Wednesday.
Yesterday I had a great deal of scientific talk with Sir John, and a long walk in the grounds which are extensive, and very pretty. Then the Airys arrived, and we had a large party at dinner.... I think, now, as I always have done, that Sir John is by much the highest and finest character I have ever met with; the most gentlemanly and polished mind, combined with the most exalted morality, and the utmost of human attainment. His view of everything is philosophic, and at the same time highly poetical, in short, he combines every quality that is admirable and excellent with the most charming modesty, and Lady Herschel is quite worthy of such a husband, which is the greatest praise I can give her. Their kindness and affection for me has been unbounded. Lady H. told me she heard such praises of you two that she is anxious to know you, and she hopes you will always look upon her and her family as friends. The christening went off as well as possible. Mr. Airy was godfather, and Mrs. Airy and I godmothers, but I had the naming of the child—Matilda Rose, after Lady Herschel's sister. I assure you I was quite adroit in taking the baby from the nurse and giving her to the clergyman. Sir John took Mrs. Airy and me a drive to see a very fine picturesque castle a few miles off.... I have got loads of things for experiments on light from Sir John with a variety of papers, and you may believe that I have profited not a little by his conversation, and have a thousand projects for study and writing, so I think painting will be at a standstill, only that I have promised to paint something for Lady Herschel. Sir John computes four or five hours every day, and yet his Cape observations will not be finished for two years. I have seen everything he is or has been doing.
Your affectionate mother,
Mary Somerville.
My mother continues her recollections of this journey.
My next visit was to Lord and Lady Charles Percy at Guy's Cliff, in Warwickshire, a pretty picturesque place of historical and romantic memory. The society was pleasant, and I was taken to Kenilworth and Warwick Castle, on the banks of the Avon, a noble place, still bearing marks of the Wars of the Roses. I never saw such magnificent oak-trees as those on the Leigh estate, near Guy's Cliff.
I then visited my maiden namesake, Mrs. Fairfax, of Gilling Castle, Yorkshire. She was a highly cultivated person, had been much abroad, and was a warm-hearted friend. I was much interested in the principal room, for a deep frieze surrounds the wall, on which are painted the coats of arms of all the families with whom the Fairfaxes have intermarried, ascending to very great antiquity; besides, every pane of glass in a very large bay window in the same room is stained with one of these coats of arms. Every morning after breakfast a prodigious flock of pea-fowl came from the woods around to be fed.
I now went to the vicinity of Kelso to visit my brother and sister-in-law, General and Mrs. Elliot, who lived on the banks of the Tweed. We went to Jedburgh, the place of my birth. After many years I still thought the valley of the Jed very beautiful; I fear the pretty stream has been invaded by manufactories: there is a perpetual war between civilization and the beauty of nature. I went to see the spot from whence I once took a sketch of Jedburgh Abbey and the manse in which I was born, which does not exist, I believe, now. When I was a very young girl I made a painting from this sketch. Our next excursion was to a lonely village called Yetholm, in the hills, some miles from Kelso, belonging to the gipsies. The "king" and the other men were absent, but the women were civil, and some of them very pretty. Our principal object in going there was to see a stone in the wall of a small and very ancient church at Linton, nearly in ruins, on which is carved in relief the wyvern and wheel, the crest of the Somervilles.
From Kelso I went to Edinburgh to spend a few days with Lord Jeffrey and his family. No one who had seen his gentle kindness in domestic life and the warmth of his attachment to his friends, could have supposed he possessed that power of ridicule and severity which made him the terror of authors. His total ignorance of science may perhaps excuse him for having admitted into the "Review" Brougham's intemperate article on the undulatory theory of light, a discovery which has immortalized the name of Dr. Young. I found Edinburgh, the city of my early recollections, picturesque and beautiful as ever, but enormously increased both to the north and to the south. Queen Street, which in my youth was open to the north and commanded a view of the Forth and the mountains beyond, was now in the middle of the new town. All those I had formerly known were gone—a new generation had sprung up, living in all the luxury of modern times. On returning to London I spent a pleasant time with my son and his wife, who invited all those to meet me whom they thought I should like to see.
My mother returned to Rome in autumn in company with an old friend and her daughter.