In the
glory days of the British Empire men were constantly being despatched to
distant lands by the Crown or East India Company or made their own way as
adventurers, traders or missionaries. Most were young, unmarried and willing to
accept the attendant risks of death from shipwreck, disease, or hostile bullets
and spears. Those who were married sometimes had the option of taking with them
wives and children, if any, who would be open to the same risks. Children born
abroad would be vulnerable to whatever local diseases were prevalent.
In 1814
John McNeill, aged nineteen, graduated as M.D. from Edinburgh and married Innes
Robinson, aged sixteen. In 1816 John obtained an appointment as Assistant
Surgeon with the East India Company and in May the couple sailed for India,
leaving behind a baby daughter. After a journey of four and a half months they
arrived in Bombay where Innes died on the 5th of November, aged
eighteen. The sources available to me do not give a cause of death; it may have
been unknown or simply uninteresting – people died every day.
For the
next four years John McNeill was as much soldier as doctor, an enthusiastic
participant during active service on several Indian fronts. He was then
despatched to Persia as Assistant Surgeon to a British Mission, one of several
to Persia at this period and which were rather awkwardly conducted as joint
affairs between the Foreign Office in London and the East India Company in
Bombay. Rather awkwardly too, he was expected (like his predecessors in former
Missions) to offer medical services to the Persian court which might - and did -
create personal intimacies which became diplomatic advantages. A previous Scottish
doctor, James Drummond Campbell, became very close to the heir to the throne,
Abbas Mirza, with whom he went tiger shooting.
(See on this site a youthful letter written by Drummond Campbell).
John took
leave in 1822, visited his parents and young daughter in Scotland, and
re-married in Edinburgh on New Year’s Day 1823. His new wife Elizabeth Wilson was
three years older than him. The couple set out for Persia in June 1823,
Elizabeth much troubled by sea-sickness. They arrived in Tabriz in October and
in November, as Elizabeth recorded “Miss Margaret made her appearance”.
A second child, Hester, was born in
March 1826 also in Tabriz. Margaret, it seems was sickly from birth and
suffered painful illness, dying in October 1826. Hester was taken back to
Scotland in 1828 for the sake of her health, though the protracted journey back
via Russia, as described by Elizabeth, could hardly have been more unsanitary.
A third child John was born in June 1830 during a cholera epidemic but died
within the year and possibly within a few weeks of his birth. A fourth child,
Elizabeth Jane (but called Eliza), was born in March 1832 at Hamadan on the
return trip from an aborted journey to Bushehr (Bushire), died in February 1834
and was buried in the Armenian church at Teheran which served as final resting
place for any foreign Christian who died locally. Hester who was still in
Scotland died around the same time of scarlet fever.
Despite this tale of woe, it was also
the case that in 1827 when John was despatched on a temporary mission outside
Tehran “his wife was entrusted with his diplomatic correspondence and proved
herself a good deputy. Colonel Macdonald writes, ‘I am more than delighted with
the promptitude and ability manifested by Mrs McNeill …we have no need of an
Agent at the Capital so long as she is there” (p. 121; see below for details of
the Memoir in which this is recorded).
A fifth child Margaret Ferooza, usually
called by her middle name, was born in 1834. But this time, as John McNeill is
quoted in the Memoir, “Elizabeth set out with our poor babe for England. It is
right that an attempt should be made to save it at whatever sacrifice to
ourselves, but it is neither stouter in frame nor more healthy in appearance
than its sisters and brother. How, then, can we expect to see it survive when
they have all been taken away? It is right, too that Elizabeth and our poor
Margaret should be out of the country for the present. The state of the Shah’s
health has become too precarious, and the possibility of serious commotion on
his death …. that it would not be prudent to have ladies and children here
exposed to the possible evils of such times” (pp 173-4).
Two years earlier Elizabeth had
expressed her frustrations: “My spirit [is] occasionally weary and worn out
with various discomforts, to which, for us, there seems no end…. I feel such an
additional loathing to everything connected with the country that, were John
sure of being made Elichee [Envoy] at the end of five years, I feel that
I could scarcely rejoice in it, or, in fact at any aggrandizement that is to
keep us longer from our home, our child [Hester, who died shortly after], our
brethren, and the rational uses of existence” (p 155).
