Boswell Takes a Wife

I

IN the little village of Adamtown, not far from Auchinleck, there lived, in the year 1767, a widow by the name of Blair. Her daughter Kate, the heir to the fortune which had been left by the late Mr. Blair, was eighteen years of age, and described, after the manner of the period, as being sensible, cheerful and pious, and of a countenance which, though not beautiful, was ‘agreeable.’ During her minority her relative, the Laird of Auchinleck, had been one of her guardians; and of a Sunday she sat dutifully in the Master’s pew of the little church on the estate.

In the eyes of the young Boswell, just home from his travels, this Scots cousin of his was the finest woman he had ever seen; and her charms were in no way injured by the fact that she possessed great wealth. What a Mistress of Auchinleck she would make! Her picture would adorn the family gallery — ‘Catherine, wife of James Boswell, Esq. of Auchinleck.’ Her children would be as clever as their father (or his friend, the Reverend William Temple) and as charming as their mother. Here, at any rate, was a flame of whom one’s father might approve. She would, the boy explained, add her lands to the ancestral estates, and he, as her husband, might have, at once, ‘a pretty little estate, a good house, and a sweet place.’

‘I wish you had her,’ said the father laconically.

To her estate James accordingly repaired, and began his suit. He so far succeeded as to prevail upon Mrs. Blair to come and make a visit at Auchinleck, and to bring Kate with her. The visit lasted four days, and there, amid the romantic groves of the family seat, he adored her like a divinity. She was henceforward the ‘Princess,’ and before the month of June was out, James rather prematurely referred to her as ‘my charming bride.’

When Temple came to Edinburgh to visit the young advocate, he was told that he must ride across country to Adamtown, on a romantic errand, and inspect the goddess. He should have his ‘consultation guineas’ for such expert advice as he, a lifelong friend, knowing the full story of James’s foibles, might care to give.

One of the most highly characteristic of Boswellian documents is a sheet of instructions, which the young fellow wrote out for his friend and entitled ‘Instructions for Mr. Temple, on his Tour to Auchinleck and Adamtown.’ It is well known, but we cannot afford to forego the information which it contains; and a portion of it may be reprinted, as given by its first editor. The sheet has been, unfortunately, separated from the manuscript of which it was originally a part, and its present location is unknown.

He will set out in the fly on Monday morning, and reach Glasgow by noon. Put up at Graham’s, and ask for the horses bespoke by Mr. Boswell. Take tickets for the Friday’s fly. Eat some cold victuals. Set out for Kingswell, to which you have good road; arrived there, get a guide to put you through the muir to Loudoun; from thence Thomas knows the road to Auchinleck, where the worthy overseer, Mr. James Bruce, will receive you. Be easy with him, and you will like him much; expect but moderate entertainment, as the family is not at home.

Tuesday. — See the house; look at the front; choose your room; advise as to pavilions. Have James Bruce to conduct you to the cab-house; to the old castle; to where I am to make the superb grotto; up the river to Broomsholm; the natural bridge; the grotto; the grotto-walk down to the Gothic bridge; anything else he pleases.

Wednesday. — Breakfast at eight; set out at nine; Thomas will bring you to Adamtown a little after eleven. Send up your name; if possible, put up your horses there; they can have cut grass; if not, Thomas will take them to Mountain, a place a mile off, and come back and wait dinner. Give Miss Blair my letter. Salute her and her mother; ask to walk. See the place fully; think what improvements should be made. Talk of my mare, the purse, the chocolate. Tell you are my very old and intimate friend. Praise me for my good qualities — you know them; but talk also how odd, how inconstant, how impetuous, how much accustomed to women of intrigue. Ask gravely, ‘Pray don’t you imagine there is something of madness in that family?’ Talk of my various travels — German princes, Voltaire, and Rousseau. Talk of my father; my strong desire to have my own house. Observe her well. See how amiable! Judge if she would be happy with your friend. Think of me as the ‘great man’ at Adamtown — quite classical, too! Study the mother. Remember well what passes. Stay tea. At six, order horses, and go to New Mills, two miles from Loudoun; but if they press you to stay all night, do it. Be a man of as much ease as possible. Consider what a romantic expedition you are on. Take notes; perhaps you now fix me for life.

