Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Gwyneth Hoyle is a research associate at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Native Studies at Trent University. She is the coauthor of Canoeing North into the Unknown: A Record of River Travel: 1874 to 1974.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803273443 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNP - Bison Books |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2005 |
| Series: | Women in the West |
| Pages: | 282 |
| Sales rank: | 687,668 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d) |
About the Author
Gwyneth Hoyle is a research associate at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Native Studies at Trent University. She is the coauthor of Canoeing North into the Unknown: A Record of River Travel: 1874 to 1974.
Read an Excerpt
Flowers in the Snow
The Life of Isobel Wylie HutchisonBy Gwyneth Hoyle
Bison Books
Copyright © 2005 Gwyneth HoyleAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780803273443
Chapter One
Carlowrie
Half hidden among the ancient trees, the tower and turrets of Carlowrie appear the very model of a Scottish baronial castle. This is the house where Isobel Hutchison was born and where she died ninety-two years later. It was the haven she returned to after months spent in travel to destinations far removed from the European world she knew. It was the home where her roots were deep and firm.
Carlowrie was built in 1852 by Isobel's grandfather, Thomas Hutchison. The son of a flesher, or cattle breeder, he was born in 1796 at Kinghorn in Fifeshire, but his destiny lay across the Firth of Forth in the town of Leith, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. There he worked for a firm of wine and spirit merchants, George Young and Company, owners of the Grange Distillery. Astute and quick to learn, by age thirty he had founded his own wholesale wine business, T. Hutchison and Company. The times were favorable for the wine trade: the Industrial Revolution created a wealthy middle class that had the leisure to enjoy the pleasures of the table and could afford the luxury of good claret.
Well established in the wine trade, in 1832 Thomas Hutchison married Jean Wylie. Her grandfather, William Wylie, was a farmer near Kincardine, then in Perthshire, close to the River Forth. The sons of William Wylie followed diverse paths. While Jean Wylie's father, Robert, remained on the family farm, her uncle James became the physician to three Russian czars, Paul, Alexander, and Nicholas. He was one of the founders of the Medical Academy of St. Petersburg and Moscow and its president for thirty years. At the request of Czar Alexander, in 1814 he was knighted in England by the prince regent, acting on behalf of King George III. He died many years later at St. Petersburg, leaving half his fortune to the czar. Jean Wylie's youngest uncle, Walter, was a sea captain, sailing from the River Forth to Baltic ports to sell pit props to the Russians. Among Jean Wylie's seven brothers and sisters, four brothers followed their Uncle Walter to sea, including one who died in Moscow and a brother, as well as a sister, who married in Canada.
Thomas Hutchison and his wife had a country home, Glendevon House, in the Ochil Hills of Perthshire, where their five children were born. They also owned a town house, the Hermitage, near the golf course in Leith. As his business prospered Thomas Hutchison became active in local politics, being elected provost of Leith in 1845. He promoted improvements to the harbor and the rail service as well as holding directorships in important Scottish financial institutions.
Having amassed a considerable fortune by 1850, Thomas Hutchison bought the estate of Carlowrie, near the village of Kirkliston in West Lothian, closer to his business interests in Edinburgh. The existing house was pulled down, and Edinburgh architect David Rhind was engaged to build a new house in the Scottish mid-nineteenth-century baronial style. The architect's specifications called for the finest stone and woodwork, and the final cost of £33,000 represented a very large sum at the time.
Approached through an avenue of sycamore trees, the formal entrance to Carlowrie is set on a raised terrace. The entire edifice is surmounted by a round tower with an arched balustrade, and turrets with candlesnuffer roofs complete the baronial effect. A large conservatory filled with rare and tropical plants is off the formal drawing room to the east of the entrance; it was originally much larger, extending almost the width of the lawn. The house is set in spacious grounds, with walled gardens hiding the greenhouses, kitchen gardens, and stables. A second avenue of trees leads westward past the paddock to the lodge beside the now-quiet country road. A three-hundred-acre tenant farm on the other side of the estate, with its sturdy eighteenth-century farmhouse and outbuildings, supplied milk and produce for the big house. When Carlowrie was built facing south across the River Almond, the setting was peaceful in spite of being close to one of the main roads to Edinburgh. From the open tower of the house one can look south to the Pentland Hills stretching off into the distance and north toward the Firth of Forth.
