Reminiscences of Scottish Life & Character Part 1

Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character.

by Edward Bannerman Ramsay, et al.

MEMOIR OF DEAN RAMSAY.

I.

The friends of Dean Ramsay desiring a memorial of his life, his friendly publishers, and his nearest relatives, have asked me to undertake the work, and placed in my hands some materials giving authentic facts and dates, and ill.u.s.trating the Dean's own views on the leading events of his life.

I feel myself excluded from dealing with one important part of such a life, for I could not take upon me to speak with confidence or authority upon church doctrines or church government. On the other hand, for the _man_ I have that full sympathy which I suppose ought to exist between the writer and the subject of the biography.

We were very old friends, natives of the same district, bred among a people peculiar in manners and language, a people abounding in a racy humour, differing from what prevails in most parts of Scotland--a peculiarity which it was the joy of the Dean to bring before his countrymen in his _Reminiscences_; and although he and I were not kindred of blood, his relatives and friends were very much mine, and my uncles and aunts were also his.

Edward Bannerman Burnett, known in after life as Edward Ramsay, and Dean of Edinburgh, was born at Aberdeen on the last day of January 1793.

His father, Alexander, second son of Sir Thomas Burnett, Baronet, of Leys, was an advocate, and sheriff of Kincardines.h.i.+re, where the family estates lay. The sheriff was of delicate const.i.tution, and travelled in the south of Europe for his health, until obliged to fly from the French Revolution; and at Aberdeen, the first place where he and his wife stopped, Edward was born. The Dean's mother was Elizabeth, the elder daughter of Sir Alexander Bannerman of Elsick, and she and her sister Mary, afterwards Mrs. Russell, were co-heirs of his estates in the pretty valley of the Feugh, including the whole parish of Strachan, of which the southern part, looking over into the _How_ of the Mearns, was Mrs. Burnett's portion; the northern, with the beautiful bank of Dee where Blackhall stands, falling to Mrs. Russell. Both sisters were eminently handsome. I have a tradition of the young ladies, when they first came from their York school to Edinburgh, being followed and gazed at by pa.s.sengers in the streets, for their beauty; and there are many still living in Edinburgh who long after gazed with admiration on the fine old lady, the Dean's mother, bending over her embroidery frame in her window in Darnaway Street.

Alexander Burnett and his wife Elizabeth Bannerman had a large family.

Edward, the fourth son, when very young, was taken by his grand-uncle, Sir Alexander Ramsay, and sent to school near his own house at Harlsey in Yorks.h.i.+re. Edward's first school, to which he was sent in 1801, made a remarkable impression upon the Dean's memory. "I believe," he says, "at that period (the very beginning of the century) it was about the most retired village in England not of a mountainous district. No turnpike road went through the parish. It lay in the line of no thoroughfare. The only inhabitants of education were the clergyman, a man of great simplicity of character, who had never been at the University, and my great-uncle, of above fourscore, and a recluse. The people were uneducated to an extent now unusual. Nearly all the letters of the village were written by my uncle's gardener, a Scotchman, who, having the degree of education usual with his countrymen of the profession, and who being very good natured, had abundant occupation for his evenings, and being, moreover, a prudent man, and _safe_, became the depository of nine-tenths of the family secrets of the inhabitants.

