The Academic Gregories

by Agnes Grainger Stewart

David Gregorie was only thirty, and the best of life was still before him. He spent his time in just such a way as attracted him. He studied medicine, mechanics, mathematics and physics, read every interesting book within his reach, and corresponded with scientific contemporaries both in Scotland and out of it. His letters, full of thoughts about the atmospheric laws, went to Edmé Mariotte in his cell. He may have got some help from them—certainly Gregorie was immensely interested in the Frenchman’s discoveries.

His life was enriched by many delightful friendships, but more than all by the affection shewn to him by his brothers and expressed in so many practical ways. In 1660 Alexander settled the property of Over Aschalache on David and his family, subject to the life-rent of old Mrs Gregorie. It was a most kind arrangement, and must have been a great help in providing for the growing family. Three years later he was made librarian of King’s College, and there he spent his time, reading and searching and arranging in the dreamy way of an old world librarian. But life, which is so fearfully unknown, held in it for David Gregorie in 1664 that which was to alter his whole career. By the tragic death of his brother, who left no children, all the family estates passed to him, and he became suddenly a rich man. He left Aberdeen, and went to live in the mansion-house of Kinairdy, with which his name is now always associated.

Few people pass through the remote parish of Marnoch, which lies on the borders of Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, but those who do are most certainly rewarded. The Deveron, not so well known as the Dee, still keeps a charm of loneliness for those who love her, and the burns are browner than in the southland. By such a burn was Kinairdy built, on a little promontory where the stream joins the Deveron. When I asked to see Kinairdy, I was told ‘There’s nothing to see there, only the old tower down by the river,’ but the old tower was enough for me, and packed full of memories. To this old house it was that David Gregorie took his wife and children in 1664. We get occasional glimpses of him as he passes about the country, at one time laughed at by his neighbours for his total ignorance of farming, while at another, in a case of illness, they would eagerly wait for his coming, with a feeling as if life and death were in his hands. Sometimes no doubt it was so, and to rich and poor alike he would go, giving his advice gratuitously for the love of doctoring, and because he was benevolent.

This medical skill of his stood him in good stead on one occasion, when a deputation of ministers called upon him to answer for himself on the charge of being a wizard. There were dread stories abroad concerning him, how, by having sold his soul to the Devil, he was able to foretell the weather (what a thing to sell your soul for in Scotland!) how, after days of sunshine, he could predict rain and sure enough the rain would come, and he might make it go on raining for weeks through his intercourse with the powers of darkness. Poor Gregorie, face to face with his accusers, went through the little crowd of his children, and brought in the familiar spirit, which was only a barometer, tried to explain how it worked, asked them to examine it (which I do not believe any of them would do), and won them over to his side by his sheer lovableness. After all, who was to doctor them with the skill of David Gregorie if he were burned for a wizard? So the kind doctor was left to his home and his work. The ministers did not understand his defence, but there was not one of them who could not remember how, with some well-chosen simple, he had healed one of their dear ones in the hour of need.

As his sons and daughters grew up, Gregorie found it more and more impossible to get the quiet which he so much wanted for his work. His patients and his children between them were taking up all his leisure. In these circumstances he determined to rearrange his hours. He retired early to bed, and rising about two in the morning, worked for a few hours in the stillness of the night. When that was over, he went to sleep till he felt rested. If these nocturnal habits were known to the deputation that waited upon him, there was some excuse for their fears. What more alarming than the shadows in the room! The midnight crucible and the sulphurous smell were not there, but it must be admitted that the Laird of Kinairdy loved the hours of darkness better than the day.

David Gregorie had twenty-nine children. Fifteen of them were the children of his first wife, and fourteen the children of his second. Nine of them died as quite little babies, but twenty grew to be older; and so, though everyone says, that it was remarkable for Kinairdy to have three sons professors of mathematics, it must be allowed that he had a most unusual number of children to choose from!

In the pedigree of the family of Gregorie in Mr Philip Spencer Gregory’s book, from which the table of the professors is for the most part taken, it is seen that David, Professor of Mathematics in Edinburgh, and later of Astronomy in Oxford, Isabel, the grandmother of Professor Innes of Aberdeen, and James, Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews and Edinburgh, were the children of the first marriage; while Margaret, the mother of Thomas Reid, and Charles, Professor of Mathematics in St Andrews, were of the second marriage.

Jean Walker was probably a cleverer woman than Isabel Gordon, Gregorie’s second wife. In the first place she converted her husband to Episcopacy and Toryism, and secondly, her son David was much the most brilliant of the Kinairdy children. To him it was, when he was working as Savilian professor at Oxford, that old Kinairdy confided a model of an improved cannon, which in his enthusiasm to improve the munitions of war, he had designed in his peaceful home by the Deveron. His son, who thought it most ingenious, showed it to Sir Isaac Newton, and the great philosopher evidently agreed with him; but to invent an instrument, the only object of which was to kill better than any cannon in use, seemed to him a fearful abuse of ingenuity. The horrors of Marlborough’s wars, where men were slaughtered by the thousand, were they not enough as it was? Who could deserve mercy from his Maker if he were to bid god-speed to such a terrible machine? Sir Isaac asked the professor to destroy the model, which he did, and the little toy which may have been a gatling gun, for aught we know, was broken in pieces.

Old David Gregorie, who had been preparing to join the allies in Flanders, to see his cannon in use, bore his disappointment most sweetly. Perhaps Newton was right, he thought, for although he had meant to help his fellow-countrymen, the invention would soon be known to the enemy, and the Gregorie gun be levelled against his compatriots.

There seems to be something almost pitiful about the end of David Gregorie’s life. Kinairdy was made over to his son, the Savilian professor at Oxford, the sweet old house forsaken, the rooms in which such merry life had been lived, deserted, and the flowers from which the gentle herbalist had drawn so many healing virtues, left to die. It would be best to think that he returned to Aberdeen at the call of King’s College, which ‘Beautified with bells within, without decked with a diadem,’ is said to ring her sons back to her before they die. But there were probably other reasons, and more potent ones. His children had to be provided for, and his wife, shrewd and not poetical (or else how could she have been a Hanoverian?) thought of all that her brother, the Provost of Aberdeen, had in his power, and she knew he could do much and would do much for her children, so they set up house once more in the old town of Aberdeen.