then went into some very painful family details, which did in some degree excuse his neglect of his parish duties, and appeared altogether so touched with the omissions of his proper business that I am in hopes he will seriously set to work to repair them. And few could do it better, for his heart is kind, his temper gentle, his judgement good, his piety sincere and his manner delightful, yet I fear to trust him, he is indolent and facile, and unless his wife be impressed with the feeling of duty belonging to their station, I doubt his keeping his resolution.
31. Thus ends 1840. A year of quiet happiness spent entirely in our pleasant home, and in which by prudence we have managed to get before the world again. And all well. God be thanked for every mercy.
1. Edited by his sons Robert, Isaac and Samuel, the ‘Life’ (1838) of William Wilberforce the philanthropist (1759– 1833) was, for the dnb, ‘no model biography.’
2. Shuja-ul-mulk Sadozai, Shah Shuja, deposed 1809 but restored by force of arms during this First Afghan War; the key fort of Ghazni fell in July 1839.
3. After the death of Eyre Tilson of Coote, Barbara, née Meredyth, married the fourth Earl of Milltown (1799–1866).
4. The ‘Bed-Chamber Crisis’ of May 1839 ended Peel’s brief first ministry. Her marriage to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1819–1866) took place on 10. February 1840.
5. The ‘Life’ (written by his son R.J.M) of the celebrated political theorist (1765–1832), who was a friend and contemporary of her father, was published in 1836.
6. The H.L. knew India before her marriage and Sir James was Recorder of Bombay (1803–1811); both contrasted it with what they recalled of Edinburgh in its ‘Golden Age’.
7. The Rev. Theobald Matthew was a tireless campaigner in the cause of total abstinence from alcohol.
8. This is the pen name of the anonymous author whose savage attacks between 1769 and 1772 on George iii’s ministers were widely read.
9. The English Poor Law, basing relief of poverty on the unpopular workhouses, was extended to Ireland in 1838; an elected Board of Guardians were responsible to the rate payers. See Coriolanus Ii: 177–9:
‘He that depends/Upon your favours swims with fins of lead/and hews down oaks with rushes.’
10. The Rev. Sydney Smith (1771–1845) was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review; his collected works were published in 1839.
11. Memorials of the Life of Sir Walter Scott by John Gibson Lockhart, his son-in-law, was published 1836–8.
12. John Clerk, Lord Eldin, built up a large art collection in his house in Picardy Place; after his death it was auctioned and to the disaster of a floor of the building collapsing was added the ignomy that many of the pictures were fakes. His natural daughter was to be governess to the Milltowns and then the Smiths.
13. The Scottish Judge Francis Jeffrey (1773–1850), well known as the founder and guiding light of the Edinburgh Review.
14. Deputy Clerk Register of Scotland (1806–39).
15. Jane Cranstoun (who married Godfrey Wenceslas Count of Purgstall) was an early confidante of Sir Walter.
16. He was a friend of Scott who encouraged him to publish his translation of Orlando Furioso between 1823 and 1831.
17. When Coleridge’s brief sojourn in the army to escape his debts ended, the authorities explained his sudden discharge on the grounds of ‘insanity’.
18. This is a reference to her broken engagement (described in her Memoirs); there are further tantalising references in her Journals (e.g. 26.5.40, 9.6.40 and especially 19.8.46).
19. The natural daughter of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, she married the Waterloo hero who had had four horses shot underneath him on the battlefield.
20. Lady Brute and Lady Fanciful, from Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife, perhaps?
21. Scottish judicial sentence associated with the death penalty.
22. Bonaparte’s nephew, later Emperor Napoleon iii: for Alfred Cobban this incident was ‘a day excursion to Boulogne.’
23. Local tax based on the value of land.
24. This was Charles Lever who lived in Brussels from 1840 to 1842. Harry Lorrequer for Thomas Flanagan (NH of I p. 493) is a ‘picaresque romance of rakehell heroes moving through a dowdy, amiable and inefficient society of fox hunts, garrison town and ruined big house’).
25. The legal process whereby goods and chattels were claimed for rent arrears.
26. The fifth Earl died unmarried at Cullen House, 26.10.1840
27. See 28.4.40
TWO
Everything comes into a sharper focus with this second year—the ways she brought up her children and looked after her husband; the methods used to cajole a sometimes reluctant tenantry into improvements; their relationships with the Agent and Steward; their views on friends and neighbours, priest and teacher; and (in an election year) how she regarded the politicians of the day from Peel (whom she revered) to O’Connell (whom she loathed).
FRIDAY JANUARY 1. A little note from Jane complaining of the excessive severity of the weather—Never felt any cold like it since the days of our Highland winters when we girls occupied the barrack room in the roof of the Doune,
