Hard down! Hard down!. Captain Jack Isbester
whole of Whiteness knew that he had not been to see Maggie! Like all the young men returning home he called at Olligarth to tell Magnus Irvine [the laird and the landlord for all the crofts in North Whiteness] all the latest South news. And there he encountered my mother, a very personable, lively young lady of 20 who took it upon herself to scold him for not going to see Maggie. (Father was 32. As a boy of 17/18 he used to call at Olligarth on the way from Haggersta to the school to carry Susie Irvine 5/6 pick-a-back to school).3 My father was not used to being scolded by young ladies, rather enjoyed it and came back for more. One night after he’d gone, mother went out to the well at the back door and he was waiting to speak to her. He asked her to marry him and said that he’d give her a week to make up her mind. He came the next morning for his answer and they were married within the month! Mother said that night she opened her bible for guidance – and it opened at the passage in Ruth – whither thou goest I will go and thy people shall be my people –
She walked in to Lerwick to buy her wedding needs and to tell her friends who had never even heard of Jack Isbester4 as in the running (though there were said to be several others). Anyway Maggie’s heart was certainly not broken – and the families of Quoyness [where Maggie Smith lived as Maggie Gair after her own marriage] and Olligarth always remained good friends. After we left Scotland aged 12 and 9 Eric and I stayed at Quoyness at your grandmother’s for a Summer holiday (we were just about the same age as Agnes and Hettie your aunt and mother).
The Shetland Times of 19 April 1884 reported
At Olligarth, Whiteness, on the 10th April, by the Rev. A McDonald, Weisdale, assisted by the Rev. D Johnstone, Quarff, SUSIE, only surviving daughter of Mr MAGNUS IRVINE to Mr JOHN ISBESTER.
It may be that the two clergymen were in attendance to make clear to everybody that although John Isbester was illegitimate he had a Master’s Certificate and, therefore, the full approval of the church!
Early on the wedding day John Isbester had written his first surviving letter to his bride-to-be.5 After suggesting that he would meet her at the schoolhouse where the wedding was to take place and expressing his pleasure that it was such a lovely day, John continued:
This morning about 7am I took a bottle of whiskey and treated all the town of Haggersta and they all drunk hartily to our long life and happiness and the remainder of what took place I will tell you again I have no paper so you must excuse this scrap I am Your Loving Johnie X
In the 1880s the ‘town of Haggersta’ consisted of four households – the Davidsons, the Mansons and the Smiths as well as the Andersons – so John Isbester’s hospitality was not on quite the scale that his words would seem to suggest.6
Captain Thomson,7 a local man who knew Whiteness well, points out that the schoolhouse used for the wedding was the place where bride and groom both received their early education, and suggests that after the wedding the guests all walked in couples along the banks of Brugarth (where the absent John Isbister, gold miner, had lived as a child) to Olligarth House (Fig.6.1) for the wedding breakfast and reception for the happy couple.
Figure 6.1 Olligarth House in 1916 (Courtesy of the Shetland Museum and Archives)
John’s bride, Susan Elizabeth Irvine (Fig.6.2), was born and brought up in Whiteness, and in her early years had attended the Whiteness school, but as the daughter of the laird she had had opportunities not given to most of the Whiteness community. My father says that his mother ‘Was spoiled, but not spoilt’, as her parents only surviving child. He continues:
Figure 6.2 Susie Irvine, about the time of her wedding to John Isbester
My mother who was known to be delicate, – she had valvular disease of the heart – had been taken gt. care of during her girlhood & had several years wintered with relations or friends in the Scottish Lowlands where the climate was less severe than in Shetland.8
Miss Urquart, a live-in governess from Scotland, was found for her, and seems to have coached her well because she became a talented singer and pianist and a fluent and entertaining letter writer. Her Sinclair ancestors on her mother’s side included doctors, clergymen and army officers in their number, and it was from that side of the family that her parents had inherited ownership of a number of crofts in Whiteness. Her father, Magnus Irvine, was a farmer and, by virtue of his wife’s inheritance, a landowner. That he was actively involved in farming can be seen in a photo (Fig.6.3) which shows him ploughing with two oxen. He is the man guiding the plough. The large black-bearded man with the oxen is probably Robbie Tullock, the general farm servant who remained with the family for many years.
An elderly acquaintance of the Irvine family visited Olligarth a few months before the wedding and, writing to his own granddaughter, explained that Mrs Irvine had not been at home but reported that they had been given dinner and that ‘Miss Irvine of Strom Bridge is a sprightly young lady and did the honours of the table well’.9 In the weeks after the wedding, clearly charmed, he wrote:
Figure 6.3 Magnus Irvine, on the left, ploughing with oxen
The husband of the young lady of Olligarth is a grandson of Peter o’Brugarth and his mother was Sarah Anderson. The young man had been seven years south and he and the young lady fell in love at first sight. She was just the age for that, full of life.10
If we take that literally, as I think we should, this was John Isbester’s first return to Shetland in seven years.
John Isbester (Fig.6.4) and Susie Irvine had made a very happy and rewarding choice. Allan Isbester writes:
From my Father’s first letters – written when he was Master of the Ann Mactavish, – it is apparent that my Mother and he when they married did not know each other at all – what they had in common was temperament. They were both lively and spirited, they were both entertaining talkers and good listeners, they were both responsive to, interested in and fond of other people. Each was proud of the other, each took responsibility for the other’s relations, and when they were together on the Centaur or the Dalgonar, their ship immediately became the host ship of the other ships of whatever port they were in. And they each had a serious side to their natures.11
Figure 6.4 John Isbester in his early years in command
John Isbester clearly believed that one reason to get married was to have babies. When his own daughter married and after a year of marriage was still not admitting to being pregnant, he expressed his anxiety: ‘Kathleen writes bright enough but surely she is not well if there is no sign yet’.12 His own marriage gave scope to no such concerns: Susie gave birth to their first child on 4 January 1885 and must