30. Too hot to stir out till quite the evening. Walked till after eight, then into our book. What a pity that Mr. Lockhart thought it necessary to publish much of the early love of Sir Walter and the very silly letters of the Countess Purgstall15 and the most childish nonsense of poor Lady Scott whom he only married out of pique, though probably he was not aware of it. She was ever from the time I ever knew anything about her a most ridiculous little person, frivolous and stupid as far as a stranger could judge, without conversation, generally dressed an object, rouge and garlands of roses on a crop head when an old wrinkled woman and I should suppose incapable of bringing up her daughters for they always flew about just as they liked, came to church in old bonnets and dirty frocks and without gloves, while she herself never came there at all. Miss Macdonald Buchanan however who was extremely intimate in the family and a good judge told Uncle Ralph that she was not so deficient as she appeared, that she possessed good sense and a most amiable temper kept an hospitable clean tidy house and that although she could not comprehend her husband she looked upon him as a very great man. I fancy when quite young she had been pretty. Latterly poor woman from bad health accompanied by pain and asthma she was said to have taken to drinking. I saw her one night at a party at the Miss Pringles’, certainly very odd, her daughter Anne in great distress, and William Clerk and Sir Adam Ferguson came and coaxed her away.
And here ends another happy month during which sorrow in no shape has visited us. And except that we have imprudently run ourselves too close in money matters we have not had a care. On the 1st of May, to-morrow, another quarter’s pay becomes due and we will be wise enough in future to endeavour to have a little in hand rather than just barely to pay our way.
TUESDAY, MAY 5. Another drive to the new Shop in Blesinton. How that little village has improved since we first settled in this country eight years ago. And all since the market was established there, though John Hornidge, John Murray and other croakers declared it never would succeed and refused to encourage it. Colonel Smith, Ogle Moore, and Doctor Robinson advanced the funds to set it agoing. Nothing more was required. Each week increased its business, by the end of the second year we were all repaid our advances. All the people round, better dressed, all busier, upwards of twenty new houses in Blesinton, most of them shops, each year the description of Shopkeeper and the style of goods improves. Those idle old men would keep a country back a generation.
It is a great pity Mr. Lockhart repeats so much and gives so many long letters. We are becoming introduced to a great many new characters, the English literary Tories, amongst whom I have seen William Rose often at my Uncle George Frere’s and had to listen every Sunday of the spring of 23, in a bower! to his Ariosto, or Tasso, I forget which16 And Coleridge whom I though quite mad, it was the fashion of the house to be amazed at his flow of eloquence, the flow of words amazed me, but as they came a great deal too quick to be comprehended I was not able to judge of the mind that prompted them, it was a torrent of language that never stopped and as the wildest eyes that ever glanced from a head accompanied this deluge with the most piercing flashes and a quantity of long grey hair stood bolt upright upon his large head as if it had been electrified he really looked as if he had escaped from Bedlam.17
7. It is a pity that Walter Scott did not travel into the North Highlands when he was about it, he would have found the manners much more primitive, the whole style of the Clans from the Chiefs downwards very much superior to any thing he had had an opportunity of seeing.
8. Sir Walter improving as a letter writer except on State occasions when he is very formal, far fetched, long-winded and much too respectful in his style to those he considers great people. Not having been brought up among them at all I suppose he felt awed by their titles.
10. Sir Walter’s tour to the Hebrides tiresome yet in parts interesting. Many years afterwards when Jane was at Abbotsford he gave her a seal the stone of which he had picked up at Iona on this occasion. It has two characters on it of some old kind of letters, a relique indeed now.
12. Book very interesting, how singular the fulfilment of some of those old Highland prophecies, that which Scott alludes to about Seaforth uttered hundreds of years ago, that whenever there should be at the same time ‘A deaf Seaforth, a childless Chisholm, a mad Lovat, and an Applecross with a buck tooth there should be an end of the male heirs of that branch of the Mackenzies.’ Such an odd combination of circumstances, and all to happen in my day, and I knowing every one of the people, I could multiply these superstitions, what a pity that Scott never came into our highlands.
13. In our drive this evening met Lord Milltown looking miserable—he said nothing of winnings, and as his horses certainly lost I fear he has made a bad business of it. What a life, feverish excitement or despair leading to everything that is bad, by slow but sure degrees eradicating all that is good. I never see him without a mixed feeling of sorrow and pity and shame that is really painful, for nature though she inflicted one very dreadful personal infirmity on him [see p. 489] gifted him with many admirable qualities, fine talents, good understanding, amiable temper, very handsome countenance, and rank and wealth and zealous friends. A bad education and disreputable society and an ill assorted marriage have altogether made him to be shunned instead of courted, and he is himself most unhappy.
14. We took our drive in the evening the children and I, then Hal and I walked. After tea read as usual. How all these well remembered names of people, times, and places recall the feelings of my early days. Days altogether of much enjoyment but embittered by the recollection of much sorrow, for my youth had a very stormy dawn, how could it be otherwise. Taken out of the schoolroom in which I had been kept as a child and thrown without preparation upon the world without a guide, without a direction, without ever having been taught to think and possessing many dangerous qualities, great beauty, the wildest spirits, the deepest feelings, and an ardent imagination, how could such a girl of seventeen avoid errour,18 errour which led to suffering, for I was of a timid temper and dared not to act altogether for myself, you have been accustomed dear children to see your mother so calm, always cheerful, never elated, never sad. May you never understand all she went through before attaining this enviable state of sober happiness. I think you never will, for you will have a watchful friend in me.
19. Took no drive for the sake of the brown mare but had abundant occupation in a Court of Enquiry held on the conduct of Catherine the housemaid who had propagated so scandalous a story of little Caroline Clark that Sarah and James were obliged to inform us of it in order to have the matter examined into. Convicted of false witness and many falsehoods she showed no contrition, no shame neither, her manner was doggedly disagreeable. Poor thing, this disposition is the worst feature in the case.
20. Called Catherine to my room and discharged her. Her behaviour was improper, stubborn, sulky, had I not been very gentle though very firm and very cold she would have been impudent. She first insisted on being paid to the end of the quarter, then expected to have her expenses paid home, next brought forward a claim to some balance of last quarter’s wages, and then tried to persuade me she had hired for higher wages than I give. But I brought down her evil spirit. Bitterly did I make her cry, I made her too acknowledge that all this was not only nonsense but wrong, and that she had seen nothing about Caroline, only she knew them that had. In short she is an unprincipled young woman and glad am I to get quit of her. And she quite deceived me for though I never liked her she was so plausible upstairs we all believed her to be thoroughly correct. The last person in the house I should have suspected of stealing out to Sunday dances though I used to think her too late in shutting her windows. I made her sign a receipt
