Travellers' Tales of Scotland

The following is from Travellers' Tales of Scotland by R. H. Coats:

XVII - Queen Victoria

(1848-1882)

SCOTLAND exercised a great fascination over Queen Victoria from the day she first entered it with Prince Albert in 1842 till the close of her long life in 1901. It is not difficult to find reasons for this attraction. To put off court dress and array oneself in a frock of Stewart tartan; to exchange the stiff quadrilles of Buckingham Palace for the sword dance and Reel of Tulloch of Balmoral Castle; to leave behind the gorgeous state carriage with its gilt, its guards, its flunkeys, and all the tinsel grandeur of a royal progress, and wade a little pony through some ford near Killiecrankie, or stoop to gather cairngorms on the slopes of Ben-na-Bhourd, or suffer oneself to be borne aloft, on the arms of two stalwart Highlanders, across the rapid stream of Corrie Buie these were experiences which any human being brought up in a palace might be expected to enjoy. Queen Victoria was never happier than in the freedom and retirement of her Highland home. She loved to set all pomp and ceremony aside, and live a country life of simple privacy, to go sketching with dear Louise, or play the piano of an evening with darling Beatrice, or have all her wants attended to by her ever faithful Brown. Above all, she felt healed and calmed, after the rush and fever of a London season, by the solitude and quiet of the everlasting hills. "Oh! those dear hills, it made me very sad to leave them behind... Lord Aberdeen was quite touched when I told him I was so attached to the dear, dear Highlands, and missed the fine hills so much... Independently of the beautiful scenery, there was a quiet, a retirement, a wildness, a liberty, and a solitude, that had such a charm for us."

Queen Victoria has recorded her impressions of Scotland and things Scottish in Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands and in More Leaves. The charm of these books is that they are a quite unpretentious diary of the author's experiences, recorded from day to day with no thought of publication. The position of august sovereign seems completely to be forgotten, and nothing is written down but what might come from the pen of a happy and loving wife, a devoted mother, an intelligent and an observing woman. We read of things which never would have been mentioned had the author been writing for the press, as, for example, that Leith is not a pretty town, and that the prayer 1 of Principal Campbell was much too long, though "part of it was really very good." We are informed of the inconvenience of postal facilities in one place, of the arrangement of bedrooms and sitting rooms in another, and are permitted to view Her Majesty enjoying a quiet rubber of whist on a wet evening, or studying maps of the Highlands after dinner, or reading The Lay of the Last Minstrel aloud to the Prince Consort. It is evident from these journals that the Queen entered into every phase of Scottish life with the greatest relish. She tasted oatmeal porridge and Finnan haddies, and thought them "very good." She also ventured on a morsel of "the celebrated Scotch haggis," professing, to the Duchess of Athole's great delight, that she "really liked it very much." And she was offered, though she respectfully declined, a dish of Athole brose. All the characteristic Highland manners and customs were observed for her entertainment. She witnessed a deer-stalking, a "sheep-juicing," and a "salmon-leistering"; she was initiated into the mysteries of Hallowe'en and a Highland Kirstnin'; and she attended a torch-light ball at Corriemulzie.

Balmoral was made the starting point for a number of excursions in the regions round about, and some of these are freshly and vividly described in the pages of the Journal. Queen Victoria had what she herself called a "very ungeographical head," and she never could remember the names of Scottish mountains. But she got other people to write those out for her, and loved to he among them. Frequently on these expeditions she preferred to travel incognito, and the devices and disguises to which this policy gave rise were the source of considerable amusement. At Loch Inch the travellers decided to call themselves "Lord and Lady Churchill and party." At the Ramsay Arms Inn, Fettercairn, all visitors were kept out of the commercial room, as it was reserved for "a wedding party that had come from Aberdeen." Awkward little circumstances, however, would sometimes occur to spoil the plot. On one occasion Brown, by a slip of the tongue, addressed the principal lady as "your Majesty." On another, the Queen was almost betrayed by the number of her gold rings, and a certain little girl, who waited on them at table, was only prevented from gazing too curiously at royalty by always being turned round to look another way. At Dalwhinnie their identity was discovered by the arrival of a drum and fife band, headed by a piper, and when the fat old landlady knew of it, she immediately set herself to prove worthy of the occasion by appearing in "a black satin dress, with white ribbons and orange flowers."

The inconveniences of such a mode of travelling, however, were sometimes really serious. Arriving at a certain inn without announcement, the Queen found that there was nothing whatever to eat save "two miserable, starving, Highland chickens, without any potatoes. No pudding and no fun, no little maid, nor our two people who were wet and drying our own and their things to wait on us! It was not a nice supper and the evening was wet. Mary and Maxted (Lady Churchill's maid) had been dining below with Grant, Brown, and Stewart in the commercial room at the foot of the stairs. They had only the remnants of our two starved chickens." Even more distressing was it when they arrived at Glenfiddich and found that the conveyance carrying the luggage had broken down. Queen Victoria had therefore to sit down to dinner in an impromptu cap made out of a "black lace veil of Emilie's," and she had nothing for it but to retire to rest at last "without the necessary toilette," after waiting up in vain till two in the morning.

During those mountain rambles, the Queen sketched and painted a good deal, and longed for some of the magic of Landseer's pencil. Her Journal shows that she possessed a true appreciation of Scottish landscape. "As the sun went down, the scenery became more and more beautiful, the sky crimson, golden-red, and blue, and the hills looking purple and lilac, most exquisite, till at length it set, and the hues grew softer in the sky and the outline of the hills sharper. I never saw anything so fine." The following description of Fingal's Cave is interesting when compared with that of Keats. "The effect of the cave was splendid, like a great entrance into a vaulted hall. It looked almost awful as we entered, and the barge heaved up and down on the swell of the sea. The sea is immensely deep in the cave. The rocks, under water, were all colours pink, blue, and green which had a most beautiful and varied effect. It was the first time the British standard, with a Queen of Great Britain, and her husband and children, had ever entered Fingal's Cave, and the men gave three cheers, which sounded most impressive."

And Queen Victoria was interested in the history and antiquities of Scotland no less than in its scenery. She noted in her Journal any place associated with Robert Bruce or Queen Mary or the "sair sanct" David I. She carefully studied the disposition of the rival forces at Bannockburn and Dunbar. She enquired about the Covenanters and Rob Roy, and took the greatest delight in seeing the little baby-basket which was sent to Holyrood Palace to contain King James I, as a present to Queen Mary from Queen Elizabeth. Especially did Queen Victoria show a partiality for "poor" Prince Charlie. She could not bear to think of Culloden Field, when she passed near it, but would put her lips with eagerness to a little silver quaich from which Charles himself had drunk in the olden time, and visited with pleasure the place where he had first set foot on Scottish ground. "I thought I never saw a lovelier or more romantic spot, or one which told its history so well. What a scene it must have been in 1745! And here was I, the descendant of the Stuarts and of the very king whom Prince Charles sought to overthrow, sitting and walking about quite privately and peaceably." At Perth the Queen wrote her name in a curious old book which had received no royal signature since those of James I and Charles I. At Glencoe she thrilled with horror at the remembrance of the massacre, and "hoped that William III knew nothing of it." And at Abbotsford she inscribed her name, by request, on the MS. of Sir Walter Scott's Journal, 11 which I felt it to be a presumption in me to do." These words were written without any affectation, for the Queen had the greatest reverence for Sir Walter. She knew his novels intimately, and was a constant reader of The Lady of the Lake and The Lay of the Last Minstrel during her visits to the Highlands. With Burns, too, she was acquainted, and loved to have his poetry read out to her by Dr. Norman M'Leod at Balmoral Castle. She also knew, as was most fitting, Clough's Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich and the works of the Ettrick Shepherd.

For the Scottish people generally the Queen had a great affection, and both she and the Prince "highly appreciated the good breeding, simplicity, and intelligence of the Highlanders, which made it so pleasant, and even instructive, to talk to them." But the hovels of the poorer crofters greatly distressed her "so low, so small, so dark with thatch and overgrown with moss and heather, that if you did not see smoke issuing from them, and some very ragged dirty old people, and very scantily clothed dishevelled children, you could not believe they were meant for human habitations... There were poor little fields, fuller of weeds than of corn, much laid by the wet, and frequently a 'calvie' or a 'coo' of the true shaggy Highland character was actually feeding in them."

We pass over the more personal and private pages of the Journal, and the glimpses it affords of little "Vicky" bowing to the people from the carriage window, or later receiving a sprig of white heather on becoming engaged to Prince Frederick of Prussia; of Princess Louise dancing the Highland reel with Brown at Inveraray; of little "Bertie," the future king of England, being heartily cheered at Bute as Duke of Rothesay; or of the Marquis of Lorne, "just two years old, a dear, white, fat, fair little fellow with reddish hair." Nor is this the place in which to dwell on the references to the Prince Consort, his shooting expeditions, his successful speech to the members of the Royal Society at Aberdeen, of which his wife was so proud, or the various kindly and wise sayings so faithfully reported and remembered. To Queen Victoria the death of her beloved husband in 1861 was "the end of all." "I felt tired, sad, and bewildered. For the first time in my life I was alone in a strange house, without either mother or husband, and the thought overwhelmed and distressed me deeply. I had a dear child with me, but those loving ones above me were both gone their support taken away. It seemed so dreadful!" Gradually, however, the floods of grief subsided, and the affections, which had been made deeper and more tender by her loss, came to be increasingly expended on many a poor cottager in the neighbourhood around. Few passages in the Journals are more interesting than those which describe the visits to Kitty Kear, to Mrs. Farquharson, to Mrs. Symons, to old Widow Grant, and to christenings and marriages and funerals besides, in which kisses and presents were given, and prayers and blessings received, and the bonds of love drawn closer between the cottage and the throne.

No account of Queen Victoria's sojourn in the Highlands would be complete which did not make mention of her attachment to Scottish Presbyterianism. When the Rev. J. Caird, afterwards the famous Principal of Glasgow University, preached at Crathie Church in 1855 on "Religion in Common Life," he "electrified all present by a most admirable and beautiful sermon, which lasted for nearly an hour, but which kept one's attention riveted."

Dr. Norman M'Leod's prayers on similar occasions, with their touching and simple references to the Queen and her little children, "gave her a lump in her throat." The death of Dr. M'Leod was a great blow to Queen Victoria. "There was no one to whom in doubts and anxieties on religion I looked up with more trust and confidence, and no one ever reassured and comforted me more about my children." How much the Queen was attracted by what she called the "grand simplicity" of the Presbyterian form of worship may be judged from the following impression of a Communion service. "It was all so truly earnest, and no description could do justice to the perfect devotion of the whole assemblage. It was most touching and I longed to join in it. [1] To see all these simple good people in their nice plain dresses (including an old woman in her mutch), so many of whom I knew, and some of whom had walked far, old as they were, in the deep snow, was very striking."

With Queen Victoria we bring our series of sketches to a close. No more distinguished traveller has ever visited Scotland. Few have rejoiced to return to it more frequently than she, and none have sung its praises in more enthusiastic terms. "This solitude, the romance and wild loveliness of everything, the independent, simple people, all make beloved Scotland the proudest, finest country in the world. ... I prefer it greatly to Switzerland, magnificent and glorious as the scenery of that country is."

[1] Queen Victoria partook regularly of the Communion at Crathie church every autumn, after 1873.

XVIII - Characteristics