Despite her high social status, the Duchess of Bedford was just as at home in a basic Highlands dwelling as a country house, Keir Davidson writes
Over the years many people have taken an interest in the Duchess of Bedford’s huts in Glen Feshie, including Queen Victoria who visited them twice. Many have also asked why the duchess spent so much of her time in Scotland between the 1830s and her death in 1853 in the collection of huts and bothies that formed part of the old township of Ruigh Aiteachain in the glen.
Was it so that she and her family could dress in their plaids and ‘play’ at being Highland farmers? Was it simply somewhere for her to host parties of visitors? Or was it, perhaps, a conveniently quiet and isolated place for her to spend time with the artist Edwin Landseer?
Answering this question, about which much has been written, is one of the central themes of my new book from which the following extracts are taken: Improbable Pioneers of the Romantic Age: the lives of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, and Georgina Gordon, Duchess of Bedford. And the answer would seem to be both more complex and interesting than the possible reasons mentioned, and illustrates the sensibilities of the Romantic Age.
Brought up in Gordon Castle, where she was born in 1781, Lady Georgina Gordon spent most of her summers with her mother, Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, and her sisters in the remote family lodge in Glenfiddich, and then, during her teenage years, with her mother at the old farmhouse at Kinrara beside the Spey in Badenoch.
These experiences became very much a part of who she was, and once married to the Duke of Bedford in 1803, she lost no time in introducing her husband to this way of life. He too was so taken with the landscapes and life he found in the Highlands, that he spent a significant part of his year in Scotland, every year until his death there in 1839.
One of the keys to the self-sufficiency of tenant farmers in the Scottish Highlands of the 18th century, was the guaranteed access to summer grazing for their cattle on the high moors, and the custom of transhumance – the annual occupation of these shieling grounds by women and children during the months of July and August.
The loss of such places during the early 19th century, as the moors were rapidly turned over to sports such as shooting and deer stalking, meant not just the breakdown of this traditional farming system, but also the loss of a key part
