An Autobiography | Page 8

was not

till 1865 that an old woman told me that when Miss F. B. came to
return some books and music to her to give to my aunt in Melrose, "she
just sat in the chair and cried as if her heart would break." She was not
quite a free agent. Very few single women were free agents in 1839.
We were hopelessly ruined, our place would know us no more.
The only long holidays I had in the year I spent at Thornton Loch, in
East Lothian, 40 miles away. I did not know that my father was a heavy
speculator in foreign wheat, and I thought his keen interest in the
market in Mark lane was on account of the Thornton Loch crops, in
which first my grandfather and afterwards the three Maiden aunts were
deeply concerned. My mother's father, John Brodie, was one of the
most enterprising agriculturists in the most advanced district of Great
Britain. He won a prize of two silver salvers from the Highland Society
for having the largest area of drilled wheat sown. He was called up
twice to London to give evidence before Parliamentary committees on
the corn laws, and he naturally approved of them, because, with three
large farms held on 19 years' leases at war prices, the influx of cheap
wheat from abroad would mean ruin. He proved that he paid 6,000
pounds a year for these three farms--two he worked himself, the third
was for his eldest son; but he was liable for the rent. On his first
London trip, my aunt Margaret accompanied him, and on his second he
took my mother. That was in the year 1814, and both of them noted
from the postchaise that farming was not up to what was done in East
Lothian.
My grandfather Brodie was a speculating man, and he lost nearly all his
savings through starting, along with others, an East Lothian Bank,
because the local banker had been ill used by the British Linen
Company. He put in only 1,000 pounds; but was liable for all, and, as
many of his fellow shareholders were defaulters, it cost 15,000 pounds
before all was over, and if it had not been that he left the farm in the
capable hands of Aunt Margaret, there would have been little or
nothing left for the family. When he had a stroke of paralysis he wanted
to turn over Thornton Loch, the only farm he then had, to his eldest son,
but there were three daughters, and one of them said she would like to
carry it on, and she did so. She was the most successful farmer in the

country for 30 years, and then she transferred it to a nephew. The
capacity for business of my Aunt Margaret, the wit and charm of my
brilliant Aunt Mary, and the sound judgment and accurate memory of
my own dear mother, showed me early that women were fit to share in
the work of this world, and that to make the world pleasant for men
was not their only mission. My father's sister Mary was also a
remarkable and saintly woman, though I do not think she was such a
born teacher as Miss Phin. When my father was a little boy, not 12
years old, an uncle from Jamaica came home for a visit. He saw his
sister Janet a dying woman, with a number of delicate-looking children,
and he offered to take David with him and treat him like his own son.
No objections were made. The uncle was supposed to be well-to-do,
and he was unmarried, but he took fever and died, and was found to be
not rich but insolvent. The boy could read and write, and he got
something to do on a plantation till his father sent money to pay his
passage home. He must have been supposed to be worth something, for
he got a cask of rum for his wages, which was shipped home, and when
the duty had been paid was drunk in the doctor's household. But the
boy had been away only 21 months, and he returned to find his mother
dead. and two or three little brothers and sisters dead and buried, and
his father married again to his mother's cousin, Katherine Swanston, an
old maid of 45, who, however, two years afterwards was the mother of
a fine big daughter, so that Aunt Helen Park's scheme for getting the
money for her sister's children failed. In spite of my father's strong wish
to be a farmer, and not a writer or attorney, there was no capital to start
a farm upon, so he was indentured to Mr. Erskine, and after some years
began business in Melrose for himself, and married Lelen Brodie. His