The Academic Gregories

by Agnes Grainger Stewart

It was a good school, and did much for its boys, beating education into them if they would not have it otherwise, and of such discipline little Gregorie, who was no exception to the fiery family temper, no doubt had his share. He passed from school to Aberdeen University and later to Edinburgh, but when he inclined to become a doctor, it was decided that he should go abroad and get a French degree, an arrangement to which he acceded with joy, and in 1696 at the age of twenty-two he set out for a time on the continent. Once away from home, with no one to consider but himself, he turned to what was really the centre of greatest interest in Flanders—the camp of William III. Merry were the days he passed there and full of excitement, so that perhaps there was one person who was only half glad when the Peace of Ryswick brought the war in Flanders to an end.

But it was better for his work that he should go further afield. On therefore he went, lingering first at Utrecht, then at Paris before he reached Rheims, where he secured his degree in September 1698. How much study Gregorie put into these years it is impossible to ascertain. Medicine, and more especially surgery, were pretty barbaric arts in those days, but this student, it should be remembered, was always a Gregorie, and could not but learn.

Just before he came back to England he spent a few weeks in the French camp, and after this he accepted an invitation to take a practice at Chelmsford, Essex. But alas! James Gregorie found that he could not settle down to a country life, and so to the regret of his patients he took a hurried farewell of them, and went back to that town from which his forbears had come—to the grey city ‘looking out on the cold North Sea.’

There is no place in the world to be compared with the old mother city of Aberdeen for the love in which her children hold her. Wherever they go she is still their home, and from between her guardian rivers she watches her sons as they go forth and is glad over their success. So it was in the past, so is it now, and so may it be while the world lasts.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century Aberdeen was by no means a dull place, and indeed Dr Gregorie, one suspects, may sometimes have wished it to be duller, as for example when Rob Roy during the brief time of his success was raising recruits for the Jacobite cause amongst his clansmen there. The Earl of Mar, into whose hands the perfidy of Montrose had thrown Rob Roy, had requested him to bring as many of his clansmen into the Stuart camp as he could muster. While he was occupied with this task, he lived with Dr Gregorie, for, however much the physician may have deplored his connection with that too notorious person, he could never afford to neglect him; and the charm of the Gregorie household so fell upon the big, warm-hearted outlaw, that in a burst of kindness and enthusiasm he offered to take Dr Gregorie’s little son and ‘mak a man o’ him.’[^[6]] Rob Roy thought him far too good to waste upon doctoring, and if the sunny child had got his way, he would have followed the cateran in that delicious life of adventure which he painted—a life of hunting and fighting and success.

[6]. Scene imitated by Scott, in Bailie Nicol Jarvie’s offer to take Rob’s sons James and Robert to apprentice.—Rob Roy, Ch. xxxiv.

But Dr Gregorie was much alarmed; he must not offend his cousin, not only because he loved him, but because they were all alike quick in anger, and a cold answer might have been answered by yet colder steel. He could not trouble him with the youth’s education, and he had only been trained in the Lowlands, and was not at all what a Highland boy of his years would be, said the doctor, but all this depreciation only made Rob Roy the keener to be friendly; and at last when every other excuse had failed, the doctor shook his head and confessed that the child was too delicate and would not live through a Highland winter. So, full of compassion one for another the cousins parted, their roads ran far apart; Rob Roy came to his end claymore in hand listening to the dirge ‘Cha till mi tuillidh’ (we return no more), while for the doctor there was a career of steady success and a peaceful ending in the sweet house in the middle of the herb garden.

Rob Roy had said he would come back and fetch the child when he was older and stronger, but likely enough when the cousins met again the chieftain could not advise any man to become his follower. Once again we see them, Rob Roy walking arm in arm with his kinsman the Professor of Medicine, down the Castle Street in Aberdeen, when suddenly the drums beat to arms, and the soldiers begin to issue from the barracks. ‘If these lads are turning out, it is time for me to look after my safety,’ said Rob Roy, as he slowly shook hands, and turning down one of the neighbouring closes was seen no more. After telling this story, Sir Walter Scott added: ‘The first of these anecdotes which brings the highest pitch of civilization so closely in contact with the half savage state of society, I have heard told by the late distinguished Dr Gregory (James Gregory, Professor of Practice of Physic in Edinburgh), and the members of his family have had the kindness to collate the story with recollections and family documents, and furnish the authentic particulars. The second rests on the recollection of an old man, who was present when Rob Roy took French leave of his literary cousin on hearing the drums beat, and communicated the circumstance to Mr Alexander Forbes, a connection of Dr Gregory by marriage.’

There is also a gossiping paragraph about this Dr Gregorie, or rather about his house, in Orem’s description of Old Aberdeen, written after he was made Mediciner in King’s College, a post to which he was appointed in 1725.

‘Dr Gregorie hath repaired his lodging belonging to the college anno 1727; and hath built to it a toofall, for giving it a better entry to the rooms than it had formerly, in which toofall he hath a little room for a study, and a little room below it beside the staircase. He hath also repaired the garden dyke and hath begun to enclose his glebe, a part wherof he hath enclosed with a stone dyke, and planted it within the aforsaid year, and hath enclosed the rest of his forsaid glebe this year 1728.’