Читать книгу The Highland Lady In Ireland - Elizabeth Grant - Страница 8

The opening year of the Highland Lady’s journal introduces us to the family, the estate and the neighbourhood of the market town of Blessington. Her varied entries describe family activities and the life of the tenantry on the estate; she comments on the wider world of politics and public affairs, as the Whig government disintegrates and Daniel O’Connell continues his campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union; and only in Colonel Smith’s autumn trip to St. Servans to investigate the possibility of a short term move to ‘retrench’ is there a suggestion of any change is the settled pattern of their lives.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1. A raw dark rainy day yet Hal went out to look for the harriers and was the better of the ride. No letters by the post, nor news of any consequence in the newspapers. In the morning I worked at accounts, paid all our debts; then gave Janey a musick lesson. In the evening they danced. After they went to bed I read aloud the Life of Wilberforce till half after eleven.

2. After mending Hal’s flannels I finished the year’s account —£6 odd remaining in hands. Luckily at this time of year there is no outlay. I have myself kept within bounds in my own private expenses though it was a costly year. Read Wilberforce aloud from nine to half past eleven and finished the book to our great regret for it is most extremely interesting, the first volume dull, rising in interest every volume after till you quite forgot the disagreeable plan adopted by the editor.1 It is a book to have, to be often read again, for the times he lived in were full of moment and the people he lived with those of the first note in the moral and political annals of our country—many of them known to me—many of them connected with me—and his truly religious heart, producing an uprightness almost heavenly, is a study for every Christian though to my feelings the formality of his religion is to be deprecated and his enthusiasm avoided.

3. The little girls and I went to Widow Redmond’s and to Biddy Shannon to send the children to school. How miserable was Shannon’s cabin, the two families crowded together to save fuel, the asthmatick old man and his epileptick daughter, poor Biddy with five ragged girls, the three youngest infants—one at the breast, another hardly walking—God help them. Settled the school accounts with Miss Gardiner. I must think over the best plan for increasing the number of pupils.

5. A note from Mrs. Moore, [wife of the Rector of the neighbouring parish of Kilbride] about Caroline Clarke which has greatly annoyed me. A case of real hardship to the poor girl whom I by no means forced on her. Wrote notes to several members of our new Book Club asking for their subscriptions, and then to Mrs. Moore to say that neither Sarah [her first maid] nor I wanted Caroline, that I should have been glad to have had her at the time I offered to take her but now I had engaged another.

6. It will behove me now to throw off a degree of indolence I have I think too much given way to—partly from weak health—partly from having Sarah in whom we had such confidence to trust to. I do not mean to replace her and have thus arranged the household—a cook, a housemaid who will wait on me, a nursery maid, Helen to come to do the washing and to be apart in her laundry as a day labourer—to finish it in four days—her wages 10/-a month, finding her own tea, I feeding her, and every second Saturday to scrub the nurseries for which she will get her dinner. A butler and coachman completes our establishment indoors which a very little exertion on my part will keep in good order as they are a well disposed set of people.

7. All early astir to prepare for the marriage. The Bridegroom [James the butler,] did all his morning work and then set off with his hamper of provisions to arrange his own breakfast at the Doctor’s. Tea, coffee, brown and white sugar, butter, preserved strawberries, bread, hot rolls, ham, corned beef, cake and wine. The Bride dressed all the children and cried too much to dress herself. She was very neat in a blue muslin de laine gown given her by Lady Milltown, a blue plush bonnet given her by me, a white shawl, worked cambric collar, the little girls as bridesmaids in white gloves, their Dehli scarves and all their finery, the best man looking as happy as a king and calling for jam. Poor Sarah, she has been nearly ten years with us—within a very few months—the first servant we hired in England, who took Janey from her birth. Never forget, little girls, how much Sarah has done for both of you.

It is for you, dear children, I am keeping this journal. I have often during my life done so before by starts for my mother or my sisters when we were separated, and I have often regretted that I had not continued to do it. Reading Mr. Wilberforce determined me to begin [even] at this eleventh hour. My experience of life, my love for you, all make me anxious to devote myself to your welfare, and if it should be God’s will to take your parents from you, the voice of your mother from the grave may be a guide and a protection. I am not young—and I am not strong. I shall be 43 next May, your father will be 60 in March and he has been more than 25 years in India. Happiness, comfort, and care may lead us on yet many years—but we may go sooner—before your principles are secured. An uninterrupted course of prosperity you are not to expect nor would I ask it for you. God chastens whom he loves. But I long to see your tempers so controlled, your habits of industry and activity and kindness so fixed, your hearts so truly given to God that you may be enabled to bear the sorrows and disappointments of life with patience, as sent for your good by Him—that you may avoid the temptations of prosperity, diligently examining your hearts which will direct you right if you prove them faithfully, remembering for God’s sake to do your duty in that state of life into which it shall please him to call you.

The post brought a few lines from Mrs. Jameson with a copy made by Harry of his Uncle Woosnam’s letter describing the march of the troops into Affganisthan and the taking of the Fort of Guznee at which he assisted, the object being to dethrone one murdering tyrant and place just such another on the vacant throne. A shocking kind of warfare—our disciplined troops against those poor wretches—as may be judged of from the list of mortality on both sides—we the assailants having twenty-three men killed and about eighty wounded, the defenders leaving in the fort above five hundred bodies to be buried, the wounded and the numbers slaughtered by our cavalry in attempting to escape from the walls were unknown. If this be glory it is indeed but tinsel. There seems to me to be nearly as much credit to be gained by an attack like Don Quixote on a flock of sheep—and the King Shah Souja or something for whom we made this slaughter added his own mite to the general sum of corpses by cutting off the heads of all prisoners brought to the camp during his progress.2

Mr. Fetherstone called and we had an interesting conversation after dinner. In his parish of Holywood he has a great many Protestant parishioners most zealous for their religion—ready to fight anyone opposed to it—and perfectly ignorant of its principles—equally superstitious, bigotted, intolerant, and uninstructed with their papist neighbours. I can say the same of most of whom I have had experience here and then we wonder Ireland don’t improve. Oh, Protestant clergy and landlords of this darkened land what sins of omission at least have you to answer for.

9. The Doctor walked in so much improved by his fortnight’s holidays—sad picture of the state of society in that part of the country near Kilkenny. Gentlemen all living beyond their means—proud and poor and ostentatious, badly educated, idle, dissipated, almost worthless, so drowned in debt as to be crippled in every feeling. How happy are we to have had our quiet lot cast here. A letter from John [Robinson, his brother the Agent] with account current to the end of the year. All debts paid, fifty pounds in hand and two or three of the Tenants the back half-year to pay yet—to near a hundred pounds more, that will do very well and the pay coming in February.

