At Edinburgh there is a railroad station instead of the North Loch; the water of Leith is—well, one cannot say in civilized company what it is;[2] and at Linlithgow, of all the palaces so fair,—built for a royal dwelling, etc.,—the oil, (paraffin,) floating on the streams, can be ignited, burning with a large flame.[3]
My good Scottish friends, had you not better leave off pleasing yourselves with descriptions of your rivers as they were, and consider what your rivers are to be? For I correct my derivation of Clarty Hole too sorrowfully.[4] It is the Ford that is clarty now—not the Hole.
To return to our sentimental work, however, for a while. I left in my last letter one or two of the most interesting points in the first year at Sandy-Knowe unnoticed, because I thought it best to give you, by comparison with each other, some idea of the three women who, as far as education could do it, formed the mind of Scott. His masters only polished and directed it. His mother, grandmother, and aunt welded the steel.
Hear first this of his mother. (Lockhart, vol. i., p. 78.)
“She had received, as became the daughter of an eminently learned physician, the best sort of education then bestowed on young gentlewomen in Scotland.” The poet, speaking of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, the mistress of the school at which his mother was reared, to the ingenious local antiquary, Mr. Robert Chambers, said that “she must have been possessed of uncommon talents for education, as all her young ladies were, in after-life, fond of reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history and the belles lettres, without neglecting the more homely duties of the needle and accompt-book, and perfectly well-bred in society.” Mr. Chambers adds, “Sir Walter further communicated that his mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair’s pupils, were sent afterwards to be finished off by the Honourable Mrs. Ogilvie, a lady who trained her young friends to a style of manners which would now be considered intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early training upon the mind of Mrs. Scott, that even when she approached her eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching her chair with her back, as if she had still been under the stern eye of Mrs. Ogilvie.”
You are to note in this extract three things. First, the singular influence of education, given by a master or mistress of real power. “All her young ladies” (all, Sir Walter! do you verily mean this?) “fond of reading,” and so forth.
Well, I believe that, with slight exception, Sir Walter did mean it. He seldom wrote, or spoke, in careless generalization. And I doubt not that it is truly possible, by first insisting on a girl’s really knowing how to read, and then by allowing her very few books, and those absolutely wholesome,—and not amusing!—to give her a healthy appetite for reading. Spelling, I had thought was impossible to many girls; but perhaps this is only because it is not early enough made a point of: it cannot be learned late.
Secondly: I wish Mr. Chambers had given us Sir Walter’s words, instead of only the substance of what he “further communicated.” But you may safely gather what I want you to notice, that Sir Walter attributes the essentials of good breeding to the first careful and scholarly mistress; and only the formality, which he somewhat hesitatingly approves, to the finishing hand of Mrs. Ogilvie. He would have paid less regard to the opinion of modern society on such matters, had he lived to see our languid Paradise of sofas and rocking-chairs. The beginning, and very nearly the end, of bodily education for a girl, is to make sure that she can stand, and sit, upright; the ankle vertical, and firm as a marble shaft; the waist elastic as a reed, and as unfatiguable. I have seen my own mother travel from sunrise to sunset, in a summer’s day, without once leaning back in the carriage.
Thirdly: The respectability belonging in those days to the profession of a schoolmistress. In fact, I do not myself think that any old lady can be respectable, unless she is one, whether she be paid for her pupils or not. And to deserve to be one, makes her Honourable at once, titled or untitled.
This much comes, then, of the instructions of Mrs. Sinclair and Mrs. Ogilvie; and why should not all your daughters be educated by Honourable Mrs. Ogilvies, and learn to spell, and to sit upright? Then they will all have sons like Sir Walter Scott, you think?