John Brown (17 page)
To the consternation of the ‘duty’ courtiers Sir Thomas Biddulph, Keeper of the Privy Purse, equerry Lord Charles Fitzroy, and Colonel Charles Gordon, two prominent banners were stretched across the wool Market. They proclaimed: ‘
WELCOME TO THE BORDERS
–
JOHN BROWN
’ and ‘
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN
–
JOHN BROWN
’. A quick conversation with the Provost of Kelso elicited the fact that the said ‘John Brown’ was a local shopkeeper bent on opportunistic publicity. But the ‘real’ John Brown was now seen as good newspaper copy and when the Queen visited the nearby ruins of the medieval Cistercian Abbey of St Mary at Melrose, the journalists ignored the royal party and threaded their way through the tombstones in the wake of Brown who was getting ‘a good view of the abbey’s architectural beauties’.
Queen Victoria’s
Leaves
was to be parodied the year after John Brown’s death. In 1884 a 77-page satirical version appeared in New York under the pseudonym of ‘Kenwood Philp’ an Irish Land League member. Supported by a series of cartoons, the paperback volume was entitled
John Brown’s Legs or Leaves from a Journal in the Lowlands
. The publication carried the dedication: ‘To the memory of those extraordinary Legs, poor bruised and scratched darlings . . .’ as a direct sneer at Queen Victoria’s numerous mentions of John Brown’s legs being injured as he jumped down from her carriage.
The volume offered to the public a mockery of all that Queen Victoria held dear about her Highland servant, composed in the style of her own writings:
We make it a point to have breakfast every morning of our lives . . . Brown pushed me (in a hand-carriage) up quite a hill and then ran down again. He did this several times and we enjoyed it very much . . . He then put me in a boat on the lake and rocked me for about half an hour. It was very exhilarating.
The text reverses John Brown’s political views and has him declare: ‘I’m a Leeberal in politics.’
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It shows him swearing in the Queen’s presence, making her cry with his rudeness, and denouncing Benjamin Disraeli with the racist comment ‘d——d Sheeny’. Here too is Queen Victoria sending a command to the Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, to compose a sonnet commemorating Brown’s legs as ‘no nobler theme ever inspired the pen of genius’.
Picking up on Queen Victoria’s carriage accident in 1863, the author has Brown tending the Queen’s staved thumb. When he grows a wart on his own thumb, the Queen, escorted by forty-two Highlanders, processes to his cottage to give succour in ‘fine old whisky’. Brown’s excesses of familiarity are rewarded with a beating from the Prince of Wales. At last a missive is received from New York noting that the Fenian leader, one ‘O’Donovan Rossa’, is sailing to Britain to assassinate John Brown. Thus the Highland Servant – ‘The Legs’ – are seen scampering away from ‘Windsoral’, never to be seen again.
Despite her courtiers’ disparaging remarks, Queen Victoria continued to promote what she saw as the nobility of her Highland staff. Prior to the appearance of
Leaves
, she had commissioned the Royal Scottish Academician Kenneth Macleay Jr to produce a series of watercolours of her Balmoral retainers. This series developed into the published portfolio
Highlanders of Scotland: Portraits illustrative of the principal Clans and followings, and the Retainers of the Royal Household at Balmoral
. The text was written by the 6th Duke of Atholl’s cousin Miss Amelia Murray MacGregor, long-time companion and friend of Duchess Anne; the Queen had met Miss MacGregor on her jaunts to Blair Atholl.
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Herein John Brown is shown among the denizens of the great clans of Scotland, depicted in ‘the grey jacket, kilt and hose of half-mourning instituted for him by Queen Victoria after the death of the Prince Consort’.
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Sporting a royal blue cravat, gold watch and fob, a dirk in his right stocking and a folded plaid over his right arm, Brown looks more like a mannequin than a hard-working gillie. His brothers William and Archibald appear on other plates, both similarly dressed. If the volume raised eyebrows in royal circles because of its blatant promotion of Queen Victoria’s Highland servants, more was to come.
For some time before the publication of
Leaves
, Queen Victoria had been anxious to show her family and his detractors at Court that John Brown, with what she saw as his noble mien, was not of common stock. To this end she instructed her Commissioner at Balmoral, Dr Robertson, to prepare a biographical memorandum on Brown.
Dr Andrew Robertson knew John Brown well and crossed swords with him on a number of occasions. Dr Robertson had practised medicine in the Crathie area for many years and was probably the best-known individual within a radius of 50 miles from Balmoral.
