, a pretty little old
lady who lived with us, and who thought that a
woman's natural weapon was the needle, and that
education in its proper use was of more import-
ance than the reading of many books. My grand-
father, Mr Dennistoun, was alive then, and living
at Golfhill, but I can only remember one day
spent there, when the kind old gentleman took
his little granddaughter over the garden and
greenhouses. He was a remarkable man in his
way, full of vigour, energy, and common - sense.
He had made a large fortune, and was most
liberal and generous to all who needed a helping
hand. More than thirty years after this, when
I met Carlyle at Professor Masson's, he said to
me, " I used to hear much about your grandfather.
He was a ' captain of industry,' and did more good
and helped more people to rise to the eminence
they attained than will ever be known." My
grandfather was born in 1752, and in 1786
married Miss Mary Finlay of The Moss, Stirling-
shire. I believe she was very handsome, with
4 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
beautiful blue eyes and black hair, but, beyond
being gentle and amiable, I do not remember
hearing of her personal qualities, except of the
strong vein of laziness which often made her work
a hole in her finger, to save her the trouble of
picking up her thimble ! This trait I recognise
in myself, though from some one else I must
have inherited the vitality which in me runs
parallel with the laziness.
My grandfather had a large family, my father,
Alexander, being the eldest son ; then came Eliza-
beth, Mrs Wood, the mother of Mrs Cross, the
cousin seventeen years older than myself, with
whom some of my happiest days were spent ; l
Mary, the wife of Mr Walter Wood ; William,
who distinguished himself at college, and died
young; James, who was so handsome that when
he travelled in America he was called " the
destroying angel." He married a Miss Gordon of
Milrig, and died when his little boy was born.
His widow soon married again, and the boy
lived with our aunt, Mrs Walter Wood, who had
no children of her own, and adored this one;
but he died when he was three, and I remem-
ber (as children) we were never tired of hear-
ing of this wonderful child, and looking at the
1 Mrs Cross was the mother of Mr J. W. Cross, who married, in
1880, George Eliot.
THE UNION BANK OF SCOTLAND. 5
little curl of his golden hair, set with brilliants,
which my aunt wore till her dying day. There
were two girls, Margaret and Agnes, who died
young ; and my Uncle John, the youngest of the
family. My grandfather, some years after his wife's
death, married again and had three daughters :
Maria, married to Mr Royds ; Isabella, married to
Mr Macdowall of Garthland ; and Anna, who died
when she was twenty-six.
My grandfather, in conjunction with Lord
Kinnaird, Mr Walter Fergus, and Mr Henry
Monteith of Carstairs, and other influential mer-
chants, founded the latest of the private banks
of issue in Scotland. This and other banks were
later absorbed into what is now called the
"Union Bank of Scotland." On my grandfather
retiring from business a magnificent banquet was
given to him, and his picture, by Graham Gilbert,
was presented to the Union Bank of Scotland,
and it now hangs in the head office of the
Bank at Glasgow. He died in 1835. In a
book published by MacLehose, ' Memoirs and
Portraits of 100 Glasgow Men, who in their
Lives did much to make the City what it now
is,' I quote the following : " Many will remem-
ber James Dennistoun as the very best type of a
British merchant of the old time high-minded
and honourable in all his dealings, prudent, yet
6 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
enterprising and successful. He enjoyed in-
timate friendship with Irving and Dr Chalmers,
whose work in the east end of Glasgow he
warmly backed. 'Mr Dennistoun,' Dr Chalmers
used to say, ' is the best natural man I ever
knew/ a dictum which satisfied his heart and
saved his orthodoxy. He was on terms of
intimacy, also, with the leading Whigs of the
day, Brougham, Cockburn, and Jeffrey ; and he
was a keen politician, and spent his money freely
in promoting the Reform Bill of 1832 a cause
which he had much at heart. For his services
in that way Earl Grey offered him a baronetcy,
but to his credit he declined it, lest it might
be thought he had been working for selfish
ends."
After my grandfather's death we went to live
at Golfhill, which was very different then from
the ramshackle doleful " shoot for rubbish " it has
become now, when the house alone is unchanged.
But the Molendinar burn still ran clear at the
foot of " The Knowes," which was indeed a fairy
playground for us children, with its broom and
gorse, and caves in the sand - hills, all becoming
the scenes of Sir Walter's poems or romances,
as one after the other they took possession of our
minds, and we must needs try to make them
living realities. The high park, now a veritable
A CURIOUS BRIDAL DRESS. 7
slough of despond, was edged by the "Wood
Walk," and with two enchanting round plantations,
tenanted by knights and ladies, stretched up,
green and cheerful, to where the steeple of the
Cathedral and the tall monument to John Knox
looked down upon it.
My father, who was born in 1789, married, in
1823, Eleanor Jane, daughter of Mr Eobert Thom-
son, of Nassau, New Providence. Mr Thomson
then lived in Liverpool, having left his place in
Nassau to his eldest son John, the father of
Seton Thomson, who married my sister Elizabeth.
My mother was only eighteen, and was married in
a riding - habit, which seems to have been the
fashion in those days, as my mother-in-law wore
the same dress on a similar occasion ; and the
unsuitability of it, wanting any connection with
its natural complement the horse, never seems
to have struck them.
My mother was "slim, petite" with beautiful
dark eyes, and altogether very pretty, I believe.
My cousin, Mrs Cross, used often to tell me that
she was the most radiant creature she had ever
seen. She seemed to sing rather than talk, to
run rather than walk, and came like a sunbeam
into the life of her much older sisters-in-law, and
was the idol of her nieces and the pride of her
silent grave husband, who delighted in her sallies
8 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
of fun and pretty playful ways. But, alas ! my
memory of her is of a time when sorrow had nearly,
if not quite, broken her heart, and when her eyes
were fuller of tears than smiles. Far the finest of
her children was James, her first-born ; and not
only was he singularly handsome, but his mental
gifts were quite as remarkable, and he was the
very pride of his father's and mother's heart.
Only one vivid remembrance I have of him, and
that was when my Uncle John was elected
Liberal M.P. for Glasgow in 1837, when the
three boys on their ponies, two cream - coloured
and one brown, rode, attended by their groom,
through Glasgow, with blue silk banners bearing
appropriate mottoes in gold letters. This almost
sounds mediaeval, so unlike is it to the vote-by-
ballot elections of the present time ; but in those
days an election was a much more picturesque
affair : each party wore their own colours, and
bands played, and canvassing went on more bare-
facedly, but perhaps not more potently, than at
present.
It is strange the foolish things that stick to
one's memory, while so much that is valuable slips
away. At this election my uncle was opposed by
Mr Robert Monteith of Carstairs, a Catholic, and
a chamberlain of the Pope. Whether that was
against him or not I do not know, but at any
A PICTURESQUE ELECTION. 9
rate he was beaten, and I still remember the
doggerel we all chanted in our nursery :
" Now poor Monteith he may sit down,
And mourn his loss sincerely ;
He'll never set up for Glasgow town,
For Dennistoun beat him fairly."
But to return to my brother James. Just be-
fore he was thirteen he caught scarlet fever. It
spread to Eobert and Alexander, and to my
mother. She and James were far the most seri-
ously ill, and he died while she was too ill
and too delirious to be told, and he was in
the grave several days before she knew that
the light of her eyes had been taken from
her, and all her bright hopes for him quenched.
It was a cruel blow, and they feared it would
kill her : it did not do that. I daresay she
wished it had, but it killed the spring of life in
her, and I do not think she ever smiled again.
And other sorrows were to follow. The year
after her youngest little girl, Euphemia, died ;
and in three months more a dear little black-
eyed boy, John Murray. These losses, coming
after her overwhelming grief, were almost too
much for this sensitive tender - hearted woman ;
but she struggled on though one felt, in a dim
childish way, that life had lost all colour and
enjoyment for her till 1847, when my brother
10 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Walter, a lovable, unselfish boy of fifteen, died
at Lagarie, on the Gareloch, Dumbartonshire, of
consumption. She nursed him night and day,
scarcely allowing any one to do anything for
him ; and the consequence was that her poor
overstrained body sickened of the same complaint.
She was taken up to Golfhill, and there, after
lingering for two or three months, she joined
those whom she had loved and lost awhile, and
found the rest and peace her heart and soul
craved for, and could never find in this world
of death and partings.
In 1835 my father had been returned to Par-
liament for the county of Dumbarton, defeating
Alexander Smollett of Bonhill. Though always
a keen and thoughtful politician, he did not take
kindly to parliamentary life, and gave it up when
this Parliament was dissolved, never again trying
for a seat. My father was very silent, and Sir
J. Colquhoun, who succeeded him, was still more
so, and I believe they were described thus: "Mr
Dennistoun always speaks when you ask him any-
thing ; Sir James never does."
Our life as children at Golfhill was an ex-
tremely quiet one. We were thrown entirely on
ourselves and our own resources ; but they seemed
sufficient, and I don't think we craved for more
society and excitement. My brother Robert had
From an oil-painting
by a French artist at Havre, 1833.
MRS DENNISTOUN AND HER CHILDREN,
JAMES, ROBERT, ALEXANDER, AND ELEANOR.
THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD. 11
a good deal of mechanical skill, and I remember
a delightful carriage he made out of a large
old box, duly christened the "Earl of Mar";
and when we came to the top of a hill the
human horse was withdrawn, and the guid-
ing it, on its own impetus, was as exciting
to us as tobogganing is now to our children
and our children's children. He also constructed
a little mill, in which he ground real corn,
which we baked into probably most indigestible
cakes. The boys had a tutor, and we girls an
English governess ; but my great delight was
the dancing class, taught by a Signor Sartorio,
and in this my brother Alexander and I greatly
distinguished ourselves, and became the prize
dancers : and as this is the only thing I ever ex-
celled in, I may be permitted to record the inter-
esting fact ! We used to spend the summers at
Lagarie, on the Gareloch, Dumbartonshire, for
several years with my aunt, Mrs Walter Wood,
and when she died it was left to my father.
We always drove down from Glasgow, resting
the horses at Bowling, then a pretty little quiet
place, now a howling not wilderness, but
junction of railways, harbour, building-yards; &c.
We loved Lagarie, which was not then sur-
rounded, as it is now, by villas of all kinds and
sizes, but was really country, and very pretty.
12 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Flowers grew beautifully there, and my aunt was
devoted to her garden. My father was very
punctual. The meals were on the table when the
clock struck the hour, and there was no waiting
for any one. And the same rule held with the
carriage, if we were not ready it went off without
us. For the practical training we got in this
way I am very grateful, more grateful still for
the way he indoctrinated us in the best English
poetry. He had a very thorough knowledge of
Shakespeare, but I daresay he thought that was
above our powers of reading aloud, so we went
through a course of Pope, Goldsmith, Dry den,
Johnson, Burns, and Scott, besides selections from
the more modern poetry, of which we learnt for
him a great deal by heart.
I remember, when I was ten years old, I com-
mitted to memory " The Vanity of Human Wishes,"
for which he gave me 5 ! and though I may
never have learnt the subject, the words remain
in my memory, and are so deeply associated with
him that I love repeating them to myself. And
vividly with my mind's eye I see his dear grey
head resting on the pillow of the sofa, for ever
after the late hours in Parliament he suffered
from a pain in his back, and except at meals
he rarely sat up; so it is on the sofa that
I always recall his image. He generally had a
A CALM EVENING OF LIFE. 13
little pocket-book, with an inch of a pencil, and
with this he was always writing down what
seemed to us mystic figures. He had a wonder-
ful memory and very clear head, and I think
there was no political or financial movement of
the last fifty years of his life of which he
could not have given a distinct account. He
had never had a regular business training, and I
don't suppose ever wrote a business letter in
his life ; but he had a genius for finance, and
it used to be said of him that whatever he
touched turned to gold. He was very fond of
pictures, of which he had a very good collection,
ancient and modern, and they were a perpetual
joy to him as he lay, still and silent, on his sofa
gazing at them. But it must not be thought
from this he was at all an invalid, for this was
far from the case : it was only the pain in his
back that made him lie down and take his
exercise in a very leisurely manner, or, as he used
to say himself, " with solemn steps and slow " ;
but he drove every day, and it was characteristic
of his dear peaceful nature that it was generally
the same drive up the Gareloch as far as Faslane.
Later, it was his pleasure to have his grand-chil-
dren as his companions on these daily drives,
the long old - fashioned phaeton, allowing of two
talkative schoolgirls on the rumble, and two little
14 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
ones on the seat at his feet. He was too silent
a man to have much to say to children ; but he
liked their company, and they felt his silence
to be friendly and cheerful, and never knew a
moment's constraint in his presence. I like to
think that through all their later lives the name
Faslane called up to all of them memories of the
dear old face, with its fresh complexion and con-
tented look, and the hands clasped on the ivory
head of his stick. " Grandpapa, are you never
tired of seeing the same view?" and the laconic
answer, " I have never seen the same view."
When croquet came in he was quite interested
in playing it. It was a great pang to me leaving
him in 1852, but my place was well supplied by
my sister Elizabeth ; and a few years after, when
she married her cousin, Seton Thomson, they all
lived together till my father died in 1874 : and in
Seton he found the best and kindest of sons-in-law.
Their little Seton, too, was an immense pleasure
to him. " The boy," he always called him.
The only check to my father's prosperity was
in the terrible panic of 1857, when, partly through
the failure of the Borough Bank in Liverpool, in
which the Dennistouns were large shareholders,
partly through the crisis in America, the great
firm had to suspend payment, with liabilities ex-
ceeding three millions. But the concern was
FOUNDING OF DENNISTOUN SUBURB. 15
sound at bottom, and asked only for a few years'
grace from its creditors, which was at once cheer-
fully granted. Their balance-sheet was one of
the first things to begin the restoration of con-
fidence, and as the result, before the year had
expired every creditor had been paid in full, with
five per cent interest for the delay : and in a few
years the firm itself had regained all it had lost
by the stoppage. These facts I quote from Mr
MacLehose's book, mentioned before. But I re-
member going from St Andrews that winter to
see my father, and I found he had put down all
the men - servants and carriages, and was living
in the most simple way ; and I heard that he had
said, "The creditors shall have every penny due
to them, and five per cent added, if I have never
another shirt to my back I " There are some de-
feats as good as victories, and this I have always
counted one ; and devoted to and proud of my
father as I always was, I never felt so proud of
him as at this time.
In 1861 my father began founding the suburb
of Dennis toun, buying for this purpose six or
seven of the neighbouring properties adjacent
to Golf hill : the whole was surveyed and laid
out in streets, terraces, and drives, and watching
the growth of this suburb was an inexhaustible
source of interest to him.
16 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
On my saying one day I had seen in the papers
the notice of two births in Dennistoun " Yes, he
said, you will see births and marriages, but no
deaths, it is so healthy ! "
He died in 1874 at the ripe age of eighty-four,
with mental faculties absolutely undiminished, and
with the calm submission of an ancient Stoic. We
were in Galloway that summer as usual, but hear-
ing he was not well I hurried off to Lagarie,
arriving there just after they had sat down to
dinner. He was in his old place at the foot of
the table, and for a moment I thought I had been
unnecessarily alarmed, but then I noticed the
difficulty in breathing, and I could have fallen on
his neck and wept, knowing soon I should see his
dear face no more. But such an exhibition would
have been so contrary to his nature that I had to
try to emulate his own calmness. For a week he
was up and dressed as usual ; was interested in all
that was going on ; sat outside silently gazing on
the beauties of nature, which he loved with a
passion I have rarely seen equalled, knowing it
was for the last time, but making no reference to
this, and by an intangible something in his look
repressing any emotional affection or allusion to
the future. For three days he was confined to bed,
mostly silent and always uncomplaining, but no
doubt he was very wearied ; and I remember well
Jto^
From a photograph
by Rodger, St Andrews, 1854.
ALEXANDER DENNISTOUN OF GOLFHILL.
DEATH OF ALEXANDER DENNISTOUN. 17
the pathetic look in his clear blue eyes as he said
to Dr Cowan who attended him, " Difficult to kill,
doctor/ 1 But the end came quietly and peacefully,
and we felt, as Dr John Brown said of one of his
patients, that he " died of death," and knew little
of the meaning of failing faculties or long illness.
I laid on his breast moss - roses his favourite
flowers, perhaps because of the name taking him
back to the Moss where he had spent happy days
of boyhood; and he often said that if he were
ill, the sight of Dumgoyne, a spur of the Campsie
range near the Moss, would cheer and comfort him.
To quote again from the book already mentioned :
"Of the late Alexander Dennistoun, it may be
safely said those who knew him best loved him
most. Affable and courteous to all, he was endeared
to his intimate friends by his high-toned honour,
his kindliness, his clear head, and his capacity and
intelligence to give sound advice to all who asked
for it. Well read and well informed, he had
cultivated a taste for art and surrounded himself
with valuable and beautiful pictures of both old
and modern masters, forming one of the finest
galleries in the west of Scotland. In politics he
was a Liberal, and though after leaving Parliament
he took little public part, he was always ready to
assist the cause with his influence and with his
purse ; and equally in Glasgow and Dumbartonshire
B
18 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
he was looked up to as a good adviser of the
Liberal Party."
But no record of my girlhood would be complete
without mention of my Uncle John, my father's
youngest brother. In nearly every respect he was
a contrast to my father. A thorough man of the
world, with good social gifts, witty, and very quick
at repartee, and with a strong sarcastic vein which
made him rather feared by those who did not know
him well a marked man in any society, he had
travelled much and seen much of men and cities.
In 1838 he married Frances, the youngest
daughter of Sir Henry Onslow, Bart. She was
only seventeen, and I believe he fell in love
with her at first sight, and proposed to her
within a week ! She was very handsome, and
I think had a wonderful fascination and charm.
She was so radiant, so impulsive, so unlike any
one I had ever seen, that I, a child of eleven
when she came first to Golfhill, became her
abject slave. Three years later her picture with
her baby girl in her arms was in the ' Book
of Beauty' for that year, and was immensely
admired. They lived in London, in 3 Grosvenor
Place Houses, three houses which then stood out
from the rest of Grosvenor Place, but now that the
whole place has been enlarged and changed it is
difficult to recognise them.
A HANDSOME YOUNG BRIDE. 19
My uncle was fifteen years younger than my
father, but this difference of age only drew them,
I think, nearer to each other, and the last years
of his life he spent at Armadale, the place next
to Lagarie, and there in 1870 he died at the age
of sixty-six.
Before closing this family record I must again
quote Mr MacLehose upon my uncle : " Speaking of
him now as his friends remember him, he was a
man scrupulous to extreme on points of honour
and integrity, of good abilities, expressing himself
tersely and clearly, a cultured and polished gentle-
man, who had read and travelled and mixed much
in the best society where his geniality made him a
great favourite."
My Uncle John left three children, James, Con-
stance, and John, and these children were the
delight of my girlhood, and became the dear
companions of later days. Constance especially
was so closely connected with all my married life,
from the day she was my little bridesmaid till she
died, two months after my husband's death in
December 1890, that it is difficult for me to speak
of her but in terms that might seem exaggerated to
those who knew her less well. She was impulsive,
warm - hearted, and very original, with a strong
sense of humour and a great charm of manner :
this, added to her elegant and striking appearance,
20 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
made her very attractive. She married when she
was twenty-two Mr Hamilton of North Park, but
he only lived three years, leaving her with two
little girls, Eva and Beryl. She continued to live
at Armadale, but for several winters she took a
house in London, and there we always went to
stay with her, and delightful visits they were,
for she had surrounded herself with a charming
circle of friends, among these the Sandfords,
Matthew Arnolds, Walronds, and Fawcetts, &c.
Near in kin and near in spirit, I have never
received more sympathy nor kindness than from
this dear cousin. She was so vivid in her enjoy-
ment of the things she cared for, so charitable
and unconventional in her judgments, that her
society was always a delight to us, and when
she died in 1890 when I needed her sympathy
most her death made a great blank in my life.
CHAPTER II.
" The human-hearted man, I loved." TENNYSON.
1850.
AND now, having given my grandchildren what I
feel to be a very inadequate account of those who
were dear to me, I must go on to tell them some-
thing of their grandfather's youth and achieve-
ments before our lives were united.
He was born at Morvich, in Sutherlandshire,
on the 22nd February 1825, and was the third
son of Patrick Sellar of Westfield and his wife,
Anne Craig. His two elder brothers were Tom
and Patrick : a sister, Jeanie, was eventually
married to Mr John Lang, and was the mother of
Andrew Lang, now so well known in the literary
world. Another sister, Helen, the idol of her
mother's heart, and the dearly loved one 'of all
the family, married the Eev. Mr Whishaw in 1850,
and died at Chipping Norton, on the birth of her
first child, Bernhard. After Helen came in order
22 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Robert, John, David, and Alexander. In these
days of constant moving about it seems almost
strange that all these nine children were born in
the same house. Stranger still that only on one
day, as my mother-in-law has often told me,
were they all under the same roof. William was
called after his great - uncle, William Young,
a very clever man, and very plain-looking, if one
can judge from a portrait the " old lady " had.
This William Young was factor on the Suther-
land estate, and in his anxiety for the prosperity
of the property was apt to be critical of any
extravagance on the part of the Duchess- Countess
and her husband, the Marquis of Stafford. In
the year succeeding Waterloo, when the various
potentates were in London, a magnificent ball was
given at Stafford House to the Prince-Regent and
the other royalties. The Prince was leaning in
the shadow of a pillar in a recess at the end of
the room, when Lord and Lady Stafford happened
to meet for a moment in front of him but not
noticing his presence. They mutually congratu-
lated each other on the brilliant success of the
entertainment. "But," said the Countess archly,
"what would Willie Young say?" When the
Prince-Regent was bidding good-bye to his hostess
she expressed the hope that he had been pleased
with his entertainment. " Yes, yes," replied the
A "GRANDE DAME." 23
Prince, "but" dropping his voice "I am only
concerned about one thing : What would Willie
Young say?" 1
William Young was a man of considerable means,
but left his fortune to relations on the Young side,
and to William he only left " 20 to buy books."
Mr Young's sister, Miss Anne Young, was a re-
markable woman. Mrs Sellar had been very much
with her when she was a child, and, till the day
of her death, held her aunt's memory in deepest
love and veneration. This veneration or power of
" looking up " was one of the many beautiful
qualities of Mrs Sellar's character, a quality now
become so rare that one almost despairs of its
reappearing in her descendants. So great was her
respect for this aunt that it showed itself in a
very funny way, as she insisted on her children
calling the venerable lady "Aunt, Miss Young/'
which inevitably degenerated into Aunt M'Shung,
and so rather defeated the pious purpose ! Miss
Young was quite a woman of the world, and had
rather the ways and manners of a " grande dame."
She rouged, and was very particular about the
style of her dresses and caps, though, no doubt,
to our more modern eyes they would seem very
1 Taken from an article on the Seaforth family, in an old number of
' The North British Review,' written by Mr Carruthers, editor of ' The
Inverness Courier.'
24 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
dowdy. She was clever, had a remarkable memory,
and was very well read, her chief interest being
in literature. Mrs Sellar used often to tell of her
aunt's horror when William, after his first term
at Oxford, puffed up, no doubt, with the new
learning and the new school of poetry, gave utter-
ance in her presence to the heresy that Pope was
no poet ! " No poet, William," said the irate old
lady ; " why, I know every card in Belinda's
hand ! " alluding to the heroine in the " Eape of
the Lock." Later in life William was more appre-
ciative of the wit, brilliancy, and wisdom that
have so woven themselves into the language that,
as the man said of Hamlet, Pope's writings are
"full of quotations," though he would probably
have still denied him the highest rank as a
" singer."
William, I think, must have recalled his aunt's
protest when, staying with us in Mull in 1871,
his nephew, Andrew Lang, being then under the
influence of Rossetti and Morris, whose " Two
Red Roses across the Moon" conveyed more mean-
ing to him than it did to an older generation,
declared that dough's poems were poetry about
the Thirty -nine Articles. "Then what subjects
would you select as suitable for poetry?" was his
uncle's somewhat indignant question, for Clough
was a man for whom he had a great love and
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 25
admiration, fully echoing Principal Shairp's words,
"One of the noblest men of his time, so true,
so deep, yet gentle -hearted too, and tender: and
then, what a battle ! What a sore spiritual
struggle his had been ! " To his uncle's question
his nephew's somewhat ambiguous reply was
"Apple-blossom," which made us all laugh and
realise then, as advancing age has made one do
over and over again since, that each generation
has its own prophets and heroes. These may
often seem to speak in alien accents to the
elders, who may, however, console themselves with
the thought that "age cannot wither nor custom
stale" what the greatest geniuses have said and
sung, and to this noble heritage they are equal
heirs.
But to return. When William was six he was
sent to the Elgin Academy with his two brothers,
Tom and Pat. They all boarded with a very clever
clergyman, the Eev. Mr Canaan, whose grandsons
are now well - known men at Oxford, and were
very happy ; and such progress had William
made with his studies ! poor little mite ! that a
year after, when he was only seven, he entered
the Edinburgh Academy with his brothers. Mr
Sellar, pere, was a man of iron will, and was de-
termined not only that his sons should have the
best education, but that they should excel, and be
26 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
at the head of their classes. This they were, and
at the end of seven years, when he was fourteen,
William was Gold Medallist and head of the
school. But he never looked back to this time
with pleasure ; and his father felt afterwards that
he had made a great mistake in spurring the
willing horse, and that the full participation in
the games which was denied him would have been
a better preparation for the battle of life than the
over-stimulating so young and fine a brain. No
boy now, I believe, is head of the Academy under
seventeen years of age, and he is certainly not
denied the privilege of belonging to the noble
army of "flannelled fools," as Rudyard Kipling
calls cricketers, to the intense indignation of some
of the present generation ! From Edinburgh he
went to Glasgow University, boarding with a
Frenchman, M. Brard, in the vain hope of his
learning to speak the French language : as far
as fluent conversation went, it was a failure,
but he always took a great interest in French
literature, which he read easily, and in after
years some of the most interesting reviews of
his works on the Roman poets came from dis-
tinguished Frenchmen. He greatly enjoyed the
lectures of the Latin and Greek professors
Ramsay and Lushington, both of whom and
their families became our life -long friends, and
THE CAMBRIDGE "APOSTLES." 27
I believe few mourned his loss more sincerely
than the genial warm-hearted successor to his
uncle, Professor George Ramsay. After two
years at Glasgow College he left it, the suc-
cessful candidate for a Snell Exhibition, which
sent him to Balliol College, where, when he
went up to Oxford, he got a scholarship. He
was seventeen when he left Glasgow College, and
spent some months with the Rev. Mr Dobson,
rector of Tuxford, not far from Doncaster. Mr
Dobson was an intimate friend of Mr Lushington,
who had recommended William to read with him
before entering on his Oxford career. He was a
first-rate scholar, and belonged at Cambridge to
that remarkable set of men who, as there were
twelve of them, were called " the Apostles," and
numbered among them such names as Lushington,
Spedding, Archbishop Trench, and Tennyson.
Here William found himself in most congenial
society and surroundings. While at Tuxford Mr
Dobson's eldest child, Kate, was born, the Kate
who was so much connected with our future life,
and was to become so intimate and trusted a
friend of ourselves and our children.
His time at Oxford seemed to be one of
the Augustan ages at Balliol, so many of his
fellow graduates became distinguished afterwards
in their different lines of life, and among these
28 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
he found like-minded friends, all perhaps bound
together, more or less, by the magic influence of
Mr Jowett, then a college tutor, and only about
five years older than himself. After leaving Balliol
he became a Fellow of Oriel one of the few open
fellowships at that time, and consequently con-
sidered the " blue ribbon " of the place. For some
little time he could not decide on his future life,
but accepted an offer to take for a term the work
of the Latin professor, Mr Melville, at Durham
University. Here he spent a pleasant time, and
as usual made many friends ; for, indeed, I think he
had a genius for friendship, and could with truth
have said with Tom Moore that what he prized
most in life was
" that freedom of the mind
Which has been more than wealth to me,
Those friendships in my boyhood twined,
And kept till now unchangingly."
When, some time afterwards, he was staying at
Rugby with Mr Walrond, his old friend Mr Shairp
told him that Professor Ramsay of Glasgow was
obliged, from ill-health, to spend the coming winter
of 1851 on the Continent, and was on the look-out
for some one to take his work, and he strongly
urged him to apply. This he eventually did, and
so returned as a teacher to the old university he
had left as a distinguished student.
A MAGNANIMOUS ACT. 29
His eldest brother Tom had been for many
years an active partner in my father's house,
looked up to and respected by all who knew
him. He was a man of great abilities and cul-
tivation, with a chivalrous sense of honour and
justice, and showed a striking instance of this
when, on his father telling him he had left Ard-
tornish, a property he had bought in Argyle-
shire, and Westfield in Morayshire, to him, he
begged him to reconsider his decision, and to let
all the brothers share and share alike adding,
" If you do not do this, I shall as soon as it is
mine." His father did do as Tom wished: and
as he had six other sons, it must have made a
considerable difference to Tom's fortune, and I have
always thought it one of those deeds that make
one think highly of human nature. Owing to this
intimacy with his eldest brother, when William
came to Glasgow he soon paid us a visit at Lagarie,
followed by many to Golfhill. We had met once,
years before, when I was staying with the Crosses
in Liverpool, who were devoted to him, and in a
spirit of contradiction I would not bow down to
their intellectual paragon, and he thought me an
"uninteresting little black-haired girl"! But all
was different when we met again, and at Christmas
time 1851 we became engaged.
30
CHAPTER III.
11 1 know that this was Life, the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared ;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back."
TENNYSON.
1851.
THE old college in which my husband taught
Professor Kamsay's classes this winter of 1851 was
perilously near Golfhill, I use the word in refer-
ence to the warning note in a letter he received
from Mr Jowett, which I shall shortly quote. We
met nearly every day, and though it is possible a
philosopher might think the time might have been
better spent, yet, "Ah, its hopes, its joys were
golden too ! " and have shed a radiance over all the
past which will only die with myself. The letter
of Mr Jowett to which I have alluded was written
early in 1852, in answer to one Willie had written
to him announcing his engagement.
"Well, old fellow, though later than it should
have been, I rejoice very heartily in your good news.
LETTER FROM MR JOWETT. 31
It was very kind of you to write and tell me. I
hear a very high character of the lady from im-
partial persons. ' High character ' I What a way
of talking! I don't mean that there are not
excellences to which no poetry or thought or
language can do justice as well.
" Walrond and I and all your great friends agree
in thinking you happy, not only in the potential,
but also in the most real sense. Shall I give you
advice once more? For the future it shall flash
from Miss Dennistoun's eyes. I want you to get
some good place, and get married as soon as possible.
So far you agree. But you won't get a good place
unless you throw your whole mind into your
professorship. Do you agree to this? But you
can't throw your whole mind into anything if you
stay half the day talking with Miss Dennistoun !
Get out of that chain of reasons if you can, and
don't be a { delicious lotus-eater.' Remember that
all her future happiness depends upon your im-
mediate exertions. This is the only way in which
you can escape the Nemesis of your good fortune.
You are unworthy of it if you don't use it well.
Remember it is the weakest and most wrong thing
you can do to her to neglect your work. No doubt
she would sooner have you stay and talk with her
than let you bother yourself with these lectures !
But under the circumstances you are a ' greater
32 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
fool ' than you ought to be if you don't know that
some day she will look on this differently, and will
remember with far more pride and satisfaction that,
even in the time of your courtship, you worked for
her sake. Neither would I, were I in your place,
allow her to be married, ' however she may pro-
test/ without getting some permanent appointment.
Everybody feels a change of circumstances such as
that. They lament when they see their husbands
with nothing to do, and their family not in the
place where they were themselves. I have known
two such marriages, both of them miserable for
that reason only. May God bless you ! All your
friends desire your happiness. Ever your affec-
tionate B. JOWETT."
I have given this letter in its entirety, because it
is so characteristic of the extraordinary interest and
affection with which Mr Jowett followed the lives
of all the young men whom he had influenced at
Oxford, and also for its admirable worldly wisdom.
And perhaps we may be forgiven if we did not
follow his advice to the letter as we did not
put off our marriage, and, as things turned out,
we were justified in our seeming imprudence, and
certainly we never regretted having disobeyed the
master! Of one thing I am certain, the work
at college did not suffer from the time spent
LETTER FROM THE PROVOST OF ORIEL. 33
with me, for of this I had many proofs at the
time and also years after ; and here I should like
to quote, in confirmation of this, a letter I had
from Mr David Binning Monro, the Provost of
Oriel, Oxford, written in 1891, acknowledging an
engraving of my husband which I had sent him
to hang in the Common Room at Oriel :
" It will be a great pleasure and satisfaction to
have his portrait to add to the collection, which you
will remember seeing in the Common Room, and
which is our chief glory. I ought long ago to have
written to say how much I felt his loss. My recol-
lection of him goes almost as far back, I suppose, as
your own, for I remember when I was in his Latin
class at Glasgow that he was then known to be
engaged. I have always thought it a special piece
of good fortune that he took that class then, with
all the broad literary and intellectual interest which
he brought from the Oxford of that time. It was
my first contact with anything of the kind, and the
stimulus was very great and had a very decisive
influence on my whole life, greater than any
which I found later."
I think even Mr Jowett was satisfied in the end
that we had not done anything very foolish!
It was during our engagement I think in the
c
34 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
month of March that William brought out his
brother John to luncheon and to spend the day ;
but before three o'clock he impressed upon him the
necessity of his returning to Glasgow to dress for
dinner, which was not till 7.30 ! This was my first
acquaintance with one who was to be the dearest
friend and brother, and was to become to two
generations of nephews and nieces the beloved
" Uncle Johnnie," the one to whom all turned in
any difficulty or happiness, as sure of help in the
one case as of sympathy in the other. He was
then a beautiful boy of twenty ; and at the time
I write, 1898, years have but added to his charms,
the inevitable lines having fallen in pleasant places,
and the eyes that never looked unkindness still
delighting and comforting all who look on them.
Alas ! he died a few months after.
We were married at Lagarie on the 1st of June
1852, by the Reverend Henry Gordon, an old
Balliol friend of my husband's. After going to
Loch Lomond, Loch Tay, and Loch Katrine, we
went to Moffat, and drove from there to Selkirk
that I might see the Yarrow, of which I had
thought and heard so much. It was so different
from the wilder, " more romantic beauty " of the
scenery we had left, that at first it seemed tame and
flat ; but soon its quiet grace and " pastoral melan-
choly " appealed to one's heart in a way that, years
From an oil-painting by Thomas Faed, 1851
ELEANOR M. DENNISTOUN.
THE QUIET GRACE OF YARROW. 35
after when we lived at Harehead, was deepened
into something like a passion.
At Selkirk we stayed with the Langs at View-
field Mrs Lang was my husband's eldest sister
and I made the acquaintance of my nephews, the
eldest, a handsome dark-eyed boy, shy and some-
what farouche, evading his new aunt's affectionate
advances, and fearing her kisses as much as the hero
of the lyric feared those of the gentle maiden ! I
little thought then of the strong friendship that
would exist between us in after years, and that to
him I should owe, besides many kind things written
of myself, the best record of his uncle's life and
works.
On our way south we stopped at Rugby, and
picked up my husband's youngest brother, Alex-
ander, who was there at school, and took him
with us to London for a couple of nights. I
had never seen him before, and was much taken
with him, he was so bright and intelligent, and
took such a humorous view of things, a quality
among many others that made him such a de-
lightful companion in after years, and endeared
him to so large a circle of friends. I began
to think I was singularly well off in my "'in-
laws," not always the feeling of a young woman
plunging into the unknown, and leaving a devoted
father.
36 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
We went abroad that summer, going first to
Homburg to try if the waters there would do any-
thing for my headaches, which then, and for many
years after, were rather the torment of my life,
so often interfering to mar pleasant arrangements.
The place we found pretty, and at first amusing,
from the number and variety of people the tables
attracted ; but it was not the kind of place either of
us cared for, and we soon left, not, however, before
making the acquaintance of Mr and Mrs Theodore
Martin, and their great friend, Professor Aytoun.
Aytoun was a very plain-looking man, and I appre-
ciated the story I heard afterwards from Mrs
Ferrier, that when her sister, Miss Jane Wilson,
was engaged to him, she begged that henceforth his
looks would cease to be the family joke ! He was
very agreeable and amusing, and a most admirable
mimic, and his accounts of some of the lectures of
his father-in-law (Professor Wilson) were very
funny. This was the first time I had seen Mrs
Martin Miss Helen Faucit off the stage; but
often and often had I made up bouquets for my
brother Alexander to throw to her, he having the
stage-fever from which so many suffered under her
magnetic influence. I remember hearing then how
Mr Martin followed her from place to place with the
worship in his heart which never faltered, indeed
was only strengthened, through the long happy
I
LADY MARTIN. 37
years they spent together, " the idol of his
youth, the darling of his manhood, and now the
most blessed memory of his age."
Mrs Martin had irregular features, and was not
strictly beautiful, but the rich full sweetness of
her voice, and the exquisite grace of her move-
ments, combined with the intellectual grasp of
her characters, not always found in their inter-
preters, made one understand the spell she cast
over her audience. Probably in these days of
so - called " realism " her acting would be con-
sidered too much in the " grand style " and
wanting in nature ; but " she nothing common
did or mean," and Shakespeare's heroines were
always ladies, portrayed by a lady. From this
time till within two years of her death, which
took place in 1897, we often saw her in London,
when she had become Lady Martin, and always
received the kindest welcome from her and Sir
Theodore.
After leaving Homburg we went for a few weeks
to Switzerland, going as far south as Mont Blanc ;
and on our return, after a few days at Lagarie, went
to Ardtornish to stay with the dear " old lady,"
the first of many happy visits, and the beginning of
a long friendship which strengthened with the years,
and had its earthly close in 1875. She had lost her
husband in 1851, and a few months after, in Febru-
38 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
ary 1852, before we were married, the very light
of her eyes was taken from her her youngest
daughter, Helen Whishaw. This grief was almost
too much for her frail body, and never, to the
end of her life, could she speak of Helen without
tears.
After her death I found among her things a little
almanac with a very touching account of all she
suffered at that sad time, which I think well worth
transcribing :
Autumn 1851 and the following year a time of great
affliction. On June 6th, my dear husband became ill : in
July consulted the doctor in Edinburgh, but without any
benefit. On 28th, Tom and his dear, dear sister arrived at
Elgin. On September 2nd we all set out again for Edin-
burgh. Jeanie joined us there, and Tom and Helen left on
the 13th, the anniversary of her marriage.
We returned to Elgin the end of the month, and settled
there. On the 28th October my dearest Mr Sellar died
calmly. I saw his last breath, and he passed away without
a struggle.
On the 29th my dear child and Mr Whishaw made a
rapid journey to see him, but they were too late. On the
1st November his remains were laid in the silent tomb in
the Cathedral burying - ground. On 2nd December my
dear Helen and I set out for England, reaching Chipping
Norton on the 4th. How rejoiced she was to get to her
own home again !
I was taken ill on the 7th January, and was never
downstairs again till the 5th of February, the last night she
A PATHETIC DIARY. 39
i
was downstairs, when we all took tea together. Next day
she went to church four times and received the sacrament ;
complained of headache, and was easily fatigued. On
Monday she felt ill, her eyes heavy, and her head aching ;
but she had a large tea-party. On Tuesday she got up
early and put her papers in order ; felt very ill ; kept her
bed by the doctor's orders. On Wednesday her baby,
Bernhard, was born, after great suffering. She never
looked well nor happy; but they thought her doing well
till night, when she did not sleep, and took no nour-
ishment. Thursday, symptoms of puerperal fever; was
bled and blistered; inflammatory symptoms subdued. Dr
Acland from Oxford called in, and approved of treatment.
Friday, complained of ringing in the ears ; asked to have
her hair cut off; wandered a little very ill. Saturday,
collected ; received the sacrament, prayed with great ferv-
ency, looked heavenly.
Sunday, died at 6.30 quite calmly. " Oh, my darling,
whose last breath I witnessed, and could not follow it."
How piercingly sad this cry from the anguished
mother's heart reads, even now after an interval of
many years ! And twenty-seven years after it was
written mother and child, whose love was stronger
than death, have been, one may trust, reunited,
"where beyond these voices there is peace" and no
more cruel inexplicable partings.
This was the crushing sorrow of her life, but so
strong was the habit of unselfishness in her that
she never allowed her own sorrow to darken the
40 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
lives of others, and the " old lady's " house was the
happy meeting-place of her sons and their families,
and all their friends. Unlike most old people, she
had no " ways " of her own, her ways being to fall
into other people's "ways." She was one of the
first in Edinburgh who went in for afternoon tea,
an extra means of hospitality being hailed by her
as a boon ! It was told of her brother, who lived in
Sutherland, that in the afternoon he used to go
down to the public road, hoping to meet some
chance acquaintance, and if he did, they were
haled in to dinner. This was very much the " old
lady's " attitude. She was never so happy as when
dispensing hospitality, and never felt satisfied if
any one came into the house and did not eat
something ; and many a young man remembered
afterwards how he left the house with his pockets
bulging with apples or oranges in a somewhat
unseemly manner, but suffered gladly for the
sake of the genial kindness and hospitality of
the old lady.
It is difficult to make my grandchildren, who
never saw her, realise how delightful she, the
original " Grannie," was, and what a happy and
loving part she played in the lives of their mothers
and all who knew her.
She was a pretty, dainty-looking old lady, as
may be seen from her picture, had a great love
ARDTORNISH. 41
of literature and a delightfully old-fashioned
respect for "learning," the only distinction she
cared in the least about. The honours gained by
her sons at school and college were a continual
source of pride and pleasure, and she quoted with
great delight a saying of Mr Jowett's, " Seven
sons, and not a black sheep among them." For
many years after, the house was filled with rep-
resentatives of her married sons, three having
been married that same year, 1852, Tom, her
eldest son, to Le'onide Byrne in New Orleans ;
and Patrick, her second son, to Agnes Macpherson
in Sutherland.
Ardtornish is beautifully situated on the Sound
of Mull, the Gaelic name means the " promon-
tory of the waterfalls," and exactly describes
the line of cliffs that stretches to Guerelas on
Loch Linnhe, and down the sides of which fall
innumerable small streams from the tableland
above. In a strong south - west wind the water
is blown back in spray, and a stranger would
think the cliffs were crowned with small bonfires.
I have never seen the same effect elsewhere. The
property of the then Ardtornish consisted of the
house and some 30,000 acres of land, and Acharn,
a sheep -farm up the valley, on the river Aline.
Between the two, at the head of the loch, was
Achranich, belonging to Mr Octavius Smith. Mr
42 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Octavius Smith was the eighth child of Mr
William Smith, who was member of Parliament
for Norwich for forty years. A friend of Wilber-
force and Clarkson, he threw himself keenly into
the Slave emancipation crusade and all the re-
forms of the day. Mr Smith refused a peerage,
and was the only Unitarian in the House of
Commons at that time. He had a very fine col-
lection of pictures, among them Mrs Siddons as
the " Tragic Muse," a bought afterwards by the
Marquis of Westminster for a few hundred
pounds, and Kembrandt's "Mill," bought by Lord
Lansdowne, probably for a similar sum. The
latter picture now belongs to the King's col-
lection at Windsor, and at the Rembrandt Ex-
hibition in 1899 was valued at 20,000!
A granddaughter of Mr Smith is the celebrated
Florence Nightingale, who may almost be said to
have created a new profession for educated women,
superseding the "Mrs Gamps/' who were more
amusing and humorous in literature than " com-
1 While these pictures were still in Mr Smith's possession, any one
on a specified day of the week could go and see them : the house-
keeper a worthy woman, but with no respect for the letter h acted
as a cicerone. Mrs Smith, on coming home on the evening of one
of those days, asked if any one had come to see the pictures. "Yes,
ma'am ; one rather grand-looking lady looked long at the Tragic Muse,
and then in a deep voice exclaimed, * Myself be'olds myself ! ' " This,
of course, was Mrs Siddons. About this picture, I have heard that
Sir Joshua signed his name on the dress, saying he would like to] go
down to posterity on the hem of her garment.
A FISHING DISPUTE. 43
forting and grateful" to their patients! Misa
Nightingale still survives to see the good fruits of
her labours in the splendid nursing and hospital
arrangements in South Africa.
Some years after (in 1859), Mr Octavius Smith
bought from Mr Sellar's heirs Ardtornish and
Acharn, and built on the site of Achranich the
modern house now called Ardtornish Tower.
Two years before I was married a dispute had
arisen about the right of fishing in the river
Aline between Mr Sellar and Mr Smith, both
men accustomed to have their own way, and very
much disliking to be thwarted ; so, for a time, a
modern Montague and Capulet drama was en-
acted. Fortunately, before Mr Sellar's death an
arrangement had been made, by the advice of a
distinguished lawyer, which smoothed away all
difficulties ; and I remember Gertrude, Mr Smith's
youngest daughter, telling me how the new peace
was inaugurated by her mother, her three sisters,
and herself, then a child of eight, lunching at
Ardtornish. Mr Sellar set her beside himself
and called her his little lady. He little then
imagined that this " little lady " would become
the wife of his youngest son, Alexander Craig
Sellar, M.P., whose promising political career was
cut short by his death in 1890, before he had
attained the full measure of success which all his
44 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
friends felt must eventually have fallen to him.
