John Brown (10 page)
Dropping behind the main party, Prince Frederick William and Princess Victoria had dismounted; picking a sprig of white heather, the Prince handed it to the Princess with a kiss and a wish for her to live with him in Prussia. When the royal party regrouped at Glen Girnoch, the Queen knew by the couple’s demeanour that Prince Frederick William ‘had declared himself’. Thus was set in motion an extraordinary sequence of events. Their marriage would lead to the birth of a son in 1859 who would become Emperor William II of the united Germany Prince Albert wished for – but who, as ‘Kaiser Bill’, would plunge Europe into disastrous war.
Each year brought several changes and new features at Balmoral. In the year that the Queen’s ninth and last child Princess Beatrice was born, on 14 April 1857, a new bridge was opened over the Linn of Dee and the Queen settled down to a regular annual routine of visiting the poor of Crathie parish, an enterprise that John Brown would organise in future years. This year, with her new lady-inwaiting Jane, Lady Churchill, who would serve the Queen constantly until her death in 1900, she bought goods at a local Crathie store to distribute to parish octogenarians.
The year 1858 was a significant one in John Brown’s career. On 25 January Princess Victoria married Prince Frederick William at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, and Queen Victoria was left in a depressed and anxious state after surrendering her first-born to an older man. The Queen was shaking so much during the formal wedding picture that she appears blurred on the daguerreotype. The Queen’s state had not improved when the royal family arrived at Balmoral that September. Although Queen Victoria was publicly criticised for leaving London while parliament was still in session and the Indian Mutiny was raging, Prince Albert knew that the Queen was approaching one of her ‘depressions’ and he was determined to get his
Liebes Frauchen
away.
On John Brown
‘[John Brown] was shrewd, a great reader, and was capable of giving a considered opinion on most matters . . . Though Brown had a bluff manner, I never saw him intentionally rude.’
11th Marquis of Huntly,
Captain Gentlemen-at-Arms
Although it had snowed heavily, the Queen drove round the estate on 18 September with her Commissioner in Scotland Dr Andrew Robertson to view the latest housebuilding and in the afternoon rode out in her carriage. To get a better view of Prince Albert, off searching for deer, when their carriage stopped at a likely place for hunting, the Queen was carried in a plaid gripping the shoulders of John Brown and Keeper Duncan over the slippery wet grass to a favourite picnic spot by the Corrie Burn. When she returned home she wrote: ‘All the Highlanders are so amusing, and really pleasant and instructive to talk to – women as well as men – and the latter so gentlemanlike.’
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By this holiday it was clear that Prince Albert’s Highland
Jäger
Archibald Fraser Macdonald was not well. He had developed the Victorian curse of consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis) and was no longer able to carry out his duties. Macdonald eventually died at Windsor Castle in May 1860. Who was to take his place? Prince Albert had for some time been observing John Brown, since he was promoted to riding on the box of the Queen’s carriage. Yes, Brown had all the qualities necessary; there was no equal in knowledge of the terrain around Balmoral; no one could light a picnic fire with damp wood like Brown; and he was skilled in amusing the Queen while the prince disappeared into the plantations to look for deer. Brown was thus promoted with the Queen’s approval. She wrote to Princess Victoria at the
Kronprinzpalais
in Berlin:
Brown has had everything to do for me, indeed had charge of me and all, on all those expeditions, and therefore I settled that he should be specially appointed to attend on me (without any title) and have a full dress suit . . . He was so pleased when I told him you had asked for him.
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‘Fascinating Johnny Brown’ was also now privy to royal secrets and the Queen told him Princess Victoria was pregnant. And he was becoming much in demand with other members of the royal family. Prince Arthur requested that Brown go with him and his party on an expedition. ‘
Unmöglich
’ [‘not possible’] said the Queen; ‘Why, what should I do without him? He is my particular gillie!’
22
When the snow came Queen Victoria wrote in her
Journal
: ‘I wished we might be snowed up, and would be unable to move. How happy I should have been could it have been so!’ She had no wish to leave Balmoral and confided in Princess Victoria that to do so was ‘more painful’ than in past years: ‘I know not why,’ she added. Her letters to Berlin expressed her need for the Highlands and she took to pondering the verses that the Revd Dr MacLeod had read to her from Robert Burns’s poem on the Highlands with the refrain:
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here
My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe –
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.
