Dear blog,

I’ve been in the Mitchell Library, in Glasgow, for the past few days reading Joanna Baillie’s letters to Lady Davy. There are 29 letters and they cover a lengthy period, from 1815 to 1851, when Joanna Baillie died. Given that Sir Humphry Davy dies in 1829, many of the letters (22 I think?) are from the later period in his wife’s life. In many ways, these aren’t important letters for our Collected Letters edition; while we are presently including Jane Davy in the edition, these are letters written to rather than from her. They have also already been transcribed in Judith Slagles’ edition of Baillie’s Collected Letters.

All of this aside, they are still very interesting letters, written by an important writer (Baillie was a poet and dramatist) and contain a number of interesting bits and pieces. Joanna Baillie portrays herself as a bit of a hermit, ever grateful for the attention that Lady Davy pays her (she always uses her title). She portrays Jane as constantly in a whirl of social engagements, in the country and in town, and as someone who enjoys travelling abroad. In 1816 Baillie goes to Geneva (I wonder whether this was her only trip outside the UK?) utilising the introduction that her friend has given her to a scientific acquaintance, Pictet. Baillie writes of her disappointment in seeing Mont Blanc: ‘I wish Mont Blanc had been as gracious to me as he way to Sir Humphry, tho’ I do not pretent to be so worthy of his favours.’ This makes me wonder whether she had seen Davy’s poem on this mountain, particularly since she certainly had seen others. The letters are often homely, full of news of mutual friends, family and Baillie’s and her sister’s health. But it’s clear that Jane Davy is a far more at ease in certain social circles; Baillie talks tantalisingly of the diaries that she must have kept of her travels, writing that her views of Turkey must be as important as Mary Wortley’s.

There’s so much that I’d like to follow up from this, such as their mutual friendships with Mary Edgeworth, Lady Byron, and Mary Someville (described as doing ‘so much honour in those matters in which we are most supposed to be incapable & deficient that all her sex are in duty bound to bid her God speed! in whatever she writes.’) For now, though, I need to finish my paper for the Godwin Diaries conference due to take place in Oxford next week (http://godwindiary.politics.ox.ac.uk/conference/)!

All best,

Sharon