CHAPTER II

The Altyre Gardens—Home Interests—Our Mother’s Death—Early Influences—The Moray Floods.

“In the silence of my chamber, When the night is still and deep, And the drowsy heave of ocean Mutters in its charmèd sleep, Oft I hear the angel voices That have thrilled me long ago: Voices of my lost companions Rise around me soft and low.

“Oh, the garden I remember, In the gay and sunny spring, When our laughter made the thickets And the arching alleys ring!

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Oh! the radiant light that girdled Field and forest, land and sea, When we all were young together And the earth was new to me.”

(From “The Buried Flower” in _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_ by PROFESSOR AYTOUN.)

On my birth (26th May 1837), within six hours of that interesting event, I was sent to Moy to the care of my father’s four unmarried sisters (generally known as “the Moy Aunts”), because scarlet fever reigned at Altyre; my brother Walter Frederick and my sister Constance had just died of it, and Eleanora lay in imminent danger, so a carriage was in readiness to take away the precious baby and her wet-nurse as quickly as possible. Thus my travels began early, though thirty years were to elapse ere opportunity offered for going further afield than Great Britain. It was to the death of this brother and sister that I owe my name, CONSTANCE FREDERICA; but though my mother wished to keep both names, she shrank from using either, and so took the sound of the end of the second name, and called me EKA, the only name by which I have ever been known in my own family. It was not till school days that the more dignified Constance came into use.

My memories of the next five years are necessarily very limited. I recollect my mother’s glorious masses of hair falling in clustering ringlets far below her waist. I remember her lovely songs and her joy in the great beautiful gardens of her own creation, and those stands of “dusty millers”—large very varied auriculas—which were the gardener’s special pride, and above all, the greenhouse on one side of the house, which was the very first greenhouse in Morayshire. Among its delights was a fragrant mimosa-tree covered with sweet yellow blossom, and a large white jessamine with shining leaves, clustering round upper windows, which, looking into the greenhouse, had the full benefit of all its sweetness.

How she joyed in every new variety of favourite flowers, the splendid fuchsias, the large blue aquilegia (Brodie Columbine), and the bright blue salvias, whose store of honey too often proved as irresistible to her naughty child as to her friends, the bumble bees—a friendship shared with the fat, ugly toads which the gardeners cherished.

To my mother the staff of under-gardeners were not merely “hands.” She took the keenest interest in providing them with all the best books on botany and horticulture, and many successful gardeners scattered over the world owed their start in life to her encouragement. A conspicuous example was that of Jamie Sinclair, who, during the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856, was found in charge of Prince Worenzow’s beautiful gardens, and who rejoiced to tell the British officers of his start from the Altyre gardens.

I find an interesting reference to him, and to my mother’s care for her employés, in a paper in _The Cottage Gardener_ (dated about 1856), by Mr. D. Beaton, head gardener to Sir W. Middleton at Shrubland Park. He tells how he himself had his earliest training in the gardens at Beaufort Castle, whence he passed to Altyre. “The collection of plants there,” he says, “was immense, and I was at the head of them in less than a twelvemonth. I had access to all the books and periodicals on gardening.

“Here I first began crossing, budding plants, and bulbs, three favourite pursuits with Lady Gordon-Cumming, who after many years sent seeds of her crossed rhododendrons to Shrubland Park at my instance.”

I have a letter to my mother from her second daughter, Ida, telling as a great secret of her hopes and persevering efforts to obtain a blue geranium by crossing the wild crane’s bill with a very pure white pelargonium. The result, however, is not recorded.

Mr. Beaton goes on to say: “The great African lionhunter, Sir William’s second son, was then learning his lessons in books and horsemanship; he was the handsomest boy in all Scotland, and so fond of fun and dancing, that we could have a ball and supper any night in the year, through his influence with ‘Mamma.’ Jamie Sinclair, the garden-boy, was a natural genius, and played the violin. Lady Gordon-Cumming had this boy educated by the family tutor, and sent him to London, where he became well known for his skill in drawing and colouring.

