he iron road from Aberdeen to Inverness must follow somewhat the road which gallant Mary took on her way to punish Huntley. There is a bleak stern look about this country as a whole, but here and there stand castles, or lie low the ruins of castles, in many a chosen place of beauty; for harsh as were these lords, and devastating as were their deeds, life must have had its moments of wonder and of delight. If Malcolm Canmore destroyed Inverness before the Twelve Hundreds, and the fat Georges destroyed Inverugie late in the Seventeen Hundreds, and all through the centuries that stretched between strong men built strongholds and stronger men took them and made mock of them, still there must have been gentleness and beauty. There were women, other than Lady Macbeth; there were young men and maidens noble or common; and I suppose the glamour of romance, the reality or the illusion of love, was invented before peace and commerce became the occupations of men.
Peterhead
One brief journey I made along the bleak coast up to the town of Peterhead, which looks nearest to Norroway across the foam, and has a most uncompromising aspect. Peterhead is a penal town to-day; and it is one of a string of fishing villages, picturesque as fishing villages are, except to the nose, "that despised poet of the senses"; and not picturesque to the people, who lack the colour of fisherfolk in Brittany. But I wished to see with mine own eyes the ruins of Inverugie.
It is one of the castles belonging to the Lords Marischal. It came to them in a curious way of forfeiture, an abbot dispossessed or some such thing, like Dunnottar, but without the appeal to Rome. And one of the stones of the castle carried the promise, and the threat—
"As lang's this stane stands on this croft
The name o' Keith shall be abaft,
But when this stane begins to fa'
The name o' Keith shall wear awa'."
The last Lord Marischal came hither, late, late, in the Seventeen Hundreds. He had seen a century move through strife to peace. In person he had taken part in the Rising of the Fifteen, a young man, but still hereditary Lord Marischal, and loyal to the Stewart cause. He had taken no part in the Rising of the Forty Five; he was not "out" on that dark night. But the sweeping revenge of those English times made the Keiths attaint and—the stone dropped from its croft. The Lord Marischal and his brother made the continent their refuge, Paris in particular, although the activities of the proposed restoration took their Lordships to Madrid and Rome and Berlin and St. Petersburg.
The younger brother, James, was made a Field Marshal by Catherine of Russia, and that amorous termagant making love to him in the natural course of proximity, he discreetly fled, became Field Marshal for Frederick the Great, and not marrying—whatever the romance of the Swedish lady—he fell at the battle of Hochkirch in 1758, and lies buried in the Garison Kirche of Berlin. A statue stands in the Hochkirch kirche, and in 1868 the King of Prussia presented a replica to Peterhead. And even so late as 1889, the Kaiser, remembering the Great King's Field Marshal, named one of the Silesian war units, the Keith regiment.
There is no statue to the Lord Marischal—Maréschal d'Ecosse, always he signed himself. He was the friend of the wittiest and wisest and wickedest men of his time, of David Hume, and Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Frederick the Great. Neither did he marry. Dying at the age of ninety-two, he was buried in Potsdam. There is no statue to him, there or here. And Inverugie lies in low ruins.
Hither he came, when attaint was lifted, late in those tottering years. He drove out to the castle, remembering all it had meant, the long splendid records of the Earls Marischal, and how the King, James III and VIII—Banquo saw him also—
"And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass
Which shows me many more."