Nor could old Mr Sellar have conceived that
on the death of her brother, Mr Valentine Smith,
the whole property of Ardtornish would revert to
Mrs Craig Sellar.
I wish I could make live over again the charm
of that life at Ardtornish and Achranich, so
simple, so unconventional, so full of activity and
enjoyment.
A road had lately been made from the Ferry
up to Achranich, joining the old road across the
hills from Acharn to Strontian ; and the goings to
and fro between the two places were as perpetual
as they had been strictly forbidden the year be-
fore ! Mr Octavius Smith was a very clever
original man, overflowing with energy, and could
scarcely believe in anything being well done un-
less he saw it done or did it himself. Dearly
did he pay for this characteristic, for when the
new house was building, of which he watched
every detail, a charge of gunpowder used for
blasting not having gone off as quickly as he
expected, he went too near, and it exploded,
damaging his eye. It was equally characteristic
that when he was taken into the house, and
by this time it was dusk, he blew out the
candle that his wife might not see his wounded
face. When I saw him, a glass eye had restored
From an. oil-painting
by Sir Daniel Macnee, 1851.
PATRICK SELLAR OF ARDTORNlSH.
A HIGHLAND HOME. 45
his appearance and scarcely marred his good
looks, and his one eye saw more than most
people's two. It would be difficult to do justice
to Mrs Smith. A sweeter, more gracious woman
I have never known, self had no part in her :
she had a pretty playful humour that seemed
to harmonise with her youthful figure, and that
lightened up a face on which sorrow had laid
its undoubted marks, for she had suffered greatly.
Her eldest boy, a fine adventurous youth, had
been starved to death in the bush on an explor-
ing party with Sir George Grey, in Australia;
and other sad sorrows were to follow. Gerard,
full of life and ability, was run over by a
railway engine ; and two bright beautiful girls,
Rosalind and Edith, died, one in 1853 and the
other two years later. But at the time of which
I write the little band of sisters was still un-
broken. In those days schoolroom life in a
London home was necessarily constrained and
colourless, and the change to the freedom of their
Highland home was pure joy to creatures so simple
and active. They scoured the hills and valleys
on their ponies, attended by Kitty Carson, the
manager's daughter, as a sort of female groom,
a quaint arrangement, but characteristic of their
father's unconventional ways. The boys cleaned
their own guns, and did a hundred things for
46 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
themselves which would now be done for them ;
but how happy they were, and the days never
seemed to be long enough for all the delightful
things that had to be done in them, days on
the loch, days on the river, and expeditions to
Mull.
One day, I remember, they had decided to go
to Mull, and though it was so stormy that any
one else would have given up the expedition,
Mr Smith would not be beaten, but made all his
party wear life-belts! Another day but as I
went, it may be believed it was a very calm one
we sailed over to Mull, taking our luncheon with
us ; and because there was a notice, " Trespassers
will be prosecuted," Mr Smith insisted on our
taking our picnic in a nasty marshy field, as
a protest against what he considered " over-
legislation " ! It was a curious comment on this,
when Valentine, his son and successor, told me
in 1901 that all trespassing on Ardtornish was
strictly prohibited : tempora mutantur !
Flora, the eldest girl, was then eighteen. She
was delicate and very fragile-looking, but full of
spirit, and had a most exquisite voice ; indeed
she seemed of music all compact, and held her
listeners spellbound. It was as if a spirit were
singing, and one wondered how such a full rich
voice could come out of such a delicate body,
THE "HIGH PRIEST OF MORVERN." 47
and the exertion did often seem too much for
her, her hands becoming icy cold. Altogether they
were a most delightful and uncommon family to
find in the wild West.
The only other neighbours we had were the
Macleods of the Manse of Morvern. The minister
was familiarly and proudly called the " High Priest
of Morvern," was the uncle of Dr Norman, and
would have been a notable man in any society,
not only from his great height, 6 feet 7 inches,
but from the dignity and simplicity of his char-
acter and manner. Mrs Macleod was a sister of
General and Dr Maclean, two most chivalrous
and delightful specimens of an old type of
simple high - souled Highland gentlemen, now I
fear nearly passed away. Dr Maclean became
head of Haslar Hospital, and there your Uncle
Johnnie, when he lived at Fernlea, renewed his
acquaintanceship, and many a talk they had over
the old Morvern days.
The year before I went to Ardtornish the
Macleods had lost two beautiful little girls from
scarlet fever, and only two boys were left. These
afterwards greatly distinguished themselves at
college and went into the Church. 1 John, the
1 Norman, the eldest son, became minister of St Stephen's, in Edin-
burgh, and afterwards went to Inverness, but has now retired from the
ministry.
48 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
younger, a remarkable preacher, was minister of
the church at Govan, near Glasgow, and a man
of great distinction, and when he died in 1898,
in the prime of life, men felt a prince in Israel
had fallen.
After a very happy six weeks we returned to
Glasgow, as my husband was again to under-
take Professor Ramsay's work. We went first
to Golfhill, as my father and sister were still at
Lagarie, and on their return we moved to a very
nice house in St Vincent Street, which my father
took for me. In this same house, Frank's birth-
place, was born, the next winter, my brother
Alexander's eldest little girl : he had married in
the previous November, Georgina, youngest
daughter of Sir Charles Oakeley, Bart., a beauti-
ful girl, whom my Uncle John had brought to
see me on our marriage tour, when we were
passing through London. I was much struck
by her appearance and the elegance and sim-
plicity of her dress of shot-green and black silk,
and a bonnet of coarse Dunstable straw, with one
large red poppy in it. Of these two children
born in the same house, both are gone, Frank,
when he was eighteen, far from home, in Australia ;
and Nina, in London, in 1892, having been for
seventeen years the happy wife of my dear
cousin, John Dennistoun.
PROFESSOR LUSHINGTON. 49
The college hours seem strange now to this
more luxurious age, for the first class was at
7.30 A.M., and as we lived nearly two miles
from college, this implied a very early start for
my husband ; but we were young and happy, and
nothing seemed much of a trouble. People were
very kind, but we went out very little, and did
not see much of any one, except Mr Lush-
ington, who had been devoted to my husband
from the time he was a student under him.
Mr Lushington became a lifelong friend of the
family, our children growing up together, and
his wife, a sister of Tennyson, was a constant
source of astonishment, interest, and amusement;
but she was not in Glasgow that winter, and it
was later that we became so intimate with her,
her daughter, and her sister.
Mr Lushington's character could not fail to
impress one : as Tennyson once said of him,
"Edmund Lushington is pure and beautiful as
the moon." He was wise with the wisdom of the
ancients, and like the ideal Christian kept him-
self unspotted from the world. He was without
ambition, which my husband sometimes regretted,
for he thought the man who wrote the 'Intro-
ductory Lecture on Greek Literature ' should
have done more of the same kind, so perfectly
admirable did he think it. But Mr Lushington
D
50 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
was content to have sown the good seed in so
many minds, and awakened much interest in
all that was best and highest in ancient and
modern literature in many young souls, and
loyally did they repay him in love and reverence.
It is of him that Tennyson writes in the ode at
the end of "In Memoriam "
" And thou art worthy ; full of power ;
As gentle ; liberal-minded, great,
Consistent ; wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower."
On the 24th of April 1853 our dear little Frank
was born. Frank was a very handsome child,
with very little hair, but most beautiful large
grey eyes and black eyelashes. My dear father
was very proud of his first grandchild ; indeed
I think there was nothing he so much admired
and liked to look at as a mother and young
child. When Frank was a little more than five
weeks old we drove down to Lagarie, and there,
on the 1st of June, the anniversary of our wed-
ding, and in the same room, he was christened
Patrick Francis Alexander by Dr Norman Macleod,
who ever after insisted on calling him Patrick.
After resting a couple of weeks at Lagarie, we
went for the summer to Ardtornish, where, shortly
after, Tom and L^onide brought their pretty little
baby -girl, born a few days before Frank, and
DR NORMAN MACLEOD. 51
called Azemia Helen, the latter name giving her
at once a very warm place in her grannie's heart.
In September Dr Norman Macleod and his wife
came over from Morvern to stay a couple of nights
with us, which would have been altogether de-
lightful but for Frank being sharply ill. Old
Dr M'Coll, the quaintest and slowest and wisest
of Highland doctors, was sent for from Mull.
His remedies proving effectual, we were able
the next day to enjoy Dr Norman Macleod's
brilliant conversation as he ranged from grave
to gay, equally at home in both, able, too, to
listen to his wife's charming music as she played
Beethoven, or the wild wail of her own " M'Intosh
Lament." And here began the friendship which
increased in the too rare opportunities of meet-
ing in Glasgow, but was to grow into extreme
intimacy when the glory of her life had left her,
and she came in 1873 to live in Edinburgh with
her children, who henceforth were to be almost
like my own. This friendship was cemented still
more closely when, in 1902, our daughter Eppie,
then a widow, married Dr Norman Macleod's
youngest son, William an ideally happy marriage.
52
CHAPTER IV. 1
" Till the future dare
Forget the past) his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity."
SHBLLBT.
1853.
WE were living in the summer of 1853 at Ard-
tornish, on the Sound of Mull, the scene of the
opening canto of " The Lord of the Isles," when my
husjband heard from his friend Mr Palgrave that
he and Mr Tennyson were travelling in Scotland on
their way to Skye, and would, if convenient, stop
with us for two or three days. A cousin of mine,
Miss Cross, one of the most charming and brilliant
women I have ever known, was staying with us at
the time, and to her, as well as to us, the thought
of " Tennyson," " the man we held as half divine,"
being our guest, was the realisation of a dream, and
we felt that, for us, earth could confer no higher
honour: and I don't think anything has happened
1 This chapter was written at Hallam, Lord Tennyson's request,
and published by him in the second edition of his father's Life, and it
is by his kind permission I am enabled to give it here.
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS. 53
in after life that has left a more lasting or delightful
impression.
Mr Tennyson and Mr Palgrave arrived on a
Saturday (in August) and stayed till the following
Wednesday afternoon. No one could have been
more easy, simple, and delightful ; and as we had
at that season no neighbours, once he had faced us
there was no further social trial awaiting him, and
he blossomed out in the most genial manner, making
us all feel as if he were an old friend. He went to
church at Morvern with us next day, a poor little
church on a windy hill, overlooking the Sound of
Mull having for its "minister" the well-known
Dr John Macleod, and its one distinction a
beautiful lona cross, brought from the island of
Inchcolm centuries ago. Mr Tennyson was much
struck by Dr Macleod (" such a well-borne head ! "
he exclaimed), and asked us if we did not have our
clergyman to dinner on Sundays. We did not,
as a rule the distance was too great ; but we felt
sure he would be delighted to meet Mr Tennyson.
And accordingly he came, and they sat up far into
the night, the one recounting the legends and
tales of the country, and his hair -breadth escapes
by flood and field ; and the other, to the delight of
his audience, sometimes reading his own poems or
recalling his own experiences. The weather was
fine, and the next day we started soon after break-
54 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
fast for a long walk on the moors, ending at a
waterfall that fell over a cliff, hollowed out, under
which we were able to creep ; and we sat with the
water falling before us like a silver veil. Mr
Tennyson said it was a great pity we had not
brought food with us, and so need not have hurried
home; and then, almost immediately, he chanted
" We had smoke, but we hadna wine,
And we had nothing whereon to dine ;
But there was Dennistoun's daughter ;
And Crosskin sang a song of mine
Behind the falling water."
All the way going home he was making the most
absurd nonsense-ballad verses, generally in Scotch,
but so rapidly uttered and so inconsecutive were
they, that it was impossible to remember much of
them, even at the time, and now only two verses
remain in my memory :
" They found her buried in the moor,
Shut out from every hope ;
And her bonny little noseling
Was as brown as Windsor soap !
There came a cobbler to the toun,
And he was ane o' the clippers ;
And he took the skin of her brown bodie,
And made it into slippers."
In the evening he read to us, and no one who
heard him could ever forget his reading of the
TENNYSON IN HOLIDAY MOOD. 55
" Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" ;
to this day I never read it without hearing his
voice. "In Memoriam" was on the table, and he
said, " I shan't read this." It happened to be
open at " Calm is the morn," and on my remarking
that it was an especial favourite of mine, he turned
round quickly and demanded "Why?" Rather a
staggering question for one not apt at giving a
reason for the faith in her ! With trembling lips
I replied that for one thing the words followed
the sense in so marvellous a manner ; and with this
feeble reply he was kind enough to seem content.
The next day we drove and walked up the glen ;
and I can see him, as distinctly as if it were
yesterday, sitting by the clear brown river, beside
a beautiful avenue of lime-trees, planted by a
cousin of Flora Macdonald's, and repeating "Ye
banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," saying no more
simple or beautiful love-song had ever been written.
He also repeated, d propos of a branch he was
leaning against breaking
" I leant my back against an aik,
And thocht it was a trusty tree ;
But syne it bent, and then it brak,
And sae did my fause love wi' me."
Both these poems were, naturally, well known to
us, but it seemed as if we heard them for the first
time, so wonderfully did his voice bring out the
56 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
melody, the meaning, and, above all, the pathos.
He had given up the idea of going to Skye, and
this gained for us another day's visit, which he
embodied in the following verse :
" If he did not see Loch Coruisk,
He ought to be forgiven ;
For though he miss'd a day in Skye,
He spent a day in Heaven ! "
To my husband he repeated several verses of,
then, unpublished poems, but begged him never to
repeat them, enforcing this later in a letter from
Farringford : " Don't quote any lines you may
remember of mine. F. P. has been doing so, and
they have travelled down to Pau, and might as
well have gone to pot, for I have before this seen
lines of mine printed with a little alteration in
verse books of others, not, I daresay, dishonestly,
an author may not know when a verse buzzes in
his head, whether it is a bee from his own hive
or no."
He spoke much of Hallam, his eldest son, a baby
then nearly a year old. Our eldest child, who died
when he was eighteen in Australia, where he had
gone for his health, was then about six months old.
Mr Tennyson took very kindly notice of him, but
one day said to me, "Do you know what I am
thinking ? " " That your own baby is much finer ? "
" That is exactly what I was thinking ! "
"A DAY IN HEAVEN. 57
It was to this dear child of ours that he alluded
in a very characteristic manner in a letter my hus-
band had from him in St Andrews, dated Farring-
ford, June 16, 1856 : "I suppose it is not of much
use sending love to your bairn, who had scarcely
come to his memory when I saw him, but I send
him a shadowy kiss across the Firth of Forth."
He left us to go to Edinburgh, " the grey metro-
polis of the North," for it was on that visit he
wrote " The Daisy," and gave to Edinburgh the
name that will for ever be connected with it. He
and Mr Palgrave went by boat to Oban, a long
row of fifteen miles ; and on my husband saying
to the old Gaelic boatman, "Robert, you are tak-
ing over one of the greatest men in England," he
replied, " That black-a-vise Mr Tinsmith that came
with Mr Pancake ! well, well ! " And so ended
this eagerly looked forward to, heartily enjoyed,
and to us ever memorable visit !
Of those assembled then in that happy Highland
home, young and old have all passed away save
myself. Mr Palgrave lived to see, and contribute
to, his friend's ' Memoirs/ and I alone sit lingering
here
" Remembering all the golden hours
Now silent, and so many dead,
And him the last!"
58
CHAPTEE V.
"I talk of our youth,
How 'twas gladsome, but often
Foolish forsooth,
But gladsome, gladsome."
E. FITZGERALD.
185 3 (continued).
IN October, when we were wondering if Mr
Ramsay would want my husband's assistance
again, he had a letter from Mr Shairp, the dear
friend who had insisted on his going to Glasgow,
telling him he had spent a day in St Andrews, and
found that the Greek professor had become so deaf
that he must give up his work and have an
assistant, the said assistant to have all the work
but very little of the pay ! Still, it might lead to
his eventually getting the professorship, and might
therefore be worth thinking of. My husband said
he knew there was one very distinguished professor
there Ferrier ! and I liked the idea of exchanging
the smoke of Glasgow for the sea at St Andrews.
So he went off to inspect the place and inter-
view the necessary people, and after a satisfactory
SETTLING AT ST ANDREWS. 59
meeting with the Greek professor and the col-
lege authorities, he agreed to accept the post of
assistant ; and he made arrangements to go to St
Andrews before the 1st of November, on which date
he was to enter upon his duties. On our way we
stayed with the Fergusons at Kirkcaldy : they were
old friends of my father, and had been extremely
kind to me when I was a girl. Mr Ferguson was
M.P. for the Burghs, and a remarkably handsome
man, and his sisters were highly educated, accom-
plished women, altogether it was a pleasant house
to visit, though perhaps a little bracing ! They
were intimate with Carlyle, and had taken me some
years before in London one day to his house, but I
am sorry to say my memory of that night is very
hazy, and I cannot recall anything of the Jane
Carlyle whose wonderful and witty letters have so
delighted me long years after.
St Andrews was not then the " city of the scarlet
gown," that was an admirable restoration that
came later; indeed I think I was the first person
that wore a scarlet cloak, which I thought highly
becoming, but found out afterwards I had only
pointed a moral, an old well-known shopkeeper
saying to my friend Mrs Purvis, "Ye see folk
canna help their taste : see poor Mrs Sellar in yon
scarlet cloak!" So much for not seeing ourselves
as others see us! But this is a digression.
60 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
We went over one day from the Fergusons to
look for a house, and my steps led me at once as
near the sea as houses could be found, but then
only Gillespie Terrace existed in that position, and
the houses were on such a small scale, so different
from what they are now, that reluctantly we
went landwards and fixed upon Abbey Park. The
original house still remains, but so surrounded and
enlarged, becoming part of the ubiquitous school of
St Leonard's, that it is difficult to trace the rooms
we lived in, though they still exist. We were very
much struck by the beautiful old-world place, so
unique in character and situation, and at that time
full of " blessed conditions " in the way of society.
" Oh, the dalliance and the wit ! " the life and fun
of those days ! days which few, besides myself, live
to remember, but which can never be forgotten,
though the attempting to recall them to others is
what the dried botanical specimen is to the beauti-
ful living flower. The place itself is so changed
that it is difficult sometimes to remember what is
new and what old. There were no houses on the
Scores then, and building them was surely a
Philistine proceeding, though one cannot but allow
that they make most charming dwellings. All to
the west, except what was called " Buddo Castle,"
is also new, and the whole style of living is far less
simple and far more like any other fashionable
SIR HUGH PLAYFAIR. 61
watering-place than the life of the little university
town as we first knew it, and as I still love to
think of it. But even then the " oldest resident "
thought the place sadly changed from the days
when the one cab slowly delivered in rotation the
guests of a dinner - party, unless they preferred
"Mattie wi' the lantern." Surely the most con-
firmed laudator temporis acti must pity the poor
hostess when he considers the long-drawn-out
reception and entertainment of her guests, arriving
as they did singly and at intervals !
Sir Hugh Playfair as provost reigned at St
Leonard's, and one might also say over St Andrews,
and though under his paternal government many
useful improvements were made, such as paving
the streets, still he must be held guilty of some
vandalism which would not now be permitted.
Round his large garden at St Leonard's he had a
sort of balustrade, on the top flat rail of which he
had inscribed the principal events in the world's
history since the Creation, ending abruptly in 1832,
when the Reform Bill was passed, and according to
this old Conservative " the sun of England set for
ever " ! How often has the glory of the world been
said to have perished, and yet it has arisen with
renewed life and vigour !
A very different stamp of man, Sir David
Brewster, lived in the next house, with the beauti-
62 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
ful little ruined chapel of St Leonard opposite ; it
again abutting on the old garden of the quaint and
charming old house, Queen Mary's, where at that
time Professor Alexander lived. This later fell
into the most appreciative hands of Mr Oliphant,
who has restored it to its ancient glory.
Sir David Brewster was the kindest and simplest
of philosophers. A favourite of Prince Albert, he
had seen much of Court life and most of the best
known people ; and he declared that among them all
the three handsomest women he had seen were Sir
Charles Oakeley's three daughters, Mrs Clayton,
Mrs Woodhouse, and Mrs Dennistoun, my brother
Alexander's wife.
Utterly unspoilt, he was always ready in the
most courteous way to explain any scientific diffi-
culty or experiment to the ignorant, and he had
quite a peculiar gift of coming down to their level
and making things clear and lucid. It was strange
that with this gift he was so nervous in public
that he said he was prevented from becoming a
clergyman because he could not be sure of saying
correctly the Lord's Prayer!
I remember once asking him very hurriedly to fill
a vacant place at dinner, and apologising for doing
so, and he replied, " My dear lady, give me time to
put on my dress coat and I am at your service at
all times."
SIR DAVID BREWSTEE. 63
In 1857 he was abroad, and when he returned it
was with a young and handsome bride, who not
only made him very happy, but added much to the
charm and hospitality of St Leonard's. He was at
this time seventy-seven and she was twenty-seven,
and when his daughter Constance was born he was
eighty.
A funny incident occurred one day when they
had a dinner-party. Lady Brewster observed that
when the tea was brought in each guest, after
tasting it, laid down the spoon and drank no more.
She took an opportunity of leaving the room, and
asked the butler to bring her a cup of the tea.
" Good heavens ! it is salt," she exclaimed.
" Oh, Lord ! mem, they must have boiled the salt
water brought up for Miss Brewster's bath."
Another day the Brewsters and several other
people were dining with us at Abbey Park, and
after dinner Lady Brewster begged me to dress
up and take in Sir David.
"But what will account for my absence?"
"Oh, you have been obliged to go to bed with
one of your headaches ; and I'll introduce the
stranger."
So I went upstairs, put on a false front, and was
announced as Miss Craig. On the gentlemen coming
in I was specially introduced to Sir David, but not
being at all attractive-looking he soon left me for
64 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
younger and fairer friends ! Determined he should
take some notice of me, I said I would not play the
piano unless Sir David asked me ; and on this being
told him, he muttered " God help the woman !
what does she mean? I don't know her." How-
ever, he gave me his arm and led me to the
piano, where I played a very primitive waltz,
but with all the airs of a Rubinstein Sir
David whispering to his neighbour, "After all
the pressing and fuss, is this all we are to
get ? " I then left the piano and came to where
he was sitting, and holding out my skirts, said I
would be happy to dance a pas seul for him. He,
seemingly thinking this strange guest had gone off
her head, thought it best to humour her, and began
to dance opposite me, when the uncontrolled laughter
of all around betrayed the trick. Mr Lloyd of
Christchurch was among the guests, and his boast
was that he had an exhaustive acquaintance with
Greek and Scotch literature. My husband said to
him
" Miss Craig has written some Scotch poems ; but
I daresay you have never heard of them ? "
" Yes," he said, " I have the book at Oxford " !
Sir David left in 1861, and became Principal of
the Edinburgh University.
The first friends we made at St Andrews were
the Ferriers, a friendship which has gone on with
MRS FERRIER. 65
unabated affection to the third generation, and has
ever been a source of the greatest happiness, and
now, alas ! of dearest memory."
Mrs Ferrier was the eldest daughter of Professor
Wilson, a woman of the Roman matron type, fine
features, piercing eyes, and most beautiful auburn
hair. Rudyard Kipling has dedicated one of his
books " to the wittiest woman in India " ; and with
the substitution of Scotland for India, the dedica-
tion would well apply to Mrs Ferrier. Hers was
a constant flow of wit that knew no pause, so con-
tinuous that her listener, panting after her in vain,
could only carry away a tenth part of the good
things he had heard. She had a wonderful power
of mimicry, and not only said the things people
would have said, but actually looked like them. Of
course, so striking a personality could not but
have enemies, and I was duly warned that she
was " dangerous," " too sharp -tongued," &c. ; but
during the long years of most intimate friendship,
both at St Andrews and later in Edinburgh, I can
remember nothing I should wish altered, and much
that I wish I could remember better. On the very
first time I saw her, when she called at Abbey Park
and kindly put me up to the ways of the place, she
told me that part of the Professor's salary was paid
by the farmers in kain that is, they were bound
to supply so many fowls, or their equivalent in
E
66 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
money; but she said, "If you are giving a party,
don't trust to this supply, for the answer to your
application may very likely be, ' We hae nae fools
the day, but we can gie you a cart o' manure ' ! "
From this visit we felt at once what a boundless
source of interest, amusement, and pleasure was
opening up for us, and were very glad our lines had
fallen to us in such pleasant places ; and for the
next ten years a very happy home we had in St
Andrews.
West Park and its remarkable inhabitants struck
me then, and remain in my memory still, as the
most picturesque original household I have ever
met. Browning says, somewhere
" If you get simple beauty, and naught else,
You get about the best thing God invents."
And when to this gift, which existed in almost every
member of the family, were added brains and wit
in no ordinary measure, the result was as rare as
it was delightful.
Mr Ferrier, then in the prime of life, lived his life
quite unlike any one else, a student, and, in a way,
a recluse, but with no far-away touch of a pedant.
His days and most of his nights were spent in his
charming library, the largest room in the house,
with books from floor to ceiling ; but at any hour
his friends could invade this sanctum, always sure
PROFESSOR FERRIER. 67
of a warm welcome, and they would come away not
knowing which to admire most, the wit and humour
of his sallies, his devotion to philosophy, or his keen
sympathy with all imaginative literature. He loved
to tell of his meeting with Scott, Lockhart, and
Wordsworth at Elleray ; and again of his being in
the ship on that sad voyage when it brought Sir
Walter from London to Leith to die at his own
loved home. There was something of graceful
courtesy and high chivalry in his nature that was
most attractive : once seen he could never be for-
gotten ; and now, after a lapse of more than forty
years, with my mind's eye I can vividly see his
beautifully- cut face and his measured meditative
step as he walked slowly home from the college,
where the students had hung upon his words, for
it was no common devotion they had for their
professor. In 1899 one of his cleverest pupils,
Professor Stuart of Cambridge, was made Lord
Rector, and in his address, speaking of the stimulus
of professorial teaching, he said
" I can never forget the magic influence of
Ferrier. It was the opening of a whole new
world to me. I remember, as if it were yesterday,
his chiselled face, full of suffering and full of fire,
while in accents of balanced eloquence he carried
us, by masterly sketches, through the philosophy
of ancient times, so that we were each in succes-
68 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
sion ardent Ionics and Eleatics. We laughed with
Democritus, we mourned with Heraclitus, and we
were carried in the veritable chariots of the gods
themselves, in the sweep of Plato's philosophy."
To have left such vivid impressions and have
kindled such enthusiasm, is surely not to have
lived in vain. I know nothing has gratified me
more than the many testimonies, written and
spoken, which I have had since my own husband's
death, telling of all he did to awaken intellectual
life and interest in the minds of his students, and
most of all impressing them with a sense of the
lofty simplicity and single -mindedness of his own
character. As Louis Stevenson so well says d
propos of Wordsworth
" Such are the best teachers. A dogma learned
is only a new error, the old one was perhaps as
good : but a spirit communicated is a perpetual
possession. These best teachers climb beyond
teaching to the plane of art : it is themselves, and
what is best in themselves, that they communi-
cate."
But to return to St Andrews. The Ferrier
girls became such close and dear companions, that
when I think of their being only thirteen and
fourteen, it seems almost absurd that such a
friendship could have existed ; but they were
utterly unlike girls of their age, and were en-
THE TERRIER GIRLS. 69
dowed by nature with many gifts. These had
been fostered by constant intercourse with re-
markable minds, and with their quick wits and
feminine susceptibility and sympathy, one never
for a moment felt any disparity of years, only
the charm of a younger intelligence, and a
brilliant spirit of fun that turned everything
into favour and prettiness. " The ideas of youth,
though they may be mixed with much folly and
sentimentality, are perhaps the best part of us,
and happy those who do not lose them when
advancing years give the power of realising
them."
Some years after, in a book of "likes and dis-
likes," such as was the fashion then to have, Susan
Ferrier wrote as her ideal " Never to lose the
halo round life " : and this was granted to her,
and gave her that wonderful power of transform-
ing the light of common day and commonplace
people into something rare and strange.
Janie was a very lovely girl in those days, with
masses of pale, satin-smooth, golden hair, and the
softest of blue eyes, that looked up into your face
in the most confiding and bewitching manner, and
I think she was generally more admired than the
beloved Susan, whose very name now breeds in
me a perpetual benediction, but who, even then,
was my especial favourite. I loved her graceful
70 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
ways and slow languorous movements, contrasting
with the swift sympathetic way her mind grasped
all noble imaginative thoughts in life and litera-
ture. We used to read a great deal together, and
these two girls constantly spent the evenings with
us : indeed I think scarcely a day passed without
our meeting either at Abbey or West Park.
Coggie was then a very grave little girl, certainly
not the characteristic of her later years !
The Christmas holidays that year we spent
with old Mrs Sellar in Edinburgh. She had a
house in Queen Street : and one much - to - be-
remembered day we drove out to Lasswade to see
the de Quinceys. Two years before, at Mrs Alan
Stevenson's, Louis' aunt, I had met Florence and
Emily de Quincey, and on this second interview
my first impressions were only deepened. The de
Quinceys lived in a cottage at Lasswade. I knew
they were not rich, but there was a grace and
simplicity about their life and surroundings that I
have rarely seen equalled. Mr de Quincey, small
in stature, with dreamy eyes that seemed looking
into the unseen, received us with the utmost
courtesy and hospitality, and discoursed, with great
eloquence, to my husband, on all subjects in
heaven and earth, dwelling, I remember, with
amusing invective on the "gloomy malignity" of
the Scottish creditor. His talk was very like his
DE QUINCEY. 71
books, the same felicity of expression, with the
same diffuseness and constant parenthesis. He
was wonderfully vigorous in body, often, as he
told us, walking into Edinburgh and out again,
no small feat for a man of his age, whose con-
stitution had been so much tried. It happened
to be his birthday, and he told me he was
seventy, and did not feel a day older than
when he was seventeen. And years after his
daughter Florence told me these words were such
a comfort to her, in the near prospect of going to
India and leaving him, an augury for meeting
again ; but this she never did, for on her return
with her children in 1860, the first news she
heard at Aden was a notice in the paper of his
death.
Two years after our visit, Florence de Quincey
went out to India to marry Colonel Baird Smith,
a man in every way worthy of her, and one who
was later to leave a mark on his country's his-
tory. He was in command of the Engineers
at Delhi in the Mutiny of 1857, a long-drawn-
out siege, never to be forgotten for the bravery
and for the sufferings of the defenders. The
Baird Smiths' eldest little girl, May, was born
in the fortified workshops at Roorkee, and the
tortures of anxiety her mother endured at that
time are known only to herself. The severe strain
72 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
she had gone through told on her health, and in
1860 she and her babies were ordered home, and
after recruiting there for eighteen months, she
sailed for Calcutta, to join her husband, who had
been made Master of the Mint there. She had
expected her husband to meet her on the pilot-
boat in the Hooghly, and had that morning put
on a particularly becoming hat, that he might not
see how much anxiety had worn her beautiful face.
He was not among the passengers on the pilot-
boat, and while she wondered at his absence a
lady, opening the newspapers, cried, "Why, they
seem to be all about your husband ! " and handed
one to her. Her eye lit on the paragraph headed
" Death of Colonel Baird Smith."
She had not even known that he was ill,
though his death was caused by the old wound
received at Delhi. This tragic sorrow, falling with
such awful suddenness on this loving fragile
woman, was enough to kill her, but it was
characteristic of her unfaltering sense of duty
that her first care was given to a young lady
who had come out in her charge to be married.
This sense of obligation, this instinct of "mother-
ing," a favourite word with her, brought its
own comfort. Her two little daughters en-
grossed, but did not absorb, her motherliness ;
even her carefully chosen maids were like young
SIR ALEXANDER GRANT. 73
daughters. Her father has said somewhere that
there is no better literature than what is conveyed
in the daily post-bag, especially in the letters of
women. Certainly his own daughter's letters,
written from her quiet homes first at St Leonard's
and then at Bath, were among the most delightful
I have ever received. The life and fortunes of
her neighbours, the growth of her children, the
books she read, were touched on with tender grace
and humour, while public questions roused an
eager and almost passionate interest. In conver-
sation this gentle delicate woman had an intensity
of conviction and clearness of expression that made
my husband whose occasional difference of view
only increased his admiration of her liken her
once to a " beautiful bird of prey."
The winter of 1853 was a very happy one, but
with no particular event to record except the visit
of Mr Grant, 1 my first acquaintance with one
I had heard so much of, and who came up to all
I expected. He was full of literary interests and
enthusiasm, and had the rare capacity of imparting
something of the glow of his own feelings to those
about him. Genial and natural himself, he was
much taken with the old-world place and its simple
friendly hospitality, and in Mr Ferrier he found
a foeman worthy of his steel ; and deep into the
1 Afterwards Sir Alexander Grant.
74 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
night the two younger scholars would sit up with
the elder man, discussing the problems which are
for ever interesting, and for ever eluding solution
by the human mind.
Janie and Susan Ferrier were in Edinburgh, so
Mr Grant did not then see her who was to be the
lady of his love only Coggie was at home, and
proudly boasted to her sisters on their return of
her friend Mr Grant of Oxford. At the end of the
session, before going to Ardtornish for the summer,
we went up to Liverpool to our dear friends, and
my cousins, the Crosses, who then lived at St
Michael's Mount, Aigburth, the garden sloping
down to the river, which, crowded with sails of
many sizes and colours, gave one a feeling of life
and stir that redeemed the " smoky brick houses"
and dull prosaic level of most of the town. But the
surroundings seemed of little consequence compared
with the bright, vivid, social charm of the home
circle : the wise, gracious benignity of the father,
whose judgment was final and sympathy boundless ;
the handsome, lively, humorous mother ; and the
peerless Zibbie, the eldest daughter, who united the
parental qualities with a charm all her own, and
whom it seems impossible to describe, but " to know
her was to love her," and to feel there was no one
exactly like her.
We left our little boy with my kind cousin
A FIRST VISIT TO OXFORD. 75
Mrs Cross ; and Zibbie went with us to Oxford,
where we had a royal time, worthy of a first visit
to a place which held so large a part in my
husband's memory and in my imagination. I loved
to see the place where " of old he wore the gown,"
and the buildings, and the river, all so full, to him,
of happy memories, and where he had so many
friendships, friendships that lasted while life
endured. Mr Jowett was there, still college tutor,
living in the rooms opposite the Martyrs' Memorial,
long after occupied by Mr Strachan-Davidson. His
kindness and hospitality, then and ever, were
wonderful. I was, of course, prepared to like him
from my husband's extreme admiration for him, but
I had no difficulty in doing so, for though his silence
was felt to be alarming by many it did not frighten
me so much, as I was accustomed to my own father's
silence, and had got into the way of not expecting
much response unless the spirit moved him to
speak. I early found out that it was the same
with Mr Jowett ; when response came it was always
worth waiting for. And different as the two men
were in education and occupation, I was often
struck by the similarity of their opinion on many
subjects, political and otherwise, the result 'of two
vigorous minds arriving at the same conclusion by
very different routes. We lived in lodgings in
High Street, and Zibbie soon became the centre of
76 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
attraction at all the many ftes to which we were
invited. I remember a luncheon at Magdalen, and
then going to the top of the tower, and a poem
being written on her little white parasol, which
became transformed into a " dove," and the natural
rhyme occurred very often ! She was beautifully
graceful and fair and attractive, and we felt very
proud of introducing her to the Oxford world.
Mr T. C. Sandars, who had run exactly the same
career at Oxford as my husband, and who became
so dear a friend in after years to myself and our
children, was there with his wife, a quiet and
gentle woman (a contrast, indeed, to the brilliant
delightful companion of his later years), but such
was his vigour, originality, and humour, that it
seemed enough for two. Mr Walrond, too, and
Mr Max Mtiller, still bachelors, but soon to marry
the two beautiful and gifted Miss Grenfells, did much
to make our stay delightful ; and the glow and
glamour of that first visit to Oxford never left it,
and still illumines the place in my imagination.
Our visits there were so often repeated that at last
they became "yearly visits to the temple," much
looked forward to, and never disappointing. And
now, after many years have passed since the Master
has gone to his rest, and left a blank in the life
and heart of his friends which can never be filled,
I should like, however inadequately, to say a few
THE MASTER OF BALLIOL. 77
words in most grateful memory of the staunchest
and most loyal of friends.
The influence he exerted over the undergrad-
uates when my husband went to Balliol was
something quite peculiar, and difficult to put in
words that do not sound exaggerated. When
Sir Alexander Grant, long years after, dedicated
his * Ethics of Aristotle ' to him in these words
" To the Master of Balliol, the Socrates of my
youth, my unfailing friend during nearly forty
years, the best and wisest man I have ever
known/' he but put into eloquent words the
feeling of all his contemporaries. It is rare that
the tie between teacher and taught lasts through
long years of separation and different pursuits and
opinions, but the three or four years spent at
Balliol were a bond of union never to be forgotten,
and the charm never passed away. It is not un-
common for young men at that impressionable age
to be influenced by any remarkable person they are
thrown into contact with, but with the Master of
Balliol the influence continued long after they were
separated, and I do not believe any of his pupils
I speak of those I knew, a goodly band ever
took an important step in life without consulting
him. Not only did he never lose touch of or interest
in his early friends, but he added on their wives
and children, as I can most gratefully testify. He
78 KECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
did, indeed, to use an expression of his own, " keep
his friendships in repair" by constant letters and
frequent meetings, either in their own homes or in
his hospitable lodge at Balliol ; and to the end of
his life he added new friends, inspiring them with
something of the same pride and pleasure in his
acquaintance that so peculiarly stirred his earlier
ones. He was shy himself, which kept him often
silent, or made him give utterance to short sentences,
pregnant frequently of wit and wisdom, but which
sometimes "froze the genial current of the soul" of
his listener, and made him feel that on him lay the
onus of finding another subject which might possibly
be discussed more fluently by the Master ! I re-
member once telling him that Mr Sidney Colvin
had told me much about Ruskin, and ended by
saying, " His parents could never apparently be-
lieve in his being grown up, and even at forty
treated him as if he were a child!" "I think
his parents were quite right," was his retort.
He was interested in all my children and their
tastes and pursuits, but he made an especial pet
of Eppie from the day when he used to tell of his
arrival late in the evening at Tullymet, in 1866,
when a little night -gowned child ran across the
hall and leapt into his arms. In later years he
used often to say, " Come and amuse me, Eppie,"
a rather staggering request, but she always rose to
A LOVER OF CHILDREN. 79
the occasion. I must here quote what Mr Strachan-
Davidson has reminded me of, that when we were
staying at Balliol in 1877, and Eppie was with us,
she being then eighteen, a gentleman who had sat
next her said to the Master, after the ladies had
left the dining-room, " It is an extraordinary thing,
but I have quite fallen in love with my neighbour."
" Not at all extraordinary," retorted the Master ;
"I have been in love with her since she was four
years old ! " And her mantle fell on her daughter
Norna, who twice when she was six and eight
was asked to Balliol ; and one day when she was
sitting prattling on the Master's knee Lady Ilbert
said to me, "I think Norna is the one person in
Europe absolutely and entirely at her ease with
the Master!"
His own shyness made him resent any one feel-
ing shy with him, and, like most clever men, he
preferred fluent nonsense of a kind to awestruck
silence ; and any one who could tell him a new
good story was hailed with delight.
" I hope you are never dull, that seems to me
one of the greatest faults," he once wrote to a
friend. Dulness and shyness were the almost
unforgivable sins to this tolerant philosopher 1
Success in life, too, he prized highly some thought
too highly; but one felt it was not so much for
the end attained, but because so much energy and
80 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
ability had gone to the attainment, that he valued it.
" I have, as you know, a general prejudice against
all persons who do not succeed in the world ! " His
friend Browning saw the other side when he said
" Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for ? "
It is well, perhaps, there should be apostles of
both views, the one to stir up to exertion, the other
to keep from despondency hearts who have not
found in love or effort their "earthly close," but
who may find in another world " higher, nobler
work to do."
From Oxford we returned to St Michael's Mount,
Liverpool, and went to Scotland by sea, a most
unpleasant experience, for there was a regular
summer storm, and I remember how not even the
sight of the white face of my beautiful little boy
could prevent my wishing each toss and roll would
be the last ! So much for being one of those
" base luxurious slaves,
Whose souls would sicken o'er the heaving waves."
We stopped with my father at Lagarie for a
week or two, and then went on to Ardtornish,
where a happy summer was spent many friends
coming to visit us there. Though the house was
small, it was wonderfully elastic ; and as the old
boatman, Robert M'Lachlan, said, when a party
HERBERT SPENCER. 81
of people quite unexpectedly arrived, "Ardtornish
was never beat yet ! "
A constant visitor at Mr Smith's, Achranich, was
Mr Herbert Spencer. At that time, as he said
himself, " he was not ' caviare to the general/ but
cod-liver oil I for he was quite sure that ninety-nine
people out of a hundred would, if asked, prefer
taking the cod-liver oil to reading a chapter of any
of his books ! " He was full of fads and theories
about his health ; was afraid to get into an argu-
ment lest it disturbed his "somniferous faculties";
and once when Mr Jowett was staying with us and
we were going to spend the afternoon at Achranich,
Mr Smith's place, so great was his fear of an
encounter of wits that he lay down with india-
rubber balls on his ears, an invention of his own,
which proved so successful that he fell asleep, and
when he awoke, like a giant refreshed, Mr Jowett
had come and gone ! He was devoted to fishing ;
but here, too, he must carry out his theories : and
because he considered fish were very scantily
developed in brain power, he made his own flies,
which no doubt were but little calculated to ex-
cite the imagination, but I never heard they were
more successful in capturing the dull fish than
the "fancy flies" of the ordinary unphilosophic
fisherman !
Mr Spencer was of quite a different type of intel-
82 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
lect from the men one had been thrown amongst,
who held that "Natural science has had a great
effect on the world, but the ideas of men have
had much more." But this did not prevent one
from admiring his high, though somewhat barren,
moral nature. No worldly motive ever determined
his action : he was as retiring and impecunious as
a mediaeval monk : he lived wholly for what he
believed to be true, and set a bright example of a
career devoted to universal ends, unblemished by
any thirst for popular applause. And he has lived
to see his reward in universal recognition at home
and abroad, both of sympathy and antagonism. On
the Continent and in America Mr Spencer is especi-
ally well known ; and it was interesting to learn
that among the books found on nearly all the Rus-
sian political offenders sent to Siberia, Mr Spencer's
works formed an important part.
No two minds of the century could possibly
differ more than his and Louis Stevenson's, who
thus writes of him : " No more persuasive Rabbi
exists, and few better. How much of his vast
structure will bear the touch of Time, how much
is clay and how much brass, it were too curi-
ous to inquire. But his words, if dry, are always
manly and honest : there dwells in his pages
a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked,
like an algebraic symbol, but still joyful, and the
A MODERN MEDIAEVAL MONK. 83
reader will find there a caput mortuum of piety,
with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most
of its essentials : and these two qualities make him
a wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him
a bracing, writer. I should be much of a hound
if I lost my gratitude to Herbert Spencer."
In those happy Ardtornish days we became great
friends, though certainly more from contrast than
affinity, and he was never tired of correcting
what he called the absurd exaggeration of my
language. An example of this amused me when,
on the occasion of Alexander Craig Sellar and
Gertrude Smith's marriage in 1870, he sat next
me and recalled the many years we had met in
the Highlands. "Yes, Mr Spencer," I said, "we
have lived and loved together through many a
changing year ! "
" We have lived" he corrected, with decision.
"Ah," I said, "you can't answer for my feel-
ings ! " upon which he grimly smiled.
I was amused to hear many years after, from
"George Eliot," that he had told her I had the
most "rapid cerebration" of any one he had
known, which " brave words" only meant, I fancy,
what an old Scotch tutor said, when asked how
my brother Alexander and I were doing in Latin
" Oh, Mr Alexander learns his lessons far better,
but Miss is so awfully quick at the uptak' ! "
84
CHAPTER VI.
" There are kind hearts still for friends to fill,
And fools to take and break them ;
But the nearest friends are the auldest friends,
And the grave's the place to seek them."
R. L. STEVENSON.
" Your e'e wis gleg, your fingers dink,
Ye didna fash yourself to think,
But wove as fast as puss can link
Your denty wab.
Ye stapped your pen into the ink,
An' there was ' Rab.' "
R. L. STEVENSON.
1854.
WE returned to St Andrews in October and took
up our usual life there, and on the 6th of December
our second child and first daughter was born, and
was christened by Mr Skinner Eleanor Charlotte.
