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