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Originally from the Aberdeenshire village of Tarland, some 7 miles north of Aboyne, Dr Robertson had actually delivered John Brown as well as a generation of Crathie babies before his appointment as Queen’s Commissioner at Balmoral in 1848. Through the Shaws of Badenoch it is likely that the Robertson and Brown family trees shared a branch or two.
Dr Robertson’s memorandum survives in a fine four-page copperplate edition.
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It is dated ‘Balmoral, June 2nd, 1865’, when Dr Robertson began his researches, and is written in the third person. Dr Robertson fashioned the content to appeal to the Queen’s sensibilities. This is what it says:
The following is a brief outline of the Ancestry of John Brown –
Dr R. is unable to extend this
history
beyond the G.G.Father of
John
James Shaw, better known on Deeside by the cognomen of Captain Shaw, was the second son of a small proprietor in Badenoch. The paternal Acres were not very numerous, but they were deemed sufficient to allow him to rejoice in the title of
Laird Shaw
– The family consisted of two sons and one daughter – The second son James, was the G.G.Father of John Brown, and Janet the Daughter, was the Maternal Grand Mother of Dr Robertson.
James Shaw was a remarkably handsome man, and in his younger days, was celebrated for his prowess in all the Athletic Games and Exercises of the day. He was of a warm generous disposition, possessing all the high and chivalrous feelings of the Highland Gentlemen. It was said of him, that he was never known to desert a ‘friend or turn his back on a foe’.
Dr Robertson when very young remembers seeing him, and he retains to this day a vivid recollection of his fine
Aristocratic
appearance.
Dr R. has also seen many of his letters which displayed much shrewdness, high intelligence, and knowledge of the world – yet with all these noble qualities he was always in difficulties, he would direct his best energies to the business and interests of
others
, but neglected his own.
It is from the blood of this man, that
John
has derived those qualities which have recommended him to Your Majesty – he is every inch
a Shaw
.
Captain Shaw when a young man obtained a commission in a Highland Regt, he was present in most of the actions during the War of Independence, in America, was taken prisoner by the rebels, but broke out of Prison, and after many hardships, and adventures, made his escape. On his arrival in England, the Regt was disbanded and he retired to his native glen, upon the half pay of a Lieutenant. He soon after married a Miss McDonald, a Woman of good Family and considerable personal attractions, as famous for attention and good management of her domestic concerns, as her husband was neglectful. They had a family of four children, three sons and a daughter. The sons were all handsome, fine looking men – Two of the sons entered the Army, the eldest Lieut. Alexdr. Shaw was killed in a duel in Aberdeen – the second Hugh, died a Captn in the 73rd Regt. The third son Thomas died young – Janet the daughter, married Donald Brown who lived for many years in the Croft of Renachat [
sic
], opposite Balmoral Castle.
Mrs Brown, Dr Robertson knew well, a shrewd sensible woman, she had two sons John and James Brown. The former married M. Leys – daughter of Charles Leys in Aberarder, who became the Mother of John Brown.
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Dr Robertson was clearly struggling to promote John Brown into a higher social class than that to which he actually belonged. Robertson ignored the Brown family tree, which he clearly knew, and concentrated on his own, and better, Shaw connections. The key words ‘handsome’, ‘prowess’, ‘noble’, ‘Highland Gentleman’ were all the Queen wanted to read. The memorandum managed to get Robertson out of an awkward position, and copies of it were circulated to members of the Royal Household and to the Queen’s friends and family. The Prince of Wales tore his copy to shreds; his rage seethed until the Queen’s autumn visit to Balmoral in 1868. On that occasion John Brown was inexplicably missing for a whole week. When he did appear his face was battered and bruised. The explanation, said the other staff, was not hard to find. A few months before, the Prince of Wales had arrived at Windsor to see the Queen. On walking into the royal sitting room he encountered John Brown:
‘What dae ye want?’ Brown had asked in his usual bluff manner.
‘I wish to see the Queen,’ the Prince of Wales had replied equally brusquely.
‘Ye’re no’ seein’ yer mother till five o’clock,’ Brown commented rudely; the Queen was having her afternoon nap. ‘Ye’ll need to gang an’ amuse yersel’ for twa hours’, Brown suggested, sitting down with newspaper raised in front of the dressing-room door where the Queen napped. Purple with rage the Prince of Wales left. The incident, gossip averred, caused the Prince (and maybe a few others) to hire an Aberdeen bruiser to give Brown a ‘going over’ in a discreet part of Balmoral estate.