Being thus ignorant generally, and few of them ever having been twenty miles from the place, I may consider the parish fifty years behind the rest of the world when I went there, so that it now furnishes recollection of rural people, of manners and intelligence, dating back a hundred years from the present time. It was indeed a very primitive race; and it is curious to recall the many indications afforded in that obscure village of unmitigated ignorance. With all this were found in full exercise also the more violent and vindictive pa.s.sions of our nature. They might have the simplicity, but not the virtues, of Arcadia.... There were some old English customs of an interesting nature which lingered in the parish. For example, the old habit of bowing to the altar was retained by the rustics on entering church, and bowing respectfully to the clergyman in his place. A copy of the Scriptures was in the vestry _chained_ to the desk on which it lay, and where it had evidently been since that mode of introducing the Bible was practised in the time of Edward VI. The pa.s.sing bell was always sounded on notice of the death of a paris.h.i.+oner, and sounded at any hour, night or day, immediately on the event happening. One striking custom prevailed at funerals. The coffin was borne through the village to the churchyard by six or eight bearers of the same age and s.e.x as the deceased. Thus young maidens in white carried the remains of the girl with whom they had lately sported. Boys took their playfellow and companion to the churchyard. The young married woman was borne by matrons; the men of middle age did the same office for their contemporary.... The wors.h.i.+p of the little church was, as may be supposed, extremely simple, and yet even there innovation and refinement had appeared in the musical department. The old men who used to execute the psalmody, with the clerk at their head, had been superseded. A teacher of singing had been engaged, and a choir, consisting of maidens, boys and men, executed various sacred pieces with the a.s.sistance of a ba.s.soon and violin. I recollect in the church a practice which would have shocked the strict rubricians of the present day. Whenever banns of marriage were proclaimed, immediately after the words 'This is the first, second, or third time of asking,' the old clerk shouted out, 'G.o.d speed them weel.' In nothing was the primitive and simple character of the people more remarkable than in the social position of the clergy amongst them. The livings were all small, so that there was no temptation for ecclesiastics of birth and high position in society to come there. The clergy were in many cases clergy only on Sundays, and for Sunday duty. The rest of the week they were like their people; engaged in agriculture or horse-breeding, they lived with their servants, and were scarcely raised above the position of farmers. To show the primitive manners of many clergymen, I may mention the case of an usher in my school, who was also curate. He enjoyed the euphonious name of Caleb Longbottom. I recollect his dialect--pure Yorks.h.i.+re; his coat a black one only on Sunday, as I suppose he was on week days wearing out his old blue coat which he had before going into orders.

Lord Macaulay has been charged that in describing the humble social condition of the clergy in the reign of Charles II., he has greatly exaggerated their want of refinement and knowledge of the world; but really, from my recollection of my friend Mr. Longbottom and others at the time I speak of, in the reign of George III., I cannot think he has overdrawn the picture. Suppose this incident at a table in our own time:--My uncle lived in what is called in Yorks.h.i.+re the Hall; and being princ.i.p.al proprietor in the parish, he was in fact the squire or great man. The clergy always dined at the hall after evening service, and I recollect the first day the new curate dined. The awkwardness and shyness of the poor man were striking, even to the eyes of a thoughtless schoolboy. He summoned courage to call for beer, and, according to the old custom, deemed it necessary to drink the health of all present before he put the gla.s.s to his lips. He addressed first the old gentleman, then the vicar, then myself, and finally, with equal solemnity, drank to the servants in attendance--the old butler and coachman, who were waiting upon the company[1]."

I value these reminiscences of his Yorks.h.i.+re school, written long after, because I think them very curious; and they show how early Edward Ramsay had his eyes open to characteristic features of the people.

Ramsay's grand-uncle, the old Sir Alexander Ramsay, died in 1806, neglecting to make the provision which he had intended for his grand-nephew, but leaving his estates to his nephew, Edward's father, who then gave up his sheriffs.h.i.+p (in which he was succeeded by Adam Gillies), and being a Whig and of Whig family, accepted a baronetcy from Mr. Fox, and made Fasque his home for the short remainder of his life.

The future Dean was not fortunate in schools. On his father's succeeding to the family estates he quitted Harlsey indeed, but only to move to Durham, which left no more pleasant memories in his mind than the other, although there he learned to blow the flute, and indulge his strong musical taste. He writes of Durham school that it had fallen off terribly, from the increasing infirmities of the head master, and Ramsay was anxious to leave it, when that move came naturally by the death of his father[2]. Writing in his journal some time afterwards, he says, "What was I to do? I was determined to go into the Church, and must go to college. How was the intermediate period to be spent?" His first private tutor was the Rev. J.H. Browne, at Kegworth in Leicesters.h.i.+re, afterwards Archdeacon of Ely. "Here," says Edward, "I did learn something both of books and of the world. Browne was a scholar, and my fellow-students were gentlemen and knew something of life." He next lived for a time with Mr. Joynes, a clergyman, at Sandwich in Kent, and went from thence, in October 1811, to Cambridge.

