Carmichaels in the Census - III: Mary Frances Carmichael, Episcopalianism, and the Creation of Carmina Gadelica

We saw in the last ‘Carmichaels in the Census’ blog how, after the death of her mother Elizabeth, Alexander’s future wife Mary Urquhart MacBean was ‘adopted’ into the household of the episcopalian minister the Rev. Arthur Ranken (1806–86) of Old Deer, husband of her mother’s sister Anne. Family tradition as retailed by Mary’s grandson James Carmichael Watson tells of another episcopalian clergyman who played a major part in her life:

From the Parsonage of Old Deer, and probably not long after leaving school, she went to be housekeeper and secretary to the revered Bishop Alexander Penrose Forbes [1817–75] at his house of Castlehill, Dundee, and at Burntisland in Fife. Of Dean Ranken and Bishop Forbes, the guardians of her early life, she often spoke with affection and regard, and it was clear that they had exercised a profound influence upon her. [CG iv, pp. xli–xlii]

Mary MacBean may well have spent some time in Alexander Forbes’ household while, as Bishop of Brechin, he was in charge of St Paul’s congregation, Dundee. It is tempting to think that his social conscience, his strong sense of vocation to tend to the poor of the city – ‘an example of slum ministry unique among Anglican bishops in the United Kingdom and rare even among Episcopalian and Anglican clergy’ [Oxford DNB] – might be detected in her later charity work as a ‘ministering angel’ among the poor cottars of Uist, not to mention the unsparing self-abnegation which so impressed and exasperated those close to her. Contemporary written records, however, suggest that it was not so much the bishop himself who influenced Mary MacBean, but rather his no less remarkable brother, the clergyman and scholar the Rev. George Hay Forbes (1821–75).

Although disabled by polio since early childhood, George Hay Forbes, having taken holy orders in 1847, ‘entered on zealous and unremitting clerical work’ [Skene, Memoir, p.44]. Mary Frances might first have met him in 1848, when he was working as a curate, and teaching at the school she apparently attended, in Crieff. The Rev. Forbes was subsequently appointed to supervise a mission in Burntisland, Fife, a task he carried out ‘with great energy and perseverance’, winning over initially hostile townspeople to the extent that he was eventually elected Provost – albeit for a truncated term – in 1869.

In the 1861 census schoolmistress ‘Mary MacBain’, born in Sutherlandshire, is recorded as living at the parsonage in Leven Street with George Hay Forbes and his wife Helen (Eleanor Mary Irby, daughter of Captain Wemyss of the Scots Guards). She may well have been living there for some time. Mrs Forbes was known in the town for her prudence in managing the household, making do with only one servant: in this case, doubtless, Mary MacBean. By the time the census was taken, it is clear that Mary, supposedly only 22, had already quietly subtracted two years from her life; by the time of her marriage in 1868, a further two years would have disappeared. As we shall see, she would follow this economical strategy with her children’s ages as well.

Mary evidently worked as one of the two female schoolteachers in Forbes’ Church school. According to the memoir compiled by Forbes’ cousin Felicia Skene, ‘after the children were dismissed, he always assembled the teachers in his own house for instruction’ [Skene, Memoir, p. 48].

George Hay Forbes is best-known today for the private printing press housed in his parsonage, the Pitsligo Press, named for his great-great-grandmother’s brother Alexander Forbes (1678–1762), the fourth Lord Pitsligo, forfeited for the part he played in the 1745 jacobite Rising. Under Forbes’ painstaking supervision, the Press turned out a eclectic selection of journals, polemical tracts, sermons, and above all high-quality liturgical works, distinguished by outstanding scholarship, free from misprints, and set in a bewildering variety of fonts. Although Forbes employed a man as a printer, he was assisted in his work by several women compositors, as well, it seems, as the older boys and girls of the Church school [Primrose, ‘Pitsligo Press’, p. 59].