“Mr. Knight, of the Exotic Nursery, for whom he used to draw orchids and new plants, sent him to the Crimea to Prince Worenzow, where he practised for thirteen years. He laid out those beautiful gardens which the Allies so much admired; had the care of a thousand acres of vineyards belonging to the Prince; was well known to the Czar, who often consulted him about improvements, and who gave him a ‘medal of merit’ and a diploma, or kind of passport, by which he was free to pass from one end of the Empire to the other, and also through Austria and Prussia. He was the only foreigner who was ever allowed to see all that was done in and out of Sebastopol and over all the Crimea.”

Throughout her brief, bright life, my mother’s influence was always exerted for good, as beseemed one who was a reverent student of the Holy Scriptures. She and most of her sisters were keenly interested in the subject of prophecy, and eagerly studied every new book that appeared thereon. Both she and my father were careful to train their children in reverent love for the “Holy Book,” and in the practice of learning by heart at least one verse every day. I think the very first which I thus learnt was the Psalm from which, at the beginning of these “Memories,” I have quoted a verse in the past tense, which sixty-five years ago she taught me in the future tense.

When her favourite son, Roualeyn, on his deathbed, surprised us all by his knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, he told us that through all his stormy life he had never been parted from the Old Book given him by his mother, so that his mind was like a well-built fire, ready to respond to the Divine spark, which at last kindled it so effectually.

Natural as was the worship with which her sons regarded their beautiful mother, it was doubtless accentuated by her keen personal interest in all their pursuits; and amongst minor details, I can remember the skill with which her firm, capable hands tied those beautiful salmon and trout flies which beguiled so many bonnie fish—an art in which her sons became equally adept; and no more acceptable gift could reach them from far countries than gay feathers with which to try new experiments.

Perhaps some fishermen may like to know a little secret confided to me by my brother Roualeyn, which was, that when the fish were sulky, refusing his best flies (_N.B._ _Fish_ invariably means salmon) he would let them rest a while. Then, tying a bit of tackle off a common rook’s feather on to a common bait-hook, he would let it float down stream, and almost invariably captured some inquisitive fish which came up to look at it.

To me, to whom sewing in any form is as hateful as having to do the simplest sum in arithmetic, it seems somewhat remarkable that, notwithstanding the very varied occupations of my mother and elder sisters, they all excelled in needlework, both useful and ornamental. They would gather a handful of graceful flowers, and then and there, with coloured silks, reproduce them on red cloth stretched on an embroidery frame. Some of these are still in the possession of daughters or grand-daughters, and are so fine that each would seem as though it must have taken months of toil.

All my mother’s daughters were endowed with much of her own artistic talent, and delighted in painting both in oil and water-colour, fired thereto by frequent visits from such artists as Sir Edwin Landseer, Sir William Ross, Saunders, Giles, and others.

Among the early details which most impressed themselves on the memory of the “Baby” of the home was the wonderful “Birthday Chair,” which on the 26th of May was always prepared for her use at all meals. Early in the morning the elder sisters went out and presently returned laden with boughs of delicious lilac and graceful golden laburnum. Tall willow-wands, tied to a high wooden armchair, formed the light framework to which were fastened this wealth of fragrant spring blossoms—a lovely bower wherein the happy child sat in truly regal state.

This pretty custom was kept up till my ninth birthday, and the lilacs never failed us. Nowadays I doubt whether a solitary spray would be found in blossom in the North, just as in those days all the girls reserved their daintiest muslins to wear at the Inverness Games in September. Now wisdom and comfort alike demand warm tweeds. And as to the delicious ripe peaches which we used to gather on the open wall, the modern gardeners hear of them with polite incredulity. Are we returning to a glacial epoch?

Among my vivid memories of about 1840 were certain evenings when my mother returned from distant expeditions escorted by several gentlemen, whom I now know to have been Sir Roderick Murchison, Hugh Miller, Agasis, and other eminent geologists, who at that time were deeply interested in the newly discovered fossil fish in the Old Red Sandstone in Ross-shire, on the other side of the Moray Firth. Similar fossils had just been found in the Lethen-bar Lime Quarries, on the other side of the Findhorn.[12] These were a source of keen interest to my mother, and it was to search for more that the geologists were invited to Altyre.

Evening after evening there was great excitement in carefully lifting from a dogcart the spoils of the day, namely grey nodules which, when gently tapped with a hammer, split in two, revealing the two perfect sides of strange fossil fishes, with the very colour of the scales still