He entered as a pensioner at St. John's, and although professing to be a reading man, he was not eminently satisfied with the effects of the society into which he fell upon his habits and accomplishments. "Not,"

he says, "that I had not really good a.s.sociates, but somehow it seems not to have been the best and such as I might have had." Another defect was his not having a skilful and effective private tutor at a time when he felt that he stood specially in need of one. "I could not form my reading habits alone, and I had not sufficient help. I did enough, however, to show I was not an a.s.s. I got a scholars.h.i.+p. I was twice in goodish places in the first cla.s.s. I had a name for flute-playing;" and then, ending this retrospect, which he wrote with some disgust, he tells how he left Cambridge in his third year, going out B.A. with no contest for honours. His college vacations were spent either in London with college friends, or with a reading party under Wilkinson, the tutor, at Redcar. In gathering up his recollections, he says he saw a good deal of society: one summer was very musical; of another which he spent at home he enumerates his occupations--"botany," "music," "Deeside." Through all, his study was theology, but in "small doses" he says. His brother Marmaduke joined him on the Christmas holiday of 1816, when they worked together at the cryptogamics, and then went up to Cambridge together--Edward to renew his theological studies with the help of the formal lectures at the University. He spent the remainder of that season at Bath with friends and relatives. He speaks of the Bath society, its gaiety, theatricals, music--some rich clergymen giving good dinners, and brother Marmaduke coming for his long vacation to a farm-house two miles from Bath, "where we had some good botanical fun. Can it be that the finding a new plant put us in a state of ecstasy? How we treasured up specimens! How we gloried in our collections! But it has all pa.s.sed away; no chord is touched." To some, who think of the Dean as the reverend, pious, grave, even melancholy man, these youthful reminiscences may appear unnatural, even unworthy. I must own that there breaks out now and then in his journal something which shows that he himself was not satisfied with many of these juvenile memoranda, as if they showed unfitting occupation and education of a young clergyman. But that was not their real nature. Those small studies and accomplishments took the place in his early training which the cricket-match or the boat-race now take in the school time of Young England. The Dean speaks somewhat contemptuously--"Here I got a smattering of astronomy," and again of his studies of cryptogamics and botany; but he nevertheless felt the full benefit of such accomplishments. His music, his pa.s.sion for rural and especially Highland scenery, the enjoyments of society, the love of seeing others happy, the joining of happiness with goodness, made the Dean what he was in after life, and enabled him to take that position amongst his countrymen which a purely theological upbringing would not have done.

But now our young cleric was to put away childish things, and to take upon him the duty of his high calling. He was ordained at Wells, and officiated for the first time as curate of Rodden, near Frome, Somerset, on Christmas day 1816.

Rodden is a very small village, of one or two farms and some labourers'

cottages, nestling round the little church, with a few, very few, outlying houses or farms. It lies among meadows on each side of the rivulet which runs through the village. One of the outlying houses is "Styles Hill," inhabited by one family of the Sheppards, all of whom soon became dear friends of the Dean. Another was the "Pear-tree"

Cottage, an uninteresting red brick house, where Mr. Rogers provided a residence for the young curate. The inc.u.mbent of the parish, when Ramsay went there, was the Rev. John Methwen Rogers of Berkley, who was non-resident. The duties of Rodden were too small to employ his whole time, and in the following year (1817) Ramsay became curate also of Buckland Dinham, the rector of which was non-resident and lived at a distance, so that the curate had the sole charge of the parish. In his work at Buckland, Ramsay took great delight, and soon won the hearts of his people, although many of them were Wesleyan Methodists of the old type[3]. But it was not only amongst the peasantry that Ramsay was beloved. All the upper and middle cla.s.ses in his own little parishes, and through the whole valley, regarded him with strong esteem and affection, and amongst them were persons whose character, and even whose little peculiarities of language, he caught and remembered. One of these, a retired Captain Balne, although he failed in prevailing on the young clergyman to take a gla.s.s of grog, his own favourite cure for all ailments, was pleased when the curate came to take a dish of tea with him and his gentle wife. Once, when Ramsay was ill, the grief in the parish was universal; but he used to say that the greatest proof of attachment was given by Captain Balne, who happened to be enjoying his dinner when the news of his friend's illness reached him, upon which he laid down his knife and fork, and declared he could not take another mouthful. Captain Balne had a peculiar phraseology. One phrase, in particular, was, "If I may be allowed the language," which came readily on all occasions. If he was asked "How is Mrs. Balne to-day?" the Captain would reply, "She is quite well, I thank you, Mr. Ramsay, if I may be allowed the language;" or ask him, "Have you a good crop of apples this year?" "Pretty middling, sir, if I may be allowed the language." The constant recurrence of the phrase struck Mr. Ramsay, who quoted it long after in his letters to his Frome friends--"I am glad to say my congregation at St John's continues good--if I may be allowed the language."