Mary Frances Carmichael’s later interest in book design, which comes through so clearly in Carmina Gadelica, must surely have been inspired by her having shared a house for perhaps over a decade with a printing press – there is no question but that she must have been involved in Forbes’ work herself over the years. Again, the religious material itself which Forbes worked on must have influenced her, especially the editions he and his brother prepared of the magnificently illustrated Arbuthnott Missal (1864), the only complete service book known to survive from pre-Reformation Scotland, and the posthumously-printed Drummond Missal (1882), a volume originating in twelfth-century Ireland. It’s significant that Alexander Carmichael would draw rather spurious parallels between Arbuthnott’s patron saint, Ternan, and the Benbecula saint Torranan in a long essay compiled for Carmina Gadelica ii.

As a young woman, Mary MacBean worked in a household under a clergyman driven by an obsessive interest in liturgy, spurred by the acrimonious controversy over the Episcopalian Prayer Book then raging between the ‘Scottish’ and ‘English’ wings of the church. This interest was complemented by a fascination about native saints: we might discern the influence of Bishop Forbes here as well, with his research into national hagiography in his Kalendar of Scottish Saints (1872) – referred to directly by Alexander Carmichael in CW MS 120 fo.86 – and his edition of the Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern (1874). Could it be that these interrelated liturgical and hagiographical streams come together in Carmina Gadelica, conceived of as a ‘lost liturgy’ of prayers, blessings, and charms whose fragments Mary’s husband had gathered in the farthest-flung islands of the west?

Finally, we shouldn’t overlook George Hay Forbes’ early interest in Gaelic and the Gaels, stimulated by anxieties that the newly-formed Free Church, victorious, and vigorous in religious controversy, might entice Gaelic-speaking Episcopalians away from the faith of their fathers:

In 1846 he took the lead in establishing the Gaelic Tract Society for the purpose of educating and maintaining Highland churchpeople in fidelity to their Church. A strong committee was formed to carry out the scheme, and on it, no doubt owing to Forbes’ family connections, Lord Forbes, The Macintosh, Lochiel, Irvine of Drum and others served for some time.

In 1847 the Society printed a translation in Gaelic of the Scottish Communion Office, and the Secretary [George Hay Forbes] knew enough Gaelic to correct the proofs, for a copy of the pamphlet lies before me with the corrections quite clearly written in his own hand. He turned his knowledge of Gaelic to good account later in life when he had to deal with Gaelic hymns in some liturgies. [Perry, George Hay Forbes, pp. 29, 31]

In the very first year of his incumbency Mr. Forbes put himself to no small trouble and expense in order to provide a number of devotional works printed in Gaelic, for the use of those to whom that language was the most familiar, and in spite of his infirm state which made it trying for him to walk, he was continually visiting at their houses, instructing, consoling, and sympathising with them in every way that he could. [Skene, Memoir, p. 46]

Given this background, could we suggest that Carmina Gadelica as printed is as much Mary Carmichael’s book as it is her husband’s? Might Carmina have an east coast as well as a west coast origin, Episcopalian as well as Roman Catholic? It may well be that Mary’s interest in early-medieval insular art (not just ‘Celtic Art’), the ‘artistic hand’ which devised the extraordinary illustrated initials in Carmina Gadelica, was first awakened during the years she spent as a young girl in Rosemarkie, home to one of the best collections of Pictish sculptured symbol stones extant (another Pictish stone, incidentally, once stood in the ruins of the abbey at Old Deer).

Might there be one final, personal mark demonstrating the influence of George Hay Forbes’ household? These were the years during which Mary Urquhart MacBean transformed herself into Mary Frances MacBean. Did Mary change her name as a tribute to the gifted, and equally driven, writer and philanthropist, Oxford-based Felicia Mary Frances Skene (1821–99), sister of the historian William Forbes Skene who was subsequently to play such an important rôle in her husband’s life, and biographer-to-be of her close and admired cousins Bishop Alexander Penrose Forbes and the Rev. George Hay Forbes?

