Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
We drove to Chiefswood, and from that to Janeswood, up the Rhymer's Glen, and so home. This occupied from one to four. In the evening I heard Anne read Mr. Peel's excellent Bill on the Police of the Metropolis, which goes to disband the whole generation of Dogberry and Verges. Wrote after tea. April 19. I made this a busy day.
The country looks beautiful, though the foliage, larches in particular, have had a blight. Yet they can hardly be said to lose foliage since they have but a sort of brushes at best. June 6. Went through a good deal of duty as to proofs, and the like. At two set out and reached by four Chiefswood, where I had the happiness to find the Lockharts all in high spirits, well and happy.
Blackwood the bookseller came over from Chiefswood to breakfast, and this kept me idle till eleven o'clock. At twelve I went out with the girls in the sociable, and called on the family at Bemerside, on Dr. and Mrs. Brewster, and Mr. Bainbridge at Gattonside House. It was five ere we got home, so there was a day dished, unless the afternoon does something for us.
The biography here spoken of was not published. Sir Walter had seats placed at suitable distances between the house and Chiefswood. Titus Andronicus, Act IV. Sc. 2. For an account of these "miracles" see Peace in Believing a memoir of Isabella Campbell of Fernicarry. Roseneath, 8vo, 1829.
I went to breakfast at Chiefswood, and after that affair was happily transacted, I wended me merrily to the Black Cock Stripe, and there caused Tom Purdie and John Swanston cut out a quantity of firs. Got home about two o'clock, and set to correct a set of proofs. James Ballantyne presages well of this work, but is afraid of inaccuracies so am I but things must be as they may.
Slept indifferently, and under the influence of Queen Mab, seldom auspicious to me, dreamed of reading the tale of the Prince of the Black Marble Islands to little Johnnie, extended on a paralytic chair, and yet telling all his pretty stories about Ha-papa, as he calls me, and Chiefswood and waked to think I should see the little darling no more, or see him as a thing that had better never have existed.
Went to Chiefswood at one, and marked with regret forty trees indispensably necessary for paling much like drawing a tooth; they are wanted and will never be better, but I am avaricious of grown trees, having so few. Worked a fair task; dined, and read Clapperton's journey and Denham's into Bornou. Very entertaining, and less botheration about mineralogy, botany, and so forth, than usual.
We went through all the Terrace, the Roman Planting, over by the Stiel and Haxellcleuch, and so by the Rhymer's Glen to Chiefswood, which gave my heart a twinge, so disconsolate it seemed. Yet all is for the best. Called at Huntly Burn, and shook hands with Sir Adam and his Lady just going off.
Yet there are sad drawbacks so far as family comfort is concerned. To-day is Sunday, when they always dined with us, and generally met a family friend or two, but we are no longer to expect them. In the country, where their little cottage was within a mile or two of Abbotsford, we shall miss their society still more, for Chiefswood was the perpetual object of our walks, rides, and drives.
The odds are greatly against my seeing you till you come down here, but I will have the cottage in such order for you; and as Will Laidlaw comes back at Whitsunday, I will have him to lend me an arm to Chiefswood, and I have no doubt to do gallantly. "EDINBURGH, 22d February ." His grand-daughter, Charlotte, whom he playfully named after the fairy in the old Scottish Nursery story. Mr.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking