REMINISCENCES OF OLD FAMILIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8330, 9 August 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

REMINISCENCES OF OLD FAMILIES.

\ * j [BY CAPTAIN MACKENZIE WILSON, OF ! AUCKLAND.] ] Tim leading article of your journal of the ■ 14th of last May contained a few observaI tions relative to members of my family, i whilst adverting to the monetary difficulties \ now besetting and retarding the operations i for the completion of the plans and works I of the Panama Canal by its talented pro- ! jector and —Viscount Ferdinand !de Lesseps. The passage referred to is as j follows : —" Towards the close of last cen- | tury there resided at Malaga a wine icerI chant who was by birth a British subject, j and he had two daughters one of whom was i married to a French gentleman, father of ' the present M. de Lesseps. The other was ' married to the representative of one of the r proudest of the old noble houses of Castile, I and her daughter again married into still I higher rank, for she became the wife of an j emperor. The Empress Eugenie sympai thised with the fortunes of her kinsman the man of genius who was to become the I irreat canal cutter, and she quickened her ; husband's interest in his Suez project. Napoleon 111. recognised the important ; political, as well as commercial, bearing of : the enterprise." I do not question a single word of this statement. It is a succinct and accurate : expression of fact, as far as it goes ; and as ■ far as your " current© calamo" required it i to go to give pith and point to the subject ; of your article in connection with Panama Canal interests ; but, I must mildly add, regardless of leaving the Malaga wine merchant, and the authors of his existence, • nameless, as if such ancestry were of no consequence. Hence, as a relative of the ! family, I have presumed to conceive it my special duty to remedy this reticence. You have justly observed that the wine merchant was a " British subject by birth." His mother was my late paternal father's aunt. Aba period long prior to this event, in the last century, my paternal grandfather, Thomas Wilson, Esq., had formerly been a lieutenant in an infantry regiment, but on his marriage with my grandmother, Miss Rose Mac- ' kenzie, daughter of Colin Mackenzie, son of Roderick Mackenzie, Esq., then proprietor of Red Castle, Ross, —he retired from the army to his paternal estate of Kelton, Dumfries, with his two sisters, Janet and Jessy Wilson. His eldest sister, Miss Janet Wilson, married William Kirkpatrick, Esq., proprietor of Conheath estate, Dumfries. They had a large family of sixteen children, and early in life the second son, William Kirkpatrick, went to Malaga, where he established himself in a lucrative business as a wine merchant, became British Consul, and married into a grandee's family. The fruit of 'chat marriage, was two daughters" one married to a French gentleman, father of the present M. de Lesseps, the other was married to the representative of one of the proudest of the old noble houses of Castile." She had been brought up at the Court of Queen Maria Christina, Dowager Duchess of Spain, and held the position of Mistress of the Robes for many years. She married the Count Montijo, and had three children : a son, who died early in life, and two daughters, one of whom died many years ago; the other became the wife of an —Napoleon 111. —and as the kinswoman of M. de Lesseps, "quickened" her husband's interest in the Suez project, which sympathy accomplished his final triumph. From these parents the Empress Eugenie inherited the title of Duchess de Teba. The Counts of Montijo and Teba were of the same origin as the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, the family name of both being Gusman. The barony of Closeburn, 35 miles from Dumfries, has belonged to successive heirs of the Kirkpatrick family for many genera tions. At present it is in the possession of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick. The Empress takes one of her titles from it. Closeburn was created a barony in the reign of Alexander 11. of Scotland. Their ancestor, the Kirkpatrick of that period, was the bosom friend of King Robert Bruce of Scotland. In 1854 I resided in Dumfries for six months. Miss Kirkpatrick, the eldest sister of William Kirkpatrick Esq., the " Malaga wine merchant," grand-aunt of the ExEmpress of the French, and first cousin of my late father, resided with her two younger sisters in a picturesque and beautiful cottage a short distance from Dumfries, on the banks of the river Nith, which flows close past it on its rapid onward course to the Solway Firth. Miss Kirkpatrick had attained the great age of 88, but was still vigorous, very hospitable, and very active, and highly respected by every class of society during her long residence there of many years. As long as the wine merchant lived, he kept her winecellar annually well stocked and replenished with the rarest of vintages, and she showed me a bottle of " Mountain " and " Lagrinas," which had been 100 years in bottle. When I first visited her she was busily engaged preparing to send off to her grandneice, the Empress, a magnificent genealogical tree of upwards of a foot in length, in a very handsome French-polished oak box, before finally closing of which she took great pains fully to explain the whole to me, and especially she pointed out in the upper branches at the top of the tree where my paternal grandfather's family entered the Kirkpatrick family. She died a few months after my departure from Dumfries. Upon my second and last return from India to Europe in 1839, I passed through Egypt, and in Alexandria had the pleasure of meeting my relative, M. de Lesseps, then French Consul there. I very sincerely hope the Panama difficulties, financially, will soon be overcome. Three hundred millions of francs, equivalent to three milliard francs, ought not long among capitalists to be a hitch, and block the way to the consummation of a final triumph equally successful with the great Suez Maritime Canal, to reward all the labours and anxieties of the celebrated chief who has the direction of the works in his old age. May Viscount Ferdinand de Lesseps De long cipared to complete all his operations ; bub as time waits for no man, and as he was born in 1805, and the writer in 1806, we both soon in the course of nature must take our departure and join the great majority. [The above appeared in a first edition of a previous issue of the Herald.]