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104   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

his whip and shook it (it is a common horse hair one, but very large, not heavy), and helped to draw the Lions' Cages off afterwards. I am rather badly off for soap. My Books cost a wee and there is my British Association fee £1 (I have kept regular

Accounts ! !) Amongst others of my entries is one : Various Charities 4d. I must look you up some of these fine days. I have got no news watsumever. So bye bye.

Your affectionate Son,

Fans. GALTON.

i

P.S. Mr Thomas Knott the Editor of Aris' Gazette has died suddenly of apoplexy.

Of Samuel Tertius Galton it must be said that he knew what his son Francis could stand. The summer trip did come off and what is

more Francis did not return in the autumn to the Birmingham General Hospital.

On September 2', Francis started with his father and Sister Bessy via Coventry to Liverpool and thence by packet to the Clyde and Dumbarton. The tour went through what is now very familiar country, Loch Lomond, Loch Long, Loch Katrine, Oban and then across to Aberdeen, and Ury, the home of the Barclays. Francis' diary of the tour is still extant, and it comes to an abrupt end on Sept. 10, apparently because he had already filled in the bulk of the remainder of the book with sketches. We know from these that the party were at Inverlochy Castle on Sept. 17th and at Ury on Sept. 21st. There are no less than six unfinished sketches of Ury, three of the outside of the house, one of the chapel and burial ground of the ancestral Barclays, one of the wall-a tremendous looking structure-over which Captain Barclay's grandfather is reputed to have thrown a bull, and lastly the inside of the gothic window above the porch-with the deep window recess showing the thickness of the walls-where Francis' grandmother, Lucy, had sat to work her sampler, according to the custom of the family. Ury must have been a fascinating spot to those whose ancestry had dwelt there, and thus Sister Bessy describes it

" We left Inverness at six o'clock in the morning passed Forres, where the witches met Macbeth, arrived at Aberdeen at 7 o'clock, drank tea at the Inn and then came on to Stonehaven where we slept. After breakfast we drove up to Ury which had belonged

to the Barclays for some centuries. Margaret Barclay showed us over the curious old house (now blown up and a modern house built by the Bairds), she showed us the Meeting House of the Quakers, close to the house, which all Quakers when travelling

in Scotland, came to see ; a tiny closet, out of the large sitting room, is where my

' The British Association met in Birmingham this August ; and there is evidence from Galton's accounts that he attended it-it was probably his first meeting.


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