Margaret Grierson

Margaret Grierson was born in c.1783 to Gilbert Grierson, Esq., Corn Merchant (d. 19 January 1819; inventory sworn 1821) of Leith, Scotland. After her father's death (her mother died in 1816), Margaret was clearly left enough to be of 'independent means', and long lived at Vanburgh Place, Leith, with 3 other women with different surnames (at least two of whom seem to have been servants). Her sister married into one of the other great mercantile families of Leith, the Cassels banking family. Walter Cassels was on the Legislative Council of Bombay, and 'known throughout India'. On 24 October 1815, Jessie married a junior member of the family, Alexander Cassels, Esq., at Gilbert's house, Summerfield. Alexander was in the East India Company's 'sea service, and died of a stroke of the sun' only 3 years later (in 1818) (Cassels 1870: 85): Jessie then lived the rest of her life with Margaret. In her novels, Margaret Grierson recorded childhood memories of Leith in the 18th century, which she describes as growing from a small, romantic fishing village to a port town replete with docks and shipyards. As Leith Docks became the port for Edinburgh, and shipbuilding and repair facilities grew. On 20 May 1806, the Leith's first Wet Dock, also the first of its kind in Scotland, was opened.

Grierson was educated, and given to the evangelical practice of home visitation among the poorer classes which emerged from industrialization and enclosure. Her father was related to the Grierson baronets of Lag - which would be somewhat ironic, given the fact that the first Baronet, Sir Robert Grierson (1655-1733), comes down in history as a 'cruel' persecutor of Convenanters. The world Margaret describes, by way of contrast, is that of the evangelical 'awakening' of the eighteenth century, the world of the Sabbath school, the benevolent society, and the religious tract society. She appears as a donor in the lists of multiple such voluntary societies, including the Church Extension Fund of the Church of Scotland (though its Leith auxiliary). In most references to her, she is referred to as 'Miss Grierson', indicating that she either wrote prior to being married, or that she never married.

Grierson's book Pierre and his Family, one of many she wrote for younger readers, was reprinted many times, and then adapted by The American Sunday School Union for American audiences. While Grierson's text was 'a work well-fitted to illustrate and enforce the loveliest traits of Christian character', it was clearly too gory a participant in Protestant martyrology for the sensibilities of more plural America. 'The state of public feeling in Great Britain allowing more license of expression on these subjects than would be proper in this country', the Publication Committee for the ASSU explained, 'the language has, in some instances, been modified; but the general character of the work is highly approved; and, regarded, not as a horrid picture of the malignant spirit of persecution, but as a display of Christian virtues'. There too their printings 'were disposed of with great rapidity'. In Cradock, South Africa, reading circles (such as that in the house of Samuel and Lucy Gray) gathered with residents and servants, to read uplifting books. "Lucy described Miss Grierson's Pierre and His Family; or, A Story of the Waldenses as nearly a Victorian bestseller in the style of Charlotte Mary Yonge's novels." (Dick 2020: 9)

Grierson's Waldensians were examples of the evangelical 'light in the darkness' narrative, models of faith and persistence written for juvenile readers. 'The Bible tells us why men like darkness: it also tells us why they hate the light.' (Grierson 1823: 63) The 'Introduction' to Pierre and his Family opens with an extensive quotation from dissenting author William Jones describing first darkness ('the dark ages', 'the invasion of Europe by the barbarous nations', 'feudal anarchy'; 'a flood of superstition [which] deluged the church' etc) and then the light (wherein Christianity 'meekly retired into the sequestered valleys of Piedmont' among a humble, believing remnant). (Jones 1816: 7) It is from Jones that Grierson draws her clues for the following family story, constructed to illustrate in a highly personalized mode the sufferings and victories of a biblical faith. The valleys (Grierson notes, following Moreland) were a defensible and geographically spectacular 'cabinet wherein to put some inestimable jewel,—or in which to reserve many thousand souls who should not bow the knee to Baal.' (Grierson 1823: 9) Having grown up the household of a merchant, Grierson's Waldensians sound inevitably rather like Scotsmen, for whom the military, the mercantile marine and the manse were omnipresent: 'Blanche, the beautiful wife of Pierre, never accompanied him to the wars, but remained at home to bring up her family, and to take care of the aged pastor, her father-in-law.' Writing as a first person narrator, as if she were addressing children gathered to hear a reading in a Sunday School, her 'lessons' are never far from the surface, and often quite explicitly didactic:

I am now about to inform you, on what account these amiable and inoffensive people were thus cruelly expelled from their quiet homes, bereaved of all their comforts, and exposed alike to the pitiless storms of persecution and to the inclemency of the elements. The reason was their religion. The inhabitants of the valleys professed the religion of the Bible, in opposition to the superstition of the pope and monks; or, as it is called, the Roman Catholic religion. (Grierson 1823: 62-63)

Here was an indoctrination into the core ideals of the Protestant evangelical international. It was a formula -- one which took moral histories, and then turned them into popularizing summaries or stories -- which she was to follow in quite a number of books. These would be widely excerpted and republished in the international evangelical press.

