A Life in the Hills

The Katharine Stewart Omnibus

Katharine Stewart

• Publisher: Birlinn
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781788850018
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

A collection of memoirs about an English woman and her family giving up city life for the Scottish Highlands in the 1950s.
Katharine Stewart, who died in 2013, was one of Scotland's best-loved writers on rural life in the Highlands. A Croft in the Hills, her first book, tells the story of how a couple and their young daughter, fresh from city life, took over a remote hill croft near Loch Ness and made a living from it. Full of warm personal insights, good humor and a love of living things, it has become a classic and has rarely been out of print since it was first published in 1960.
This omnibus gathers A Croft in the Hills together with some of Katharine's later books: A Garden in the Hills, describing a year in the life of her Highland garden; A School in the Hills, a history of the school at Abriachan that eventually became the Stewarts' family home; and The Post in the Hills, which tells the story of the postal service in the Highlands, from the point of view of Katharine's later role as postmistress of the smallest post office in Scotland, run from the porch of her Abriachan schoolhouse.
Each of these books glows with what Neil Gunn described as "its unusual quality, its brightness and its wisdom." The omnibus brings the grace, charm, and wisdom of Stewart's writing to a new generation of readers.
Praise for Katharine Stewart
"Stewart's memories are, as she says herself a tale of other times, almost a glimpse of legend . . . Evocative and charming." — Scottish Book Collector on A Croft in the Hills

THE POST IN THE HILLS

FOREWORD

For over thirty-five years now we have been involved, as a family, with one of the smallest Post Offices in the Highlands. Small and down-to-earth as it is, it has forged for me a strong sense of linkage with the early days of the postal service. Times of snow and storm have meant delivery of mail on foot, as in the days of the ‘runners’. With the breakdown of telephone communications urgent messages have been taken round by word of mouth.

The office is the natural centre for the dissemination of news affecting the area, where the activities of the Community Council, of the School Board, of the Village Hall Committee can all be scrutinised and discussed, as in former times the newspapers would be perused, the Postmaster charging a small fee for reading them aloud!

There is a linkage with the future, too, now that computerisation has reached even the smallest outposts. But that is another story. The past, the present and the future of the postal service, this great effort in communication, all hold fast to the watchword of service. We’ve come a long way since the first recorded ‘runner’, bringing news of victory in battle, died after accomplishing his mission. But I reckon he considered himself privileged to have been given the task, as, in a small way, we feel a certain sense of privilege in being, by stamping and dating and processing the mail, the bearers of news to people in many parts of the world.

From the bushman putting his ear to the ground to the advent of the silicon chip, between the foot-post and the sender of electronic mail there is a vast gap in the story of communication. The bridging of this gap has been accomplished by the ingenuity and energy of many people. Science has performed miracles beyond the reach of the imagination. But in our small corner we have been able to keep in close touch with the human side of things, the look in the eye, the touch of the hand, as news, good or bad, is communicated. In the record of day-to-day doings in the story of the postal service we can almost feel the weariness in the bones of the ‘runners’, hear the hoof-beats of the Surveyor’s horse, the sound of the mail-coach horn. Here, in the Highlands, we can still follow the foot-post’s track, the coaching inns where the horses were changed are still there, as are the little toll-houses, where the gates were flung wide for the passage of the mail-coach. ‘Acceleration’ is a key word in most facets of life today. But I’m glad to have been involved in the service of the Post Office when speed was not necessarily of the essence, when time still seemed as limitless as space and there was enough to spare for the exchange of greetings, for a blessing here, a good wish there, a sharing of whatever the day held, as the simple routine of work went on.

I should like to thank many people for help in the preparation of this book – Mr Steward and his staff at Highland Archives, where a box of old letters set me on a trail, Miss Mackenzie at Inverness Museum who dug out old photographs, Dr James Mackay, whose handbook on the postal history of the Islands and other publications provide an invaluable source of information, Mr and Mrs J.A. Mackintosh who lent me many of these books, Mr Martin Cummins and Mr Alistair Ramsay of the Scottish Post Office Board in Edinburgh and Mr Adam Borwick of the Royal Mail (Scotland and Northern Ireland) for generous help with illustrations and encouragement, the staffs of Royal Mail and Post Office Counters, Inverness, and of the Post Office Archives in London and, of course, Tom Johnstone of the Mercat Press for his ever-ready guidance.

I

LETTERS FROM THE HIGHLANDS

When we inherited the charge of running the small Post Office, along with the tenancy of the old schoolhouse, in the hills above Loch Ness, some 35 years ago, we had little inkling of how the systems of communication had evolved over the centuries, or, indeed, how they were to develop during the ensuing decades.

To us, as to many people, the Post Office was, in our early years, the place where you could buy stamps and postal orders, cash orders, make deposits in a Savings Bank, post a parcel, send a telegram. Everything was weighed and calculated, often from behind slightly intimidating metal bars, by slightly intimidating, often elderly, personnel. Letters were delivered by postmen who were most often unseen when they came in the early hours and pushed the envelopes through a slit in the front door. We remembered the arrival of the telegram boy, wearing his little round, chin-strapped hat, who handed in his little yellow envelope and waited to see if a reply was needed. He was greeted with trepidation, followed most often, mercifully, by relief.

We had collected stamps, of course, in our young days, and postcards, but it had never really occurred to us to wonder how the perilous journey of a fragile piece of paper from, say, one of the more remote small islands of the Hebrides to our doorstep was accomplished successfully for our delight. Now, with a book of stamps to hand, scales, weights, a date-stamp, forms of all kinds, we began to think about how the whole business of communication world-wide was managed.