10. Tom Darker [the Steward] much edified with a very able article on the Corn Laws I gave him to read—admits the possibility of the system of agriculture pursued here being improvable, thinks that lighter fences, corners brought in, gates to fields, drains and rotation of crops might greatly increase the value of land; assured me he and his brother have been improving in these respects. Anne Henry from Lodgepark came to call. I should be quite satisfied with such a daughter. I want no daughter of mine to shine. I want no acknowledged beauty, no professor of any accomplishment—no learned lady—nothing remarkable, but I wish to see my girls obliging, industrious, contented, sufficiently accomplished to make their home agreeable, so intelligent as to be suitable companions to their father, their brother or their husband.

12. I have been thinking how best to encourage the school, and not being able to afford more help in money than it now costs, I have determined on giving fewer prizes— only one in each Division—and instead I shall send ten children to school. I have also resolved on resuming my regular daily business as the only possible way of keeping things in order. Monday—The washing to be given out. Clothes mended. Stores for the week given to the servants. Tuesday—work for the week cut out and arranged, my own room tidied. Wednesday—accounts, letters, papers all put by. Thursday—house-keeping, closets, storeroom, etc. arranged, bottles put by, pastry made—in short every necessary job done for the week. Friday—gardening and poor people’s wants. Saturday—put by clean clothes and school. Two hours generally does all, except on Thursday. Thus I am always ready and have plenty of time for other occupations. I also give an hour every evening to the little girls. Janey has a musick lesson every day—Annie every second day—twice a week French—twice a week English—twice a week dancing. Alas, when we see company all this happiness must be forborne, but we owe a duty to society as to other things and in its turn it must be paid and a little intercourse with our acquaintance is good both for ourselves and for our children. With friends it is delightful, and we have some even here I should be very sorry to have to part from. In the evening played some of Corelli’s solos, read aloud Mrs. Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans.

14. Janey and Miss Cooper to carry some trifles to poor Biddy Shannon and enquire how many children from Burgage are at school. A poor woman with a sickly baby came for a dispensary ticket: luckily I had some old flannel and socks of Johnny’s for the little wretched thing—and mind, dear little girls, never to throw away anything. I consider the servants sufficiently well off with their wages, well fed, well housed, and no hardship, and all old clothes I put carefully away, sure that some day some distressed persons will want them. The merest rag goes into a rag bag which when full a poor woman will sell for a few pennies. Cut out shifts and bibs for some poor—sixty yards of calico for one pound; how much comfort to be given for the price of one smart bonnet.

15. My account day very busy, brought up Tom Darker’s books to the end of the year and quite satisfied with the Farm, having sold from it upwards of two hundred pounds worth besides all the hay, corn, straw and potatoes consumed by the family.

16. Too busy moving furniture to get out; reading the paper over the fire saw ‘more insults by the French to the British flag’ somewhere on the Coast of Africa. Add this to the West Indies, the Mauritius, etc. and then this nice business in China—the Chartists—the Queen’s pecuniary embarrassments with her income of upwards of three hundred thousand a year—the disreputable character of her court composed of the needy, the frivolous, the profligate, and the weakness if not the wickedness of the ministry—what awful times.

A most unladylike letter came from Mrs. Moore to Sarah. I was quite unprepared for the extreme shabbiness, the heartlessness, the total want of gentlewomanly feeling betrayed by this extraordinary production. I was too seriously angry to be able to advise a proper answer till I had waited for near an hour and then it required a little controul to keep the reply sufficiently civil and sufficiently decided. Mrs. Moore after all is but an Irishwoman—uneducated, selfish, peremptory, unfeeling to those beneath her; she is a fair sample of her countrywomen—pleasant and ladylike in the drawing-room and the less that is known of her out of it the better.

17. I write here, my little girls, to let you see the evil consequences of want of propriety in the conduct of a mistress of a family towards her servants. You will be, I hope, too well brought up to find like poor Mrs. Moore any pleasure in the gossip of a servant; these undereducated persons are of course apt to quarrel among themselves. And be lenient in judging of them. Do not expect from uncontrolled tempers the same patience strict discipline has I hope produced in yourselves, nor imagine that uninstructed people can perform their duties as conscientiously as you would do. But endeavour by strictness and kindness to induce them to serve you well—teach them to improve themselves by your example and by your advice and by your assistance. Good books, a kind though serious reproof, and above all family prayer properly followed up will effect this in all who are worthy of remaining with you.

I do not know any part of an Irishwoman’s character that so ill bears to be scrutinised as her conduct towards her dependants generally—her servants in particular. She is capricious with her tradespeople, and exacting, and bargain-making—almost unknown to her husband’s tenants—of very little use to the poor—very fine in her own person—very niggardly in her own house—treating her servants as in other countries people do not treat dogs and her governess as no other lady would treat a servant. All the fault of education, the evils of which of course descend, rendering the lower order of Irish generally as unworthy of confidence as the upper are of intimacy. At present with the exception of Tulfarris the Hornidge family home I know of neither ladies nor gentlemen in Ireland—and even there I am not thoroughly satisfied.

18. Queen opened parliament in person with a sad silly speech—things of importance hardly touched on—about the weakest ever uttered of all those unmeaning productions. Great fears of the Chartists doing mischief in London. I can just remember walking on Windsor Terrace when a very little girl, and my brother William at school at Eton to see the old King George iii with Queen Charlotte. How much per cent has the value of royalty fallen since those days and like enough to get down to zero before very long if this silly girl has not fixed on a wise husband. We all seem tired of the folly of such a Court, really a disgrace instead of the blessing it might be.

19. Found the Doctor at home in sad distress at Mrs. Moore’s discreditable conduct. Made me promise not to whisper it even—seemed delighted I had burned her notes. Indeed I will try to forget them thinking perhaps I have judged her unfairly by a standard with which she is perfectly unacquainted, viz: the feelings of an English lady, and then her father one of the profligate though brilliant set that shone when neither religion nor morality was in fashion, her mother not to be mentioned in the line with the word lady, and herself very much spoiled by family flattery before marriage, a husband’s folly after, and too clever often to meet with an equal among her own sex; naturally of an arrogant temper, selfish and under-educated—a really fine character that has been irreparably injured.

There is such an evil spirit abroad, in all the manufacturing districts especially that it is impossible not to dread future events, and the links which used to connect the different ranks of society together have been so rudely cut asunder by the haughty bearing of the aristocracy of birth that very unkind feelings have been created between classes which might have been mutually agreeable and together most useful to the community at large. A little of the Highland manners would have done more for the good of the empire than people are perhaps aware. Who ever there thinks less of the purest blood in Europe because the hand of the highly-born is extended to every fellow creature—his table open to every person of respectability—his assistance at the command of every individual round him? All his dependants known to him by name—their well-being as much his object as that of his own family. When did anyone hear of Radicals in the Highlands? Are there any Chartists there? And where can be found such a society of gentlemen as among her chiefs and nobles. There was nothing struck me so remarkably when I first came here as the tenants marrying their children—setting them up in different trades, etc. without ever saying one word about it to their landlord. It went through their whole conduct—we were to them only the receivers of a much grudged rent. It has been my endeavour faithfully pursued through many discouragements to establish a more affectionate intercourse between us. I have certainly succeeded in a great degree—time is acting for me—and I hope you, my dear children, will assist in accomplishing the good work which will provide you with humble but true friends, and give my little Johnny an improving tenantry.

21. Mr. O’Connell telling unblushing falsehoods as usual and using language in the House such as he uses to his mobs—called to order even by the Speaker. What a disgrace to have him and his tail in a British House of Commons—an assemblage once of gentlemen.

25. Little Post girl came for the little bundle we had made up for her to help her on her way to Australia—the poor thing was going with one shift, one frock, etc. I told her what she would most want. She is a wise girl—a friendless orphan will do better there than here.

28. Janey and I walked through all the mud to school— twenty-seven children all clean and happy looking; boys reading—girls at work—three sewing beautifully. Called at Judy [Ryan’s], found it all filthy, house, people, children and pig! Poor Sarah, if she does take the vacant room there she surely will not stay long with such a crew and so nasty.

31. Most beautiful day. What a fine winter. For these windy storms do incalculable good. They dry the ground— drive away fever—clear the air of all the miasma our 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 of her cleverest men having in their after life bewailed that desultory reading results as much from idleness as from a desire for knowledge, getting through books unconnected with each other without any purpose, but amusement. To be deprecated at any age, but positively pernicious to youth, encouraging an appetite for novelty merely, unsettling the mind without much informing it, causing over-excitement followed by lassitude without any one good result.

27. Something radically wrong in the character of Sir James Mackintosh I imagine, a want of thoroughly religious principle though he had much religious feeling. He was too much disappointed in his situation at Bombay because he did not seek for it on right grounds. It was all wrong and yet I feel for him, for how desolate did I not myself feel at Bombay, how dull the parties were, how stupid the conversation, and there was great improvement since Sir James’s day but I took myself to task for my folly in expecting to find Lord Jeffrey, Mr. Horner, Charles Grant, the Duke of Gordon, Count Flahault etc. with their proper accompaniments in a distant Colony, or rather not expecting, I was not so ill informed as that implies, but feeling dull because I did not find all of talent and of polish I had left behind. Here I feel this too a little, the people are not sufficiently educated to be to me what my early friends were, but there is much worth and much talent and much kindness among them. And I have sobered myself down to be quite happy with ‘good home brewed ale’ and to think of Highland days as of a glass of champaign not often attainable.6

Walked to Blesinton with the little girls, called at Mrs. Murray’s, found them in, heard a great deal about Lord Downshire of course, met Mr. Moore in the market place, talked of our books, he has offered to lend me Sir James Mackintosh’s Essay on Ethicks which he says with the Colonel’s help I shall understand. Mr. Murray [Lord Downshire’s Agent] showed us a Temperance Medal rather handsome. It is really curious what an effect Father Matthew7 is producing, the distilleries are in many places given up, the breweries even injured. Our brewer told us he does not sell one cask of beer now for twenty he used to sell; that and the fine of five shillings really seeme to have produced great effect; that odious whiskey, it is the bane of Ireland the money spent on this abominable poison would keep each family in comfort, besides that with so excitable a people the use of spirits maddens them and puts them up to the commission of every crime.

SUNDAY, MARCH 1. Much interested in the journals of Sir J. M’s little Tours, knowing most of the places, his idea of Indian politicks so correct, projected improvements affected. Strange that I should never have seen Sir James himself though we were relations after a Highland fashion, and our families intimate and my father and he great friends. I must write you some Highland tales, dear children, or you will not know your mother well.

10. Children all went to Peeny Kelly’s who made much of them Jack in particular, he must be Squire Smith again, no Colonels for her, he must live in his own place among his own people and he will always have plenty for they always had plenty before him. Very likely, when the property was twice as large as it is now.

15. How excessively beautiful is the English of Junius, 8 I never studied it before having only known it read in bits by my father as was his custom with most Authours he liked from whom he used to select passages for our evening’s amusement. What pains my father took with us, it did not strike us when we were young, it was done so easily, so much as a part of his own occupations. But every hour since I was separated from him, I have felt the value of early constant intercourse with such a mind as his. We were his companions in all his pursuits—his assistants as far as our powers admitted. What we could comprehend he always so fully explained, yet he led us to enquire for ourselves, seldom either giving us short roads to knowledge, he often let us take a great deal of pains to find out what he could very easily have told us.

John Hornidge called quite in a bustle about the Election for Poor Law Guardian, having nominated Colonel Smith and taken a world of pains to secure his return in opposition to one Riley set up by the Priests. He tried hard to get Hal to promise to accompany him to-morrow to canvass some respectable farmers in Lacken. Sacred musick the first part of the evening, Lord Byron afterwards.

16. I think my self my little hub is acting Coriolanus a little bit, however he says he won’t move; if the black-guards elect him he will do his best for them but he won’t solicit one of their most sweet voices. They all know he has consented to the nomination.9

19. We met the priest Father Germaine whose Curate has been so busy setting up this Riley, he very much wanted to pass us appearing in the extreme of hurry, but Hal would not let him off. ‘How are you, Mr. Germaine’? He was obliged to answer though he quickened his pace. ‘Has your Curate been very successful in his canvass?’ ‘I believe not, Sir’, said the poor priest quite taken aback; it was too bad. Coming home my heart filled thinking of all the happiness that awaited us, business going forward everywhere, the ploughman in the field, the labourers splashing [trimming] the hedges, the farm yard full. It is really enjoying life to live as we do.

31. Tumult in the family on account of thefts from the pantry, so many cakes taken away yesterday, the two girls suspected but in the absence of proof could accuse none so we called the whole household together. Would allow no one to speak, only listen to a pretty severe rebuke; fancied that we saw guilt on the two faces.

Hal and I walked all about to see what the men were doing, some fencing, some potato planting. Beautiful weather, all prospering round us. Both Hal and I bore the success of the priests and Mr. Riley in the poor law business with equanimity.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1. Hal and I walked to Russboro’, found Lady Milltown in and so agreeable we staid an hour hearing her talk. In praise of John Robinson as a man of business and talent and as a gentleman. Against the priests and the Irish generally. About the queen and her temper!

6. The Doctor and Tom Darker amusing us with the Priest’s denuciations in the chapel against Colonel Smith and anyone who voted for him as a Poor Law guardian in opposition to the Candidate of the true faith. He called on most of our tenants, threatened all, and rated all, yet all but two voted for their landlord. Dempsey stoutly insisted that he would, he did not care, he would vote for the man who gave him his land, and he let the priest understand that it would be as well to give over abusing him for he was not the man that would bear it, the Curate struck him when Dempsey turning to the Priest advised him to look after that young man of his for so sure as he ever laid hands upon him again so sure would he knock him down.

They told Farrell the carpenter that if he did not vote for their candidate they would not let him enter their chapel, on which he observed there were other places of worship he could get into without any leave from them. They have refused to christen a child of James Carney’s the mason on the same account without he pay them most exorbitant fees. All this is most agreeable to me, the tighter they strain the cord the sooner will it snap. The roused feeling of the people too is really comforting, a ray of light in the darkened land.

The Doctor a good judge says it is surprising the change among the people latterly in their estimation of the priests they are losing much of their fear for them and all their respect. Tom Darker says the same thing, that they talk of their priests now in a way they would never have dreamed of doing a year or two ago. I think nay I feel sure that if we protestants did our duty, if we acted up to our principles, if the landlords visited and assisted and became acquainted with their tenantry and our clergy laboured with zeal in their vocation, there would be few papists in this country in twenty years.

14. Another summer day but windy. Paddy the gardener who had been absent yesterday without leave (whiskey drinking of course) at his work again. Hal went in to the Sessions having heard a bad account of Judy Ryan and her sister big Ellen quarrelling and fighting and drinking, taken up by the police at last.

16. Hal off on a crusade against the impertinent interference of the Roman Catholic priest with his tenantry, party work, political scheming beginning here where till now we never had any of it. Tenants who voted with and for their landlord denounced from the altar, harrassed in every way. So on the priest and on the tenants the Colonel means to call, to request of the first not to trouble themselves with what should not concern them, to tell the second to mind what they are about, to inform all that such as are not thoroughly for him he shall henceforth consider as against him and treat accordingly, he never till now interfered with them one way or another, but war having been proclaimed he will not blink the fight. If there were more like him we should not have the country priest-ridden the way it is. The poor people are well inclined and would be happy and prosperous if those vile priests would let them alone. Well, he found Father Ricard the curate at home, Father Germaine was not at home, and he told him quite plainly all he had heard and all he thought of what he had heard and all he certainly should do in consequence and he does not think they will continue their agitation hereabouts. At first the little priest tried to shuffle off the accusation but at last he was obliged to admit its truth though he excused it as an incidental flourish in an admonitory harangue concerning dues which I am delighted to find they are beginning to find some difficulty in collecting.

Mrs. John Hornidge called looking most wretched, so very fine too, just like a corpse dressed up for the grave in Italy in all the family splendour!

17. These wild people all gone mad, nothing but fighting in Baltiboys during these odious holidays. Andy Hyland beat and bruised in a most shocking manner by four strangers on the Ballymore road who insisted they owed him a beating though they would not say for what. Red Paddy Quin and big Pat his cousin a regular fight unknown for what. Pat Ryan and James Ryan both on lame James Quin for some mistake about a cart. Pat Ryan and Paddy the gardener at midnight on Monday quarrelling in Blesinton breaking people’s windows keeping half the town up. Judy Ryan and her sister Ellen throwing pewter pots at some men’s heads in a publick house and worst of all Dempsey his four daughters, George Cairns, his wife, and others setting on James Ryan with stones and broomsticks and pitch forks because they were displeased at his having hired a certain field. Shall we live to tame in any degree such savages.

18. Lovely day, played with Johnny, saw the little girls off on the donkeys for the post, then went to put away the clean clothes and then to start on my tour of lecturing. Pat Ryan and Judy his wife, James Ryan and his wife, George Cairns and his wife, Bryan Dempsey three of his daughters and two sons, Mary Dodson, Judy Ryan etc. all required it and all got it, all acknowledged they were wrong but did not seem inclined to do right again, all thanked me for the respect shown them in my taking the trouble to come to speak to them, none were uncivil, so I shall continue paying this respect in hopes that by constantly showing an interest in them and watching over them and advising them kindly we may in time improve their tempers. If I could but keep the women quiet, make them peace-makers instead of wranglers, keepers at home instead of gadders abroad and induce them to have their homes comfortable. We shall see, live in hope as they say, but these people are so untamed, and then their unfortunate religion and those priests.

27. A great parcel of Club books, came, Sydney Smith’s works10 in three octave volumes. Life of Sir Walter Scott in ten small ones.11 I had read this last before with such pleasure that I look forward to many delightful evenings reading it aloud. We began it after tea, read the fragment by Sir Walter himself with much interest and Mr. Lockhart’s stupid first chapter. It is more pleasant to me than to many from my knowing so many of the people mentioned. William Clerk so intimate at my father’s, so clever, alas! that I should have to add so indolent. I recollect one summer evening that he was drinking tea with us when we lived in George street that he was describing the confession of a felon who was on trial for murder which he related in so impressive a manner that when he drew the paper knife across [my sister] Mary’s throat in illustration of the story half of us screamed with horrour so entirely had he rivetted our attention. His memory was so extraordinary his information so extensive that people unable to believe that he really did know everything accused him of reading in the morning to prepare a set of subjects and then artfully turning the conversation at dinner like Sheridan to the point that suited him. If he had talked less one might have fancied this but he never let anything pass as far as I remember and we met him almost daily for years.

He was an oddity like his still cleverer brother Lord Eldin, so were the delightful old sisters, all of them foolishly fond of animals, the house was full of beasts, cats in pelisses, dogs in spencers, eating and drinking all over the rooms, often sitting on the tops of their heads and their shoulders. Lord Eldin had a most valuable collection of pictures, his whole house was one gallery, his port-folios of sketches were still more valuable, he had no greater pleasure in a spare hour than looking over some of these treasures even with us young people, explaining to us the beauties of the art and the defects of the particular painter.12 Edinburgh was in those days a school for the young mind to be formed in. I did not make the use I might have done of very uncommon opportunities, but it was impossible for the most careless not to derive permanent benefit from constant intercourse with society so talented.

28. Lovely and very busy day Hal off to the Sessions, then one of the school children ran down to say the Inspector had arrived there so Jane Cooper [the governess], the little girls and I went up to meet him. He is newly appointed to this district and expressed himself much pleased with the size and cheerfulness of the room, the cleanliness of the children whose appearance he considered superiour to any he had seen. His wife who examined the work praised it highly, she had seen some as neat, none so clean. I mentioned several things to him in which I considered the Board had not used me fairly and he gave me good hopes of redress in time, more particularly as to assistance towards the repairs of the schoolhouse which thus encouraged I shall apply for again.

Hal’s Sessions business was a grand affair. Kearns and Dempsey and James Ryan and all their assistants and all their witnesses, furious with one another, Dempsey most impudent to the Colonel who made him make a most ample apology in open Court. How low is morality among these people. Kearns let his grazing to James Ryan and knew that Ryan was to pay the money for it to the Colonel to whom Kearns owed that and much more for rent. Two days after he let the same ground to Dempsey and accompanied him to John Robinson’s office in Dublin and saw him there pay the hire of it. Dempsey knowing of the former transaction as many persons say though he has sworn a solemn oath on the Testament that he did not. It is all very shocking.

29. It is singular that with the great intimacy described by Mr. Lockhart to have existed between Lord Jeffrey13 and Sir Walter Scott that so constantly as we, that is [my sister] Jane and I, were with Lord Jeffrey, almost living at Craig Crook during the summer months, I never saw Sir Walter there nor in all our many delightful conversations did I ever hear his name mentioned. Not so William Clerk, his intimacy with Scott certainly was not so close in after life as it had been in their earlier days, but it continued and I often heard him talk of Abbottsford (sic) and of the novels which he never hesitated to affirm bore internal evidence of their Authour till he was let into the secret when he never afterwards gave an opinion upon them. Tommy Thompson14 too had cooled in his friendship and many other Whigs, probably politicks divided these clever men, for party then ran very high in Scotland. People in Edinburgh were also apt to get into sets, and to have so many engagements with one another that they really had no leisure to spend out of their own circle.

