Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming

Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming was one of the most intrepid and enterprising women travelers of the Victorian period, who also had the skill and industry to record her journeys in word and image. Encouraged by her many distinguished connections, during the height of the British Empire, she visited India, Ceylon and many of the countries of the Pacific Rim, between 1868 and 1880. The extent of her achievement is still in the process of evaluation.

Known as ‘Eka’ to her friends, Constance Frederica Gordon- Cumming was born at Altyre, near Forres, Morayshire, Scotland, on 26 May 1837. She was the 12th child of Sir William Gordon-Cumming, 2nd baronet of Altyre and Gordonstoun, and his first wife, Eliza Maria Campbell. She received her early education at home, probably from resident tutors, and taught herself to paint, with the help of several visiting artists, including Edwin Landseer.

Following the death of her mother in 1842, she went to live with her eldest sister, Anne Seymour, who, in 1843, married Oswin Baker-Cresswell of Cresswell and Harehope, Northumberland. However, Jane Eliza Mackintosh, her stepmother from 1846, persuaded her to return to Altyre in 1848, and then sent her to school. So, until 1853, she resided at Hermitage Lodge in Fulham, run by the three Stevens sisters, which she would describe in her memoirs as ‘a first-rate school near London’. A year after leaving school, she attended her first London ‘season’ and her first ‘Northern Meeting’ at Inverness.

Following the death of her father in 1854, Gordon-Cumming returned to Northumberland to live with her sister, Seymour. On Seymour’s death in 1858, she stayed with her sister, Alice Jenkinson, in the Vale of Severn, and then with another sister, Eleanora ‘Nelly’ Grant, at Castle Grant, on Speyside. In 1867, Nelly’s husband, George, ‘lost much of his capital in a stock exchange speculation’ (Laracy 2013, page 74), so they moved first to Comrie, Perthshire, and then, in 1869, a little further east, to Crieff. During this period, Gordon-Cumming developed as a painter, and began to exhibit in Edinburgh (from 1866) and Glasgow (from 1867).

In spring 1868, Gordon-Cumming undertook a painting tour of the Western Isles, initially in the company of her half-brother, Frederick. Then, in November 1868, she left Southampton to make her first voyage abroad, to India, where she joined her half-sister, Emilia Sergison, and Emilia’s husband, Warden, who had been serving in the 4th Hussars. She spent a year exploring the country, and returned to England in February 1870 with portfolios full of paintings and notes for her first article and first substantial book: ‘Camp Life in the Himalayas’ (Good Words, February 1870) and From the Hebrides to the Himalayas (1876). So she established a pattern of life in which she travelled widely and published extensively.

During her time in England, Gordon-Cumming probably used the home of her brother, William, at Auchintoul, as a base for visiting other relatives and friends. Then, in the autumn of 1872, she accepted an invitation from ‘the widowed Rev Hugh Jermyn, formerly the parson of Altyre and latterly Bishop of Colombo … to visit him and his daughter in Ceylon’ (Laracy 2013, page 77). She arrived in Colombo in February 1873, and finally returned to London in July 1874. The opportunity to join the Bishop and his daughter on their official visits across Ceylon formed the substance of her experience on the island, and the basis of her later book, Two Happy Years in Ceylon (1892).

During her winter in England, over 1874-75, Gordon-Cumming received an invitation from Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, to join him and his wife, on their journey to Fiji, where he was to become its governor. This instigated her third and most extensive tour abroad. Leaving England in March 1875, they travelled via Singapore and Sydney. While Hamilton-Gordon was keen to move on to Fiji, Gordon-Cumming spent over three months in Australia, and took the opportunity to visit the Blue Mountains and the sheep station of Duntroon. Between September 1875 and March 1878, she explored Fiji, New Zealand and the South Seas – partly in the company of the Bishop of Samoa – before leaving for California. At Home in Fiji (1881) and A Lady’s Cruise in a French Man-of-War (1882) record this period; Granite Crags (1884) covers the months that she spent painting in California’s Yosemite Valley. She showed the results in what comprised the Yosemite’s first ever art exhibition.

From California, Gordon-Cumming set out for Japan, arriving in Nagasaki on 6 September 1878 and departing from Yokohama for China in mid December. Exploring China between December 1878 and June 1879, ‘she ranged northwards along the coast from Hong Kong and Canton to Tsientsin, and inland to Peking’ (Laracy 2013, page 82). While in Peking, she met William Hill Murray, a Scottish missionary, who had invented the Numeral Type system, through which blind and illiterate Chinese learned to read and write. She was so inspired by this meeting that she helped support his school for the remainder of her life and wrote two books on the subject of the blind in China, as well as the more general record of her stay in the country, Wanderings in China (1886).

Gordon-Cumming returned to the United States via Japan, arriving in San Francisco in late September 1879. However, just a week later, on 1 October, she embarked for Hawaii, and spent two months touring the islands, and studying its volcanoes. These she described in Fire Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii (1883). Crossing the United States from 2 December 1879 to 2 March 1880, she arrived in Liverpool on 13 March.

From that time, Gordon-Cumming lived at Crieff, with her widowed sister, Nelly (until Nelly’s death in 1889), and then on her own. For the following 15 years, she wrote most of her books and many articles, and produced paintings and drawings, her creative output bringing her fame. She showed work at various exhibitions, and most notably at the Indian and Colonial Exhibition, which was held in South Kensington in 1886, and included large numbers of her watercolours in various of the national sections. Her final publication was the autobiographical volume, Memories (1904), which among other subjects included the main record of her time in Japan.

Though Gordon-Cumming was sometimes criticised as a writer in her lifetime, her achievement was recognised in 1914, when she was made a Life Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

She died in Crieff, Perthshire, on 4 September 1924, and is buried nearby.

Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Cambridge).