John Brown was by this time reckoned a competent and diligent, if ascerbic, member of the Balmoral gillies and he played a role in the preparations for the royal family’s exploration of their Scottish home. Eight days after their arrival at Balmoral members of the royal party assembled to make their first ascent of Lochnagar, the 3,768ft twin-peaked mountain some 9 miles south-west of Ballater. A tourist guide of the time described it as ‘cut by frightful corries; it has on its shoulder a gloomy tarn, overhung by tremendous precipices’. From the north summit,
Cac Carn Beag
, there are spectacular views over the tarn also called Lochnagar (‘Loch of the Goats’). Before setting out, Queen Victoria read what Lord Byron had said about the mountain:
Away ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses,
In you let the minions of luxury rove!
Restore me the rock where the snowflake reposes,
If still they are sacred to freedom and love.
Stern Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,
Round their wild summits though elements war,
Though cataracts foam ’stead of smooth flowing fountains,
I sigh for the valley of dark Lochnagar!
Oh there my young footsteps in infancy wandered,
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;
On chieftains long perished my memory pondered
As daily I strode through the pine-covered glade.
I sought not my home till the day’s dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar-star;
And fancy was cheered by traditional story
Disclosed by the natives of dark Lochnagar.
Years have rolled on, Lochnagar, since I left you,
Years must elapse, ere I tread thee again:
Nature of verdure and flowers has bereft you,
Yet still are you dearer than Albion’s plain.
England, thy beauties are tame and domestic
To one who has roamed o’er the mountains afar!
O for the crags that are wild and majestic,
The steep, frowning glories of dark Lochnagar!
33
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert set off for their jaunt in a postchaise. They drove to the bridge in the deer forest of Ballochbuie some 4 miles south-west of Balmoral. Here had gathered the gillies with the ponies which were to take them up the mountain. The guide for the day was Mr Bowman, a keeper sent by laird Farquharson of Invercauld, and he waited with Prince Albert’s appointed gillie Macdonald and Mr Grant, Head Keeper at Balmoral, to supervise the lunch baskets with Batterbury the groom.
Prince Albert went ahead to stalk deer; he was unsuccessful but he shot two ptarmigan before rejoining the main party to ride and climb higher. Four hours after they set out they reached the top of Lochnagar, where they had lunch. The vista, hemmed in by drifting mist, was, said Queen Victoria, ‘cold, wet and cheerless’. They began their descent in wind and rain. About a thousand feet from the top the sunshine broke through to reveal splendid views over Invercauld. Back at the carriage which had waited with the grooms below, the royal party were met by the Queen’s Physician, Sir James Clark, and Prime Minister John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, who rode back with them to Balmoral.
The Queen rapidly acquired a taste for the countryside around Balmoral and was keen to show off the sights to the seven-year-old Prince of Wales. At Ballochbuie they changed from the postchaise to ponies with the Prince of Wales riding astride the deer saddle of Head Keeper Grant’s pony; with a group of gillies from Balmoral, they explored the woods and braes of Craig Daign, and sat for a while in a wooden hurdle ‘box’ to watch for deer. There Queen Victoria and Prince Albert sketched for a while and the prince broke off from his drawing pad long enough to bag a ‘royal’.
34
During this 1848 holiday Queen Victoria and the royal family attended the Highland Games at Invercauld House. The press reports and the regular attendance of royalty at the future Braemar Gathering added a respectability to the games and guaranteed a popularity which has endured ever since. Although clansmen had gathered on the Braes of Mar since the eleventh century, when King Malcolm III held a competition to select ‘his hardiest soldiers and his fleetest messengers’, Braemar was not the site of the first modern Highland Games. This honour has been given by historians to the first Highland Society Gathering at Falkirk Tryst in 1781. Although it was mainly a competition for pipers, the gathering developed and by 1826, the year John Brown was born, fullscale games had been established throughout Scotland. Also by 1826, the Braemar Wright’s Friendly Society – a charity to aid the sick, the aged, widows and orphans – had become the Braemar Highland Society to promote sport, the Scots language and culture. So here at Invercauld House, Queen Victoria was thoroughly entertained by the panoply of Scots Highland culture, ranging from dancing (once a male-only competition) to the athletic events of pole-vaulting, cabertossing, hammer-throwing and tug-of-war events. Queen Victoria became the royal patron of the games and a generous contributor to the society’s funds. Over the years the games became a royal event at Braemar Castle and Old Mar Lodge, with the Queen herself acting as hostess at Balmoral.