The old lady came over at this time and paid us a
long visit, her dear sons, John and Alexander, often
joining her. Alexander had just gone to Balliol,
where his progress was watched with the keenest
interest by my husband ; and when, four years later,
he took a first-class degree, he felt far more pride
and delight than when he himself had taken the
same degree. Indeed, from first to last, the career
A POLITICAL MISHAP. 85
of this brother, nearly ten years younger than him-
self, a distance in time that gave an added charm
to their friendship, was a source of the deepest
interest to him. Later on, when a distinguished
and strenuous Parliamentary career opened out for
the younger brother, the elder followed it with an
ambition he never felt about his own success.
When that career was prematurely cut short much
of the savour went out, both of politics and of life,
for my husband. Politics were at all times the
staple of conversation among the seven Sellar
brothers. After months of separation they would
greet each other with, "Well, Pro., how about
the Government ? " " Well, Alexander, what do
you say about the bill ? " Starting from the
same Liberal opinions, the brothers remained sub-
stantially in agreement, and the discussions owed
none of their keenness to controversy. Once,
indeed, when both were men over fifty, relations
were strained for half an hour between my husband
and Tom, his eldest brother, a man we none of
us ever lost the habit of looking up to. Both were
the guests of their brother John on his yacht the
Fenella in the harbour of St Heliers in Jersey.
Even before the Home Eule Bill my husband's
attitude towards Mr Gladstone was very critical,
while Tom regarded him with the enthusiasm with
which he inspired so many Liberals at that time.
86 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Lying on the sofa in the cabin, my husband
indulged in a humorous and irresponsible diatribe
against the Prime Minister, and was so much
amused with his own eloquence that he did not
notice that his elder brother's answers were grow-
ing short and grim. Even when he got up and left
the cabin abruptly, my husband absorbed himself
contentedly in Marryat's ' Snarlyyow, the Dog
Fiend,' quite unwitting of the feelings he had
roused, till his brother John came down the com-
panion, with real concern on his kind handsome face,
and said, " Pro., would you mind apologising to the
old Prior ? " a name they had given to their eldest
brother. " I'm afraid you've really hurt him about
Mr Gladstone." Two minutes later the brothers
were laughing over the occurrence like schoolboys.
Strange that these two brothers, William and
Alexander, alike in tastes and in many ways, though
different in others, should both have been taken in
one year ; for Alexander died at Parham in January
1890, and my husband followed in October. One
of the last things he said was, " No one knows
how I have missed Alexander, and I have not been
long in following him." But at the time I write of
there was
" No sorrow in our song,
No winter in our year."
All were young and strong and happy not wealthy
From a photograph
by Rodger, St Andrews, 1854.
WILLIAM Y. SELLAR.
FORMER CHARMS OF ST ANDREWS. 87
but rich " in that content surpassing wealth "
which the sage found in meditation, and which
we found in " books and work and healthful
play," and in stimulating and charming society.
My father came to see us that winter, a very
rare occurrence, for he hated leaving home ;
but he was very happy, and I loved his visits.
Old Mr Tennant of St Eollox also came to visit
us that winter, and on his return reported to
my father, " I found them uncommon comfortable,
Aleck ! " expecting, I fancy, to find us living on the
"handful of oatmeal" supposed to be sufficient
nourishment for academic men.
Certainly millionaires did not abound in St
Andrews ; but for native gaiety, exuberant fun,
and freedom and friendship, mingled with the
best talk on all subjects, I think it could well
hold its own, and it had far more of a uni-
versity atmosphere and aspect than any other
town in Scotland. Historical associations, and
the beautiful old ruins, the charm of situation,
the sweep and breadth of sky, and the sunsets
that flamed over the long level of the Links,
made a fair setting for the modern spirit that
even then was beginning to invade the place, but
not with the rapidity of the last two decades.
Life was not then so hurried, and I think people
had far more animal spirits than they have now.
88 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
" Laughter, holding both his sides," was a reality,
not a figure of speech. People liked being amused,
and were not ashamed of showing their interest,
instead of the bored superciliousness I have so often
seen in later years when any one was kind enough,
or, as it seemed, foolish enough, to try to amuse
the company ! I remember once at West Park
that winter, Sheriff Gordon and a friend of his, Mr
Patrick Fraser, going through a whole opera in the
Italian style, improvising in the wittiest manner, and
weaving into the story all that was going on at the
time, and then ending with a ballet ! and as the
Sheriff was a man of 6 ft. 3 in., the effect was very
funny. Another day the Sheriff and Mr Lancaster
acted as waiters at Abbey Park, fulfilling the role
admirably, but, soon wearying of well-doing, they
subsided into vacant chairs, to the astonishment of
the other guests, each announcing the other as pol-
itical characters of the day ; and anything funnier
than their conversation throughout dinner-time I
never heard. This was Mr Lancaster's first visit
to St Andrews ; but I had known him before I
was married, and he at once became a great
friend of my husband's. And none mourned him
more deeply when, in 1875, he was suddenly and
prematurely taken away, taken when he had
made himself felt as a political and legal power,
MYSTIFICATIONS. 8 9
and when his friends had hoped to have seen him
eventually made Lord Advocate. The expression
that rises to one's mind in thinking of him is
" inexhaustible vitality." JEye, voice, all spoke of
the brilliant wit and humour that possessed him.
He required no audience, and was as amusing
among the dullest as among the brightest : and
how rare is this quality ! No company could be
dull where he was, and his abundance of life
seemed infectious.
Two or three years later I remember an even-
ing we were all staying with my father at
Lagarie when my Uncle John at Armadale
had a dinner - party, and Mr Lancaster and I
went as Professor and Mrs Crombie from Aber-
deen. We were a strange and somewhat outrt-
looking couple, for Mr Lancaster wore an old
waistcoat my uncle had worn about fifty years
before, white satin embroidered with forget-me-
nots and very short- waisted, and my own attire
was equally rococo.
There were some rather stiff people at dinner
who could not understand why Mr Dennistoun
should pay such marked attention to such people !
and this only fired Mr Lancaster to make him-
self more conspicuous. In a pause of conversation
he drew all eyes upon him by putting on his
90 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
spectacles, fixing his eyes on my husband, and
exclaiming in a loud voice, as if uttering a
prophecy, "What a remarkable man Dr Johnson
was, Professor Sellar," and then the oracle became
mute. I, meanwhile, was driving the poor man
who took me down nearly desperate by talking
of nothing but geology. In vain did he protest
he knew nothing of the subject, but that did
not in the least deter me who, save for a few
geological terms, was equally ignorant; and I
stuck like a limpet to my "scratched rocks," till
a happy diversion was made by Mr Lancaster
calling down to me from the top of the table,
" Camilla, my love, I have just been telling Miss
Dennistoun that my waistcoat, which she has
been admiring, was embroidered by you ! " And
all eyes being turned to the garment in question,
my uncle exclaimed, " And such a remarkably
good fit too ! " This was too much for me, and
the de'nodment came.
Mr Lancaster was a most brilliant talker, and
far into the night my husband and he used to
sit up discussing all questions, generally begin-
ning and always ending with "the war."
And indeed the war that year was a very
serious and engrossing topic, when the life-blood
of the flower of England was so freely shed, and
terrible sufferings and privations were so nobly
THE CRIMEAN WAR. 91
borne on the bleak frozen shores of the Crimea.
It is not for me to
" discuss the Northern sin
Which made a selfish war begin."
Indeed my position then, and it remains much
the same now, was that of little Wilhelmine,
" And what they killed each other for
I could not well make out ! "
The siege of Sevastopol was severe and arduous,
but after terrible loss of life to the besiegers it
ended in victory. I remember hearing that when
Dr Kane, the Arctic explorer, whose brother was
married to a cousin of mine in America, Bessie
Wood, landed in America after eighteen months'
absence, and asked what news there was, he was
told Sevastopol had fallen, upon which he ex-
claimed, "Who and what is Sevastopol?" The
whole war had begun and ended in the absence
of this Arctic Eip van Winkle !
To Mr Lancaster we owed one of the greatest
happinesses of our lives, for it was he who this
winter introduced to us Dr John Brown. We were
passing through Edinburgh, when he brought him
to see us at the hotel where we were staying,
and they both returned to dinner. This was the
beginning of a friendship which grew ever warmer
and closer. Next day Dr Brown sent me the MS.
92 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
of "Rab," and said I might take it with me to
Selkirk, where we were going ; and I know I got
little sleep that night after reading it, so haunted
was I by its beauty and simplicity. It is one of
those stories that make one love the author, and
it would be curious to know how many thousands
of friends it made for him in every part of the
world. He wrote much that was charming after-
wards, and what he wrote, though unequal, had
always a unique flavour, but he never wrote any-
thing so perfect as 'Rab'; and as "Rab" he was
known to many a loving friend. Whatever he
wrote, whatever he said, one might add whatever
he looked, had the same exquisite personal quality,
what he himself used to call " the juice of the
whole man/' It was this essential excellence that
he sought, with a fine fastidiousness, in music, in
literature, in art : this that he found, with an even
surer touch, in the men, women, children, and
dogs whom he met and loved and understood in
his daily life. No one I have known had such
delight in such a variety of human qualities as he,
provided only that they were genuine. The rugged
humour of a carter, the grace of a delicate high-
bred woman, the wit of a man of the world, the
innocence of a child, all were "dear to this man
who was dear to God." For nothing in my life
am I more thankful than for the years in which
DR JOHN BROWN. 93
he came in and out of our house after we settled in
Edinburgh, with the doctor's privilege of knowing
and comforting all our sorrows and anxieties, and
his special gift of sharing all joys and interests.
To me, who was always profoundly uninterested
in " symptoms," his respect for the healing power
of Nature made him particularly sympathetic as a
doctor. More than once, when I was prostrate in
the dark with headache, I have sent the message,
"Mrs Sellar's love, and she is too ill to see a
doctor." I am glad to think that I wasted little
of his visits on professional talk : we were far
more interested in discussing some new book or
poem, some new aspect of thought, some fresh
experience.
Of his humour what shall I say? It inter-
penetrated all his speech, and played a soft
lambent light over his saddest thought. At
times, too, like Charles Lamb's, it had an elfin
freakishness.
When my grandchildren read and love his
'Minchmoor,' it will be a proud surprise to them
to recognise the " young voices from the haugh "
at Harehead, especially the "pauvre petite, the
animosa infans, the wilful, rich - eyed, delicious
Eppie." When she was grown up this daughter,
Eppie, had an album in which she wrote appro-
priate mottoes under the various portraits : under
94 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
his she wrote these lines from one of the elegies
on Sir Philip Sidney :
" A sweet attractive kind of grace ;
The full assurance given by looks ;
Perpetual comfort in a face :
The lineaments of Gospel books."
What " perpetual comfort " I found in him as
the years went on, bringing with them the in-
evitable cares and troubles, joys and sorrows, is
known only to my own heart. Only one dreaded
to draw too deeply on his sympathy, so real was
the shadow cast on his sensitive spirit by the
sorrows of others. Nor was it only his friends'
sorrows that he shared : firmly and tenderly he
could face their failures, their defeats, even their
sin. To be worthy of Dr Brown's friendship was
an incentive, to more than he knew, to make the
best of themselves.
Years after, in a delightful article Andrew
Lang wrote on "Rab's Friend," he expresses the
same feeling. " What Dr Brown might have
done, had he given himself to literature only, it
is impossible to guess. But he caused so much
happiness and did so much good in that gentler
profession of healing which he chose, and which
brought him near to many who needed consola-
tion more than physic, that we need not regret
his deliberate choice."
THE LONELINESS OF OLD AGE. 95
Like Cowper and many other gifted beings, Dr
Brown was subject to seasons of gloom and sad-
ness, when his pure beautiful soul was clouded
over, and he could not even see the light of God,
whom he loved and served so well ; but when the
clouds passed his mind was as clear as ever, only it
seemed as if his spirit had gained a deeper depth,
as of one who had trod the wine-press alone, had
gauged the extreme of suffering, and therefore
was strong to comfort the brethren. As I write
of this dear friend, and of all the others who
added so much to the happiness of our life, I am
oppressed with the sadness of the feeling that I
only am left feebly to record what they were to
us ; and the lines that Sir Walter Scott quotes in
a letter to Lady Louisa Stuart seem exactly to
suit one's own case :
" For many a lad I loved is dead,
And many a lass grown old ;
And when I think on those are fled,
My very heart grows cold."
In a letter to Mr Erskine of Linlathen, Carlyle,
old and lonely, gives eloquent utterance to these
feelings :
"It is the saddest fortune of old age that the
old have to see themselves daily grown more
lonely reduced to commune with the inarticulate
eternities, and the loved ones, now irresponsive,
96 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
who have preceded them thither. Well, well,
there is blessedness in this too, if we take it well,
nor is hope quite wanting, nor the clear con-
viction that those whom we would most screen
from pain and misery are now at rest. Shake-
speare says pathetically
' Fear no more the heat of the sun,
Nor the furious winter rages ;
Thou thine earthly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages.'
These tones go tinkling through us sometimes
like the pious chime of far-off church bells."
Of course it was after we came to Edinburgh
in 1863 that we saw so much of Dr Brown, but
it was this first visit which made an impression
which time deepened but never altered.
Again, with an "iteration" that was delight-
ful, not "damnable," we spent a happy summer
at Ardtornish, its hospitality and elasticity alike
inexhaustible. I think it was in this summer that
my father and my sister Elizabeth, and my Uncle
John and his daughter, came up with the yacht
Talisman and induced us to go with them to Skye :
but yachting was not altogether to my taste, and
we returned home from Portree in the more
prosaic but more certain steamboat, not before,
however, the glamour of those Western Isles had
possessed one, for in fine weather they are indeed
AN UNTIMELY ARRIVAL. 97
the Islands of the Blessed. Years after, rowing
along the coast to Amalfi, we were strongly re-
minded of this time, so curiously alike were
scenery and atmosphere. Mr Ferrier, his two
girls, and his son John paid us a delightful visit
in August. We had expected them in the
evening, but no steamer arrived, and in the early
dawn of the following morning, hearing a crunch-
ing on the gravel, I jumped up and looked out,
and there was the whole party slowly approaching
the sleeping household ! But such arrivals were
common events. To leave the place in the short
days of autumn with young children in an open
boat for in those days that was the only way we
could board the steamer was sometimes no small
difficulty. That very season the steamer was due
about 2 o'clock, and a scout was sent to the hill
about 12, whence he could see her approach, and
so give us warning before her arrival. But on this
occasion she did not come up till 12 at night !
when, with our lanterns dimly burning, we, our
babies, and our luggage had to row out on the
Sound and wait her coming up, and were hoisted
up the towering black sides. In the cabin I
remember we found all the Blackburns- from
Boshven ; and so much in the world did we seem,
compared with them, that Mrs Blackburn declared
she could smell Glasgow smoke at Ardtornish !
G
98 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
At that time, and for some years after, the post
only came three times a-week ; and though that
made the day of the arrival of letters one of ex-
citement, and necessitated considerable activity in
answering them before evening, there was a " sweet
security" from interruption on the off days, and
it is wonderful how soon one adapts oneself to ex-
isting circumstances, though, perhaps, not wholly
endorsing the axiom that "Whatever is, is best.' 1
At the present time Loch Aline boasts a daily post,
a telegraph office, and a steamer passing up the
Sound every day. But all these changes remind
one how quickly time is passing, and I must
make haste, while it is called to-day, with my
reminiscences.
99
CHAPTEK VII.
" Far may we search before we find
A heart so manly and so kind.'
SCOTT.
" I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old."
TENNYSON.
1855-1857.
PRINCIPAL TULLOCH came to St Andrews in 1855.
I believe it had been intended to make him the
Professor of Biblical Criticism, and Professor Brown
Principal, but by a most happy chance the positions
were reversed, and as Principal of St Mary's he
soon became known far and wide, adding to the
happiness of colleagues and friends in the old city,
and bringing innumerable strangers to his beauti-
ful and hospitable house at St Mary's, the only
collegiate residence in the place, which for thirty
years was to be his home and the centre of
intellectual life to his friends and neighbours.
Young and handsome, he made quite a sensa-
tion on his arrival, crowned as he was that year
by the great prize of Aberdeen University, the
100 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Burnett Prize, which carried with it the substan-
tial sum of 600. Genial and humorous, he was
a delightful companion, copious in talk, but never
monopolising it, and with the heartiest, most infec-
tious laugh I have almost ever heard. He at once
became a leading member of the happy, friendly
society of the place, and soon seemed to dominate
it, as the tall cross under which he now lies in the
beautiful Cathedral cemetery, looking out to sea,
dominates the surrounding graves. The change
from a quiet country manse to a university town
must have been agreeable to a man so eminently
fitted for intellectual society, and the gain to our-
selves was great. At that time he was full of life,
and though no man was farther from wearing his
heart on his sleeve, in his conversation he raised
one's mind above the dull routine of ordinary social
intercourse, and put a living interest into questions
of the day. Talking to him, you got beyond plati-
tudes and party cries; and you could not but
admire the great catholic sympathy he showed
in goodness wherever found, from Newman and
Keble to the unknown fervid Highland preacher.
By nature one of the happiest and most humorous
of men, he was occasionally overshadowed by a mys-
terious cloud that darkened the horizon of his life,
and made him profoundly miserable while it lasted,
even though sustained by a most real faith in the
PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. 101
divine goodness, and by the unwearied sympathy
of one of the sweetest of women a wife who has
been done justice to in Mrs Oliphant's Life of the
Principal, for only those who knew her intimately
were aware of the strength as well as the sweetness
of her character. It can easily be believed how
the advent of such a couple should have added to
the gaiety of the little nation of St Andrews.
Our social meetings were so simple that they were
frequent, and "the feast of reason" was possibly
more admirable than the material feast ! The
"professed cook," named Bell Toddy, who became
necessary when a "state party" was to be given,
was a veritable Mrs Meg Dods in her way,
though entirely ignorant of French kickshaws, as
she called them, and was quite a character, so that
interviewing her preparatory to a dinner-party
was a great amusement. Mrs Ferrier once de-
clared that my husband, being in a blase mood
one day, said, " The only people I care for
here are Bell Tulloch and Principal Toddy!" I
think the mixing of names was her own de-
vice ! I remember Bell telling me once, what I
thought was so characteristic of her class in
Scotland, that she had a small boy who, in con-
sequence of an accident, was obliged to have his
leg cut off. This was done in another room, she
remaining in the kitchen in an agony of suspense,
102 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
when a neighbour rushed in with the leg in her
hand, exclaiming, " It's a* weel ower," and was
surprised that this well-meant consolation caused
the poor mother to faint.
Long years after I was struck by the same
directness in facing facts and contempt of masking
them in sentiment, in a story which a dear old
Galloway woman, Ann Johnston, the aunt of our
gardener there, told me. She herself was full of
sentiment, and said that when a lassie she used
to walk behind her mother on the moor and put
her small feet into the mother's footprints, " I liked
her that weel ! " When Ann Johnston was old she
was bent quite double ; and she told me how a boy
came into her cottage, looked at her steadfastly for
some minutes, and then said with a perplexed look,
" Eh ! but the joiner will hae a job to make y'r
coffin, it'll be such a queer shape." But this is a
digression.
Mrs Oliphant, already well known as an authoress,
though I fancy she had not then written a quarter
of the voluminous works she was to give to the
world, was a great friend of the Tullochs, and she
and her friend, Mrs Macpherson from Rome, a niece
of Mrs Jameson, the writer on Mediaeval art, spent
some weeks of this winter at St Andrews, and added
much to our enjoyment. Mrs Oliphant was bright
and vivacious, absolutely unaffected and simple, but
MRS OLIPHANT. 103
with no very striking personality, at least to the
casual observer. She was rather a plain woman,
with very bright intelligent eyes, but her front
teeth were prominent and spoilt her appearance a
good deal. Later in life this defect was remedied,
and she looked quite different. When I think how
lively and happy she then was, I am pained to read
in her autobiography of all the sadness and sorrow
she was to suffer, as one after another of her children
was taken and she was left quite alone. She was
in Edinburgh for a day the year she died, and on
my writing to her to say how sorry I was not to
have seen her, I had a touching little note from
her which I copy here :
" WINDSOR, I5tk February.
16 DEAR MRS SELLAR, I received your kind note
only on arriving here, where it had followed me.
I am sorry, therefore, that I had not the chance of
seeing you, which I should have been so glad to do.
I know that you too have known evil days since
the old hopeful happy time when we used to meet,
and those who have lost so much should understand
each other. I am but a poor wreck left on the
shore, everything gone from me, and always hoping
that each morn I wake may be the last. -But if
you are ever in London and would come down here,
I should be glad to see you. Very truly yours,
" M. 0. W. OLIPHANT."
104 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
In the winter of 1863 Mrs Oliphant and Prin-
cipal Tulloch and his wife spent some months in
Eome, he having to seek a holiday and rest from
overwork. Mrs Oliphant lost her only little girl
there, a child of great promise, and this overwhelm-
ing sorrow bound the two families together in such
close ties that when the Principal died in 1886,
she was at once felt to be the proper person for
writing his biography. The Principal died at
Torquay, where he had gone in the hope of re-
covering from a long and painful illness; but it
was not to be, and the end came quickly, but
not before his faithful wife, who had been too ill
herself to accompany him, had, at the risk of
her own life, joined him. Weak and shattered
after his death, she went to her daughter, Mrs
Tarver, at Eton. The Queen, who for years had
been intimate with the Principal, and had a great
admiration for him, sent to say she would like
to call on Mrs Tulloch. She was lying on her
sofa when the Queen arrived, and she struggled
to get up, but the Queen, bending down, kissed
her and said, " Lie still, lie still : I do not come
to you as the Queen, but as one sorrowing woman
to another." Mrs Tulloch survived her husband
a year.
" He first deceased ; she for a little tried
To live without him, liked it not and died."
QUEEN VICTORIA AT A SICK-BED. 105
Two families, not living in St Andrews but
only a few miles from it, came much into our
lives in these years, Mr and Mrs Purves of
Kinaldy, and Mr and Mrs Cheape of Lathockar
and Strathtyrum. The Purveses were a happy,
well - conditioned couple, full of originality and
vigour. Of all the people we knew then, I should
have predicted the longest, healthiest life to Mrs
Purves ; but many years later, after we left St
Andrews, when recovering from influenza, she
fell from some steps in the greenhouse, and this
accident paralysed some of the nerves and affected
her speech, though it left her vigorous mind un-
touched. Henceforth, however, she led quite an
invalid's life, and died in 1904. Mr Purves I
have constantly met since we left St Andrews;
and now, when he is well over eighty, I am more
than ever struck by his vigorous memory and the
extent and accuracy of the miscellaneous know-
ledge he possesses. Nowhere have I met more
loyalty or undiminished interest in all our affairs
than in this kind friend of fifty years' standing,
with whom Time has dealt so gently that, except
for deafness, a defect he shares with many
excellent people! I see little or no change in
him. I hear he too is writing his reminiscences,
which are sure to be interesting, and more in-
structive than some I wot of!
106 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Mrs Cheape was a most charming-looking woman,
with a complexion of milk and roses, nearly white
hair, and a bewitching smile. This smile did
not bewray her, as no one could know her with-
out loving her, and I had reason to be very
grateful to her; for one summer when we left
Frank at school at St Andrews, she had him con-
stantly out to spend Saturday and Sunday at
Lathockar with her son Jim, who was the same
age, and no words can say how kind she was to
him. I always loved her, but when I saw her
last, in 1902, I was filled with admiration at the
beautiful picture of old age she presented, powers
of mind and memory undiminished, affections un-
chilled, and though suffering from that saddest 01
all deprivations, blindness, her cheerful interest in
everything was as keen as ever, and no shadow
was cast on the dear face that still retained so
much of its early beauty.
In 1857 we had a visit from Mr and Mrs
Lushington at Abbey Park. She was Cecilia
Tennyson, the sister of whom Tennyson writes in
the beautiful Epithalamium at the end of the "In
Memoriam," bending on him "her blissful eyes."
She inherited to the full the peculiarities and
eccentricities of her family, every member of
which had the temperament of Genius, which
only blossomed into the perfect flower of fulfil-
THE TENNYSON FAMILY. 107
ment in Alfred, though her two other brothers,
Frederick and Charles Turner, were not incon-
siderable poets : upon them Nature had tried
her 'prentice hand, and then she made Alfred !
But all, men and women alike, had the same
simplicity and unworldliness. I remember Mr
Palgrave telling of Septimus Tennyson calling on
him in London. He had never seen him before,
and was puzzled as to who he could be, struck
by his strange resemblance to his great friend
the poet, when his visitor put an end to his
doubts by exclaiming in a sepulchral voice, " I
am Septimus, the most morbid of all the Tenny-
sons " ! Mrs Lushington had something of this
morbidness, which showed itself principally in
undue anxiety about her health, good enough, if
she would only have let it alone. Once, years after,
to get off the wearisome subject of health, or rather
want of it, I said, " What a pretty bonnet you've
got, most becoming!" She replied, "It's last
year's bonnet. Poor old Bella, the cook, is past
work, and I have to support her and spend less
on myself. We must bear each other's burdens.
You are a very unselfish woman." I tried to blush
at my real character having been at last dis-
covered, when she added, " I often see you in very
old clothes " !
She was dark, tall, and striking - looking, of
108 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
the Meg Merrilies type, and this was particularly
accentuated when she stood at the open door,
where she fancied she got more air, as indeed
she did, and chanted to mystic numbers of her
own composing some of her brother's poems, and
a very striking lyric written by Mr Lushington's
brother, Henry, on an incident in the Crimean
War, with the refrain, "Down fell the snow."
This was really very touching and fine, and never
failed to draw tears from the eyes of her dear
husband. I am afraid, too, it was sometimes the
cause of irreverent, if concealed, laughter to some
of the audience, who could not get over the weird
appearance of an ancient sybil singing in the
doorway of a modern drawing-room! In spite of
all her eccentricity there was something attractive
in the absolute genuineness and simplicity of her
character, her sense of humour, and the originality
of her expressions. She gave me, at this time, a
piece of grey Japanese silk she had bought from
a travelling pedlar, saying it was " like moonlight
on a frozen lake." I am afraid it conveyed no
such poetical associations to any one when it was on
my back, but rather suggested a dowdy quakerish
garment, eminently unbecoming to what a candid
friend called my " black, yellow, and orange com-
plexion " !
I think it was during this year that we had
SIR ARCHIBALD LAWRIE. 109
a visit from Archie Lawrie, now Sir Archibald
Lawrie. He was a frequent visitor at both my
father's and my uncle's houses, and his wit and
humour endeared him to both the older men.
After some years at the Scottish Bar he went
out to Ceylon, where he rose to the position of
Senior Puisne Judge. He has now retired, and
lives at his own place, The Moss, in Stirlingshire.
In Ceylon he achieved a wonderful popularity, not
only among Europeans, but also with the natives,
with whom he was in perfect sympathy. His
bungalow was ever open, and a scene of constant
hospitality. Any kindness he may have received
from my people in the past he has more than repaid
by his goodness to my sons, Billy and Edmund,
the latter of whom spent eight years in Ceylon, and
found in the judge's bungalow a second home.
Very soon after the Lushingtons' visit Florence
was born, on the 16th of April, at Gillespie Terrace,
a small house close to the sea which we had taken,
as Abbey Park had been let for the summer. This
little family event kept us in St Andrews till June,
and as Mr Dobson and his daughter Kate were
to visit us at Ardtornish in the end of that month,
we delayed the baby's christening till we got there,
that this old friend might perform the ceremony.
Here we followed Mr Jowett's advice, for in a
letter I got from him in May 1857, in answer to
110 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
one asking him to be godfather to the child, he
replied : " I will gladly be godfather to your little
girl (I did not know there were such superstitions
in Scotland), but I fear I shall not be with you
till the middle of September, and as the whole
Christian world, including St Augustine, once
believed, ' Durus tormentor infantum/ what no
mother believes about unbaptised children (for
my ideas on these subjects I would refer you
to Hamlet at Ophelia's grave), I seriously think
you had better get some one else to baptise
the 'wee thing/ I had an epistle from 'Tornie,' 1
who really is a famous child." I remember how
taken up Grannie was in having the little draw-
ing-room decorated with white flowers; and as
the baby was a pretty and very fair one, and
the "officiating priest" was very dark and hand-
some, the picture was rather a pleasant one.
The child was called Florence Anne, after Miss
de Quincey and her own grandmother, the dear
old lady being quite willing that her name should
only have a secondary place, though she her-
self had most religiously carried out the Scotch
custom which enforced a strictly laid down rule of
family names, leaving no room for fancy or friend-
ships. Her son, Tom, and his wife Ldonide, and
1 " Tornie," our eldest boy Frank, a contraction of " The Ardtornish
Pet."
A YOUNG BRIDE. Ill
their three little girls, Helen, Annie, and Isabel,
spent most of the summer at Ardtornish ; and very
happy we all were together. Leonide was then only
twenty -two, having married at seventeen. She
had been married in New Orleans, which was their
home, and where Tom had been settled for some
years. Indeed, she was going back to school
when Tom proposed to her, and I believe her first
exclamation was, "Then I shall lose all chance of
getting the prizes I felt quite sure of winning ! "
Her mother, too, a French lady, was quite taken
by surprise, for when her eldest daughter, Mrs
Byrne, went to tell her that Tom Sellar had pro-
posed for one of her daughters she said, "Ah
oui, Am&ie." "No, not Amelia" "Mon Dieu !
ce n'est pas Leonide ? " But Leonide it was ; and,
in spite of her feeling at first as if she had been
kidnapped (for it was their full intention to return
to New Orleans in a couple of months, but, owing
to new business arrangements, it was decided they
should remain in Liverpool), she adapted herself to
circumstances, and was the best of wives. She was
very striking-looking, tall and handsome, with jet
black hair and blue eyes, inherited probably from
her Irish ancestry. She was full of life and spirits,
and was an immense favourite wherever she went.
The year after this they all set out to spend the
summer in New Orleans, and this satisfied her
112 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
that England, after all, was the better place to
make a home in.
This summer Mrs Sellar had a visit from her
daughter, Mrs Lang, accompanied by her three
handsome boys and their old and very Scotch nurse
Nancy. Mrs Lang had spent the winter before
at Clifton, where Nancy was always taken for a
foreigner ; and one of the tradesmen requested Mrs
Lang to send her orders in writing, as he could not
understand a word her German maid said ! Nancy
was a good faithful soul, whose whole interest was
in her master's family, and she lived and died in
their service. I remember one day the third little
Lang boy, John, was sitting silently gazing at the
waterfalls on the cliff, when suddenly he said, in
the broadest vernacular, learnt from Nancy, "Do
ye ken what I would do with thae waterfalls if
they were mine ? " " No," I said, wondering what
utilitarian idea had entered the boy's head. "I'd
let them bide/ 1 was the oracular response.
One day at this time we all drove over to
Loch Ari-Innes, near Acharn, joined by some of
the younger members of the Smith family from
Achranich. We fished on the loch, and lunched
beside the burn. We put a bottle on the bough
of a tree near the loch and fired at it with a
small rifle, a new possession of William Smith's.
Some one broke the bottle, and Andrew Lang was
A NARROW ESCAPE. 113
going to hang up a white handkerchief for a
target when a bullet sang past his right ear and
hit the water on a line from him. Somebody had
been teaching a lady how to shoot : as usual in
any disaster cherchez la femmef In any case
there was no more shooting that day, much to
Andrew's disgust, as he had not had a shot !
What a tragedy it would have been, and what
a loss to the world of letters, had the bullet
struck him ! It would have lost one of the most
brilliant and versatile writers of the day from
'Ballades and Lyrics of Old France' to histories,
biographies, poems, essays, and Gifford Lectures!
And here I must quote some lines, sent to me
recently by a friend, which were said at the time
to be written by a Frenchman in reference to Mr
Lang's Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology:
" De 1'esprit BUT les lois
Des Superstitions,
Les Comments et les Pourquois
De la tradition,
La bonne, la mauvaise f oi
De nos soumissions,
Tel est ton theme a toi
Et ses conditions.
Oh, charmant persifleur
Qui abordes et qui effleures
De gaite" de coeur
Les abimes."
Since writing these lines I have heard a doubt
H
114 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
expressed as to whether they are not really
written by Mr Walter Pollock. I leave my
readers to solve the problem.
This year, 1857, was full of the deepest interest
and anxiety, for it was the year of the great Indian
Mutiny, which seemed to shake the foundations of
the empire, and all our confidence in the races who,
till then, seemed thoroughly subject to us. Yet,
even at the worst, how loyal and faithful were
many of them ! and this in the face of nationality
and the inexorable laws of caste, a tyranny for-
tunately unknown to ourselves. The first news of
rebellion and disaster filled this country with a
burning desire for revenge, but this was succeeded,
as usual among English-speaking nations, by the
nobler determination that the rebellion must be
put down at all costs save honour ; and with dogged
resolution, and in many cases most heroic sacrifice
of life, the campaign was fought to the bitter end.
And surely in no war were there ever produced
more able, heroic, God-fearing men than those who
then guided and saved the empire of India. It
was as if Cromwell's Ironsides had come to life
with " sweeter manners, purer laws," but with
equal determination to do the duty that lay before
them. I hope all my grandchildren will read the
history of the Mutiny, for nowhere will they
learn of more heroic deeds of valour or of more
THE INDIAN MUTINY. 115
chivalrous and noble men. I little thought then
that long years after our daughter Eleanor would
become the intimate and trusted friend of Sir
Neville Chamberlain, whose character and actions
were like those of some ancient paladin.
Mr Jowett was again with us this autumn, and
it was then that I dressed up as a beggar and
completely took him in ; but the story of this is
told in the first volume of the Master's Life.
Grannie had a visit also this summer from her
son Patrick and his wife Agnes and their two
children, Pat and Helen. Pat was a beautiful
little boy, with curly golden hair, the very pride of
his mother's heart ; and Helen was also very pretty,
with hair like ripe maize. I often used to tell
Agnes she did not know what original sin was
in her children, certainly she had not the close
acquaintance I had ! so good and law-abiding were
they ; full of spirit too, little Pat fearlessly riding
old Greybeard, the pony to whom they afterwards
gave a happy home at Morvich for in the old home
in Sutherland, where they were all born, Patrick
and Agnes now lived, and there all their children
were born. Their second daughter, Annie, clever
and highly educated, distinguished herself at Ox-
ford, at Lady Margaret's, where she eventually
became Vice-Principal, and had the most extra-
ordinary influence for good over all her pupils.
116 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
She only left Oxford in consequence of the sadly
premature death, in 1901, of her youngest sister
Eya, who lived with her mother in St Andrews,
winning hearts by her sweet unselfish nature,
active too in good works, but absolutely free
from the "fussiness" of some of the votaries of
philanthropy.
CHAPTER VIII.
41 0, broken minster, looking forth
Beyond the bay, above the town ;
0, winter of the kindly North ;
0, college of the scarlet gown,
And shining sands beside the sea,
And stretch of links beyond the sand,
Once more I watch you, and to me
It is as if I touched his hand ! "
ANDREW LANG.
1859.
ON the 9th of February of this year a little girl
was born at Abbey Park, Constance Helen. My
husband was at college at the time, and on his
return was informed of the interesting fact by an
old woman called Stick Bell her profession being
to sell firewood who met him in the avenue, and
ever after made this a pretext for mulcting him of
money. " Ye mind I was the one that told you of
your wee lassie ; " and she never appealed in vain.
He was delighted with his little girl, whose sleek
black head he said was so like a seal's that he used
to call her "Phoca"; and very devoted friends they
always were, her lively temperament and quick wits
118 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
being a source of continual amusement to him.
She was called Constance after my dear cousin,
and Helen after her aunt my husband's favourite
sister.
It was a cause of great regret to us that we were
unable to be present at the wedding of our dear
friends, Sir Alexander Grant and Susan Ferrier,
which took place at St Andrews on the 2nd of
June, an anniversary always remembered, coming
as it did next to our own day, 1st June. This
was the commencement of one of the happiest
marriages I have ever known.
" Yet tears they shed : they had their part
Of sorrow : for when time was ripe,
The still affection of the heart
Became an outward breathing type,
That into stillness passed again,
And left a want unknown before :
Although the loss had brought us pain,
That loss but made us love the more."
They sailed for India very soon after their
marriage, and Sir Alexander spent some time at
Madras as secretary to Sir Robert Trevelyan, after
whom he called his first child, whose birth, followed
so rapidly by his death, was so similar to the ex-
perience of his friend Tennyson, whose touching
lines on the subject I have quoted. Later Sir
Alexander became Principal of Elphinstone College,
Bombay, and he remained there till he was called
SIR ALEXANDER GRANT. 119
home to be Principal in Edinburgh, where his intel-
lectual powers, his knowledge of men, and his dig-
nity and urbanity, made him a striking figure, and
one of whom the University might well be proud.
Time fleeted fast and happily that summer,
though all felt rather sadly that it was the last
that would be spent at the dear Highland home
to which they had all become so attached, and
nowhere else could they hope to meet en masse
as they had done since 1852 ; but the place had
been sold to Mr Octavius Smith, as I think
I have mentioned before. We had the usual
number of friends staying with us, but I cannot
remember any special event except our departure
that autumn. We were due in St Andrews on
a certain day, and had counted on the steamer
taking us to Oban in time, but their courses in
those days were very erratic, and we heard that
the Clansman would be detained in the north
by sheep and wool, so we had to hire a fishing
smack, and set off in it in the early morning.
Till we got near Lismore we went smoothly, and
so delightful and beautiful was it that I began
to fancy I had become a good sailor, when a
sudden rising of the wind very soon contradicted
that delusion, and some hours after, wet and
weary, sick and sorry, we thankfully put down
our feet on the pier at Oban, and inwardly vowed
120 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
that we should never go to sea again. But a sick
woman's, like a maiden's, vows are "lightly made
and lightly broke," and many a time and oft have
we crossed the Channel since then, in fair and
foul weather, but never without a feeling of devout
thankfulness when it was well over.
In winter Mrs Sellar came to Edinburgh for
a few months, leaving, very unwillingly, John to
look after Ardtomish ; but she was not very strong,
and her sons would not hear of her being so far
from doctors, though she invoked their aid less
than most people. Mrs Sellar that winter had a
flat in Scotland Street, quite a comfortable one,
but rather out of the way, except, as Mrs Deane
remarked, very much in the way for us, as it was
half-way over to Fife! And so we found it, for
at that time that " kingdom " was only reached by
the steamers crossing to Burntisland, and many a
little visit we paid her, visits which would now
be called " week-end " ones, but this elegant phrase
had not then been invented. Wherever the old
lady settled herself there was to be found peace,
happiness, and the most genial hospitality.
I think it was this winter that we saw a good
deal of two young men who were afterwards to
make a mark in the world in their different ways
Mr Story and Mr Skelton. The former, after many
years spent in Eosneath as minister of the parish
PRINCIPAL STOKY. 121
his father had held with much distinction, became,
and is now, 1904, Principal of the University of
Glasgow. 1 He was then, as now, a very striking-
looking man, with a reserved, dignified manner
which sat less easily on his youthful years than
it does now. He came to St Andrews to attend
Principal Tulloch's lectures, and this was the com-
mencement of his warm friendship with the Tullochs
and Mrs Oliphant, which was only severed by death,
and I think a summer seldom passed without their
meeting at Mr Story's lovely romantic home at
Eosneath. I do not think Mr Skelton at this time
had written much, but he was known to be one
of the rising literary men of whom much was
expected; and this his later years amply fulfilled
as novelist, essayist, historian, and critic. He, too,
was attracted to St Andrews by Principal Tulloch,
but only as a friend, and he soon became intimate
with the Ferriers and ourselves ; but it was later,
when he came to Edinburgh, and when he had
married Miss Annie Laurie and she was " bonnie
Annie Laurie " ! and settled at The Hermitage
of Braid that we saw so much of him. It was
a lovely romantic spot in a narrow valley in the
Braid Hills, only a mile from Morningside, and
yet so far removed from every appearance of
neighbourhood that it might have been a lodge in
1 Principal Story died on January 13, 1907.
122 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
a vast wilderness, " such boundless contiguity of
shade," too much of the latter, in fact, in the time
of the fall of the leaf, but lovely in spring and
summer, and a home after the heart of one who
loved nature with a passion which he extended to
bird and beast. Of these creatures, indeed, his
knowledge was so minute and accurate that he
could have recounted their ways and habits with
more ease though not more love than the very
perplexed ways of Mary Queen of Scots, and her
most difficult, not to say ruffianly, surroundings.
A walk out to The Hermitage on Sundays was,
I used to declare to my husband, his invariable
idea of entertaining any friends we might have
with us ; and they always returned agreeing
with him that they could have done nothing
more pleasant. Mr Skelton's books are so well
known that it would be a work of supereroga-
tion in me to name them, but perhaps some of
his poems are less well known, and I should
like to quote one which has always been a great
favourite of mine :
THE E'EN BRINGS A' HAME.
" Upon the hills the wind is sharp and cold,
The sweet young grasses wither on the wold,
And we, Lord, have wandered from Thy fold,
But evening brings us home.
SIR JOHN SKELTON. 123
The darkness gathers. Through the gloom no star
Eises to guide us. We have wandered far :
Without Thy lamp we know not where we are :
At evening bring us home.
The sharp thorns prick us, and our tender feet
Are cut and bleeding, and the lambs repeat
Their pitiful complaints. Oh, rest is sweet
When evening brings us home !
We have been wounded by the hunter's darts,
Our eyes are very heavy, and our hearts
Search for Thy coming, when the light departs
At evening bring us home.
Among the mists we stumbled, and the rocks
Where the brown lichens whiten, and the fox
Watches the straggler from the scattered flocks :
But evening brings us home.
The clouds are round us, and the snow-wreaths thicken.
0, Thou dear Shepherd, leave us not to sicken
In the waste night, our tardy footsteps quicken :
At evening bring us home."
This " cry " will find an echo in every life rapidly
" stepping westward " !
For years after we came to Edinburgh how
many happy hours we have spent at The Hermi-
tage with the cultivated host and his delightful
wife, and the charming circle they gathered -round
them ! Principal Tulloch was their frequent guest,
full of life and good stories, and with that ex-
124 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
plosive laughter that never failed to provoke
ready chorus in his audience. Sir Noel Paton
was sometimes but too infrequently a guest.
It was difficult to lure him from his home. At
The Hermitage, too, we met Mr Froude, perhaps
the most loved of all Mr Skelton's intimate friends,
an unforgettable man, of singular and romantic
appearance, with glowing eyes, so often described.
His talk was always interesting, often eloquent ;
but after the lapse of years it is only the im-
pression that is left, not the substance. It was
remarkable, the singular and graceful art with
which Mr Skelton set his guests talking, and
controlled and suggested conversation by constant
animated attention and occasional happy remarks.
Conversation at The Hermitage never permitted
the strain of monologue, never stiffened into
argument nor degenerated into mere story-telling,
though stories and laughter always lightened dis-
cussion. In the drawing-room, with its furniture,
which was and is simply furniture and not brie-
&-brac, and its background of water - colours, his
wife would sit at the piano, while in turns we
begged for the songs that were peculiarly hers,
" The Bells of Shandon," " Wearin' o' the Green,"
and especially Norman Macleod's "Dost thou
remember, Soldier old and hoary?" It was at
one of these parties that Mr Froude first told me
JAMES ANTHONY FROTJDE. 125
that Carlyle had given him his ' Reminiscences '
to read, and, full of the subject, I remember next
morning at breakfast repeating what he had said
concerning Carlyle's father, the story that was
afterwards to be so familiar to us all. Some time
after, when I met him again at The Hermitage,
he was equally full of the ' Letters ' (about to be
published) of Jane Carlyle, which he said were
the most brilliant and vivid he had ever read,
sometimes scathing and withering in their sarcasm,
keen as steel and as cutting, and, at rare intervals,
revealing a depth and pathos scarcely suspected
in one who certainly never wore her heart upon
her sleeve.
With a kindness for which I shall always be
grateful, my daughters were often included among
the guests in that charming society, and one of
them writes of a party there : " I remember dining
at The Hermitage one day with my father, to
meet Mr Froude and Mr Huxley, who happened
to be guests there. Mr Froude shook hands with
me, * Your father was just your age when I first
knew him/ ' and I believe/ he added to Mr Skelton,
' Sellar's daughter has just the round, ingenuous
face her father used to have/ I remember that
during dinner Froude and Huxley were discussing
some subject with animation across the table, and
how I turned to the young man who was trying
126 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
to make talk to me, and begged that we might
both listen to what we could so rarely have a
chance of hearing again ! Unfortunately the
memory of my own elation has outlived all recol-
lection of the subject under discussion. Huxley,
of course, made a far more genial impression on a
girl's mind. I remember his sitting down beside
a girl who was present, Fanny Bruce, whom, I
heard afterwards, he thought one of the most
brilliant creatures he had ever met, 'one who,
had she been a Frenchwoman, might have had
a salon/ He insisted on hearing all the details
of her balls, declaring that when he heard dance-
music it was all he could do to keep his 'old
feet quiet/ My father and I met Mr Huxley
again, dining at Mr Auldjo Jamieson's, our next-
door neighbour.
" I only remember one remark of Mr Huxley's.