Buckland is a larger village than Rodden, containing nearly 500 inhabitants. The two places are five miles apart. Buckland is on the brow and slope of a steep hill, the church being on the summit, and the irregular street descending from it on the Frome side, with many cottages scattered about among orchards and meadows. So the curate of Buckland, living at the Pear-tree Cottage in Rodden, required a pony for locomotion, which he showed with some pride to his neighbours on first buying it. It was an iron-gray, and a sedate clerical pony enough, to which he gave the name of Rumplestiltskin, after one of Grimm's popular stories; and whenever he spoke of him or to him, he gave him his name at full length. The country and some of the places round Buckland are very interesting. On the west is one of the entrances to Vallis, a gra.s.sy valley bordered by limestone rocks, and trees and copse, with a trout-stream winding through it. There, when the labours of the day were done, the Sheppards and he would spend a summer afternoon sketching and botanising, whilst tea was prepared at a neighbouring farm.

Vallis opened into several other vales, and on the heights above were the picturesque villages of Elm and Skells, and the ruined nunnery and ma.s.sive old castle, the old seat of Delameres, renowned for a defence in the Cromwellian wars. Mr. Ramsay proposed in jest to fit up the castle as a dwelling, and bring all his friends to live there. Another time he was for fitting it up as a museum. It would make, he said, a splendid place for a _hortus siccus_--a "great ornament to our ponds and ditches[4]." The writer of these trifles excuses herself for collecting them, because she knew the value which is attached to the least of the sayings and doings of a departed friend; but we are a.s.sured, that even in those Arcadian regions life was not always holiday. There was some serious work. The curate took great pains on the future interests as well as the characters of his little flock.

In one family he acted the part of the truest of friends--gently reproving the little ones when they deserved it, and ready to amuse when it was the time for amus.e.m.e.nt--sometimes taking them to Bath for the day, and making them very happy, bestowing at the same time great pains on their instruction--sometimes practising music with them, and accompanying their sonatas on his incomparable flute--recommending to the governess a higher style of music, leading them on gradually to the works of Beethoven and Mozart. By and by he gave them instructions in architecture; taught them, as he said, all that he had learned from Rickman. His teaching was minutely technical. He would a.s.semble his cla.s.s in a little morning room, with books before them, and a case of mathematical instruments, pens and pencils. His pupils wrote what he saw fit to dictate, and he taught them how to use the compa.s.ses. Next came botany, which was not a new study to his pupils. There his brothers a.s.sisted him. They made a joint _hortus siccus_ under his instruction.

Edwin contributed many specimens from Scotland, and Marmaduke made a little collection of mosses. But they had to thank the curate for yet higher and better instruction. His younger pupils were not excluded from the most earnest conversations between him and Mr. Algar, Mr. John Sheppard, and some friends of the neighbouring gentlemen and clergy. In these conversations books were read and criticised, theological and other subjects, including some politics, were discussed. Ramsay was quizzed for Whiggish tendencies. The mistress of the house usually joined and set them right in politics, for she had been brought up in Plymouth during the French war, and had learned the old-fas.h.i.+oned Tory doctrine, and to think any other politics sinful. But all those high subjects of politics and religion were discussed with fitting respect; for that society--young and old--had a deep sense of religion, and the parents encouraged the younger members to visit and instruct the workmen and their families who were employed in the large cloth manufactories of the Sheppards; so that it came to pa.s.s that every man, woman, and child was taught or helped to teach others, for in those days very few of the working-people, at least in that part of England, could read at all. A lending library was attached to the mills. A large Sunday school was formed, chiefly for the children of the workpeople, and additional services were undertaken by the curate--a second sermon on Sundays besides one on Thursday evenings, where the families of the neighbourhood attended, and as many of the servants as could be spared.

