The Highland lady in Dublin, 1851-1856 - Elizabeth Grant

In the years covered by this volume, she and her husband, Colonel, later General, Henry Smith, and her two unmarried children moved to Dublin. Hers was a busy existence with an invalid husband, a testy aunt who needed to be humoured if only because her favourite niece was to be her principal legatee, an unmarried daughter, and a young son who, despite his mother's wish for him to lead the life of an improving country gentleman back in Co. Wicklow, aspired to follow in his father's footsteps. Their full part in the Dublin social whirl is entertainingly described, as they move with their Blessington neighbours, such as the Earl and Countess of Milltown and the Hornidges, and their city friends, through the levees and balls, operas and concerts that graced the season. The estate meantime was far from neglected and the chatelaine of Baltiboys kept a watchful eye on all that occurred in the neighbourhood she loved so well, as well as the increasingly complicated fortunes of her wayward son-in-law whose duplicity contrasted with her own high standards.In town and country, public and family life, her observations and comments cover the full range of society, with shrewd, amusing and often significant insights into her life and times. This penultimate volume of the Highland Lady's diaries closes with the Crimean War, on all aspects of which she has her own trenchant views. And, tragically, with the development of a cataract in one eye, which she accepted with her characteristic stoicism: 'I don't see well what I write. Instinct guides the pen. A blind old age for the busy bee, a cross indeed with a thousand blessings.'