As she travelled to Scotland for the August 1849 holiday aboard the royal yacht
Victoria and Albert
, Queen Victoria called at Cork, Dublin and Belfast on her first visit to Ireland.
35
By 13 August the royal yacht had entered the Clyde and proceeded up Loch Goil into Loch Long to anchor in Roseneath Bay. Prince Albert made several visits ashore around Loch Lomond while the Queen stayed aboard with her senior naval officers.
On 15 August they were at Balmoral after a trip in the
Fairy
to Glasgow to attend presentations by civic dignitaries, and with visits to Glasgow Cathedral, the University and the Exchange. The royal party had proceeded by rail to Perth, with a stopover in the city, and thence by Spittal of Glenshee and Castleton of Braemar to Balmoral. As usual, the royal party were greeted and joined for the last part of their journey by local dignitaries; on this occasion they included General Sir Alexander Duff and Francis Godolphin D’Arcy Osborne, 7th Duke of Leeds, who was staying at nearby Mar Lodge.
A highlight of the 1849 holiday was the royal family’s first stay at Altnagiuthasach (‘The Hut’), a lodge in Balmoral Forest near Loch Muick, some 9 miles south-east of Balmoral Castle. The royal party set out on 30 August on ponies, and Prince Albert walked the last 2 miles with the gillies. These royal outings were very ‘labour intensive’, with several attendants needed to supervise the food and equipment. Although the ponies carried the burdens, each one had to be led, as did the ladies’ and children’s ponies, for the ground was rough. It is certain then, as he was a gillie working with the ponies, that John Brown was involved in royal jaunts from the very first. When the royal family were out picnicking, John Brown usually brewed Queen Victoria’s pot of tea. On one such outing early in his royal service in 1851 the Queen remarked it was ‘The best cup of tea I ever tasted.’
‘Well, it should be, Ma’am,’ replied Brown. ‘I put a grand nip o’whisky in it.’
It was Prince Albert’s custom to fill every moment of his waking life with something practical, so he took a lesson in Gaelic from gillie Macdonald as they walked. Queen Victoria described the scene that met them in a journal entry that would be repeated many times for all their Scottish trips:
We arrived at our little ‘bothie’ at two o’clock, and were amazed at the transformation [after their first trip to Balmoral they had given orders that the
sheil
be altered]. There are two huts, and to the one in which we live a wooden addition has been made. We have a charming little dining-room, sitting-room, bedroom, and dressingroom, all en-suite; and there is a little room where Caroline Dawson [Maid of Honour] sleeps, one for her maid, and a little pantry. In the other house, which is only a few yards distant, is the kitchen, where the people [ie, her personal attendants] generally sit, a small room where the servants dine, and another, which is a store-room, and a loft above in which the men sleep. Margaret French [the Queen’s maid], Caroline’s maid, Löhlein [Prince Albert’s
Jäger
], a cook, Shackle [a footman], and Macdonald, are the only people with us in the house, old John Gordon and his wife excepted. Our rooms are delightfully papered, the ceilings as well as walls, and very nicely furnished. We lunched as soon as we arrived, and at three walked down (about twenty minutes’ walk), to the loch called ‘Muich’ [sic]; which some say means ‘darkness’ or ‘sorrow’. Here we found a large boat, into which we all got, and Macdonald, Duncan, Grant and Coutts [all gillies] rowed; old John Gordon and two others going in another boat with the net. They rowed up to the head of the loch, to where the Muich runs down out of Dhu Loch, which is on the other side.
The scenery is beautiful here, so wild and grand – real severe Highland scenery, with trees in the hollow. We had various scrambles in and out of the boat and along the shore, and saw three hawks, and caught seventy trout. I wish an artist could have been there to sketch the scene; it was so picturesque – the boat, the net, and the people in their kilts in the water, and on the shore. In going back, Albert rowed and Macdonald steered; and the lights were beautiful.
36
Queen Victoria was now living in close proximity to her highland retainers and began to know them by name and personality. And soon one name was to stand out: that of John Brown.
Queen Victoria first mentions John Brown in her
Journal
entry for 11 September 1849. She is describing a visit to Dhu Loch with Lady Douro, later the Duchess of Wellington, and lists the gillies in attendance as ‘Grant, Macdonald (who led my pony the whole time, and was extremely useful and attentive), Jemmie Coutts (leading Lady Douro’s pony), Charlie Coutts, and John Brown going with us: old John Gordon leading the way’. The Queen and Lady Douro rode in a carriage as far as ‘Linn of Muich’ where the party changed to ponies. Over dreadful tracks in a howling wind they climbed above Dhu Loch to ‘some very welcome luncheon’ in a sheltered hollow.
