The Highland Lady In Ireland. Elizabeth Grant
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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