There, be sure, was no big talk on the primary obligation of orthodoxy, no attempts to proselytise. But all cla.s.ses of that primitive people valued his preaching, and farmers and their labourers, the workmen of the factories, as well as their masters, took advantage of it. His brothers often visited him, and joined heartily in his pursuits whether gay or serious. It was delightful to see the three brothers so happy in each other's society, and helping on a worthy common object. Marmaduke, the Cambridge man, would talk astronomy, and William, the sailor, afterwards Admiral Ramsay, brought down a fine telescope, and himself gave them their first lesson in practical astronomy, handing over the instrument when he left to his brother the curate, that he might continue the instruction.

During all these years of useful, cheerful, happy employment at Frome, Edward Ramsay never forgot the land of his forefathers and of his own youth. He sometimes visited Bath and London to hear Edward Irving preach, to see Kean act, to stare at old books and prints in the shop windows, to revel in the beauties of Kew Gardens; but every summer he found time for a visit to Scotland, and spent his holiday with boyish delight amongst the scenes and friends of his childhood.

It was on one of those visits to Scotland, in the autumn of 1822, whilst Mr. Ramsay was spending his holidays among his friends on Deeside, that the managers of St. Paul's Chapel, Aberdeen, offered him the place of second minister to that congregation, along with Mr. Cordiner. He was much gratified, and would gladly have accepted the appointment. He liked the place--his native town; thought highly of the respectability of the congregation; but there was one objection, which to him was insuperable.

The congregation had for some time been Episcopal only in name, and it went against Mr. Ramsay's conscience to minister in a church calling itself Episcopal, but without the communion or discipline of a bishop.

He explained to the managers his objection, and thought for a time it might be overcome by a union with the Scotch Episcopal churches in the diocese. He had yet to learn the strength, of the Scotch prejudice against bishops; perhaps to learn that the more shadowy the grounds of dispute, so much the more keenly are ecclesiastical squabbles fought.

Worthy Bishop Skinner would have been glad to have Ramsay a fellow-labourer in his city upon whatever conditions. Yet he could not contradict his younger friend's honest and temperate adherence to his principles and to Episcopacy. The correspondence all round, which I have before me, is quite decorous; but after Ramsay had stated his objection, and that it was insuperable, the managers wrote to him, 1st October 1822, that "a unanimous election would follow if he accepted the situation under the present establishment." It would have been easy to divide the congregation, but this did not suit Ramsay's feelings or nature, and he courteously bowed to the decision of the managers, and returned to Frome, where his income from both curacies was 100 a year,--a poverty the more irksome to a man of culture and refined tastes.

Not long after (still, I think in 1823), the Journal records--"Mrs.

Forbes, my aunt, had just come into her accession of fortune, and presented me with 5000. A man may live many days in this world, and not meet the like gift in a like kindly spirit[5]."

Of the year 1823 the Journal remarks very severe winter. "Marmaduke and Edwin with me at the Pear-tree[6]; a delightful tour in South Wales with the Sheppards and other friends most agreeable and good-humoured,--botany, sketching, talk, and fun. Life has few things to offer more enjoyable than such tours. I have found in them the happiest hours in my life." And then follows the wail for so "many of them departed; so many dear good friends; all different, but all excellent!"

Marmaduke having gone as tutor to Lord Lansdowne's eldest son, Edward was more free to consider an offer from Edinburgh, and ultimately accepted the curacy of St. George's in York Place, under Mr. Shannon. He preached his two last sermons at Rodden and Buckland on Christmas day 1823.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Reminiscences_ (Second Series, 1861). Introduction.

[2] May 10, 1810.

[3] Some account of his dealings among the Methodists may be found in the _Sunday Magazine_, January 1865, edited by the Rev. Dr. Guthrie. The paper is t.i.tled "Reminiscences of a West of England Curacy."

[4] This was a favourite quotation of Ramsay's, who was amused with the remark of Withering's or Woodward's botany, repeated in his letters for long after:--"The organ at St. John's gives universal satisfaction--a great ornament to our ponds and ditches."

