CHAPTER V

Summary

[Mr. Samuel Greig was a distant relation of the Charters family. His father, an officer in the British navy, had been sent by our government, at the request of the Empress Catharine, to organize the Russian navy. Mr. Greig came to the Firth of Forth on board a Russian frigate, and was received by the Fairfaxes at Burntisland with Scotch hospitality, as a cousin. He eventually married my mother; not, however, until he had obtained the Russian consulship, and settled permanently in London, for Russia was then governed in the most arbitrary and tyrannical manner, and was neither a safe nor a desirable residence, and my grandfather only gave his consent to the marriage on this condition. My mother says:—

My cousin, Samuel Greig, commissioner of the Russian navy, and Russian consul for Britain, came to pay us a visit, and ultimately became my husband. Fortune I had none, and my mother could only afford to give me a very moderate trousseau, consisting chiefly of fine personal and household linen. When I was going away she gave me twenty pounds to buy a shawl or something warm for the following winter. I knew that the President of the Academy of Painting, Sir Arthur Shee, had painted a portrait of my father immediately after the battle of Camperdown, and I went to see it. The likeness pleased me,—the price was twenty pounds; so instead of a warm shawl I bought my father's picture, which I have since given to my nephew, Sir William George Fairfax.