The house was two years in completion, and Thomas Hutchison died before it was ready to occupy. His widow lived there with her four sons until 1863, when the eldest, Robert, married the daughter of the local Presbyterian minister. At Carlowrie Robert enjoyed the role of country gentleman, with a passionate enthusiasm for archaeology, rural economy, and arboriculture. He published several essays and papers on rural economy for private circulation, and he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh as well as belonging to other Scottish learned societies. He and his wife had seven children, two of whom were later knighted for their accomplishments. Unfortunately Robert Hutchison, despite his scholarly achievements, had no interest in the family wine business, and by 1888 his extravagant lifestyle had run him deeply into debt.
Robert's younger brother, Thomas, having followed his father in the wine trade, spent a number of years in India expanding the business. When he returned to Scotland at about age forty, he married his second cousin, Jeanie Wylie, the granddaughter of his mother's seafaring uncle, Walter. Her father was a farmer and maltster from Parkhead, near Alloa, and her mother was a Younger, whose family founded a famous Alloa brewery. For the first years of their marriage Thomas Hutchison and his wife lived in his father's home, Glendevon House, where two children, Nita and Walter, were born.
To Thomas fell the burden of saving the family's reputation and business. In 1888 he paid off his brother's debts and took over the ownership of Carlowrie, where, on May 30, 1889, a third child, Isobel Wylie, was born. Hilda and Frank followed—five children over the span of twelve years.
The wholesale wine trade was flourishing. Soon Thomas Hutchison could afford to devote his time to his family and his estate. When it was necessary to attend to business matters, the frequent trains from nearby Ratho station would take him to Edinburgh in less than twenty minutes. He had a passionate interest in the gardens, and in his daily journal he recorded his observations of the weather and details of the plantings. A quiet, reserved man, he imparted his love of nature and horticulture to his children by example. By the time his fifth child was born, when he was in his late fifties, his garden, his library, and his family were the center of his life.
Carlowrie was a world unto itself, a halcyon domain where "it seemed always afternoon." A dozen servants were on hand to respond to the double row of bells hanging in the hall beside the kitchen. The gardener and his wife lived in the lodge at the end of the avenue of trees, and the tenant farmer was the nearest neighbor on the other side of the estate. A mile up the country road was the village of Kirkliston, and each Sunday the Hutchison family walked to the twelfth-century kirk where Thomas Hutchison was an elder and took their places in the front pew of the gallery.
A resident governess took care of the schooling, sometimes assisted by a fräulein to teach the children German. After lessons there was plenty of scope for five active youngsters, with croquet, tennis, archery on the lawns, skating in winter, bicycling, and games of hide-and-seek at any time. The days were never long enough, filled with hikes in the country, picnics, and visits to and from the Wylie relatives on the other side of the River Forth. There were trees to climb, where one could disappear and read in secret leafy bowers. The children also loved to write and produce plays, using the spacious first landing of the great staircase as a stage. The servants, seated in the formal entrance hall, provided the audience for the first performance, and relatives were invited for subsequent evenings of entertainment.
Before she was ten, Isobel had her own garden plot near the greenhouses where, with her father's encouragement, she built a cold frame, planted seeds, and recorded the growth of her plants. Her older brother, Walter, was a keen photographer and taught her to develop and print film in the darkroom. Lessons in Scottish dancing and physical sports like running and jumping were as much a part of her life as the more ladylike pursuits of embroidery, crocheting, painting, and—significantly—pressing flowers. Idle moments were few, and she cherished time alone to absorb the beauty of the world around her, to think about the mysteries of life, and to attempt to frame her thoughts into poems. For all her love of sports and physical activity, Isobel was a shy and introspective child. Surrounded by a close and loving family, with no need for outside friendships, her life at Carlowrie was as perfect as she could wish it to be.
With the dawning of a new century, the tranquil family life of Carlowrie was shattered. In April 1900 Thomas Hutchison caught a chill that rapidly turned to pneumonia. Within three days the husband and father, the center of their golden world whose constant presence was the vital spark, was gone.