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As the years passed Queen Victoria’s interest in events at Balmoral never dimmed and John Brown encouraged her to share every aspect of estate life. Her
Journal
entries are full of such incidents. On 21 October 1868 she went to The Bush Farm, then the residence of John Brown’s brother William, to witness the ‘juicing’ of the sheep. It was the practice in the Highlands, before the sheep went off to their low country winter quarters, to ‘juice’ – or dip – the sheep in a mixture of liquid tobacco and soap. Queen Victoria witnessed the process, with Princess Louise and Prince Leopold, as John Brown’s elder brother James and William dipped the sheep. Sheep clipping was done in due season by the womenfolk of the shepherds’ families and Queen Victoria greatly admired their expertise.
Such events were mixed with more personal occasions. Three days after the ‘juicing’, the Queen, with Princesses Louise and Beatrice, was taken by John Brown to the home of forester John Thomson for the christening of his three-weekold baby, named Victoria, by the Revd Dr Malcolm Taylor. Queen Victoria considered the simple ceremony ‘impressive’, and added: ‘I gave my present (a silver mug) to the father, kissed the little baby, and then we drank to its health and that of its mother [Barbara] in whisky, which was handed round with cakes. It was all so nicely done, so simple, and yet with such dignity.’
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Queen Victoria knew the names of all her estate workers and their families and visited them regularly, particularly if there was illness in the house. Yet she was selective in her generosity and tended to favour individuals for her bounty rather than being broadly munificent of spirit. John Brown had a great deal of the latter in his character. At the turn of the year 1868/69 the winter brought hardship to many and unemployment with its accompanying social distress had not been as severe since 1842 – the so-called ‘Year of the Locust’, when twenty-one manufacturers were declared bankrupt in a month and five thousand hands were thrown out of work.
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Not far across the Solent from Osborne House, some six thousand dockyard employees, from shipwrights to mechanics, were thrown on the unemployment scrap heap when the Admiralty, under the First Lord, Liberal Hugh Culling Eardley, closed the dockyard at Portsmouth. Queues formed at the pawn shops and beggars lined the streets of Southampton and Portsmouth in order to raise a few pence to buy relief.
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At Osborne John Brown set up a fund of moneys collected from below stairs staff. Under the headline ‘
HER MAJESTY
’
S SERVANTS AND THE DISCHARGED DOCKYARD WORKERS
’,
The Times
published an item about the fund: ‘The Committee of the Portsmouth Dockyard Discharged Workmen’s Relief Association thankfully acknowledges through the medium of
The Times
the receipt of £22 16
s
6
d
subscribed by Mr John Brown and the Queen’s servants at the Royal establishment now at Osborne, and forwarded to the chairman of the committee.’
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As John Brown’s fame spread, a number of anecdotes, imagined and real, sprang up concerning his activities, and over the years dozens of Deeside folk have added their ‘memories’ of him. One such was Mary Henderson who lived at Crathie, and remembered the Queen’s visits with John Brown to her family’s cottage. She recalled one occasion:
I am afraid that as children we had little appreciation of the honour of the Queen’s visits and the Queen’s interest in our life and doings. Not seldom if when playing about we spotted the distant approach of the grey horses, did we bolt and hide behind a stone dyke lest royal eyes should see us. The carriage was stopped and we were called, grubby and reluctant, to the royal presence.
And of John Brown:
I recall clearly that John Brown, who apparently had been sent into [our] cottage on some errand, came suddenly out behind us, and snatching my brother’s tam-o’shanter from his head, demanded what he meant by standing before the Queen with his bonnet on. The truculent youngster, nothing daunted, turned round and grabbed his tammy back, declaring that he had taken it off, as he had done on being greeted by the Queen, but was too young to know he should have kept it off.
It was characteristic of the Queen that she should at once interpose – ‘Yes, Brown, he did take it off,’ and to my brother – ‘Put it on again, my dear, you might catch cold.’
So we rather scored off the great John Brown that day, and the more so that when the Queen told him who we were, he replied, ‘Damn it, your Maa-dj-esty, I could ‘a’sworn it was twa laddies.’
I was inclined to be a pious young party in those days, and I reported later in shocked tones, that John Brown had sworn before the Queen. Indeed, so horrified was I that (so I was often told after) I did not even say swore, but spelt it, ‘S.W.O.R.E.’ – it was too awful a word to repeat! One lady-in-waiting was said to have complained that John, having been sent to fetch her, happened to meet her on the staircase and remarked, ‘Ye’re the very wumman I want.’ Much on her dignity, the outraged lady complained to the Queen that John Brown had called her a woman, on which Her Majesty replied: ‘Well, aren’t you a woman?’
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