The Raven Hotel, Droitwich, August 5.
My Dear Friend Susan B. Anthony: I have often wished to write thee since we parted in London, my heart has been so full of loving thought. It has been a greater trial than I can describe that I have been denied the pleasure of receiving thee in my home in Edinburgh. If it had been only for an hour, I should have looked back on that hour as one of great privilege. But even if we should not meet again, I have had a pleasure which seems almost like a dream to me, in having made the personal acquaintance of thyself and dear Mrs. Stanton....
That thou shouldst have been on the 1st of August with the Elizabeth Pease of those grand anti-slavery times, revived in me the thought I expressed in moving a vote of thanks to thee and Mrs. Cady Stanton for the noble addresses you gave at the Prince's Hall Meeting in London; ... that you had been brought here to give us the hand of rejoicing fellowship; and that it gave me great faith to believe the God of Justice was leading us on, and had brought England and America together by your presence amongst us at this most critical and hopeful time of our agitation....
I have addressed thee in the dear singular person, because it seemed to me in harmony with the noble simplicity of thy character, and also more affectionate—just as I feel toward thee. Believe me, dear friend—I love so to call thee—thine very affectionately,
Priscilla Bright McLaren.
[The diary notes many teas and luncheons in Edinburgh, drives to Melrose Abbey, Holyrood Palace, Roslyn Castle, to the celebrated monuments, the old cathedrals and the university; calls from distinguished professors and those interested in philanthropic movements, visits to public institutions, and lovely gifts from the new friends. Every day of the month was filled with pleasant incidents. The scenery through the lake and mountain regions Miss Anthony found so beautiful that, although there was a steady downpour of rain for days, she sat on the outside of boat or stage in order not to miss a moment of it. She hunted up the old home of Thomas Clarkson but could not find there a person who ever had heard of him. She went also to the Friends' meeting house at Ulverston, presented to the Society by George Fox and completed in 1688. To her such spots as these were more interesting and hallowed than towering castles and vine-clad abbeys.]
Ballachulish Hotel, August 13.
My Dear Sister: Miss Julia Osgood and I are here, waiting for sunshine.... While in Edinburgh Mrs. Nichol drove us out to Craigmillar Castle, where I saw the very rooms in which Queen Mary lived. We bought for a shilling a basket of strawberries plucked—no, "pulled"—the old man who sold them said, from the very garden in which berries and vegetables were "pulled" for Queen Mary three hundred years ago. One evening Professor Blackie, of the Edinburgh University, dined with Mrs. Nichol. At my reception he had said he did not want to "see refined, delicate women going down into the muddy pool of politics," and I asked him if he had ever thought that, since the only places which were too filthy for women were those where men alone went, perhaps they might be so from lack of women. At dinner Mrs. Nichol rallied him on the report that he had been converted, and he admitted that it was true; so as he was leaving I said, "Then I am to reckon an Edinboro' professor among my converts?" He seized my hand and kissed it, saying, "I'll seal it with a kiss." Don't be alarmed—he is fully eighty years of age but blithe and frolicsome—sang and acted out a Scotch war-song in the real Gaelic.
On August 1 we saw 200 medical students capped—and not a woman among them, because the powers ruled that none should be admitted. That afternoon we called on Professor Masson, a great champion of co-education. We took tea with Mrs. Jane and Miss Eliza Wigham. The stepmother, now eighty-two, was Jane Smeale in 1840. In their house have visited Henry C. Wright, Parker Pillsbury, and of course Mr. Garrison. Mrs. Nichol went with us to Melrose by rail, from which we drove to Abbotsford....
Tuesday at 2 o'clock Miss Osgood and I landed at Stirling. At 4:30 we reached Callander, where I found no trunk, and not a man of them could give a guess as to its whereabouts. They give you no check here, but just stick a patch on your trunk. I had expected not to find it at every stop, and now it was gone for sure; but the station-master was certain he could find it and forward it to me, so he wrote out its description and telegraphed in every direction. Meanwhile we went to a hotel for luncheon and there in the hall was my trunk! Nobody knew why or how it got there and all acknowledged our American check system superior. I was raging at their stupidity, and no system at all, but laughingly said, "You ought to send this trunk free a thousand miles to pay for my big scold at you." The man good-naturedly replied, "Where will you have it sent?" I answered "Oban," and he booked it.
