[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 passionately 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 noble 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 Aberdeenshire 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-fishing. 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 noble 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 ignoble sportsman as he cheered his great slow-hounds through the thicket, and his halloo rang from the wood of Trustach to the craigs of Ashintillie. 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 woodcock, 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 ashore with much difficulty. It was after this, when boasting of his valiant exertions, that Mrs. Russell put him in mind of the gratitude 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 glass for glass 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, Yorkshire 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.