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Transcription

[Page] 130
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an Autumn of glorious weather and we
had but one halfday wet from the last
week of August to the 12th of Sept.
Several afternoons in each week we
made excursions in the car among
the Cheviots, a region I knew well
from a distance but had never
penetrated except to the Carter,’ We
enjoyed our trips beyond words,

June 1952
How desultory I have been writing up
my journal ! As one grown old one loses
initiative and finds it difficult to
exert one’s brain. To ease to think is to
take the high road to dotage! Having
something to record I have taken up my
journal again and shall endeavour to
continue writing in it. The matter of
moment is our decision to sell ‘Ormsacre’
and to retire to a small house in Melrose.
My motives are two: First, I am now in my
87th year and though, on the whole, active
I cannot disguise the fact that I have no
longer the vision I had till a few years ago.
A slight illness, such as I have had recently,
has left me easily tired. Then comes a more
important motive. I could not bear the

thought of Mary having to wear out her life after
my death in a flat in Edinburgh. Fortunately,
there recently came into the market a small
house in Weirhill Place, Melrose, which, small
and with a correspondingly small garden,
was evidently built by an Architect, sound
in construction, pleasantly situated, with a
view from its windows to the east down the
Tweed valley and away to the hills above
Bemersyde

[Margin]
Aug 1954
‘Weirknowe’
I have learned
was actually
built by the
famous firm
of builders
‘Smith of Darnick,
in 1850 ---

It must have been built at least
a century ago.

[Margin]
It. was built
in 1850. ---

for when my brother Andy
& I were very small boys, I suppose of 6 or 7 years old,
and the family living in ‘Abbey Park’, we
came to this house to receive instruction from
an elderly governess called Miss Isaacs,
and I remember so well news having
just been published of the meeting of Livingstone
and Stanley in central Africa, that Miss Isaac
unrolled a large map, the greater part of
which was devoid of names, and indicated
to us where Stanley had contacted Livingstone!
I also remember how we had ‘gardens’ in
Miss Isaac’s garden and how she rewarded our
diligence with pansies. How strange it is that
the wheel of time should again take me to
Weirknowe and that in that garden I shall
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