The old churchyard in which John Brown, the Queen's trusty Scotch servant, faithful as a squire of old, sleeps, lies down in the low land near the Dee. John Brown's house, solid and unpretending like the man himself, which he only occupied once, when his coffin lay for a night in the dining-room, is in the neighbourhood.
The Queen has white cottages not far from the castle gate, built on the model of the Osborne cottages, pretty and convenient homes of keepers, keepers' widows, &c., &c., with the few artisans whose services are necessary for the small population. There are other cottages of the old, homely sort, containing no more than "the butt and the benn" of stereotyped Scotch architecture, with the fire made of "peats" or of sticks on the hearth-floor. In some of these, the walls of the better rooms are covered with good plates and photographs of every member of the royal family, with whose lineaments we are familiar, from the widowed Queen to the last royal couple among her grandchildren. These likenesses are much-valued gifts from the originals.
As a nucleus to the cottages, there is the shop or Highland store with a wide door and a couple of counters representing two branches of trade in the ordinarily distinct departments of groceries and haberdashery. Probably this is the one shop in her Majesty's domains in which, as we have evidence in her journal, [Footnote: "Life in the Highlands"—Queen's journal. "Albert went out with Alfred for the day, and I walked out with the two girls and Lady Churchill, stopped at the shop and made some purchases for poor people and others. Drove a little way, got out and walked up the hill to Balnacroft, Mrs. P. Farquharson's, and she walked round with us to some of the cottages to show me where the poor people lived, and to tell them who I was…. I went into a small cabin of old Kitty Kear's, who is eighty-six years old, quite erect, and who welcomed us with a great air of dignity. She sat down and spun. I gave her, also, a warm petticoat; she said, 'May the Lord ever attend ye and yours, here and hereafter, and may the Lord be a guide to ye and keep ye from all harm.' … We went into three other cottages—to Mrs. Symons's (daughter-in-law to the old widow living next door) who had an 'unwell boy,' then across a little burn to another old woman's, and afterwards peeped into Blair's, the fiddler. We drove back and got out again to visit old Mrs. Grant (Grant's mother), who is so tidy and clean, and to whom I gave a dress and a handkerchief; and she said, 'You're too kind to me, you're over kind to me, ye give me more every year, and I get older every year.' After talking some time to her, she said, 'I am happy to see ye looking so nice.' She had tears in her eyes, and speaking of Vicky's going said, 'I'm very sorry, and I think she is sorry hersel'.'…">[ she avails herself of the feminine privilege of shopping. For the Queen can live the life of a private lady—can show herself the most considerate and sympathetic of noble gentlewomen in this primitive locality. She can walk or drive her ponies, or visit on foot her commissioner or her minister, or look in at her school, or call on her sick, aged, and poor, and take to them the comforts she has provided for them, the tokens of her remembrance they prize so much. She can enjoy their simple friendliness and native shrewdness. She can read to them words of lofty promise and tender consolation. She can do all as if she were not crowned Queen and ruler of a great kingdom. In hardly any other part of her empire would such pleasant familiar intercourse and gentle personal charities be possible for her. The association has been deepened and strengthened by a duration of more than thirty years. The Queen came while still a young wife to Balmoral, and she has learnt to love and be loved by her neighbours in the long interval which leaves her a royal widow of threescore. Her children were fair-haired little boys and girls, making holiday here, playing at riding and shooting, getting into scrapes like other children, [Footnote: There is a story told of one of the little princes having chased an old woman's hen and been soundly scolded by her for the offence. Her neighbours remonstrated with her, and her heart failed her when, a few days afterwards, she saw the Prince Consort coming up the path to her house leading the small offender. But the visit was one of courteous deprecation, in order that the little hunter of forbidden game might personally apologise for his delinquency.] prattling to the old women in "mutches" and "short gowns," whose houses were so charmingly queer and convenient, with the fires on the hearths to warm cold little toes, and the shadowy nooks ready for hide-and-seek. These children are now older than their mother was when she first came up Dee-side, heads of houses in their turn, but they have not forgotten the friends of their youth.
The rustic community is pervaded in an odd and fascinating manner with the fine flavour of a Court. It has, as it were, a touch of Arcady. Among tales of the great storms and fragments of old legends, curious reflections of high life and gossip of lords and ladies crop up. Not only are noble names and distinguished personages, everyday sounds and friendly acquaintances in this privileged region, but when the great world follows its liege lady here, it is to live in villiagiatura, to copy her example in adapting itself to the ways of the place and in cultivating the natives. Courtiers are only courtly in being frankly at ease with the whole human race. Ladies-in-waiting and maids of honour lose their pride of rank and worldly ambition—if they ever had any, stroll about, drop into this or that cottage at will, and have their cronies there as in loftier localities. We hear of this or that marriage, which has yet to be announced in the Morning Post; how a noble duke, who was conveniently in attendance on the Prince, once walked with a fair and gentle lady, whose father was in waiting on the Queen, through the birch woods and by the brawling Dee, and a marriage, only too shortlived, came of it. And we end by listening to the piteous details of the swift fading away of the much-loved young duchess. Other names, with which the Court Calendar has made us familiar, are constantly coming to the surface in the conversation, generally in association with some act of cheery good fellowship. The son of an earl found a dog for his mother at one of these cottage hearths, and never returned to the neighbourhood without punctually reporting himself to tell its old mistress how well her former pet was thriving—that it had its dinner with the family in the dining-room, and drove every day with the countess in her carriage.
