“I know you are indifferent to nothing that concerns us, and therefore I take an early opportunity to acquaint you with the mixture of evil and good which has very lately befallen us. On Saturday last we had the advice of the death of my wife’s brother Charles Carpenter, commercial resident at Salem, in the Madras Establishment. This event has given her great distress. She has not, that we know of, a single blood-relation left in the world, for her uncle, the Chevalier de la Volere, colonel of a Russian regiment, is believed to have been killed in the campaign of 1813.* My wife has been very unwell for two days, and is only now sitting up and mixing with us. She has that sympathy which we are all bound to pay, but feels she wants that personal interest in her sorrow which could only be grounded on a personal acquaintance with the deceased.
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* I know nothing of the history or fate of this gentleman, except that he was an ardent royalist, and emigrated from France early in the Revolution. |
| DEATH OF MR CARPENTER. | 213 |
“Mr Carpenter has, with great propriety, left his property in life-rent to his wife—the capital to my children. It seems to amount to about L.40,000. Upwards of L.30,000 is in the British funds, the rest, to an uncertain value, in India. I hope this prospect of independence will not make my children different from that which they have usually been docile, dutiful, and affectionate. I trust it will not. At least, the first expression of their feelings was honourable, for it was a unanimous wish to give up all to their mother. This I explained to them was out of the question; but that if they should be in possession at any time of this property, they ought, among them, to settle an income of L.400 or L.500 on their mother for her life, to supply her with a fund at her own uncontrolled disposal, for any indulgence or useful purpose that might be required. Mrs Scott will stand in no need of this, but it is a pity to let kind affections run to waste; and if they never have it in their power to pay such a debt, their willingness to have done so will be a pleasant reflection. I am Scotchman enough to hate the breaking up of family ties, and the too close adherence to personal property. For myself, this event makes me neither richer nor poorer directly, but indirectly it will permit me to do something for my poor brother Tom’s family, besides pleasing myself in ‘plantings, and policies, and biggings,’* with a safe conscience.
“There is another thing I have to whisper to your faithful ear. Our fat friend being desirous to honour Literature in my unworthy person, has intimated to me, by his organ the Doctor, that, with consent ample and unanimous of all the potential voices of all his ministers, each more happy than another of course on so joyful an
* I believe this is a quotation from some old Scotch chronicler on the character of King James V. |
| 214 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Sir Walter Blunt—1 King Henry IV.,” Act V. Scene 3. † See Moliere’s “George Dandin.” |
| OFFER OF A BARONETCY. | 215 |
