Carnegie by Raymond Lamont-Brown

Author:Raymond Lamont-Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752495101
Publisher: The History Press

FOURTEEN

A HONEYMOON

Andrew Carnegie may be little but his hoard and heart are great, and he is a happy bridegroom and rejoiceth as a bridegroom to have his happiness sure . . .

Mrs James G. Blaine, 1887

As the Carnegies crossed the Atlantic the New York papers caught up with the news of the wedding and expressed interest in Carnegie’s wedding present to his wife. As well as a post-nuptial income provision of some $20,000, Carnegie gave Louise a house at 5 West 51st Street, New York.1 As soon as it was convenient, Carnegie sold Braemar Cottage at Cresson as part of the expunging of Margaret Carnegie’s mortal memories.

The newly-weds spent their honeymoon of a fortnight on the Isle of Wight, now a flourishing resort island following the purchase of Old Osborne House in 1845 by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Uncle George Lauder, eager to see his nephew’s bride, visited them on the Isle of Wight and Louise soaked up Scottish history from him, elaborating on the foundations laid in her childhood encounters with the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott and Jane Porter’s notable novel The Scottish Chiefs (1810).2 A few days were then spent in London where they received congratulations on their marriage from William and Catherine Gladstone. They stopped off at Mentmore, the residence of the Earl of Rosebery in Buckinghamshire, and then they were off to Dunfermline and Carnegie’s old haunts. En route they paused at Edinburgh, where Carnegie received the Freedom (Honorary Burgess) of the City and the foundation stone was laid for the new Carnegie Library at George IV Bridge, which would open in 1890. Carnegie had contributed a benefaction of $250,000.

For their first summer as man and wife Carnegie leased the Scottish estate of Kilgraston, a mile south-west of Bridge of Earn, Perthshire. By this time the area had developed as a summer resort and there were mineral wells (deemed the oldest in Scotland) nearby at Pitcaithly. Charles Grant (1831–91) had succeeded his father as the owner of Kilgraston in 1873. The red sandstone mansion was badly damaged by fire in 1871 and its rebuilding had sorely depleted the Grant finances; coupled with the agricultural depression of the 1880s, this caused the Grants to move to nearby Drummorie House in order to save money. They let out Kilgraston for profit and thus the Carnegies came to be residents there.3 From the moment she was greeted at the door of Kilgraston by a Scots piper, Louise, now deeming herself ‘more Scotch than her husband’, fell in love with the place. She wrote ecstatically to her mother:

I wish I could describe this lovely place. Just now roses are in full bloom around one of my windows with white jessamine around the next one filling the room with the most delicious perfume. The beautiful lawn in front where we play tennis and the Scotch game of bowls, lovely shady walks on one side and in the distance a new mown field with hay cocks. Oh! why aren’t

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.