Whether the young clergyman took notes enough to satisfy the future biographer, and whether he showed a subtle skill in uniting an indulgent account of Boswell’s inconstancy and impetuosity with a eulogy of his good qualities, I very much doubt. The rôle of ambassador in affairs of the heart has ever been fraught with peril; moreover, Temple was a somewhat stiff and solemn young man, with a personal — and professional — disapproval of Boswell’s propensity to intrigue. He was neither odd nor vivacious; and though he loved his friend for his eccentric charm, it may be doubted whether he quite succeeded in communicating it.

One incident of Temple’s visit was peculiarly alarming. At Adamtown he met a merchant named Fullarton, recently returned from the East Indies, — the whole episode reads like a chapter out of Roderick Random, — who is thereafter called ‘the Nabob.’ His presence there dismayed Boswell, and caused him to cry out, ‘The mare, the purse, the chocolate, where are they now? . . . I am certainly not deeply in love,’ he added, ‘for I am entertained with this dilemma like another chapter in my adventures, though I own to you that I have a more serious attachment to her than I ever had to anybody; for “here every flower is united.’”

Boswell had, in truth, got himself into the emotional rapids. The speed at which he was traveling was thrilling, and the constant change of scene and mood afforded him infinite entertainment; but the point toward which he was plunging he could not clearly foresee. To begin with the least of his difficulties, he was still in correspondence with both Zélide and the Italian Signora. The former let him know that she talked of him without either resentment or attachment; the latter wrote ‘with all the warmth of Italian affection.’ Kate Blair was better suited to him and to Auchinleck, to be sure; but the vivacious Dutchwoman and the passionate Italian offered a life of novelty and excitement. One of the Signora’s letters, indeed, moved him to tears. And so he fluttered, in thought, from flower to flower, and tasted the sweets of each; but he returned ever and anon to the heiress.

His was an embarrassment of riches. We are dealing now with the most dissipated period in a life which was never conspicuous for self-restraint. It may be questioned whether it is right to bring to bear against a man the information that is privately conveyed in a letter to his most intimate friend; or whether, even after the lapse of a century and a half, a writer is justified in setting down in cold print the facts that he has read in documents that ought never to have been preserved. The public is harsh, and the critics are harsher, if not actually hypocritical, in dealing with erring mortals who are no longer here to defend themselves or to destroy the evidence against them. ‘The important thing,’ it has been said, ‘is not to get caught ’; and the adage is as true of the mighty dead as it is of the living. And yet the man who has chanced upon new facts in the biography of a great writer may perhaps be pardoned for giving them to the world; for unless he actually destroys the evidence which he has found (which of course he has no manner of right to do), he must reckon with the certainty that some later investigator will turn it up and put it into print. The scholar is not responsible for the original recording of the facts; he merely reports what he has found; it is not his office to apportion a great man’s meed of praise or infamy. Such a practice has at least the approval of Johnson. When, years later, Boswell proposed to print the autobiography of Sir Robert Sibbald, which he thought ‘the most natural and candid account of himself that ever was given by any man,’ Mrs. Thrale objected, and gave the usual reason: ‘To discover such weakness exposes a man when he is gone.’ ‘Nay,’ said Johnson, ‘it is an honest picture of human nature.’

The fact, then, is that Boswell had sought out the company of other ‘charmers,’ notably that of a brunette, whom he habitually describes as his ‘black friend,’ and who was known to his friends as ‘the Moffat woman,’ because he had met her at the town of that name. Her real name is, fortunately, unknown to us. Temple was eager to get his friend married off, in order to rescue him from this artful female.

I startle [Boswell said to Temple] when you talk of keeping another man’s wife. Yet that was literally my scheme, though my imagination represented it just as being fond of a pretty, lively, black little lady, who, to oblige me, staid in Edinburgh, and I very genteely paid her expenses. You will see by my letter to her that I shall have a house and a servant-maid upon my hands.

Nevertheless, he could not break the disgraceful bond. Perhaps he had neither the will nor the inclination to do so; in any case, he could not at the moment, for the woman was about to bear him a child. In December she gave birth to a daughter, who was named Sally. Boswell makes one reference to her, in a letter to Temple, and then is silent forever. Of Sally we hear no more.

All this happened in the midst of the negotiations for the hand of the Princess Kate. One can but wonder whether the heiress heard any rumor of the irregularity of her lover’s life at the moment when his devotion to her was supposed to be all-absorbing. It is certain that she did hear gossip of another kind. Boswell had been rash in talking about his ‘Princess’ and her ‘wary mother,’ and had even spoken of their wish to make a good thing out of any future alliance. This he referred to metaphorically (and indiscreetly) as their system of salmon-fishing. Gossip came to the ears of Mrs. Blair, and the Princess, not unnaturally, left Boswell’s letters unanswered.

Boswell, too, heard gossip. Miss Blair was, a friend told him, a wellknown jilt. Yet the situation never became so strained as to result in a quarrel. The ladies were, indeed, ‘wary.’ Why should they not be so? James was decidedly a good catch, a clever and entertaining young fellow enough, if only, to use his own words, he could restrain his flightiness. It was not necessary, the ladies thought, to break with him; but only to administer a snub. He was allowed to think that the Nabob was winning the day. New rivals appeared. Boswell fretted and fussed. He wrote more letters. At last a temporizing reply was sent by the Princess. Her calmness brought him once more to a state of subjection, in which he was convinced that he was at last genuinely in love.

Then, suddenly, Miss Blair burst like a star on Edinburgh, the guest of Lord Kames, the intimate friend and companion of her cousin, Jenny Maxwell, the young Duchess of Gordon. Boswell flew to her at once. She was capricious. At first, she seemed glad to see him there. Again, she was distant and reserved. Probably the duchess had opinions of the suitor which were not within influence. Yet the two were together often. Boswell accompanied the young ladies to the theatre to witness a performance of Othello, and in the jealous Moor he saw the very likeness of himself. How many a lover has been emboldened by the mimic scene! At this moment he put his arm about her waist, and fancied that she leaned toward him. He watched her tears, and often spoke to her of the torment that they saw before them. Still he thought her distant.

At last the young duchess went away from Edinburgh, and Boswell was glad of it. He went again to his Princess. The story of his interview is as vivid as anything in the Life of Johnson.

I found her alone, and she did not seem distant. I told her that I was most sincerely in love with her, and that I only dreaded those faults which I had acknowledged to her. I asked her seriously if she now believed me in earnest. She said she did. I then asked her to be candid and fair as I had been with her, and to tell me if she had any particular liking for me. What think you, Temple, was her answer? ’No; I really,’ said she, ‘have no particular liking for you; I like many people as well as you.’ (Temple, you must have it in the genuine dialogue.)

BOSWELL. — Do you indeed? Well, I cannot help it. I am obliged to you for telling me so in time. I am sorry for it.

PRINCESS. — I like Jeany Maxwell (Duchess of Gordon) better than you.

B. — Very well. But do you like no man better than me?

P. — No.

B. — Is it possible that you may like me better than other men?

P. — I don’t know what is possible.

(By this time I had risen and placed myself by her, and was in real agitation.)

B. — I’ll tell you what, my dear Miss Blair, I love you so much that I am very unhappy. If you cannot love me, I must, if possible, endeavour to forget you. What would you have me do?

P. — I really don’t know what you should do.

B. — It is certainly possible that you may love me, and if you shall ever do so, I shall be the happiest man in the world. Will you make a fair bargain with me? If you should happen to love me, will you own it?

P. — Yes.

B. — And if you should happen to love another, will you tell me immediately, and help me to make myself easy?

P. — Yes, I will.

B. — Well, you are very good. (Often squeezing and kissing her fine hand, while she looked at me with those beautiful black eyes.)

P. — I may tell you as a cousin what I would not tell to another man.

B. — You may, indeed. You are very fond of Auchinleck — that is one good circumstance.

P. — I confess I am. I wish I liked you as well as I do Auchinleck.

B. — I have told you how fond I am of you. But unless you like me sincerely, I have too much spirit, to ask you to live with me, as I know that you do not like me. If I could have you this moment for my wife, I would not.

P. — I should not like to put myself in your offer, though.

B. — Remember, you are both my cousin and my mistress; you must make me suffer as little as possible. As it may happen that I may engage your affections. I should think myself a most dishonourable man, if I were not now in earnest; and, remember, I depend upon your sincerity; and whatever happens, you and I shall never have any quarrel.