Isobel's father died just before her eleventh birthday. In her only novel, written more than twenty years later and describing circumstances that closely matched her own, she reproduced the powerful but inexpressible feelings of a child facing the sudden death of a beloved parent. Her despair and disbelief mingled with indignation at the unrestrained emotions of the adults around her. Too proud to cry in front of the servants, she felt her unshed tears enter like iron into her soul, and with the anguish of a wounded wild creature she hid her grief in solitude, only to have it surface again in years to come.
Although his death was unexpected, with his usual attention to detail Thomas Hutchison had left his affairs in perfect order. All financial matters were arranged to be administered by an Edinburgh law firm as a strict trust, which continued until the death of Isobel, the last surviving member of the family. A nephew, the third Thomas Hutchison, son of the improvident older brother Robert, was already working in the family business and became managing director when it later amalgamated with J. C. Thompson and Company, wine merchants.
The arrangements Thomas Hutchison had made ensured that the family could continue to live in its accustomed style, with adequate indoor and outdoor staff. While a lawyer with the title of factor oversaw the management of the estate at Carlowrie, Mrs. Hutchison—Mama as she was known by her children—took over the direction of the family.
Sixteen years younger than her husband, Mrs. Hutchison was small and dark haired with a brisk and capable manner. At school she had been one of the brightest girls in her class, able to hold her own in the subjects taught to members of both sexes. As a matron, she directed the large household of servants with a firm hand. After the initial shock of her husband's death she took full charge of bringing up the five children, ranging in age from sixteen to four. Whereas her husband's interests had centered on the estate and the gardens, Mrs. Hutchison's world was that of the conventional Victorian lady. Now a widow, she spent her leisure hours entertaining visitors or being driven in the brougham to leave calling cards with suitable neighbors. She had a close relationship with her mother and aunts in Alloa and with her sisters, all living within easy journeys of Carlowrie. She and her sisters suffered from congenital deafness, and in later years Mrs. Hutchison was afflicted by tinnitus, or ringing in her ears.
Writers often reveal more of their true feelings in their imaginative fiction than through straight autobiography. In Original Companions Isobel Hutchison described her mother as full of common sense with a wholesome gift of humor but lacking in imagination, while her father was lavishly generous in a secretive way. In her diaries her relationship with her mother can be perceived as correct and conventional. Whether deafness was the barrier or Mrs. Hutchison's formal manner, Isobel's affection for her mother appeared to lack the depth of feeling she had for her introspective, nature-loving father.
Isobel was a faithful diarist. From a tentative beginning when she was ten years old, the events of most of the next eighty years were chronicled in commercial diaries about three inches by four or even smaller, her open, rounded script filling every part of each tiny page. The diaries, ten or more to an archival box, are housed in the Archives of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, each page giving a terse summary of the day's activities. There is little space for more than facts. Some particularly momentous years are inscribed in greater detail in hard-cover notebooks, and in these she recorded not only daily events but thoughts and feelings.
Most children find keeping a daily diary a tedious exercise; they often begin boldly at the start of each new year, but the entries peter out in a few months. In her first diary in 1899 at the age of ten, Isobel made sporadic entries until May, when she received a new bicycle for her birthday. There are scattered entries for the years 1901 and 1902, but at age fourteen, in 1903, she had developed the discipline to maintain daily entries that lasted to the end of her life. Significantly, the diary for 1900, the year her father died, and those for the years when she suffered other tragic losses are missing from the collection. It seems that any reminders of those years were so painful they must be expunged from the record. Although her diaries reveal little of her inner self, their existence shows that from an early age she was self-disciplined, regular in her habits, and diligent. The absence of diaries for specific tragic years is the first indication that Isobel's feelings ran so deep that she hid them even from herself.
