2110-2-11-5

75, Cromwell Road, South Kensington. S.W. January 18 1914

Dear John

Here is the book upon the Sutherland Clearances. Gerard [Craig-Sellar] finds it is the only one we have here, therefore perhaps you will let us have it back sometime when you have done with it.

Yours affectly

Gertrude. I. Sellar [Gerard's mother]

[Notes by JB on a book on the Sutherland Clearances]

P.S. In a footnote to p. 517, Vol II, he gives an account of the accidental [underlined] discovery that sheep could fend for themselves on the hills through winter.

Tuesday [underlined]. [Hugh Shaw Stewart.]

Conditions in the Highlands before 19th Century.

25 Feb: 1914.

ARDGOWAN, GREENOCK.

Dear Strachey,

One more letter, (not for publication!) on the general conditions of the Highlands, not Sutherland only.

While a good deal of extravagant nonsense is written about "the comfort & happiness" formerly prevailing there is [underlined] a substratum [underlined] of reality as to this. There came undoubted hardshiops, not specially in Sutherland, connected with evictions, & most wretched misery concering emigration to America, which (emigration) was in no way assisted by Lairds (who hadn't money) nor by the State.

I have just been re-reading selections from the M.S.S. of Dundas

of Ochtertyre. [Born in 1736, of a family near Stirling he lived with the best Scotsmen of his day, including Sir W. Scott, who travelled both in Highland and Lowland, & was both a scholar and an advanced agriculturist.]

These selections are published in "Scotland & Scotsmen in the 18th Century," published in 1888 by Messr. Blackwood. In the 2nd. Vol. he sets out his views of the Highland Question 1750-1800 in a judicial, sympathetic, & temperate manner.

I think anyone reviewing the forthcoming "Sutherland Clearances" should refresh his memory with Dundas: but probably not. Buchan is "well acquaint" with him.

Yours sincerely

Hugh Shaw Stewart