P. — Never.

B. — And I may come and see you as much as I please?

P. — Yes.

O reader, is not this scene worthy of the great Trollope? More modern in tone than Fielding or Fanny Burney? Do you not hear the very language of the eighteenth century more distinctly than in the words of the Narcissas and Sophias who crowd the pages of its fictions? Somehow, I cannot but like the black-eyed Kate. She was a coquette, of course, — much more of a coquette than Zélide, — but I should think all young ladies would be grateful to her for her retort to our hero: ’I wish I liked you as well as I do Auchinleck.’

Of the art of a man who could thus set down the very words of his courtship in a letter to a friend, not much can be said; for most readers will be thinking rather of the breach of decorum than of the perfection of the art. It would certainly be difficult to discover a passage in any work of fiction which sets forth more vividly the uncertain emotions which surge over a young pair who are discussing the very vital question whether or not they wish to get married. It is all very droll, of course. But then our Boswell was one of the drollest men who ever lived. ‘Curious’ was his own word for the scene: —

My worthy friend, what sort of a scene was this? It was most curious. She said she would submit to her husband in most things. She said that to see one loving her would go far to make her love that person; but she could not, talk anyhow positively, for she never had felt the uneasy anxiety of love. We were an hour and a half together, and seemed pleased all the time. I think she behaved with spirit and propriety. I admire her more than ever. . . . She has the justest ideas. She said she knew me now. She could laugh me out of my ill-humour. She could give Lord Auchinleck a lesson how to manage me. Temple, what does the girl mean?

What did she mean? It was clear only that she was leading him a chase — he knew not whither. The thought of his rivals dismayed him continually. There was, in particular, a young Member of Parliament, who was also a knight and an officer in the Guards, Sir Alexander Gilmour, said to be worth £1600 a year. What chance was there with such a competitor? Boswell, who realized that it would be ‘a noble match,’ began to feel that the game was up.

And then, suddenly, who should appear in Edinburgh but the Nabob! He was himself no happy suitor, but had concluded, from his own experiences with Kate, that she intended to take Boswell. This he himself explained to Boswell when they met. For meet they did. James, it would appear, scraped acquaintance with Mr. Fullarton by way of discovering how he stood with the charmer. The Nabob was all friendliness, and together they joked about the situation in which they found themselves. Together they went and called upon Miss Blair. They were surprised to find that, though she behaved exceedingly well, her reserve was more than ordinary. When they left her,they cried aloud with one accord, ‘Upon my soul, a fine woman!’

In a burst of friendly admiration, Boswell proposed that they should sup together at the house of one of his numerous cousins, and talk matters over. Perhaps, between them, they could get something accomplished. ‘I do believe, Mr. Fullarton,’ said Boswell ‘you and I are in the same situation here. Is it possible to be upon honour, and generous in an affair of this kind ? ’

They agreed that it was possible. After supper, they adjourned to a tavern, where we may be certain that they drank the lady’s health, and canvassed the situation. Boswell repeated to Fullarton his friend Dempster’s opinion that all Miss Blair’s connections were in an absolute confederacy to lay hold of every man who had a thousand pounds a year, and repeated his own mot about the salmon-fishing. ‘You have hit it,’ cried the ingenuous Nabob; ‘we’re all kept in play; but I am positive you are the fish, and Sir Alexander is only a mock salmon to force you to jump more expeditiously at the bait.’

The new allies sat together till two in the morning, by which time they had agreed that both should offer themselves once more to Miss Blair, privatim et seriatim. Boswell was to offer first.

In the morning — or, rather, later in the morning — he presented himself once more before the Princess. She received him, and made tea for him. It was well for Boswell that he had come first, for the lady was feeling gracious, though she had apparently decided to put an end to the affair. She begged Mr. Boswell not to be angry, though she must be honest with him.

‘What, then,’ said Boswell; ‘have I no chance?’

‘No,’ said she.

He asked her to repeat the rejection ‘upon her word and upon honour,’ and she did so.

She would not tell me [he adds] whether she was engaged to the knight. She said she would not satisfy an idle curiosity. But I own I had no doubt of it. What amazed me was that she and I were as easy and as good friends as ever. I told her I have great, animal spirits, and bear it wonderfully well. But this is really hard. I am thrown upon the wide world again. I don’t know what will become of me.

