by John Buchan
The third Earl — a William and not a Gilbert — chose the fallentis semita vita. He sat for many years in Parliament, but never held office, and much of his time was given to the management of his estate, county business, country sports, and long periods of foreign travel. His wife’s father was Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Hislop, and her mother a daughter of Hugh Elliot, so she was a distant cousin of her husband’s. Never strong in body, she had the spirit of a soldier, and wherever she went radiated an atmosphere of gentleness and mirth and courage. Like many who are not robust in health, she had an insatiable zest for life, and had, perhaps from her sufferings, keener perceptions than other people, and a quicker sense of joy. Each new experience and interest was adopted with gusto, and few quiet lives have been more fully lived. The list of the books she was reading at the age of twenty-three might shame many professed scholars; but she had nothing of the blue-stocking in her, and her learning was a small thing compared to her wit, her sense of fun, her startling acumen, and her broad tolerant wisdom. She is a figure that may be commended to the acquaintance of those who, in Lady Louisa Stuart’s phrase, have “an old-fashioned partiality for a gentlewoman,” and one could wish that Mr. Arthur Elliot’s privately printed volume of extracts from her letters and journals could be made accessible to the world. For as a letter writer she ranks with Lady Louisa. She was also an accomplished historian and biographer, as her memoir of Hugh Elliot and her four volumes on the first lord minto prove, and her Border Sketches show how deep she had drunk of the traditions of her ancestral countryside. But it is in her diaries and letters that she most reveals herself, and whether she is trying to probe the secret of some rare landscape, or discoursing gravely on politics and metaphysics — till she breaks off with a laugh, or gossiping about manners and people, or formulating from a rich experience a mellow philosophy of life, she leaves on the reader an impression of a soul rich in the best endowments of humanity, a spirit at once sane and adventurous, securely anchored and yet reaching out delightedly to the cyclic changes of the world. If there were two strains in the Elliot blood — the venturesomeness and speed of Liddesdale, and the sagacious centrality of the Whig lairds — in her they were mixed in right proportion, and she bequeathed something of this just equipoise to her sons.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER 1. BOYHOOD: ETON AND CAMBRIDGE
The subject of this Memoir was born in London on July 9, 1845, at 36 Wilton Crescent, the house of his grandmother, Lady Hislop. He was given the family name of Gilbert, and the second name of John after his uncle and godfather, Lord John Russell. Two months later his father. Lord Melgund, who was then out of Parliament, carried off his wife and child on one of those protracted continental visits which were the fashion in that generation. The Melgunds took with them their carriage — in which a shelf had been fitted to serve as the baby’s crib — a courier, a nurse, and a lady’s maid, and made a leisurely progress up the Rhine to Switzerland, and then over the St. Gothard into Italy. The winter was spent chiefly in Rome and Turin with the British Minister, Sir Ralph Abercromby,* who had married Lady Mary Elliot. Country house visits filled the rest of that year, and at Cambridge Gilbert John took his first wavering steps on the lawn in front of the lodge at Trinity. It was not until the early spring of 1847 that the Melgunds returned to Scotland and the child saw the home of his ancestors.
*Afterwards Lord Dunfermline.
Most of Gilbert John’s boyhood was spent at Minto, and it would be hard to find a happier environment for a child than the roomy old Border house set among its lawns and glens and woodlands. All accounts agree on the sunniness of his temper, the vigour of his body, and his uncommon good looks. He had his mother’s deep blue eyes, which Mrs. Norton praised in the style of the period.* Presently brothers came to keep him company: Arthur, born in 1846; Hugh in 1848; Fitzwilliam in 1849; and the four little boys formed a stalwart clan, sufficiently near in age to be true playmates.
* The following verses were written as a postscript to a letter from “Miss Letitia Bellamy” in London to Miss Fanny Law of Clare, Northumberland, describing Lady Melgund’s children among others at a children’s party given by the Duchess of Argyll. They were published in Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap Book, edited by Mrs. Norton: —
“The prizes have been given — but no time can be lost, I must hurry lightly through them if I wish to save the post: For the loveliest sleeping infant, to the Duchess of Argyll (It was like a little rosebud, if a rosebud could but smile), The prettiest two-year-old who walked the distance from the door Being carried in his nurse’s arms and set down on the floor, And the loveliest little three-year-old that ever yet was seen, In a glittering ducal palace or a daisied village green, With eyelashes like shadows and eyes like summer stars, A little stately, graceful thing no imperfection mars: Both were won by Lady Melgund, I don’t know who had gained The ones before I entered, these were all that then remained”
Gilbert John Elliot, at the age of thirteen (From a miniature at Minto House)
The love of horses was Gilbert’s absorbing passion, and during his continental visits at the age of one he was reported by his father to have shown a precocious knowledge of horseflesh at the various posting-houses. Before he was four he rode a bay Shetland pony, “Mazeppa,” under the tuition of the old groom, Robert Donald, and barely a year later commenced his hunting career with the Duke of Buccleuch’s hounds, of which hunt he was one day to become a noted figure. It was a recognized practice on the days he was going to hunt not to send up his porridge, as he was far too excited to eat any breakfast.
