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The Queen tasted real Scotch fare at breakfast, oatmeal porridge and 'Finnan haddies. She saw the sights of Edinburgh, and in driving through the Highlands afterwards, had a reception from Lord Breadalbane at Taymouth Castle. The descriptions of her stay at Lord Breadalbane's, and at Lord Glenlyon's in Blair-Athole, are very graphic. 'At a quarter to six, we reached Taymouth.
Through the Rich family many of these 'Van Dycks' passed to Taymouth Castle, where by a coincidence they were lodged in the company of numerous works of George Jamieson of Aberdeen, who is said to have been for a short time a fellow-pupil of Van Dyck's under Rubens, who has been called 'the Scotch Van Dyck, and who is certainly the first native painter who deserves honourable mention.
It was, as a matter of fact, the work of Atkinson, who in the first years of the nineteenth century built Scone, Abbotsford, and Taymouth Castle. With loud warning blasts upon the horn, Gabrielle Heyburn pulled up; but ere she could descend, Walter Murie, a good-looking, dark-haired young man in grey flannels, and hatless, was outside, hailing her with delight.
But the autumn mists shut out the "Highland hills," already receding in the background, and the Links of Forth, where the river winds like the meshes of a chain through the fertile lowlands to the sea. Soon Drummond Castle and Taymouth, with their lochs and mountains and "plaided array," would be like a wonderful dream, to be often recalled and recounted at Windsor and Buckingham Palace.
I went through the heart of the Highlands by Crieff, Taymouth, the famous seat of Lord Breadalbane, down the Tay, among cascades and druidical circles of stones, to Dunkeld, a seat of the Duke of Athole; thence across Tay, and up one of his tributary streams to Blair of Athole, another of the duke's seats, where I had the honour of spending nearly two days with his grace and family; thence many miles through a wild country among cliffs grey with eternal snows, and gloomy savage glens, till I crossed Spey and went down the stream through Strathspey, so famous in Scottish music; Badenoch, etc., till I reached Grant Castle, where I spent half a day with Sir James Grant and family; and then crossed the country for Fort George, but called by the way at Cawdor, the ancient seat of Macbeth; there I saw the identical bed in which tradition says king Duncan was murdered: lastly, from Fort George to Inverness.
At the northern end of the lake we caught distant glimpses of the battlemented towers of Taymouth Castle, home of the Marquis of Breadalbane, which, though modern, is one of the most imposing of the Scotch country seats.
I ought to have gone to Taymouth to thank Lord Breadalbane and accept the hospitality he had offered, but it happened that he had not fixed a date, so I avoided Taymouth. This was wrong, but young men are generally either forward or backward. The Marquis afterwards expressed himself, to a third person, as rather hurt that I had not been to see him.
Next morning before we were up came a note from Lord Breadalbane urging us to come immediately to the Castle. . . . Taymouth Castle, though not more than fifty years old, has the air of an old feudal castle. . . . As we were ushered up the magnificent staircase through first a large antechamber, then through a superb hall with lofty ceiling glowing with armorial bearings, and with the most light and delicate carving on every part of the oaken panelling, then through a long gallery, of heavier carving filled with fine old cabinets, into the library, it seemed to me that the whole Castle was one of those magical delusions that one reads of in Fairy Tales, so strange did it seem to find such princely magnificence all alone amid such wild and solitary scenes.
It is to be feared the Highlander, in the excitement of the moment, and the marvel that any man not to say any prince could give up the sport at such a crisis, suggested that the Queen might wait, while the deer certainly would not. "The Queen commands," said her true knight, with a quiet smile and a gentle rebuke. In the evening there was company, as at Taymouth, some in kilts.
From Stirling the tourists proceeded northwards by Crieff and Glenalmond to Taymouth; thence, keeping by the banks of the river, to Aberfeldy, whose birks he immortalised in song. Here he had the good fortune to meet Niel Gow and to hear him playing.
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