At 6 o'clock we took the front seat with the driver on a great high stage which we mounted by a ladder—they call the stage the "machine"—and drove a few miles to the Trossachs Hotel, past Loch Achray and Loch Vennachar.... While the rain rested this noon I took a walk up the ravine and it seemed very like going up the mountain at Grandfather Anthony's. Indeed, there is nothing here more beautiful than we have in America, only everything has some historic or poetic association....
Bruntsfield Lodge, Whitehouse Loan, Edinburgh, August 23.
My Dear Sister: Here am I, back in Edinboro' again, at Dr. Jex-Blake's delightful home—at least one hundred and fifty years old, with an acre or more of garden all enclosed with a six-foot wall. Lodge means a walled-in house; loan means lane, and the street took its name from a white house which two hundred and fifty years ago stood in this road. Every day the doctor has taken me a long and beautiful ride in her basket-carriage, driving her own little pony, White Angel, or her hay horse, while her boy-groom rides in his perch behind. Today she drove me through Lord Rosebery's park of thousands of acres. It is lovely as a native forest—the roads macadamized all through—and a palace-like residence set deep within....
Ambleside, August 27.
My Dear Sister: Last Thursday I left Edinburgh for Penrith, which has a fine view of the lake and the hills beyond. Next morning I took steamer at Pooley Bridge. The trip the whole length of the lake was beautiful, but can not compare with Lake George—indeed, nothing I have seen equals that—but the hills (mountains, they call them here), the water and the sky all were lovely. At Patterdale I had a cup of tea, with bread and butter and the veritable orange marmalade manufactured at Dundee. Thence I took a stage over Kirkstone Pass, and walked two miles up the hills to a small hotel with a signboard saying it is the highest inhabited house in England, 1,114 feet above the sea—not very much beside Denver's 6,000 and others in Colorado 10,000 or 12,000. Arrived at Ambleside to find the hotel overflowing, so they sent me to a farmer's house where I had a good bed, splendid milk and sweet butter. Saturday morning I went by coach to Coniston, then railway to Furness Abbey, a seven-hundred-year-old ruin of magnificent proportions. After four hours there, I took a train to Lakeside and then steamer up Lake Windermere back to Ambleside. The hotel still being full, "the Boots," as they call the porter or runner, found me lodgings at a private house, where I am now. It is the tiniest little stone cottage, but they have a cow, so I am in clover. My breakfasts consist of a bit of ham, cured by the hostess, a boiled egg, white and graham bread with butter and currant jam, and a cup of tea.
Saturday evening I strolled out and entered the gate of Harriet Martineau's home. On the terrace I met the present occupants, Mr. and Mrs. William Henry Hills. They invited me to call in the morning, when they would be happy to show me over the house. In naming the hour they said: "We never go to church—we are Liberal Friends—real Friends." At that I immediately felt at home with them. I called and spent two hours sitting and chatting in the drawing-room where Harriet Martineau received her many distinguished guests, and in the kitchen saw the very same table, chairs and range which were there when she died, and sitting on the doorsill was the same black-and-yellow cat, said to be fourteen years old now. The Hills invited me to 5 o'clock tea, which we took in the library, where Miss Martineau used to sit and study as well as entertain her guests at dinner. It seemed impossible to realize that I was actually in her house. It is not large and is covered with ivy, which grows most luxuriantly everywhere. It fronts on a large field, much lower than the knoll on which it stands, and fine hills stretch off beyond. The old gardener, who has been here more than thirty years, still lives in a little stone cottage just under the terrace.
Mr. Hills is a great lover of America and its institutions. He is one of the very few I have met here who really love republicanism. Nearly every one clings to the caste and class principle, thinks the world can not exist if a portion of the people are not doomed to be servants, and that for the poor to have an ambition to rise and become something more than their parents makes them discontented. "Yes," I answer, "and that is just what I want them to be, because it is only through a wholesome discontent with things as they are, that we ever try to make them any better."...
Dublin, September 10.
My Dear Sister: ... I stayed in Belfast some days, and visited the Giant's Causeway with Miss Isabella Tod, amidst sunshine and drenching showers; still it was a splendid sight, fully equal to Fingal's Cave. The day before, we went nearly one hundred miles into the country to a village where she spoke at a temperance meeting. Here we were guests of the Presbyterian minister—a cousin of Joseph Medill, of the Chicago Tribune—and a cordial greeting he and his bright wife gave me. They have three Presbyterian churches in that one little village. All welcomed the woman speaker most kindly, but not a person could be urged to vote down the whiskey shops, as these are licensed by a justice of the peace, appointed by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who receives his appointment from the Queen of England!