not trusting her at all.
22. Every evening we go on with Sir Walter. The King’s visit to Scotland amused us much. That very August 1822 Hal sailed a second time for India hearing of Lord Castlereagh’s suicide in the Channel. I was in my room at the Doune where I had been confined for many months, my sisters and my father and William went up to Edinburgh to all the splendour, but without any tail. Indeed very very few of the Highland nobles gave into poor Sir Walter’s folly about the Clans with their pipes and tartans and gatherings. His making the great big fat King appear at his Levée in the kilt, (a dress only worn by a small portion of his Scotch subjects of the lower order, for the Highland Chiefs in ordinary always wore trews and on occasions of ceremony the full dress of every other gentleman of their day) was considered as a mistake more serious than a folly for it very highly offended the Lowlanders who indeed during the whole pageant, in despight of their wealth and their numbers, acted only as very secondary to their wild neighbours. I believe the King and half his Court really believed all the Scotch were Highlanders. I think it was old Lady Saltoun who thus wittily answered the complaint of a Lowland Lady on this subject, ‘why since his stay will be so short the more we see of him the better’.19
24. At six o’clock I had the three servant girls in to prayers and to read the Bible which I explained to them as they went along, Kitty listening though a Roman Catholic, I only made her read in the National School Extracts as totally ignorant of religion as the Papists are, it is better to begin with her as with a child. I hope this may be of use to these poor untaught girls, at any rate it keeps them at home and occupies them for an hour on a Sunday evening.
27. Wrote to the Secretaries of the National Board to know what is become of Miss Gardiner’s salary, that certainly does seem to be a strangely mismanaged concern. What they do with the immense sum of money voted yearly to them by parliament it really is difficult to make out, they shamefully underpay the teachers and even the pittance they give them is generally due for months, there is no getting any assistance towards improvements or repairs, nor is there any training school as yet for instructing female teachers, and the Institution being going on these six years, and such a farce as the Inspector is. One merit they have and it is a great one, they are most liberal in their supply of school requisites. All their books are admirable and very cheap and they give every four years a complete set to be used in the School, gratis.
Mr. Featherstone called and walked into Blesinton with us which we found quite gay with a detachment of the 22nd on their march southward. We did all our business then called on the Doctor and brought him back with us to dinner which was delayed till five o’clock by Mrs. John Hornidge and Mrs Finnemor coming to call, the two poor old women were dressed up like two characters in a Comedy,20 ringlets and flowers and feathers and Mrs. Hornidge with nearly a dozen flashy colours about her. And the ghastly looking false teeth and cadaverous countenances making them truly melancholy spectacles.
28. A holiday, nobody working, Paddy asked leave to go to Naas to purchase clothing, I will try him this once. Mr. Darker went to buy wedders for fattening and a bit of beef. We have reached a melancholy part in the life of Scott, his ruin, from two causes. Commercial engagements both with printers and booksellers which he had no business ever to have entered into, and utter carelessness in the management of everything he was concerned in. The Printer’s books were never balanced, the Bookseller’s affairs he never enquired into, he bought land, built a castle, lived like a Prince, without an idea of his means. Immense sums were made by his works the sound of which seemed to satisfy him. He sometimes got money, sometimes Bills.
Oh those Bills, the bane of Scotchmen, the ruin of many a fine estate, the whole miserable business is doubly melancholy to me from reminding me of the ruin of my own father, who with a larger certain income than Sir Walter, ready money at the beginning, quite as much for his annual falls of timber as ever Sir Walter made by his brains, much less expensive house-keeping, very little building, very moderate improving, lost in contested elections as much as Sir Walter by speculations by the help of those dreadful Bills and a set of Agents and flatterers who most successfully enacted towards him the part of the Bannatynes. The children of both have suffered. We are none of us where we should have been as the heirs of such parents. In our case however we have gained by adversity for we all required her rugged lessons, and though our paths in life have lain much below the proud promise of our birth I question whether they have not led to much more certain happiness which depends neither on rank nor success nor on wealth but on a properly regulated temper.
William can never be of the consequence his father was, but he will be independant and from his own exertions, and he will have a moral influence from the rectitude of his conduct in very difficult circumstances worth infinitely more in the estimation of good men than any that station alone could give him. John might have run a more brilliant career at home, because more in the eye of the world, than the creditable and lucrative official life he is passing in India but he don’t regret the difference, and he will return young enough to enjoy many cheerful years in his native country. On the girls the blight fell heaviest, the younger girls, for my early indiscretions deserved no light doom,21 and I can only attribute the favour of God in blessing me after many years of distress with such a home as with grateful affection I feel to be mine, to the unfeigned humility with which I repented the unhappy consequences of a faulty education on an unreflecting mind.
29. No Paddy, nor sign of him. It really is a sad failing this detestable punch drinking, well he shall pay half a crown for his headache and never will I give him leave to a fair again. Tom Darker bought ten wedders for £9 1 0 the beef was 7½d per pound, the dearest I ever paid in Ireland.
30. Paddy and I a very serious conference, he is in a fright. John Robinson arrived. Tenants all ready to meet him. And in general paid well, Pat Quin in the Bottoms, a defaulter as usual. Kearns of course and Widow Doyle and Widow Farrell, some of the rest did not pay up, but these paid nothing.
SATURDAY JUNE 6. Finished Sir W. Scott—a work it would have been better in half the number of volumes, and if some judicious friend had sobered down the panagerical style of his son in law’s enthusiastick veneration and admiration it would have been another improvement. But faults and all it is an admirable book and will correct many prejudices entertained both against the conduct and the disposition of ‘good Sir Walter’ whose worth really has been equal to his genius.
9. Your father says, dear children, that I shall quite frighten you into fancying your mother had been in her youth a monster of wickedness from the severity with which in mature age I have censured the follies and the flippancies of girlhood, for my indiscretions amounted to no more serious crime, bad enough. What can be more odious than a pert flirting girl, often betrayed by her giddiness into little better than a jilt. First of all inconsiderately entangled herself, then without reflecting on her duty to him whose whole object she had become or on her own feelings towards him, or on his character, or on the reasons urged against him; was easily frightened into giving him up, and weakly led to act a heartless part in affecting levity very ill timed and God knows very unlike the reality. The whole tale was melancholy, none acted rightly and each I believe suffered for it. Let it rest with the Dead.
18. Drove after dinner. Met quantities of Teetotallers who had all walked in procession from Ballymore to the Water fall [at Polaphuca] all looking so decent, well dressed and happy. I do hope there is no latent mischief under this temperance pledge, its present effects are so excellent apparently.
19. Paddy the gardener absent again, yesterday was a holiday, what must we do with the unfortunate man.
20.
