A peep inside ....

The Early Years of Osgood Mackenzie

Thirty years after the event Osgood Hanbury Mackenzie met the French piper who had been hired to celebrate his birth on 13 May 1842 in the imposing Chateau de Talhouet. Osgood’s father was Sir Francis Mackenzie, 12th laird of Gairloch, in the north-west highlands of Scotland. His mother Mary, daughter of Osgood Hanbury of ‘Holfield Grange, Essex, who held 3,392 acres of land in the parish of Coggeshall’, was Francis’ second wife.

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Flowerdale, Gairloch: Osgood's childhood home


In 1841 he had a breakdown and the decision was made that he should take his pregnant wife and young family to Brittany, to try to find some peace away from his responsibilities. Osgood explained a little about that year in Brittany in his memoirs. The focus was on allowing his father to enjoy the opportunities for fishing and hunting. An Aberdeenshire salmon-fisher accompanied the family for ‘the capture of the salmon in the River Ellé’ and ‘my father had a big extent of chasse to shoot over’ but ‘there was no game to speak of, and the bags consisted chiefly of squirrels, which it was the fashion there to eat’.
There was indecision as to the naming of the newly born. Originally he was to have been Hector, a Mackenzie name, but, much to Osgood’s regret, (he later expressed a clear preference for a Gaelic first name), and one of the rare occasions on which he disagreed with his mother:
‘My father, recollecting that the eldest son of my Uncle John Mackenzie was called Hector, thought two of the same name in the family might be confusing, so, when we reached England and I was christened, the name of Osgood was given me, after my maternal grandfather, Osgood Hanbury.’




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