It was, I have said, well for Boswell that he had gone first to try his fortune. The other victim got short shrift. Alas, poor Nabob! With his appearance on the scene a light must have dawned upon Miss Blair. Despite the ‘serious and submissive manner’ in which the Nabob came, she had grown suspicious; for, as he confided to Boswell, she would give him no satisfaction, and treated him with a degree of coldness that overpowered him quite.

II

Well, our Boswell was destined to learn the true nature of a coquette. Zélide had never treated him like this. Perhaps, after all, he had made a mistake. Meanwhile, his mind was diverted by a visit to London, where he was delighted to find that he was at last, in truth, ‘a great man.’ His Account of Corsica had appeared, and had brought him no small amount of fame. He now had his reward for his audacity in visiting the island. A crisis in the fortunes of Paoli and the Corsicans was rapidly approaching; the future of Corsica was becoming a matter of international significance and public interest. Boswell’s book was bought and read. Among other readers was Zélide. She wrote Boswell about the reception of the book in Holland, told him that two Dutch translations were under way, and proposed herself to render the book into French.

Boswell was delighted. Zélide was a woman worth knowing! Correspondence with her flourished once more. ‘ Upon my soul, Temple, I must have her!’ he wrote in March. ‘She is so sensible, so accomplished, and knows me so well, and likes me so much, that I do not see how I can be unhappy with her.’ He had persuaded his godfather, Sir John Pringle, who had seen Zélide on the Continent, that she was perfectly adapted to him, and wrote to his father begging permission to go over to Utrecht and propose. He had already broached the matter to Zélide, and she had suggested that they meet without having pledged themselves in any way, and see whether they would dare to risk an engagement — if not, they might still be friends for life. ‘My dear friend,’ she wrote a little later, ‘it is prejudice that has kept you so much at a distance from me. If we meet, I am sure that prejudice will be removed.’

But Temple, being a clergyman and English, disapproved of the foreign woman. ‘What would you think of the fine, healthy, amiable Miss Dick, with whom you dined so agreeably?’ Boswell asked Temple, parenthetically. And then he sent Zélide’s next letter to his father that the Laird might see for himself what a lady she was.

How do we know but she is an inestimable prize? [he wrote to Temple in April]. Surely it is worth while to go to Holland to see a fair conclusion, one way or other, of what has hovered in my mind for years. I have written to her, and told her all my perplexity. I have put in the plainest light what conduct I absolutely require of her; and what my father will require. I have bid her be my wife at present, and comfort me with a letter in which she shall shew at once her wisdom, her spirit, and her regard for me. You shall see it. I tell you, man, she knows and values me as you do. After reading the enclosed letters, I am sure you will be better disposed towards my charming Zélide.

How arrogant is man! Zélide took offense at last, and sent to Boswell an ‘acid epistle,’ the flashing wit of which, he complained to Temple, scorched him. She was a lady, brilliant enough, to be sure, but likely to become a termagant at forty — and already she was near thirty. Suddenly a fear attacked him that his father would consent to his proposal to go over to Utrecht and woo. But luckily Lord Auchinleck was firm. He would have no Dutchwomen at Auchinleck; and so his son now gladly obeyed his behest to let the woman alone. ‘ Worthy man!' cried the boy, ‘this will be a solace to him upon his circuit.’

As for Zélide [he wrote to Temple] I have written to her that we are agreed. ‘My pride,’ say I, ‘and your vanity would never agree. It would be like the scene in our burlesque comedy, The Rehearsal: “I am the bold thunder,” cries one; “the quick lightning I,” cries another. Et voilà notre ménage.’ But she and I will allways be good correspondents.

This final renunciation occurred in May, 1768, more than four years after the establishment of their intimacy at Utrecht.

