John Brown (6 page)
As with hundreds of other clansmen who survived the slaughter at Culloden, the Browns returned to their tenancy in Angus to ‘lie low’. For years though, Hanoverian government troops harassed the clansmen, burning and pillaging their homes. The Browns, who suffered similar difficulties, decided to seek a more peaceful area in which to rebuild their shattered lives.
In the 1770s John Brown’s grandfather, Donald Brown (
c.
1750–1827), who married Janet Shaw (c. 1751–1836) of Badenoch, left Angus and took the road north through the Capel Mounth Pass to take up a new tenancy at Rhinachat, a small part of the Monaltrie estates of the Farquharsons of Invercauld, an estate in the Dee Valley about 11⁄2 miles from Braemar.
12
There they raised their family, which included six sons, one of whom, ‘Old’ John, was John Brown’s father. He became a prominent character at Crathie.
13
Deriving its name from the Gaelic word
Creathach
(brushwood), Crathie lies on the main road from Braemar to Ballater and is situated about a mile from the modern Balmoral Castle.
14
The hamlet of Crathie grew out of an early Scottish ecclesiastical site. In his historical notes the Revd Ronald Henderson Gunn Rudge, Minister of Crathie from 1964 to 1971, opined:
The story of the Christian Church in Crathie goes back through the long years to the misty records of the 6th century when the Celtic or Brithonic Saints, St Colin and St Monire, brought the Christian Gospel north into Deeside. A famous pool in the River Dee, near Balmoral Castle, is known as Polmanaire – “the pool of St Monire” – so called because in this pool the Saint of old is said to have baptised his Christian converts.
The earliest Chapels are reputed to have been erected at The Lebhall (on the north Deeside Road); at Balmore (in Aberarder Glen); and at the Mains of Abergeldie (on the south Deeside Road). In the 15th century a new Church was built beside the River Dee, where the ruins can still be seen in the old Churchyard. This was the centre of worship until 1804, when it was replaced by a larger, but austere, Church built on the site of the present Church – dedicated in 1895. It was in the 1804 Church that Queen Victoria [and the Brown family] worshipped during the greater part of Her Majesty’s residence at Balmoral Castle. The Queen laid the foundation stone of the new building on 11 September 1893, and two years later was present at its dedication.
15
The area around Crathie is very hilly, with the principal peaks being Lochnagar, Cairntoul and Ben Macdhui. Their presence gave rise to the gossiping Lord Clarendon referring to John Brown, unkindly, as a ‘Child of the Mountains’.
When Old John Brown settled into his tenancy at Crathienaird, the area had already been substantially improved by the ‘model landlord’ Colonel Francis Farquharson, who himself had fought in the Jacobite Army.
16
He introduced new agricultural methods, repaired old buildings and established new ones, built roads and bridges, and even developed the four mineral springs which had been known since the thirteenth century at Pannanich in the nearby united parish of Glenmuick, Tullich and Glengairn.
17
The house at Crathienaird where John Brown was born has now vanished. In his day Crathienaird was a
clachan
(hamlet) of some eighteen heather-thatched houses built of mud and unhewn stone. Each was a two-roomed cottage built in the Highland style of ‘but and ben’; in some of the poorer households the inhabitants shared their dwelling with their cattle.
18
Within, the floors were of hardened earth which became damp and muddy in winter. The large Brown family slept in a series of traditional ‘box beds’, which were curtained off or shut off with doors. The younger members of big families generally slept around the peat-burning hearth, wrapped in blankets or plaids. For light the house had small unopening windows with four to six panes of glass. Quite often, on leaving such a ‘bothy’ (house) for a new job, the family would take the windows with them as personal property. The focal point of the Brown’s main living area was the hearth, with its cooking pots supported on a ‘
swee
’ (a movable iron bracket) over the fire; a cauldron of water was kept permanently heated on a three-legged trivet. Light from the fire supplemented the oil-burning
cruises
(boat-shaped rush-wick lamps). In 1831, when John Brown was five years old, the family moved to larger accommodation at The Bush Farm, Crathie, where he spent his childhood days.
19
Around this time the Duchess of Kent was giving attention to her daughter’s education. In 1824, when Victoria was five, she had been transferred from the care of her nurse Mrs Brock to her German governess Fräulein Louise Lehzen, whom King George IV had appointed a Hanoverian baroness in 1827. Yet it was now time for Victoria to move on from nursery stories to a proper education. Towards this end the duchess consulted Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, and John Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln, about the current state of the princess’s education and how it should be developed. The result was a recommendation for her to continue with the tutorship of the evangelistic clergyman Revd George Davys, whose languages and history lessons were now supplemented by a music teacher, a singing master, a dancing instructor and a drawing master.
Victoria was a quick if somewhat unwilling pupil, but she had a flair for languages and drawing. Her love of riding made her an accomplished horsewoman, and she terrified the ladies-in-waiting with fast gallops through Windsor Park. Victoria’s destiny, however, was beckoning: on Saturday 26 June 1830 King George IV died and was succeeded by his brother Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence, as King William IV. In the shadow of the throne which was now destined to be hers, Princess Victoria developed a distinct character and temperament. As Arthur Benson and Viscount Esher were to remark:
She was high-spirited and wilful but devotedly affectionate, and almost typically feminine. She had a strong sense of duty and dignity, and strong personal prejudices. Confident, in a sense, as she was, she had the feminine instinct strongly developed of dependence upon some manly adviser. She was full of high spirits, and enjoyed excitement and life to the full. She liked the stir of London, was fond of dancing, or concerts, plays and operas, and devoted to open-air exercise.
20
Herein were clues that were to make her an enthusiast for Scots outdoor pursuits and the devoted friend years later of the red-headed lad who ranged over the hills at Crathie. Yet there was more in her character that would bind her to John Brown. She hated change; she looked upon herself as a ‘deserted child’ (after her father’s death); she was blisteringly truthful, admitting to ‘fearless straight forwardness’, and Lord Melbourne was to comment that she was ‘the honestest person I have ever known’. Further she showed firm loyalty to friends; her trust once given was not withdrawn. And her ‘nervous shyness’ made her cling to the people she knew and liked; as she said herself: ‘I am terribly shy and nervous and always was so.’ These traits of truthfulness, honesty and loyalty were all recognisable too in John Brown’s developing character. Open-air activities, especially, were to be an important factor in John Brown’s upbringing, for his education had a much more practical aspect than Princess Victoria’s.
John Brown attended a few
raithes
21
at Crathie school. Crathie’s first parish schoolmaster had been appointed in 1710, but his post had fallen out of use.
22
By 1719 a charity school had been set up by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
23
and this was one of the thousand parish schools still extant at the time of the Scottish (Education) Act of 1803. At Crathie it cost the Brown family 3
s
6
p
per quarter for a high standard of primary education. At school the Brown children learned the Gaelic language in parallel with English.
24
On John Brown
‘John Brown stands out as a striking figure of a man in my boyhood memories. Often as I was playing with other children on the green slopes in the Castle grounds Queen Victoria would come along in her chair drawn by a pony.
‘A groom sometimes attended the pony, but by the Queen’s side there always seemed to be John Brown with his rich Scots brogue. The Queen would always smile and say a few words to us, then pat the head of the nearest. On several occasions that was me. John Brown might also say “Good-day” but he was just a little too stern to get really friendly with us.
‘Wherever the Queen went, in the castle grounds or about the rooms, John Brown was always at her side. When he died the Queen had a two-foot high brass plate erected in memory of her “true and faithful” servant in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore. But when King Edward came to the Throne he had the plate removed, and I never heard what happened to it. Everyone about the Royal house knew that the Prince of Wales disliked John Brown.
‘Brown was popular with the servants at Windsor, although they went in awe of him. He was just in settling disputes and obtained for them many little extra comforts and privileges.’
