1769

Summary

[JB left London on 9 June 1768 and returned to Edinburgh for the summer session of the Court of Session (12 June to 11 August). He was kept very busy with legal work, and his fees for the session amounted to fifty-eight guineas. During the court vacation, JB, as usual, stayed at Auchinleck. In mid-August he paid a call on his cousins the Montgomeries of Lainshaw, whom he found entertaining relatives of theirs from Ireland, Charles Boyd (a wealthy attorney in Dublin), his wife and their daughter, Mary Ann. The visitors were accompanied by Margaret Montgomerie's first cousin Mrs. Jane Boyd, who was aunt of Mary Ann and wife of Charles Boyd's brother Hugh. JB was enraptured by Mary Ann, and on being invited to visit her and her family in Ireland, promised to come in March the following year (when the Court of Session rose at the end of the winter session). Writing to WJT, JB extolled Mary Ann's virtues (referring to her as ‘La belle Irlandaise’):

I have now seen the finest creature that ever was formed … Figure to yourself Temple a young Lady just sixteen, formed like a grecian nymph with the sweetest countenance full of sensibility, accomplished with a Dublin education, allways half the year in the north of Ireland, her father a Counsellor at law with an estate of £1000 a year and above £10000 in ready money. Her mother a sensible wellbred woman. She the darling of her parents & no other child but her sister … From morning to night I admired the charming Mary Anne. Upon my honour, I never was so much in love … I was allowed to walk a great deal with Miss. I repeated my fervent passion to her, again & 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 … I am fixed beyond a possibility of doubt as to her. Believe me she is like a part of my very soul … This is the most agreable passion I ever felt. Sixteen innocence and gayety make me quite a Sicilian Swain.