References:

Carnie, Robert Hay. ‘The Pitsligo Press of George Hay Forbes: Some Additions and Corrections’, Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions, iv (1955–71), pp. 233–43.

Perry, William. Alexander Penrose Forbes, Bishop of Brechin: The Scottish Pusey (London: SPCK, 1939).

Perry, William. George Hay Forbes: A Romance in Scholarship (London: SPCK, 1927).

Primrose, J. B. ‘The Pitsligo Press of George Hay Forbes’, Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions, iv (1955–71), pp. 53–89.

Skene, Felicia Mary Frances. A Memoir of Alexander, Bishop of Brechin, with a Brief Notice of his Brother the Rev. George Hay Forbes (London: J. Masters and Co., 1876).

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. ‘Forbes, Alexander Penrose’, ‘Forbes, George Hay’, ‘Skene, Felicia Mary Frances’.

Image:

Rev. George Hay Forbes

Carmichaels in the Census - II

Mary Frances MacBean, future wife of Alexander Carmichael, was born as Mary Urqhuart MacBean in Kirkiboll, in the parish of Tongue in northern Sutherland, on 31 October 1837. She was daughter of Kenneth MacBean (b. 1809) and Elizabeth or Elisa née Fraser (1812–47). Kenneth had been born on 26 January 1809 to John MacBean (1761–1843), then grieve at Davidston on the Black Isle, later farmer at Flowerburn Mains, Rosemarkie, and his wife Mary Urquhart (1773–1853), the paternal grandmother after whom our Mary was named. Kenneth MacBean married Elizabeth Fraser on 20 February 1835, when working as an exciseman in Fortrose. The couple had two other children: Mary’s older sister Anne Calder MacBean, probably called after her mother’s sister, was born on 7 December 1835 in the parish of Inverkeithing, Fife, while a younger brother John Fraser MacBean, probably named for both his grandfathers, was born in Kirkiboll on 12 February 1839.

Although contemporary records are scant, it is difficult not to draw conclusions about Mary’s childhood and youth. A restless and rootless upbringing, punctuated by a catastrophe, or even a series of catastrophes, do much to explain her drive, resourcefulness, and strength of character; it may also help to explain why Mary Urquhart MacBean the child would go on to recreate herself as Mary Frances MacBean the adult. Here is her grandson James Carmichael Watson (1910–42) writing about her in the fourth volume of Carmina Gadelica:

My grandmother’s forebears for many centuries had belonged to the Black Isle in Ross. Her father was Kenneth MacBean (or MacBain), civil engineer, of Kessock Ferry, and her mother Elizabeth Fraser, daughter of John Fraser of the Ness, Chanonry. John Fraser, her maternal grandfather, had been an employee of Broadwood the piano-maker in London, and, retiring to his native croft, his own ancestral property, became the Inspector of the Poor in Fortrose. Her father was alive at the time of her marriage, but her mother died while she was still a child, and she had neither sister nor brother. [CG iv, xli]

James’ grandmother clearly identified with her mother’s family rather than her father’s.

The 1841 census shows the three-year old Mary Urquhart living with her parents, elder sister, and younger brother in Bridge Street, Montrose, the latest excise posting of her father. Within a few years the family would fall apart.

On 15 March 1847, when the MacBeans were living in Perth Road, Dundee, Mary’s mother Elizabeth died from typhus, a disease rife in industrial British cities at the time and epidemic in Dundee during that particular year. The records suggest that Kenneth resigned his post in the excise and took the family back to the Black Isle. In the 1851 census he is listed as living at the family home of Flowerburn Mains, Rosemarkie, with his widowed mother, his brother David and sister-in-law Janet, their five children and a nephew. There is no sign of Kenneth’s own children.

