The Book-Hunter | Page 2

like so many other young men, into taking up arms as a volunteer.

In the end of last century he came to Aberdeen as a lieutenant in a
regiment of "Fencibles," or some such volunteer title, and there
captivated the affections of a beautiful young lady, Miss Eliza Paton, a
daughter of the laird of Grandholm, an estate four miles distant from
Aberdeen. Of this lady and of her family a few words must be said.
So small was the value of land in Scotland in the beginning of the
century, that it is safe to suppose the estate of Grandholm yielded less
than one-third of its present rental. The circumstances and social
position of the family were, besides, seriously lowered by the
extraordinary character of the then laird. John Paton, grandfather of Dr
Burton, was a man not devoid of talent, and of a strikingly handsome
gentlemanly appearance and manner. He married, early in life, a
beautiful Miss Lance, an Englishwoman, who, after bearing him ten
children in about as many years, fell into a weak state of health, of
mind as well as body. The laird nursed his wife devotedly for a long
period of years, cherishing her to the exclusion of all other persons or
interests. His children he regarded as the enemies of his adored wife,
and consequently of himself, and his conduct to them from first to last
was little less than brutal. When the enfeebled wife at last died, the
husband's grief verged on madness.
He would not allow her body to be buried in the ordinary manner, but
caused a tomb to be erected in a wood near the house of Grandholm,
where the corpse was placed in an open coffin, and where the bereaved
husband could go daily to bewail his loss. The distracted mourner
rejected all attentions from children, relatives, or friends, yet apparently
dreaded being left alone, for he advertised for a male companion or
keeper to bear him company. The writer has often heard Dr Burton
amuse himself and his audience by describing the extraordinary
varieties of struggling humanity who applied for the situation.
Ultimately, it is believed, none of them was selected, and the laird fled
from his natural home, and from that time till his death lived chiefly in
London, leaving his large young family to take care of themselves as
they best could.
The three sons went successively to India or other foreign parts, and

died there, one of them leaving a son, whose family are the present
possessors of Grandholm.
Of the seven daughters--several of whom were very handsome--two
only were married, namely, Eliza, who became Mrs Burton, mother of
the historiographer; and Margaret, who espoused rather late in life a Dr
Brown, and continued as a widow to inhabit an old house belonging to
the Grandholm family in Old Aberdeen till June 1879, when she died at
the age of ninety-eight.
The young family, thus deserted by their natural protector, fell chiefly
under the authority of his eldest daughter, Mary--said, of all his
children, to most resemble the laird himself.
Among this lady's nephews and nieces there linger strange traditions of
the violence of her temper, and of the intensity of her loves and hates. It
is hardly necessary to say that none of the females at least of the family
received any particular education.
Mary was a woman of strong natural abilities, and of an excellent
business faculty. She managed the very small resources left at her
command with consummate skill, and in her later years made of
Grandholm a hospitable, cheerful, old-fashioned home for those whom
it pleased her to receive there. Her sister Eliza's marriage had not
pleased her. There was much to justify her objection to it; William
Burton, not then holding a commission, was entirely without pecuniary
resources.
His strongest talent seems to have been for painting, and by such
occupation as he could get in drawing and painting in London he was
barely able to maintain himself. The old grandfather and his lieutenant,
aunt Mary, have been described to the writer in the darkest colours as
having constantly interposed between the true lovers, William Burton
and his beloved Eliza Paton, who, in spite of all advice to the contrary,
soon became his wife. What the laird of Grandholm and his daughter
Mary did was no doubt done in the harshest manner, but their actions
themselves seem hardly blamable. When William Burton found it
impossible to maintain his wife in London, she was received again into

her paternal home with her infant, William, John Hill Burton's elder
brother. The wife, of course, earnestly and constantly desired to rejoin
her husband. The father and sister declined to facilitate her doing so by
paying the expense of her return journey, concluding that if her