Few children can have had more engaging ways. The love of his home was deep in him, and before he was five, when driving with his mother to inspect the havoc caused among the Minto trees by a gale, he revealed his anxious affection. She writes: “Berty invariably shuts his eyes not to see the injured silver. ‘No, I can’t bear to look at it, it makes my heart too sad,’ and occasionally he sighs out a most mournful ‘Alas’ when we pass any grievous wrecks. His sentiment about everything surpasses anything I ever heard, and in some things he certainly shows considerateness beyond his years; he always offers to go out with me, and often insists on doing so, though I know he would rather have his pony. Once he said to the nurse, ‘Well, I would rather ride, but I promised Papa to take care of Mama, and so I had better go with her;’ and it is perfectly true that William did tell him so, but I was not at all aware how seriously he was impressed with the charge. However, he certainly keeps his promises, for he watches me as a cat does a mouse.”
Lady Minto often breaks off her letters to chronicle the return of the boys and dogs, far too dirty to be allowed to come beyond the door. There were many sports in that happy place: rabbit-hunting in the Lamblairs, fishing in the Teviot and the hill burns, house-building with fir branches on the side of the Big Glen below the Green Walk, tree-climbing in the great beeches and sycamores whence the upper windows of the house could be spied on, walking — in emulation of certain feats of a previous generation — along the stone ledge which runs round the top of the house, skating and glissading in the bitter winters which now seem to be unknown in the land. They were even allowed to keep a lamb under the turret stairs, which their long-suffering mother did not evict until it became a sheep.
Usually Minto was filled with a big family party, but there came times when Lord Melgund was attending the House of Commons, and mother and children were left in comparative solitude. Such seasons were devoted by her to the beginning of their education. The family did not believe in private schools, and certainly with such a mother no seminary for youth could compare with home. Her strong good sense on these matters is witnessed by a hundred passages in her letters: “Minds, like bodies, should have good solid meals, and leisure for digestion, and time to stretch! Beef makes bone, and les études fortes nourish the mind; but it will not do to let it gnaw every merry-thought, nor refine itself into spun sugar” In her room the boys read poetry and history and fairy tales, and we hear of G
ilbert declaiming with passion Pope’s version of Diomede’s speech in the 9th Iliad. But the chief formative influence was the atmosphere of good talk in which they lived, talk about books and politics and the events of a larger world, which stimulates a child’s interest. Gilbert was, in his mother’s view, a little slower to quicken than the others, for he had a certain placidity and contentment which lived happily in the day and might foretell a lack of mental enterprise.
On his seventh birthday she writes in her journal: —
“He is not as advanced in learning as many of his contemporaries, but he learns easily and bids fair to possess more than average intelligence. He has a good memory, is very observing, and extremely obedient and docile. He has a natural turn for poetry, and certainly admires the beauty of numbers even when he can scarce understand the words. He is very fond of fairy tales, and indeed of any description of story I will read to him, unless it is very dry or he suspects me of an intention to instruct him. . . . I don’t think he has as much curiosity to learn about the things round him as his brothers have.” (Those earnest inquirers, be it remembered, were of ages varying from two to five.) “He has a most amiable disposition, and not a spark of malice, sulkiness, or envy in his character. He is very sweet-tempered and yielding, always gay, never put out. . . . I don’t think him a child gifted with deep sensibilities or enthusiastic feelings of any kind, neither has he the perseverance or love of overcoming obstacles of some children, but he is sensitive to blame, and has little sentimentalities about localities and past days, is very open to impressions of fine weather, scenery, and pleasant ideas of all kinds. He is very courageous and high-spirited.”
And the candid mother concludes that “energy and perseverance” are the qualities at present most to seek, qualities which were assuredly not absent in his subsequent career.
In 1853 the children joined their grandparents at Nervi, on the Riviera, returning by the Lake of Geneva, where Gilbert had his first sight of the snow mountains which later were to throw their glamour over his fancy. His military instincts were early apparent, and the Crimean War gave him something to talk about; he used to present himself daily at the luncheon table after the newspapers had arrived with the breathless question, “Does Silistria still hold out?”
It is a delightful group of boys that is portrayed in Lady Minto’s letters, portrayed by one who understood all the subtleties of childhood. “The people who really enjoy life in this house are the boys,” she writes; “nevertheless, I suppose they have their grievances, for Fitz told me one day he could never remember the time when he had been happy! Hughie, on being asked what he thought of things in general, answered, ‘Oh, weary! weary! no change, the same thing every day; I think we must go to Africa.’ And the next day he repeated his African intentions to me, adding, ‘And if we did go I suppose they would put taxes on everything directly — tax the date trees.’ I made out afterwards that his horror of taxation arose from a difficulty about keeping another dog which he had been wanting to have.”*
* There is a story of one of the little boys who bore with difficulty the visit of several girl cousins. On their departure he was heard condoling with his dog: “Poor old man, poor old fellow, did those horrid little girls give you fleas?”
