Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

20 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
a pleasant garden, and those large rooms and airy
passages which are the charm of Edinburgh houses.
This dwelling, their first possession, in which the
Blackwoods settled before the birth of their first child,
was large enough to receive and contain the numerous
family of boys and girls who made haste to follow.
The pleasantness of that home is proved with a very
tender pathos by the many pilgrimages made to it still
(1895) by the last survivor,^ Miss Isabella Blackwood,
to whom the image of " my Father " still seems to
smile benignant over the mists of eighty years.
To this house very shortly after there came another
inmate in Mrs Blackwood's sister. Miss Elizabeth
Steuart, between whom and the young wife there
existed one of those lifelong unions which are often
almost the closest of any ties. She was, like her
sister, a woman of somewhat severe and caustic wit,
a bustling housewife, a keen critic, always ready with
the sharp edge of an uncompromising opinion or the
pungent wisdom of an old Scots proverb : but, under
this veil of strong character and perfect independence
of mind, possessed of an absolute devotion to the
family which she had thus adopted and made her
own. None of the disadvantages which sometimes
accompany the presence of such a domestic spectator
seem to have existed in her case, though she always
spoke her mind freely, and was no ministering angel
1 Since the above sentence was written Miss Isabella Blackwood has
ended her long life, to the heartfelt regret of the present writer, who had
hoped to present to so old a friend, and one from whom so much information
was derived, this record of those most dear to her. No one more
faithful to her family or more concerned for its credit and reputation ever
lived, and the scenes and surroundings of her youth were always nearer
to her heart than anything else in life.