How Boswell weathered it out till summer, it is not easy to say; he was now, to use his own words, ‘thrown upon the world again.’ But a man who unites with an extreme susceptibility a fixed determination to marry cannot be long bereaved. In the course of a visit to his cousins, the Montgomerys of Lainshaw, he met the ‘finest creature that ever was formed,’ and named her at once la belle Irlandaise. She was an Irish cousin of Margaret Montgomery, and so no time need be lost in preliminaries. She had a sweet, countenance, full of sensibility, and was ‘formed like a Grecian nymph’; her age was sixteen. Her father (who had an estate of £1000 a year and ‘above £10,000 in ready money’) was an Irish counselor-at-law, and as worthy a man as Boswell had ever met. Father, mother, and aunt were all in Scotland with la belle Irlandaise, whose name was Mary Anne. Father, mother, and aunt all approved of James. ‘Mr. Boswell,’ said the aunt to him, ‘ I tell you seriously there will be no fear of this succeeding, but from your own inconstancy.’ It was arranged that Boswell should visit Ireland in March, and, furthermore, that in the meantime he should correspond—with the father.

The thought of a visit to Ireland added a glow to wooing; the theatre of his adventures was widening once more. The Account of Corsica was being printed in Ireland, — a so-called ‘third edition,’ — and its success had given the father and mother — Boswell seems habitually to have encountered ‘wary’ parents — an opportunity of flattering the suitor.

But what of Mary Anne? A study of this young lady in her native land does not seem in any way to have diminished her charms. During this period no letters were written to Temple, so that we miss the opportunity to follow every shift in the lover’s mood. But the confidences reposed in Sir Alexander Dick are no less frank, though much less voluminous.

‘I must not forget la belle Irlandaise, who is really as amiable as I told you I thought her. Only figure me dancing a jig (or strathspey) with her to the tune of Carrickfergus, played by an Irish piper.’

This, I regret to say, is the last of Boswell’s utterances about the Irish beauty. What it was that cooled the ardor of the young people, we do not know; we must await the discovery of other letters written in the early summer of 1769. Perhaps the parents put an end to the affair. Be this as it may, before the month of June was out, Boswell was engaged to be married to his cousin, Margaret Montgomery, who had accompanied him on the Irish expedition.

Could anything be more unexpected? Hitherto, in Boswell’s correspondence, Margaret had been a mere lay figure; not once is she mentioned in connection with love. She was a quiet and admirable person, of whom Boswell’s elders must have approved. They must have deemed her an eminently safe person — was she not a cousin? She was not a foreign woman, who would introduce a strange note into the society of Auchinleck; she was not wealthy, but she would do. It was really essential to get James married off. Since his return from the Continent, his life had been growing ever looser. There was need of a steady, feminine hand. Therefore, it would seem, they took care to throw him with Margaret, trusting in the effect of propinquity. Even before the expedition to Ireland, Boswell speaks to Sir Alexander of Miss Montgomery as sitting by him while he writes. Sir Alexander himself lent his influence to the plans that the family were working out. He told Boswell that he would find his cousin’s conversation ‘nutritive,’ and the word pleased the young man. ‘ Indeed it is such as nourished me; he replied, ‘and like sweet milk tempers and smooths my agitated mind.’

Mrs. Boswell was one of those kindly, long-suffering women whose lives are a quiet blessing to men; unhonored by the world, but eternally dear to a few who are privileged to be near them. Through a long wedded life, through years in which bitterness must have been her portion, she was a devoted wife to Boswell. He loved her, and after her death never ceased, in his own garrulous fashion, to lament her loss.

But her husband’s ways were not her ways. His enthusiasms she could not share. It is to be feared that his restless hero-hunting was to her a source of shame. At the very best, it could have seemed no better to her than the eccentric taste of a man who collects exotic animals as pets. ‘She disapproved,’ says Boswell, ‘of my inviting Mr. M——sh, a man of ability but of violent manners, to make one in a genteel party at our house one evening. “He is,” said she, “like fire and water, useful but not to be brought into company.”’

Mrs. Boswell was not interested in making social experiments, in mixing difierent kinds. She would never have seated Samuel Johnson and John Wilkes at the same table. In a word, she never really understood what her husband was about, and never assisted him in developing that very strange variety of genius which Nature had bestowed upon him.

Just at the end of Boswell’s Commonplace Book there is a sheet headed, ‘Uxoriana.’ It is one of the most pathetic pages ever traced by his cheerful pen, for it is his attempt to Boswellize his wife. Its pathos, to my mind, consists in its brevity — there are but four anecdotes set down, and they are dull. There was in the lady nothing to Boswellize. Did he ever, I wonder, in the long dull evenings at Edinburgh and Auchinleck, let his mind wander back to the Utrecht days, and to a young woman who had told him that she did not have the talent to become a subaltern in his life?