[5] Mrs. Forbes, the sister and aunt of so many Burnetts and Ramsays, lived the latter part of her life at Banchory Lodge, in the middle of that "Deeside" country, where the future Dean spent many of his happy holidays, and learned much of the peculiar ways of that peculiar people.

There were no two ladies in Scotland more esteemed and beloved than the Dean's aunts on both sides--Mrs. Russell, his aunt and mine, living in widowhood at Blackhall, and Mrs. Forbes at Banchory Lodge, three miles apart, on the opposite banks of Dee. Mrs. Forbes died 1st February 1838.

[6] His dwelling near Frome.

II.

The Dean was pa.s.sionately fond of Deeside. Let me indulge myself in looking back upon that district such as he knew it, such as I remember it sixty years ago.

The natural features of Deeside are not changed. The n.o.ble river pours down its brown flood as of old, hurrying from its wooded rocky highlands. On the prettiest part of its bank stands Crathes, the finest of Aberdeens.h.i.+re castles, the immemorial seat of the Burnetts, where Edward Ramsay, himself a Burnett, was received with all the love of kindred, as well as the hearty respect for his sacred profession. I daresay Crathes was not to him quite what I remember it. But we were of different professions and habits. I will say nothing of the chief sport of Dee, its salmon-fis.h.i.+ng. However fascinating, the rod is a silent companion, and wants the jovial merriment, shout and halloo, that give life and cheerfulness to the sport of the hunter. My recollection of Deeside is in its autumn decking, and shows me old Sir Robert and my lady, two gentle daughters and four tall stalwart sons--they might have sat for a group of Osbaldistones to the great painter Walter Scott. I will not describe the interior of the old house, partly because it was changing, and every change appeared to me for the worse; but no one would forget the old hall, where Kneller's picture of Bishop Burnett still looks down on his modern cousins and their hospitality. It was a frank and cordial hospitality, of which the genial old bishop would have approved. The viands were homely almost to affectation. Every day saw on that board a n.o.ble joint of boiled beef, not to the exclusion of lighter kickshaws; but the beef was indispensable, just as the _bouilli_ still is in some provinces of France. Claret was there in plenty--too plentiful perhaps; but surely the "braw drink" was well bestowed, for with it came the droll story, the playful attack and ready retort, the cheerful laugh--always good humour. A dinner at Crathes was what the then baronet, old Sir Robert, would call the "best of good company."

Another part of the house I well remember--the place, half gun-room, half servant's hall--where we prepared for sport in the morning, and brought the day's bag home at night. Prominent figures there were two brothers Stevenson, Willie and Jamie, known for twenty miles round as the "fox-hunters," known to us, after the southern sporting slang had been brought among us by our neighbour Captain Barclay, as "Pad-the-hoof" and "Flash-the-muzzle[7]" The fox-hunting was on foot, but let no mounted hunter sneer. The haunts of the game were continuous woods and bogs, hard to ride and from which no fox could be forced to break. "Pad-the-hoof" looked no ign.o.ble sportsman as he cheered his great slow-hounds through the thicket, and his halloo rang from the wood of Trustach to the craigs of As.h.i.+ntillie. Both were armed, but "Flash" took less charge of the hounds than seeing to death the fox, the enemy of all, including the roe, which recent plantations had raised into an enemy. I must say nothing on foot or wing came amiss to Flash-the-muzzle's gun. Hares and rabbits, not then the pest of the country, swelled our bag. We had a moderate number of black game, and the fox-hunters were somewhat astonished to find that we of the gentry set much store by woodc.o.c.k, which bulked so little in the day's sport.

The fox-hunter brothers had the run of the servants' hall at Crathes, and they were said to have consumed fabulous numbers of kitchen pokers, which required to be heated red-hot to give the jugs of ale of their evening draught the right temperature and flavour. That was a free-living community. The gentlemen of the house were too much gentlemen to stand upon their dignity, and all, from the baronet downwards, had the thorough appreciation of Deeside humour. It was there that the Dean learned his stories of "Boatie" and other worthies of the river-side. Boatie himself was Abernethy, the ferryman of Dee below Blackhall; he hauled his boat across the river by a rope made fast at both ends. Once, in a heavy water, the rope gave way, and Boatie in his little craft was whirled down the raging river and got ash.o.r.e with much difficulty. It was after this, when boasting of his valiant exertions, that Mrs. Russell put him in mind of the grat.i.tude he owed to Providence for his escape, and was answered as the Dean himself tells us in his _Reminiscences_. Another of the water-side worthies, "Saunders Paul,"