Some one was speaking of men who had been
embittered from lack of appreciation. 'Well, my
experience is, that if all the undeserved appreci-
ation one gets were weighed in a balance against
all the undue depreciation, the first would so out-
weigh the latter that it would kick the beam/
I suppose that this was the period of his con-
troversies with the orthodox on Biblical subjects.
The men stayed long downstairs, and when they
came up Colin Mackenzie a humourist, but also
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY. 127
a man of old-fashioned Scottish-Episcopal piety
sat down beside me and said, with a quizzical
look, * Conversation downstairs reminded me of
the story in " Punch " : poor Mr Huxley is like
the tiger not a Christian left to worry/ "
Years after this we again met Mr Huxley at
the dear Master's hospitable lodge at Oxford. He
took me down to dinner, and was most genial
and delightful shifting his seat at table to the
detriment of the social arrangements, but in order,
he said, to get his good ear next me. " But I have
nothing to tell," I remonstrated, " and I can say of
my ears as Dr Johnson said of his eyes, ' both
dogs are bad.' >: So the symmetry of the table
was restored, and we had an intimate and lively
discussion of ' The New Republic/ by Mr Mallock,
which had recently appeared. He laughed at
the character which was supposed to represent
himself, and nodding across the table at his wife,
said, "That lady could have done a far better
caricature of me than this ! "
We never met again, but the simplicity of his
character and his humour made a great impres-
sion on us.
To return to my narrative. In 1860, Ardtornish
having passed into other hands, we thought our-
selves very fortunate in getting from Mr Black-
128 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
burn a sub-lease for a couple of months of Hare-
head, a small house I will not desecrate it by
the name of a "villa" on a most lovely bend of
the Yarrow, opposite Bowhill ("When summer
smiled on sweet Bowhill"), and I was not at all
surprised to hear it was the most loved by the
Duke of Buccleuch of all his many possessions.
To live beside Yarrow was to fulfil a dream of
one's youth. It is a wonderful spell that all that
countryside lays on the spirit, not taking it by
storm, its charm is too subtle and quiet for that,
but holding it with a love that is as deep as it
is lasting, like " music married to immortal verse,"
but the music is the still sad music of humanity,
which has so interpenetrated the scenery with
the loves, the joys, and, above all, the sufferings
that flesh is heir to, that scenery and association
are inextricably interwoven and have become one.
And over all broods, and for ever will brood, the
spirit of the mighty dead, the great Magician who
made Scotland and all Scottish hearts his own,
though, indeed, that were too small a realm for
one who has well been called "the whole world's
darling."
We spent a very happy summer in this beautiful
Tale of Yarrow, and had visits from many dear
friends Mrs Sellar, John and Alexander, Dr
Brown, Mr Shairp, Mr Lancaster, and many others.
VISITORS AT HAREHEAD. 129
One day, when the Master of Balliol was with us,
I dressed up and was announced as a visitor who
was staying in the neighbourhood. I professed
myself a follower of, and absolute believer in, Dr
Gumming, who was making a considerable noise
at that time, and had prophesied that the end of
the world was close at hand. "Fluent nonsense
trickled from my tongue," and I tried hard to
engage Mr Jowett in a controversy, and might
possibly have succeeded though he looked horribly
bored, but was too courteous to snub me when,
at some extremely wild statement I made, my
husband burst into such uncontrollable laughter
that the game was up, and I had to show my
own identity. Dr John Brown, on his way to
Minchmoor, came to us bearing with him a beauti-
ful brown retriever puppy, which he presented to
Eppie, putting it into her bed, and her delight
was unbounded. She became perfectly devoted to
this dog, Rover, and the best photograph we had
of her as a child was with her arms round his
neck. Mr Lancaster, too, came in the heyday of
happiness and success, having just engaged himself
to Margaret Graham, the second daughter of Mr
Graham of Skelmorlie. We had not met her
then, but of course we became intimate friends
when they settled in Edinburgh, a friendship
that has gone on increasing with the years.
I
130 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
But how far I am wandering from Harehead !
It is a curious coincidence that as I write this
I have a letter from Mrs Allan of North Cliff,
St Andrews, sending me a picture of Harehead
which, she said, recalled so vividly to her one of
the happiest visits she had ever paid. She was
then Rosie Cheape ; and I have a vivid recollec-
tion of our delight in the drives and expeditions
we made, and in the games of croquet, in which
she generally came off victorious, and certainly
always so when the dear Master of Balliol was
my partner. This friendship, begun at St Andrews,
and with one so many years younger than myself,
has known no decay : on the contrary, it has been
strengthened by the kind interest Mrs Allan has
always taken in my children as well as in myself;
and many happy hours have we spent in her
pretty home at St Andrews, the fascinating old
city which seems to have the irresistible power of
recalling her children to her when the shades of
evening are falling.
Professor Veitch was in Yarrow that summer as
guest of Professor Fraser, who with his family
were living at the Manse of Yarrow ; and the
two professors driving down one day to luncheon
became engrossed in philosophical discussion, in
which they were more at home than in the
PROFESSOR A. CAMPBELL PRASER. 131
management of their steed, and even forgot its
existence, till they were rudely awakened by
finding themselves and their trap in the bottom
of a ditch, and the horse luxuriating in a fresh
patch of grass which had lured it to their doom.
However, no great harm was done, and they
arrived a little late and rather crestfallen, but
uninjured.
Of Professor Fraser and his family we naturally
saw a great deal when we came to live in Edin-
burgh in 1863 ; and I remember a delightful visit
they paid us long years after, in Galloway, when
the Professor gratified my heart by calling Ken-
bank a "poet's home." When he retired from
the college in 1891 it was to a life of professional
leisure but literary activity, in a charming old
place, Gorton, the dower -house of classic Haw-
thornden. Here, surrounded by congenial friends,
he and his wife dispensed much charming hospi-
tality ; and from a day spent at Gorton one
returned heart -warmed and brain -stimulated. I
spent one such day there this last spring; and
as I write this, June 1904, I have received from
the Professor his 'Biographia Philosophica,' full of
the ripe wisdom of his long experience, and show-
ing how, from youth to age, his days have been
" bound each to each by natural piety." It is
132 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
a picture of one who followed divine philosophy
with a single heart, and who never found her
" harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute ;
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns."
He has reaped his reward by a beautiful serene
old age, surrounded by "love, honour, reverence,
troops of friends."
133
CHAPTER IX.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth :
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere."
TENNYSON.
1859-1861.
ON our return to St Andrews a great happiness
was added to our lives in the arrival of Mr Shairp,
who had been elected to the Latin professorship
on the death of Dr Pyper. To have as a colleague
this true and tried friend was no small delight
and help to my husband, who felt that now " the
grandeur that was Rome" would be impressed on
the minds of the students, as his ideal was to
instil into them something of the " glory that was
Greece." Very happy times the two friends had
together ; and in a small place like St Andrews
it can easily be understood what a gain such a
cultivated, refined couple as Mr and Mrs . Shairp
were to the social life of the place. They were per-
haps less socially inclined than many of their neigh-
bours, and sometimes one a little grudged their
134 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
extreme attachment to their own fireside. Mr
Shairp always brought with him a breath of fresh
stimulating air from the mountain heights in which
his mind habitually lived. The world was never
too much with him, and his hatred of " gossip par-
lance " kept his talk on a higher level of thought,
and yet never crushed his listeners, indeed,
rather inspired them to be at their very best.
He was so full of enthusiasm and moral ferv-
our that he became quite forgetful of himself.
Indeed he had a soul free from egotism, and
was completely carried away by his subject.
One could not know him without feeling he was
of a deeply religious nature, that this was the
mainspring of all his actions, and coloured all
his life. This, and a passionate love of Nature
and a poetical imaginativeness, habitual and
natural, were the characteristics that struck one
most then, and remained with him to the close
of his life. Living with Dr Norman Macleod's
aunts in Glasgow, in 1837, for a year before going
to Oxford, he was keenly alive to the charm and
influence of their nephew, who was a year or two
older than himself. Of him he always said, after
intimate acquaintance with some of the best minds
of the time, that he was the most eloquent and
inspiring person he had ever met. This dear and
valued friend, Dr Norman Macleod, after stren-
DB NORMAN MACLEOD. 135
uous and devoted years of labour in the Church
of Scotland, of which he was so conspicuous and
beloved an ornament, died in 1872, "dead in
his prime," as his friends sadly felt, for they had
hoped he had still many years of usefulness before
him. But a visit to India, crowded with mission
meetings, and all the social gatherings which,
wherever he went, never failed to pursue one whom
the Queen delighted to honour, and in whom the
working man equally found his best friend, proved
too much for his strength, and after a few days'
illness he died in Glasgow, and was buried at
Campsie beside his father, and close to the scenes
of his youth.
It is to this Mr Shairp alludes in a poem he
called " Spring, 1876":
" And one beneath roars factory, forge, and mart ;
Above the still green fell and boyhood's glen ;
There rests o'er-wearied that large human heart,
That brother man of men."
In the happy congenial surroundings in Glasgow
Mr Shairp became deeply imbued with Celtic ideas
and lore, perhaps imbibing them all the more easily
because Celtic blood was in his veins, his grand-
mother having been a Macleod of Dunvegan. This
love for the Highlands and its people fie never
lost, as many of his poems show. But he had an
equally strong love for the Border country, from
136 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
which he also drew ancestral blood, being de-
scended from Scott of Harden, sister of the
" Flower of Yarrow." And this love was only
deepened in the many walks and excursions he
made with Professor Veitch on Tweedside during
the last twenty years of his life. Among his poems
few are finer than " The Bush aboon Traquair."
Of this poem Mr Palgrave, no mean critic, has
written " The lovely * Bush aboon Traquair,'
distinguished above all Shairp's early lyrics by
such gracious exquisiteness of sentiment and
melody, that it singly should be enough to ensure
him an abiding place in that unique and delight-
ful company the song- writers of Scotland."
This poem was inspired by a visit he paid to
Traquair, when he, Dr John Brown, and Mr Lan-
caster were staying with us at Harehead in the
Yarrow country. They all walked across the hills
to verify the scene of the old Scottish air ; and my
husband used to relate with great amusement their
meeting a shepherd, and Mr Shairp's hailing him
in the vernacular always a mistake, and generally
resented and asking, " Whaur is the bus ? "
"Lord help ye, man, what sud I ken about ae
bus ! there's a gude wheen o' them here," was the
answer. But if he did not find the exact "bus,"
he found what was far better, the very spirit of the
place, not unalloyed with the sad gentle memories
"THE BUSH ABOON TRAQUAIR." 137
that seem inseparable from the "pastoral melan-
choly " of that haunted country.
" And birks, saw I three or four,
Wi' grey moss bearded o'er,
The last that are left o' the birken shaw,
Whaur mony a simmer e'en
Fond lovers did convene,
Thae bonny bonny gloamings that are lang awa'.
Frae mony a but and ben,
By muirland, holm, and glen,
They cam yin hour to spen' on the greenwood sward ;
But lang hae lad and lass
Been lying J neath the grass,
The green green grass o' Traquair kirkyard.
They were blest beyond compare
When they held their trysting there,
Among the greenest hills shone on by the sun ;
And then they won a rest,
The lownest and the best,
I' Traquair kirkyard when a' was dune.
Now the birks to dust may rot,
Names o' luvers be forgot,
Nae lads and lasses there ony mair convene ;
But the blithe lilt o' yon air
Keeps the bush aboon Traquair,
And the luve that ance was there, aye fresh and green."
Mr Shairp came to St Andrews from Rugby,
where as a house master he had spent eleven years
with distinction and success, though his friends felt
it was not the milieu they would have chosen for
him. Dean Bradley tells how he was asked by
138 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Archbishop Tait, then headmaster of Rugby, how
he thought Shairp would do as a master in his
place (the Dean having accepted the headmaster-
ship of Marlborough). Dean Bradley was startled
for a moment, and felt that Shairp's ignorance of
English school life, and even his entire and delight-
ful unconventionality, and the freedom with which
he would discuss all social, philosophical, and theo-
logical questions, might prove serious drawbacks.
On the other hand, he felt his high character,
active intellect, and fervid enthusiasm would bring
a new and valuable element into their school
society. On asking the opinion of a mutual friend,
Mr Matthew Arnold, he was answered in the
characteristic words " My dear Bradley, you will
all take him to your bosoms ! "
And this prophecy was literally fulfilled, not
with the masters only, but also with the boys
who were advanced enough to appreciate contact
with such an original high-souled intellect. One
of his pupils, Mr Shadworth Hodgson, writes thus
of these old Rugby days : " His unconscious mes-
sage to us schoolboys was a message from the
world of life not only outside school, but also
outside that of the ordinary careers of business and
pleasure, for which school is the preparation, a
spark or ray from the ideal life of man as a denizen
of the planet Tellus, haunted for ever by the
eternal mind. In one word, Shairp was a poet,
MR SHAD WORTH HODGSON. 139
a poet not so much by the accomplishments of
authorship as by necessity of nature." This last
sentence conveys exactly what one always felt
about him.
Long years after, when we were settled in Edin-
burgh, Mr Shadworth Hodgson, who had the
additional interest for us of being a cousin of the
de Quinceys, paid us a visit on the occasion of his
receiving an LL.D. degree from the University.
He had written at this time a book on ' Time and
Space ' which he called a Metaphysical Essay, and
which was acceptable to the audience, fit but neces-
sarily few, to whom it was addressed. I took him
one day to call on Mrs Ferrier, then a widow and
living in Edinburgh, and she asked us to come to
some evening entertainment. " At what time ? "
asked Mr Hodgson. " Choose your own time and
space," was the ready reply. Many years after this
Mr Shadworth Hodgson became well known in the
philosophical world by his important book, c The
Metaphysic of Experience/
But to return to Mr Shairp, before he left Rugby
he had married Miss Eliza Douglas, a daughter of
Lord William Douglas of the house of Queensberry :
the name alone, from its old-world association, must
have stirred so imaginative and patriotic a heart.
No marriage could possibly have been happier,
and together they " walked the world yoked in all
exercise of noble ends." A beautiful little boy was
140 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
born to them sometime before they left Rugby, but
in six short months he returned to the heaven he
came from, leaving sad hearts where he had brought
so much added happiness. When they came to St
Andrews another little boy, Campbell, cheered and
comforted the hearts that had suffered so keenly
from the loss of his little brother, and naturally he
became a dear friend of our children.
After we left St Andrews in 1863 Mr Shairp
became Principal of St Andrews, and though the
almost daily intercourse was naturally at an end,
there were many meetings here in Edinburgh, and
there in visits to the old city which had so many
dear associations for us. I think the last time I
saw him was when he came over to Edinburgh to
be present at the funeral of Sir Alexander Grant
in 1884. After the service he returned home with
my husband, and I remember the tender solicitude
with which he insisted on my husband lying
down, for the Principal saw that he was much
affected by all that he had gone through, the
earthly end of a friendship of old standing and
close ties. So my last remembrance of this dear
friend was one of kindness, a kindness that had
never failed us.
In September 1885 he died at Ormsary in Argyle-
shire, the house of kind friends, where he had gone
in the hope that the soft western air would do him
good, as he had not been strong for some months.
PRINCIPAL SHAIRP. 141
Shortly before leaving St Andrews he had repeated
his favourite lines :
" And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny."
And so it proved ; and it seemed meet for this pure
soul to pass away by the shore of the western sea
he loved so well.
As I write of another of the friends " gone be-
fore," the memory of the happy days spent with
them comes back vividly to me, and I feel sadly
what an inadequate account I have given of what
we always counted our richest possession. I think
I cannot end this slight sketch of Principal Shairp
better than by quoting some of his own beautiful
lines entitled " Memories " :
"While they here sojourned, their presence drew us,
By the sweetness of their human love ;
Day by day good thoughts of them renew us,
Like fresh tidings from the world above.
Not their own, ah ! not from earth was flowing
That high strain to which their souls were tuned ;,
Year by year we saw them inly growing
Liker Him with whom their hearts communed.
Then to Him they passed, but still unbroken
Age to age lasts on that goodly line
Whose pure lives are, more than all words spoken,,
Earth's best witness to the life divine.
Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter,
Churches change, forms perish, systems go,
But our human needs they will not alter ;
Christ no after ages shall e'er outgrow."
142
CHAPTER X.
" A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome."
DEYDEN.
1877.
MR T. C. SANDARS was, as I think I may have
already said, of the same age as my husband. They
were scholars of Balliol at the same time, and
became simultaneously Fellows of Oriel. I have
always thought Mr Sandars one of the most re-
markable men I have known : his mind seemed
to have been made on the same massive scale
as his body, and there was a reserve of force
about him which made you feel he had the
power to do anything if he chose to exert it.
He had little of that last infirmity of noble minds,
ambition, and was content to do the duty that
lay to his hand, and that he always did with all
his might. He was one of the first contributors
to the ' Saturday Review ' : indeed, when in the
first number appeared articles by Mr Sandars, Mr
Bowen (afterwards Lord Bowen), and Mr Grant
ME T. C. SANDARS. 143
(afterwards Sir Alexander Grant), we felt the
' Review ' to be quite a family magazine. He and
Mr Bowen both continued to write regularly for this
' Review ' for some years, but on there appearing
an article which he thought very unfair to Mr
Jowett, Mr Bowen withdrew, and could never be
induced to write again in it. I do not remember
when Mr Sandars' interest in the journal ceased.
Mr Sandars was at the Bar, but did not care to
practise : at the same time, his translation of the
' Institutes of Justinian ' was for many years, and
may still be, a standard legal class-book. He was
twice sent out by the Government once to Egypt
and once to South America to report on the Rail-
way Systems in both countries. This I believe he
did in a most masterly manner. His judgment was
so sound that he was constantly being made a
referee, and I daresay saved many a case of litiga-
tion, for which the barristers would not bless him !
So many-sided was he that it was difficult to know
which side to like best : and the more I think of
him, the more impossible it seems to describe him ;
but it was a privilege to know him so well as we
did. A sentence in Robert Louis Stevenson's
' Christmas Sermon ' recalled him vividly - to me
the other day "To hear the dinner -call when
he is hungry, fills him with surprising joy." For I
remember one time when he was staying with us
144 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
at Kenbank, and there had been more than the
usual amount of rain, his exclaiming, " What should
we do without the daily recurrence of luncheon
and dinner ! "
His humour was boundless, and he had the
happy temperament that made him enjoy what
the Germans call "Heine Freuden" His wife
had died about 1877, leaving him with five
children, and he had married a Miss Murray, a
friend of his eldest daughter. She was a bright,
brilliant young woman, who accepted all his friends
for her own, and made his home a very happy one
for himself and them. Mrs Sandars had one boy,
Edmund, who was a source of great interest to his
father, and in after years he became the comfort
of his mother's life. Mrs Sandars, two or three
years ago, asked one of my daughters if she
would write out for her any remembrance she
had of Mr Sandars' fun and humour when he
was staying with us in Scotland. This my
daughter Florence did, and I shall add on to
this what she wrote, as it gives a picture of
how Mr Sandars appeared to children :
" His visits, often repeated in ensuing summers,
were as great a joy to us children as to our
parents. He was quite different from the other
' grand grown - ups/ It was not that he talked
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. 145
child's talk or played child's play with us, but
we, as well as our elders, were swept along in the
great genial stream of his kindness and his immense
fun. I think we all felt that he distinguished our
individual characters, looking at us in the same
kind but dry light in which he saw his own family.
"It was in this year, 1866, that my father and
mother and Mr Sandars met the Mark Pattisons
and the Master of Balliol at Tummel Bridge. Mrs
Mark Pattison had a remarkable and artistic ward-
robe, it was the early dawn of the aesthetic move-
ment, and, after retiring for the night, my mother
and her friend, Miss Ferrier, had sat up examining
her gowns till a late hour. My father, with a good
deal of amusement, told Mr Sandars of this, and
next morning at breakfast he turned to Mrs Patti-
son, ' Do you know what Sellar and I were doing
all last night? Trying on each other's shirts!'
" One delightful thing about him was that every
time he came he had a new fad, and expected
everybody to be interested in it, or rather made
everybody interested in it. One year it was
music, and I remember a small verse he wrote
and taught his children :
" { Oh, joy to think Papa to-day
A little overture will play ;
Or, what will be a better thing,
Perhaps our dear Papa will sing. 1
K
146 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
This advertisement would, he assured them, fill
any concert -room in London, with the simple ad-
dition of two little words in the corner Beer
gratis.
"I remember his saying once that the best
kind of woman to marry was one 'with whom
you could have a little fun in the evenings/ It
would have been impossible for any woman, or
man either, to equal him as a provider of fun in
the evenings. He was always inventing games
that no one but himself was clever enough to
play at. One time it would be we were all to
make an alliterative alphabet. I am always glad
that I can remember the only one that was pro-
duced, and that rapidly and aloud, with bursts
of laughter, not only from his audience but from
himself; for the fun of the thing seemed to take
him as much by surprise as it did us.
"<A SHOPKEEPER'S HONEYMOON.
" { Alfred and Ada Aberdeen approach,
Bright, breezy, being beautified by brooch ;
Cutting cold Caithness, courting Clova's Crags,
Down dreary Deeside driving devious drags.
Endearments end, enthusiastic eyes
Forswear fond fancies for flea-bitten flies.
' Gee-up ! ' good gee-gees ! gently goaded go,
Here's happy, humble home ! ' Halt, horses, ho ! '
Industrious inmates instant introduce
Jams, jellies, joints, Johannesberger's juice.
"FUN IN THE EVENINGS." 147
Kind kinsfolk kissing, knit kind kinships' knot,
Light-hearted lovers like Life's lowliest lot.
Mark, morning moves, make money, mated male !
No nestling nincompoops nice nuggets nail.
Oblivious of obloquy obtain
Proposing purchasers : put puddings plain,
Queer quinces, queen-cakes, questionable quails,
Red ribbons, razors, riding-habits, rails ;
Such shop shall staring saunterers surprise,
Till timely Tin thy triumph testifies.'
"But the crown of our 'fun in the evenings'
was when he took to telling us long nonsense
stories. He never failed to be amused at them
himself, and would often break into bursts of
laughter over some specially absurd inspiration.
" One story was the adventures of a gentleman
who started in life with no stock in trade except
some original views on female education. To bring
these to market he determined to set up a Girls'
School, but not having even a house in which to
receive inquiring parents, he hangs about a station,
arguing that some ladies must miss their train,
and that that would give him an opportunity of
introducing himself and his views. When, finally,
fortune sends him a simple-minded mother of many
daughters, he so impresses her that she instantly
demands to be shown the school. ' That, 'madam,
would be difficult, but if you will come for a little
walk I will show you a very striking and beautiful
view which will perhaps do as well/
148 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
" The rest of the history of this educational ex-
periment I have unfortunately entirely forgotten.
" Of the more recently told story of the admiral's
daughter, Letitia Vernon, I have only faint and
broken recollections. She lived in a country town
about an hour from London, and used constantly to
saunter down to the station to see if anybody she
knew would turn up. The London express stand-
ing in the station, she gets into a first-class carriage
just to see what it feels like, and of course is carried
off to London. Landed there penniless, unable to
send a telegram, and having no friends to go to,
she determines to turn up the first street that
begins with an A. Shortly after, seeing Adam
Street posted up on the wall, she exclaims, { Oh,
great progenitor ! be thou my guide/ and turns up
a quiet side street. She is attracted by a riotous
noise proceeding from a long low building, and
looking in at the window, sees a large schoolroom
with a crowd of unruly children and a worn and
distracted -looking female teacher. The thought
strikes her that here she may get a little employ-
ment : acting on the impulse, she walks in and says
to the lady, ' You look very tired. Perhaps I could
take the lesson for you/ 'Thank you/ said the
lady; 'but do you happen to know anything?'
'Well/ said Letitia, 'thousands have been spent
on my education, and I know a little/ Satisfied
A SCRIPTURE LESSON. 149
with this, the lady gratefully accepts her offer, and
says, * We were just in the middle of a Scripture
lesson. You had better begin with drawing on the
blackboard/ Letitia takes up the chalk and feebly
draws a square, and, trusting to chance, turns to
the children with, ' Now, my dears, what does this
represent ? ' Dead silence, till a child at the back
shouts out ' Temple at J'roosalem ! ' ' Yes/ said
Letitia, joyfully seizing the inspiration. ' Yes, my
dear, you are right, not, indeed, the outer and
inner court, not the minarets, not the doves/
" ' Dra' the birds, dra' the birds/ from all the
children.
" ' No/ said Letitia, when order was restored,
'this is the ground-plan of the temple. Now, let
me explain, my dears, what the ground -plan is.
Supposing we knocked down this school '
* Hurrah ! hurrah ! ' from all the children, and the
riot would have known no end if the curate had not
entered at this moment. To him Letitia confides
her plight, and he suggests that he might take her
to Guy's Hospital and introduce her to the matron.
I lose sight of them here till I find them in the
street passing a photographic atelier, where the
curate proposes they should go in and be photo-
graphed together. The photographer, a French-
man, insists on le clerique being done en costume,
and, to make it more vraisemblable, proposes to
150 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
envelop him in clouds of incense, which he produces
by means of two Pharaoh's serpents, a chemical
toy in vogue in the later Sixties.
" On Sunday evenings we used to repeat poetry
to him, as I believe his own children did also. He
liked us to choose poems we could really under-
stand, Campbell or Scott. I remember when I
was repeating that verse out of ' The Fountain/
" ' And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind/
he interrupted me with ' Now, tell me, what
does age take away?' Even now, after all these
years, I am hardly at one with myself as to the
proper answer : then, at the age of ten, I had no
word to say, and was relieved when Sir Charles
Bowen who was sitting near answered, 'Why,
your hair, for one thing ! '
" It has been a great pleasure to me to write this
account, and though it sounds thin and wooden, I
know, dear Mrs Sandars, that you can supply the
living touch, and so I shall not apologise for the
inadequacy of all I have written. How could it
be otherwise ? There never was any one the least
like him. R A. M."
151
CHAPTER XL
" So full of power, yet blithe and debonair,
Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay,
Or half a dream, chanting with jaunty air
Greek words of Goethe, catches of Beranger.
We see the banter sparkling in his prose,
But knew not then the undertone that flows
So calmly sad through all his stately lay."
J. C. SHAIRP.
1880.
I THINK it was somewhere about 1880 that we met
Mr Matthew Arnold at dinner at the Sandars' in
London. I had met him once before at Balliol, so
had, in a way, got accustomed to the "grand
manner" which was characteristic of him, and
which though it savoured of affectation was
really natural to him, and, unlike most seeming
affectations, was neither repellent nor did it put you
off your ease. I could not help, though, thinking
of the effect it produced on that earnest-minded,
somewhat prim, shy little genius, Miss Bronte,
who thus writes of him : " Striking and pre-
possessing in appearance, his manner displeases
from its seeming foppery. I own it caused me at
152 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
first to regard him with regretful surprise : the
shade of Dr Arnold seemed to me to frown on
his young representative. Ere long a real modesty
appeared under his assumed conceit, and genuine
intellectual aspirations, as well as high educational
acquirements, displaced superficial affectations."
This seems rather breaking the butterfly of a
mannerism on an iron wheel of Johnsonian
criticism ! He was quite aware of the effect his
manner had on many, and was often very humorous
about it, as when he said to an old Oxford friend
shortly after his marriage, " You'll like my Lucy ;
she has all my sweetness and none of my airs ! "
Certainly there was no affectation that evening,
but a great deal of humorous chaff, and an almost
boyish delight in being with his old college friends
again. His hair was untouched by time, while
theirs was grey ; and fancying Mr Sandars was
looking at him, he exclaimed, " Ah, Sandars, you
are jealous ! You think it is a wig ! But pull it,
Sandars, pull it ! " A propos of this, I heard after-
wards that a friend, meeting him in Bond Street,
asked where he had been. " At Douglas's, having
that perpetual miracle, my hair, cut 1 "
The conversation turning on our respective
children, he said, "All the talent in the Arnold
family has gone to my brother Tom's children."
At this time he could not know how more than
MATTHEW ARNOLD. 153
justified he would be in his opinion of his brother
Tom's children, whose eldest daughter, Mary, the
wife of Mr Humphry Ward, has become one of
the most well - known and celebrated novelists of
the day. It would be ridiculous for me here, in
these scanty domestic annals, to say anything
of her books, the almost unparalleled success of
which has put her in the first rank of novelists.
If it be true of books as of men, " By their fruits
ye shall know them," hers, indeed, take a very
high place. And here I should like to say some-
thing of her eldest brother, William Arnold, who
became such a dear and valued friend. We
first met him when we went to stay with the
Charles Arnolds at Eugby, of which he was then
head boy. He had a great look of his grandfather,
and it was a pleasure to all at Rugby that an
Arnold of the third generation should so distin-
guish himself. From Rugby he went to Oxford,
and when he left it he married Henrietta Wale,
a granddaughter of Archbishop Whately, and
eventually settled in Manchester, on the staff
of 'The Manchester Guardian,' a paper of high
reputation, but to which his articles imparted an
intellectual flavour it had not before possessed.
It was while he was in Manchester that they
came to visit us in Edinburgh, and in spite of the
disparity in years, my husband always said he
154 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
felt he was more like the type of his old friends
at Oxford than any young man he knew ; and they
became great friends, and had many interests and
appreciations in common. This feeling was only
strengthened by a visit we paid them in Man-
chester, in 1888, when my husband was not very
well, and when their kindness and consideration
could never be forgotten by either of us. For
several years Mr Arnold worked with marked suc-
cess on ' The Manchester Guardian,' but the night-
work became too trying, and his health gave way.
He had finally to give up his work in Man-
chester, and went to London. From henceforth he
was to live an invalid's life : but no one going to
see him, welcomed by his cheerful smile, and listen-
ing to the vigorous spontaneity of his talk, could
have guessed the terrible suffering he almost con-
stantly endured. His strong and well-stored mind
was to him a kingdom, and one he shared with
all around him; and he was still able to write
(when not hurried) on literary or political subjects.
I think all his visitors felt that to listen to his talk
was an intellectual privilege, and their admiration
was kindled by the splendid patience and resig-
nation he showed. Hearing I was trying to write
down some reminiscences, he expressed a wish to
see what I had then done ; and I cannot resist
copying out what he wrote to me after he had
W. T. ARNOLD. 155
read them, though I know his criticism is far more
than 1 deserve, and that his kind heart prompted
his words :
" I am ashamed of having kept your type-script
so long, but I had a week of pain soon after we
met, and was able to read nothing but novels.
Also, there were bits of your Memoir which I
wanted to savour er at leisure. I have enjoyed it
much, and so has Het. Your picture of your own
father is particularly lifelike and interesting, and
Andrew Lang's answer as to the proper materials
for poetry is a gem in a word. I suspect the
youth had been reading Kossetti's version of a
fragment of ' Sappho,' and had remembered the
* sweet apple that reddens upon the topmost
bough/ But it is all delightfully human and
kindly and humorous, and has done me good to
read, and made me love you better than ever if
that, indeed, be possible. Ever your affectionate
"W. T. ARNOLD."
The last time I saw Mr Arnold going about was
when we met in July 1903, at the house of his sister,
Mrs Ward, to see the King and President Loubet
pass up Grosvenor Place, when I, as the eldest
guest, and he, as the most delicate, had comfortable
chairs in the balcony, and we had a couple of hours
156 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
of delightful talk. Once again I saw this dear friend
in June of this year (1904), when Death had set
his seal on him, and he lay partially unconscious.
I lent over him and kissed his forehead, and he
faintly smiled, but said nothing, and I left the
room, feeling " he hates him That would upon
the rack of this tough world Stretch him out
longer." Soon after I got home I received the
following note from Dorothy Ward: "Aunt Het
wants me to tell you that directly you had left the
room he said, ' Did Mrs Sellar really come ? How
lovely of her ! ' ' Two days after he passed pain-
lessly and quietly away, leaving a broken-hearted
wife, and to his friends a most beautiful memory.
This is a digression of which, I fear, there are
too many in these desultory sketches, but there
is a sad pleasure in recalling the memory of those
we have loved and lost, and though William
Arnold was of the generation of our eldest chil-
dren, and a dear and intimate friend of our
eldest daughter, we never felt with him that
years made a gulf difficult to cross.
Of Matthew Arnold's conversation that evening
I can recall little but the general impression of
humorous vivacity and affectionate kindliness.
And here I feel again, as I have often done be-
fore, in dwelling on the dear memories of so many
friends, how difficult almost impossible it is to
LORD PEEL. 157
convey anything like an adequate picture of them
or their conversation to others. To oneself, as
Mr Gilbert Murray has well said of translators,
"the light of the original shines through, the
music of the original echoes round," but one's
presentment of it is dull, the sound toneless.
A year or two later we met at Balliol again, but
as it was on the occasion of a public dinner to old
Balliol men, I did not see much of him. Lord Peel,
then Speaker, was also a guest of the Master's :
a dark striking-looking man, with a grave charm of
manner, lighted by a smile that recalled a story
the Master once told me, that it was said of his
father, Sir Robert Peel, that " his smile was like
the silver fittings on a coffin " !
My next reminiscence connected with Mr Arnold
was in April 1888, when the Bowens were staying
with us, and as we were driving up from Holyrood
we saw on a poster in the street, " Death of Matthew
Arnold." This was a great shock to my husband
and to all of us. Mr Arnold had gone on the Sat-
urday with his wife to his sister, Mrs Cropper, at
The Dingle, near Liverpool, in order to receive his
married daughter, who lived in America, and was
to arrive in Liverpool on Sunday. He had been
to church on Sunday morning to hear Dr Watson
( u lan Maclaren") preach, and after luncheon
started to go to the docks to meet his daughter.
158 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
In his joy and lightness of heart at the prospect
of seeing her so soon, he leapt over a low fence,
and, alas ! dropped down dead. The shock to wife
and daughter is too painful to dwell upon : but
for him to be called away suddenly and painlessly
with unabated powers was surely the end he would
have desired.
159
CHAPTER XII.
" That region left, the vale unfolds
Rich groves of lofty stature,
With Yarrow winding through the pomp
Of cultivated Nature ;
And, rising from those lofty groves,
Behold a ruin hoary,
The shatter'd front of Newark's Tower,
Renowned in Border story."
WORDSWORTH.
1861.
THIS summer we again spent in the Vale of Yarrow
at Harehead, and a second summer but deepened
our affection for that lovely country, though I cannot
remember many special occurrences to be noted. We
saw much of the Langs, generally lunching there
on the Sundays when we went to church in Selkirk.
I think it was this year that Andrew came to the
College Hall at St Andrews, a new venture in the
educational line evolved by Principal Forbes and
Professor Shairp, who felt that something, of the
kind was much wanted there. They accordingly
took Sir Hugh Playfair's house, St Leonard's, and
Mr Rhoades who afterwards married Janie Ferrier
160 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
was made warden : under his wise and benig-
nant rule the young men did well, and had a
happy time. Andrew Lang has recorded in beauti-
ful verse the spell which the city by the Northern
sea laid on him, a spell to which many hearts
respond.
Professor Forbes, previously the distinguished
Professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh,
whose work on Glaciers had made him of world-
wide reputation, had succeeded Sir David Brewster
as Principal of the University, and with him and
his wife and family we became extremely intimate.
They lived in one of the quaint old houses in
South Street, with a beautiful garden at the back,
one of the surprises common to so many old
houses in St Andrews which from the street
entrance give no sign of possessing a garden.
Principal Forbes was a man of striking appearance,
tall, slight, and delicate -looking, but with power
and intellect in his face ; and observing him one
could not help recalling that his mother, Lady
Forbes, was the beautiful Miss Stuart Belches of
Invermay and Fettercairn, Sir Walter Scott's first
love, and one never forgotten by his faithful heart.
Mrs Forbes was original and humorous, and delight-
ful company when one got her alone, for in society
often a curious shyness had almost a numbing effect
on her. Two dear girls, Eliza and Minna, died a
PRINCIPAL FORBES. 161
year or two after we left St Andrews, but Alice,
the youngest, lives at Pitlochry, where she has
a charming little cottage ; and her brother George
has become a great authority in electrical en-
gineering.
In August Mrs Sellar came to Harehead and very
kindly took care of the children while my husband
and I made a short run to the Italian lakes, re-
turning by Ghent, Malines, and Brussels the two
first most picturesque and interesting old towns :
after seeing them Brussels looked new and modern
a small and inferior edition of Paris. From
Brussels I brought home for the little girls red
and blue shirt - bodices and skirts, what were
then called " Garibaldis," and would now be called
" blouses ": and in this changing world, impressed
with the instability of fashion, it is extraordinary
how this mode still survives, though its develop-
ment is as remarkable as is that of the beautiful
rose " La France " from its original but unacknow-
ledged ancestor the single dog-rose!
On our return to St Andrews in 1862, Abbey
Park being let, we took the corner house in
Pilmour Place, not a very nice one, and we
felt rather cramped in it, but it was near the
sea and the links ; and, after all, it was only
for six months. Here in this humble abode
was born a little boy, whom we named Walter
L
162 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Dennistoun. He was what the French call bien
ne, having a very sweet easy nature from the
beginning.
In summer we returned to Harehead, but only
two events I distinctly remember, the arrival in
the autumn of Fraulein Janson, a young German
lady from Karlsruhe, highly recommended to us by
Mrs Charles Arnold of Rugby, as governess to the
little girls. And no words of mine can say too
strongly how admirably she fulfilled her duties, and
with what single-hearted devotion she threw herself
into what must often, for so young a creature, have
been an uphill task, " training the young idea how
to shoot," and especially to shoot in the German
language ! a task she accomplished so well that
they have never had any difficulty in speaking or
reading it since. She was many years with us, and
though for some time she has retired to her native
place and settled down with her dear sister among
their old friends, she occasionally comes over to Eng-
land. Recently, when I went to Karlsruhe, and
was there for a few weeks, we saw much of them
both, and enjoyed their most kind hospitality. The
other event was our taking and furnishing a house
in Play fair Terrace, a short-lived enjoyment, for
soon after taking possession there was a rumour
that Professor Pillans was going to resign the
Latin Chair in Edinburgh, and as the professor-
THE LATIN CHAIR AT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 163
ship offered a larger and more important sphere,
my husband thought he ought to stand for it,
though the idea of giving up Greek for Latin
was not without a pang to him. " I feel," he
said once in reference to the change, "as if I had
been jilted by a beautiful and exquisite woman
and had married an admirable matron and grown
really fond of her!" Still for the last two or
three years his thoughts had been much turned to
Latin literature, and he was writing on the early
Latin poets. He therefore put on a double spurt
of work in order that his book might be completed
and published before the election came on, so that
the electors might have something more to judge
his capacities by than the report of his teaching
at St Andrews. He was much urged to this by
his most faithful and loyal friend Mr Jowett, who
followed every turn in the affairs of his many
friends' lives : and when one thinks of the ever-
increasing number of men who from first to last
looked up to him as guide, philosopher, and friend,
this minute and unfailing interest seems little short
of marvellous. Mr Jowett wrote : " I fear you
will not succeed unless you get a part of your
book out. Indeed, you must sacrifice everything
to it."
The book was out in time, and probably helped
to gain the election ; and here I should like to
164 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
quote a letter Mr Matthew Arnold wrote to Mr
Shairp about it.
"Auffuitll, 1863.
"MY DEAR SHAIRP, It is long since I had
your note and Sellar's book ; but I have been
very busy, and I would not write to you till I
had fairly read the book. I have now read
every word of it, some of it more than once, and
with extreme satisfaction. It is more like a book
written by a foreigner on a matter of ancient
literature than a book written by an Englishman,
and would honourably support translation into
French or German as a handbook for the history
of Roman poetry during a certain period : and
this is high praise, for it implies that the book
has what so few English books on learned matters
have thorough information, clear method, and,
above all, some principles of criticism. This is
the book's greatest merit in my eyes : Sellar has
tried to look at his poets as they are, and not
through the coloured and distorted glasses of some
extraordinary British crotchet. This will become,
as time goes on, a less rare merit in English criti-
cism ; but at present he and Sandars are about
the only English critics I know who really exhibit
it. The style about which you ask my opinion
has a systematic character and connectedness
which are the first requisites in treating a subject
'THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC/ 165
like Sellar's : perhaps I could have wished it a
little less academic, with a little more play of the
writer's individuality in it, a little more of un-
expected turns and vivacity. It returns, too, a
little too often to certain points such as the
Roman majesty and caractere, good points as
these were to indicate and fix clearly. Then, for
a standard work (which it deserves to be) on its
subject, Lucretius is treated with somewhat dis-
proportionate fulness, Catullus with somewhat
disproportionate brevity, and a chapter or two
should have been given to Plautus and Terence.
All this might be put right by adding a hundred
pages, which, after all, would not make too thick
a volume.
"The delicacy and interestingness of the criti-
cism in certain places I say little about, because
these are chiefly shown in the chapters on Lucre-
tius, most of which I had read and liked, as such
criticism deserved to be liked, before ; and also
because the pre-eminent merit of the book, in
my eyes, is not that it contains ingenious and
eloquent passages, but that it is, in the main,
throughout true."
Mr Jowett again wrote : " The more I read
Lucretius, the more I feel persuaded that a splen-
did thing may be written upon him. It is an
166 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
unwrought mine, at least, to any person of phil-
osophical or poetical feeling. I hope you will ac-
complish the work, and make it clear who ought
to be Professor of Latin at Edinburgh. ... I
have read most of your testimonials. I was
especially glad to see Tennyson's, which is very
characteristic."
Tennyson's testimonal was written to Professor
Lushington, as being easier than praising a man
to his face, and I here quote it :
" Tell Sellar I am glad to hear he is a candi-
date for the Edinburgh Latin Professorship, since
he is not only one of the best Latin scholars
living, but one of the finest. I mean one of the
most keenly and critically sensitive to the indi-
vidual beauties of each author, as I have found
by conversing with him, and by reading some of
his essays. Moreover, he is such a thoroughly
good fellow that I wish him to succeed in what-
ever he sets his heart upon : and if I say this
rather to you than to him, it is only because I
cannot so well praise a man to his face."
The election to Edinburgh took place in the
spring of 1863, and my husband received the fol-
lowing letter from Mr Jowett :
ELECTION TO EDINBURGH PROFESSORSHIP. 167
"I suppose I may congratulate you by this time
on the result of the election at Edinburgh. In-
deed, your success gives me the greatest pleasure.
I think you have got all that a man can desire
in life a good wife and children, a good income,
and a good position. Don't be too contented ! I
hope you will always maintain a revolutionary
element about University reform.
" I am very desirous that Campbell should suc-
ceed you at St Andrews, not because he is a
friend of mine, but because I do not think you
are likely to get any one equally good. He is
a thorough student of Greek, and excellent in
Greek prose and verse composition; also I think
he would have a great aptitude for dealing with
your students, judging from the infinite pains
which he bestowed on their Northern brethren
at Queen's. Had he remained there he would
have made the college a different place."
I may add here that the Master's hopes were
fulfilled in every way. Mr Campbell was elected
to the Greek chair at St Andrews, and filled it
with success and distinction for more than twenty
years. They became our intimate friends, and
many happy visits passed between us, in their
beautiful little home at St Andrews, and in our
different summer homes, and in Edinburgh. His
168 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
life has been full of literary activity, principally
on classical subjects ; and on the death of his dear
and valued friend, the Master of Balliol, he be-
came joint writer and editor, with Mr Evelyn
Abbott, of the Master's life, truly a labour of
love, and crowned with success.
Since his retirement in 1895, Mr and Mrs Camp-
bell have spent the winters in a charming villa at
Alassio, loyally called " San Andrea " ; and this
summer, 1904, Mr Campbell has written a short life
in a new edition of Thomas Campbell's Poems a
kinsman of his own and received from Oxford
the degree of Litt.D.
As we were to move to Edinburgh in autumn,
it seemed unnecessary to take any place for
the summer months, so we stayed on at St
Andrews till we left it finally in November. To
our minds few places gained less by summer or
lost less in winter. A " livelier emerald " perhaps
clothed the links, and the summer dawns and sun-
sets were very beautiful ; but there are so few
trees that there was very little more green per-
ceptible in the landscape, and we felt that, after
all, we had had the time that suited us best by
spending our winters and not our summers there.
It was a wrench to leave a place where we had
spent ten very happy years, where four of our
children had been born, and where we had many
LEAVING ST ANDREWS. 169
dear and congenial friends ; but these we felt we
had " grappled to our souls with hoops of steel,"
and that absence could not cool such friendships.
It was a thing to be for ever thankful for that
we had had such years there, " no fears to beat
away, no strifes to heal " ; and that whatever
might lie in the future for us, this past was
secure.
" Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and we had had our hour."
170
CHAPTER XIII.
" Such dusky grandeur clothes the height,
Where the huge Castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town ! "
SCOTT.
" The grey metropolis of the North."
TENNYSON.
1863.
IN November of this year began our life in
Edinburgh, heralded by the birth, on December
7, of our fourth daughter, May Violet. We
had taken a house in Melville Street for a couple
of months, as the house we had bought in Buck-
ingham Terrace from which I now write was
not quite completed.
