Tom Hepburn School Days (Biggar)

When I was about two years old (1877) my father moved to Glasgow and we lived on Allison Street in Crosshill District for two years. But about 1879 we moved back to Biggar to the new house that was now finished on the North Back Road. Previously we had lived in the flat above Grandpa Hepburn’s baker’s shop on the main street where I was born. I have a vague recollection of Allison Street and it is very faint. But I can remember when we moved back to Biggar. The school was out of the town beyond a field or two to the north. It was kept by two maiden ladies, the Misses Ramsay. It was a private school for girls mostly but boys were kept till they were eight years old. My sister, Agnes, or Addie as we called her all her life, was three classes ahead of me. I was with the younger Miss Ramsay, a tall, fine-looking woman who had a thorough command of her class in a small room adjoining the main school. I was often in trouble with Miss Ramsay and was reprimanded by voice and strap many times because my chief companion at that school was a wild fellow named Will Shaw who lived near the school. I rather think Will was one from the wrong side of the blanket as he lived with his mother and had no father near hand and was adept at any mischief afloat. If he and I weren’t fighting I was following him into some trouble or other on the playground or under a fence into adjoining fields and gardens. Miss Mary Ramsay, the teacher of the higher classes was a stout and motherly woman and a fine teacher too. These Ramsays had an exceptional family history. They were a clever family. One of their brothers had a fine practice as a lawyer in Edinburgh – the others in fine positions likewise. When the family was young and the most of them in their teens they discovered that there was a strain of insanity in their parents and ancestors. They had a meeting of the whole family and vowed that none of them would ever marry so as to prevent transmission of this evil strain to others. They kept their vow. None of them married and they were a handsome race. How few families would have the unselfish grit to do the same. Margaret Ramsay died from some lung trouble in middle age. Mary and a brother died in an asylum in later years. The only two of the seven who contracted the hereditary trouble.

It was in Miss Ramsay’s class that I started drawing. I seemed to be fairly good at it and others in the class came to me when they wanted a drawing on their slates. That got me into trouble sometimes. There was a Nellie Kelly that sat near me one session. She had a sharp tongue and often a cold look in her eye. One time she wanted something drawn on her slate. I drew a girl with a long nose like an elephant writing her name underneath. When she discovered what was on the slate she grabbed it out of my hands and took it across the room to Miss Ramsay. The teacher put her hand over her mouth first and then eyed me severely. “Tom Hepburn, you will stay in after school and do arithmetic.” That was that but I got back at Nellie later. Another boy and I concocted a verse of poetry and taught the other boys to sing it. It went like this:

        Nellie Kelly burnt her belly supping hot kale,

        Nellie Kelly rubbed her belly and made it aw’ hale.

This Nellie was the niece of a Dr. Kelly in Biggar. He was the doctor who helped to bring me into the world but I didn’t know that when Nellie and I had our scraps.

There were few holidays at school in these days. I remember one holiday due to winter weather. There were about two feet of snow one morning. My father carried me to school on his back while Addie struggled along in his footsteps. When we got to school another girl in my class, Jeanie Henshilwood, arrived also on her father’s back. He had tramped twice as far as we had. Miss Mary Ramsay met us at the school door and said, “No school today. You are the only one’s here.” So we were carried back without any regret, on my part anyway.

When I told the story of the carrying to school of Jeanie and I to the rest of the class she was promptly designated as my lass ever after. I could see no reason for it until fifteen years later. I met her once on holiday when I was out on a walk in the country near her father’s cottage. Her father was a hedger and dike builder. Jeanie had developed into a handsome young woman. We had a pleasant talk of old times and she gave me a kiss at parting. That was all that happened. I was a shy, young fellow sometimes. I heard that she married shortly after and moved away from Biggar.

There was another girl in Miss Ramsay’s school that I had a clash with, Bella Boa, a stout lassie a year older than I. We were in some game on the playground and were both racing helter skelter along the walls of the school from opposite directions when we met with a bang at a corner. My hard head came in contact with her soft mouth and the collision loosened some teeth. We both sat down in the mud. Bella was no coward. She scrambled to her feet holding her mouth with one hand. She grabbed a handful of my hair with the other and I felt I was getting the worst of it. Some of the bigger students separated us and led Bella in for repairs. My forehead bled a bit but I got no sympathy. Many years later I met Bella at her home above the hardware shop in Biggar that was kept by her family. She was then a big stout woman and was engaged to a Glasgow man. She reminded me that I was the cause of her losing some teeth. Luckily these had been replaced by new teeth she told me. I showed her a small hollow in the skin of my forehead that I claimed she had bitten out. She looked at the spot carefully declaring that it needed a microscope to see it. Anyways, she said: “I will cure it for you.” She then landed two big smacking kisses on the spot. She then cried: “Look at Tom blushing!” Her younger sister, Nan, looked on with a severe face saying that it was not funny at all. It was Nan whom I had called to chat with. That was a large family, the Boa’s: five girls and four boys. My Aunt Lockhart was intimate with their mother. So, I met them in all my holidays at Biggar.