Neither Elizabeth or Ferooza subsequently
returned to Persia but John did, eventually becoming Her Britannic Majesty’s
Minister Plenipotentiary, and in 1839 Sir John.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth took medical
advice and for the winter of 1841 moved herself and Ferooza to the spa and
health resort of Pau in the Bas Pyrenées, a destination not at all remote since
letters from Persia would arrive via Bordeaux and thus probably a little faster
than letters to England. It is from Pau that the letter transcribed below is
written.
And Ferooza? She married a Scotsman,
had several children, and died in 1871 at the age of 37 soon after the birth of
her sixth child. It was one of her children, Florence, who became the “By Their
Grand-Daughter” who wrote the very full and interesting Memoir of the Right
Hon. Sir John McNeill, G.C.B. and of His Second Wife Elizabeth Wilson,
published in 1910 and made use of above.
Ferooza. Source: Findagrave
Transcription
Addressed
to: R
S Wilson Esqr Royal Bank Edinburgh
En Ecosse / Angleterre
[Robert
Sym Wilson, writer of the signet, 1792-1868, cashier of the Royal Bank of
Scotland; close friend of John McNeill; brother of Elizabeth McNeill]
PAU
despatch postmark 28 DEC 1841; on reverse, London transit postmark JAN 4 1842
Datelined: Maison Santarvilles [?], Rue Royale Pau
Basses Pyrenées
Dear R,
Sunday
brought me two letters from John dates 30th Oct. & 14th
Novr. The first announced poor Charles
Scott’s death [Sir Walter Scott’s son and a member of Sir John’s Mission]
and also the ratification of the Treaty of commerce, both of which took place
on the 28th October – the former sad event very much abating the joy
the latter has caused. Poor Charles [who died from dysentery] rests
besides our sweet Eliza in the Armenian burying ground at Tehran. Ben [Benjamin
Wilson, her nephew] was quite well and getting on with Persian. Major
Farrant was off with the Treaty (on the 4 Novr) to get it ratified by the Queen
[Victoria] and to be back in Tehran in March (I envy him not his trips) to
allow John to arrange his plans for returning, which he still expects to be
able to do at the time originally intended – He does not say whether he has
seen the Shah yet but the Hadji (who is prime minister and formerly his enemy)
is particularly gracious and all the persons about the Court have behaved well.
The second letter is written in good spirits and I cannot resist giving a
quotation tho’ it is more graphic than daisent [decent],
“Your old
acquaintances the Koords have been plundering on the road, where they had just
spoiled a caravan where Lady Campbell and you passed. Mr Abbott whom you know
and Mr Fox whom of course you also know and whom Lord Palmerston attached to
this Mission were plundered there the other day – their clothes were run thro’
with spears in several directions and having been stripped and deprived of
their boots and stockings, they were driven several miles into the hills and
expected to be murdered; but having made the Koords understand that they were
coming to join the Mission the rascals thought it prudent to let them go and
returned to them their clothes & such articles as might lead to detection.
It would have been amusing enough, if one had been sure it was to end so well,
to have seen two such men as Tod and Abbot, both so precise, and formal and
dandies in their way, scudding barefooted over the hills, their pace every now
and then quickened by an admonishing touch of a Koord’s spear point in the most
fleshy part of their persons which had been deprived of al protection from
coat, shirt or trowsers. I am not fully informed whether they retained any
covering at all, or whether they were reduced to the costume of Adam before the
fall. However, we may joke about it now, & assure you I am very glad to
know that they are safe in Tabreez having nothing in the way of bodily harm to
complain of except thorns in their feet. This occurrence however makes me very
uneasy about our messenger who had to travel the same road. He has now been due
some days & I begin to fear he has been robbed”.
We
continue, thank God, to flourish greatly in health and I begin to forget there
is such a thing as a doctor in the world. I have never been so free of them
since the Dau [Ferooza] was born. She begins to fatten and is very firm
indeed upon her pins.
I have
written to dear Bobo [ ? ] & shall take my epistles to the post with this.
We got a good laugh lately at a very natural mistake of Mrs Gibbs [a household
servant who had been with the family in Persia]. We generally walk
in the gardens of the Chateau de Henri quatre. On returning one day she asked
why the castle was called the hungry cat. She is well and has made a large
handsome bun to welcome in the new year. May it find all I love in good health
and heart!
…..
With true
love to all the brethren & kind friends ever your affecte. E McNeill.
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