damp Autumns generate. All the people busy with their manure preparing for the potato planting. Thus ends the first month of my Diary. All of us in health. Children improving—dear Hal happy with plenty of the active business he likes on his hands, and by good management money enough to carry on his improvements gradually. Though far from rich we are perfectly independant. We live comfortably—can afford to keep all neat about us—can see our friends in all hospitality—can give a little way—can assist many—and have the hope of bringing up our dear children in the station we hold ourselves—probably the happiest in our mixed society—above want—below parade—leaving us at liberty to enjoy the quiet domestick life that suits us best. With a grateful heart do I acknowledge these many blessings. May God Almighty keep me as I strive to be, humble. ‘Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.’
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1. Hal after the fox-hounds, I busy preparing for the new laundry maid, much annoyed at the loss of things mostly by carelessness and the very improper habits of these lawless Irish replacing what they have wantonly destroyed by the very first available article they can lay their hands on. Such as the ironing blankets disappearing and without a word to me, a good set of blankets taken off a bed to be scorched to tinder. A poker broken, a common iron poker, never mentioned, but a cut steel one from the best bedroom brought down immediately and burned so black that there it must now remain. Fifty things of like nature making it so troublesome to keep house in Ireland, as unless the mistress sees to every individual order being executed she need not take the trouble to give one. She must be herself a servant to keep up order. I am sorry to be obliged to have this fourth maid but I cannot help it, they are all so slow, so bewildered, so ignorant that one is forced to have double the necessary number, of course they can neither be so well fed, so well paid, nor is the work so well done as where there are fewer.
2. Read the debate on the Irish side of affairs to Hal, most extremely interesting, nobody spoke well on the Ministerial side. Lord Stanley again! the only man who did not blink the ‘no popery’ cry, tolerating most liberally, nay more, willing to employ useful men of any creed in proper places, but never forgetting that we are a Protestant country with a Protestant Government and a Protestant sovereign.
3. Poor Widow Bankes came for some little presents. Do you remember, Janey and Annie, how frightened you were of this poor half crazy woman, and how Mama cured you by making her a sort of pet, giving you clothes for her, and letting you give her a dinner sometimes, little foolish girls, were you not?
End of the great Debate. Sir Robert Peel so very fine, honest, open, manly, straightforward constitutional English. I cannot see any essential difference between him, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Stanley, on one side, and Lord Melbourne, Lord John Russell, on the other, nothing to prevent their all acting together to arrest the progress of democracy and impiety, reform progressively what the changes of time and feelings have rendered unsuitable to the age, and redeem the honour of Britain which has been sadly sullied of late. Should this ever happen we shall be once more a great nation, till it does, I fear, there don’t seem to be enough with talent on either side alone to fill the offices of Government.
5. Children brought arms full of old stuff frocks and shoes and two bonnets which we held a council on and assigned where they would be useful, the best go to a box in my room, the remainder is distributed in turns to the deserving poor. I find the patterns thus given them have been of much use in improving their home-made clothes, they are so clever they can copy anything.
6. Very fine hunting morning, bright but cold. Had cold luncheon ready in the hall for the hunters, no one called in but the Doctor who made a good dinner and gave Janey and me a Latin lesson, and told us Lady Milltown was not well, complaining of no one ever calling on her, out of spirits. Her Lord complaining that she never dresses till near dinner-time, an idle slovenly habit she learned in France, never stirs out, she that used to be so active, he don’t know on earth what to do with her; so it must be for she has no pursuit. With that beautiful house [Russborough] full of the choicest works of art she has no pleasure in it but to see it now and then dusted, her fine family of children are no resource to her. She is incapable of assisting in their education. No reader, beyond a novel which only wearies the spirits, no worker.
And here let me remind you, dear little girls, of an old saying of dear Grandmama’s that a woman who had not pleasure in her needle was never happy, and very seldom good, it may sound a little forced but it is nevertheless perfectly true. A woman has so many solitary hours. Reading through all would be very far from profitable to her, a scientifick pursuit or a devotion to some particular art would withdraw her attention too much from these numberless little duties upon which the happiness of all around her depends.
Besides this want of occupation poor Lady Milltown has had the misfortune to yield to a vile, irritable, jealous, malicious temper which has alienated every friend, and of what avail to her is all her wit and her talent and her rank of which she is so vain now that she is getting old? The spirits that once carried her through are deserting her and she has nothing to replace them with, no one loves her, not even her children, I can’t excuse her failings though I make every allowance for her entire want of education, her early marriage to a profligate man, her later marriage to an unprincipled one, for she knows the right way, and won’t pursue it.3
8. Carpenters getting on well upstairs. Dear Hal mightily offended with me because I do not always approve of his taste. Like most men he understands very little about colours, which contrast well, which suit, which shock, neither has he much eye for form or arrangement. Taste like every other talent requiring more cultivation than his active soldier’s life has given him opportunity for, but I almost got myself into regular disgrace for hinting this. Men, you are very vain. Not much in the papers, good speech of a frequently troublesome man, the Bishop of Exeter on the Abominations of Socialism.
10. Frightful day, yet the Colonel a good deal out looking after workmen. Disappointed in my laundry maid, but will try her longer, they are all so unneat, so careless, and understand so little what they ought to do, it is really a tiresome business to manage them all, and Hal has worse to complain of outside, real dishonesty, entitled hereabouts cuteness, very sad it is to have so little hope of reforming such errours. Truth is not in the people nor will it over be in them under the Roman Catholic priesthood.
12. Papers full of the Queen’s marriage. The looks of the bridegroom, the dresses, the processions, the banquets, the parties, the cakes, etc. The Queen seems to have shown great calmness combined with great feeling and to be really in love with her young husband. And if he has the talent as well as the beauty of his family this may be a propitious marriage, may rescue her from the gossipping mischief of her bedchamber and raise her thoughts to subjects becoming her important station.4
16. Sunday. Such a beautiful morning, wakened by my three pets all tumbling into bed to me in such glee. Nothing almost raises my spirits so much as a bright Sunday. ‘This is the day that the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it’. May you ever keep it thus, dear children, not as a day of gloom, as a day of austerity, as a day of privations. Moroseness is no part of the religion of Christ. The Roman Catholic Sunday is in many respects infinitely nearer the proper method of spending the day to my mind than the Calvinistick. The old Church of England nearest of all, not the methodistical section of it, but the real cheerful old English reformed Church.
21. Our book Club begun in earnest, our book—Sir James Mackintosh.5
22. Talking over Sir James Mackintosh, I observed how little real value was the greatest genius, the most first-rate talent, compared with the habits of regular industry, how very little the first generally leaves behind it.
It seems to me that there must be something wrong in the Scotch system of education—so many