This Melville Street house was delightfully near
Mrs Sellar's in Randolph Crescent, and there I spent
most of my time. But one day, on returning to
our temporary home, we found the central stucco
ornament on the ceiling of our bedroom had fallen
down. Had this happened at night, the conse-
SETTLING AT EDINBURGH. 17 1
quences might have been serious ; so we moved
at once to Swain's Hotel, Albyn Place, and the
baby on the 7th December found her best welcome
literally "in an inn." She was a pretty little
baby, and was called May after an old aunt of
my husband's, and Violet was a fancy of my own.
My husband thought it a fantastic name, and said
so to the old nurse, Mrs M'Cleerie, when he was
going to register it ; but her reply was, " Now,
Mr Sellar, your wife has a bad headache, and
there is to be nae ' harley - barley ing ' : just do
what she wants." So, accordingly, I got my
way ; and long years after I heard from Dr
Sprott of North Berwick that Violet had been
a great name in the Adamson family for genera-
tions, and that they were connected with my
husband's family. The best known member of
the Adamson family was an Archbishop of St
Andrews in the sixteenth century, but I don't
know that my husband would have been much
more interested in this information than he was
in the name itself! A relation he was interested
in, from the heroic character of the man, was Sir
John Moore, who was a second cousin of his
father, and in this way : Professor Sirnson had two
daughters ; one married Dr John Moore, author of
a novel, ' Zeluco,' which made a considerable noise
at the time, and is said to have inspired Byron's
172 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
"Childe Harold," and she was the mother of Sir
John Moore. The other daughter married Dr
Plenderleith of the High Church, Edinburgh, and
their daughter, Jean, married Mr Thomas Sellar,
my husband's grandfather.
The University received my husband with the
utmost kindness, and the much larger classes in-
spired him with fresh vigour. Teaching was
always a pleasure to him, and though sometimes
" teaching vocables " as old Professor Pyper called
it to inattentive and very inaccurately-prepared
students was not without its trials, still these
were amply counterbalanced by the delight he felt
when ardent young minds responded to his own,
and embraced with avidity the new world of
thought and ideas he opened up to them. No
professor ever felt more interest in his students
than he did, or followed their progress in after-life
with more sympathy and, in the case of great
success, with more pride. Their triumph was truly
his ; and I could not but feel how his heart would
have responded to the following noble words of his
much-loved friend, Professor Butcher words spoken
fourteen years after my husband's death, at a ban-
quet given in Mr Butcher's honour in 1904, the
year after he had resigned his chair:
" But other benefactors there are, unknown and
unrecorded, sons of Edinburgh University, who
SPEECH OF PROFESSOR BUTCHER. 173
might say to their Alma Mater, ' Silver and gold
have I none, but such as I have give I thee,' and
who have given her the quiet memorials of a
student's life, the example of patient and unob-
trusive work, pursued often under difficulties, in-
spired by duty and lit up with courageous hope,
a college life of strenuous simplicity and hardness,
of high ideals and unworldly aims. Men such as
these have stamped their mark, the authentic
impress of their character, on our universities of
Scotland. The bequest they have left is of price-
less value. How often has one wished to follow
into later life those whom one has watched in the
opening of their career! There is nothing more
moving than the endless procession of students
who pass under our eyes and go forth from our
walls, generation after generation, bearing their
new-lit torches, go forth into the darkness of the
future, some of them destined to name and fame
and success, but thousands of others who can never
win their way to that light, but of whom now and
again we catch some unexpected glimpse which
reveals them at their task, with torches still un-
dimmed, it may be in some lonely parish of their
own land, or it may be at some distant outpost
of the Empire."
Inspiring words ! which must have stirred the
hearts of many of his young hearers to still more
174 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
strenuous efforts, and moved at least one heart
to quiet tears remembering the past ; and filling
all present with deep regret that such a voice, so
powerful in influence over the students in inspir-
ing them with great thoughts, being, as a critic of
his writings has said, an anima naturaliter Grceca,
should henceforth be silent in the University he
had adorned for twenty-one years.
But how far I have wandered from 1863 ! though
the connection in my own mind is an unbroken one.
During the session we had on many Saturdays six
or seven of my husband's students to breakfast.
I daresay to some it was rather an ordeal, and
that they were glad when it was over ; but my
husband liked seeing something of them privately,
and so becoming better acquainted with them and
their aims in life : and I think the urbanity and
geniality with which he entered into their views
and aspirations, as far as a Scottish student can
be induced to express them, must have impressed
the more thoughtful of them. For the respectful
attention they always gave him in class he was
grateful, as anything like rowdyism was abhorrent
to him. His interest in his third class, which was
for the seniors, was very great, and the teaching
of it a pure pleasure ; for the quick intelligence of
some of his students gave him back, he used to
declare, his "own with usury." The great success
DISTINGUISHED STUDENTS. 175
of some of these he lived to see and to rejoice in.
Mr R. B. Haldane, and a younger brother full of
promise, who died while attending the University,
and whose death he felt most keenly, were especial
favourites ; and loyally has Mr Haldane repaid his
affection, for at no meeting connected with the
University has he neglected an opportunity of pay-
ing a tribute to his memory, and recording how
much he believed he owed to all he had learnt in
that senior class.
I have often thought how interested my husband
would have been had he lived to see Mr Haldane
head of the War Office, for though a man of peace
himself, he took an extraordinary interest in mili-
tary affairs; and professional soldiers, such as Sir
Frederick Maurice, author of ' The Balance of
Military Power in Europe/ were often struck with
his minute tactical knowledge of historic battles.
Dr Hume Brown, now Professor of Scottish
History, was an ardent student in whom he had
great pride ; and I remember how delighted he
was with his ' Life of George Buchanan/ and the
letter which accompanied it, in which Dr Hume
Brown said it was my husband who had first
awakened in him the literary ambition, of which
this book was the first-fruits, now followed by
many other valuable histories and biographies. Dr
Marshall, who has been for twenty-five years Rector
176 KECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
of the High School, was another in whose career he
felt great interest. Dr Marshall took a scholarship
at Balliol ; and I remember the Master writing to
my husband, " This is the strongest man you have
sent us for a long time." Besides the strength he
showed in scholarship, he was an apostle of the
^Esthetic School, though discarding all its affecta-
tion, and had an instinctive knowledge and love
of art and bric-ti-brac, both of which had full scope
in a little place he bought some years ago at
North Queensferry, a romantic spot, interesting
historically, as it was from there Queen Margaret
of sainted memory embarked for Edinburgh, and
was hence called Queensferry. We rented this
house, The Hope, for two seasons, and became much
attached to it. Professor Pringle-Pattison, a dis-
tinguished student and afterwards a colleague, was
one in whose society my husband found great
pleasure ; as he also did in Professor HardieX
who now occupies the Chair of Humanity, after
a brilliant career here and at Oxford.
Many years later another favourite student, after
distinguishing himself in both the Latin and Greek
classes here, has won distinction in other spheres,
Mr Patrick Duncan. He became Lord Milner's
private secretary at the Board of Inland Revenue,
who thought so well of him that when a treasurer
was required to deal with the finances of the
PROFESSOR MASSON. 177
Transvaal, he asked for his services there. This,
I am told, proved to be the most successful of all
Lord Milner's appointments at that time. Two
years later, when the even more responsible ap-
pointment of Colonial Secretary was vacant, Mr
Duncan was promoted to that office.
These are but a few of the men in whom my
husband felt a deep interest, and who came under
my own personal knowledge, but the list would be
incomplete indeed did I not mention Mr Francis
Jamieson, first a student, now school inspector, but
for many years previously my husband's assistant,
and this to him was a labour of love. The day
after my husband's death Mr Jamieson wrote to me,
" He took my imagination while I was still a boy,
and has possessed it ever since. No one can now
ever kindle it in the same way. It was the charm
he exercised over me which gave my work a zest it
can never have again." Mr Jamieson will forgive
me for quoting his words, but they went to my
heart from their simplicity and truth, and I know
how fully my husband valued his affection.
Two years after our settling in Edinburgh Pro-
fessor Masson was appointed, on the death of
Professor Aytoun, to the Chair of English Litera-
ture. He had filled a similar position in University
College, London, and had also been editor of ' Mac-
millan's Magazine' for seven years. Besides being
M
178 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
a most popular and successful lecturer, he was the
author of many books : his magnum opus was the
* Life of Milton/ Genial and friendly, he was an
intimate friend of such men as Carlyle and de
Quincey, whose works he edited; and many were
the young minds he awakened to a knowledge and
love of their own country's literature by his sym-
pathetic enthusiasm. He resigned his chair in
1895, but he and his wife and daughters, after some
wandering, have again settled down in Edinburgh.
In these very desultory and inconsecutive recollec-
tions I find I have mentioned some of the professors
elsewhere, but here I should like to record the
names of Professors Tait and Crum Brown. Peter
Guthrie Tait, as he was then called, was at the
Edinburgh Academy while my husband was there,
though he was probably some years younger, but
this made them start as friends when they became
colleagues. It is not for me to speak of his fame in
Natural Philosophy and Mathematics, as it is world-
wide, and for ever associated with Lord Kelvin the
greatest scientific genius of the age. But it is as
a kind and loyal friend that I remember him,
though one saw but too little of him, as no one
could persuade him to dine out. Of his brother-in-
law, Professor Crum Brown (for the two professors
had married delightful Irish sisters), I had much
more intimate acquaintance : besides, he was a half-
PROFESSOR CRUM BROWN. 179
brother of our dear Dr John Brown. I do not think
I ever met any one who had so much accurate and
miscellaneous knowledge or so much vivacity in
imparting it. As he lived near us in Belgrave
Crescent, my husband and he used to drive up to
college together every morning. Dr Crum Brown
is now, I think, the Father of the College, and
certainly no professor is more popular. I remember
a curious little illustration of his wide and mis-
cellaneous interests. One of our daughters was
dining with them one day, and my husband said
to her, " Two things are certain : you will have an
excellent dinner and some unusual conversation."
This was verified when she retailed the subjects of
her host's table-talk, Chinese folk-stories and the
history of the Antiburgher Secession !
On the bench at this time were several judges
with whom we were intimate, their very names
recall pleasant memories. Mr Inglis was the
Lord Justice-General, and was recognised as the
greatest legal authority Scotland had produced
for long. He lived in a beautiful house in Aber-
cromby Place, indeed it was two houses he had
knocked into one ; and his fame for hospitality
was nearly as great as for legal learning. His
dinner-parties were celebrated and frequent. He
eschewed the modern practice of having the names
180 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
of each guest put in what was thought to be the
most appropriate place, for he said he always
gave great care to the selection of his guests, so
that wherever they sat they would have congenial
neighbours. His beautiful old silver plate and
china were as recherches as the dinner itself, and,
as I think is often the case where no lady pre-
sides, the guests seemed to be on honour to exert
themselves. At one party I remember a guest
told of the difficulties a distinguished host, a friend
of his, had in India in marshalling his party to
the dining-room, the etiquette of precedence being
there so rigid and the laws of it so difficult to
follow. When no one moved to the dining-room
after he had given the word of command, losing
all patience he called out, " Oldest and ugliest go
first ! " All were then as ready to yield preced-
ence to their neighbour as they had been before
reluctant !
This anecdote was capped by another guest
telling of the manager of a theatre in Paris who,
having the evening before requested the ladies
with hats to take them off in order to let their
neighbours see something of the stage, found his
appeal was in vain. The next evening he announced
that all ladies over thirty-five were privileged to
retain their hats. He had scarcely done speaking
when not a single hat was visible in the theatre !
LORD NEAVES. 181
My neighbour, I think Lord Deas, on another
occasion, at the Justice-General's, was complain-
ing he had no leisure time, not even on the day
of rest. "E'en Sunday shines no Sabbath-day
for him," I muttered. The Lord Just ice- General
heard me and said, " Now, where is that from ? "
I said I thought it was Pope's, but could not
remember where. The question went all round
the table, eliciting many different answers Pope,
Dryden, Johnson, but no certainty. Before break-
fast the next morning I had a note from Lord
Curriehill who apparently had sat up all night
with Pope saying he had found the quotation
in the epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, being the prologue
to the "Satires."
Lord Neaves was another judge, as humorous
as he was scholarly and cultivated, and he sang
his own witty verses in the most dramatic and
amusing manner : to have him at a dinner-party
was to ensure its success. Each of his daughters,
with whom we later became so intimate and have
continued so to the second and third generation,
has inherited much of his talents and tastes.
Lord Young was also a witty judge, a tithe of
whose bon mots time and space would fail' me to
quote. One day, dining at his house, and some
delay in handing round the soup having occurred,
he whispered to me, " * Lord, make haste to help
182 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
us/ would be an appropriate grace!" A clerical
deputation having waited on him, he asked what
religious body they belonged to, were they Free
Church ? " Well, not exactly," was the hesitating
reply. "U.P.'s, then?" "That was nearer the
mark, but they had differed from them on some
points." "Then," said Lord Young, wearied with
their indecision, " I shall write you down as split
peas ! " He was the authentic author of the fol-
lowing anecdote. A millionaire, not known as a
pillar of the Church nor addicted to its services,
handed over during his life a very large sum
500,000 to the Church of Scotland, which Lord
Young declared was the heaviest fire insurance
premium he had ever heard of.
Mr Maitland, who had been Solicitor - General,
and whose title on the Bench was Lord Barcaple,
was another friend who made an impression on
our minds from the simplicity and force of his
character. He was a first-rate lawyer, but what
was more interesting to our unlegal minds, he was
full of intellectual interests, and had a very fine
taste in literature; and now, in 1906, another
interest is added to his memory, in the fact that
his grandson, Mr Alexander Maitland, is married
to our niece, Rosalind Craig Sellar.
Two young men who were distinguished at the
Bar at this time were Mr Rutherfurd-Clark and
LORD RUTHERFURD-CLARK. 183
Mr Kinnear, both some years after to be raised to
the Bench, Lord Rutherfurd- Clark in 1875 and
Lord Kinnear in 1882. The latter was created
a Baron in 1897. He had been a student of my
husband's the year he was in Glasgow, in 1851,
and had greatly distinguished himself in the senior
Latin class ; and his scholarship made a great
impression on my husband, who, later, considered
an article on " Catullus " in the ' North British
Review* a masterpiece, and one from which he
often quoted extracts.
Lord Kinnear and Lord Rutherfurd - Clark (a
most genial and delightful man) were so de-
voted to the works of Sir Walter Scott, that
it was said if such a disaster were possible as
some of the best Waverley Novels being entirely
lost, they could almost between them have re-
written them from memory. What a blessed
possession such a minute knowledge and memory
must have been I It would indeed be an ungrate-
ful memory in me if I passed over the name of a
judge whom we delighted in, Lord Manor. " Scholar
and gentleman " was the expression that naturally
rose to one's mind on meeting him : he was so
gentle, so refined, and being a Dundas, eloquence
came naturally to him. He read widely, and was
devoted to poetry, but preferred the elder poets
to the modern ones, and found Tennyson's " In
184 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Memoriam," I remember, culpably obscure ! I
wonder what he would have thought of some of
the minor poets who came after Tennyson, who
loved to envelop their want of thought in mystic
language ! " Having nothing to say, they cared
greatly how they said it ! " Two of Lord Manor's
sons remain in Edinburgh. The younger son has
been raised to the Bench under the title of Lord
Dundas; and his no less clever elder brother was
for some years Crown Agent, and is as distinguished
for his conversational powers as for his legal acumen
and literary taste.
Lord Manor prided himself on never having given
in to what he thought the barbarous pronunciation
of Latin in England, and stuck to this even during
his career at Oxford, and he thought he met his
reward when, on one occasion, a very eminent
Norwegian clergyman came to England on ecclesi-
astical business, and having "no English," Latin
was the only available means of communication.
When he was introduced to Lord Manor he ex-
claimed, "You are the first person I have met in
England whose Latin was not like an unknown
tongue to me ! "
We did not see much of Lord Moncreiff during
the first years we were here, but became intimate
with him and his family later ; and a happier and
more united one I have not known. His manner
LORD MONCREIFF. 185
had something of the punctilious courtesy of an
earlier time, but this could not conceal the humour
he had inherited, and had in his turn handed down.
An evening spent with him was always a pleasure.
I remember his once coming here to dinner, and,
having mistaken the hour, rather earlier than the
other guests. For this he apologised, and I said,
"Pray don't, for it will give you an opportunity
of settling a legal point which is greatly disturbing
the Episcopalians of Edinburgh. Do you or the
Bishop of Edinburgh take me down to dinner to-
night ? " " Most assuredly I do," was the answer.
" The Bishop here is only the head of a Dissent-
ing body, not a Lord Spiritual."
When, some years after, Lord Moncreiff retired,
I used often to go and sit with him and hear in-
teresting accounts of his life in London when he
was Lord Advocate. He had some fine Raeburn
portraits ; and of these pictures his son, the second
Lord Moncreiff, told me a few years later that a
London agent, who had come down to Edinburgh
in the hope of picking up art treasures, had offered
him more than twice as much for his grandmother's
portrait as he did for his grandfather's. "Ah,"
I said, "Death has adjusted the balance, and if
we are the inferior sex in life our pictures rank
higher in the realm of art."
186
CHAPTER XIV.
" The gallant Frith the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float,
Like emeralds chased in gold.
' Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land.' "
SCOTT.
"Thy sons, Edina, social kind,
With open arms the stranger hail."
BURNS.
1864.
IN January 1864 we took up our abode in 15
Buckingham Terrace, and this has been our
stationary home ever since. The children joined
us from St Andrews and nearly as important
an article the furniture ! and soon we felt settled
and comfortable. And now I feel much more
difficulty in chronicling events, if one can use such
a word in the annals of an uneventful life, partly
because, by some curious freak of memory, the
farther off things are, the more clear is the re-
membrance of them, and partly because life in
Edinburgh soon became the common property of
EDINBURGH HOSPITALITY. 187
the family, and what was peculiar to oneself is
what one least cares to write about. Mrs Sellar's
home being in Edinburgh made it a centre for
all her large family ; and Alexander, who had
gone to the Scottish Bar, lived with her, and his
great ability and delightful gift of humour and
many-sided character made his companionship a
constant delight to my husband.
We did not know many people when we came
to Edinburgh, but the universal kindness and
hospitality we received soon removed all feeling
of strangeness : it was as if the freedom of the
city had been given us, and made us citizens of
no mean city. Its romantic beauty Time cannot
wither, rather indeed adds to it, as I felt when,
for the first time, I ascended Arthur's Seat in
1902, and felt sorry I had not done so often
" When I was young, ah ! wof ul when ;
Ah ! for the time 'twixt now and then."
Where we received so much kindness it would be
invidious to single out particular friends, but of
those who were strangers to us when we came
to Edinburgh, none were more truly kind than
Mr and Mrs T. G. Murray ; and this friendship
has gone on to the third generation. Their only
child, Graham, was then a boy at Harrow ; from
there he went to Cambridge, passed at the Scottish
188 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Bar, and married, when he was twenty-four, Mary,
a daughter of Sir William Edmonstone, a charm-
ing girl of seventeen, who has become the leader
of society here, and the most gracious and con-
siderate of hostesses. The time would fail me
to chronicle all her husband's subsequent successes,
from a brilliant tenancy of Lord Advocate and
M.P. for Bute ; a seat in the Cabinet as Secretary
for Scotland ; and finally, Lord Justice -General
and Lord President of the Court of Session (the
highest honour of the Scottish Bar), and a Peerage
under the title of Dunedin the ancient Gaelic
name for Edinburgh, who may well be proud of
her son.
His father was a man of great capacity and
judgment, and any advice he gave, either in
public or private, was held to be conclusive.
No man's word carried greater weight. His
kindness, hospitality, and charity were boundless,
and when he died it was felt there was no
one left to fill his place. His devoted wife lived
to see and rejoice in the great success of their
son, and found much happiness in the love and
affection of delightful grandchildren. Mrs Murray
had the strength of mind and conviction of an
older generation, a strenuous and unswerving sense
of duty, a clearness of judgment and intellect of
almost a masculine type, but no woman could have
LORD DUNEDIN. 189
more strictly followed St Paul's advice, and been
a greater keeper of home. She adorned no plat-
forms, but the poor and needy rose up and blessed
her ; and many a missionary in a lonely land was
cheered by her letters of sympathy and encourage-
ment. She died in April 1906, and left a great
blank in the hearts of all her friends.
Mrs Murray was one of seven sisters, all women
of marked character and ability, though with one
voice they would have declared that their mother,
Mrs Tod, was more remarkable than any of them.
The sister known most intimately in these early
days of our Edinburgh life was Joanna Tod, who
as the only unmarried daughter lived with her
mother in the family home in Ainslie Place. Mrs
Tod was a striking -looking old lady, with most
beautiful eyes and a very distinguished bearing.
She was a sister of the Mary Duff who has gone
down to history as Byron's first love. Miss Tod
found scope enough for her shrewd head and
gentle heart in her task of being a dutiful and
attached daughter, and was no less devoted to a
dear blind friend, with whom she spent all her
spare time.
After her mother's death, which was 'shortly
followed by Miss Stirling's, she became engaged
to Mr Abdy Fellowes, a half-brother of her
brother-in-law, Admiral Fellowes. I was often
190 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
their guest in their charming country house in
Berkshire, and used to feel that it was like a
page out of George Herbert's life, when, on coming
down before breakfast on a summer morning,
I saw the dear middle - aged couple walking
across the lawn from early morning service, so
full of cheerful peace were the two faces. Yet
truly attached as she was to the Church and
country of her adoption, Mrs Fellowes remained a
shrewd and humorous Scotswoman in her judg-
ments. Lady Grant perhaps the closest of all
her friends used to tell how on one occasion she
and Mrs Fellowes had gone into the parish school
during the religious instruction, given by the
presumably young and rather foolish curate. He
was discoursing to the children on the significant
importance of Lady-Day, illustrating it with the
crudest symbols on the black-board. "Do you
happen to have a ' cutty - stool ' about you ? "
whispered one indignant and amused Scotswoman
to the other alluding, of course, to Jenny Geddes.
With another of the Tod sisters, Mrs Maconochie,
and her husband and children, we were intimate
at a rather later period. At that time they were
living at Gattonside, a charming place on Tweed-
side. Mr Maconochie was a delightful host, an
excellent teller of anecdotes and humorous stories,
and one whose early memory went back to the
THE MACONOCHIES. 191
great days of Edinburgh wits and judges. I re-
member his attributing his knowledge of Shake-
speare to frequenting the theatre during the lessee-
ship of Mrs Henry Siddons and her brother, Mr
William Murray. It was of Mrs Maconochie that
Dr Brown once said, "She is a woman to write
sonnets to." She had to use another of his ex-
pressions "those unforgettable dark eyes such
as one sees once or twice in a lifetime." There
was a feminine grace about her tall slender figure,
and an almost girlish freshness and sweetness in
her manner. It may have been the invalid life
she led that in some ways kept her so young.
Never was there a woman so hedged about by
tender observances as she was by husband and
sons. To young people she was irresistibly at-
tractive. There was a corner at the back of her
sofa occupied night after night by some lad or
girl from among her guests, glad to confide their
thoughts and experiences to so eager and affection-
ate a listener. Her earnest piety and unworldly
goodness were delightfully combined with sober
shrewdness and ready sense of humour.
Another member of this same family, Louisa,
was also a great friend, though for some years we
did not see so much of her and her gallant hus-
band, Admiral Fellowes, a man of most striking
appearance, very tall, very handsome, and with the
192 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
delightful charm and bonhomie typical of a sailor.
For some years he held an appointment at Chat-
ham, and they lived in the Admiralty House ; and
generously did he and his dear wife dispense hos-
pitality there. To the deep regret of all who
knew him, he died somewhat suddenly at Gibraltar
in 1886, when he was in command of the Channel
Fleet, and it was by telegram that she heard of
his death. Other sorrows were to follow. The
year after her husband's death her second son,
who was in the Navy, and bade fair to follow his
distinguished father's steps, was cut off; and some
years after her youngest son a beautiful youth
of twenty -three died quite suddenly. "Break
not, oh woman's heart, but still endure ! " And
she has endured with such patience and sweet-
ness as to elicit the love and admiration of all
who know her.
One of the best known men of social Edinburgh
in these days was Mr Henry Davidson. He lived
at Muirhouse, about three miles from Edinburgh
(a house most beautifully situated, overlooking the
Firth of Forth, whose charms I think have been
too much ignored), and with its Scotch firs like
stone pines, and its stone balustrades, reminds
you always of an Italian villa. Mr Davidson was
highly cultivated, musical, artistic, well read, and
was most excellent company. He had a quick wit
SIR NOEL PATON. 193
that brightened but never wounded, he was far
too courteous and kind for that. I remember a
funny little anecdote of his once coming down
the stairs of his own house and meeting a young
woman going up whose face he did not know.
" Who are you ? " he said. " Please, sir, I'm be-
tween the cook and the housemaid." " God help
you ! " and he passed on. Mr Davidson was father
of the present Archbishop of Canterbury, as well
as of the pleasant representatives he has left here.
His brother, Sheriff Davidson, had something
of the same ready repartee. Dining with us one
day, one of our daughters told him of the difficulty
she had in teaching the boys at a Sunday-school
to repeat hymns correctly : for instance, they
would say, " Thus spake the sheriff," instead of
" the seraph." " I am not surprised," he said ;
"they are really synonymous terms"! Probably
the parents of these boys were more accustomed
to the visits of the sheriff's emissaries than to the
more heavenly visitants !
The Noel Patons were an interesting element in
our society, a most harmonious couple, as good
as they were handsome. Sir Noel, who was
Limner for Scotland, and a personal friend of
Queen Victoria, was a prince of courtesy, and
when with him the noisy hurrying world seemed
far away, and one felt transported into a purer,
N
194 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
nobler atmosphere of poetry and art, which was
his native element. He had surrounded himself
with beautiful objects of art, many of historical
value, and he had one of the finest collections of
armour in Scotland. But the gem of his collection
was his delightful wife. There was a great charm
in her affectionate manner and talk, so sym-
pathetic, so free from egotism, that a morning
spent in her company was always a delight and
refreshment. And now, after so many years have
passed, and both have gone to their rest, the re-
membrance of her as one of the bravest spirits
I have ever known is vividly impressed on my
heart. Her children adored her, and in her last
illness so like herself was she that one of her sons
told me there was nearly as much laughter as
tears in her sick-room.
" And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea,"
must have been the feeling in her unselfish heart.
Close to us, in Buckingham Terrace, lived a
delightful couple, Captain and Mrs Sinclair, with
whom we were very intimate, and their boys who
were of the same age as some of our children, and
were dear friends of theirs were in and out of
our house continually. Captain Sinclair was an
ardent Conservative, a Jacobite at heart, and his
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 195
house was filled with Jacobite relics. Mrs Sinclair
was a skilful musician, and a most staunch friend.
I have often wondered what these parents would
have thought if they had lived to see their
eldest son, Jack, Secretary for Scotland in the
most Revolutionary Government this country has
seen ! Probably the political dismay they would
certainly have felt would have yielded to parental
affection and to their pride in their boy's success ;
and I am quite sure they would have succumbed
to the charms of Lady Marjorie, Jack's wife.
Charlie, his brother, in his lovely home on the
Kale water, in Roxburghshire, staunchly upholds
the family traditions.
It would be strange to write about Edinburgh
and take no notice of one of her most remarkable
sons R. L. Stevenson. I had been his mother's
bridesmaid, and I stayed with Mr and Mrs Steven-
son in 1851, a year after they were married, in the
house their baby was born in, 8 Howard Place,
and a fractious little fellow he was! though de-
cidedly pretty with his dark eyes and fair hair.
This uncommon combination he inherited from his
mother, from her also his light heart, which
carried him bravely through the many years of
delicacy that would have depressed most people
into thorough invalidism. This was almost my
first visit from home, and it was an intense
196 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
interest to me to watch the development of my
girl friend into a wife and mother, and to study
the character of her grave scientific husband. He
delighted in her livelier spirits, for, left to himself,
life was " full of sairiousness " to him ; and had it
not been for his strong sense of humour, which was
a striking trait in his character, the Calvinism in
which he had been brought up would have left
its gloomy mark upon him.
Among the pictures on the wall there was a
fine engraving of David Hume, whose writings, in
spite of his opinions, he greatly admired ; " but/'
he said, " I shall take that down when the boy
is old enough to notice it, for I should not like
him to think Hume was one of my heroes." He
could not guess how far his son was to travel
from the orthodox paths, and yet always to bear
about him the indelible mark of the Shorter
Catechism !
The Stevensons took me to dine one evening
with his brother, Alan Stevenson, to meet the
daughter of Thomas de Quincey. I thought
Florence de Quincey a lovely girl. She was
dressed in a pale-pink muslin, and had long black
velvet ribbons hanging from the back of her head.
This may not now sound very elegant, but it was,
and so was she, and " the mind, the music breath-
ing from her face," made her a creature that once
ALAN STEVENSON. 197
seen could never be forgotten. Mr Alan Steven-
son made a great impression on me, and I thought
I had never met a more interesting man. He was
one of those men who, as has been well said,
"pass beyond the facts of science to the truths
of science." He was rather sad-looking, as if the
weight of this unintelligible world hung heavily
on his spirit, which was of a highly imaginative
order. Science was his forte, but poetry was his
passion. Both powers came into play in the per-
petual warfare he waged with the awful forces
of Nature while building lighthouses on almost
impossible and inaccessible rocks all round the
coast of Scotland, a work which culminated in
the splendid triumph of the Skerry vore Light-
house, so graphically described by the late Duke
of Argyle in his most interesting autobiography
published this year (1906). Wordsworth had been
as a guiding-star to Mr Stevenson from his youth
upwards, and one easily understood the affinity
of two such high austere souls, also the impulse
that made Mr Stevenson write to Wordsworth,
telling him how much he felt he owed to him in
life. Mr Stevenson showed me a little frame with
a lock of Wordsworth's hair, round which 'he had
fastened laurel leaves,
"Those laurels greener from the brow
Of him who uttered nothing base."
198 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Of Louis himself, when we came to Edinburgh
and later, we did not see much. Our children
were, I think I may say, clever and lively, but
their ways were not his ways, and to a youth so
eccentric no doubt they appeared shallow and con-
ventional, as he with his long hair and black shirt,
a freak of his appeared to them affected, not to
say intolerable ! I think I ought to mention here
that later, when they became acquainted with his
works, he had no warmer admirers than every
member of our family. I remember his mother
telling me when he was a lad that he would some-
times go off for two days at a time no one knew
where ; and in extenuation of this conduct he
would tell his mother that she must pay the
penalty of having given birth to a tramp !
He must have been about eighteen when Professor
Fleeming Jenkin came to Edinburgh as Professor
of Engineering. Mrs Jenkin gave me once an in-
teresting account of the beginning of her friendship
with Louis, one of the happiest influences in his
life. She had been returning her first calls, a
weary business to one who used to say that nothing
tired her but the conventionalities of life. Dusk
was falling, and one name, Mrs Thomas Stevenson,
Heriot Row, remained on her list. She hesitated :
the thought of home was very alluring, but she
resolved to finish all her calls at once. She found
AN UNSEEN INTERLOCUTOR. 199
her hostess sitting in a room lit only by the fire-
light. Mrs Stevenson would have rung for lights,
but Mrs Jenkin assured her that she preferred
the cosiness of the dusk. Into the conversation sud-
denly broke a young voice, and Mrs Jenkin became
aware of the figure of a youth, half-hidden in the
window recess. So interesting did the conversation
become that Mrs Jenkin lingered under the charm
of this unseen interlocutor till she suddenly realised
that she would be late for dinner. The young man
accompanied her to the door, and under the gas-
light in the hall she saw the slender figure, long
hair, and brown eyes with which we are all familiar.
" I hope you will come and see me," she said,
shaking hands. "When shall I come?" "To-
morrow," was the flattering response. When her
husband remonstrated with her on being late,
"Never mind," she said; "I have seen a young
poet."
At this time, of course, none of the books were
written which were to make him famous. Mr R.
L. Stevenson acted in several of the plays by Mr
and Mrs Jenkin, produced on their little stage,
a delightful form of entertainment, and of a far
higher order than most private theatricals.
Many years after this, when his name was
famous, his mother told me that she had a scrap-
book into which she pasted all notices of him and
200 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
his works (it must, indeed, have been a large
book !), and for a motto she prefixed
" Speak weel o' my love,
Speak ill o' my love,
But be aye speaking ! "
Nothing makes one believe more in the wit and
humour that Professor Wilson must have possessed
than the amount of these qualities in nearly all his
descendants ! Notably so in a pair of cousins, who
were among our great friends, Bessie Wilson, a
daughter of his eldest son, and Coggie, a child of
his eldest daughter, Mrs Ferrier. Bessie Wilson
we did not know till after we had been several
years in Edinburgh. There was something in the
quality of her mind and character that bridged
over the gulf of years that separated us, and she
and my husband and I became devoted friends.
One summer she went with us to Switzerland, and
proved, in spite of the proverb, that three is some-
times the best possible company ! But then it is
not every one that has her charm of sympathetic
interest in all that we saw or did, her brilliant
conversation, and last, not least, her handsome
presence, which attracted every one we met. She
was a first-rate raconteuse, and to so observant
a mind, and one so full of infinite variety, life
possessed the deepest interest.
Of her cousin, Coggie Ferrier, what can I say ?
PROFESSOR WILSON'S DESCENDANTS. 201
She has inherited much of her mother's wild wit
and, perhaps, somewhat reckless humour and won-
derful powers of mimicry. All this is known and
appreciated by those who have met her even in the
most casual manner, but only those who are most
intimate with her know what a heart of gold she
has, and what capacity for sacrificing herself for the
good of a friend. Our acquaintance began in our
early St Andrews days, when she was a child ; and
now, when she lives in London, that social Charybdis
that sucks up so many of our best and brightest,
our meetings are not so frequent as we should
like; but the bond of auld lang syne is a very
strong one, and never fails us.
Many years later I had another friend in Edin-
burgh whom I went often to see. The fever of
bric-d-brac hunting was on me, and old Mrs Begbie
had a little shop in Rose Street of that kind. She
was a delightful woman, clever, well read, and full
of interest in her artistic trade. Her father had
been a bookseller, and she having a taste for
literature browsed freely on the books in his shop,
and listened eagerly to the literary talk occasionally
heard there. One day, when a little girl, she came
home with a prize from the dancing-school, and an
author and poet, who was at the time with her
father, gave her as a further reward a chain and
medal. This was Robert Pollok, the author of a
202 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
poem called 'The Course of Time/ which had a
considerable vogue in its day ; but ungrateful Time
in its real course has relegated the poem to the
limbo of forgotten things, and I doubt if any one
of the present generation ever heard of it.
Mrs Begbie kept up her taste for literature. She
had an immense admiration for Archbishop Trench's
works, and I remember her delight when I brought
his daughter, Mrs Butcher, to her shop, and she at
once recognised the likeness to the beautiful picture
Romney had painted of Mrs Butcher's grandmother.
What happy days Mrs Butcher and I spent in
prowling over old shops and frequenting sales !
On the evening of one of these days we were
dining at Palmerston Place, and my husband ask-
ing what " culpable extravagance " was, Professor
Butcher said, " What our wives are always on the
verge of"!
A constant and delightful visitor at Palmerston
Place was Miss Blanche Trench. She and Mrs
Butcher were a fascinating pair of cousins whose
names, Rose and Blanche, were two " sweet sym-
phonies." Handsome, graceful, and with a quite
singular charm of manner, they would have been
remarkable in any society, and certainly they
shone with something like southern radiance
among our northern lights. Once when Mrs
Butcher bound her abundant auburn tresses with
IN THE LAKE COUNTRY. 203
a chaplet of vine leaves, Lady Grant said she
looked like a beautiful Bacchante converted to
Christianity. Miss Blanche Trench played charm-
ingly on the guitar, and looked a perfect picture
as she sat singing to her delighted audience.
The summer of 1864 we spent in the Lake
country, in a nice old house near Ambleside be-
longing to Kate Dobson's grandmother, Mrs Harri-
son, nee Wordsworth, a cousin of the poet, with
none of his gifts but far more than his graces, for
she was quite a beautiful old lady. The Tom Sellars
had taken a house in the neighbourhood, and there
were constant meetings and much happy intercourse
for parents and children. The Tom Arnolds, too,
spent that summer at Foxhowe, and I well remem-
ber Mary, their eldest daughter, the future cele-
brated Mrs Ward, a fine gipsy-looking girl, whose
thick black hair was a constant difficulty to her to
keep in becoming order ! Even then she had shown
literary capacity, and was making an index for her
father's book on English Literature, not an easy
task for a girl of fourteen.
We made many little expeditions in the lovely
Lake country, and altogether it was a very happy
summer, though my husband felt a more bracing
climate would have been a better preparation for
him and for his winter's work.
In February 1865 a little boy was born, whom
204 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
we christened William Grant, and Sir Alexander
Grant and Dr Brown were his godfathers.
That summer we spent at Tullymet, a very pretty
place in Perthshire, at the entrance of Strathtay,
and not far from Strathtummel, a fine, breezy,
healthy country. At Tullymet there was a charm-
ing old-fashioned garden, and a home farm, which
was a supreme delight to Walter.
It was here we began reading the Waverley
Novels aloud to the children, and I remember my
husband becoming so excited over * The Antiquary '
that he would not close the book till two hours
after our audience should have been asleep ! I had
felt it was high time to introduce them to good
literature, for the children's stories of that day
were, many of them, unwholesomely edifying ; and
that summer I had seen with considerable amuse-
ment my little girls undertaking on Sundays the
instruction of some of the farm children, quite as
old as themselves and quite as wise : but they, at
any rate, put themselves above their pupils in posi-
tion, for they each mounted a tree and delivered
their instructions from that elevated rostrum !
Andrew Lang came to see us there ; and I
think of all the different places that we took for
summer, Tullymet was his favourite. Here, too,
we had a visit from Mr T. H. Green, who had
stayed with us in Edinburgh the year before,
MR T. H. GREEN. 205
when he lectured on " The Commonwealth "
at the Philosophical Institution. Mr Green was
naturally silent, and his instinct was rather to
shun society; so it was unfortunate that there
was an evening party while he was with us, still
more unfortunate that the ladies' cloaks were taken
off in his room, to which he could not, therefore,
retire for refuge. Towards the end of the evening,
seeing him looking rather dejected, my husband,
to cheer him, said, " Only two cloaks now, Green,
in your room." " Till there are none" was the
sombre reply, "it is all the same to me." On
his arrival at Tullymet, Eppie, a child of seven,
thought it incumbent on her, for the Master's
sake, to entertain another Balliol man, and, un-
deterred by his somewhat irresponsive manner,
exerted all her powers of conversation on him ;
and I well remember the kindly perplexed smile
he turned on me, quoting, " and panting Time
toils after her in vain." Mr Green told the
children how his father, in his efforts to instil
the virtue of self-control and patience, used to
read aloud to them in the evenings, stopping at
the most interesting and exciting point ; and he
especially remembered how, when reading in ' The
Antiquary' the thrilling account of the duel with
Lovel, he suddenly closed the book at the sent-
ence " Captain Maclntyre's bullet " and they
206 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
had to wait with what patience they could com-
mand till next evening before they knew what
the bullet had done!
Mr Green was Fellow of Balliol and tutor in
philosophy. His lectures were very remarkable,
and his personal influence even greater than his
influence as a lecturer. This was not acquired
by any peculiar grace of speech or manner. His
strong and simple character seemed to need no
words to express it : he lived his thoughts, carry-
ing his convictions into practice. Mr Jowett
often spoke of him as one of his best and dearest
friends. " Sit mea anima cum illo," he said, after
Green's funeral in 1882. Eleven years later the
Master died, and his remains were laid in St
Sepulchre's Cemetery, separated only by a single
grave from that of Mr Green. This account of Mr
Green I take from the Master of Balliol's ' Life/
written by Mr Evelyn Abbott, a dear and intimate
friend of both. And here I may record that it
was Mr Green's much-loved wife who watched over
the death -beds of all these three men. " Be near
me when my life is low," was the desire of them all.
And surely no greater or more touching tribute
could be paid to any mortal than the wish, when
all earthly things are fast fading, for the help and
comfort of so good and sympathetic a friend.
207
CHAPTER XV.
" And some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his vintage rolling Time hath prest,
Have drunk their cup a round or two before,
And, one by one, crept silently to rest."
OMAR KHAYYAM, translated by E. FITZGERALD.
1864-1868.
WE had spent the summer at a pretty little place,
or rather a little place in a pretty country, Cray,
lying between the Spittal of Glenshee and Glenisla.
My husband had not been very well, and we went
up for a short visit to Brahan Castle, in Ross-shire,
a place his brother David had taken for the
summer ; and from there he went on to Suther-
land, where John had a shooting in Strathnaver,
and he thought the change and occupation in
the open air would set him up. But it did not
do him much good, and the doctors strongly
recommended his taking an entire rest from his
work, and advised his spending the winter abroad.
An old Balliol friend, Mr Harvey, afterwards
Rector of the Edinburgh Academy, kindly under-
208 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
took the management of my husband's classes ;
and as he was a first-rate scholar, my husband's
mind was comparatively easy, though it was a
trial to him giving up his students into alien
hands. For ourselves, we secured the most per-
fect travelling companion in our friend Kate
Dobson. She had had the rarest and most ideal
education for a woman intimacy with a scholarly
father. She had carried Latin and Greek to the
point of familiar pleasure in the literature, and
on this, as on other subjects, was the most sym-
pathetic companion to my husband. Strong and
an excellent walker, she could accompany him on
expeditions that were too long for me, and was
equally at ease if he were silent or conversational.
Best of all, perhaps, she excited and encouraged
in him a vein of humour which, while it rendered
her speechless with amusement, lightened many
an hour of depression for him.
In November, therefore, we all started for Bonn,
and, like Wordsworth's little heroine, " we were
seven " ourselves, Kate, the three little girls, and
Walter. We had a horrible passage to Flushing ;
and all night the line, " But our flower was in
flushing when blighting was nearest," rung in my
head, and how profoundly I wished our vessel was
there too ! We first went to the Hotel Royal at
Bonn, but after a month we thought it would be
A HIGH COMPLIMENT. 209
quieter and less expensive to board in a family, and
we went to two old ladies, Misses von Salomons,
where we were very comfortable, and they were
most kind. Miss von Salomons had a great ad-
miration for my husband, and said one day, in the
tone of paying him an extreme compliment, that he
was not in the least like an Englishman ! " Then,
what country would you say he belonged to ? " I
asked. Afraid if she said German or Prussian we
should not like it, she very cleverly replied, " A
Courlander." And as none of us had ever seen a
Courlander, we had to be content, feeling in this
case omne ignotum pro magnifico est.
A brother, Herr Clement, came after a time,
pompous and silent, a Roman Catholic, yet not so
devout but that he invariably forgot all the fast-
days till the meals were well over, and was then
filled with voluble remorse. Here, too, we met
Mr Smart, now minister of Chirnside, whose kind-
ness to our children then, and to our dear Frank
later, I shall never forget. He used to take the
children for long days' skating, a form of amuse-
ment which requires active, not passive, guardian-
ship ; and so gained at once my present gratitude
for their safety and the place in their memories
sacred to those who provide the pleasures of child-
hood. My husband knew several of the professors,
and we received much kindness from the von Sybels,
o
210 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
which I repaid in a novel way by saying to Mrs
von Sybel that her daughter was sehr verwachsen,
which, I believe, means deformed, while I had meant
to say, was " very well grown " ! However, she
read my thoughts, though my words belied them,
and was very gracious.
At Bonn we ran across a distant kinswoman and
old friend of mine, a Mrs Gray and her husband, a
doctor in the Indian Medical Service. As a girl
she had lived much with my aunt and elder cousins,
and had not only a memory that retained every-
thing, but a power of narrative that made the
most ordinary occurrence picturesque. This came
as easily to her pen as to her tongue. At the end
of this winter we left her on excellent terms with
her German hosts, but during the summer I re-
ceived a letter of ten pages from her, describing
the estrangement and rupture between the two
families with such liveliness that we eagerly seized
the sheets from each other's hands. My husband
was at this time reading Balzac for the first time
with great admiration. He declared that " 1' Affaire
Gray " was worthy of a place in the Comedie
Humaine.
Mrs Gray had a charming placidity of manner,
which contrasted as oddly with her husband's
alternate high and low spirits as her short round
figure with his height and handsome looks. He
A VISIT TO ROME. 211
was an excellent whist player, as good as my hus-
band himself, and many evenings were pleasantly
spent at the card-table. My husband used to say
of himself that, though he could read when he was
four, he knew his cards long before he knew his
letters.