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 for her wages after all this, 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. Paddy very penitent, I very serious with him, his fine of 2/6 seems to have but little effect, if he does not reform we really must look about for another gardener as valuable things might be destroyed by a day and night’s neglect.

THURSDAY JULY 2. We had taken such a long drive last night that we proposed to give ourselves only a short one this evening and were just setting out when Doctor Eckford [their old Indian friend] drove up to the door. Very little changed in the ten years that have passed since we parted in the ‘Isle of France’, [Mauritius].

7. Doctor Eckford went by the caravan after much too short a stay for he is very agreeable in a house from his constant cheerfulness. He has overturned all I have been doing these ten years in less than so many days having infected my restless husband with such a desire to economise in France instead of at home that, his own inclination for such a scheme being very great, I feel it is more than probable he will yield to the temptations of a fine climate and the society of an old friend. If it will make him happier why should he not do it, he certainly would save in two years or at most three as much as would entirely relieve him from every embarrassment, and give us a little ready money besides, while here it is almost impossible to contract our expenses sufficiently as the occupations which make his life agreeable to him are all of a very expensive kind. Whether an idle life in a foreign country would suit him as well I have my fears. We must both take a little time seriously to reflect on all the circumstances of our position and when our minds are made up act with decision.

17. Never was such horrid weather. Heard of poor Major Hornidge’s death. Alas, thus do our old friends leave us. Tom Darker spoke of it with tears.

19. Mr. Foster preached a sort of funeral sermon of which I could make very little. It was certainly his own for it was full of flourishes, splendid descriptions in flowery metaphorical language leading to nothing. Hal grieves in earnest for the poor Major, his last remaining old friend in this country, whom he served under in the Yeomanry during the rebellion [of 1798], who was consistently kind to him under every circumstance, he was as the sermon said a model for a country gentleman. A good Landlord, a kind master, an accommodating neighbour, as a husband, a father, a friend most exemplary. Many will long feel his loss, he was my boy’s Godfather and should we be so far favoured by God as to rear our dear child to manhood we may propose this good kind man to him as an example, for his life exhibited most Christian virtues, his end was that of the righteous.

20. Wrote to Mr. Fetherstone to ask him to tea. He came and the Doctor and two old Mr. Murray’s with two wives and six young people making a party of twenty-one. We had a long tea table, plenty of dancing, then wine and water and all seemed very happy. The Doctor was most good-natured doing all he could to keep up the fun, but the two curates declined dancing as too frivolous an act for the clerical profession and the two Carrolls on account of being in deep mourning, a mistake on the one part and folly on the other. What can be the sin of a clergyman standing up to dance with children in a small and perfectly private party, and when did young men ever introduce their feelings into society. Annoying a whole set of people for a piece of self ceremony, for they are quite able to laugh and eat most heartily black crepe and all!

28. I am not quite sure that I like the St. Servans plan but I see very plainly that Hal prefers it to circumscribing his expenses here and honest Tom Darker will manage for him so faithfully that the utmost will be made of the ground and we shall take the opportunity of getting quit of several insolvent tenants whom it would not be so agreeable to turn out while we were living among them, as they are all ill living reckless people quite inclined to be mischievous as well as drunken and idle. I therefore mean to consider the plan as set.

30. Another lovely day. Paddy the gardener absent all yesterday, having had some money given him to buy meal, he has sent in the keys this morning, knowing he has dismissed himself. Unfortunate creature, after so many warnings, but go he must, he is unfit to be trusted with any plants of value, and it would be wrong to others to forgive him.

SATURDAY AUGUST 1. A very beautiful day, delightful for hay-making, excellent for ripening the crops which are very heavy. I in the garden with John Kearns who must do for the present at least, till we are more settled whether to go abroad or to stay. Hal and I looking over accounts and calculating what saving we could effect by breaking up our establishment, what expenses we must leave behind us, how we should arrange our plans. Paid Paddy the gardener in full, sending him off between ready money and savings book with £13. He who came here ragged and starving, there will be little remaining this day week.

8. The heat so oppressive there is no stirring out till after seven in the evening, yet the Colonel will go out to look at his hay and in consequence is feeling his side. It is very odd, but I never yet knew any man who had the least sense in his conduct with regard to himself, their knowledge that certain things are hurtful to them does not seem to make the least difference—they appear to have no power of control over themselves. I am sure I hope dear Hal you will read this and think of it and without getting angry just consider whether it is likely we should have you long well in a French climate with French fruits without a horse.

10. Johnny was out in the morning and in such extravagant spirits in the afternoon he appeared as crazy as Prince Louis Napoleon22 who tried to get up a little revolution in Boulogne with five men and ten horses out of a steam boat and an edict ready drawn up proclaiming M. Thiers his prime minister, it was all over in a couple of hours, and they were all half drowned trying to escape.

18. Poor Law Commission sat again, Hal sent John Darker not being able to move himself. On the whole it all seems to be fairly done, a very just value laid on lands and houses too, generally speaking and a very fair attention paid to such corrections as persons of superiour local knowledge propose. And Riley the Colonel’s opponent! An admirable guardian, one of the best of them. Wide awake, shrewd, intelligent, and quite acquainted with the value of property. We got our house lowered and some of the bad land planted on the top of the hill. The tax will by no means fall heavy, it is not known, but the Commissioner supposes about three per cent. The landlord besides his own rate for his own house and grounds etc. will pay for each tenant the half of what his farm and tenements are rated at. We expect to have to pay about £20 yearly, not so much as we spend now by many a good pound, doing but little either towards lessening the evils of poverty, which to say the truth are principally brought on the people by their own vices, for a more improvident, idle set of human beings never were collected in a plentiful land. And then being taught by their priests to believe that the more they suffer here the less they will have to endure in purgatory, they are deprived of any stimulus to exertion.

Lord Milltown and John Hornidge unfortunately came to very high words yesterday at the meeting which is a pity, Lord Milltown was quite wrong in an observation he made regarding some valuation he was inconsiderate enough to call unfair and John Hornidge retorted in a passion instead of gravely. How invaluable in every relation of life, private and public, is a perfect command of temper; remember this, my own dear boy, in case I do not live to help you. A country gentleman, which we look forward to your making yourself, ought more particularly to be very guarded on this count, so many little irritating accidents are apt to happen to him both in the management of his own affairs and in his intercourse with his neighbours, they are a class very apt to fall out without care about their roads and their assessments and their different jobs, and to do good a man must have influence, and to have influence he must have temper, it would be all in good order always with all of us if our hearts were rightly with God.

