Lady Eliza Maria Gordon-Cumming

Artistic Connections

Lady Gordon Cumming made water-colour sketches of fossil fish, and Louis Agassiz incorporated some of them in his monograph on fossil fish (1844-1845).  Geologist, Dr J G Malcolmson also chose to feature them in a paper on the Old Red Sandstone (1859), published many years after his death.  It seems she left many of her drawings at the Geological Society, so that others could consult them when in London.

Music was clearly important in her life. We’ve learnt from her daughter, Constance’s book, Memories, that her mother sang ‘lovely songs’, and Lady Gordon-Cumming’s Strathspey was composed and dedicated to her.

Eliza was interested in horticulture and designed the gardens on the estate. She produced fine embroidery too.

Music

Title: The March of the Women of Science 
Composer: Mary Maxwell Campbell
Arranged by: Frances M Lynch & Herbie Clarke
Written: 1829 (2018)
For: Voices and Drums
Performed by: Frances M Lynch and Herbie Clarke
Premiered: National Library of Scotland, Jan 18th 2018

The March of the Women of Science, has become the anthem of Minerva Scientifica and is performed at almost every event. It is very suited to this early female adventurer into the sciences.

Education

In an aristocratic family, it is likely that Eliza was educated at home by governesses.  Her mother became a novelist and diarist, so she had a literary background.

Occupations

Palaeontologist and fossil collector
During the Devonian Period, around 400 million years ago, Scotland lay south of the equator.  Sediments laid down then are known as Old Red Sandstone, and typically, remains of plants and fish are trapped in the fossils found in these rocks.  The area where she lived is a rich source for these fossils.  Eliza Gordon-Cumming learned to recognise and understand different species of such fossilised fish and built up a large collection.

Plant breeder
She was a highly respected plant breeder who provided her gardeners with books and magazines on botany and horticulture, and later, many of them were able to use this knowledge to pursue successful careers.

Scientific Achievements

Her collection came to the notice of geologists such as Dr John Malcolmson, Hugh Miller, William Buckland and Louis Agassiz, who visited her, saw her collection and recognised its value. She provided Agassiz both with actual items from her collection and with drawings.  He included a number of these in his Monographie des poissons fossiles du vieux grès rouge, crediting her for her recognition of unusual specimens, and her artistic skill in precisely illustrating them and named a fossil after her: Cheirolepis cummingiae. We don’t have an image of this fossil but the one below is very similar.

She donated many specimens to museums in the UK such as the National Museum of Scotland and the Natural History Museum, as well as in European locations such as Neuchâtel and Paris.

The Geological Society of London and The Literary Gazette acknowledged and thanked Eliza in the year after her death.

“During the past year great additions have been made to our stores of knowledge, and specimens in fossil Ichthyology, by the presentation to our Museum of a very large and rich collection of fishes from the lower beds of the old red sandstone near Forres, which we owe to the zeal and liberality of Lady Gordon Cumming of Altyre.

Her Ladyship and her eldest daughter have further contributed most accurate and exquisitely finished drawings of many fossil fishes from the same locality, in illustration of Dr Malcolmson’s paper on the old red sandstone. ”

William Buckland: Anniversary Address to the Geological Society of London in 1841

Did You Know?

One of her hobbies was salmon-fishing, tying her own flies, and readily standing in the middle of the river as she cast her line!

She had thirteen living children, though sadly died in an accident soon after her last child was born. A tribute to her by Sir Roderick Murchison lamented;

“the death of a of a most successful explorer of these remains, whose loss geologists have to deplore”.

One of her daughters was Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming, a travel writer and explorer, whose autobiography, Memories, tells us of the background of the family.

An Inspiring Woman

Lady Eliza was a respected woman of science in an age when women were seldom acknowledged to have any intellectual capacity, and lived in many ways an unconventional life. She was an accomplished horticulturalist, cross breeding plants in her greenhouse – the first in Moray.

Her extensive collection and work on fossil fish filled only the last 3 years of her short life.

Some of the drawings she had left at the Geological Society were copied and reproduced without her permission, the artist having taken the credit for himself.  She was furious, and protested – but sadly died shortly after, so the misattribution was never corrected.

Her death itself demonstrates she was a woman of courage – according to her daughter it may have been because “she had been severely injured when stopping a bolting horse in a gig wherein sat a terrified woman..” and this shortly before giving birth.

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