But was her heart ‘a-chasing’ some
thing
, or some
one
? Certainly she was in love with the Highlands. But biographer Tom Cullen believed that these outpourings to her eldest daughter were a code: ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands . . . Yes, that is my feeling, and I must fight and struggle against it.’ And the code suggested, opined Cullen, that Queen Victoria had become infatuated with ‘Fascinating Johnny Brown’, and her ‘fight’ was her struggle to put such feelings out of her mind.
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John Brown settled rapidly into the duties of being the Queen’s ‘particular gillie’, which included taking a prominent place behind her at a variety of royal functions. Important events such as the fête for members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, on 22 September 1859, became commonplace for him. A few days before, Prince Albert had presided over a meeting of the prestigious British Association at Aberdeen; their work was of great interest to the prince. ‘Four weighty omnibuses’ filled with ‘the scientific men’, wrote Queen Victoria in her
Journal
, enjoyed an afternoon of Highland games; and the Queen particularly noted that ‘Brown’s father and brothers’ mingled with the official guests.
Each of her
Journal
entries for royal jaunts in Scotland now seems to include some mention of John Brown for a while. The first to take place after the fête was on Friday 7 October, when the royal family made an ascent of 4,296ft Ben Macdhui, one of the Cairngorms, 19 miles west-northwest of Castleton of Braemar. They proceeded by ‘sociable’
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changing to post-horses at Braemar. At Shiel of the Derry their ponies were waiting for the ascent. Brown led the Queen on a pony called ‘Victoria’ up the stony track and into heavy mist on the top of Ben Macdhui. There the Queen, the Prince of Wales and Princess Alice took lunch in ‘a piercing cold wind’, which dispersed the mist to open up grand views of stupendous scenery. Whisky and water refreshed the Queen – Brown said ‘pure water would be too chilling’ – who partook of tea once they had descended back to Shiel of the Derry.
This jaunt was a dress-rehearsal for four important ‘expeditions’ that the Queen and Prince Albert made to various parts of Scotland; they were dubbed the ‘Great Expeditions’ by Queen Victoria. The First Great Expedition was to Glen Fishie and Grantown-on-Spey. With John Brown and Keeper Grant on the box, Queen Victoria set off from Balmoral attended by General the Hon. Charles Grey, then Prince Albert’s Private Secretary, and Jane, Lady Churchill.
Writing in her
Journal
at ‘Hotel Grantown’ – really a coaching inn – on Tuesday 4 September 1860, Queen Victoria traced their route in the ‘sociable’ via Linn of Dee, where they changed ponies for an exploration of the banks of the Geldie Burn as it enters the Dee, and thence on to the Fishie Burn and lunch. By this time John Brown was observing Queen Victoria’s dietary preferences and began to make sure that all the items she enjoyed were packed in the picnic hampers or were available at Balmoral whenever possible. He became an expert, for instance, in hunting down the Queen’s favourite pralines.
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Chatting to Lord and Lady Alexander Ramsay, met along the way, the Queen’s party rode on to the ferry of the Spey and a fine view of Kinrara, some 3 miles south-west of Aviemore station, with the adjacent hill of Tor of Alvie then crowned only by the last Duke of Gordon’s monument. Grant and Brown helped negotiate the ferry across the Spey to where carriages waited. As was her wont, Queen Victoria had insisted that the party went on their expedition incognito. As she explained:
We had decided to call ourselves ‘Lord and Lady Churchill and party’, Lady Churchill passing as ‘Miss Spencer’, and General Grey as ‘Dr. Grey’! Brown once forgot this, and called me ‘Your Majesty’ as I was getting into the carriage; and Grant on the box once called Albert ‘Your Royal Highness’; which set us off laughing, but no one observed it.
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During their overnight stay at the coaching inn at Grantown, the Queen noted: ‘Grant and Brown were to have waited on us [at table], but were bashful [ie, drunk] and did not’. The
Journal
entry included a description of the ‘very fair’ dinner of Highland cuisine that was served:
soup, ‘hodge-podge’ [a pudding of indeterminate contents], mutton-broth with vegetables, which I did not much relish, fowl with white sauce, good roast lamb, very good potatoes, besides one or two other dishes, which I did not taste, ending with a good tart of cranberries.