We stayed in Bonn till the end of March, and
then Kate, my husband, and I started for a short
visit to Rome. Of Rome, what can one say that is
not well known and hackneyed ? We were there at
Easter, and so I for my husband's interests were
entirely in classical Rome came in for the various
spectacles at that season. I could not help being
struck with the flippancy of a very handsome
Polish countess, a Roman Catholic, in our hotel,
who hurried away, saying she must see one or
two pilgrims' feet washed, and then she would
fly to the ccena ! It was curious, when the
silver trumpets were blown and some relics were
held up to view, to see the rapt, ecstatic devo-
tion of those around us. The evening we arrived
in Rome we went to the Coliseum, that we might
view it aright in the moonlight, and very strik-
ing and impressive it was ; but I am afraid in
my mind thoughts of the martyrs and wild beasts
were swallowed up in the contemplation of the
loveliest girl I think I have ever seen, walking up
and down with a handsome man, evidently her
212 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
lover. And my happiness was great when next
morning I discovered she was in our hotel, and
we soon became great friends. She was a Miss
Rose Russel from Boston, and her lover for she
was engaged to him was a German Baron, of a
very old family, but I forget his name, and I
heard he had died a year or two after they were
married. Of her I never heard again, but the
memory of her loveliness remains fresh in my
mind.
My husband not being very well, the sights
and remains of ancient Rome, though deeply inter-
esting, were rather a strain and fatigue to him,
and he often said he would like to go back and
visit it again when he would be better able to
enjoy it. One expedition I remember we made
which was a source of very deep interest to him
a Horatian pilgimage, going to Tivoli and
Vicovaro, where we slept, by no means in a
" lordly pleasure -house," for the house was more
like a stable than a hotel ; but the beds were
clean, though the sheets were very coarse, and the
mattresses stuffed with the husks of Indian corn :
but we were in the country of Horace ! For the
first time my husband trod in that poet's foot-
steps, and travelled by roads familiar to him :
looked on the valley of the " swift Digentia,"
now called Licenza, where, beyond question, lay
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HORACE. 213
the Sabine farm which Maecenas had given to
the poet. My husband had with him the genial
essay, " La maison de la campagne d'Horace," by
M. Gaston Boissier, which he greatly admired,
and found most useful in identifying places. And
with this and Horace's own poems a book which
was a constant companion he seemed to realise
the life in that Sabine villa, and the poet's
growing attachment to its simplicity and charm.
" The man who was once graced by fine clothes
and shining locks, whom the money-loving Cinara
preferred to his rich rivals, who would imbibe
Falernian at midday, now is pleased with a frugal
supper and a nap on the grass beside the stream."
We went from Vicovaro, partly driving, partly
walking, to Rocca Giovine, beautifully situated on
a precipitous rock. I remember being very much
struck by the whole bearing of the women, sun-
burnt and looking far older than their years. In-
deed the place seemed full of grandmothers and
small children ; the missing link the mother
apparently non - existent ! These women had a
dignity of carriage and a freedom of movement
that was most impressive : nearly all of them
wore coral beads round their dark sunburnt
throats. The villa consisted of such scanty re-
mains that it required a good deal of imagination
to reconstruct it. Near the Chapel of Madonna
214 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
della Casa is a spring now called Fontana degli
Oratini, perhaps the Fons Bandusiae of the poet ?
On our way to Rocca Giovine we were over-
taken by a man and a mule, the latter heavily
laden. The man in the large Roman black cloak
of the country, draped round him with a grace
no Englishman could emulate, was so remarkable
a figure that I felt sure he was no common
peasant, and I begged Kate Dobson (who was
the linguist of the party) to ask him what
his profession was. It was scarcely a surprise
when he answered " Una poeta " / He certainly
looked one of the tuneful choir more than most
of his brethren. He had been very well educated
at Rome ; had gone to Mexico, and had there
written an epic on the tragic death of the Em-
peror Maximilian. He was much interested to
hear my husband was a Professor of Latin, and
there and then they began a conversation in
that language ; and one heard quotations from
Horace hurtling in the air under the shadow of
Mons Lucretilis, and almost in sight of his own
Sabine villa, the stranger from the barbarous
North being no whit behind Horace's own Italian
countryman in love and admiration for him, and,
naturally, with a more complete knowledge. And
here, surely, was a living proof, should such be
needed, that in prophetic vein, and in no idle
A MODERN ROMAN POET. 215
boasting spirit, had Horace written, " exegi monu-
mentum sere perennius " ; for what had brought
these two strangers of different lands, education,
and position passing each other on an Italian
highway into warm and hearty sympathy but
this very monumentum his deathless poems ?
Colloquially the poeta was more at home in the
Latin tongue, probably from the services of his
Church being in that language, and his ear more
accustomed to the sound.
The journey back from Home is rather blurred
in my memory ; but I well remember the beauty
of the swift -flowing Rhone, emerging fresh and
blue from its bath in the lake, and the exquisite
cleanliness and luxury of the hotel at Geneva ;
but somehow it seemed smug and commonplace
after the dear dirty divinity of happy-go-lucky
Italy. While we had been in Italy, Miss Janson
took the children to Karlsruhe, where her mother
lived, and they all joined us at Chateau d'Oex, a
very pretty valley in the Canton de Vaud. It
was not what Andrew Lang calls " a profes-
sional beauty in scenery," but very home-like and
pleasant to live in : and here we first made the
acquaintance of Mr Alfred Benn, who -was so
often to come into our lives in after -years. He
is a remarkable man, an excellent classical scholar,
and equally at home in science. So when we were
216 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
in any difficulty on any subject, we had but to
" turn it up in Benn " to have our minds en-
lightened. Since this time Mr Benn has become
known in England by his scholarly book on the
Early Greek Philosophers ; and as I write this he
has just published his magnum opus, the ' History
of Rationalism/ which promises, I am told, to
become a classic work on the subject. Our first
meeting was rather curious. He and his mother
and an Italian greyhound had arrived one after-
noon, and were sitting in the drawing - room
when we came in from our own rooms in the
dependance. We were puzzling over a double
acrostic, made up of quotations, and there was a
difference of opinion about one, when Mr Benn's
voice broke in with " I think you will find
it in Shelley's ' Epipsychidion.' ' Balaam's ass
speaking could scarcely have surprised the prophet
more than this knowledge of Shelley in a stray
visitor in a Swiss pension surprised us. Mr Benn
told us afterwards that when we left the room
and my husband said, " Don't leave the ' Ring
and the Book/ " he muttered to his mother,
"These are no common tourists who have got the
' Ring and the Book ' ! " I think it had been
newly published then.
It made a great difference to my husband
having Mr Benn's companionship and sympathy
MR ALFRED BENN. 217
in his studies, they generally being in accord on
these subjects, though sometimes there might be
a difference, as I remember once, years after,
when they had gone a little excursion in the
Bavarian Tyrol, and Mrs Grey, Florence, and I
joined them at Berchtesgaden. I found them
barely on speaking terms, because of some differ-
ence of opinion about Lucretius ! But this was
a very temporary estrangement, and time would
fail me to tell of the many times we came across
him at different places abroad, in London, and
at Kenbank ; and of the faithfulness and loyalty
of his friendship, extended in the summer of
1905 to my granddaughter Molly, when she was
in Florence, a place that has been Mr Benn's
home since his marriage in 1887. A helpmeet,
indeed, his wife proved herself, for she was nearly
as learned as he was, and deeply interested in
all literary subjects and in art in which she
was no mean proficient : skilled, too, in household
ways, which has now more space for develop-
ment, as they have settled themselves in a beauti-
ful Florentine villa. This I have not seen, and
probably never shall; but I often think of her,
of her charm of manner, and of the beauty of her
soft melodious voice : and her letter each Christ-
mas, telling of all they had done during the
summer, I always look forward to as a treat.
218 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
We spent nearly all the summer at Chateau
d'Oex. Here I saw, for the first time, whole
meadows starred profusely with the white nar-
cissus, scenting the air and delighting the eye.
Indeed, the greatest delight of these months of
the early summer was to follow the succession of
lovely Swiss flowers from the valleys up to the
bare heights. We engaged a master from the
National school in the village to teach us botany.
With Swiss thoroughness, this excellent Monsieur
Pichart began every analysis with the question,
" Fleur visible ou invisible ? " And so far the sub-
ject offered little difficulty.
Our daughter Eleanor had not been very well,
and the doctor at Vevey strongly recommended
a winter in the South. So before we returned
home she was settled at Mdlle. Vincent's at
Vevey, where she made the acquaintance and life-
long friendship of Alma Whately, a granddaughter
of the Archbishop. This friendship was further
strengthened in after - years by Miss Whately's
cousin, Henrietta Wale, marrying William Arnold.
At Chateau d'Oex, Florence, who was always
zealous and enterprising, over-walked herself, and
was obliged to lie up entirely; and hearing the
Charles Arnolds from Rugby were at Zimmer-
wald a beautiful place in the Bernese Oberland
we went there and had a very pleasant time,
A PUZZLING OKDEB. 219
till we all set our faces homewards. Florence
was forbidden to walk, so our first effort on
arriving at a railway station was to get a porter
to carry her. As few of the porters spoke Eng-
lish, I gave the order, as I thought, in good
German, and bade them "Tragen die Jungfrau,"
which made them stare, not sure whether I meant
the mountain or the Virgin ! Of course " Tragen
das Fraulein" was what I should have said.
A great sorrow met us on our return to
London from abroad the death of our beloved
Zibbie Cross, who had married a year before Mr
Bullock, who afterwards took the name of Hall on
inheriting the property of his uncle, General Hall, at
Six-Mile-Bottom, Cambridgeshire. She had given
birth to a fine boy at her friend Miss Thornley's
house, near her own old home at Champion Hill.
He survived, is now married, and has children
of his own ; but she died and left not her like
behind : and this was the deep and permanent
feeling of all who loved her, which meant all
who knew her. To those who had not that
privilege, no words could convey what she was.
To know her was a liberal education ; and when
she died, life could never again mean quite the
same thing to her family and her friends.
I wish there was an English word equivalent
to the galantuomo, bestowed on King Victor
220 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Emmanuel by his countrymen, for that is the
expression that naturally comes to one's mind in
thinking of Henry Hall. He, Charles Bowen, and
Alexander Craig Sellar had all been at Rugby
and Balliol together " the Triumvirate," we used
to call them : each was remarkable in his own
way, and they remained the closest friends till
death parted them, none of them reaching old age.
There was something of the knight-errant about
Mr Hall a spirit of adventure, a lover of lost
causes, a chivalrous devotion to his friends and his
peerless wife. Some years before he married he
went to Mexico and wrote a little book, ' Across
Mexico/ telling of many places and scenes no
Englishman had hitherto visited. He had also
fought with Garibaldi, and in the battle of Monte
Suello with such gallantry, that he was personally
and cordially thanked by the General.
After his wife's death, feeling action imperative,
he went to Sedan to administer the fund got up
by ' The Daily News ' for the behoof of the poor
people who had suffered so terribly in the Franco-
Prussian War; and so great was his efficiency
and active sympathy that the French Government
of that day 1871 presented him with the Legion
of Honour.
Six-Mile-Bottom had in the time of his uncle,
General Hall, been celebrated for its splendid
THE TRIUMVIRATE. 221
partridge-shooting, the Duke of Cambridge shoot-
ing with the General each autumn ; but it was
not in this direction that Henry Hall signalised
his possession. Schools, co-operative stores, and
comfortable cottages for the labourers sprang up
all over the estate, and his house became the
rendezvous for the most intellectual and spiritual
residents in Cambridge University, from which it
was only distant six miles.
Of one of those whom I have said were called
" the Triumvirate" this seems a fitting place to say
a few words. Mr Charles Bowen, who became
Lord Bowen, has been described as "perhaps the
most popular man that was ever at Balliol." In
writing to Sir Robert Morier in 1878, I see the
Master says of him, "I think you knew Bowen,
but you hardly know all his merits. He always
seems to me one of the most gentle and honour-
able men I have ever known, a man of genius,
converted, perhaps crushed, into a lawyer, and
probably the greatest English lawyer of the day/'
With every word of this my husband would have
agreed, for though Lord Bowen was ten years
his junior, and consequently a contemporary and
much more intimate friend of Alexander Sellar,
my husband often said he felt the same affection
for him as for his own well-tried associates, and
found as much delight in his companionship as he
222 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
did in their society. He delighted in his scholar-
ship, his wit, his interest in politics and in litera-
ture, and considered his poetical translation of
Virgil's Mneid a most admirable piece of work,
and with as much of the spirit of the original as
a translation could be expected to give.
Once, in Oxford, when Lord Bowen, Dean
Stanley, the Master of Balliol, my husband, and
Mr Sandars were breakfasting together all Balliol
scholars, and congratulating themselves on being
so ! Dean Stanley said if they were to go in for
the examination now, he did not believe they
would pass. " Yes," said the Master, " Bowen
would."
His witty sayings are remembered by his friends.
When Dr Lushington's partial condemnation on
the Colenso case was reversed by Lord Chancellor
Westbury's judgment, Bowen wrote on the margin
of his copy of the Chancellor's deliverances, " Hell
dismissed with costs." A riddle he once made
was, " Why is a step - father an inexpensive
article?" "Because ce n'est que le premier pas
qui cotite."
All who met him were struck by his great
capacity and brilliancy, but few knew the depth
of his affectionate heart. In Alexander Sellar's
long illness, lasting for some months, Lord Bowen
LOKD BO WEN. 223
went constantly to Parham to see him, and wrote
to him every day. Lord Bowen did not long sur-
vive his friend, and in his illness Mrs Craig Sellar
became to him and his wife the comfort he had
been to her husband and herself.
224
CHAPTER XVI.
" All that life contains of torture, toil, and treason,
Shame, dishonour, death, to him were but a name.
Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season,
And ere the day of sorrows, departed as he came."
R. L. STEVENSON.
" Her children rise up and call her blessed."
1870-1875.
IN the spring of this year we were made very
anxious hearing that scarlet fever had broken out
at Marlborough, and this was increased when our
dear Frank took it, mercifully it was of a mild
type. My husband would not hear of my going up
to him, as I had never had the fever ; but he went,
and after staying a short time with the house
master, Mr Bell, he and Mrs Knightley whose
boys were great friends of Frank, and had also
had the fever moved them all three to Clifton,
where they underwent quarantine: and in May my
husband was able to bring Frank to join us in
London on our way to the Black Forest, where we
had decided on spending the summer. We settled
ST BLASIEN. 225
ourselves at St Blasien, a very imposing-looking
place. It had once been a church and monastery,
and was now turned into a hotel. I think we
were the only English people there ; but it was a
very pretty country, full of clear running streams,
where Frank got some fishing and Walter pursued
the chase of butterflies, a taste he had learnt at
Chateau d'Oex. Andrew Lang, too, joined us ; and
my husband went and met Nellie coming from
Vevey. So we were a goodly family party, and
had not to depend for company on visitors. There
was one young German couple who interested us,
a Herr von Goler and his wife from Karlsruhe.
He was A.D.C. to the Grand Duke of Baden, and
had come to St Blasien for a month's holiday ; but
they had not been there a week when one morning
he came to my husband, and in an awe-stricken
voice said he had got a wire, " Krieg erklart,"
and he had to return to Karlsruhe at once. This
was the beginning of the terrible Franco-Prussian
War, at which the world gazed aghast for eigh-
teen months. It came as unexpectedly on the
A.D.C. as it did on us ; and I remember we took
charge of the one-year-old baby (who could sing
but not speak !), while nurse and parents hastily
gathered together all their possessions and then
hurried off home that afternoon.
When in Karlsruhe in 1901 I called on the von
p
226 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Golers, sending up my card with " St Blasien, 1870:
Karlsruhe, 1901" written on it. I was most warmly
welcomed, and found the musical baby was now
married and the father of several babies ! When
the Freiherr came in I thought the thirty -one
years had dealt gently with him, for he was a
very fine-looking soldierly man ; and when I com-
plimented him in bad German on his appearance,
"Ach," he replied, "aber ich fuhle so alt." "Just
the reverse of me," I said ; " ich bin so alt und ich
fuhle so jung!" But to return to 1870. Soon
the Kellners all went off to the war, and the young
men of the village followed, till there seemed no
one left but anxious women and children. One
had never been brought face to face with war
before, and we thought it would be well to leave
St Blasien and go to Switzerland. We went first
to Zurich and then to Felsenegg, above the Lake
of Zug, where we stayed for some time, then pro-
ceeding to Engelberg, a beautiful place not very far
from the Lake of Lucerne. Here we met Mr Benn
again, and he and my husband had many moun-
tain expeditions. We returned home by Karlsruhe
in August, and went to the hospital, where it was
a touching sight to see German and French soldiers
who, a short time before, were enemies trying to
kill each other, now playing chess, draughts, and
other games in the most amicable manner.
A DEPARTURE FOR AUSTRALIA. 227
As we passed down the Ehine on our way home,
there were not many outward signs of war, but
there was an unrest all round, and many rumours
of battles and disasters, all of the latter on the
French side : they were ill - prepared for a war
which had been entered upon with such a culpably
" light heart " by Louis Napoleon. But this is a
domestic, not a military or political, survey of the
times, so I pass on.
In the spring of 1871 the doctors all thought
that a sea voyage and a year's residence in a milder
climate would be of the greatest advantage to
Frank, who had outgrown his strength but not
the evil effects of the scarlet fever. So it was
decided he should go to Australia to his Uncle
Robert and Aunt Matilda ; my dear father sent
his own man, Matthew, an excellent servant and
most skilful nurse, to attend to him; and they
sailed from Tilbury in the Joshua in May. We
had stayed with the Octavius Smiths at Princes
Gate, and John Sellar went with us to see him
off. When did he ever fail to speed the parting
and welcome the coming guest ? And how thankful
we were for the upholding of his kind sympathetic
spirit, for of all temporary partings surely the
saddest and most heart -aching is with the loved
ones who " go down to the sea in ships " ! In a
moment they are out of sight and with a gulf of
228 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
waters between us, perhaps never to be crossed
again, as was the case here. But, thank God!
the future is not revealed to us, and hope whis-
pered that this voyage would do so much for him.
Yet as we rowed away and looked at the slight
young figure in grey looking over the bulwark till
he was borne out of our sight, our hearts felt
very heavy. On our return dear Mrs Smith was
most kind to us, for she had loved the boy ever
since he was a baby at Ardtornish.
That summer we had taken a small house in the
North of Mull, close to Glen Gorm, which stands
out like a lighthouse on the farthest northern point,
with a glorious view of the Western Isles. The
correct placing of North and South Uist was a
constant subject of speculation with my husband
when we dined at Glen Gorm, for he generally
felt gravelled for lack of matters in conversation.
Mrs F. and her daughters, though really clever
women, were somewhat arid in talk, and whenever
I heard the word South Uist I knew my husband
had come to the end of his tether !
Among the books we read that summer was a
short 'Life of Julian Fane* by his friend Lord
Lytton (Owen Meredith), in which he mentions
Mr Fane's devotion to his mother, and how no
birthday of hers passed without his sending her
a sonnet in celebration of it. " How different," I
A BIRTHDAY ODE. 229
said, "from my prosaic children, none of whom
greet me in this manner ! " But on my birth-
day, which happened a few days after, I found
what from its writing I thought was a begging
letter, but it turned out to be a Birthday Ode by
my daughter Eppie, aged twelve :
" I've seen with grief her hair grow white,
And wept some tears at this sad sight ;
Few has she, but some London lotion
Has set the growing powers in motion."
I denied the veracity of her facts, and thought
her humour was greater than her poetic gifts !
While we were at Sorn my cousin, Constance
Hamilton, came round with her yacht and carried
off my husband and our daughters Eleanor and
Eppie to Skye. And this was the first of many
visits they paid to Dunvegan and its handsome
chief. The Macleod some years after married a
young Austrian countess, and going on board Mrs
Hamilton's yacht she exclaimed, "Ach, I will be
often with you in ghost!" meaning in spirit. I
think it was on this occasion that Eppie, suffer-
ing curious pains in her limbs, saw a local doctor,
who declared it was " rheumatic gout/' - " How
can so young a child have such a thing the matter
with her?" my husband asked. She looked up
quizzically and said, " ' If gouty deeds my father
pleased/ would not that account for it?"
230 KECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
I cannot remember many circumstances of that
summer, except the unparalleled beauty of the sun-
sets, and the remark the Ardtornish manager made
when we told him we had taken Sorn, and hoped the
air would be very good. " Air ! " he replied ; " why,
there's nae thing but air ! " And certainly sea and
air, and the view of distant islands, and the strange
feeling that there was nothing but sea between us
and America, did constitute a great charm, though
probably in these restless days of motor cars and
steam-yachts the life there would have been voted
very slow.
We returned to Edinburgh in October, and I
was thankful my husband had his work to do,
for the accounts from Australia became more and
more grave about our dear boy. Only those who
have similarly suffered know the additional pang
that absence gives, the awful longing to see and
hear and be near the loved one, that can never be
granted, but which eats into one's heart. On the
8th of January 1872 we got a telegram to say that
all was over and he was at rest. The end had
come quietly, and no one could have tended him
more lovingly and carefully than his uncle and
aunt, who were indeed devoted to him. What the
loss of our first-born was to us I cannot and will
not attempt to say. There never was a gentler
soul, or one more pure in heart, and now " he sees
LOSS OF A FIRST-BORN. 231
God," and one knows " it is well with the child."
But nothing can entirely remove the sense of loss
and all the possibilities of " might - have - been "
which, perhaps, " alone can fill desire's cup to the
brim." He " rests by the long wash of Australasian
seas," far from his own immediate kindred, but near
him now are the ashes of the kind uncle and aunt
who supplied the place of his own parents. In
his last dear letter to me he said, but without
dwelling on it, he had been very ill, but that
he was better, and that he hoped soon to come
home. And this wish was fulfilled, but not in
the way he anticipated, for it was to a home not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens, that
he was called.
Matthew, the servant who had nursed him so
devotedly, returned to England at once, and came
to see us, bringing with him the dear boy's small
possessions. And all who have gone through this
trial know the anguish of it, the contrast of the
durability of "mute, insensate things," and the
quick confusion to which the young spirit has
succumbed, a heart-breaking experience.
During the years 1874-75 we passed through
that autumn which comes in all families when the
older generation one by one begins to pass away.
I have already told how gently death came to
my father in June 1874. When, in the ensuing
232 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
February, my husband's mother was taken from
us, death came in as lovely a guise.
She had spent the summer of 1874 with us at
Kenbank. My husband was busy with his volume
on Virgil, and I remember with what eagerness
she listened to his reading aloud from the MS.
her characteristic reverence for learning combining
with her intense affection for her son to fill her
heart with proud satisfaction.
In September she returned to her own house in
Walker Street. There was no pain nor sickness,
only a gradual failure of the bodily powers. She
had always been the best of correspondents, and
now she still sat guiding that unwearied pen of
hers ; but so dim had her sight grown that she
sometimes failed to notice that she had no ink on
her , pen. She got into the habit of handing her
letters to the grand -daughter who lived with her
to have them corrected.
For some days before she took to her bed she had
written diligently, but had never asked " to have
the press corrected," her own phrase. A few days
later she sent for her blotting-book and showed us
six letters addressed to her sons. Only two were
finished, but all were begun, so that no one should
feel neglected. Life was dear to her among all her
children and grandchildren, and when she first felt
her strength going she had some days of quiet
J
From a photograph
by Rodger, Si Andrews, 1856.
MRS SELLAR.
"STEPPING WESTWARD." 233
sadness. Then she realised that this was an
occasion for her instinctive delight in giving, and
grew quite cheerful, looking round her room and
deciding to whom she might leave all her little
possessions. One of my daughters was not very
strong that year, and "Grannie" was eager that
she should enter at once into the possession of
her sealskin. When I tried to put this off she
said decidedly, "No, the cold weather is coming:
besides, if she waited till I were dead she would
not wear it at once."
For three months the dear old lady lay in her
room, her bodily powers gradually failing, but
nothing clouding her mind nor weakening her
immense power of loving. One of her grand-
children was attending my husband's lectures on
Latin literature, and, for love of the lecturer, the
old lady insisted on having notes read aloud to
her. On one occasion, after a long pause, she
said, looking puzzled, " I can't remember whether
there were two Scipios called Africanus or one."
When satisfied on this point she quoted a
passage out of Addison's ' Cato.' The sound old
eighteenth-century culture instilled into her almost
seventy years before by her revered aunt, Miss
Young, was alive in her up to the last !
But her main preoccupation was in the small
happinesses she could give. She had been much
234 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
taken up with giving me a Christmas present,
and to please her I had chosen a fine old silver
buckle. The first time I went into her room with
it on, she was lying with her face turned to the
wall. " How are you this morning, dear Grannie ? "
" Very far through." Then with her habitual
courtesy, turning painfully round, she added in a
brighter tone, "But not too bad to admire your
pretty new buckle ! "
Her barrel of apples from America did not
arrive till after the New Year, and though she
was at the last stage of weakness she kept plan-
ning the baskets of apples to be sent to various
families of children. " Has Percy Grant had his
apples ? " was among the last things she said.
Except Eobert, the Australian, all her sons were
in this country at this time. They all came and
went constantly to see her: the best - beloved,
Johnnie, came down twice a-week from London to
be with her. Though she could not eat much, it
was a pleasure to him to bring all kinds of little
comforts for her. And she who counted that day
lost in which she had given nothing, was always
touched and surprised by gifts bestowed on her-
self. Once he brought her down a beautiful soft
grey dressing-gown, and the first time she had
it on I happened to slip unseen into the room.
He was sitting beside her, and she was stroking
LAST HOURS. 235
his hand, saying, " My dear Johnnie, my bonnie
boy " ; and then, with a funny little touch of
humour she added, " Would it be profane to say
* Thou hast warmed me, clothed and fed me ' ? "
To save trouble to the household her sons lived
at the Club or in hotels ; but this fact (which
would have vexed her hospitable heart) was con-
cealed from her, and she would give eager and
particular instructions about their meals.
Brought up in the school of Presbyterian
Moderatism, her piety was cheerful, humble, and
reserved, and drew its strength from certain
chapters of the New Testament, and its emotion
from the beloved Scottish Paraphrases. These
we read to her the last thing before she was left
for the night, but if her maid happened to come
into the room at the time, she would motion to
the reader to stop, and make anxious inquiries
if there were "rizzered" haddocks and other
essentials for the gentlemen's breakfast. Then
with a little apologetic sign she would say, " ' Let
not your hearts with anxious thoughts be troubled
or dismayed* but I wish I were sure that my
sons were quite comfortable ! "
Four sons, two daughters - in - law, and three
grandchildren were in the room when she gently
breathed her last. Her hand was clasped in
Johnnie's, and my own name was the last she
236 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
uttered. I have always been glad to remember
that the tenderest expression of affection in the
Scriptures was used by a daughter-in-law to her
mother-in-law.
It was a great regret to us that our dear Dr
John Brown was at this time away from home,
and unable to be with her and us. A few weeks
after her death he came to see me in Walker
Street, and I noticed how sadly his eyes dwelt on
the writing-table where she was accustomed to
sit. Then he said, " I used to tell her that she
would die some day writing to John : she did far
better, died with his hand in hers."
237
CHAPTEE XVII.
" Where the kingdom of Galloway's blest
With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat."
A. LANG.
" Kenmures have fought in Galloway
For Kirk and Presbyt'rie ;
This Kenmure faced his dying day
For King James across the sea.
It little skills what faith men vaunt,
If loyal men they be
To Christ's ain Kirk and Covenant,
Or the King that's o'er the sea."
A. LANG.
1872.
IT was with a heavy heart for the loss of our boy,
whose death in Australia, as I have related, took
place at St Kilda, near Melbourne, on the 8th of
January, that a couple of months later we began
the somewhat wearisome process of looking out
for a house to which we could go in summer, as
we were rather tired of having a new place every
season. And the pleasant arrangements of a Scot-
tish University enable the professor to have an
unbroken holiday, which he can and in this case
did devote to writing on his own subject, and
238 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
not to the otium cum dignitate which is some-
times supposed to be the great object. It is
this leisure, giving them time to lay in what
they have afterwards to give out, which induces
many a distinguished scholar to come from a
Southern to a Northern University. My husband,
by mere chance, heard one day from a friend
that, driving the previous summer in Galloway,
he had seen a cottage, beautifully situated above
the banks of the Ken, near the little upland
village of Dairy. Mr Home was so enthusiastic
about the beauty of the country, and the name
of Galloway had such a pleasant sound in our
ears, that we determined to make a pilgrimage
into this terra incognita, accompanied by our
eldest daughter Eleanor.
The station at New Galloway, nine miles from
Dairy, rather depressed us, and we felt we had
come to the end of the world. Our spirits were
not revived by the intelligence that we must
either walk to New Galloway (five miles off),
whence we could get a carriage to take us to
Dairy, or wait four hours at the station for the
Dairy omnibus which met the next train. " They
also serve who only stand and wait" is a noble
line, and useful in the conduct of life, but not
carrying much comfort to one stranded in a lonely
railway station. So we accepted with gratitude
NEW GALLOWAY. 239
the kind offer of an old friend of my husband, Mr
Kenmure Maitland, who had come by the same
train, but was more fortunate in having the
Kenmure carriage to meet him, and in this he
proposed to drive us up to New Galloway. The
drive along the banks of Loch Ken is very lovely,
soft and peaceful in a singular degree ; and indeed
peace seemed to me the characteristic of the whole
country, especially of its lovely hills, but, except
the distant view of the blue Carsphairn hills, the
Kells range which is such a feature at Dairy
is not visible from the road along the lake. At
the avenue at Kenmure Castle Mr Maitland got
out, as we were still a mile from New Galloway ,,
where we were to get a carriage for Dairy.
We were much struck by this avenue, which
was exactly like a lofty green cathedral aisle ;
and I remember Mrs Gordon, whose home it
was, telling me later that, when she was a
child, so thickly had the upper branches inter-
twined themselves that a boy had climbed across
them. But decay had begun, and when I saw
them last year thirty-three years later the top
branches had broken off, and though still beautiful
it was an unroofed aisle. Probably there is truth
in the old saying that lime-trees take a hundred
years to grow, a hundred to flourish, and a
hundred to decay, rather a sad celebration of
240 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
their tercentenary. My husband had sat on the
box of the carriage and heard from the old coach-
man all " the clash of the country," especially of
its leading spirit, Mr Kennedy of Knocknalling,
who "made a* things go when he came doun."
The drive from New Galloway, leaving the lake,
crosses the Ken, where it flows gently and smoothly
through fertile meadows, though farther up the
glen it rushes like a Highland torrent over rocks
and boulders and between cliffs. The course of few
rivers of so short a length shows such a variety, and
always beautiful. The village of Dairy straggles
up a hill, and not far from the top of it we found
Kenbank, the house we were in search of. Dairy
is situated in the heart of the Covenanting country,
and from there had sprung the resistance to Prelacy
which culminated in the " Pentland Rising." The
situation was all we could desire. A farmer and
his family were in possession, living in the kitchen
wing, and the dining-room was utilised as a
granary! But we saw possibilities of making it
a comfortable house for summer residence, and
went home with the intention of taking a lease
of it, which we did, and set about furnishing it
as quickly as possible, as we decided to go there
in May.
Climate is perhaps not the strong point in any
of the most beautiful parts of Scotland, but this
THE GORDONS OF KENMURE AND LOCHINVAR. 241
first summer happened to be a very fine one, and
we all became attached to our little summer re-
treat, and continued so till we left it twenty years
after. The village was ten miles from the rail-
way station, to which an omnibus went every
morning, returning in the evening, and that kept
us in touch with the world, without destroy-
ing the primitive flavour and originality of the
people. Many warm friends we made among them,
and the absence of years has never diminished the
interest they take in everything that concerns our
family. Of the neighbours who received us with
such kindness that we soon ceased to feel strangers,
I should like to record some memories of dear old
Mrs Gordon and her family. She was the last
lineal descendant of the historic house of the
Gordons of Kenmure and Lochinvar. On the
death of her uncle, Lord Kenmure, her brother
Adam had succeeded to the title, and she received
the rank of a viscount's daughter. On her brother
dying without children she succeeded to the prop-
erty. A propos of Lord Kenmure, years after this,
on one of our pilgrimages to Craigenputtock, we
called on an old farmer, Murdoch by name, who,
in his youth, had known Burns well. He told us
how, as a lad, he had rowed the boat in which
this Lord Kenmure had taken Burns and a clerical
friend over Loch Ken. They landed on a rather
Q
242 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
difficult part of the shore, and Burns jumped
into the water and carried the clergyman on his
back, Lord Kenmure calling out, " Well, Burns, I
never thought to see you priest-ridden ! " It was
on this visit that Burns, riding along the wild hill-
road from New Galloway to Newton-Stewart in a
fierce thunderstorm, composed his famous " Scots
wha hae wi' Wallace bled." His ballad, " Ken-
mure' s on and awa'," dates from this same time.
Burns also, some years later, wrote the following
lines on Mrs Gordon's aunt, a Miss Davies, who
was a beauty, but extremely petite:
" Ask why God made the gem so small,
And why so huge the granite ;
Because He meant mankind should place
The greater value on it."
Old Murdoch told us more about Burns : much
has escaped my memory, but I remember when I
bewailed Burns's intemperance he broke out with " I
wunner to hear a sensible woman like you talk such
d d nonsense ! " A fellow-feeling in this matter
had made him " wondrous kind " to Burns ! As we
were on our way to Craigenputtock, I asked him if
he had ever seen Carlyle. He replied, "Na, na ;
he aye keepit folks aff the road him ! " A variant
of Carlyle's own expression, " Slamming the door
on nauseous intruders."
Mrs Gordon's early education had been given to
REMINISCENCES OF BURNS. 243
her by an old French emigre, a Chevalier of the
Legion d'Honneur, who lived with her uncle, and
he had instilled into her such a love of Froissart's
1 Chronicles ' that she declared she knew them as
well as she knew her Bible. She used to tell, as
characteristic of this gentleman's mingled naivete'
and pride, that while he was reduced to making
his nightcaps and waistcoats out of his wife's old
gowns, he would accept nothing from Lord Kenmure
except the payment due to him for teaching French
to the young people. From this preceptor she had
perhaps also gained something of the French charm
of manner which, united with her inborn Scottish
vigour and capacity, made her a most gracious and
interesting chatelaine. She lived a great deal in
the past, and so imbued one of her granddaughters
with her own interests that the younger woman
almost came to feel herself her grandmother's con-
temporary. One of my daughters, going down to
Kenmure after a long spell of wet weather, was
greeted with, " Oh, Florence, it is quite bewildering
to see any one so modern. Grannie and I haven't
come down later than the '45."
Mrs Gordon used to relate a curious psychical
experience she had once during her life in India.
She was up at a hill - station, having left her
husband at his station in the plains. She awoke
one night thinking she heard him calling " Louisa,
244 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Louisa, come to me." She went to sleep again,
and again distinctly heard his voice, so she
insisted on starting at once to rejoin him, and
found him in extremis. He had been bled : his
native servants had deserted him : a bandage had
slipped, and but for her arrival he must have bled
to death. He lived two years after this. She had
many curious stories of seeing apparitions. She
returned to Scotland, and at her brother's death
resumed her maiden name, and was henceforth
the Hon. Mrs Bellamy Gordon, and her home was
the beautiful, historical old castle of Kenmure. It
stands upon a conical hill round which the approach
winds, and commands a beautiful view of lake,
river, and hills. The garden, which is the pride of
the country, is surrounded by a very high beech-
hedge, and within its boundary is the old bowling-
green on which the Lord Kenmure of that day and
Lord Nithsdale were playing in 1715 when they
were called away to join the ill-starred Kebellion,
in which both were taken prisoners and put in
the Tower of London. Lady Kenmure rode, with
short pauses, night and day to London to en-
treat for her husband's pardon, but without avail,
and he was beheaded on Tower Hill. Lady
Nithsdale was more fortunate in rescuing her
husband from prison by dressing him in woman's
clothes to personate her maid Betty; but a
THE HON. MRS BELLAMY GORDON. 245
story so well known I need not repeat. Two
bowls, one with a large K and the other with an
N, remain at Kenmure to recall that time. How
many happy hours have we all spent in that beauti-
ful old garden ! And never did we leave Kenmure
without being laden with flowers, fruit, or game,
and sometimes all three. Dear old Mrs Gordon was
never so happy as when giving ; and one day, when
she was not very well, and I went to her room to
thank her for all the things we were taking home,
she said, " Am I not a happy old woman, my love,
to have things to give ? "
Mrs Gordon had the dignified simplicity suitable
to the last direct descendant of an old historic
house, living on in her noble old castle ; but her
greeting was so cordial, her talk so vivid, her
whole presence so gracious and responsive, that it
was only gradually that one noticed how carefully
punctilio was observed. Up to the end she would
rise from her chair to greet the youngest guest. She
would never send a verbal message instead of a
note, nor write a note without some touch of wit
or courtesy. Her experience of life and of varied
fortune had given her a larger outlook than the
unquestioning conservatism that one might have
expected to find in such surroundings. Once, after
listening to some younger people expressing rather
prejudiced views, she said to me confidentially,
246 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
" You see, my dear, I am a bit of a Kadical." If
her own politeness was too perfect to be obvious,
nothing disturbed her more than any one paying
her fussy attentions. Once, when an officiously civil
guest had left the room, she said, with a sigh of
relief, " Now, my love, pick up my ball : I haven't
dared to raise my eyes for half an hour, lest
should offer to do something for me."
Of her stories of her childhood one remains in my
memory because of her manner of telling it. " My
love, I once did something for which I feel I can
never be forgiven. When I was very young my
father was in charge of the Coastguard, and we
lived at Portpatrick, and I went to a dancing-
school at Stranraer with the children of the neigh-
bouring gentry. But on the great day, once a-
year, when all the world came to see us dance, the
children of the towns-people joined our class. There
was among them one little boy with golden curls
whom we all admired very much, but he always
chose to dance with a pretty little girl, the child
of a shopkeeper in the town. I think the master
must have been a bit of a flunkey, for he said, at
the opening of the exhibition, ' Now, little Missie
Gordon may choose her partner.' I looked for the
boy with the golden curls : he was standing beside
his little partner, and oh, mv dear ! I carried him
PASTIMES AT KENMURE. 247
off, and she cried ; and I don't see how I am ever
to be forgiven !"
Feeling, and even what we call sentiment, were
stronger in her than in any one of her age I
have ever known. Mr Ruskin was a kinsman
of her grandchildren, and on one occasion paid
a visit to Kenmure accompanied by his cousin,
Mrs Severn, and her husband. After dinner we
were all sitting listening to Mrs Severn's charm-
ing singing of " There grows a bonnie brier- bush
in oor kail -yard," when I noticed Mrs Gordon
get up and leave the room with a little air of
agitation. One of her granddaughters slipped
out after her, and on her return I asked if any-
thing were the matter. "Dear old grannie, I
found her in her room a little overcome. ' I
haven't heard that song,' she said, 'since I heard
it sung by the only man I ever loved.' '
Another time, but this was many years later,
when we were all dining at Kenmure previous
to our returning for the winter to Edinburgh, we
proposed playing games with pencils, and one of
the games was to draw from a bag a question, and
then a noun, and write the answer in verse bring-
ing in the noun. She at first refused to play, but
we insisted she should try. She drew " Which is
best, beauty or talent ? " and the noun was " fancy
248 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
ball"; and before any of us were ready with our
halting rhymes and answers she had written
" Beauty at a fancy ball !
Talent there's no use at all ;
And yet we freely must confess
In both we do admire a dress (address)."
Considering Mrs Gordon was past eighty, I think
this was rather a remarkable production ; but her
head was as good as her heart, and she is one
of the people who dwell very vividly in my memory,
and whose friendship I valued highly.
I think there ought to be a clause in the thanks-
giving prayer for the best and dearest we have
known on earth, also for the great beauty that
Nature has spread around us so lavishly, the
two things that have given us the most enduring
happiness " while here we sojourned."
Mr Kennedy, who was the proprietor of Kenbank,
the cottage we had taken, justified all the coach-
man had said of him, he did " make a' things go."
He was a very handsome man, " ruddy and of a
fair countenance," with the keenest, most penetrat-
ing eyes under a pent-house of shaggy black eye-
brows, which gave his face a very distinctive look.
His strength and energy were as the strength of
ten. "Time could not wither him." He hunted,
he shot, he danced, all equally well : was clever,
shrewd, humorous : had a fund of anecdote, and
KNOCKNALLING. 249
told a story in the most racy manner. His hospi-
tality knew no bounds, and if he met us on the
road his first words would be, " Come and dine
with me to-night." And very often we did dine ;
and how lovely the drives home in the moonlight
by the river were ! Exciting, too, in later years, for
one of our dear little horses, Punch, had a curious
dislike to the sound of laughter, which certainly
made his name inappropriate ! And as we seldom
made a quiet exit from Knocknalling, as soon as
he heard Mr Kennedy's laugh he would rear and
prance in rather an alarming manner. One day,
indeed, he broke the traces, but that being done he
having "no vice/' as the coachman said remained
quite quiet till a new trace had been put on.
Knocknalling is a beautiful place, four miles up
the glen from Dairy, and embosomed in the forest
hills, the Ken on the one side of the property
and the Pulharrow stream, which takes its rise
in Loch Dungeon, on the other. All who have
lived in this part of Galloway feel its charm, but
it is difficult to describe it to those who have
not had that advantage. There is something of
the Border country in it and something of the
Highlands : it is lonely but not sad, soft and yet
wild. Oh, for an hour of Walter Scott ! Had
he seen it, and re-created it, all the world would
have loved it, as those did who lived in it.
250 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Just opposite Kenbank was Glenlee, the place
that had given the territorial title to Mr Millar
when, as Lord Glenlee, he went on the Bench. It
had been bought by Mr Wellwood Maxwell, but he
had died the year before we came to the country,
and his widow and children were living there then,
and we became great friends a friendship that has
gone on to the present day ; for though Glenlee has
passed into alien hands, Mrs Maxwell has built a
cottage near New Galloway, and her daughter
Kitty, Mrs Alfred Courtney, has a lovely little
house quite near, and their warm greeting is now
one of the pleasant features of a visit to that
dear country.
The only other property near us was The Holme,
belonging to Mr Augustus Spalding ; but as he was
a confirmed bachelor, he preferred living in a smaller
house he had built, close to where the Ken runs
into Loch Ken and for ever loses its name and
character, for when it emerges it has become the
river Dee, the junction taking place near Parton
Station. The Dee itself, a longer and more im-
portant river, takes its rise on the other side of
the Kells range, which presents a very different
" soul's face " from what it shows on the Glenkens
side, where perfect peace seems to dwell on its
soft blue outlines. On the Dee side it passes
through desolate moors, under weird threatening
THE GLENKENS. 251
hills, the scene, one feels sure, though he "names
it not for fear of inquisitive tourists," of Mr Buchan's
powerful story, " No-Man's-Land," in ' Blackwood's
Magazine' for January 1899. As a friend re-
marked, after reading that story, " anything might
happen among those gruesome Galloway hills."
Mr Spalding let The Holme every summer, which
gave us a variety of acquaintances, but he himself
did not come down from London till the shooting
season, which we regretted, as we left early in
October ; for he had great social abilities, was a
brilliant actor and a most genial friend. Bobert
Paterson, who was the original of " Old Mortality,"
did much of his self-chosen and pious work among
the tombstones in the Glenkens ; and there is a
stone monument of him and his old pony in the
grounds of The Holme, near the Garpole burn.
That first summer my husband and I left the
children with Miss Schwab, their clever governess,
at Kenbank, and went to Edinburgh, to old Mrs
Sellar's house in Walker Street, on the 14th of
September, and on the 17th was born a little boy,
whom we called Edmund Francis, after our old
friend Professor Lushington and the dear boy we
had lost. The children joined us in our own house
in Buckingham Terrace in October, and we all
settled down for the winter, greatly comforted and
cheered by the presence of our little baby boy.
252
CHAPTER XVIII.
" Fast yellowing phantom birches shake,
In dreams I hear the Ken ;
On those dear hills might musing break
To music once again."
J. W. MACKAIL.
" Or where, amid the empty fields,
Among the bracken of the glen,
His yellow wreath October yields
To. crown the crystal brows of Ken."
A. LANG.
1873-1889.
WHEN spring came round again we felt the comfort
of having a place of our own to go to, and the more
we saw of the Glenkens the better we liked it.
Though so far from the beaten track, there were
many excursions to be made from it; and being
inland, there were roads in all directions for driv-
ing, and rivers and burns innumerable holding
out occupation and hopes generally illusive to
the patient angler, who often was obliged to sit
"by some trottin' burn's meander" the livelong day
and return with an empty basket ; but to have done
this and "no' think lang" was surely a happiness
THE SALMON LOUP. 253
in itself, and makes one cease to wonder that phil-
osophers have so often been followers of the gentle
art, from Izaak Walton downwards. Another ad-
vantage the angler has is that the too constant
rain, which depresses the spirits of other men,
fills the rivers, and, in consequence, his heart
with hopes of better luck. I am afraid the Ken
was " fair and false," it looked so beautiful but
was not prolific in fish.