For a start, we looked back to our first days in the hill land where we had come to live and work. Our post arrived in early afternoon. We saw its bearer from a distance as he came down through a patch of felled woodland from the road where he had left his motor-bike. He was one of our nearest neighbours – Bill-the-Post – and his coming was always welcomed with a blether, an exchange of news, sometimes a cup of tea, even when his delivery consisted of small buff envelopes containing bills or forms. On days of storm he would battle his way through waist-high drifts of snow to deliver the mail. Many times, when his round was done and his own well-tended croft was not demanding attention, he would give us a hand at whatever job we were at – getting a crop in before the weather broke, seeing to a sick cow or finishing some fencing to keep the roe out of the turnips.

In older times, before the luxury of a delivery to the door had been introduced, a letter would have to be collected from the nearest receiving office, probably the one in Inverness, ten miles away. Here, the postmaster would stand in the market place on market day, and call out the names of any persons from the country for whom letters had arrived, perhaps from relatives who had emigrated to the towns in the south or to countries overseas.

From the late 1700s, when a school had been established here by the Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, it is probable that the schoolmaster would have kept for collection letters sent by a ‘runner’ from the town. He would have also seen to the despatch of mail by the same means. And he would, on request, have read the letters to recipients who had never attended school and also write answers at their bidding. In some places, letter-writers earned a small fee performing this task. Even in our day, fingers roughened by years of toil took badly to the handling of pen on paper.

With all the facilities we have for the writing of letters today it’s sad that so few are written. Telephonic messages are essentially ephemeral. There is poetry in speaking to a beloved in a far-off place while walking in the garden, an instrument tucked close to ear and mouth. But where is the relic, to be read over, thought about, cherished and put away for future reference? Luckily, in the Highlands, we have had letter-writers of great talent who have left us priceless records of the times they wrote in. Mrs Grant of Laggan, wife of the local minister, wrote letters to many friends, over a period of years, which were eventually published in London in 1809, in three volumes, entitled Letters from the Mountains, being the real correspondence of a lady between the years 1773 and 1807. She travelled quite extensively round the country and in her letters discusses many topics, social and political, as well as personal and domestic matters, illness, bereavement and so on. A picture of the times certainly emerges. The publication was well received and went into four editions.

Captain Burt, an officer of engineers, was sent into Scotland about 1730 as a ‘contractor’. After his return he published, in 1754, his Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London. There was a strict injunction that they were to be shown to no one but one nameless friend, but this was clearly disregarded when they appeared in book form. One can understand his fear of possible lynching when reading his description of a ‘Capital Town in that Northern Country’ – obviously Inverness. He talks of the squalor of the ‘Huts’ and streets, the filth of the inhabitants and their strange ways. Fortunately for him these hapless people had no contact with him or his writings. There must have been many places furth of the border where similar conditions prevailed. His descriptions of other parts of the country, where his engineering skills would have given him a different outlook, are, however, valuable. He talks of roads, bridges, ferries and so on. There is a definite impression that he has an eye on methods of ‘civilising’ the ignorant peasantry. Could he have been a Government spy?

Our great writers, too, have found time to send letters to fellow-writers which give us fascinating insights into the world of literature and of literary criticism and also glimpses of the personal lives of the writers. Fortunately many of these letters have been preserved in book form. The original copies are in the National Library in Edinburgh. Neil Gunn, Naomi Mitchison, Hugh MacDiarmid have left us letters which show how their minds worked, what influences they accepted and bestowed, how they reacted to criticism, what were their relations with the world at large. Their problems in matters of finance, ill-health and domestic arrangements are also touched on, giving us a rounded picture of the human being pushing the pen.

Today the air-waves must be resounding with like messages, but where are they? Lost among the clouds or stars? Perhaps recorded in the minds of recipients, but ephemeral as life itself.

The writing of diaries or journals, not meant originally for publication, has also been largely abandoned. The one I keep myself I find invaluable, not for the re-reading of any profound reflections inscribed therein, but as an aide-mémoire, reminding me of when certain things took place – a meeting, a visit to friends, the posting of an important letter.

Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal of a tour she and her famous brother made of parts of the Highlands gives us glimpses of the conditions of the time, descriptions of the houses, of the inns, of the food provided. William’s poem about the ‘solitary Highland lass’ does show some empathy with the people.

Queen Victoria was an indefatigable diary writer and no mean artist. Her sketches of Highland people and places are full of life. She writes mainly, of course, about the daily doings of herself and her entourage, but she also describes meetings with the real people of the country. She went to watch the sheep-dipping, which she called ‘juicing the sheep’ and ‘salmon leistering’, catching the salmon driven into nets or speared, attended the Games and a christening and visited many elderly women, of whom she became really fond. Between these entries there are references to events in the outside world such as the death of the Duke of Wellington, the fall of Sevastopol. The Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands 1848-1861 was published in London in 1868; More Leaves 1862-82 was published in 1884.

The Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the Autobiography of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus 1797-1830 is another delightful book, recording the daily life of a family of the minor Highland aristocracy. There are accounts of hardship and happiness, rising at six on winter mornings and breaking the ice in the jug to wash, picnics in the hills, boating on the river, dancing and singing. The outside world is always there, in the background. When Napoleon threatens to invade the south there is talk of raising a body of hardy volunteers from among the local people. Is anyone today, I wonder, recording life in this charming and authentic way, so that future generations can appreciate the truth of the past?

II

EARLY DAYS

As time went by old houses were being renovated and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Croft in the Hills
• A Garden in the Hills
• A School in the Hills
• The Post in the Hills