On the way down Queen Victoria reported:
The road was rough, but certainly far less soft and disagreeable than the one we came by. I rode ‘Lochnagar’ at first, but changed him for Colonel Gordon’s pony, as I thought he took fright at the bogs; but Colonel Gordon’s was broken-winded, and struggled very much in the soft ground, which was very disagreeable.
1
Part of their return journey was by boat, with John Brown joining the rowers. The Queen concluded:
We were only an hour coming down to the boat. The evening was very fine, but it blew very hard on the lake and the men could not pull, and I got so alarmed that I begged to land, and Lady Douro was of my opinion that it was much better to get out. We accordingly landed, and rode home along a sort of sheep-path on the side of the lake, which took us three-quarters of an hour. It was very rough and very narrow, for the hill rises abruptly from the lake; we had seven hundred feet above us, and I suppose one hundred feet below. However, we arrived at the hut quite safely at twenty minutes to seven, thankful to have got through our difficulties and adventures, which are always very pleasant to look back upon.
2
As a matter of course the Queen now included the names of the gillies whenever she wrote about her Scottish jaunts, and the ladies of the court began discreetly eyeing up the handsome Highlanders, from Archibald Fraser Macdonald, whom Prince Albert trained up as his
Jäger
, to Head Keeper John Grant who was dour but striking. The Hon. Eleanor Stanley, one of the Queen’s Maids of Honour, noted ‘the most fascinating and good-looking young Highlander [is] Johnny Brown’.
Certainly Brown was now playing a more prominent role. Prince Albert observed him as he handled the ponies on their hill walks in his new position as undergroom. Brown seemed the most skilled of the gillies in negotiating the patches of bare granite and dangerously loose scree they encountered on 6 September 1850 as they ascended 3,940ft Ben-na-Bhourd. So Prince Albert decided that John Brown should ride on the box of the Queen’s carriage instead of the usual postillion who was unused to the terrain. Prince Albert had grown to like Brown – as one reporter put it: ‘The Prince Consort [was] struck by [Brown’s] magnificent physique, his transparent honesty and straight-forward, independent-character.’
3
It was common knowledge in royal circles that the Coburgs ‘were cursed with melancholia’.
4
From his marriage to Queen Victoria in 1840 to his death in 1861, Prince Albert was often made ‘wretched by the loneliness of exile’
5
as a stranger in a foreign land, and at such times he sought the solace of solitude. Thus he often went off on his own to hunt deer, or to be alone – apart from attendants – at the hut he had built at Feithort. Sometimes the Queen would seek out the prince at Feithort, with Brown leading her pony, but her visits were not encouraged, and she realised that the prince needed time away from his family and his relentless work on efficiency measures for her Household. Now that John Brown was keeping an eye on the Queen when she was out riding, Prince Albert could follow his own agenda of Highland pursuits without feeling guilty. When Albert was away, Queen Victoria and her daughters went on painting picnics, with John Brown taking them to the best views and the most comfortable locations for their repast. Queen Victoria wrote to Augusta of Prussia, Empress of Germany, that ‘I only feel properly
à mon aise
and quite happy when Albert is with me.’
6
In widowhood it was to be a sentiment she expressed about John Brown. In the meantime, ‘Johnny Brown’ was in his element.
Victoria’s aunt, Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the crowned consort of King William IV, had died in December 1849, and the Queen was still in mourning when her favourite son Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, was born in May 1850. Victoria’s thoughts had turned to Scotland more and more during her confinement, especially to the plans she had made with Prince Albert for the development of the estate which was now firmly theirs. The purchase of neighbouring Birkhall for eight-year-old Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, meant that he was now the ‘first royal landowner on Deeside’, and the lease of nearby Abergeldie greatly increased the bedroom space for future royal jaunts. Queen Victoria had already decided that Abergeldie should be made ready for her mother, the Duchess of Kent, so that she could enjoy the healthy benefits of Deeside; more immediately it would help her to get over the death of Queen Adelaide, whom the Duchess regretted offending in life. Albert’s memoranda on the plans to improve Birkhall and Abergeldie alongside Balmoral, from developing policies, building cottages and constructing new roads, were constantly fluttering on to Victoria’s desk among the state papers from the tiresome Prime Minister Palmerston.