Anne Grant

Anne Macvicar, was born at Glasgow, on 2 February 1755. She was the only child of Duncan Macvicar, a Highland resident, who married in the year 1753 a Stewart of Invernahyle. Grant lived in the mountain home of her maternal ancestors until she was eighteen months old. In the year 1757, Duncan Macvicar, having obtained a commission in the 77th Regiment of Foot, went to North America, leaving his wife and daughter at Glasgow.[3]

Mrs. Macvicar some time afterwards received his directions to follow him; and accompanied by their daughter, she landed at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1758, and took up her temporary residence at Albany, New York. Mr. Macvicar, having exchanged into the 55th Regiment, was sent down from headquarters at Oswego, New York on Lake Ontario to buy stores, with leave of absence to visit his family. On his return, he took his wife and child with him to the garrison, travelling in a boat up the river. He served in the attack on Ticonderoga, 8 July 1758, when seven of his fellow officers were killed. On the declaration of peace between Great Britain and France in 1762, the 55th Regiment was ordered to New York, previous to embarkation for England.

Returning by the river from Oswego to Albany, the Macvicars became intimate with Madame Margarita Schuyler (1701–1782), who had then left her mansion on The Flats, and purchased a house in that town.. Mr. Macvicar, retiring on half-pay from the army in 1765, received a grant of land from the government, and purchased from two fellow officers their land grants. These lands, lying adjacent, after being cleared, seemed to Mr. Macvicar to be ideal for a fertile and profitable estate. Mr. Macvicar hired men to survey and map his lands, and also at the time reasonably expected that his [sic] Township of Clarendon would in a few years become a very valuable property. Meanwhile, Mr. Macvicar became the tenant of Madame Schuyler’s new house at The Flats, in the township of Claverac, and of a few adjacent acres of land.[4]

At this period of her life, Grant had two homes, usually spending the summer with her parents, presumably at Invernahyle in Scotland, and the winter with Madame Schuyler at Albany.[4] She had lived among Dutch settlers, French Huguenots, English soldiers, African-American slaves, and Mohawk people. She had learned the Dutch language among her young friends at Albany, and had frequented the summer wigwams of the indigenous peoples. She could talk their language sufficiently well to make herself understood by those women and children who were accustomed to European conversations.[5] All this knowledge, Grant had amassed by the time that she was ten years of age.

Her acquaintance with books at that period was proportionately small. Soon after her arrival in America, she had been taught needlework and the elements of reading by her mother, and a soldier had given her lessons in pot-hooks, hangers, and joining-hand. The family Bible, and a Scotch sergeant's copy of Blind Harry's The Wallace were the earliest books to which she had access, and she derived from studying the latter on the banks of Lake Ontario an enthusiastic feeling for Scotland, which lasted through life.[6]

On the voyage back to Albany, from the garrison at Oswego, staying a while at Fort Brewerton, Captain Mungo Campbell, the commander, presented her with an illustrated copy of the Paradise Lost. This, with the aid of a tattered copy of Nathan Bailey's Dictionary, she learned at last to understand. It served her in the first instance as a vocabulary, then as a story book, and subsequently as an incentive to poetical aspirations. At Madame Schuyler’s, Grant became acquainted with Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Addison, and a few other standard authors. She also took lessons in geography and the use of the globes from the Dutch chaplain. Her principal advantage, however, consisted in oral instructions received from Madame Schuyler, and from listening to the conversations held by her monitress with the military officers[6]

Disgusted with the new settlers, and suffering from rheumatism, Mr. Macvicar suddenly resolved on returning with his wife and daughter to Scotland. His neighbour, Captain John Munro, consented to take charge of the "Township of Clarendon", and with a reasonable expectation of deriving an income from it in a few years, and of securing an ample inheritance for his child, he reappeared in Glasgow in 1768. Shortly after their departure, the American Revolution began, and they never returned, their land being seized by the colonials.[7]

In Glasgow, Grant found several girls of her own age, including two sisters named Pagan, afterwards better known as Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Brown, with whom, during the three following years, she cultivated a friendship. The change of scene and of circumstances provided progress for her education. Her father had again employed himself in commerce, but he resigned that occupation and accepted the appointment of barrack-master at Fort Augustus, in the county of Inverness, in 1773, and immediately removed there with his family.[8][9]

In Fort Augustus, for six years, Grant lived among the families of the military officers, and the inhabitants of the Strathmore, while practising literary composition in writing letters to her Lowland and other friends, and in occasional sallies of poetry.[10]

The chaplain of Fort Augustus was a young clergyman named James Grant, who, in the year 1776, was presented to the neighbouring living of Laggan. He had no fortune, but was a gentleman by birth, and connected with the families in the county. Anne and James married in May 1779. Her parents, soon after this event, removed to Fort George, Highland, where Mr. Macvicar was appointed barrack-master.[10]

Anne Grant

The Grants lived in Laggan for the next twenty-two years.[11] Their cottage was 55 miles (89 km) from Perth, and the same distance from Inverness, and these were the nearest towns. They rented a small farm from the Duke of Gordon as an additional source of income.[10] Soon after her marriage, Grant received into her family Charlotte Grant, a young girl who was her husband’s relative.[10]

Almost every year, Grant took a few weeks' holiday to visit her family and acquaintances in different parts of the Strathmore, including her parents, and her favourite friends at Glasgow.[12] She acquainted herself with the Gaelic language, and was able not only to speak it with the people, and to understand the religious services which her husband performed in it, but to translate the compositions both of ancient and modern bards.[13][14] Her travels through the Highlands of Scotland during this time would come to greatly impact her future literary work, which draws heavily on the imagery of the region.

The first great trouble she ever felt was the death of her second son, age four. A year or two afterwards, she also lost twin daughters. Her elder children, usually two or three at a time, generally resided with her parents, who, in 1794, left Fort George, and took a house in the city of Glasgow. There the grandchildren enjoyed many educational advantages.[14] On the death of a favourite companion of her girlhood, Grant took one of the small children into her own home. When Charlotte Grant, who had lived with her since early in her marriage, married early but also died young, Grant took in her child.[15]

When the family estate was absorbed into the new State of Vermont, Grant's financial expectations were severely altered; yet the loss affected her only slightly. The death of her eldest son, John-Lauchlan, at the age of fifteen, was dreadful to her. Its effect was somewhat softened to both parents by the birth of a fourth son a fortnight afterwards, and for eighteen months, although depressed in health and spirits, their domestic happiness was so perfect that Grant subsequently declared that, if she were permitted to select six months out of her whole former life to live over again, she would choose the last six of that period. However, it came to a fearful close: Rev. Grant was attacked by inflammation of the chest, and after three days' illness, he died in 1801. They had been married twenty-two years and of their twelve children, eight survived, six daughters and two sons. [16]

In June 1803, she reluctantly left Laggan with her children, and took up residence at Woodend near Stirling,[17] having garden-ground attached to her dwelling and a few acres of pasture-land. Her father died in the same year at Glasgow, and her mother, who had a small pension as an officer’s widow, came to spend the remainder of her life living with her daughter.[18] Grant's only certain income was the small pension due to her as the widow of a military chaplain. The Duke of Gordon considerately permitted her to remain the tenant of his farm for two years after her husband’s death. She was also aided by the kindness of many among her family connections and friends. They collected the original verses and translations which she had previously written and given away, sent them to her for revision, and published them under the patronage of the Duchess of Gordon, three thousand names appearing in the list of subscribers.[16]

Twice within the years 1803, 1804, and 1805, maternal duties summoned Grant to various parts of England, the last of these visits being to London and its vicinity for the purpose of fitting out her third and eldest surviving son, Duncan James, for India, the Right Honourable Charles Grant having obtained a cadetship for his young clansman. To make a comfortable provision for all her children had now become her chief desire, and to further this object she resolved, at the suggestion of her friends, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, and others, with whom she had kept up a correspondence from her girlhood, to publish the letters which they had preserved. Early in the year 1806, under the title of Letters from the Mountains, those letters were published by Messrs. Longman, and met with extraordinary success. She derived from this work, not only large financial profits, but also many invaluable friendships.[18]

While residing at Woodend she took charge of several little boys as boarders, and among them, at one time was young Morritt of Rokeby. Sir Henry and Lady Steuart were her nearest neighbours.[19] In April 1807, her daughter Charlotte died at the age of seventeen. In July of the same year, her daughter Catherine died, age twenty-five. Grief for these children was mingled with fearful apprehension for the six survivors, as their cases made her fully aware that the insidious illness of their father’s family, consumption, was inherited by their children.[19]

Having kept alive her American remembrances by comparing them with those of her mother, and having enlarged and corrected these conjoint impressions by reading Cadwallader Colden's The History of the Five Indian Nations, and that part of the Travels through the United States of North America by François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt which relates his tour from Upper Canada to New York, she fortunately met in London with several near relations of Madame Schuyler, who afforded her the aid of their more accurate knowledge, while she was engaged in finishing the manuscript and correcting the proof-sheets of her Memoirs of an American Lady, which appeared in 1808. It was her largest success and met with a very favourable reception.[19][20] It provided a description of growing up in pre-revolutionary America and her life with the Schuyler family in Albany who helped raise and educate her. The book also came to inspire other writers and artists interested in the Scottish Highlands, and it often cited as the inspiration for the Scottish folk song Blue Bells of Scotland.[21]

It is not to be doubted, although the observation does not seem to have been uttered or to have got into print, that the Letters from the Mountains were partly indebted for their immediate success to their connection with the birthplace of James Macpherson and the race of Ossian. The Memoirs of an American Lady, also, fell into and harmonised with the recollections of many survivors of the American war, and thus in the first instance, gained favor with the public. Without such introductory circumstances, both works might have failed to excite attention, but, having gained it, their intrinsic merits sufficed to extend and heighten their celebrity. They passed through repeated editions, and were the means of constantly enlarging the circle of her personal friends.[19]

In 1809, the Countess of Glasgow having requested her to take charge of her ladyship’s daughter, who was then leaving school, Grant was induced to wish for other pupils of a similar kind, whom her daughters might instruct under her own supervision. With this object in view, she took some steps towards removing to London, but she eventually decided on fixing her residence in Edinburgh, where she took a house in Heriot Row, and removed her family there in March 1810.[22]

In 1811, she published her Essays on the Superstition of the Highlands of Scotland, with Translations from the Gaelic. Towards the close of the same year, her mother, Mrs. Macvicar, died, age 84. The two following years were chiefly spent in training the pupils committed to her care. One of her final large pieces of work was Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen, was published in 1814. It was a lengthy poem about the prospects of a prosperous century for Great Britain.[23] On 14 August of that year, her son, Lieutenant Duncan-James Grant, died at Surat, while engaged in military duty. A few days later, Grant's daughter Anne died.[24]

• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Hagglund, Dr. Betty (17 February 2010). Tourists and Travellers: Women's Non-fictional Writing about Scotland, 1770-1830. Channel View Publications. ISBN 978-1-84541-188-6.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Virtue and Company (1875). The Art Journal (Public domain ed.). Virtue and Company.
• "Anne Grant" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. XI (9th ed.). 1880. p. 50.
• MacColl, Norman (1890). "Grant, Anne" . In Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney (eds.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 22. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 376–378.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.

• "Anne McVicar Grant". Retrieved 9 March 2012.