Various opinions have been held regarding the lady whom he selected to
share his lot. Any adequate estimate of this remarkable woman belongs to
an account of her own career, such as that given by Mrs. Ireland in her
judicious and interesting abridgment of the material amply supplied. Jane
Baillie Welsh (_b.1801, d. 1866_)--descended on the paternal side from
Elizabeth, the youngest daughter of John Knox; on the maternal owning to
an inheritance of gipsy blood--belonged to a family long esteemed
in the borders. Her father, a distinguished Edinburgh student, and
afterwards eminent surgeon at Haddington, noted alike for his humanity
and skill, made a small fortune, and purchased in advance from his father
his inheritance of Craigenputtock, a remnant of the once larger family
estate. He died in 1819, when his daughter was in her eighteenth year. To
her he left the now world-famous farm and the bulk of his property. Jane,
of precocious talents, seems to have been, almost from infancy, the
tyrant of the house at Haddington, where her people took a place of
precedence in the small county town. Her grandfathers, John of
Penfillan and Walter of Templand, also a Welsh, though of another--the
gipsy--stock, vied for her baby favours, while her mother's quick and
shifty tempers seem at that date to have combined in the process of
"spoiling" her. The records of the schooldays of the juvenile Jane all
point to a somewhat masculine strength of character. Through life,
it must be acknowledged, this brilliant creature was essentially "a
mockingbird," and made game of every one till she met her mate. The
little lady was learned, reading Virgil at nine, ambitious enough to
venture a tragedy at fourteen, and cynical; writing to her life-long
friend, Miss Eliza Stodart, of Haddington as a "bottomless pit of
dulness," where "all my little world lay glittering in tinsel at my
feet." She was ruthless to the suitors--as numerous, says Mr. Froude,
"as those of Penelope "--who flocked about the young beauty, wit, and
heiress. Of the discarded rivals there was only one of note--George