They never have anybody there, except now and then Mr. Moore, his man of business, who is in the full sense of the word corpulent, red-faced, with a short leg with a steel yard to it, and a false tuft; and he is Colonel of the Yeomanry. But I like him for a wonderful rare quality in any Baillie, but above all in a Scotch Baillie; he is independent and no toad-eater. He found fault with his patron’s potatoes at the grand table, with a whole row of silver plates dazing his eyne; and he as often as occasion occurs quietly contradicts him....
General Way[146] and his wife are to be at Mount Stuart next week. Sir Guy described General Way as an Adjutant-General, and a Methodist, which sounds such an odd mixture,—true Church Militant. They are great Jew converters. I have been reading a luminous treatise on Witchcraft, seriously refuting such belief. One rather odd circumstance is, that three-and-twenty books and tracts have been written since Charles II.’s reign in earnest support of the doctrine of Sorcery and Witchcraft....
I go on writing in case you are still shut up, it may amuse you tho’ I have no event. An occasional mad dog spreads horror thro’ the district; no wonder I enter into the poor dog’s feelings, he belonged to the steam boat, and that was enough to send any Christian out of their senses, let alone a dog.
Lady Campbell to Miss Eden.
March 10 [1821].
What a delightful letter, and I feel perfectly agonised, not an idea, not a topic, not a word to send you in return. Sir Guy says I may do as I please, so I shall send the Highlands to the right about, and go south to you as soon as the weather is travellable, and that we have seen Sir Guy’s old Scotch aunt[147] at Edinburgh. I must see her because she is called “Aunt Christy.” That name, you must acknowledge, is worth a visit.
I send you, my Darling, a small Heart with my hair in it. Put it on directly and wear it. I know it is a comfort to have a little something new when one is ill, as I learnt when I had the chicken-pox, and found great benefit in some gilt gingerbread Kings and Queens. Lucy used to bring me them twelve years ago; they were hideous, useless, and not eatable, but still they made a break in the day....
I wish I could instil in you a little of that respect and mystic reverence which I never could feel myself for Doctors, and Pestles and Mortars—that blind devotion which is so necessary to make the stuff efficacious, for by faith we are saved in these cases, as in cases of conscience.
I am sorry they have made you have hysterics, and won’t let you have the Elliots, and conversation. That bluff Chilvers,[148] with his Burgomaster appearance, as if he was magistrate of our vitals and poor bowels! I hate him ever since he offered me the insult of a blister, that first blister of hateful memory.
Write, or don’t write, as it suits you. Lucy and Sir Guy are such friends, they quite doat on one another, and understand each other. Therefore wipe away all I said for nothing. That is my comfort with you, I can tell you and then scratch it out again as I please, and that is the only way to be constant in this changeable world, to be able to follow the changes of those we love, so as to be always the same with them.