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The next day, Wednesday 5 September, Queen Victoria’s maid reported to her that Grant and Brown, along with the other attendants, had spent a ‘very merry’ night in the commercial travellers’ accommodation. Throughout their stay the proprietress of the inn was fooled by the various aliases of the party and did not recognise her monarch. The party moved on to Castle Grant, Morayshire, the home of the wealthy Earl of Seafield, just over a mile from Grantown, which the Queen described as looking like a ‘factory’. When they passed through Grantown on their return, the royal party had been unmasked and the town was thronged with waving, cheering people, their erstwhile hostess still in her paper curlers waving a flag from the window of her hostelry.
Travelling in her carriage with the leather cover drawn up – because of the midges – Queen Victoria and her party made a slow pace, because of tired horses, to Tomintoul in Banffshire, noted as the highest village in the Highlands at 1,160ft above sea level and much patronised for its angling. Queen Victoria was not impressed by its ambience; she wrote:
Tomintoul is the most tumble-down, poor-looking place I ever saw – a long street with three inns, miserable dirtylooking houses and people, and a sad look of wretchedness about it. Grant told me that it was the dirtiest, poorest village in the whole of the Highlands.
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This was an uncharacteristically negative entry for the Queen to write of her beloved Highlands, but she may have been irritated by the inn incident. She went on:
While Brown was unpacking [their picnic lunch] and arranging our things, I spoke to him and to Grant, who was helping, about not having waited on us, as they ought to have done, at dinner last night and at breakfast, as we had wished; and Brown answered, he was afraid he should not do it rightly; I replied we did not wish to have a stranger in the room, and they must do so another time.
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In the future Brown would regularly be inebriated while on duty, yet he learned the lesson about the Queen not liking strangers around her and became protective. After lunch, the party travelled along the banks of the River Avon in southern Banffshire. Time was getting late so the party sped up, and the Queen was astonished at the rate John Brown could stride out as he led a trotting ‘Fyvie’. Later that day the Queen wrote in her
Journal
how her Highland servants’
willingness, readiness, cheerfulness, indefatigableness, are very admirable, and make them most delightful servants. As for Grant and Brown they are perfect – discreet, careful, intelligent, attentive, ever ready to do what is wanted; and [Brown], particularly, is handy and willing to do everything and anything, and to overcome every difficulty, which makes him one of my best servants anywhere.
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Brown’s interpretation of the Queen’s ‘wants’ often raised eyebrows among her courtiers. For instance, John Brown was once asked by one of the Queen’s Maids-of-Honour if he had tea in the picnic basket. He replied: ‘Well no, Her Maa-jd-esty, don’t much like tea. We tak oot biscuits and speerits [whisky].’
Safely back at Balmoral the Queen declared that her ‘First Great Expedition’ had been ‘delightful’ and ‘successful’.
Invigorated as she usually was at Balmoral, Queen Victoria returned to Windsor unprepared for the cruel blows of fate that lay in the immediate future. On 9 March 1861 the royal physicians decided to operate on a growth on the Duchess of Kent’s arm. At seventy-four she seemed to make a good recovery, but a turn for the worse brought the Queen hurrying to her mother’s bedside at Frogmore Lodge, Windsor. There she kept vigil until the Duchess died on the morning of 16 March. Immediately Queen Victoria went into a ‘nervous decline’. She had only recently been reconciled to her mother after years of rancour, the Duchess having bitterly resented her daughter’s decision to rule without her mother’s interference.
On Deeside the Duchess would be remembered for years as a plump but attractive old lady, readily recognised, as she drove out of Abergeldie Castle in her carriage, since she insisted on wearing her hair in bunches of ribboned ringlets on either side of her face. In her grief the Queen recalled that when they had left Balmoral the last time, John Brown had been almost reluctant for them to go. He had declared to her his hope that they would have no illness during the winter and return safely to Balmoral. Above all, he had emphasised, that there be no deaths in the family. It had been a strange
vorbedeutung
(prophecy), mused the Queen, of what was to come. First the Duchess’s old Comptroller, Sir George Couper, had died, then a few days later ‘dearest mama’. When would it end?
