I was determined to visit Dundonnell, Ross-shire, to pay respect to Robert Savage Reid, who died aged 16 as a result of “spasm of the heart“.
His absent father, Francis Archibald Reid, was Major-General for the Madras Army:
Major-General Francis Archibald Reid was a passionate plant collector. He corresponded with, and assisted William Jackson Hooker. In a letter to Hooker he described his consternation that “his countrymen will not go out of their way to gather”:
Father and son, major and schoolboy, are buried in a circular graveyard, in a most beautiful beech woodland, a little north of Dundonnell house:
Peter and Florence made it Dundonnell [Big Ted was our guide]:
Florence:
On Robert’s grave, Peter calked a broken heart and then rubbed it off with lichen:
