Lady Victoria Campbell
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'.:.:••:•*:' m bA • • /fri fc Ha \mwmS°* Scotland *B000451243* LADY VICTORIA CAMPBELL LADY VICTORIA CAMPBELL. !(l895.) [Frontispiece. >^ LADY VICTORIA CAMPBELL a flDemoir BY LADY FRANCES BALFOUR SECOND EDITION HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO TO HER FELLOW-WORKERS IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST AND TO THE PEOPLE OF HER LOVE IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS THIS MEMORIAL IS DEDICATED PREFACE A word of gratitude must be said to those who have helped me to write these pages of remembrance. I owe much to our brother, Lord Archibald Camp- bell, not only for the encouragement he gave me, but also from what I learned when I saw him in the islands. He, with her, has lived for and amongst the people. In their love for him, in his perfect understanding of themselves and their homes, I have seen the working of the selfsame spirit that wrought so mightily in her. Lady Mary Glyn has preserved a series of letters which show how, through the changing years, no shadow of change touched the love she bore for those of her name and race. The second generation, in her niece, Mrs. Edgar Dugdale, has given a page of recollections which is stamped with the vivid lines of a true and loving picture. Counsel, which has not failed from the first to the last written word, I have had from her "London Bishop," the Eev. Archibald Fleming; without his x PREFACE supervision I must have completely failed in my effort. Mr. Ritchie, of Iona, has given the Celtic design on the cover of the book. He, in a friendship of a lifetime, knows the inner meaning of the galley, the symbol of her happy voyages over Life's tem- pestuous sea. Miss Lee Richmond, whose beautiful photographs of Iona are known to every pilgrim to the shrine of St. Columba, has given the picture of the window where Lady Victoria made her sacrifice of prayer and praise. The photograph of herself in the buckboard, speaking to the two ministers, has been given to me by Mr. Isaac Cowie, who took it when he was visiting Tiree as a deputy of the Foreign Mission Committee. The letters preserved by Mrs. Macdiarmid give the thread of the island story in words which are instinct with her life and purpose. There are others, and one especially I name in my heart, for without his strengthening aid I could never have had the courage to attempt, in a time of special personal sorrow, this work of Remembrance. To those I name, and to the many who have given me her written words or told of some deed of love and toilsome adventure ; to those who have given me tidings of her journeyings oft, of her organised work, or who by some familiar quotation have re- PREFACE xi called the dominant, vital character, the happy laughter, the spirit of sympathy—to one and all I offer the gratitude of a full heart. They who love her with an undying remembrance and bless the days that were brightened by her coming, these are they to whom I turn, confident of forgiveness for all the shortcomings of these pages. They alone know how the " deep dawn behind the tomb " hides from earthly sense the radiant life that was given to her friends. " As sometimes in a dead man's face, To those that watch it, more and more A likeness, hardly seen hefore, Comes out—to some one of his race. " So dearest, now thy brows are cold, We see thee what thou art, and know Thy likeness to the wise below, Thy kindred with the great of old. " But there is more than I can see, And what I see I leave unsaid, Nor speak it, knowing Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee." F. B. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAdE CHILDHOOD AND HOME 1 CHAPTER II THE HOUSEHOLD FRIENDS 13 CHAPTER III FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE 31 CHAPTER IV HOME FOR GOOD .... 59 CHAPTER V "pastors and masters" . CHAPTER VI "ONE, THE MARCH IN GOD BEGUN" . 118 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAGE AND THEY WAKBn'd THE MEN OF THE WILD TIREE " 154 CHAPTER VIII THE FAIR HAVENS" 200 CHAPTER IX _,_ u TTT _, , "» ETHICA . _ 237 CHAPTER X NIGHEAN AN DIUC .... 274 CHAPTER XI "REST AND BE THANKFUL" . 399 ILLUSTRATIONS Lady Victoria Campbell (1895) Frontispiece Argyll Lodge Elizabeth Campion . 24 Elizabeth King 24 Lady Victoria Campbell (1869) 32 Lady Victoria Campbell (1871) 32 Lady Emma McNeill 48 Elizabeth, Duchess of Argyll (1868) 64 Lady Victoria Campbell (1885) 80 Iona Cathedral, Window, South Transept 144 Elizabeth Knowles . 160 xvi ILLUSTRATIONS PAOB George, 8th Duke of Argyll, k.t., k.g. 192 Cross of Elizabeth, Duchess of Argyll, Iona . 