Mary told the story to her grandson James Carmichael Watson as follows:

On her mother’s death she found a new home. Her people, like many others in the district, were of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and her mother’s sister, Anne Fraser, was the wife of the Rev. Arthur Ranken [(1806–86)], priest of Old Deer and later Dean of the united Dioceses of Aberdeen and Orkney. She became for the time an adopted child of Dean Ranken’s house, and went with his daughters to the College for Girls established at Crieff by Canon Alexander Lendrum, the Episcopal clergyman there – a school co-eval with Trinity College, Glen Almond, and similar to it in purpose, but not now in existence. [CG iv, xli]

It may well have been the case that Mary did go to school with the Rev. Ranken’s only daughter Anna Elizabeth (1834–64). This must have been during the late forties, for in the 1851 census Mary MacBean is recorded as the servant of William Campbell, innkeeper, living at Shore Place, Rosemarkie, near her father and grandmother. Although her siblings have not been traced in this census, it appears that her sister Anne died on 23 March 1853 at Fortrose. Her brother John probably did not survive childhood.

In 1861 Kenneth MacBean is recorded as an auctioneer, still living in the household of his brother David in Flowerburn Mains, Rosemarkie. Ten years later, the family seem to have vanished. We do not know what happened to Mary’s resourceful but restless father, although she did tell her grandson that he was still alive at the time of her marriage in 1868. A Kenneth MacBean of the right age is recorded as having died in the State of Victoria, Australia, in 1873. Mary’s second son, born on the 31 March 1872, was named Eoghan Kenneth Carmichael.

References:
Carmina Gadelica iv, p. xli.
David M. Bertie, Scottish Episcopal Clergy (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), pp. 410–11.

Image:
Rosemarkie in the Black Isle

Alexander Carmichael’s Dedication to his Wife

It should come as no surprise that Alexander Carmichael may be best described as an inverterate and constant tinkerer – he was fastidious and took great pains over his writing, especially with regard to his Introduction to Carmina Gadelica. Drafting and redrafting this particular, and it must be said rather tricky, part of Carmina was extremely important for a number of reasons: it allowed the author to give a general introduction to the reader with regard to the books’ contents; it also allowed Carmichael to try to explain the stucture of the present work and how the genesis of collecting and compiling finally reached the state in which it was ready to be published; the author’s editorial methodology would also be touched upon (something which Carmichael would at times lose sleep over) in order to forestall any potential criticisms; and finally where Carmichael could also acknowledge the assistance he received from many, many people, both friends and colleagues alike.

An example of a draft dedication penned to his wife is contained in one of his field notebooks and written down sometime after 1893:

This book is dedi[cated] to the [del: best of wives]
The best of ^[supra: wives] and the best of mothers
The severest of critics but the warmest of friends
Thee my beloved Mary.

In simple but apposite words Carmichael reflects the affection, warmth and respect that he showed his wife of more than two decades (at the probable time of writing). Certainly, Carmichael had a lot to be grateful about for it was his wife who had painstakingly undertaken the chore of drawing of the ‘Celtic letters in the work have been copied … from Celtic MSS … This has been a task of extreme difficulty, needing great skill and patient care owing to the defaced condition of the originals.’ One of the most distintive aesthetic touchstones of Carmina Gadelica is this very lettering and it would have been a rather different book (and look) if it had not been for her artistic input. But for whatever reason the above dedication remained in manuscript and instead Carmichael offered his thanks to his wife thus in Carmina’s Introduction:

Again and again I laid down my self-imposed task, feeling unable to render the intense power and supreme beauty of the original Gaelic into adequate English. But I resumed under the inspiring influence of my wife, to whose unfailing sympathy and cultured ear this work owes much.

There is no doubt that Carmichael was sincere when he penned these words but it is neither quite as touching nor as direct as the warmth shown in the draft dedication which never made its appearance in print. All this, it may be said, just adds to the adage that behind a good man is a good woman.

References:
CW129(g), fo. 253r
Carmina Gadelica, i, pp. ix–xxxvi.
Image: Mary Frances Carmichael (née MacBean)