The serial: Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 22

This game, a favourite of Daisy’s, was shoved on to the laps of fidgety children, before and after lunch and they were expected to play quietly

The year 1916 saw the longest, most devastating armed conflict known to man. The battle of Verdun began towards the end of February and lasted until mid-December. Some claim it was France’s Stalingrad, when a quarter of a million were killed and half a million wounded. The hospital at Arc-en-Barrois was filled to the gunnels. At the height of the Verdun battle, John wrote to Nell Martin-Holland in London to ask if she would recruit a clergyman for the hospital. Although the local curé paid regular visits to the wards and patients and staff attended Mass in the village, many English personnel who were Anglican were forbidden to celebrate communion in a Roman Catholic church. Unfortunately, the Martin-Hollands could find no one for Hopital Temporaire.

It wasn’t easy for Daisy at Largie either but she had assistance from Margaret Dempsey and Maude Harding. My grandmother spent most of her pregnancy without her husband but she had him back in time for the birth of Simon. The next year the indefatigable pair discussed the possibility of working at the hospital together.

Conference

Fortunately they never put their plan into operation, as the Macdonald children had suffered, not only from their father’s absence but also from Daisy’s visits to London to help raise hospital funds.

After the armistice in 1918, the family was to enjoy a few years of calm. Sadly, this unity was not to last. The last publicised event at Largie before John’s death was the conference of Scottish bishops in April 1921. Barely six months later, in early September, he was taken ill with a duodenal ulcer that had troubled him for some time.

Lang was at Ballure when John became ill. The archbishop summoned Daisy, who was away from Largie and called a Glasgow specialist. The doctor failed to arrive in time to help (the journey involved a train ride to Gourock, a ferry to Tarbert and a drive of 20 miles to Ballure).

On September 7, after a blood transfusion, John collapsed and three days later he died. His body was laid in a coffin made of timber from the Largie woods and piped to the family burial-ground.

Notwithstanding the early death of their father, the Largie children learned early to entertain themselves and were good at games like Solitaire, which consists of a circular board with rows of marbles. It works on the principle of drafts, where the player hops one marble over another and at each move the vaulted piece is eliminated. The aim is to finish with one marble on the board.

This game, a favourite of Daisy’s, was shoved on to the laps of fidgety children, before and after lunch and they were expected to play quietly.

The Macdonalds enjoyed solitude, so they favoured card and board games for one player. However, the Largie visitors’ book proves the family was sociable but frowned upon gambling; few of them played bridge.

Nevertheless, they indulged in unsophisticated card games that demanded speed more than intellectual ability, like Racing Demon; hard on the family’s pocket, the game required one pack per player. Given the boisterous way it was played, many cards were destroyed.

The Macdonalds read keenly. I have the remnants of Daisy’s book collection – George Meredith, Thackeray, RW Emerson, Charles Lamb and collections of poetry and essays given to her by Gertrude Leverton-Harris, whose husband, Frederick, was a British politician and art-collector.

Unfortunate

Unlike her husband, my grandmother lacked a room of her own. John worked in his large library on a three volume history of France. I’ve little idea when he began this magnum opus of 1,316 pages, which opens at the time of the Romans and ends with the FrancoPrussian war (1870-71).

The Largie visitors’ book shows my grandparents stayed in Oxford at 7 Cross Road for the winter of 1910, which suggests John was working on the book at that time and seeking help from his old Magdalen tutor, Charles Fletcher. By 1914 the work was complete.

“This book,” wrote John from northern France in May 1915, “was in the press before anyone dreamt that we should be standing beside our traditional enemy on the very battlefields, where we have so often confronted her.”

The timing was unfortunate; John worried that in the light of France’s recent trials, he had overstated “the temperamental weaknesses of the French,” but he could not alter the work as it “would be so biased as to lose its value”.

A largely unfavourable American review (the book was published on both sides of the Atlantic) appeared in April 1916.

Charles Downer Hazen, shortly to bring out his own work on the French Revolution and Napoleon, admired John’s first two volumes but found his treatment of the Revolution owed too much to the conservatism of Edmund Burke.

Conversely, Dr Walford D. Green, a biographer of Voltaire, claimed in the English History Review of July 1916 that John was at his best when covering the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. He excelled with his interpretation of contemporary authorities and modern times.

My grandfather’s enthusiasm was not limited to “the country over the water.” He was also interested in local history and in 1921 (the year of his death) was elected the first president of the Kintyre antiquarian society.

I’m sure John never allowed his children to touch his books. Like the gun room, his library was out of bounds. Had Angus ventured into the airless space, soundproofed by rows of books, he might have noticed how his father numbered them.

Important

On the inside front cover he wrote a letter in capitals followed by a lower case roman numeral, then one in Arabic. For example: A iv 12. Important volumes carried a book-plate with the Macdonald motto, “semper paratus pugnare”, which means “always ready to fight,” and a coat of arms of a man in armour, his face concealed by a helmet and visor.

His shield, divided in four parts, had a lion rampant on the top left hand and a crusader’s gloved hand holding a crucifix on the right. A boat occupied the bottom left side while a fish took up the right.

The lion signifies the Macdonalds’ affiliation with Scotland and the crucifix the defence of the faith; the fish demonstrates that they were followers of Christ and the sailing boat: nautical skills. A boat for the West Highland chieftain of yesterday was as much a status symbol as a smart car is for today’s company executive. More tomorrow