good fellow.
The day was so tempting that I went out with Tom Purdie to cut some trees, the rather that my task was very well advanced. He led me into the wood, as the blind King of Bohemia was led by his four knights into the thick of the battle at Agincourt or Crecy, and then, like the old King, “I struck good strokes more than one,” which is manly exercise.
April 21. — This day I entertained more flattering hopes of Lady Scott’s health than late events permitted. I went down to Mertoun with Colonel Ferguson, who returned to dine here, which consumed time so much that I made a short day’s work.
Had the grief to find Lady Scott had insisted on coming downstairs and was the worse of it. Also a letter from Lockhart, giving a poor account of the infant. God help us! earth cannot.
April 22. — Lady Scott continues very poorly. Better news of the child.
Wrought a good deal to-day, rather correcting sheets and acquiring information than actually composing, which is the least toilsome of the three.
J.G.L. kindly points out some solecisms in my style, as “amid” for “amidst,” “scarce” for “scarcely.” “Whose,” he says, is the proper genitive of “which” only at such times as “which” retains its quality of impersonification. Well! I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me. I never learned grammar; and not only Sir Hugh Evans but even Mrs. Quickly might puzzle me about Giney’s case and horum harum horum. I believe the Bailiff in The Goodnatured Man is not far wrong when he says, “One man has one way of expressing himself, and another another, and that is all the difference between them.” Went to Huntly Burn to-day and looked at the Colonel’s projected approach. I am sure if the kind heart can please himself he will please me.
April 23. — A glorious day, bright and brilliant, and, I fancy, mild. Lady Scott is certainly better, and has promised not to attempt quitting her room.
Henry Scott has been here, and his canvass comes on like a moor burning.
April 24. — Good news from Brighton. Sophia is confined; both she and her baby are doing well, and the child’s name is announced to be Walter — a favourite name in our family, and I trust of no bad omen. Yet it is no charm for life. Of my father’s family I was the second Walter, if not the third. I am glad the name came my way, for it was borne by my father, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather; also by the grandsire of that last-named venerable person who was the first laird of Raeburn.
Hurst and Robinson, the Yorkshire tykes, have failed after all their swaggering, and Longman and Co. take Woodstock. But if Woodstock and Napoleon take with the public I shall care little about their insolvency, and if they do not, I don’t think their solvency would have lasted long. Constable is sorely broken down.
“Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That’s sorry yet for thee.”
His conduct has not been what I deserved at his hand, but, I believe that, walking blindfold himself, he misled me without malice prepense. It is best to think so at least, unless the contrary be demonstrated. To nourish angry passions against a man whom I really liked would be to lay a blister on my own heart.
April 25. — Having fallen behind on the 23d, I wrought pretty hard yesterday; but I had so much reading, and so many proofs to correct, that I did not get over the daily task, so am still a little behind, which I shall soon make up. I have got Nap., d — n him, into Italy, where with bad eyes and obscure maps, I have a little difficulty in tracing out his victorious chess-play.
Lady Scott was better yesterday, certainly better, and was sound asleep when I looked in this morning. Walked in the afternoon. I looked at a hooded crow building in the thicket with great pleasure. It is a shorter date than my neighbour Torwoodlee thought of, when he told me, as I was bragging a little of my plantations, that it would be long ere crows built in them.
April 26. — Letters from Walter and Lockharts; all well and doing well. Lady S. continues better, so the clouds are breaking up. I made a good day’s work yesterday, and sent off proofs, letters, and copy this morning; so, if this fine day holds good, I will take a drive at one.
There is an operation called putting to rights — Scotticè, redding up — which puts me into a fever. I always leave any attempt at it half executed, and so am worse off than before, and have only embroiled the fray. Then my long back aches with stooping into the low drawers of old cabinets, and my neck is strained with staring up to their attics. Then you are sure never to get the thing you want. I am certain they creep about and hide themselves. Tom Moore gave us the insurrection of the papers. That was open war, but this is a system of privy plot and conspiracy, by which those you seek creep out of the way, and those you are not wanting perk themselves in your face again and again, until at last you throw them into some corner in a passion, and then they are the objects of research in their turn. I have read in a French Eastern tale of an enchanted person called L’homme qui cherche, a sort of “Sir Guy the Seeker,” always employed in collecting the beads of a chaplet, which, by dint of gramarye, always dispersed themselves when he was about to fix the last upon the string. It was an awful doom; transmogrification into the Laidleyworm of Spindlestaneheugh would have been a blessing in comparison. Now, the explanation of all this is, that I have been all this morning seeking a parcel of sticks of sealing wax which I brought from Edinburgh, and the “Weel Brandt and Vast houd” has either melted without the agency of fire or barricaded itself within the drawers of some cabinet, which has declared itself in a state of insurrection. A choice subject for a journal, but what better have I?
I did not quite finish my task to-day, nay, I only did one third of it. It is so difficult to consult the maps after candles are lighted, or to read the Moniteur, that I was obliged to adjourn. The task is three pages or leaves of my close writing per diem, which corresponds to about a sheet (16 pages) of Woodstock, and about 12 of Bonaparte, which is a more comprehensive page. But I was not idle neither, and wrote some Balaam for Lockhart’s Review. Then I was in hand a leaf above the tale, so I am now only a leaf behind it.
April 27. — This is one of those abominable April mornings which deserve the name of Sans Cullotides, as being cold, beggarly, coarse, savage, and intrusive. The earth lies an inch deep with snow, to the confusion of the worshippers of Flora. By the way, Bogie attended his professional dinner and show of flowers at Jedburgh yesterday. Here is a beautiful sequence to their floralia. It is this uncertainty in April, and the descent of snow and frost when one thinks themselves clear of them, and that after fine encouraging weather, that destroys our Scottish fruits and flowers. It is as imprudent to attach yourself to flowers in Scotland as to a caged bird; the cat, sooner or later, snaps up one, and these — Sans Cullotides — annihilate the other. It was but yesterday I was admiring the glorious flourish of the pears and apricots, and now hath come the killing frost.
But let it freeze without, we are comfortable within. Lady Scott continues better, and, we may hope, has got the turn of her disease.
April 28. — Beautiful morning, but ice as thick as pasteboard, too surely showing that the night has made good yesterday’s threat. Dalgleish, with his most melancholy face, conveys the most doleful tidings from Bogie. But servants are fond of the woful, it gives such consequence to the person who communicates bad news.
Wrote two letters, and read till twelve, and then for a stout walk among the plantations till four. Found Lady Scott obviously better, I think, than I had left her in the morning. In walking I am like a spavined horse,
