Eighteenth-Century Scotland
The Scots Household in the Eighteenth Century. By Marion Lockhead. (Moray Press. 25s.) THE eighteenth was the final Scotch century "—that was Lord Cockburn's verdict in 1847. Certainly it is the most interesting Scotch century,. and saw the transformation of a country which had threatened to become a perpetual poor relation of England into one which, intellectually and culturally, could look Europe in the face. It was a change as striking as the change from the narrow streets and tall buildings of the Old Town of Edinburgh to the spacious terraces and squares of the New. The daily background of this period of transformation was admirably described by Henry Grey Graham in his Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, published fifty years ago. Now comes Miss Lockhead, covering much the same field in her book of 400 pages, and tapping many of the same sources, though she has been able to use documents published by the Scottish Historical Society and the Spalding Club since Graham's day. She supplements his picture at various points, telling us more about dress, games, relations between masters and servants • she is more concerned than Graham with people's faith and feelings, and has less to say on industry and education.
Recipes for possets and syllabubs, news of a performance of The Provoked Husband at Banff, the price paid by Lady Grisell Baillie for a " virginall Hammer and musick book "—in such details, which can take us to the heart of a past century, the book abounds, and every chapter is packed with lively and entertaining quotations from diaries, letters, account books, household books. The arrangement of the material is less satisfactory. Brief accounts of Hume, Boswell and Adam Smith are embedded in a chapter on " the library," which begins appropriately enough with a survey of books and bookshops ; for an account of Scots painting we have to look to the end of the chapter on " lairds and ladies." Miss Lockhead's accompanying comment too often distracts rather than illuminates. She has a passion for Jane Austen's characters, whom she likes to compare with her real Scots characters : " If Marianne Dashwood had been under the care of this refreshing lady [Mrs. Grant of Laggan] she might in time have learned both sense and manners." Such interpolations, and there are many, do not help us to see the main subject more clearly ; they only blur the picture.
JANET ADAM SMITH.
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