was nominally the keeper of the public-house at Invercannie, where the water of Cannie falls into Dee. It was the alehouse of the country, but frequented much more by the gentry than by the commons. It was there that Mr. Maule in his young days, not yet Lord Panmure, led the riots and drank his claret, while Saunders capped him gla.s.s for gla.s.s with whisky and kept the company in a roar with Deeside stories. Old Saunders--I remember him like yesterday--was not a mere drunken sot or a Boniface of the hostelry. He had lived a long lifetime among men who did not care to be toadied, and there was a freedom and ready wit in the old man that pleased everybody who was worth pleasing. Above all, there was the Deeside humour which made his stories popular, and brought them to the ear of our Dean.

That was the left side--the Crathes bank of Dee. Across the river was the somewhat dilapidated fortalice of Tilquhillie, the seat of an ancient and decayed branch of the Douglases. The last laird who dwelt there lived in the traditions of Deeside as own brother to the Laird of Ellangowan in Scott's romance. Ramsay has put him well on canvas. Who does not remember his dying instructions to his son and his grieve?--"Be ye aye stickin' in a tree, Johnny; it will be growin' when ye are sleepin'!" while he cautions the grieve, "Now mind that black park; it never gied me onything, ne'er gie onything to it."

In the days when the Dean knew that Water-side the fortalice was uninhabited, and I think not habitable for gentlefolks; but down on the haugh below, and close to the river in a pretty garden-cottage, dwelt the old Lady Tilquhillie, with her son the sheriff of the county, George Douglas, whom a few Edinburgh men may yet remember as the man of wit and pleasure about town, the _beau_ of the Parliament House--at home a kind hospitable gentleman, looking down a little upon the rough humours that pleased his neighbours. The old lady--I think she was a Dutch woman, or from the Cape of Good Hope--and her old servant, Sandy M'Canch, furnished the Dean with many a bit of Deeside life and humour; and are they not written in the _Reminiscences!_

Higher up the river were two houses where the Dean was much beloved--Banchory Lodge, his uncle General Burnett's, where also lived his dear aunt, the widowed Mrs. Forbes; and Blackhall, where, in the time I have in my mind, lived his aunt, Mrs. Russell, the widow of my uncle Francis Russell, a woman of many sorrows, but whose sweet voice and silver laugh brought joy into the house even amidst sickness and sorrow[8]. She had not the Deeside language, but she and her sister Lady Ramsay, Yorks.h.i.+re women, and educated in the city of York, helped to give the Dean that curious northern English talk which he mixed pleasantly with the language of Angus and Mearns that he loved so well; and he inherited from the Bannermans the sweet voice, so valuable an inheritance to a preacher.

I have gone over less than a dozen miles of the valley of the Dee, which was the Dean's Deeside. I think the manners and popular thought, as well as the language of that little district, were peculiar, and fitted to catch the attention of an eager student of human nature and character.

Deeside, in its wider acceptance, of course includes the great city at its mouth, and the picturesque mountains of Mar near the source of the river, where the Queen has now set her mark of favour on the land. I beg to distinguish Deeside--the Dean's Deeside--lying between these. The city of Aberdeen, with its trade and manufacture and wealth, with its University and schools, and some tradition of the antique metropolis, has established, as she had good right, habits and language of her own, not to be mistaken, but almost confined to her own walls. On the other hand, the mountains of Mar, where lie the springs of the Dee, where tower Lochnagar and Benmacdhui, are inhabited by a race of shepherds and hunters, speaking a different language, differing in manners from the Dean's friends, who dwelt from the Hill of Fair to As.h.i.+ntillie, where hardly a Gaelic name occurs among the peasantry.