H.L.F. Gale,
son of a Queen’s Messenger at Windsor Castle
Most of John Brown’s education was conducted out of school. He learned the arts of deerstalking, fish spearing, rowing, swimming, shooting, and riding the Highland breed of ponies known as garrons, which were used for rough hill work. He learned how to walk the mountains, climbing and tackling gradients at speed. He became an expert on the flora and fauna of the area and learned how to forecast the weather. Victoria came to pay close attention to his weather lore; she always averred that if Brown said it would rain or snow, even on the finest day, then it would. He was fluent, too, in the Gaelic names of the glens and mountains, the shepherds’ greetings and their whistle calls to their dogs. And all this information he shared with Victoria as he walked at her horse’s head from the early days of his royal appointment.
While John Brown was learning his trade and adopting the lifestyle of a Highland laddie, Princess Victoria was going through a very emotional part of her life as heiress presumptive to her septuagenarian ‘Uncle King’. The stress led to mental exhaustion. As part of her education the Duchess of Kent took her on ‘royal progresses’ to various towns and historical sites, much to the annoyance of the King, who believed that his sister-in-law was deliberately keeping his niece from his court, where Princess Victoria was already being groomed in royal protocol by Queen Adelaide. It was true. The Duchess, supported by Sir John Conroy, her ambitious Comptroller of the Household, was attempting to influence Victoria in case the King died before she came of age. In such an event the Duchess would probably be declared Regent, with Conroy as her chief adviser; the prizes would be rich for both.
During one of these tours the Duchess gave her daughter a book of blank pages in which to record her impressions. Thereafter she was to keep a daily record of events for the rest of her life. By the time of her death in 1901, her writings stretched to several dozen volumes. From her accession in 1837, though, the extant
Journal
is the truncated version prepared from the original sheets by Princess Beatrice, Victoria’s youngest daughter and co-literary executor, who removed ‘anything which might cause pain’. Thus much (innocent) information about Queen Victoria and the early life of John Brown was ‘sanitised’.
In 1836 Princess Victoria was seventeen and as her legal majority approached there was increased talk of her marriage prospects. Pools of suitors were divided into rival Court groups. At St James’s Palace King William was keen to introduce her to eligible young men of his choice, particularly if they were not favoured by the Duchess of Kent whom he now detested. So he invited the Prince of Orange, the eldest son of the King of the Netherlands, to visit, along with his sons William and Alexander. In Brussels, Princess Victoria’s uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians (and King William’s bête-noire largely because he was the Duchess of Kent’s brother), cherished his sister’s hope that Victoria would form a liaison with her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. This would mean a German alliance, a move which King William deprecated. First, though, came the Dutch brothers whom Victoria found ‘plain’. Then arrived the Coburg princes, Albert and Ernest, whom she found ‘amiable, very kind and good . . . Albert is very handsome.’
25
Although Albert was ill during his trip and did not take to Court life, Princess Victoria wrote thus to her Uncle Leopold:
I must thank you, my beloved Uncle, for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert. Allow me, then, my dearest Uncle, to tell you how delighted I am with him, and how much I like him in every way. He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy. He is so sensible, so kind, and so good and amiable too. He has besides, the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you can possibly see.
26
Other foreign suitors came and went but by the next year Princess Victoria’s mind was occupied with more serious matters. On 20 June 1837 King William IV died and Princess Victoria succeeded to the throne. Styled ‘Victoria, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith,’ she was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Thursday 28 June 1838. She settled down to learn the profession of monarchy against a background of political intrigue. On 12 October 1839 Queen Victoria wrote again to her Uncle Leopold:
The dear cousins [Albert and Ernest] arrived at half past seven on Thursday, after a very bad and almost dangerous passage, but looking both very well, and much improved . . . Albert’s beauty is most striking, and he so amiable and unaffected – in short very fascinating.
27
The outcome was that Queen Victoria finally made up her mind and proposed marriage to Prince Albert. He accepted, and on 23 November she informed the Privy Council of her intention to marry. On 16 January 1840 she officially announced to the country her betrothal in a speech from the throne. She married Prince Albert on 10 February at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. On 21 November 1840, nine months and eleven days after the wedding, Princess Victoria (‘Vicky’) Adelaide Mary Louisa, the Princess Royal, was born at Buckingham Palace.