Books, Arts & Manners: The Highland Belle

The late Mrs. August Belmont, grande dame of the Metropolitan Opera, who died a few years ago at the age of 101, once told a reporter that a private train was “an acquired taste—one that is acquired immediately upon boarding.” I am now in a position to state, with no hesitation whatever, that Mrs. Belmont was absolutely right. And how, pray, do I know this? I know it thanks to Gerald Morgan-Grenville of Crickhowell, Powys, Wales, and his Highland Belle, a two-car train available for charter travel throughout the Scottish Highlands. My wife and I—and four delightful traveling companions—chartered the Highland Belle for six days and nights during the last week in May and railroad-wandered over the Highlands, with our private sleeping car (it had been part of the Royal Train in 1939), our sitting-dining-observation car (the British refer to these as “balconies”), and from time to time our own engine, which we used whenever we weren’t attached to regularly scheduled British Rail passenger service. For a brief magic moment we luxuriated in an age long passed, when grand Victorian and Edwardian ladies and gentlemen and their American counterparts moved across Great Britain and the United States in the land yachts known as private railway carriages.

I started out feeling a little guilty about all this rented opulence, but after perhaps the second minute I remembered Oscar Wilde’s comment about some not quite proper gentleman who “thinks with the Liberals and eats with the Tories.” For those six days I decided to be that gentleman and totally at my ease.

SC

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Schuyler Chapin

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The late Mrs. August Belmont, grande dame of the Metropolitan Opera, who died a few years ago at the age of 101, once told a reporter that a private train was “an acquired taste—one that is acquired immediately upon boarding.” I am now in a position to state, with no hesitation whatever, that Mrs. Belmont was absolutely right. And how, pray, do I know this? I know it thanks to Gerald Morgan-Grenville of Crickhowell, Powys, Wales, and his Highland Belle, a two-car train available for charter travel throughout the Scottish Highlands. My wife and I—and four delightful traveling companions—chartered the Highland Belle for six days and nights during the last week in May and railroad-wandered over the Highlands, with our private sleeping car (it had been part of the Royal Train in 1939), our sitting-dining-observation car (the British refer to these as “balconies”), and from time to time our own engine, which we used whenever we weren’t attached to regularly scheduled British Rail passenger service. For a brief magic moment we luxuriated in an age long passed, when grand Victorian and Edwardian ladies and gentlemen and their American counterparts moved across Great Britain and the United States in the land yachts known as private railway carriages.

I started out feeling a little guilty about all this rented opulence, but after perhaps the second minute I remembered Oscar Wilde’s comment about some not quite proper gentleman who “thinks with the Liberals and eats with the Tories.” For those six days I decided to be that gentleman and totally at my ease.