Item 187 - Letter from Henry Sidgwick to his mother

1 doc

[Sent from A. Balfour's house, Strathconan, Ross-shire]:- Explains that his last letter to her was written on their journey from Edinburgh. Refers to the 'charm of the scenery', and to the nearby hills, one of which they climbed a day or two previously. Reports that his brothers-in-law began to stalk deer on the previous Monday, and that they have killed four stags. States that they are 'now living almost entirely on the produce of the chase of various kinds'; is glad she likes the grouse sent to her. Reports that he has gone with Nora to visit two or three people 'in the "Strath", one of them a woman living in almost the only remaining specimen of the stone hovels that a generation ago were the ordinary houses [there]'. Remarks on the resemblance of the Highland people to Irishmen 'as [they] ordinarily imagine them, and refers to a woman whom they visited, 'who said "at all at all" just like an Irishwoman in fiction' but he 'did not detect in her household arrangements any of the recognised defects of the Irish character'. States that they have promised to stay there until the following Wednesday, and he thinks that they will then return to Cambridge. Reports that Nora sends her love, and expresses their concern that she has had some pain in her hand.

Part transcription in Sidgwick, Arthur, and Sidgwick, E. M, 'Henry Sidgwick'. London: Macmillan, 1906, p 323-324.