From morning to night, I admired the charming Mary Anne. Upon my honour, I never was so much in love. I never was before in a situation to which there was not some objection; but here ev’ry flower is united, and not a thorn to be found. But how shall I manage it? They were in a hurry, and are gone home to Ireland. They were sorry they could not come to see Auchinleck, of which they had heard a great deal. Mary Anne wished much to be in the grotto. It is a pity they did not come. This Princely Seat would have had some effect. . . . I was allowed to walk a great deal with Miss. I repeated my fervent passion to her again and again. She was pleased, and I could swear that her little heart beat. I carved the first letter of her name on a tree. I cut off a lock of her hair, male pertinaci. She promised not to forget me, nor to marry a lord before March.

Temple was not the only friend who heard of the passion for Miss Mary Anne. The whole story was confided to Sir Alexander and Lady Dick. The latter had reached the cynical conclusion, shared perhaps by the reader, that Boswell was eager to marry money. Of this sordid motive Boswell speaks in a letter to Sir Alexander, a paragraph of which is here printed for the first time. The reader may make what he can of it.

The Irish heiress whom I went to see at Lainshaw turned out to be the finest creature that ever I beheld, a perfect Arcadian shepherdess, not seventeen; so that, instead of solid plans of fortune-hunting, I thought of nothing but the enchanting reveries of gallantry. It was quite a fairy tale. I know that, if I were to tell this to Lady Dick, she would not believe a word of it, but would maintain that I am disguising, even to myself, my old passion for gold. The truth, however, is that I am in love as much as ever man was, and if I played Carrickfergus once before, I play it a hundred times now. I was lately at Adamtown, and had a long talk with Heiress Kate by the side of her wood. She told me that the knight Sir Sawney was never to rule her territories. But alas, what could I say to her while my heart was beyond the sea? So much for love!

A very dangerous relapse, however, in favor of the Princess now occurred. Sir Alexander Gilmour (or Sir Sawney, as Boswell had nicknamed him) had made off, and the wary mother, it seems, was not unwilling that James should again be received as a suitor. Once more, therefore, did he walk ‘whole hours’ with Miss Blair, and once again did he kneel before her. Letters were written in the old manner, designed to melt down Kate’s coldness. And then ‘came a kind letter from my amiable Aunt Boyd in Ireland, and all the charms of sweet Marianne revived.’

This was in December. In the spring, somewhat later than had originally been intended, the proposed visit to Ireland was made. Boswell had, as a companion, his cousin Margaret Montgomery, the particular friend of Mary Anne; at Margaret’s home in Lainshaw, it will be recalled, he had first met la belle Irlandaise. It is odd that Boswell should have said so little of this visit. It is not mentioned in the Life of John-son. Indeed, practically nothing has been known hitherto of Boswell’s visit to that remarkable island; but the discovery of a letter to Sir Alexander Dick, written from Donaghadee, on May 29, 1769, lights up the whole of this obscure period in Boswell’s life.

In Ireland Boswell ran true to form. He was careful to meet the Lord Lieutenant. Why should one cross the Irish Sea and fail to meet the most prominent man in the nation? But how to approach a lord lieutenant? As a friend of Corsica. Nothing more natural. By this device he had obtained an interview with William Pitt, the Prime Minister of England, three years before, when he had called on the great man, dressed in Corsican costume, and pleaded for his foreign friends. He now found the Irish naturally well disposed toward the Corsicans.

The Lord Lieutenant was remarkably good to me [he writes]. And I assure you I have not met a firmer and keener Corsican. I believe something considerable will be raised in this kingdom for the brave islanders. I am indefatigable in fanning the generous fire. I have lately received a noble, spirited letter from Paoli. This I have shewn to numbers, and it has had an admirable effect.

Boswell liked the country as well as the people. He thought Dublin ‘a noble city,’ and the life there ‘magnificent.’ He visited a number of country seats, and saw some rich and well-cultivated land. He planned, before his return, to visit Lough Neach and the Giants’ Causeway. He would like, he said, to come back and see a ‘great deal more of Hibernia.’