The early diaries show Isobel as an active teenager, something of a tomboy who delighted in bicycling, golf, cricket, high jumping, and running. While the diaries reported mainly the life within the enclosed world of Carlowrie, distant events such as the death of Queen Victoria or the Russian-Japanese War were mentioned. More regularly recorded were the books Isobel read—Dickens, Thackeray, and many of Scott's Waverley novels, as well as popular novels of the time and the Girl's Own Paper. Equally important in her life was writing: plays to be performed for invited audiences, regular contributions to the family magazine, the Scribbler, and always poems.
Begun in 1903 with Nita as the first editor-in-chief, the Scribbler was produced every two months and contained typed articles, stories, poems, plays, and nature notes by the three sisters and some by outside contributors. For a few years Walter provided photographs and articles on photography. The artwork, both inside the magazine and on each unique cover, showed a high degree of competence and originality. The subscribers—friends and extended family members—received the one copy of each issue in turn, crossing off their names and posting it to the next on the list. From the first issue it was clear that the Hutchison sisters, Nita and Isobel in particular, were serious about writing, even in their humorous pieces. In later years when Nita had left home and Hilda was studying abroad they continued to submit stories and poems and, in Hilda's case, musical compositions. Isobel, still at home, became the editor-in-chief, writing editorials with dry wit and illustrating stories with clever cartoons and caricatures. Over the course of eight years, twenty-three issues were produced.
Before her father's death it had been arranged that the eldest daughter, Nita, would attend a boarding school, Calecote Towers, in Hertfordshire. Walter, the older son, became a day pupil at Fettes, a prestigious Edinburgh school. These two had been Isobel's constant companions from her earliest childhood. Her younger sister Hilda now began to take Nita's place, and Walter became even more important to her during his free time from school. Frank, the baby of the family, was seven years younger than Isobel, and it would be a few years before he was part of the close circle.
Walter completed his schooling at Fettes and passed the preliminary examination to study chartered accountancy. In the summer of 1904 Mrs. Hutchison took Nita and Walter to France for a holiday, and Walter remained until Christmas at the University of Grenoble. Miss Whitelaw, their longtime governess, retired from teaching to look after her mother, and in the same year Isobel, Hilda, and Frank began attending private school in Edinburgh—the girls at Miss Gamgee's, which later became Rothesay House, and Frank at Miss Menzies's. They traveled into the city each day by train from Ratho station find walked from Haymarket station to the schools in the west end of Edinburgh. Rothesay House, a small school occupying two houses on Rothesay Terrace, taught a curriculum designed for young ladies expecting to live privileged lives at home, following the patterns of their mothers. Isobel often stood at the top of her class, and botany was among the subjects she excelled in. Daily commuting distanced the Hutchison girls from their classmates, who either lived in Edinburgh or boarded at the school. Always more at ease with older people and young children, Isobel might have seemed aloof, but with plants, trees, and books as her companions she was never lonely.
In Scotland, influenced by the Protestant Reformation, universal education for both sexes was the accepted tradition, and a few women had even attended university late in the eighteenth century. University education was stressed for all teachers, and teaching was considered an honorable profession. Mrs. Hutchison, however, from a family that did not see the need of higher education for girls, accepted that view without question. Though her oldest daughter Nita showed great literary and artistic promise at her school in England and the headmistress urged her to attend university, Mrs. Hutchison thought it unnecessary. Marriage was the proper course for girls.
Although Thomas Hutchison was a successful merchant and prosperous landowner, he was not "landed gentry" or even "county" in the subtle rankings of British aristocracy. Carlowrie, designated on the map as a castle, was in reality a baronial mansion, set in spacious grounds. It was called a castle to distinguish it from Carlowrie farm, part of the extensive estate of Lord Rosebery, the prime minister who followed Gladstone, which bordered Carlowrie to the northeast. The children at Carlowrie were allowed to speak with the naturally soft lowland Scots accent, whereas the governess at Dalmeny House, the Rosebery mansion, taught her charges to speak with the proper upper-class English accent. The daughters at Carlowrie were not part of the elaborate ritual of presentation at court and the attendant series of balls and social events that constituted the "marriage market" of the late Victorian and Edwardian period.