Bob Boa, one of the sons, was a friend of mine in Glasgow for several years during my apprenticeship. Two other Biggar lads, Bob and I met once a week to play whist and talk of old times. Bob was a joiner to trade (carpenter) but went as a soldier to the Boer War. He was one of the pipers who played Lord Roberts into Pretoria. I lost trace of him after that. I think he stayed in South Africa. Like many old soldiers he may have fallen a victim to the drinking habit. I heard this rumour but hoped that it was not true.

At eight years of age (1883) I was transferred to a public school near Biggar Old Church known as Morrison’s School, that being the name of the head master. My teacher for these two years was a Miss Mary Brown in a class of about eight boys and ten girls. She kept a good discipline but it was the fear of old Morrison’s hard leather strap that kept us subdued. The classes were all held in one large room with a few blackboards and only screens between them. In the middle of the room was a great round bellied stove. Every week or so when old Morrison saw some of the boys getting inattentive, he would shout: “Now boys, watch this. I am toasting the five fingers of the strap. It is getting good and crisp.” We looked and held our breath.

The only memento I have of Mary Brown is a small English dictionary in which she wrote my name, “Thomas Hepburn” in her angular writing. Someone told me later that she had moved with her family to the States. It is remarkable how many of our old acquaintances left Scotland for Australia, Canada and the States.

In the playground of Morrison’s School, a row of cottages lined one edge. One of them was occupied by a Miss McLean of whom I have a faint recollection. My wife, whom I met and married in British Columbia, had the name: Margaret McLean Smith. The middle name was called after her grandmother who was a sister of Miss McLean of Biggar. This was the old lady whom we used to tease as boys when playing games at the school play yard. She came out to scold us if our balls landed among her roses.

It was about the time I changed to Morrison’s school that my father took me over to a blacksmith’s shop on the other side of Biggar Street. He told the smith to make a hoop for me. The whole process was interesting. The picking out of a small bar of round iron, bending it into a nice circle then welding and hammering the joint to the same size as the rest of the hoop. Then came the making of a club to drive the hoop. The blacksmith, whose name I have forgotten, said something about working for a younger generation of Hepburn’s now. On reaching home, after carefully guiding the hoop through all its paces, I asked my father what the blacksmith meant by a younger generation. “Oh”, said my father, “That’s the smith who made a velocipede for your Uncle

John, before bicycles were thought about. You know, John was not doing much for some years. He had started in father’s bakehouse to learn the baking business but found the dust of the flour gave him hay fever, so, he gave it up.” He got interested in velocipedes and got the smith to make him one using two light wooden wheels. Then when it was finished and he could manage to ride it he started for Edinburgh by way of Linton and Penicuik. He was going to make a future selling encyclopedia. Half way to the city he played out. He and the ‘pede came home by train. I don’t know what happened to the velocipede after that because after that Uncle John had had enough. He never even took any interest in bicycles when the high bike, called the Penny Farthing came out.

My father could handle a horse quite well. When I was eight or nine years old we often borrowed one of Grandpa’s horses, usually the one called ‘Davy’, hitched it to the old dog cart that grandpa had and took a run around some of the country roads. My father often had farms to call at on business. The farmer’s wives were very hospitable. We had often to go in and get drinks of milk and chat. Once we had a long run up Tweedside to Tweedsmuir passing through Broughton where the Biggar Burn enters the Tweed. We had with us a Mr. and Mrs. Swan from Windermere, a newly married couple, whom my parents had known many years. Old ‘Davy’ had a long run that time. We had lunch at the Crook Inn at Tweedsmuir when we got there. My father had hired or borrowed a wagonette for that trip. Mrs. Swan being a young woman from London was greatly pleased at the scenery of the Tweedside with the hills purple with heather. I remember the bedroom of the inn we were shown into. It had a full-sized mirror and Mrs. Swan teased me about standing so long in front of it. I explained to her that I had never seen the whole of myself in a mirror before and she laughed at that.

I remember many years later about that Inn, the Crook Inn, in John Buchan’s stories. It is also mentioned in one of Crockett’s. Buchan was born not far from Tweedside and Crockett, the writer, had a brother, a minister, in Tweedsmuir Church. I met him once in later years when I was on a fishing trip and had his company on the drive-up Tweedside in a farm wagon.

Grandpa had a carter called Jimmie Gibson. He hired Jimmie whenever he needed some carting done. He had a quiet, old white horse that I got many a ride on when I happened to meet Jimmie when coming home from school. My mother could always tell when I had been on Jimmie Gibson’s horse for the white hairs on my trousers always gave me away. Later Jimmie was forbidden to let me on his white horse the hairs were so plentiful.