224 Iona Cathedral ...... 224 Cottages in Tiree ..... 256 Island House ...... 288 Scarinish Harbour .... 288 The Rev. Dugald Maclean, Rev. T. S. Macpherson, Lady Victoria Campbell in her Buckboard, and John Mackinnon ..... 336 CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND HOME " Oh, the garden I remember In the gay and sunny spring." Victoria Campbell, the third daughter and eighth child of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, was born in London on May 22nd, 1854. The house where her parents were living at that time was in Carlton House Terrace. Argyll Lodge, the London home of the family, had only just been purchased and was not yet ready for occupation ; but very soon after this further addition to the already large family, the new home- stead was entered and became a centre of life and interest to a wide circle of friends and relatives. It was a year of deep anxiety at home and abroad. The Crimean War had begun, and the Duke records " how the final order to launch our comparatively small army of some 30,000 men on the shores of the greatest military country in the world was a trans- action in which the closing formalities make a deep impression. The final reading of the draft despatch directing Lord Raglan to employ the Army in an attack on the Russians in the Crimea came after a Cabinet dinner held at Lord John Russell's house in Richmond Park." It was near midnight when the 2 CHILDHOOD AND HOME momentous meeting broke up, and the Duke records his pleasure as he escaped into the sweet and calm air of a glorious summer night. He offered Mr. Gladstone a drive home in his open carriage. " It was midsummer, and the air was full of the smell of all the blossoms that made sweet the whole air of suburban London at that season of the year." In those anxious hours, he must have thought with a sense of peace of the home into which he was just about to enter with the little daughter to whom Argyll Lodge was to mean so much throughout her life. In the Duke's autobiography he tells the tale of " its purchase : Just at that time (1853) we heard that a villa on Campden Hill, which had long been well known in London as the residence of the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, was for sale. It had four acres of land about it, beautifully planted, and two very old oaks in the grounds would have done no discredit to any ancient chase in England. It was next to Holland Park, and abso- lutely removed from all noise of traffic. We went to see it, and the first thing I saw out of the late Duke of Bedford's room was a fine lawn covered with starlings, hunting for grubs and insects in their very peculiar fashion ; moreover, there were other birds in abundance. To my amazement I saw nuthatches moving over the trees as if they were in some deep English woodland. Flycatchers and warblers were also visible to my accustomed eye. There were objections ; distance was to be considered. But CHILDHOOD AND HOME 3 the birds settled everything. All doubts and diffi- culties vanished before the rummaging of the starlings, the darting of the flycatchers, and the agile climbing of the nuthatches. Under such stimulus from birds it seemed quite a subordinate consideration that the lawn would be perfect for the children, and perfect too for breakfast parties. I returned to town, and instructed my agent at once to purchase Bedford Lodge." Soon after the christening of Lady Victoria the family moved to Campden Hill, and the life there was begun which was only to end with the death of the Duke in 1900, when the house passed back into the hands of Sir Walter Phillimore. In 1854 Dr. Cumming, of Crown Court Church, was at the height of his great fame. His was then the principal church representing in London the Church of Scotland. The Disruption had carried with it the church built in Regent Square for Edward Irving and the other Scottish churches. If Dr. Cumming was wrong in his confident prophecy and advice to the Government, and tradition says he was one of those who fortified the deluded Lord Advocate with the prediction that " only a very few would come out," he at least kept Crown Court firmly attached to the National Church; and when St. George's, in Edinburgh, with other large churches left vacant by the Disruption, gave him a call to come and strengthen the things which remained, he refused to leave the church and the flock which followed his ministry in London. 4 CHILDHOOD AND HOME f At that date his preaching was free of the interpreta- tion of prophecy to which he devoted so much of his thought in the later years of his long ministry.