II
Gilbert went to Eton in the summer half of 1859, to Mr. Balstone’s house, which next year became Mr. Warre’s. In July his grandfather died, and by his father’s accession to the earldom he became Lord Melgund. He was no classical scholar, though, like Kinglake, he had “learned the Iliad through Pope in his mother’s dressing-room,” and the Eton of his day did not offer much in the way of a general education. His mother writes: —
“Berty has already taken his first flight from home. He left us for Eton last May, and has now returned to spend his second holiday with us. Gentle, gentlemanlike and loving, manly, intelligent and sincere, his character promises well for future goodness. His learning will never be deep nor his energy great, nor is he remarkable either for originality or quickness, but he is sensible, easily interested, likes history, poetry, and drawing, and will, I think, as I have always thought, learn more when his learning is of a kind more to his mind. . . . He is impressible, and not without a desire of doing well. His chief characteristic has ever been his strong moral sense.”
Melgund speedily found his feet at Eton: he was supremely happy, and flung the full vigour of his strong young body into every form of sport. His mother records his cheery letters: during the first summer half he wrote that he had started in the school tub race and had come in seventy-second, which, he adds, was not so bad for a first attempt. His optimism was fully justified, as before leaving Eton he had pulled up seventy-one places, finishing second in the School Sculling. He also made a name for himself in the running field, was just beaten in the mile race, and ran the “Long Walk” (three miles) in fifteen and a half minutes.
The journal which he began to keep in 1861 is as scrappy as other schoolboy chronicles. It records famous days with the beagles, steeplechases, and games of football in which he was a demon at shinning, but the river was his chief joy. He rowed in the Defiance and the Victory, and in his last summer half was first choice out of the Eight, winning the Silver Sculls. Corkran (Captain of the Boats) and he were both hoisted after the race. The determination to keep fit prevented any indulgence at the sock shop. The Elliots were a hardy race, and Melgund remembered his indignation at being given a greatcoat when he first went to Eton, driving from Hawick to Carlisle, a distance of nearly fifty miles, on the top of the stage coach.
A few characteristic entries may be quoted from the journal. He writes on February 1863: —
“The Prince of Wales came through here to-day: he had been out with the harriers. I thought he looked a very decent sort of chap, but I didn’t see what sort of a horse he had.”
The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in March gave the Eton boys a holiday.
“At 10:30 the whole school assembled in the School Yard and walked up arm-in-arm to the Castle. We had a very good place inside the upper gates of the Castle. There was an awful crowd, which I got jolly well into once and had roaring fun. We went, down to the College for dinner, and went up to the Castle again afterwards to see the Prince and Princess of Wales depart for Osborne. Directly their carriage had passed all the Eton fellows rushed through the crowd and regularly forced their way down to the corner of the street near Layton’s, where a body of police were drawn up, but they were quickly dispersed, and we rushed down to the station, broke through the barrier, and got on to the platform and squealed like mad. I had a better view of the Princess than I ever had before, as she stood bolt upright in the railway carriage as it went slowly out of the station. It was about the greatest lark I ever had, bowling over the crowd, which was a thundering tight one, and smashing through the police!”
In the summer half of 1863 Melgund was elected to “Pop,” and made his maiden speech in favour of “instantaneously going to war with America.” Under 2nd June the journal has this entry: —
“Jersey,* Hope major,** Phipps, and I made up a nice little party to go to Ascot. We all of us wore whiskers except Jersey, who wore a loose overcoat and a blue veil. I wore a flexible moabite sort of hat and my great-coat. Hope looked about the handsomest fellow I ever saw: he had on a light-coloured overcoat and black whiskers. We all had light ties We went to Bachelor’s Acre, where we got into an open fly which we had ordered beforehand and drove in it. We got to Ascot about twenty minutes past four. When we got to the course we all took off our false whiskers except Phipps, but he got so bothered by the Gypsies, who asked him whose hair he had got on, etc., that he finally had to follow our example. Hope and I somehow or other got separated from Jersey and Phipps; we caught sight of Parker and a lot of fellows who had a drag; they gave us some champagne and let us stand on the top of the drag. Phipps and Jersey walked right up to ‘Parva Dies’* and were nailed. We saw one race — the Prince of Wales’ Stakes: ‘Avenger’
won. I thought the race itself an awfully pretty sight and very exciting. We started from Ascot about five, and got back in loads of time. We got out of our fly at the footbarracks, where ‘Sambo’ (the raft man) met us and took our clothes. Day* complained of Jersey and Phipps, and they were both swished. There was great excitement about it, and the space round the swishing-room door was crowded.”
* The seventh Earl of Jersey. The late Sir Edward Hope, K.C.B., registrar of the Privy Council, known among his friends as “Blackie” Hope.
* Mr. Day, one of the masters.
After this performance the quartette had the effrontery to be photographed in their costumes at Hills and Saunders’. There was a later escapade: —