Up the river, about a mile in the Earlston
property, was a waterfall called the Salmon Loup ;
and it was fascinating to sit on the banks over-
looking it and see the salmon so gallantly fling-
ing themselves up the fall. Some attained their
end at once ; many fell back, but, nothing daunted,
renewed their efforts with a perseverance worthy
of human emulation. A visit to these falls was
our regular Sunday afternoon walk : it was also
the scene of many picnics. There was a small
tarn near Kenbank called Mossruddock, in which
trout were sometimes caught. One afternoon
Andrew Lang was fishing there, and John, our
gardener, quite a character, was fishing at the
other end. Andrew had been whipping the water
for some time with no result, and looking up saw
the sun setting in unwonted glory behind the
western hills. " By Jove, what a sunset ! " he
exclaimed. " Hae ye gruppit yin ? " came in a
254 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
stentorian voice from the other side of the tarn.
" I said sunset, not a trout," was Andrew's irate
reply.
Lochinvar was a place we often went to : it now
belongs to the Oswalds of Auchencruive, but was
originally part of the Kenmure estate, and Lochinvar
was the second title in the Kenmure family. " A
king may make a belted knight," but the force of
genius can go farther, for that mighty potentate,
Sir Walter Scott, has immortalised the name Loch-
invar in his spirited ballad, known all over the
English-speaking world. There is no great beauty
in the little loch situated in the middle of a bare
moor, unrelieved by trees ; but when the sun is shin-
ing and the heather is in blossom there is a charm
about it that is as sure as it is inexplicable. There
was a nice cottage by the side of the loch belonging
to the gamekeeper ; and many a tea-picnic we had
there, bringing the provisions, and getting what
Hannah More called the "tea equipage" there,
and the milk and cream.
I remember Mr Henry Craik (now Sir Henry
Craik) and his wife going with us to Lochinvar ;
and the conversation turning on " hard cases," I
said, " What would you do if some one pronounced
a word wrongly and you were obliged to repeat
the word, would you say it as they did, or
rightly ? " " Most certainly I should say it
A PRIZE BABY. 255
rightly," replied Mr Craik. " Yes," I said, " slur-
ring it over as much as possible ? " " Not at
all," broke in Mrs Craik ; "he would lay great
emphasis on it ! "
It was in 1873 that the annual Cattle Show took
place in New Galloway, and we were all there. Mr
Kennedy gave me 2s. 6d. as a prize for having the
handsomest baby in the county. " That puts me
on a par with you," I said, " who have the hand-
somest son." In the summer of 1905, when I saw
Mr Murray Kennedy at St Peter's Church in
London, walking up the aisle with his pretty
daughter and only child, who was about to marry
the Master of Sinclair, so handsome did he look
that I thought, even after thirty-two years had
elapsed, that my friend still held the field !
We had a visit in the summer of 1873 from
Mrs Ferrier and her daughter, Coggie. I can
only remember one characteristic saying of Mrs
Ferrier's. My husband had gone on a short cruise
with my cousin, Mrs Hamilton. I knew they were
going to Arran, so my economic soul was rather
disturbed by getting a telegram for which I had
to pay 2s. 6d. (New Galloway being then the
nearest telegraph station), telling me they were
at Lamlash. " Pretty expensive," I said, " to pay
2s. 6d. for ' piper's news M " " Yes, indeed," re-
plied Mrs Ferrier ; " wire back ' We have had
256 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
lamb hash for luncheon ' ! " This wild play on
words was so like her ! Years after, when she
was paying a visit to a friend on Loch Lomond,
and was laid up by a severe illness for some
weeks, at a time when astronomers were all
greatly excited by the strange movements of the
planet Venus, Mrs Ferrier, now sufficiently re-
covered to be taken home, was carried in a chair
to the carriage, and meeting another guest on the
stairs, exclaimed, " This is the transit of Venus ! "
This summer we had a flying visit from our dear
young friend, Tom Wyer, who arrived early one
morning before we were up, but I knew well where
I would find him, in the nursery with the baby !
And there, of course, he was, when an hour later
we met. I have never known any one with such
a passion for young children, to which all my
youngest ones could bear witness. He had as
fine qualities of brain as of heart, and had passed
high in the Civil Service, and was on his way to
India for the first time, when he came to wish us
good-bye.
Through all these happy summers at Kenbank
a crowd of welcome visitors filled the house and
overflowed into the Norwegian hut in the garden.
Like all Scottish people, we counted many of our
kinsfolk among our friends and frequent guests.
My cousins, the Macdowalls of Garthland, were of
THE MACDOWALLS OF GARTHLAND. 257
that convenient age, old enough to be my com-
panions, young enough to be the dear friends
of my children. They had inherited disciplined
character and religious instincts from a family
which counted Mr Erskine of Linlathen and Hay
Macdowall Grant among its kin, but their more
philosophical turn of mind and instinctive liberality
of view came, I used to think, from their mother,
my Aunt Isabella.
The eldest daughter, Maria, was head of her
father's house, and faithful kinswoman of a vast
relationship, and had her hands full of practical
duties, yet she found time to make her reputation
as an admirable translator of German books. The
next sister, Eleanor (my god - daughter), is the
heroine of one of the few stories of gipsy prophecy
which has been fulfilled. An old "spaewife" had
told her, as a girl, that she would marry a fair
man from the South, and "find twa doos in ae
nest." This was fulfilled when she married her
cousin, William Ingilby, brother of Sir Henry
Ingilby, Bart., of Ripley Castle, Yorkshire, and
had twin boys. Both these boys entered the
army ; and when I saw their mother during the
South African War, with her two sons "at the
front, I was reminded of Mrs Browning's Italian
poetess with her pathetic cry of " Both, both my
boys ! " I was the more deeply interested in her
258 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
anxiety, because our own elder boy, Walter, was
all through this war. He was wounded at Karee
Siding, and was obliged to be in hospital three
weeks ; but beyond this he has, mercifully, never
felt the smallest inconvenience from the wounds.
The Macdo walls belonged to a very old Galloway
family ; and when at Kenbank a young Balliol man
remarked the curious likeness of Anna Macdowall,
the youngest sister, to an antique painting at
Balliol, supposed to be a portrait of Devorguilla,
she expressed no surprise, for the Macdowalls,
if not descendants, at least counted kin with the
foundress of Balliol !
Another dear friend, Louisa Laurie, was a cousin
in the third or fourth degree, as far as blood was
concerned, but almost one of ourselves in the kin-
ship of nature. Her mother, Miss Finlay of the
Moss in Stirlingshire, had been my father's cousin,
and I recognised in Louisa the essential Finlay
qualities I had loved in him, restfulness, humour,
and a contemplative passion for nature. Her
strong prejudices in favour of all that is Scottish,
Presbyterian, and old-fashioned (strongly held if
humorously maintained), were a challenge and a
delight, first to my husband, and then to my sons.
When I think of the rush of young life through
the house, I sometimes wonder how my husband
managed to write the books he was engaged on
A SUNDAY-EVENING RECREATION. 259
during these summers. I had planned and carried
out a little study for him on the ground-floor ; and
from the garden or the lawn-tennis ground we could
see the " good grey head " bent sedulously over the
manuscript. In 1877 he published the volume on
Virgil which he had been engaged on for some
years ; and though, of course, I am no authority
on these matters, I believe, from what I have
heard, that it still holds its place as a valuable
book on the subject in Oxford and elsewhere. At
meals, and on his walks, he liked nothing better
than the talk of bright and lively girls, the
Macleods, Miss Alma Whately (a granddaughter of
Archbishop Whately), Miss Theresa Clive-Bayley,
Miss Alice Robertson (afterwards married to Mr
Maconochie, now Sheriff of the Lothians) : all felt
the attraction of his gentleness, his love of being
loved, his delightful humour.
We kept up, to some extent, the fast-vanishing
fashion of reading poetry aloud on Sunday evenings ;
and in a letter to Kate Dobson my husband de-
scribed himself as reading " * Obermann once More'
to a languid and disgusted family " !
There were some visitors whom he claimed as his
special property. Ernest Myers was one, a Radical
in those days of a very philosophical type, the
translator of Pindar, and a most perfect reader of
poetry. Another was Mr W. P. Ker, whom in
260 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
1878 my husband was fortunate enough to secure
as his assistant for one year. Mr Ker had been
a distinguished scholar of Balliol : he was already
engaged on those Italian, early French, and Icelandic
studies which, later, went to make him one of the
best equipped of literary critics. So sound and
sympathetic was his classical scholarship, that my
husband, in his last illness, said more than once,
" I do wish W. P. were to be my successor in the
Latin chair." His scholarship and keen sense of
humour appealed to my husband, and they worked
very happily together. This friendship culminated
in Mr Ker's seeing my husband's last book, ' Horace
and the Elegiac Poets/ through the press: it was
all but finished in 1890 when he died. For this
and all the kind things he has said and done, I
personally owe him a debt of gratitude. My thanks
are also due to Professor Butcher and Mr J. W.
Mackail, to each of whom I know it was a labour
of love.
Andrew Lang was, of course, a constant visitor ;
and though the too frequent rain was a trial, and
gave rise to the family proverb, " a regular Ken-
bank day," still I think he loved the country, and
two of his poems, " Ballade of his own Country,"
with the refrain, "With the smell of bog -myrtle
and peat," and " The Grass of Parnassus," are
especially dear to me on this account, although all
WEATHER PROVERBS. 261
hold a place in my heart. A propoe of proverbs
about the climate, one day, years after this, when
we were very anxious to go a long drive to the
foot of the Carsphairn Hills, the morning looked so
unpromising that we consulted John, the gardener,
as to our chances of having a fine day. He looked
wise, and turned round to see the " airt " of the
wind. " Yes," he said, " it will be fine the wind
blaws frae Doon to Dee ; had it been the opposite
way there would be rain." Lady Grant, who was
with us at the time, said, " There must be some
old-world rhyme about this " ; and when she came
down ready for our expedition, she declared she
had found it.
" Gin the wind blaws frae Doon to Dee,
Brawly buskit may ye be :
Gin the wind blaws frae Dee to Doon,
Pit aff, pit afF your braw new goon ! "
She had found it, but in the same way as Sir
Walter Scott found so many of his mottoes, not
in the pages of " old plays," as he called them, but
in the ready working of an imaginative brain.
In 1874 or the following year Andrew Lang and
his handsome fiancee, Miss Nora Alleyne, .paid us
a visit. From Grannie downwards we were all
greatly taken with her ; and she has remained the
constant friend of every member of the family
ever since. To me, personally, she has always
262 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
shown so much kind consideration that I feel
grateful to her, for to one so well informed and so
strictly accurate, my untidy mind content with
vivid and striking impressions and feelings must
often have been a trial !
So constant a visitor was Charles Maconochie,
that he called himself the " hardy annual." That
ignorer of titles, John, the gardener, called him
" Chairlie Maconochie," adding, " I aye liked him ;
he never forgot to ask after the state o' my
stomach." He was moved to this, no doubt, by
John having confided to him that, " for the health's
sake" of that valuable organ, he " began with 9
dozen o 1 peels and finished up with 12s. 6d. worth
o' bottles, and was nane the better for either!"
Charlie talked with my husband, who had a great
affection for him (I have often thought how he
would have rejoiced in his eventually becoming
Sheriff of the Lothians), shot with Mr Kennedy
at Knocknalling, fished with more or less success
with the boys, and was ready and helpful in
any " ploy " or entertainment that happened to
be proposed.
As the children grew older, many entertainments
of varied kinds were held in the village, to the
great delight of the inhabitants as well as of our-
selves. One time it was a lecture on Brittany
by Dr Wilson of Sweetheart Abbey, who, with his
VILLAGE ENTERTAINMENTS. 263
clever wife (a half-sister of Dr John Brown), came
over to help us. Being a great friend of Ruskin,
she had taken his advice and made many excellent
sketches of their travels in France. These she had
enlarged, and they made a very attractive accom-
paniment to Dr Wilson's most interesting lecture.
It was proposed that the next entertainment
should be of a more frivolous nature, and we
actually attempted a dance ! The town - hall of
those days was small and inconvenient ; the lamps
were more effective in emitting the strong odour
of petroleum than in transmitting any brilliancy of
light ; the floor well, it was more accustomed to
hobnailed boots than dancing - slippers ! But the
day before the ball a large party from Kenmure
joined the Kenbank family, and they danced all
afternoon, declaring that was the only possible way
of polishing the floor ! I think their motto was,
" What's the odds so long as we're happy ! " And
that they were, for it was a less blase generation
than the present one. John, the gardener, dressed
in his best " funeral blacks," insisted on handing
round the refreshments, and gave the finishing
touch to our innocent entertainment. I was struck
by a sentence I met the other day in a delight-
ful book about Ireland by Mr Filson Young a
propos of similar entertainments of this date in
country places there : " The simplicity and homeli-
264 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
ness of those jovial days saved them from the
social blight which too much artificiality and civil-
isation spreads, and kept their humanity sweet and
wholesome."
Our next attempt at entertainment took a much
higher range. We had Miss Mary Wakefield
most inspiring and delightful of singers ! with us,
and morally it seemed selfish to keep the enjoy-
ment of such a musical treat to ourselves. So we
looked about for a charitable motif for having a
concert, and found an appropriate one in the loan
library of the village, which stood much in need
of new books. I think the result was 18 ; and
considering the extreme pleasure we gave and got,
and the low price of the tickets, this was thought
very satisfactory. I cannot recall who assisted
Miss Wakefield, but any assistance more or less
counted for " padding," so enthralled were the
audience by her magnificent voice and her vivid
radiant personality.
In one of these summers we had a delightful
visit from Mr and Mrs Robert Shaw Stewart,
friends of old standing, who never failed us in sym-
pathy, in joy, or in sorrow. His buoyant spirits
and genial nature found enjoyment in our simplest
pleasures, though he did once say we were so
eccentric our house might be mistaken for a lunatic
asylum ! " Perhaps that is the reason," I said,
A FANCY DRESS DANCE. 265
" you are so at home in it." I remember his going
with us and Captain Chater to a fancy dress
dance in the neighbourhood of Castle-Douglas. I
had a bad headache ; but as in those days a
chaperon was a necessity now very much done
away with, I braced myself to accompany them,
puting on my card, " Dame de Moyen Age," which
admitted me in my ordinary evening dress. The
way was long sixteen miles in a closed waggon-
ette. Mr Shaw Stewart's elbow went through
one of the windows in the energy with which
he declaimed some original nonsense verses ; but
we considered this a pleasant diversion, as it
gave us more air. On arriving, we found our
host's house beautifully decorated with auratum
lilies; but the scent was so powerful that my
headache became unbearable, and I had to seek
refuge in my hostess's bedroom and lie down.
In little more than an hour her maid asked me
if I would mind going into another room, as
her lady was feeling so ill she was obliged to go
to her bed ! At 3 o'clock the welcome summons
to go home came, and I staggered down to the
carriage. And the motley crew we presented as,
with draggled fancy dresses and wearied bodies,
we faced the interminable drive in the early dawn
meeting the milkmaid singing blithe, if rather
out of tune, and the mower whetting his scythe
266 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
must have been a humbling sight ! Mrs Shaw
Stewart congratulated herself on having chosen the
better part of staying at home with my husband.
Andrew Lang and Miss Alleyne were married
in 1876, and henceforth became constant visitors
till we left the country in 1891. Many remin-
iscences of those days call up smiles and laughter
when we talk of them among ourselves; but it
would be " chronicling small beer " indeed, to write
them down for any but the participants. One
time but that was in his bachelor days after
leaving Kenbank, I received the following post-
card from Andrew Lang:
" Sur le pont de Carlisle
Le vent et la pluie !
Sur le pont de Carlisle
M. Lang s'ennuie ! "
A funny invitation he also sent me on a post-
card, when I was in London one spring, and he
happened to be left en garqon for a few days,
" A weary lot is mine, fair maid,
A weary lot is mine,
When dinner but for one is laid,
And I alone must dine.
I'll ask my Rider l to the feast,
Uncork my oldest wine
(Which you'll not care for in the least),
If you'll but come and dine, my dear,
If you'll but come and dine."
Rider Haggard.
RIDER HAGGARD. 267
I did go, and a very pleasant evening we had ;
and I was much interested in Mr Eider Haggard,
whose books were then making a considerable sensa-
tion. Later he came and stayed with us in Edin-
burgh when lecturing in the Synod Hall, and I took
him to see Mr Stewart, the cab proprietor, who, I
knew, was an ardent admirer of the originality of his
novels. Mr Stewart was delighted to see him, and,
with characteristic unconventionality, declared he
was like a splendid harlequin bursting in through
an open window on the staid literati of the day !
In 1881 a theatrical entertainment was at-
tempted, and I think I may say it was a great
success. " Sweethearts " was the piece, new then,,
though hackneyed now. The heroine's part was
taken by our daughter, Eppie, whose striking
likeness to Mrs Kendal was remarked on. We
did not know her at that time ; but years after,
Mrs Kendal and her charming husband became
intimate friends, and their yearly visits to Edin-
burgh are times of rejoicing. She had been
struck by the likeness between herself and Eppie,
and she told me that one evening Mr Hare
said to her, at the end of an act in a play in
which they were both acting, " Madge, there is
a lady in the stalls who is extraordinarily like
you." "Oh," she replied, " I know her well, and
will send and ask her to come round."
268 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
The hero of" Sweethearts," Captain Chater, after-
wards colonel in the Argyll and Sutherland High-
landers, was quite an exceptionally fine amateur
actor, and belonged to the dramatic company,
" The Strollers." The gardener in the play was
Vereker Hamilton, now an artist in London, and
one in whose strong and stirring battle-pieces
the military strain that both brothers inherited
from their father comes out. He was our guest at
the time, and so was his brother, Ian (afterwards
General Sir Ian Hamilton), invalided home from
South Africa after Majuba Hill, where he had been
badly wounded in the hand and wrist ; but with his
arm in a sling, and with his handsome face and
gallant bearing, he looked indeed an ideal young
hero. And the promise of his early career has been
more than fulfilled in every action of his distin-
guished life. I found I was by no means the
only person who was struck by his bearing ; for
one day, taking him down to Kenmure to see
old Mrs Gordon, she exclaimed, " Well ! it is
satisfactory to meet a hero at last who looks
like one."
I think I may add here a very characteristic
remark of Dr John Brown's. Ian, some years be-
fore this time, was staying with us in Edinburgh,
and was reading a book in a corner of the draw-
ing-room. Dr Brown called, and had been talk-
GENERAL SIR TAN HAMILTON. 269
ing to me : he crossed over, and, putting out his
hand, said (not having spoken to him before),
"Well, good-bye; I hope you're as good as you
look."
At these theatricals Ian sat with our little boy
Edmund on his knee. Edmund was dressed in a
Pyrennean suit which we had brought him from
Lourdes that summer, and very picturesque and
handsome they both looked. When applause was
being given in no stinted measure, Ian made
Edmund clap his unwounded hand, and so the
two swelled the chorus.
In September the following year, 1882, our
daughter Eppie was married by Principal Tul-
loch, in the parish church, Dairy (I believe it
was the first marriage that had ever taken place
there), to Cecil Scott Arkcoll, barrister in London.
One of these summers and as these are not
historical notes I may be allowed to play wild
havoc with dates ! Mr MacCunn brought down an
Oxford reading-party to Dairy, Mr Leveson Gower
(the " my dear George" later of Mr Gladstone's
celebrated letter) and Mr Shoebridge. He returned
the following year with Mr Hodgson and Mr Boul-
ton (later the editor of the ' Songs of the North/
and then full of enthusiasm for music, poetry,
and the beauty and romance of Scotland). This
was a very happy time, and it bore important
270 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
fruit, for Mr MacCunn returned several years
afterwards with his friend Professor now Sir-
Oliver Lodge ; and when we came back from
Italy, where we had gone for a short visit, we
found he had proposed, and was engaged, to our
daughter Florence. They were married in Sept-
ember 1887, in the parish church of Dairy, by
the Rev. Mr Walker, and a happier marriage was
never celebrated there or elsewhere. I am always
glad to think my husband saw his little grand-
son, who was born the following year.
I cannot end this chapter, which gives but a
faint recollection of the happy days we spent at
Kenbank, without mentioning a family with whom
we were so intimate that few days passed without
our meeting. Mrs Maitland, on the death of her
mother, Mrs Gordon, of whom I have already
written, took the name of Gordon on inheriting
the estates. She also inherited the spirit of kind-
ness and hospitality always shown at Kenmure ;
and though she had not so much of the abound-
ing vitality that characterised the elder lady, there
was something very attractive in her gentle re-
fined ways, and in the deep and quiet interest she
took in literature and art. She had so much of
the instinctive love of beauty, that a temporary
London lodging, when she inhabited it, took on
a grace by no means natural to it. Her eldest
PROFESSOR MACCUNN. 271
daughter, full of romance and originality, returned
to the " faith of her fathers," and became a
Roman Catholic. Just before she joined that
Church she was in a small town in Belgium, and
on the counter of a bookseller's shop she saw a,
manual of devotion written by a lady of the Ken-
mure family, and a collateral ancestress, who had
become an abbess in Belgium. I do not say this
had anything to do with her conversion, but
it was a curious coincidence. Miss Maitland has*
written several Catholic stories, some of which,
have been translated into German.
Of Eleanor, a younger sister, my heart would
say much, for she was dear to all who knew her ;.
but after some years of delicate health, in which
she spent the winters abroad, she faded away,
leaving the memory of a sweet unselfish life in*
the hearts of her friends. Jean, the youngest
daughter, was as keen an Episcopalian as her
sister was a Roman Catholic. From her initiative
efforts in securing a resident clergyman for two-
months in each summer, and regular services each
Sunday in the town hall, has arisen the beautiful
little Episcopal church, St Margaret's of Scotland,,
now erected in New Galloway. Colonel Gordon
Maitland predeceased his mother, and Kenmure-
Castle now belongs to his brother, James Mait-
land Gordon.
272
CHAPTER XIX.
"Among men of letters are to be found the brighest specimens and the
chief benefactors of mankind. It is they that keep awake the finer parts of
our souls ; that give us better aims than power or pleasure, and withstand
the total sovereignty of Mammon on this earth. They are the vanguard in
the march of Mind." CARLYLB.
" Great thoughts, great feelings came to them,
Like instincts unawares."
LORD HOUGHTON.
1874-1879.
THOUGH the following slight reminiscences of the
Master properly belong to Scotland and his visits
to it, there is no great unsuitableness in adding
them to these Balliol Memories, for it is in his own
college home the place he loved most on earth
that one's imagination most often pictures him.
I think it was towards the end of the year
1872 that Mr Jowett preached at the Old Grey-
friars' Church, in Edinburgh, on the so-called
opposition of science and religion, an opposition
which he thought would tend to disappear as
both were better understood. By a comparison
or contrast of Bunyan and Spinoza he illustrated
the opposition of faith and reason, and dwelt on
the hope that the dissensions which divide the
MR JOWETT ON BOSWELI/S 'LIFE.' 273
Christian world may be, and indeed are being,
healed. He summed up with the conviction which
more and more, as his life drew to a close, ap-
pealed to him, that those who do the works of
Christ are Christians, whatever name they may
bear.
It was on this visit that he lectured at the
Philosophical Institution on Boswell's * Life of
Johnson,' a subject peculiarly dear to his heart :
he once said he had read the book fifty times !
He took the keenest interest in Dr Hill's edition
of Boswell's ' Life/ which is dedicated to the
Master as " Viro Johnsonianissimo." Of ' Kasselas '
he thought very highly, and agreed with Boswell
that we might all read it with interest once a-
year. "It is the Vanity of Human Wishes," he
said, " delineated in a sort of prose poem or idyll."
He was interested when I told him my father had
given 'Rasselas' to me when I was ten years old,
and when, for love of the giver, I think I must
have pretended to like it more than I really did !
We had some people to meet the Master at
dinner when he was here ; and though most of
them liked him, and all were impressed by- him, I
never thought a dinner-party was the place where
he shone most, and he seldom inspired strangers
to be at their best with him, owing to his own
silence and want of quick response. One night he
274 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
dined out with some friends, and took down Miss
Jex Blake, the pioneer of medical education for
women, a clever woman, but an inveterate talker.
A fellow guest, after dinner, apologetically hoped
she might not have been too much for him. " Oh
no," he said ; " lex is the Latin for law, and, I
suppose, Jex for jaw." I only heard this anec-
dote quite lately, and it may be apocryphal.
The Master also preached at Elie, in Fifeshire,
in the parish church, that summer or the
following one, when he was staying with Sir
Alexander Grant and his family. The request
from the minister came quite unexpectedly, and
the Master had only one sermon with him, " On
the art of conversation " not quite appropriate to
his audience, mainly " fisher-folk " ! Lady Grant
declared it was difficult to keep from laughing
when she saw the old fishwives holding their
hands to their ears, or, as they called it, " sharpen-
ing their lugs," to hear the eternal gospel, and
getting what many of them must have thought
to be a " stone " when they were asking for
"bread"!
One of the Fellows of Balliol for whom my
husband had an immense admiration, which was
shared by all who knew him, was Mr Henry
Smith. He was Savile Professor of Geometry, and,
with his kind and genial sister, lived in Oxford,
MR HENRY SMITH. 275
and was the Master's right hand in all the
management of the college. His memory is
green in the hearts of the few contemporaries
who still survive him, and his witty and humor-
ous sayings linger in Oxford as specimens of the
livelier conversation of an earlier day. " Surely
Ruskin has a bee in his bonnet ? " asked some one
of him. " A bee ! oh, a hive of them ! but they
buzz so sweetly it does not matter." After read-
ing Darwin's ' Origin of Species/ Mr Smith found
himself inditing the following verse :
" Oh, glorious stream of tendency,
We raise our souls to thee,
Who out of primal jelly-fish
Hast made such folk as we ! "
Another time, on entering the room in which
he generally lectured, he found it filled with cases
of stuffed birds. As there was some idea of turn-
ing it into a natural history museum, he exclaimed
pathetically, " Am / not of more value than many
sparrows ! "
One more story I remember. A Mr Simon,
who chose to pronounce his name Simone, was
dining with Mr and Miss Smith, and she said to
her brother, " Why does he not pronounce his
name in the usual manner ? " " Oh ! " he replied,
"he is afraid lest Satan should desire to have
him, and sift him as wheat ! "
276 BECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
In June 1879 we paid a visit to the Master of
Balliol at Oxford, and met M. Tourgu^nief, the
Russian novelist, who was also a guest at The
Lodge, and was to receive the degree of D.C.L.
the next day. He was a very striking - looking
man, of great height and powerfully made. His
face was of the leonine type, and his manner
was so gentle and kind that we at once became
friends. He was very easy and eloquent in talk,
and spoke much of happiness. "If it did not
come, why pursue it ? It is like health : when
you don't think of it, it is there. Happiness
has no to-morrow, no yesterday; it thinks not
on the past, it dreams not of the future." He
gave a terrible account of Russia : 28,000 of the
best of the youth of the country in prison or
on their way to Siberia ; constitutionalists turn-
ing nihilists in their despair, he seemed to see
no ray of hope.
He told us of an extraordinary dream he once
had. He dreamt he was in a large hall, with an
iron door at one end of it. The hall was crowded
with people, and a strange whisper went round
them, coming from no one knew where, announc-
ing that each individual was to knock at the door,
and it would be opened to them by some one
whose age would be of the number of years the
inquirer would still have to live till death called
M. TOURGUENIEF. 277
him hence, " chacun rencontra Tdge de sa mort."
Just in front of Tourgue'mef was a radiant-looking
girl of eighteen : a child of three came out to
meet her. A great reluctance seized Tourguenief,
but the crowd behind pressed him forward. The
door opened ; no one came out, but as it closed
he heard the wail of a new-born infant. He
awoke cold and trembling, and so vivid had the
dream been that for some days he felt like a
man doomed to an immediate death.
At the luncheon at All Souls, after the degrees
had been given in the Theatre, he sat next me,
and as he was by far the most striking figure there,
I felt quite proud of my position! In a letter
Mr Jowett wrote to a friend at this time I see
he says, " Tourguenief was as pleased as a child
at the honour which was conferred upon him, not
least at the red gown of the D.C.L., which
Henry Smith and others subscribed and bought
for him."
At this time M. Tourguenief lived in Pans,
exiled from his native country. The Master of
Balliol, who afterwards often saw him there, told
me he never failed to ask after " that amiable
lady," perhaps my friends will not easily recog-
nise me under this sobriquet ! M. Tourguenief
died in 1882.
It was in 1885 that, on one of our numerous
278 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
visits to the Master of Balliol, we met Lord and
Lady Sherbrooke. Lord Sherbrooke's appearance,
from his great height and from his fine head and
features, would in any case have been striking, but
as he was an albino it was naturally very marked
and distinctive. His eyesight was defective, like
that of all albinos, and this must have been a
terrible handicap to so active and vigorous a brain.
He took me down to dinner, was most copious
and interesting in talk, and told me much of
his early life, referring especially to this matter
of eyesight. After he had been some time at
the Bar he consulted several oculists, and all
agreed that in a few years not more than seven
he would almost certainly become blind. As
he had married in 1836, he felt it was doubly
incumbent on him to work while it was " day,"
and make provision for the future ; and as there
was more prospect of making money quickly at
the Bar in New South Wales, he and his wife
sailed for Sydney in 1842. A trip to Australia
in a P. & 0. steamer of the present day is a
very different experience from a long voyage in
a sailing-vessel fifty years ago, and it reminded
him, he said, of Dr Johnson's dictum that "a
man in a ship is worse off than a man in jail,
for," said he, " the man in jail has more room,
LORD SHEEBROOKE. 279
better food, and commonly better company, and
is in safety." Lord Sherbrooke had been his own
best oculist, for he invented a protection to his
eyes that had served him well till the time I
speak of, when he was seventy - four ! These
spectacles, if they can be so called, were like very
thinly beat - out silver bowls of teaspoons, with a
hole in the centre of each not bigger than a pin-
hole, and this concentration of focus suited and
preserved his eyesight.
He spoke of his own statuette on a match-box,
by Pellegrini, which was on the Master's writing-
table, and asked if I knew the couplet in ' Punch/
written at the same time,
" Ex luce lucellum, the proverb you know ;
But if Lucy can't sell 'em, what then, Mr Lowe ? "
The humour of this so appealed to him that he
told the story with relish, though I heard after-
wards that the failure of the Budget of 1871 so
absurdly due to this trivial tax was one of his
bitterest disappointments. He had been made
Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1868. When we
met him, age had not withered his wit and
humour, but had mellowed the stinging " sarcasm
which so often scathed his opponents, and gave
rise to many squibs, such as the following one,
280 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
written by a Member of Parliament, but anony-
mous as far as I know:
" Here lie the bones of Robert Lowe,
Where his soul's gone I don't know :
If to the realms of peace and love,
Farewell to happiness above ;
If haply to a lower level,
I can't congratulate the Devil ! "
His memory was marvellous. Two or three years
after this time we had all been much exercised
in finding out where Scott had written his glori-
ous lines,-
" Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife !
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
I referred for help to our friend Mr Alfred
Benn, and for the first time he failed me ; but he
said Lord Sherbrooke, in a very striking speech
he had made some years before, had quoted them
with great effect, and from him I could get the
required information. I did not like to trouble
him, so I wrote to Lady Sherbrooke a very
charming woman, who devoted her whole life to
her husband, and on her asking him the question,
he at once said, "You will find it as the heading
to the 34th chapter in ' Old Mortality."'
It was at Balliol, too, that we had a delightful
meeting with Dean Stanley. His was a most
DEAN STANLEY. 281
attractive personality : his face, though sad and
worn, for this was not long after his wife's death,
was especially refined, and when he smiled it
seemed illuminated. One had heard many stories
of his absence of mind, such as taking a lady in
his own house down to dinner, and, forgetting the
main object, leading her to the front door to put her
into her carriage ! a proceeding she energetically
resisted. But if his mind was sometimes absent,
his manners never were. He talked much of his
wife and their supremely happy life together. I
told him I had once been at the Abbey, and how
kind Lady Augusta had been to me, talking much
of Dr John Brown, and of his and her great friend
Mrs Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter. The conver-
sation then turned to Edinburgh, and he asked me
if I had ever heard Dr MacGregor preach. I said
I had, and added, " Do tell me who persuaded you
to go and hear him when you and Lady Augusta
were on your way to St John's Episcopal Church
in Edinburgh some years ago. For, travelling
down from London, one of our fellow-travellers
a striking-looking man in a velvet skull-cap spoke
much of various preachers in England and Scotland,
and said he had had the good fortune to come across
you on your way to St John's, and had persuaded
you to go and hear Dr MacGregor instead, and this,
he believed, you had done, and had been delighted.
282 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Ever since I have wondered who he was, so now
do tell me." "Cook," he replied, not one of
those who, when in too great a majority, " spoil
the broth," but one who is the guide and mainstay
of the tourist who cannot look after himself!
Another time we again met the Dean at Balliol.
Our daughter Eppie was with us, and was next
the Dean at dinner, but not taken down by him.
In the middle of dinner the Master, beside whom
I was sitting, asked his butler to bring him paper
and pencil, and he wrote down something for him
to take to the Dean. I noticed the Dean's amused
smile as he got the note, and nodded to the Master,
who then told me he had written, " Pay attention
to your neighbour, she will repay it ! " He did
as he was told, and made it a very pleasant even-
ing for Eppie, whose feathers had been rather ruffled
by her partner, who, on her having said she did not
care much for Dickens, replied, " Ah, well, I am not
surprised. My wife there, who is a very clever
woman, but with no sense of humour, can't bear
Dickens." The insinuation that she had no sense
of humour was most mortifying to one of so lively
a spirit.
A great friend of my husband since the Balliol
days when they were both undergraduates was
Mr Francis Palgrave, so widely known later as
the editor of the * Golden Treasury of English
FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE. 283
Lyrics/ published in 1861. Perhaps no single book
of its size has ever given more pleasure to countless
numbers of people in both hemispheres. Dr John
Brown used to give it as a wedding - present
" for honey -moonlight reading"! In preparing
the ' Golden Treasury/ Mr Palgrave had the in-
estimable advantage of the intimate friendship
and critical taste of Mr Tennyson, though it was
Mr Tennyson's modesty in barring the inclusion of
any of his lyrics that led Mr Palgrave to exclude
all living authors from the collection.
He had been brought up in a very intellectual
milieu: his father, Sir Francis Palgrave, was a
well - known historian and antiquarian, and his
mother a daughter of Mr Dawson Turner was
a woman of remarkable culture and brilliancy of
mind. Her influence tended to foster in her son
his innate love of art, which was so strong a feel-
ing in him, at a time when it was by no means so
developed as it is now, though possibly this new
development may be something of a fashionable
fad ! Mr Palgrave became quite an authority on
art, and all the best engravings which hung on the
walls of the Master's house at Balliol were chosen
by him. He was one of the first who "preached
Blake " as one of his friends said as painter and
poet. To judge from the Publishers' List of the
present date (1907), Blake seems no longer " caviare
284 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
to the general." As a poet he thought " Blake's
verse narrow in range, and at times eccentric to
the verge of madness ; but whatever he wrote, his
eye is always straight on his subject." He used
to compare Blake's soul with Fra Angelico's, each
living in the all-pervading presence of the spiritual
life. His pictures, he thought, showed immense
power and originality, though often out of draw-
ing and grotesque ; but some, such as " Job in
Misery" and " The Morning Stars singing for Joy,"
were beautiful. Later, in a letter to Mr Gladstone
in 1876, Mr Palgrave " confessed with pain that the
high place which Blake had held on the strength
of a few of his works is not sustained by the sight
of his collected f Opera.' There is much puerility,
much almost sensational spiritualism, much even
(I suspect) of commonplace, concealed by eccen-
tricity of manner." And he continues, " On
Saturday I am to see the Flaxmans at Christie's
privately. These will be, oh, how much higher a
sight than Blake's ( glorious incompleteness ' ! "
I have dwelt on this side of Mr Palgrave's in-
tellectual development because he alone of all my
husband's friends possessed this keen interest in,
and knowledge of, pictorial art. No less was he
deeply interested in all literature classical, Italian,
French, and English ; he was a brilliant talker, and
became quite absorbed in his subject ; and as these
BLAKE'S "GLOKIOUS INCOMPLETENESS." 285
subjects ranged over so many fields of literature
and art, it was easy for him to find a sympathetic
audience. He travelled a great deal on the Con-
tinent, and Italy was the country of his soul. No
man ever had a happier married life : his was a
deeply affectionate nature that only a wife and
children could fill, and he was fortunate in finding
perfect satisfaction in both. His work was in the
Privy Council Office, which threw him among con-
genial friends ; and in 1880 he was made Professor of
Poetry at Oxford, succeeding his and our dear friend,
Principal Shairp. Here he was in a post for which
he was eminently fitted, and which he enjoyed. He
concluded his term of office by a series of lectures
on " Landscape in Poetry," which he afterwards
brought out as a most delightful book. When my
husband's 'Virgil' came out in 1877, he wrote, I
remember, a delightful letter to him, from which I
quote : " Except in regard to a very few points, the
book has given me more immediate pleasure and
a stronger anticipation of enduring gain than any-
thing I have read for a long time. In short, you
have made me look for your volume on ' Horace '
with an interest which I have wholly ceased to
feel in the ' births of time/ which may be reserved
for Tennyson or Browning or Mrs Lewes."
Mr Palgrave wrote a volume of poems and a
volume of hymns : one beautiful hymn I especially
286 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
remember, beginning, " Star of Morn and Even." He
died in October 1897, exactly seven years after his
wife's death. His daughters live now in Carlyle
Square, London, surrounded by the beautiful en-
gravings collected by their much-loved father. The
eldest daughter has written a delightful Biography
of him, from which I have gained some of the in-
formation I have noted down, and I am glad to
be indebted for this to one of a younger genera-
tion, for whom I have a great affection.
Two more Balliol men Lord Sandford and Mr
Cumin who, like my husband, had also won Snell
Exhibitions, were intimate friends of ours. Lord
Sandford was a son of Sir Daniel Sandford, the
eminent Greek Professor at Glasgow University,
and from him he inherited a knowledge of the
classics which would have made him a distinguished
scholar had he not preferred to devote himself to
the Education Office. He was a most genial and
delightful man, with a sunny disposition and affec-
tionate heart. Raised to the Peerage in 1891, under
the title of Baron Sandford of Sandford, he died
two years later on the 31st December 1893.
Mr Cumin hailed from the north of Scotland, and
had a good deal of pawky Scotch humour, which
made him excellent company : all his friends were
devoted to " Pat Cumin," as he was always called.
I saw most of him in 1865 I think it was when
MR FAWCETT. 287
he came down to Edinburgh for a few months on
some Trust Commission. This was after his marriage
to Mrs Northcote, a charming widow, whom all his
friends welcomed and appreciated. Mr Cumin was
a " genial gourmet," and the day after his marriage
he told his wife that he had ordered for dinner a
widgeon, cooked in some very recherche and appe-
tising manner. " Oh/' she replied, " I do wish you
had not taken the trouble : I hate all Jish ! " thus
betraying an ignorance and incompatibility of taste
in gastronomy quite incomprehensible to her hus-
band. Mr Cumin's work, like that of Lord Sand-
ford, was in the Education Office, and, like Lord
Sandford, in the discharge of his duties he met
many clever interesting people, and made many
fast friends.
A very notable couple we met at Balliol were
Mr and Mrs Fawcett. There was something heroic
in Mr Fawcett's determination that his blindness
should never be allowed to interfere with his career
in life. And nobly was this resolve fulfilled, for he
had become Postmaster -General, and those who
heard his able speeches, full of statistical informa-
tion, had difficulty in believing that since he was
twenty-five when the accident had occurred that
cost him his eyesight he had been stone-blind.
But his brave clever wife had been eyes and much
more to him, and there was something pathetic in
288 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
the thought that he had never seen her ; but her
mind and heart were to him a kingdom. His
memory was wonderful in small things as well as in
great. There was a large dinner-party that day at
Balliol, and he asked me to tell him who were all
there, and where they sat. I did so, and during
dinner he spoke to the different people, directing
his face to where they sat, exactly as if he saw
them.
No memory of Balliol would be complete that did
not record the great friendship we had with Mr
Strachan-Davidson, Senior Fellow of Balliol, whose
gentle and faithful heart has smoothed the path
and cheered the lives of so many of his friends.
Though he was so much younger than we were,
that made no difference in the sympathy and
warmth of our friendship ; and the many meetings
we had at Balliol, Headington Hill (where, for a
time, he and Mr Evelyn Abbott lived), and at
Kenbank, but drew the bonds closer. Mr Evelyn
Abbott had been a splendid young athlete and
devoted to cricket. He met with an accident
while running in a hurdle - race, did not take
proper care, and insisted on playing soon after
in a cricket - match in which he made over a
" century." This violent exertion on the top of
his previous mishap changed the whole tenor of
his life, for from that time he was unable to
MR STRACHAN-DAVIDSON. 289
walk a step. But nothing could conquer his in-
domitable spirit or cloud his clear vigorous brain,
and he continued to do the work of tutor to the
college with marked acceptance. Mr Strachan-
Davidson, with that devotion to his friends which
is so strong a characteristic of his, did all that
was in human power to lighten Mr Abbot's
burden in " that long disease, his life " ; and I
often used to feel when I parted from them that
I did not know which I admired most, the
splendid pluck of the one man, or the noble un-
selfishness of the other. In these last years, each
time I have been at Oxford Mr Strachan-David-
son has met me, and given me the keys of Balliol
gate, so that I might go in and out when I liked.
And I hope this has greatly impressed the porter,
whose intervention was thus rendered useless !
290
CHAPTER XX.
" There is but one society on earth :
The noble living and the noble dead."
WORDSWORTH.
1870.
EVEN a slight acquaintance with remarkable people
leaves an abiding happiness in the memory, and
in the case of George Eliot this was heightened
when, in 1880, she married my cousin, John Cross.
I think the first acquaintance his family made
with Mr and Mrs Lewes came about in rather a
curious way.
Mrs Cross and her family were living at Wey-
bridge, and one day in October 1867 a fire broke
out in their house. It was got under before doing
any very great harm, though it was the cause of
strange aberrations on the part of some of their
neighbours who rushed in to help, and among other
things threw out the bedroom china on to the lawn,
thereby insuring its destruction ! and saving some
useless things, while nearly all their valuable books
were destroyed. Obliged to leave their smoking
GEORGE ELIOT. 291
also soaking ! house for the night, Mrs Cross and
her daughters took refuge in a little country inn,
the "Hand and Spear" now enlarged beyond all
recognition, and here they found their old friend,
Mr Herbert Spencer, with Mr Lewes : the two were
making a walking tour in Surrey. I have often
heard my cousin describe this evening as one of the
most brilliant and delightful she had ever spent.
The things of the mind and spirit always appealed
to her much more than material things. This was
their first acquaintance with Mr Lewes, with whom
they were afterwards to become so intimate.
My cousin, Zibbie Cross, of whom I have written
elsewhere, had just then published a small volume
of poems, ' An Old Story, and other Poems/ which
had been kindly received by the press, and much
valued by her friends, as showing a part but only
a part of her wonderful personality, for no words
(not even her own) could fully express that. On
Mr Lewes' invitation Zibbie went shortly afterwards
to see George Eliot, and never did she forget the
affectionate manner in which the great authoress
greeted her. Zibbie had a charming gift of music,
and had composed a setting to a poem of George
Eliot's from 'The Spanish Gypsy' ("Through the
woods, the pillared pines ") so effectively that the
authoress, I believe, was much moved on hearing it.
The first time I saw Mrs Lewes was some years
292 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
later, when Eleanor and Emily Cross took me one
Sunday (the day she received visitors) to The Priory,
St John's Wood. Nothing could exceed the kind-
ness and graciousness of her manner, and no one
could resist the charm of the earnest, deep, musical
tones of her voice and the constantly changing ex-
pression of her impressive countenance : but of this
the pictures of her give little idea. There were
several people of more or less importance there ;
and though the very fact of my being an " unknown
quantity " made her only the more gracious to me,
I felt unwilling to engross more than my own share
of a conversation which all those around me were
craving to hear. Her great friend, Mr Henry
Sidgwick, was there, I remember. This was the
first and only time I ever saw him ; but having
read his 'Biography* this last year, 1906, I am
not surprised that so pure and noble a soul
should have greatly impressed all who knew him
intimately.