Mrs. Hutchison tackled the marriage problem by entertaining officers from the ships based at Rosyth, just across the River Forth. Isobel noted in her diary early in 1905 that Mr. Padwick of the Caledonia came to tea, and about the same time the Scribbler contained the story "A Summer Cruise to the Mediterranean by a Naval Officer." It was not long before Nita and Victor Padwick were married—Mama had attained her objective. Padwick was a paymaster in the Royal Navy, but members of the family did not consider him Nita's intellectual equal. The Padwicks' life was governed by naval postings, at first around the south coast of England and the Island of Jersey, later in South Africa and China. Much of Nita's life was spent in rented accommodations, alternating between the south of England and the north of Scotland. In light of the realities of Nita's marriage, Mrs. Hutchison ceased to push her other daughters in that direction. She had also realized that Isobel's strong streak of independence could not be bent to her will.
From early childhood Isobel enjoyed long, solitary walks with the family dog along the river or through the various woods on the estate. Walking was freedom and independence, a time for observing nature, for collecting plants, for turning words into poems combining thoughts about spiritual matters with the beauty of nature. In 1904 the family was on a late summer holiday in the Highlands, staying in Kingussie on the River Spey close to the Cairngorm Mountains, when she recorded in her diary: "Went long walk—15 or 16 miles—longest I have been, lovely scenery." Just a few years later, when Isobel was twenty and Hilda seventeen, they made an ambitious hike through the Highlands, packs on their backs, covering the hundred miles from Blairgowrie to Fort Augustus. Their route, through the heart of the Cairngorms, held some of the loneliest and most striking of Scotland's mountain scenery. There were hotels at convenient stopping distances along the route, but on the Larig Pass (Lairig Ghru) they were caught by bad weather and spent the night with a gamekeeper in his bothy. The experience provided material for a story in the Scribbler, as well as a Nature Notes column including a description of the plants found in the pass, with their Latin names.
Shortly after this 1909 expedition Hilda, who had shown considerable talent for music at Rothesay House, went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, living in the Latin Quarter. Music was an acceptable field of study for young ladies, and Mrs. Hutchison approved. Isobel, shy and reserved by nature, appears to have been content to remain at home.
Living at home as an unmarried daughter in a middle-class family has often been a breeding ground for social tension. Florence Nightingale, confined within a Victorian home and not permitted to pursue a nursing career, had felt condemned to a life without purpose. The greater importance attached to the education of a brother was a further cause of tension within Victorian families.
Having proved herself bright and capable at school, Isobel made the best of her situation by taking short occasional courses in Edinburgh, reading widely, and concentrating her efforts on trying to publish some of the poetry that flowed steadily from her pen.
Writing, both prose and poetry, was one of the accepted occupations in the Dictionary of Employment Open to Women, published in London in 1898, and at the turn of the century several hundred women in Britain were writing for a living. In the quiet backwater of Carlowrie, Isobel seemed unaffected by the Edwardian ferment that was sweeping away some of the stolid attitudes and rigid conventions of the Victorian period. The shift reflected the change in the monarchy and was more of style than substance. The suffragist movement was the only obvious manifestation of change, and Isobel gave no hint of interest in its activities.
She and Nita made separate visits to the Continent and wrote travel articles and other stories for the Scribbler. Hilda, now a serious student, contributed musical compositions or dissertations on French literature to the family magazine. Walter, on the other hand, studying in Edinburgh to qualify as a chartered accountant, was no longer part of the editorial staff. Writing was such an essential part of their lives that Isobel and Nita continued their teenage magazine even though they were now in their twenties.
In what turned out to be the final issue of the Scribbler, the 1911 coronation issue, the forthcoming travels of the three Hutchison sisters were described. Isobel and Hilda would be spending the winter and spring in Rome, living with an Italian family to learn the language. Nita, who sent an article about the island of St. Helena and a poem on sailing south, was already in Cape Town on a two-year tour of duty with her husband. In a high-spirited editorial decorated with cartoons, Isobel looked forward to producing an "Italian Special" the following summer. This issue was never produced. The deck had been shuffled, and fate was about to deal the family a hand containing two death cards. Never again would Isobel's writing be quite so lighthearted.
Continues...
Excerpted from Flowers in the Snow by Gwyneth Hoyle Copyright © 2005 by Gwyneth Hoyle. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.