The fine old white house of Abergeldie, with its single-turreted tower, has become the Scotch home of a genial prince and a beautiful princess, who, we may remember, remained steadfastly settled there during the darkening, shortening days of a gloomy autumn, in devoted watch over her lady-in-waiting lying sick, nigh unto death with fever. Abergeldie has another cherished memory, that of the good old Duchess of Kent, for whom Prince Albert first rented the castle, who often stayed in it, accompanied by her son, the Prince of Leiningen, her daughter, the Princess of Hohenlohe, or some member of their families. The peculiar cradle which used to be swung across the Dee here, conveying passengers as well as parcels, has been removed in consequence of the last disaster which befell its progress. An earlier tragedy of a hapless bride and bridegroom who perished in making the passage is still remembered. Remoter traditions, like that of the burning of a witch on Craig-na-Ban, linger in the neighbourhood.
Beyond Balmoral, in the Braemar direction, stretches the fine deer- forest—a great fir-wood on broken ground—of Ballochbuie, a remnant of the old forest of Mar, where a pretended hunting expedition meant a projected rebellion. It is said an earl of that name bestowed it on a Farquaharson in exchange for so small a matter as a plaid. It is now part of the estate of Balmoral. The hills of Craig Nortie and Meal Alvie lie not far off, while on the opposite side rise Craig-na-Ban and Craig Owsel.
Of all the Queen's haunts, that which she has made most her own, where she has stayed for a day or two at a time, seeming to prefer to do so when the hills have received their first powdering of snow, [Footnote: "A little shower of snow had fallen, but was succeeded by brilliant sunshine. The hills covered with snow, the golden birch-trees on the lower brown hills, and the bright afternoon sky, were indescribably beautiful"—Extract from the Queen's journal.] almost every year during her residence in Aberdeenshire, is that which includes Alt-na- Giuthasach and the Glassalt Shiel. This retreat is now reached by a good carriage-road over a long tract of moorland among brown hills, opening now and then in different directions to show vistas closed in by the giant heads and shoulders—here of dark Loch-na-Gar, there of Ben Macdhui, both of them presenting great white splashes on their seamed and scarred sides—wide patches of winter snow on this July day, far more than usual at the season, which will not melt now while the year lasts. "Burns," the Girnoch and the Muich, trot by turns along with us, singing their stories, half blythe, half plaintive. Once or twice a lowly farmhouse has a few grass or oat-fields spread out round it, with the solitude of the hills beyond. A cross-road to such a house was so bad that a dog-cart brought up to it, had been unyoked and left by the side of the main road, while its occupants trudged to their destination on foot, leading with them the horse, which needed rest and refreshment still more than its masters. The blue waters of Loch Muich come in sight with bare precipitous hills round; a little wood clothes the mouth of the pass and the loch, and helps to shelter Alt-na-Ginthasach. The hut is now the Prince of Wales's small shooting-lodge. The modest blue stone building, with its brown wooden porch and its offices behind, is built on a knoll, and commands a beautiful view of the loch and the steep rocky crags to those who care for nature at the wildest. The only vestige of soft green is the knoll on which the hut stands. All the rest is bleak and brown, or purple when the heather is in bloom. The hills, torn by the winter torrents, are glistening after a summer shower with a hundred silver threads in the furrows of the watercourses.
There are fences and gates to the royal domicile, but there is hardly an attempt to alter its character within, unless by a round plot of rhododendrons offering a few late blossoms. But all nature, however stern and savage, smiles on a July day. The purple heather-bell is in bloom, the tiny blue milkwort and the yellow rock-rose help to make a summer carpet which is rendered still gayer by many a pale peach- coloured orchis and by an occasional spray of wild roses, deeper in the rose than the same flower is in the low countries, or by a tall white foxglove. Loch Muich may be desolation itself when the heather and bracken are sere, when the lowering sky breathes nothing save gloom, and chill mist-wreaths creep round its precipices; but when the air is buoyant in its tingling sharpness, when the dappled white clouds are reflected in water—blue, not leaden, and there is enough sunshine to cast intermittent shadows on the hillsides and the loch, though a transient darkness and a patter of raindrops vary the scene, it has its day and way of blossoming.
The Queen's house or shiel of the Glassalt stands near the head of the two miles long loch, just beyond the point where the Glassalt burn comes leaping and dashing down the hillside. Here, too, is a small sheltering fir and birch plantation, though not large enough to hide the full view of the sentinel hills. A "roundel" of Alpenrosen, or dwarf rhododendrons, is the only break in the growth of moss and heather. The loch is so near the house that a stone thrown by a child's hand from the windows of the principal rooms would fall into the watery depths.
The interior is almost as simple and limited in accommodation as Alt- na-Giuthasach was when the Queen described it in her journal. The dining-room and drawing-room might, in old fashioned language, be called "royal closets"—cosy and sweet with chintz hangings and covers to chairs and couches, a small cottage piano, a book-tray in which Hill Burton's "History of Scotland" and Sir Walter Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," find their place among Scotch poetry old and new. The engravings on the walls tell of that fidelity to the dead which implies truth to the living. There are likenesses of the Prince—who died before this house was built, as in the great palaces; the Duchess of Hesse—best known in the north as Princess Alice; the Princess of Hohenlohe, with her handsome matronly face, full of sense and kindness, and her young daughter, Princess Elise, who passed away in the springtime of her life. In these rustic sitting-rooms and the adjacent bedrooms and dressing-rooms we come again on many a portrait of the humble friends of the family—the dogs which we seem to know so well; the early group of little Dash and big Nero, and Hector with the parrot Lorey; Cairnach, Islay, Deckel, &c. [Footnote: An anecdote of the royal kennels states that when no notice has been given, the servants shall know of her Majesty's presence in the vicinity, and will say among themselves, "The Queen is at Frogmore" by the actions of the dogs, the stir and excitement, the eager listening, sniffing of the air, wagging of tails, and common desire to break bounds and scamper away to greet their royal mistress.]