Mary Elizabeth Haldane

Mary Elizabeth Haldane: a Record of a Hundred Years (1825-1925) (Naomi Mitchison Library)

Mary Elizabeth Haldane was Naomi Mitchison's paternal grandmother ('Granniema'). Like her granddaughter, she lived to be a centenarian, raised a large family, exhibited varied talents and died beloved by a wide range of family, friends and admirers. Her children included her son Richard, who was Secretary of State for War, and then Lord Chancellor, Mitchison's father, a great scientist whose work saved many lives, and the author/editor of this slim volume, originally compiled really for family and friends, Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane, an outstanding woman who became Scotland's first woman Justice of the Peace. 'Granniema' had five step children and six of her own. Despite a sometimes painful religious upbringing, she was to achieve something near sainthood: a devout believer herself, she had a large-hearted tolerance, and encouraged liberty of thought. No one accuses her of narrowness. Born some half a century too early to achieve fame in the wider world, she nevertheless won the hearts of everyone she knew. She loved painting but was not trained. She was widowed, after a very happy marriage, for forty-eight years, for the last twelve of which she was an invalid. She was first mistress of Cloan, and a great nineteenth-century heroine.