29. Hal drew up the minutes for his will which he wishes to make before leaving home. Neither he nor I having any foolish superstitions about these things but both of us liking to have all our affairs so arranged that in case of accident all may be found in good order, properly settled that there may be neither trouble nor perplexity left behind us. He read the rough draft over to me and it appears to me to be extremely just, very proper in every respect, and very, very kind to me, proving that he really has confidence both in my affection and in my prudence. Still woman is but woman and in matters of business even where the good of her own children is concerned she requires the counsel of a sterner mind, so we agreed that he should ask Richard Hornidge to undertake a joint charge.

If it be my lot to survive you, my dear, kind Hal, I will endeavour to the utmost to fulfil every wish of yours, to do as I think you would like to have done, and you may depend upon my paying to the few relations you value the same respect and the same attention as I believe you have always seen me show to them. And I sometimes wish that it may be my lot for you would be very wretched without me, encumbered with business and frightened about the children and lonely, and if you were ill how wretched you would be without her who for so many years has been your anxious attendant.

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 2. Hal wrote his Will over fair on one of the printed papers and signed it in presence of the Doctor, and Tom Darker, who subscribed it as Witnesses. He leaves all his property to Johnny, and with a portion of £2,500 each to the dear little girls.

5. We consider that the sale of our horses and our carriages will take us over to France and give us a good sum besides to have by us for accidents and that the pay—£320—will keep us there well. The gross rent of the property here is about £380—head rents, cess23, pensions, wages, &c., all the necessary expenses that must be left upon it, allowing for bad rents, etc., £350—leaving John £630 to lay up annually, besides the profits of the farm, which must at least be another £100. And then, if we are so lucky as to let the house, we might allow ourselves the rent of it, as John would certainly have £600 a year, maybe more, to pay our little debt of a £1,000 with. So that if we tire of the Continent in two years we can come home rather more than free, and if we can stay a third year, we shall have near £1,000 in our pockets. So Hal is right, and the scheme is a good one when looked fairly in the face, and all set down in black and white figures arithmetically. Yet all my heart is in Baltiboys, rain and all I wish to live and die here.

7. Took a long walk: went to school and was much pleased. Called in by Tom Kelly to see his new haggard. His whole range of offices is very complete, well laid out, well built and most creditable to him. He is in despair at the Colonel going away. So are they all, poor people. Old Mrs. Tyrrell came to give up her land looking wretchedly ill. She has made some arrangement with Mick Tyrrell, which the Colonel seems to approve of, and which I hope may be agreed on, as the poor old woman would have her cabin and garden for life and a little turf, and be rid of her ill-tilled field, which keeps her in poverty and pays us no rent, and thus another patch would be got quit of, which fits in very well to little Tyrrell’s good farm.

9. Miserable night of asthma—in consequence of taking a tumbler of negus at night, eating meat at dinner and taking no exercise. Medicine won’t do alone—he must abstain from wine and meat till the stomach come round again; he was still suffering so much at six o’clock that he sent to tell the Doctor he should not go this day; but he got better, and the day was fine with the wind in his favour, and the Doctor came and revived his spirits; so they started at one o’clock. He never looked up once after turning from the hall door, and we—how desolate we were—for of later years I have been spoiled, he has never left us, and this month that we are to be alone seems to me as if it would be endless. Frank came back by nine o’clock, his master was off in good spirits.

10. Began the round of visits I intend to make before leaving the Country, and took the Burgage side first. The Redmonds seem pretty comfortable; the eldest married daughter in a good place, paying the Mother for caring her fine child, and though receiving neither money nor kindness from her husband, able to maintain herself perfectly without him. The second daughter married too rather in a hurry we think, and so well—to a woollen draper’s shopman, quite a lift in the world—but when it happened and how she and her baby came so unexpectedly upon the scene so immediately after the announcement of the husband seems queer, however married she is and well, and has a comfortable lodging, and has taken her little sister Margaret to live with her. Biddy, too, is with a laundress, so only the two least girls are at home. Mick always in work, and always dutiful to his Mother, so is her eldest son; her third son little help to her, but able to support himself, and she has a little boy as good as Mick. The house is in good repair, clean and decent, and she is so industrious there is no fear but that the worst days of that family are over. The poor Delanys looked miserable, their house a ruin and the two sick old people seated each side their chimney in patient misery. They have a little crop, straw enough to thatch the house, hay enough for the cow, the two little wee boys beginning to be some help to them, three daughters in good places, two at home—one must stay to mind those old cripples, but the other must get a place. Hal has left some warm clothing for the old man, and I must do something to enable them to get over the winter; it is heart-breaking to think of what will become of the creatures when we are away—it is the good dinner that has kept old Delany alive and free from pain so long. Then to the dear old cottage now almost a ruin, so dirty, so damp, windows overgrown with the creepers we trained so neatly, papers peeling off the walls, damp breaking through the ceilings, garden a wilderness. Mary Fitzpatrick wants what I can’t give her—a contented temper—always fretting for evils she can’t cure, and forgetting her many comforts. She would marry a Widower with three children, but only two of them are thrown upon her, and he is kind to her and a good workman. She has two nice babies of her own, wants nothing from me but a small supply of medicine, for her health is certainly very bad and most likely the principal cause of her fretfulness.

14. We walked up Burgage Lane to pay all remaining visits there, and found a great improvement in its inhabitants since we first remember them. All thriving except old Shannon, suffering from asthma, and Henry Wall’s family, who don’t look so well off as they used to do. The wife is too fond of tea; she has another baby, so I sent her physick. Mary Doolen I will leave a little money for with Tom Darker to be given to her occasionally.

15. The Doctor tells me Lord Milltown could not come home just now, that he can live at Leamington while the £200 he has just won will last, and what he will do after that nobody can tell; he is unable to raise money to pay the renewal fines of some farms on his wife’s property, the leases of which have fallen in, so that her income will be lessened for the future; and he knows the authour of Harry Lorrequer24 a class fellow of his own, a wild, very clever, hare-brained creature, who himself played off many of the tricks he describes, now living at Brussels, I fear not very creditably, since his present employment is fleecing Hugh Henry at Ecartez.

17. Great commotion in the yard, Mary Highland having been seen at the peach trees. I gave it them well at all sides, being very angry and for sundry reasons of my own being very glad of an opportunity publickly to find fault with her. Tom Darker has distrained the three bad Tenants, Kearns, Doyle and Quin.25

25. No letter from Hal by the early post, the second brought me his first from St. Servans. Says if I like he will return to sweet Baltiboys, where perhaps we might economise just as well as anywhere else after all. I will say the word, he may depend upon it, too happy to get him back at this small cost to the place where he is best and happiest, and where he ought to be. And may God grant that this new trial, backed by so many more equally unsuccessful, may cure his restless temper, which I sincerely believe was at the bottom of this whim, though he fancied it resulted from prudence. The dreadful society is worse in my eyes than the ugly, wretched seaport. What could he expect from a set of people among whom Dr. Eckford figured chief. Henry Robertson is so captivated by the scenery and the air here, that he seriously thinks of coming to live in Dublin or near it. His £800 a year, which is a bare maintenance for them in Edinburgh, would enable them to keep a carriage here; he says that if we could gather a little knot of Indians about us, we might laugh at the world.

27. The Doctor came and carried me to Henry Wall’s wife to see whether she would do for Mrs. Cotton, Mary Nowlan having become so intolerable they cannot keep her. The old Irish story: for the first six weeks no one could behave better, but as soon as the good feeding had given her spirits and she had got some clothes and a little money, her senses seem to have deserted her. First she wanted five meals a day, she having never had but two in her cabin, and they only potatoes, with very seldom milk to them; then beer at command, which in her life before she never could have tasted; then angry at getting no presents; then sulky at the English nurse insisting that the baby should be kept cleaner, etc., etc. How can one help these creatures? And Mary Wall, whom we found to-day actually without sufficient clothes to cover her, will be perhaps just as absurd in her turn. Patience, time and care may improve at least the young.

29. John had no difficulty with the poor creatures whose crops he seized. He left them all that they would require for the support of their families, merely took what they would have improperly otherwise disposed of, and before May comes, when they will be dispossessed, we must see to get something done for them. Farm they never will—Quin from vice and Kearns from folly, and Doyle from something between the two. Doctor called to hear about the Colonel, as indeed he has done most days, and to ask me if I wanted money. Took a long walk, gave Mary Wall good advice and something better.

30. Not quite so comfortable a month as many, Hal having given his health another shake, not a very safe thing at his age, and spent money instead of saving it; but if it teach him wisdom we won’t grudge it; his own warm, luxurious, happy home is the place for him at his age with his health, and, when he sees the good train his affairs are now in, I think he will not again be tempted to wander.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 15. A melancholy end to the St. Servans expedition, [the Colonel being bed-ridden with asthma for a fortnight after his return] but one to be expected, for change of air very seldom suits his asthmatick disposition. He has had a great shake, and he is not recovering from it so well as he used to do. A warning to him to take better care of his valuable life, and stay in the home filled with comforts suited to his age.

17. I must get to the garden, now looking as it used to do under Paddy reformed—his temperance medal and the entreaties of himself and friends having softened my hard heart after some weeks of obduracy, for I was very angry with him. We had the Duke of Wellington’s Life here by Maxwell from our club—very badly done, I though—and now Beckford’s Travels, which the Colonel tells me are equally stupid. We ought to have a new round of books ordered, these being out; but our indolent secretary [Ogle Moore] is too busy rocking his babies and fondling his wife to attend to any thing besides—how can we expect him to mind a book society when he neglects his parish?

19. Old Mrs. Grant sent us some periodicals to amuse the Colonel, among them a number of Chambers’ Magazine, with which I am delighted. How is it that the Scotch always get to the top of every thing—do all best—early education of temper and habits, as well as school learning.

24. The Doctor was quite agitated yesterday in telling us of a most shocking piece of negligence—worse—neglect of positive duty in our Vicar and Curate. A girl thirteen years of age, for whom they are receiving an annuity from the County, allowed to live among papists, unacquainted with the nature of an oath, remembered two years ago to have said some prayers, etc. This shocks him and others because it came before them in a Court of Justice, where her testimony could not be received by the magistrates on account of her ignorance; but I could rake up fifty such cases or such like, where the total inattention of our clergy is every day increasing evils that a generation of better care will not eradicate. And people wonder that the reformed religion does not spread here. I wonder it is tolerated—it seems to fail to produce even in gentlemen an idea of their duty. What effect can it have on the poor. Mr. Moore is greatly more culpable than Mr. Foster—he knows his duty, which the other poor creature really does not—poor Ireland!

30. Poor Sarah spent her night in tears. She is fretting herself to death, and I feel for her leaving us after eleven years happy service, and I feel for myself losing such an affectionate and useful creature; and though I do not value James equally, thinking he has some of the cuteness and plenty of the selfishness of an Irishman, I full well feel that as a servant we can never hope to replace him. The whole house is weeping.

31. The last day of October—upon the whole a very harassing month to me. We were too prosperous, all was going on too brightly with us, we needed some little check to keep us in mind that we are but pilgrims and sojourners here below and can’t expect always to travel in pleasant places or in sunny weather. I hope, and I firmly believe, that the worst is over.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 2. I am no worldly mother, dear children, I wish for no splendour for any of you. If my two dear girls marry men of worth with a profession which their talents and industry will enable them to live comfortably by and to leave their children in the same station they hold themselves, it is all that I desire. A small establishment, some years of strict economy, would be no objections with me, but I think we owe it to our parents and to our children not to sink them below their birth, which we most certainly do when we cannot educate them for and in that rank in society they have a right to join.

3. Old Lord Seafield dead26 my Chief—puffed off in the papers as a noble Earl, which indeed he was, but it was a dignity he and his family and his race and his people think very secondary indeed to his being the head of the Clan Grant. In my young days, at least, and in our part of the Highlands the clannish feeling was as ardent as ever it could have been, though they tell me it is wearing out like other good old things that don’t seem to me to be replaced by better.

7. Hal rode and I walked, and then came the butcher with a quarter of beef and a poor man with a quarter of veal, which he had overbled and had to kill. I remember thinking it very disagreeable in your grandpapa, children, my dear father, that he made me, when I had grown up, attend the cutting up of the meat. The sight of so much raw flesh and the smell made me nearly sick at first, and I thought I should never learn the names of the pieces, nor understand where to look for them all. ‘If you don’t marry a rich man,’ said Grandpapa, ‘you will thank me for this.’ ‘Even if she do,’ said Grandmama. ‘she will not be the worse for her servants knowing she understands her business.’ I was a foolish little girl in some things. I used to faint when I saw blood, so Grandpapa made me attend the Doctor whenever he had to bleed any one, and very soon I could hold the cups and even assist him in many surgical operations. It is mere selfishness prevents women being thus useful. Nature intends them for nurses, and if they thought more of the sufferings they could relieve than of the unpleasantness to themselves, they would soon lose their nervousness.

8. Jane Cooper quite shocked at my family troubles. Caroline requiring more rubbing in consequence of disobeying the Doctor’s injunction—little naughty girl, one would have thought her seven weeks’ penance would have frightened her. And Mary Byrne needing several more ablutions before she will be free from a swarm of very unpleasant companions. Decent and clean as she looks with a neat bonnet and shawl and two tidy gowns, she has but one shift—one petticoat—so she must wash, and I must lay out her money for her in Linen if she is to stay here. Absentees, you ought to be at home instructing these poor savages.

Father Matthew to preach at Black Ditches to-day. Such crowds already on the road, the hill and the bridge swarming. All the country will be there; and no one before him ever did so much good to it, already rags are disappearing, the people are looking fat, clear, clean and more cheerful. In Blesinton, where I know every second house once sold whiskey, there are not above three in the whole town now where it is to be had. Coffee, tea and bread to be had in the teetotal shops instead, and on a market day quantities of meat bought. Drinking was the curse of the country, it is by no means so poverty stricken as it looked. The means of the people for the most part were fully adequate to their comfort, but they wasted in riot what would have supported their families well. I have known a farmer take his oats to market and spend every shilling of the price of them in whiskey before he left it. Punch and a pipe—that was the Irish comfort, and to enjoy it he sat in a ruined cabin in a ragged dress by a cold hearth, with a starving set of children round him.

9. Little girls and Miss Cooper went to church, so did Marianne—and didn’t some home again, leaving us to get our dinner as we could. So I sent for her and scolded her well. My former gentle fault-finding making no impression on any of them, they never believed me in earnest. Mary, too, remained at chapel till five o’clock to take the pledge. The Doctor called in on his way to dine at Tulfarris. He had been talking to Father Matthew, and says he is a gentlemanly, nice-looking man about forty. None of the people hereabouts much disposed to follow him, but their priests make them. I wonder what becomees of all the money collected—the poorest person pays 1/– for the medal, the better sort 2/6 or more, and near a million have bought them.

16. My new maid Mary Byrne, who seemed so good a servant and had endeavoured to do all her work to my satisfaction, has got her head turned already. On Saturday she could not eat her dinner—a stew of beef and cabbage. To-day she declined washing the clothes without assistance, so I desired her to return to her cabin—such sort of tempers not suiting me. All spring and the early part of summer they had only one meal a day, and she was working out in the fields on 6d a day without food when I was struck with her tidy appearance. How can one help such creatures?

17. Dull morning. About half after seven Mary Byrne sent me word that she would stay with me still if I would give her help. I was very angry, ordered her off without delay and sent for Nancy Fox to come and wash for me. They are most extraordinary people.

28. Getting ready for John Robinson, who came by the mail at 11 and had all his business over by dinner time. The tenants paid well with the exception of Pat Quin in the Bottoms, who never will be made anything of, and Kearns. Little Doyle paid up all arrears, his fright having made him industrious—that and the Temperance pledge. Old Mrs. Tyrrell has given up her little holding to Mick Tyrrell, one of the most thriving farmers in the place. Commons, as usual, had a mere nothing to give—three or four pounds and his tickets for butter.

30. John off to Commons early to distrain his goods and began in form to make an inventory of stock and crop amounting in value to several hundred pounds, when the old wretch told him he might take whatever would make up the rent at Mr. John Darker’s valuation. So John helped us to two good milch cows, a yearling and some oats—altogether equal to the nine months rent owing. Why the old creature did not sell his things himself at the different fairs and markets and bring the money decently it would be hard to say.

John says that in the King’s County when he is receiving Lady Milltown’s rents the tenants will pay a small proportion, fall on their knees, declare they cannot pay another penny, a thousand excuses from different pieces of ill-fortune, when he calls in the Driver, orders him to proceed immediately to distrain their goods, and then from out of some secret pocket comes the whole rent to a fraction. They are the strangest people! What has made them so it would be hard to tell: maybe misgovernment and certainly want of education and most indubitably the priesthood; but here they are, neither honest nor truthful nor industrious and full of wild fearful passions that won’t be rooted out for many generations.

The poor Delanys, who owe a dozen years’ rent, gave up their bit of ground at once and were forgiven their £15 or £16, which they were quite incapable of making in their best day, and now the old man’s ill-health and the old woman’s want of energy, for she is not so old or so weakly but what she could very well earn her bread, were it not for an indolent habit and the frightful doctrine that the more she suffers here, the less will she suffer hereafter. John got altogether upwards of £220. Rutherfurd and Williams have still to pay—another hundred nearly—and all the Bills we have in Dublin won’t be quite a hundred, so that leaving me £60 for present expenses he will have a very nice little sum in hand, £150 I think, which we will not touch if we can help, that we may have a little ready money by us. We felt it so very uncomfortable to be run so close. Before the end of February pay will come again, and before any more bills are due in May, both rent and pay will come, and another good balance I hope after clearing all debts may be added to the sum in Bank, so we shall get on capitally, and if we could but get more land into our own hands we should really make a fortune. By taking advantage of every windfall, I hope in time we may manage this.

TUESDAY DECEMBER 8. Dempsey has been most extremely disagreeable about the same piece of ground of Kearns’ that he was so unruly about in spring, 27threatening James Ryan and his whole family, getting Counsel’s opinion, going to the Sessions, and using such language himself and his daughters to everyone whom he thinks fit to consider of the opposite faction. Altogether he is a regular savage, and threatens to be very troublesome.

Miss Gardiner called upon me in great distress to know how to conduct herself in the following circumstances: since the measles broke out, she has never got her school gathered again. On going to enquire for her different scholars, she was told they should not return, for that I had burned all their Roman Catholic catechisms, that their priest was informed of it, that he was exceedingly angry and determined to make a great noise about it. She wanted to know whether she should call upon him to refute their folly, but, after considering a minute, I told her not. I bid her take no notice of the story whatever, and if the priest called on her to make enquiries, to take him extremely coolly, merely to say the tale was not true, and that there were no catechisms in the school, none being allowed to be taught there by the rules. I think it not unlikely that the tale may have originated with the priests themselves. They do not like my school, they do not like the knowledge the children gain there, nor the attachment they feel for me. They are beginning to find their power shaking, and they are trying desperate plans to retain it. How difficult it is to do good here. Much can’t be done in this generation.

19. Finished six shifts and six nightcaps and sent them to Mr. Foster for the six old women on the Church list and have determined on endeavouring to alter the arrangement concerning the charity money. At present it is given in single shillings to any of them who beg hard or on the first Sunday in the month they each get three or four. They are all in rags, all starving, lodge where they can, and spend this money on the people who let them in and in tea, snuff, etc. I will myself give no money to be so misapplied, and as our Vicar takes no sort of trouble with his parish nor any one else, as I have the Curate’s ear, I’ll try and do what good I can, and for a beginning give them all linen instead of putting a sum of money in the Box on Christmas day. Went to Peggy Nary, who is much in want of Christmas comforts. She is Hal’s pensioner, but I look after her for him, and before many days she will be very comfortable.

25. Christmas day. What a pity—I forgot teetotalism when I mixed the puddings, and not one of the outside men would taste them. Now when those unruly people have such self-command where they think it a sin to yield to temptation, is it not plain that properly educated they would be a fine and a moral race, almost equally plain that those thousand crimes they do commit they have not been taught to consider sins.

26. A regular réveillée—The Wren—under our windows. What can have been the origin of this strange custom? It is St. Stephen’s day—the first martyr, who was stoned to death—and what has a little harmless bird to do with that? They hunt the poor little thing to death, then set it on a pole, fix a kind of bower round it, and then carry it all over the country with musick and dancing and all of them dressed up with all the rags and ribbons and bits of coloured paper they can collect. This morning there were no young women of the party as there used to be. Maybe they don’t find it merry enough now that whiskey a’n’t in fashion.

A visit from Mr. Moore and chatting on from one subject to another, he and I got quite confidential; he lamented his dereliction of duty, said he was firmly resolved to ‘turn over a new leaf’. ‘But you have said so so often.’ ‘Never to you,’ etc. He 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