The little cl.u.s.ter of mansions which I have mentioned lies, I think, wholly within the parish of Banchory-Ternan. Following the river down from that parish, the next place of any importance is the old manor-house of Durris, some half-dozen miles lower, and on the right bank of the river. It is a place of some interest to lawyers for having given rise to one of the leading cases on the law of entail, which settled points that had formerly been doubtful, all in favour of the strict entail. The victim in that case, ejected by the heir of entail, was John Innes, who had sold his property in Moray to invest the produce in the great barony of Durris. The new tenant, believing himself almost proprietor, built a comfortable house under the walls of the old castle, and in that house was born the writer of these notes. I do not feel myself severed by any disgusts from the country of my youth where I spent my best years, or at least the years of most enjoyment. It was then a wild moor, with some natural beauty, a picturesque den leading from the house to the n.o.ble river, wooded with native birch and scrubby oak, with some tall larches and magnificent horse-chestnuts, and even a few immemorial Spanish chestnuts planted by the old Peterboroughs, now all gone. Along that river bank were some of the broadest haughs with which I am acquainted, and some of the best salmon streams, then woods and sheep pastures and a dozen miles of heather hills--up to Cairn-monearn and Kerloach--giving the best grouse-shooting in the country. It is in truth a charming water-side even in the eyes of a critical old man, or of a tourist in search of the picturesque; but for a boy who lived there, shot, and fished there, while all the houses round were the dwellings of cousins and friends, while game was not yet let for hire, it was a place to win that boy's heart, and I loved it very heartily. We were the nearest neighbours on one side of that cl.u.s.ter of residences of the Burnetts and Douglases and Russells which I have tried to describe. We were all very good friends, and thus the Dean and I were early acquainted.

I have said little of the Dean's ancestors, merely named the Burnetts and Bannermans. Indeed I would guard against loading my memoir of the Dean with anything like mere pedigree. I take no interest in his ancestry, except in so far as they may have given a character--so far as he may have inherited his personal qualities from them. I will not dwell then upon Alexander de Burnard, who had his charter from Robert the Bruce of the Deeside lands which his descendants still hold, nor even on the first Lairds of Leys. When the Reformation blazed over Scotland, the Baron of Leys and his kindred favoured and led the party that supported the new faith; but, even in that iconoclastic age, two of them are found protesting against the destruction of religious places at Aberdeen. One, Gilbert Burnett (he was grand-uncle of the Bishop of Sarum), enjoyed considerable reputation abroad for certain philosophical writings. He was Professor of Philosophy, first at Basle and afterwards at Montauban, and a general synod of the French Protestants desired that his works should be printed at the expense of the synod. These _Dissertationes Ethicae_ were accordingly published at Leyden in 1649; but his death prevented his other writings from being published. Two brothers of the same generation, Thomas and Duncan, settled in England as physicians, and seem to have been men of literary eminence. Pedigrees of both are to be found in the Herald's Visitations of Ess.e.x and Norfolk. Duncan, Thomas, and Gilbert, are all noticed by Sir Thomas Middleton among the "Learned Men and Writers of Aberdeen;" and Duncan is noted as a holy, good, and learned man. In the stirring times of the Covenants, Sir Thomas Burnett of Leys, Baronet, though an adherent of the Huntlys, embraced the Covenant from conscientious motives against his political instincts and a.s.sociations. And ever afterwards we find him firm in the principles of the Covenant, yet advising peaceful and moderate counsels; and when Montrose, after his conversion to the royal cause, pa.s.sed through Aberdeens.h.i.+re, harrying the lands of the leading Covenanters, he supped one day at Crathes, excepted and protected Sir Thomas Burnett and his son-in-law, Sir William Forbes of Monymusk, in the general denunciation of the Puritans. We find Sir Thomas repeatedly a commissioner for visiting the University of Aberdeen, and in his later years he endowed three bursaries at King's College, his own _alma mater_. Jamesone has painted him with a thoughtful and refined, but earnest and manly face. The baronet's brother, James Burnett of Craigmyle, was of the same character. No less earnest and staunch than his brother in his adherence to his principles--he ever figures as a peace-maker and enemy of bloodshed. He is described by the parson of Rothiemay, an unsuspected testimony, as a "gentleman of great wisdom, and one who favoured the King though he dwelt among the Covenanters, and was loved and respected by all." Is it not plain that the temperance and moderation descended in the blood of the Burnetts?