Ossian Collection > Scottish eccentrics

SIR THOMAS URQUHART 29
clear now, upon the evidence of a cloud of witnesses, that
his marriage was happy above the average. Mary Boyle, a
most discerning woman, protested that 'the injudicious
publication of such exaggerated expressions through a
cold medium of printed words conveyed a most erroneous
impression of the man himself. . . . He would break off
suddenly, and all the venom and bitterness be drowned in
a burst of ringing laughter, and his handsome though
naturally grim face ripple all over with good-humoured
smiles, so that no one who saw or heard him could doubt
the kindly nature and the tender heart."
Urquhart has been divided from the vast majority of
Scots since his own day — and is divided to-day — by the
barrier he indicates when he says (and I think rightly) that
"ignorance, together with hypocrisy, usury, oppression,
and iniquity took root in these parts [Scotland], when
uprightness, plain-dealing, and charity, with Astroea,
took their flight with Queen Mary of Scotland into
England".
Here is a picture of a Scot. "Alan had a weird in-
nate conviction that he was beyond ordinary judgment.
Katherine could never quite see where it came in. Son of
a Scottish baronet, and captain in a Highland regiment,
did not seem to her stupendous. As for Alan himself, he
was handsome in uniform, with his kilt swinging and his
blue eye glaring. Even stark naked and without any trim-
mings, he had a bony, dauntless, overbearing manliness
of his own. The one thing Katherine could not quite
appreciate was his silent, indomitable assumption that he
was actually first-born, a born lord. He was a clever man,
too, ready to assume that General This or Colonel That
might really be his superior. Until he actually came into
contact with General This or Colonel That. Whereupon
his overweening blue eye arched in his bony face, and a
faint tinge of contempt infused itself into his homage.
Lordly, or not, he wasn't much of a success in the worldly
sense. . . . Sometimes he would stand and look at her in
silent rage, wonder, and indignation. The wondering