Grierson died on 12 February 1849 at her residence at 3 Vanburgh Place in Leith, a series of terraces built by William Lamb in 1826, (Historic Environment Scotland) where she seems to have lived since at least 1837. The fact that her death is not noted in the 1849 Kirk Session minutes for the parish shows that she joined the Free Church with the Disruption. Her Will allocated bequests to her sister, Jessie Grierson Cassels (who died only two years later, in 1851); her servant 'for more than 36 years' Helen Mowbray, the Rev. James Lewis (of the congregation of St. John’s quoad sacra parish, which adhered to the Free Church in 1843) (Ewing); the school built by David Thorburn, D.D., of Free Church South Leith, on Duncan Street; to Rev. Dr. Henry Grey of Free Church St Mary's on Barony Street, which appears to have (at one time at least) been Grierson's church; and to the Leith Dispensary and Humane Society which, at the time, was actively raising funds for the building of Leith's first Hospital (opened in 1850, a year after Grierson died). Her will included shares in various shipping companies, but most particularly in Edinburgh City bonds.

Mark Hutchinson

• Note: my particular thanks to Dr Malcolm Prentis, who brought to bear his unrivalled knowledge of Scots history and sources to bear on elements of this entry.

Works:

• Lily Douglas; A Simple Story Humbly Intended, as a Premium and Pattern, for Sabbath Schools, etc. [By Miss Grierson.] Boston: 1821

• Labourers in the East: or Memoirs of eminent men (Claudius Buchanan, Henry Martyn, David Brown), who were devoted to the service of Christ in India ... By the author of Lily Douglas [i.e. Miss - Grierson]. Edinburgh: William Oliphant, 1822; American edition, Philadelphia : American Sunday School Union, 1827.

• Pierre and his Family; or, a Story of the Waldenses. By the author of “Lily Douglas” [Miss Grierson], Edinburgh, 1823; Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1827; Edinburgh: W. Oliphant & Sons, 1846.

• The Catechist; a fragment. Parts first and second. By the author of “Lily Douglas,” etc. [i.e. Miss - Grierson.], Edinburgh: William Oliphant, 1823, 1827.

• The Visit, or mamma and the children. By the Author of “Lily Douglas,” etc., Edinburgh: [Miss Grierson], 1824.

• The Student's Walk; or, A sabbath in the country. [By Miss Grierson.], Edinburgh: W. Oliphant, 1825; Edinburgh, [1856].

• Pierre and his Family ... 2nd edition, etc., Edinburgh: 1825.

• Jerusalem Destroyed: or, the History of the seige of that city by Titus... Edinburgh: Wm. Oliphaunt, 1826.

• Memoirs of the Rev. Claudius Buchanan. By the author of Pierre and his Family [i.e. Miss Grierson]. Revised by the Committee of Publication.] Claudius Buchanan, 1766-1815. Philadelphia, 1827.

• Babylon Destroyed: or, the History of the Empire of Assyria. Edinburgh: Wm. Oliphant, 1827.

• A Pious Mother's Love Illustrated: Interspersed with Pleasing Sketches of English Scenery, 1829.

• American biography: or, Memoirs of Mrs. A. Judson and Mrs. M. L. Ramsay. Abridged for the use of Village Libraries. By the author of Lily Douglas [Miss Grierson]. Edinburgh [Leith printed], 1831.

• Memoirs of the Rev. Henry Martyn, 1831

• Select biography: or the memoirs of Mrs Graham Harriet Newell and Caroline Smelt [nd]

• Stories by the Author of “Pierre and his Family”, Edinburgh, [1856]

• Fitzallan the Catechist: a Fragment. Containing the Original Story of the Sea-Boy's Grave / by the author of “Pierre and his Family, Lily Douglas,” etc. [Miss Grierson]. Edinburgh, [1856]

• The Sea-Boy's Grave. [Extracted from “Fitzallan the Catechist.”] By the Author of “Pierre and his Family,” etc. [Miss Grierson. With coloured illustrations.] Edinburgh: W. Oliphant & Co, [1866]

Sources:

• Cassels, Robert (1870). Records of the Family Cassels and Connexions, Edinburgh: Andrew Elliott.

• Dick, Archie. (2020). Reading Spaces in South Africa, 1850–1920s, New York: Cambridge University Press.

• Ewing, William (1914). Annals of the Free Church of Scotland, 1843-1900, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, online at Ecclegen, Ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, 1843-1849, https://www.ecclegen.com/, accessed 18 May 2021.

• Edinburgh Sherriff's Court, Wills and Testaments, SC70/4/6, National Records of Scotland, https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/.

• Grierson, Margaret. (1823). Pierre and his Family; or, a Story of the Waldenses. By the author of Lily Douglas, Edinburgh, 1823; Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1827; Edinburgh: W. Oliphant & Sons, 1846.

• Jones, William (1816), A History of the Waldenses, connected with a Sketch of the Christian Church from the Birth of Christ to the Eighteenth Century (London: Gale and Fenner).

• Lyon, David, 'The Ladies of Lagg - Lagg & Rockhall with Griersons in the Scots' Magazine', 15 November 2007, accessed 16 May 2021.