Editorial Postscript

Summary

Only a few details survive of JB's visit to Dublin, and of the rest of his Irish jaunt. His letter to Sir Alexander Dick of 29 May, written from Donaghadee after his return from Dublin, reported that ‘I have been exceedingly well entertained. The Irish are zealous friends to Corsica, and on that account I found myself treated with a distinction that has been very flattering to the blood of Auchinleck’. He found Dublin ‘really a noble City’, and told Dick that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was ‘remarkably good to me’. JB had also seen ‘some beautiful country seats’. Although JB told Dick he found Mary Ann Boyd ‘really as amiable as I told you I thought her’, his interest in MM had plainly deepened. In Dublin, JB had also reconnected with a college friend, Capt. James Hoggan (d. c. 1780), of the 51st Regt. of Foot, who had been a classmate in Robert Hunter's Greek class at the University of Edinburgh. He spent time with him and several other young army officers. The chief consequence of roistering with these companions was a severe case of venereal disease, which was to afflict him well into the summer. On 14 July, back in Edinburgh, he noted that he had been ‘blooded’ by a surgeon to ‘begin the cure of a severe symptom. It is hard for one night of Irish extravagance to suffer so much.’

After writing his letter of 29 May to Dick, JB went from Donaghadee to Belfast, from where, that same night, he wrote to Margaret at Hugh Boyd's in Donaghadee, apologizing for an act of ‘rash and most absurd passion’ (the nature of which is not known), but telling her that ‘taxing me with indifference went to my very heart’, and that ‘these few hours of separation’ (i.e. the trip to Belfast after their quarrel) ‘have had a serious effect on me’.