Mr Lewes, then so full of life and brilliant and
witty conversation, died in November 1878, leaving
Mrs Lewes very desolate and lonely, though no one
ever had more loyal and devoted friends. But at
such times the heart knows its own bitterness, and
not the dearest friend can intermeddle with it :
the first battle must be fought alone. After a
time, life (which she had always found so " in-
BEQUEST FOR AN AUTOGRAPH. 293
tensely interesting") and the love of her friends
asserted themselves. I met her again in the
autumn of 1879, suddenly and unexpectedly, in a
picture-gallery. John Cross was with her, and she
asked me and my daughter Eppie, who was with
me, to go and see her at The Priory next after-
noon, which we did. I love to think of the com-
fortable cosy hour we spent with her. It was the
last time I saw this great writer and wonderful
woman. Eppie asked her if she would write her
name in a birthday book she had brought with her
in the hope of securing this valuable autograph,
and I remember the sweet smile with which she
said, "My dear, I would like to do anything to
give you pleasure, but I was obliged long ago to
register a vow that I would never sign my name
for such purposes ; and if you only knew the
number of books that have been sent me from all
parts of the world, you would understand and
forgive ! "
She spoke much of the Cross family, and of all
the love and interest they had brought into her
life, adding that she had never met any one who
had impressed her more with love and admiration
than their dear mother, who had died the year
before. On the 6th May 1880 Mrs Lewes was
married, in London, to John Cross ; but, alas ! after
little more than six months of supreme happiness
294 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
she died on December 22, at the beautiful house
in Cheyne Walk which he had so carefully pre-
pared for her.
In April 1866 there was great excitement in the
Edinburgh University, as on the 29th Carlyle
whom the students had elected as their Lord
Rector was coming down to give the accustomed
speech on that occasion. He was the first Lord
Rector who had been elected on purely literary
merits, and it was well known how much he dis-
liked display and publicity of every kind. Indeed
he had at first refused the honour unless the
necessity of a public speech was withdrawn, but
that being impossible, he finally consented ; and
Mrs Carlyle being unable to accompany him, Pro-
fessor Tyndall undertook to look after him and
manage everything. I remember that morning
Principal Sir David Brewster calling here, partly
to give us two extra tickets he had, and partly to
let off his agitation and anxiety, for he had just
heard that Carlyle was not going to read his
speech, and he perhaps judging from himself
felt an extempore speech would mean fiasco and
a complete breakdown.
The meeting was in the Music Hall. The
students and men completely filled the lower
part, whilst the gallery was given up to ladies.
CARLYLE'S RECTORIAL ADDRESS. 295
I was fortunate in getting a front seat ; and it
was a sight I shall never forget as the Chan-
cellor and the Professors brought in the Lord
Eector in his heavy robes, which, character-
istically, he cast aside as soon as he began to
speak, and stood before us, a world-famous man,
in his plain everyday clothes. World -wearied he
looked, as with weak voice he turned to address
the students of the same University in which he
himself had been a student fifty-six years before.
Few but those beside him could have heard a word
of the address ; but absolute silence reigned, as
" in soft earnest language, made picturesque by the
form in which it was expressed, he proceeded to im-
press upon them the elementary duties of diligence,
fidelity, and honest exertion in their present work
as a preparation for their coming life." But for
this noble address one must go to his own published
works. He wound up with Goethe's hymn, which
he had called to Sterling " the marching music of
the Teutonic nations," and he finished with the
words which, to the end, were so often upon his
lips, Wir heissen euch hoffen.
I think this was the most impressive scene I
have ever witnessed : no one who was there could
ever forget it, and it seemed burnt into one's
memory, when ten days after one heard of his
wife's tragically sudden death in London. This
296 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
news reached him by telegram in Dumfries, where
he had gone to stay with his sister. Mrs Carlyle
had been so relieved, and felt so proud, when
Professor Tyndall had wired to her the words,
"A perfect triumph"; but her previous anxiety
had, as she expressed it, "tattered her to fiddle-
strings," and the sudden relief was scarcely less
trying to her always highly-strung nerves. She
expected Mrs Oliphant and Principal Tulloch and
his wife to dine with her that evening, and in the
forenoon was taking her usual drive in the Park,
her little dog running beside the carriage. Some
one driving carelessly drove over it, and the scream
it gave made Mrs Carlyle jump out of her carriage
and take the poor little dead body in beside her.
After driving once more round the Park, the coach-
man was astonished at not getting any orders, and
looking into the carriage saw her motionless. The
shock had killed her.
We were in London in the summer of 1880, and
one day I took my courage in my hands and went
to call at Cheyne Eow, ostensibly to ask for Miss
Aitken, who had been brought by her uncle, John
Carlyle, to see me two years before, but really in
the hope I might possibly see Carlyle himself.
Miss Aitken was not at home, and the maid said
AN INTERVIEW AT CHEYNE BOW. 297
if I would call the next day I would see her. "But
I go to Scotland to-morrow." " Oh, if you come
from Scotland, perhaps the master will see you ! "
She left me to inquire ; and, like Bob Acres,
my courage oozed out at my finger-ends. She
returned and said Mr Carlyle would see me, but
she hoped I would not stay long as he was weak,
and was going out for his daily drive in a few
minutes. When I entered the sitting-room, so
often described that it seemed familiar, I thought
it was empty, but I saw the coverlet on the sofa
move, and on going nearer, Mr Carlyle shrunk
and attenuated was under it, with his face to
the wall. He put out his hand over his shoulder
to shake mine, and on my asking him how he was,
he answered, "Waiting for my latter end." "I
hope without pain and discomfort," I said. " With
a considerable degree of both," he replied. He
then asked about my husband, and referred to his
visit to Edinburgh as Lord Rector, and again to
our having met last at the station at Dumfries,
in the midst of " screaming engines and other
infernalities."
Seeing him so weak and exhausted, and hear-
ing the brougham come to the door, I bade him
farewell, hoping the mighty brain in that poor
frail body would soon be at rest; but he lived
298 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
on till February of the next year, 1881, and was
buried not in Westminster Abbey, which had
been offered but refused, and not in the grand
old parish church of Haddington, where lies the
restless passionate heart of the wife he mourned
with such touching affection and remorse, but
among his kinsfolk, in the dreary little kirkyard
of Ecclefechan.
299
CHAPTER XXI.
"We are fond of talking of those who have given us pleasure, not that
we have anything important to say, but because the subject is pleasing."
OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
1884.
CENTENARIES of all kinds are common now, but
this, the Tercentenary of Edinburgh University,
was, I think, among the first of the kind. It was
planned and most admirably carried through by
Sir Alexander Grant. I remember well how much
cold water was thrown on the idea: " It would be
a fiasco;" "A perfect failure;" "No one would
come," &c., &c. But, undeterred, he went on with
the arrangements, and had the satisfaction of
seeing the undertaking a great success. People
distinguished in Arts or Science came from all
parts of the world ; and for once the bleak walls
of the University and the Synod Hall (where
the largest meetings were held) looked down on
an assemblage of men gay as a parterre of tulips,
in their coloured robes of office and orders. It
was a wonderful sight, and the sound of many
300 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
tongues suggested the Tower of Babel. Many
houses opened their doors to the strangers, but
none had a more delightful "consignment" if I
may use such a word than ourselves, for they
were all dear and old friends, as well as most
distinguished men, Max Miiller and his delightful
and handsome wife, Sir Robert Morier (at that
time Ambassador at Madrid), the Master of Balliol,
and Mr Munro of Cambridge.
We had two dinner-parties, I remember, but at
neither of them could I be present. Owing, I
fancy, to all the anxiety I had gone through about
Edmund at Moffat, where he had been so ill, I
had more than usually bad attacks of headache,
and there was no fighting against them. And
hard as it was to lose so much of the society I
delighted in, I had no anxiety as to our guests
being neglected, for our daughter May, in the
absence of her sisters, rose to the responsibility of
the "honours thrust upon her," and was ably
assisted by the excellent Mrs Max Miiller. I re-
member her telling me that at home she was
called " General Jackson, always ready for action,"
and if I would only tell her whom she was to
take to a ball that was to succeed one of the
dinner-parties, she would manage everything for
me. And so she did and so well, too, that she
left no room for any regret for my absence.
SIR ROBERT MORIER. 301
It was delightful to see the Master of Balliol
and Sir Robert Morier together, for I think of
all his many friends and former pupils he was
the one who came nearest to his heart. Large
in body and mind, he had a robust humour that
was very attractive ; and there was a simplicity
and distinctness about his utterances that one
does not generally associate with a diplomat.
Easier and more delightful guests than the Max
Mlillers could not have been found ; and he looked
quite resplendent in the uniform of the French
Academy, and covered with orders. No one ever
bore honours more lightly, or made himself more
agreeable to any stranger he might be introduced
to. For myself, I can only say my affection
equalled my admiration. There was something
singularly lovable about him ; and the many times
we met afterwards, both at Kenbank and Oxford,
but deepened this impression.
" In the personalities that most attract us we
cannot measure the qualities, we can only allow
ourselves to be guided by the charm, that in-
definite gift of the gods, which lies we know not
where, and is we know not what." And I think
this very well describes the influence he exerted
over all who came in contact with him. There
was a serenity and benignity in his expression,
and yet underlying all a sense of sadness, as if
302 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
uncertainty and evanescence lay not far from the
happiest life. The death of his eldest child, a
girl full of promise, in her sixteenth year, had
told heavily on his affectionate heart; and years
after the time about which I am writing, he lost
very suddenly his beautiful, gifted, and most at-
tractive daughter, Mary, who had been married
for two years to Mr F. Conybeare. Mercifully he
was spared the sorrow of the untimely death of
his youngest and last remaining daughter, Beatrice,
the bright happy wife of Mr Collier Fergusson, as
he predeceased her by a few months. His de-
voted wife has written a most interesting biog-
raphy of her distinguished husband in which the
personal pronoun has not once been used ! Indeed
.she, Lady Burne-Jones, and Mrs Creighton have
done much to disprove the common axiom that
a widow is not the person to write her husband's
life.
In 1904 I paid a visit to Mrs Max Miiller in
the house at Oxford, which was such a full and
happy one when last my husband and I had been
there together. Materially all was unchanged.
The beautiful chalk drawing in grisaille, picked
up by Mr Max Miiller in Florence for a few
francs, and considered by many experts to be a
first sketch by del Sarto himself, looked down
from the walls ; the marble bust of the Emperor
A STUDENT OF MAX MULLER. 303
William II. a present from himself, the gigantic
proportions of which were, on its arrival, a cause
of perturbation not unmixed with laughter, filled
a corner of the room ; but the spirits that had
made the fulness of life, and filled the house with
music and charm, were all gone, yet so vividly was
their bodily presence realised that at no moment
would it have been a surprise if they had entered
the room. And I think we both felt, in the words
of his own national poet, Goethe,
" All that is present as from far I see,
And that which died is all the world to me."
But I have wandered far from the doings of
the Tercentenary, and the happy time we had
together in Edinburgh. Mr Max Muller went
one day to call on Mr Stewart, the cab-proprietor
on the Dean Bridge, because I told him that he
had few more ardent admirers of his works, and
that a visit from him would indeed be a red-
letter day; and Sir Robert Morier, who had ac-
companied Mr Max Muller on the visit, said one
of the most striking recollections of Edinburgh
would be his having met there a cab -proprietor
who had read and understood Max's books !
Mr Munro of Trinity College, Cambridge, was
considerably older than the other men of the
party, a grave and weighty man, for whose
304 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
scholarship my husband had boundless admiration.
Between them there existed a great bond of affec-
tion, strengthened by their common love of Lucre-
tius ! Of Mr Munro it might truly be said what
Bishop Creighton wrote to Mrs Humphry Ward of
her father, " He was one of those who are de-
termined to keep themselves unspotted from the
world. Surely nothing is more precious than the
life of the student, the scholar, the thinker, whose
chief aim is to be true to the best he knows."
One of my daughters here reminds me of a
little incident I had quite forgotten. Mr Munro
and Sir Eobert Morier were men of about the
same size, but one had his waistcoat with the
modest V suitable to a college don, the other
the expansive shirt-front of an ambassador ; so,
when their waistcoats were interchanged, there
was consternation on both sides, and when they
finally appeared in the drawing-room, she says I
greeted them with, " I believe you have had some
difficulty in securing your vested rights!"
One afternoon we were all asked to an "At
Home " at Professor Masson's, to meet Mr Brown-
ing. The crowd was immense, the Massons having
been put in the difficult position that all hosts of
celebrated guests experience, of either offending
friends by not asking them, or half killing the
victims by asphyxiation ! The latter having,
ROBERT BROWNING. 305
luckily for us, been chosen, Professor Masson said
he must introduce me to the great man. In vain
did I plead that that, at least, he might be
spared. However, the introduction was made,
and I could not help saying, " Oh, Mr Browning,
would you not rather be a dead dog than a living
lion?" And I remember his bright good-natured
smile as he answered, "Not at all; I think it is
very kind of any one caring to meet me." And he
went on to say what a splendid gathering of people
we had collected in Edinburgh, and what a fine
setting the romantic old town made. We did not
see any more of him at this time, but years after
we stayed at the Master of Balliol's with him ; and
one could not know him without loving him, he
was so frank, so cordial, and with an utter absence
of the self -consciousness which must have often
poisoned the life of his great brother poet, Lord
Tennyson. Between the two there existed that
cordial admiring friendship that is so admirable,
and perhaps too rare, among contemporary poets :
yet as I write this I remember, with contrition,
Wordsworth's line " The Mighty Minstrel breathes
no longer," in the beautiful " Elegiac Lines on the
Death of James Hogg," and the exquisite sonnet
" A trouble not of clouds or weeping rain,
Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light
Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height ; "
U
306 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
lines that cannot be read with dry eyes. I
remember one evening when I was going upstairs
with Mr Browning at the Master's lodge he put
his arm in mine and pointed out photographs from
some pictures by his son which hung there, and
spoke of his being glad he had devoted himself
to the sister art, and had not taken to poetry
" three of us would have been too much ! " and
he hoped there was a great future for him in paint-
ing. I did not say to his father that I had seen
one picture of his in the New Gallery which, in
my poor opinion, did not promise future fame, a
naked woman in a wood, which he called Joan of
Arc, and I thought Stark would be a better title !
Mr Browning was very funny when speaking of
the Browning Society, and said they often found
a meaning in his verses which had certainly
never entered his own head. He was as clear
and simple in his talk as he was sometimes
the reverse in his poems ; and one often regrets
that he who could write so lucidly and with
thrillingly intense power did not always take
the trouble to " beat his music out." As Lord
Tennyson said of him, " He has plenty of music
in him, but cannot get it out : he has intel-
lect enough for a dozen of us, but he has not
got the glory of words." One of Tennyson's
grandsons Lionel Tennyson's boy was a godson
A " RATHER GLORIOUS GODFATHER. 307
of Browning, and bore the somewhat overwhelming
name of Alfred Stanley Browning. Mr Browning
told us how he had written to him on his birthday,
sending him some little gift, and tried to justify his
godfatherly relationship by some good advice, end-
ing with " You have three names, one glorious, the
other good, and the last that of an old friend who
feels a great interest in you." The child replied,
thanking him for the present, and adding, "But
are not you, too, rather glorious ? " Just as he
told this a great bunch of roses was brought in,
left at the door for Mr Browning. " You see," I
said, " other people besides little Tennyson think
you are ' rather glorious/ '
Though not staying with us, there was another
visitor to Edinburgh at this time whom we saw a
good deal of, and who made an indelible impression
on our memories, Colonel Yule, soldier, scholar,
and translator : a distinguished member of the
Hakluyt Society, and editor of the works of
Marco Polo. His appearance was as striking
as the quality of his mind and character was
exalted, and in any society he would have stood
out as a man of mark. He was a great friend of
Mrs Baird Smith, and my intimacy with her made
him very kind to me. Before he left Edinburgh he
gave me a beautiful photograph of himself from a
portrait, noble and dignified as that of a Venetian
308 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
senator. I saw him once or twice after this in
London : I think it was early in 1890 that he
died. Almost immediately before his death he
was unanimously elected a Member of the French
Academy, and there is something very touching in
the reply he dictated with his dying breath,
"Reddo gratias, illustrissimi domini, ob honores
tanto nimios, quanto immeritos : mihi robora de-
ficiunt, vita collabitur, accipite voluntatem pro
facto. Cum corde pleno et gratissimo moriturus
vos, illustrissimi domini, saluto. YULE."
The following sympathetic commentary on these
words appeared in 'The Academy* of March 29,
1890:
" Moriturus vos saluto
Breathes his last, the dying scholar,
Tireless student, brilliant writer :
He salutes his age, and journeys
To the undiscovered country.
Moriturus vos saluto
Breathes his last, the dying scholar,
And the far-off ages answer
Immortales te salutant.
There await him with warm welcome
All the heroes of old story,
The Venetians, the Ca Polo,
Marco, Nicolo, Maffeo,
Odoric of Pordenone,
Benedict de Goes, seeking
Lost Cathay, and finding Heaven.
COLONEL YULE. 309
Many more whose lives he cherished
With the piety of learning ;
Fading records, buried pages,
Failing lights and fires forgotten,
By his energy recovered,
By his eloquence rekindled."
No better description could be given of Colonel
Yule than in the words of his lifelong and
devoted friend, Mr Coutts Trotter : " Personally,
his simplicity and humility were alike marked and
touching, though his presence had all the personal
dignity of one who knew he had long and steadily
followed a lofty ideal. He had the old Scottish
sense of the seriousness of life, and of the import-
ance in all things of being on the side of truth and
right."
It was a privilege to have known, even thus
casually, one of such an exalted type, and in 1905
it was delightful to come upon the following words
in Lady Burne- Jones' admirable life of her husband :
" A beautiful figure in the memory of those days,
1882, is that of the celebrated Oriental scholar,
Colonel Yule, for he was the very image of Colonel
Newcome, only with learning added thereto. Occa-
sionally he came along and dined with us, and then
he and Edward would spend all the evening talking
together of far countries and ancient travels."
But again I am wandering away from the Ter-
centenary, and losing myself in later memories, and
310 BECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
though there is a thread of continuity in my own
mind, I can scarcely expect my grandchildren to
follow it if they should ever reach so far in a
narrative often of so little interest to them. Indeed,
one of them has frankly declared the most import-
ant event will be the record of her birth I Shall I
cheat her and pass it over unrecorded ?
The Tercentenary lasted for nearly the inside of
a week, and during that time there was a banquet
given to the distinguished guests, and ladies were
admitted to the gallery to hear the speeches, but to
this I was unable to go. Another evening there
was an illumination of Princes Street and the
Castle rock, with a large bonfire on the top of
Arthur's Seat. Few cities can boast of such a
situation for an illumination, and it certainly was
a very beautiful sight. It was impossible to move
together like the clouds, so we divided into couples,
to meet again when the spirit or fatigue moved us
to return home. To our daughter May's great con-
tent Sir Eobert Morier fell to her lot ; and for long
after she used to tell of the delightful time they
had spent together, and of the witty and amusing
stories he had told her.
The weather, though cold and east-windy, was
dry and bright, there was no rain to damp
either the earth or our spirits; so at the end of
the week we felt like the old Scottish lady after
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY TERCENTENARY. 311
her dinner-party, " Weel, it's ower and wf credit"
I think all the visitors went away satisfied, and
felt a new interest in Scott's "own romantic
town " ; and the inhabitants had their minds
stimulated and exhilarated by contact with so
many brilliant intelligences, and were grateful to
Sir Alexander Grant for having planned and car-
ried out such an enterprise. We little thought
then that this was his last public undertaking,
though even at that time his wife felt anxious
about him ; and as soon as quiet was restored, she
took him to Bath. There he improved a little,
but always had a sense of fatigue and lassitude ;
and the end came suddenly, when, on his return
from dining with Lord Moncreiff one Saturday in
November, he had a stroke of apoplexy. He never
recovered consciousness, and on Sunday evening
passed quietly away. Dr Maclaren had come
down in the forenoon to tell us how ill he was,
and I intercepted the Fettes boys coming out of
church, and took poor Percy Grant to his home
where his father lay dying. Ludovic was at Ox-
ford, and Julia (who was coming down from Eng-
land that night) saw at Carlisle the notice, of her
father's death in 'The Scotsman/ Sylvia was at
St Leonard's school at St Andrews, and heard of
his death by telegram on the Monday morning.
None of these his children had known he was ill.
312 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Of such shocks and sorrows one cannot write,
though one can never forget the quiet heart-
broken wail of his stricken Madonna -like wife,
" Twenty-five years of perfect happiness all over ! "
I had seen their first meeting at Abbey Park in
1857, and now I was witness of their last parting
in 1884, and the breaking up of one of the happi-
est homes I have ever known ; and even after so
many years, the allusion to the bare facts fills my
heart with thoughts too deep for tears. Perhaps
the saddest part of old age is the outliving so
many of our best and dearest friends.
" Melted the crowd that with me moved along,
Dumb the first echoes that around me rung."
On the other hand, I most gratefully acknow-
ledge all the love and sympathy that has been
shown me in no stinted measure by so many of the
younger generation, and for all the memories which
" thrill in my soul and make me young again."
Le roi est mort, vive le roi ! is true of all official
positions as of kings ; and rather heartless though
it sounds, still I suppose it is necessary to appoint
for every vacant post an immediate successor.
The University was fortunate, after Sir Alexander
Grant's death, in securing for the Principalship
Sir William Muir, who had retired from the dis-
tinguished and important position of Governor of
SIR WILLIAM MUIR. 313
the North-West Provinces of India. He and Lady
Muir, with two unmarried daughters, took a large
house close to Edinburgh Dean Park House, one
most eminently suitable for the boundless hospi-
tality they showed, not only to all connected with
the University, but to the citizens of the fair city
that was henceforth to be their home, hospitality
dispensed with the ease and courtesy learnt, no
doubt, in the semi-Court life they had led in the
East. Everything connected with the students
was of deep interest to Sir William Muir, and very
grateful they felt for his constant kindness. Lady
Muir was equally interested in the young women
who attended the University classes, and has left
a lasting record of this in the Muir Hall for
Women Students in George Square. After her
death, which did not take place till some years
after this devoted couple had celebrated their
golden wedding, their daughter Mary, widow of
Mr Eobert Arbuthnot, became head of her father's
house, and most genially and gracefully did she
dispense its hospitality ; and certainly no father
was ever more tenderly and lovingly cared for. A
few years before her mother's death, their elder
daughter Jean had become the wife of that dis-
tinguished soldier, General Wauchope of Niddrie,
whose death at Magersfontein, South Africa, cast
a gloom over all Scotland.
314
CHAPTER XXII.
"I am most gladly in debt to all the world; and to earth, my mother, for
her great beauty." From 'The Road Mender.'
" Times and places new we know,
Faces fresh and seasons strange,
But the friends of long ago
Do not change."
A. LANG.
1885-1886.
IN the autumn of 1885 my husband's health again
broke down, and arrangements having been made
for Mr Allen, of Queen's College, Oxford, to take
his class, he and Florence went to Cannes for a
few weeks ; but the climate did not suit him, so
he and a friend travelled in Italy till we joined
him at Lucerne, in April 1886, where we found
him with the Lewis Campbells and the Bishop of
Eipon and his wife. Our daughter May had gone
with the Macleods to Schwalbach, and joined us
from there. I went to the station to meet her,
and the Bishop accompanied me, and insisted on
carrying her travelling-bag for her. I reminded
MADAME MINGHETTI. 315
him of this and other more interesting and im-
portant facts when Flora Smith and I spent a
most agreeable afternoon with them at the palace
at Kipon in 1903. I think he was like Bishop
Fraser of Manchester, who is reported to have
said he " liked his bishop's sleeves as small as
possible."
From Lucerne we went to Axenfels, higher up
on the Lake, and liked it very much ; but after a
fortnight there we crossed to Seelisberg, on the
other side, as being a better place for long walks
and expeditions. The house from which there
was a most beautiful view had once been a mon-
astery, and was now a hotel. Here we made the
acquaintance of Signor Minghetti and his wife, an
unforgettable couple ! If one had had to guess
their nationality, he, unquestionably, would have
been thought to be the English one, so quiet and
undemonstrative was he in manner, while she was
so full of vivacity and gesticulation. But, indeed,
she had the blood of many nations in her veins,
for one grandmother had been Scottish (one of the
Minto family) and another grandmother Austrian.
Her father, Sir Richard Acton, was English, and
her mother Austrian.
Madame Minghetti must have been beautiful, and
still retained much of the charm of her youth. She
had lived most of her life in Naples, and married an
316 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
Italian prince, whose name I forget. This was not
a happy marriage, and many years after his death
she went, as she herself told me, "from her vie
orageuse into the beautiful, dignified, well-ordered
life of Signor Minghetti," adding, " and he has
been both husband and father to me." He at this
time was far from well, his face bloodless as a
statue, and we felt instinctively the end was not
far off"; but his intellect and brain were as clear as
ever, and my husband and he had much interesting
talk together. He spoke with great frankness of
the political and ecclesiastical condition of Italy,
and said one great obstacle to the welfare of the
kingdom was the hostility of the bishops. Priests
were the slaves of the bishops, and the bishops
were slaves of the popes. (I see M. Waddington,
in a letter from Eome written in 1880, quotes
Minghetti as saying, " The most absolutely liberal
man he had ever known was Pio Nono, but what
could he do once he was Pope?") Signor Min-
ghetti lamented that there was not sufficient public
opinion to alter this state of affairs ; and when
asked how such a public opinion could be formed,
he replied, " I cannot tell ; it is enough for us that
it does not exist." Liberal-minded and far-seeing
himself, the state of his country was often perplex-
ing and disquieting to him, and he seemed gladly
to take refuge in literature and classical studies.
SIGNOR MINGHETTI. 317
V
He told us what an admirable scholar Queen
Margherita was, and what pleasure he had in
reading 'Virgil' with her an author to whom she
was devoted. He said he had spoken to many
English scholars on classical subjects, but whenever
they quoted in the original he was quite unable to
follow them, and it was as if they spoke in a
strange tongue with which he was unacquainted.
My husband repeated some lines from c Virgil/ with
the pronunciation given in Scotland, and Signor
Minghetti said he could follow and understand
them quite well, the sound of the vowels being the
same ; but beyond that there was the subtle differ-
ence of sound belonging to each of the foreign
accents through which the Latin was interpreted.
There was something singularly attractive in his
gentle courteous bearing, and it was with real
sorrow though not with surprise that a few
months later we heard of his death. A short
time before this Madame Minghetti sent me a
photograph of him, and I wish she had added
her own.
While we were at Seelisberg a great fte, in
memory of the Battle of Sempach, took .place at
Lucerne, and May and I took an early steamer to
see the procession. On our way down, at one of
the villages where the steamers stop, whom should
we see on board of one of them going to the head
318 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
of the Lake but Mr Mackail, on his way to visit
us at Seelisberg ! We could only, in dumb show,
telegraph signs to him to wait there till we re-
turned, which we fondly imagined would be about
dinner-time ! All the usual times of sailing, how-
ever, being disturbed, we did not get a return
steamer till midnight ; but so lovely was the
moonlight sail up the Lake, and the walk up the
hill to Seelisberg in the "innocent freshness of
the new-born morn/' that it left us nothing to
regret, except having lost some hours of Mr
Mackail's too short visit. But we made up for
it next day, and had much delightful talk ; and
1 remember we sat for long in the balcony over-
looking the lovely Lake, I working at some em-
broidery, and he reading aloud to me.
Mr Mackail brought with him a manuscript copy
of a beautiful mediaeval poem, " Quia amore langueo,"
copied from one of Furnivall's Early English Text
Society publications, which had taken powerful pos-
session of his imagination, and it greatly impressed
me. The next morning I covered myself with glory
by getting up at five o'clock to see him off, walk-
ing part of the way down the hill at the foot
of which he was to take the steamer. From the
day he first came to our house in Edinburgh
(I think in 1874), a boy of fifteen, and looking
far more like a young Greek than a Scotsman, we
PROFESSOR J. W. MACKAIL. 319
had been fast friends, and we had followed, every
step of his triumphant progress in Oxford with the
deepest interest. When at last he had taken every
honour it was possible for Oxford to give him, he
went to the Education Office in London, to the
extreme disappointment of the Master, who wished
to retain for Balliol the services of so brilliant
a son. In 1888 he made an ideal marriage
with the beautiful only daughter of Sir Edward
Burne-Jones. Some months before he was engaged
he took me to The Grange, the fine old house in
West Kensington, which had once been the home
of Richardson the novelist, and introduced me to
his friends there. This was a red-letter day for
me, and was the beginning of a friendship which
has been a great happiness in my life ; and now
that, alas ! that happy home The Grange has
passed away, with its beautiful, gentle Master,
I am thankful to have known something of its
charm, the exquisite simplicity of the life led
there, where ideas reigned supreme, and beauty
was everywhere. No great man was ever more
kindly or approachable : one felt at ease with him
at once.
When staying with them in 1895 in their
charming little cottage at Rottingdean, we had
a long walk on the Downs, and I remember his
saying he had no fear of death, but a horror of
320 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
age and decay of faculties ; and from this, merci-
fully, he was saved, leaving the world in the
plenitude of his powers, and all too soon, as his
friends and the world felt. He was devoted to
his grandchildren, and was much amused when I
reminded him that one day, when he was dining
at the Mackails', and playing with a mechanical
toy I had brought Denis (who was not the least
amused by it !), I advised Sir Edward to take
it home with him, which he did. And Angela
next morning, asking where the toy was, was told
her grandfather had taken it. " What to do with
it?" "Play with it." "Well/' she indignantly
exclaimed, "I am upside down disgraced by Ba-
papa ! "
This same Angela has certainly not disgraced
her family, for in 1905 she gained another
scholarship at St Paul's Girls' School in short,
is running the same race as her father did; and
one of my regrets at being so old is that I cannot
hope to see the future results in her life. Some
results I did see in her father's case, when in
1904, in Edinburgh University, where as a boy
he had carried all before him, he received the
degree of LL.D., the highest honour the Uni-
versity has to give, the outward and visible sign
of what he had done for literature and scholar-
ship. In 1906, a greater honour has been con-
SIB EDWARD BURNE- JONES. 321
ferred upon him in his election to the Professor-
ship of Poetry at Oxford, a position singularly
suited to his talents and acquirements, and in
which he succeeds another valued friend, Mr
Bradley. His and his dear wife's family life
have been a great happiness to me, and their
children, who call me "Scotch Granny," have
indeed been like another batch of grandchildren ;
and the spare bedroom, which was dedicated to
their own granny and to me, has been christened
" the granary," and many happy hours have I
spent in this ideal home.
322
CHAPTER XXIII.
"Wherever I may wander I shall write with my tears, 'Oh, my friend,,
your place is empty ! ' " From a Persian Poet.
" Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer
Right onwards."
MILTON.
1890.
As soon as we could get away from Edinburgh this
year we went to Italy, as my husband was finishing
the chapter on " Propertius " in his volume upon
' Horace and the Elegiac Poets/ and was anxious
to ascertain, if possible, the exact spot in Umbria
from which the poet came. We went directly to
Perugia, where my cousin Constance and her
daughter, Beryl Nicholson, met us. It was our
first visit to Perugia, "beautiful for situation in
all the earth " ! We arrived when it was dark,
and next morning, when we threw open shutters
and windows, we almost cried out with delight, so
wonderful and beautiful was the view. Certainly
From an engraving
by James Faed, 1890.
WILLIAM YOUNG SELLAR,
PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH,
1863 TO 1890.
IN ITALY. 323
a "city set on a hill," though rather fatiguing
to get at, amply repays one by the extent of
its views on all sides. Perugia has, besides
its beauty, many interests, with its old mediaeval
buildings and its wonderful collection of Perugino's
pictures.
We drove over to Assisi one day, stopping at
the foot of the hill to see the Church of S. Maria
degli Angeli, built on the site of the original
Oratory of St Francis, where the roses still blossom
on the bushes said to be sprung from the thorns
with which St Francis castigated himself. A
chorale was being played on the organ, and, to
my astonishment, it was the well-known nigger
song, " Way down upon the Swanee Kiver," played
very slowly ; and I should not think any Italian
worshipper would guess the source whence it
came ! Assisi struck me as a gloomy, sad, im-
pressive place, but one that would require more
time to explore than the one day we could give
it. My cousin and I spent most of our time in
the cathedral, while my husband and Beryl went
farther afield in their search for the birthplace of
Propertius, in which they found much interest but
no great certainty. Indeed I think they felt as a
young friend of mine did who, on making notes of a
Greek History she was reading, began with, " Origin
very muddled " ! So with Propertius ! But so
324 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
much was certain that the search brought them into
" scenes of natural beauty and places of historic
interest which were familiar to Propertius, both in
his childhood and in his later life," and thus helped
my husband to realise some of the influences which
had acted on the poet's imagination.
One more day we stayed at Perugia, in which
my husband and Beryl again went into the country,
while my cousin and I spent it in investigating the
old town. In the afternoon we found an old Jew who
had some fine bric-a-brac , and my eye at once fell
on a plaque of Gubbio ware a Madonna and child
that still haunt me. A little corner of the plaque
was broken off, which I thought accounted for the
comparatively small price asked for it 100 francs.
This was far more than I was prepared to spend,
but I felt I must have it, and to make up for the
extravagance would shut my eyes to all further
temptations ! But, alas ! when I was arranging
about the money I found he had said 1000 francs,
not 100 as I had thought ! so the plaque may be
still there as far as I am concerned.
The next day, on our way to Siena, we drove
along the Lago Trasimeno, my husband delighting
in it for its many reminiscences of Hannibal and the
sanguinary victory he gained here over the Roman
Consul Flamminius, B.C. 217, and I enjoying its
natural beauty, its wooded olive slopes and lovely
LAGO TBASIMENO. 325
little islands. We spent a day at Siena : the
country round seemed arid and stony, rather like
the " riddlings of creation," but the town was very
striking, though most of the buildings, being in
alternate black and white marble, did not appeal
to me so much as the simpler self-coloured stone
would have done. I may be speaking as a fool, and
one day's knowledge of any place is apt to leave
false impressions which a further acquaintance
would remove.
We spent two or three days at beautiful Florence
a place one never ceases to have a longing to see
again ; but we could not stay longer, as my hus-
band had been recommended to try the waters at
Wildbad. We did go there, and a very pretty
little place it is, and we met some pleasant
people ; but a Bad-Kur has no eventful history,
and we were not sorry when time was up and
we could leave.
On our way home via Strasburg we stopped at
Paris from June 9th to llth, and joined Mr and
Mrs Butcher, who were staying at a little ex-
clusively French hotel on the other side of the
river. I think the sight of these dear friends did
my husband more good than all the waters of
Wildbad or the wonders of Florence. Their ar-
rival in Edinburgh in 1882 had given a new lease
of life to his professional work, for in Mr Butcher
326 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
young enough to be his son he found the per-
fect sympathy and understanding he had enjoyed
in the old Oxford days, and which till now he had
thought could never come again, and in Mrs Butcher
the grace and charm and sweet consideration that
brightened his social life. The next day, after
going to the Louvre, we lunched at a cafe, Mrs
Butcher ordering the meal, and with that unique
gift she possessed of turning everything she touched
into favour and prettiness, converting a commonplace
little luncheon into a feast for the gods ! Later in
the day we made a beautiful, and I don't think
often thought of, expedition (still under Mrs
Butcher's guidance) by steamer to Meudon, where
in the balcony of the hotel overlooking the river
we dined. It was dusk when we returned to Paris ;
and the sail there, under innumerable bridges, with
the red and yellow lamps reflected in the river
making a perfect illumination, was dream-like or
pantomime-like, according to the mind of the be-
holder ! The next day, to our great regret, we had
to return to London, as my husband was to pro-
ceed almost immediately to Dublin, where he was
to receive the degree of LL.D. from Trinity College.
He never saw these dear friends again, but, thank
God ! the future is veiled, how else could life be
borne?
After a couple of days spent in London with our
TWO STORIES AND TWO CELLARS. 327
daughter Eppie, we went to Balliol College, Oxford.
I think it was on this visit that there was one of
the Sunday concerts, which, since Mr Farmer had
gone to Oxford, was almost a weekly occurrence,
much to my husband's annoyance, as he hated
music and loved good talk. When we all went
off to the concert, leaving him, the Master lifted
a book from the table, written by a friend of his
for private circulation, and called ' Country Con-
versations/ telling me to give it to my husband
to read in our absence. " Oh, no," I said ; " he
would think that almost worse than the music ! "
From Balliol we went to the Max Mullers, and
found there Principal and Mrs Story a congenial
friendship brought about by Mr Max Miiller's
Gifford Lectures in Glasgow in two previous years.
Their hospitality was boundless : dinner - parties,
luncheon-parties, garden-parties followed in rapid
succession, Mrs Max Mtiller only regretting her
house was not larger, so that she might have
more guests. It was suggested that she had just
added two stories and two cellars (Sellars), and
that ought to satisfy her !
In London the Walronds came to see us, and that
was a great pleasure, for my husband had almost
a hero-worship for Mr Walrond, and used to tell
how one day, expatiating on his goodness to Mr
Matthew Arnold, he replied, "Ah, we were all good
328 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
at Rugby ! " " Yes," said my husband, " but he has
remained good ! " After two days of London, my
husband and our daughter May crossed over to
Dublin, and were the guests of Professor Tyrrell,
where they met many interesting people, and the
reception my husband got when he received his
degree much gratified him. I am sorry I do not
personally know Professor Tyrrell, for I feel in-
debted to him for the very kind and appreciative
way he spoke of my husband.
When they were in Ireland, Norna Arkcoll, my
daughter Eppie's eldest child, then about seven
years old, accompanied me to Liverpool to her
aunt's (Florence MacCunn), where we had a delight-
ful little visit, and on the way down to Kenbank, I
remember, an old blind lady with her attendant was
in the carriage with us. When we came to the
Lake District I said to Norna, " Oh, do look at
those beautiful hills ! " " Hush, hush, grannie ! "
and seeing me look surprised, she added in a
whisper, " If that old lady heard you, it would
make her sorrier that she was blind and could not
see the hills " !
My husband and May returned from Dublin the
same day that we arrived at Kenbank, both de-
lighted with their first visit to Ireland. Though
feeling well, and with no premonition of danger,
my husband felt it borne in upon him to get on
SIR LUDOVIC GRANT. 329
as quickly as possible with the volume of the
1 Latin Poets ' at which he was working, and he
devoted himself very assiduously to his writing
till the 16th of July, when we went to Edin-
burgh for the wedding of Sir Ludovic Grant and
Ethel Lancaster. When we were in Florence in
the spring of this year, I remember my husband
coming to me with a beaming face and saying,
" I have seen something delightful in the papers :
Ludovic Grant is to be married to Ethel in
July!" Then and there we went out to look
for a present for them, and found a little antique
chest of drawers, of which they were kind enough
to approve when it arrived in Scotland ; but my
husband never quite got over its having been
bought in a " pawnshop," as he would call it,
though it was really a fascinating little den on
the Ponte Vecchio.
Sir Ludovic Grant had been newly elected Pro-
fessor of Law in the Edinburgh University ; and
later he became Dean of the Faculty of Law, in
which capacity when presenting the graduates for
their degrees he speaks with such grace and dis-
crimination of their different characteristics that
he has raised the ceremony from something that
approached general and fulsome flattery to an
intellectual pleasure for the audience. This charm
and felicity of expression he inherits from both
330 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
father and mother. The uniting of two families
we knew so well and liked so much was a great
pleasure to all of us.
On our return to Kenbank we had a more than
usual number of visitors, among them Professor
Nichol and his daughter, whom we drove over to
Craigenputtock, as the Professor was writing on
Carlyle at this time. To my mind Craigenputtock
is the dreariest place in the kingdom, and might
well deserve the description of a property in the
middle of Fife given by an old Scotsman to an
English gentleman who had bought it without
having seen it. Going later to Scotland to inspect
his new possession, this gentleman asked a fellow-
traveller if he knew it, and what it was like.
"Wed," said the Scot, "if the de'il himsel' were
tethered to it, you wud say f puir fellow ! ' ' Cer-
tainly Craigenputtock was " bleak without and
bare within," and one thought with sympathy
of poor Mrs Carlyle's life there, and her heroic
efforts to make a loaf of bread that would suit
her dyspeptic husband, cheered in the task by
the thought of Palissy the Potter and his many
failures before he achieved perfect success! But
perhaps for the literary development of Carlyle
the absolutely unbroken silence of the place and
its freedom from " nauseous intruders " were neces-
sary and salutary. I forget now Professor Nicholas
CRAIGENPUTTOCK. 331
impressions of the place, but no doubt his descrip-
tion of it is trenchant and original.
On the 12th of August my husband, May, and
I went for three days to Lord Stair's, at his
beautiful place Lochinch, in Wigtownshire, where
fuchsia and heather grow side by side, so mild
is the climate. Lord Stair was a perfect type
of an old Scottish nobleman shrewd, humorous,
most kindly ; and one always felt a day with
him was invigorating, so direct was his conversa-
tion, lightened up often by excellent Scotch stories
admirably told. One little incident I remember.
In our bedroom, under the gas bracket, there
hung a printed notice, " Do not blow out the gas."
On my asking Lord Stair, d propos of this, if
he was accustomed to entertain fools gladly or
otherwise, he replied that some English servants
were so foolish that one had really blown out the
gas, and as they had already had one fire at Loch-
inch they did not desire another ; therefore he had
put up this notice, which to most people would
seem very unnecessary.
All August and most of September my husband
was very well, taking long walks every day and
greatly enjoying all the visitors that came, among
them the Master of Balliol with his ' Plato/ Mr
Strachan - Davidson with his ' Polybius,' Andrew
Lang with his wife ! and many other friends :
332 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
also Agnes Macleod, an especial favourite of my
husband. This was not the first nor the last time
she has been a ministering angel in our family, so
it was meet and natural she should be with us in
the great sorrow that was so soon to overtake us.
On the 24th of September my husband suddenly
became very ill, and two days after we got a nurse,
and the comfort we had in her no words can tell.
Nurse Jeffrey is now the District Nurse at Moffat.
A London doctor happened to be in the neighbour-
hood and saw him on the 28th, but on the following
Tuesday I sent for Dr Maclaren, his Edinburgh
doctor. I did not tell my husband I had done so,
but took him, on his arrival, straight to my
husband's room, who brightened up when he saw
him and said, "Oh, Maclaren, this is kind of you ! "
and all that afternoon and the next day he was
better.
His youngest son's arrival, too, was a great
pleasure to him ; and my daughter Eppie and
her little girl Norna came, and the child said,
" Grandpapa was delighted to see me," and when
I told him this he said, " So I was." He spoke
much of his elder son (who was with his regi-
ment in India at the time), and of the con-
fidence he had in his judgment and sense of
right. He was for some days interested in the
loving letters of inquiry I had about him ; for
LAID TO BEST. 333
he loved to be loved, though I think he never
knew how much the simplicity and transparent
truthfulness of his character endeared him to so
many. He sent affectionate messages to many of
his friends, the Master of Balliol, Mr and Mrs
Butcher, Lord Kinnear, and others. He did not
speak much, and for the first days lay mostly still
and quiet. Once he said how perfectly happy the
conditions of his life had been : nothing in them
would he have changed except his health, but that
had been a heavy handicap. He was very weary ;
but rest was soon to come, for after a few days
of more or less unconsciousness he passed quietly
away on October 12th, just as the sun set in
crimson glory over the hills on which his bedroom
windows looked. That sunset and all its associa-
tions will never be forgotten by me while memory
holds its seat.
It was a beautiful autumn afternoon on which
my husband was laid to rest. The rain of the
previous night and early morning had ceased, and
the Ken, swirling in full flood, swept past the
wall of the churchyard, close beside which his
" resting grave " had been allotted. The spot had
always had an attraction for him, and a month
before, when in full vigour and health, he had re-
marked on its extreme beauty and expressed a
334 RECOLLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS.
wish that when his time came he might lie there,
beside the Ken, looking towards the hills he knew
so well, and near the Martyrs' Monument. This was
a stone raised to the memory of three Covenanters,
natives of the parish, who were slain.
In order to have the words of the burial service
of the Church of England read over my husband's
remains, it was necessary to ask permission of the
Rev. Mr Walker, the parish minister, and his
elders. This was instantly granted. All the shops
were closed, and nearly the whole population of the
village came to pay their last tribute of respect to
one whom many loved and all esteemed.
The funeral cortege was met at the gate of the
churchyard by an Episcopalian clergyman in full
canonicals, and the beautiful words, " I am the
Resurrection and the Life," were again heard in
the precincts of the parish church of St John's of
Dairy. The last time they had been intoned was
in the '15, when the headless trunk of Viscount
Kenmure (executed for his share in the Jacobite
Rising of that date) was brought down for inter-
ment from London. On this occasion his direct
descendant, Mr Gordon Maitland of Kenmure,
followed the funeral of his friend and neighbour,
and when the last words were spoken he was the
first to shake my sons by the hand in sincere and
silent sympathy.
ST JOHN'S OF DALRY, GALLOWAY, 1900.
Here where no lovelier ground
Stands open to the mute perpetual sky,
The eternal mountains watching all around,
The pastoral river always rippling by.
J. W. M.
A LAST TRIBUTE. 335
Incorrupta fides nudaque veritas these are the
words engraved on my husband's tombstone, and
the sentiments had been as a beacon and a watch-
word to him during his life. As the mourners
turned to go, many must have felt what his old
pupil and friend afterwards so strikingly expressed
in the following lines :
" Where nineteen summers' festal feet had gone,
The darkness gathers round thee, laid alone ;
And there, unchanged, unshadowed, lie with thee
Kindness and Truth and Magnanimity"
r. w. M.
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