| Administrative History | James Hay Beattie [1768-1790]. Eldest son of Beattie. Named, with permission, after Beattie's patron James Hay, Earl of Erroll. His childhood is lovingly recorded in many letters, which show that Beattie was always a deeply involved parent, and in the memoir Beattie wrote shortly after James Hay's death. His childhood and adolescence were marred by his mother's mental illness, and her total disasppearance from his life when he was aged about eleven. He attended Aberdeen Grammar School, and then Marischal College from 1781 to 1786. He considered entering the church, but Beattie secured his appointment on 28 Spetember 1787 as his own assistant and successor. James Hay sometimes taught the Arts class, but was already ill with tubercolosis, of which he died on 19 November 1790. His father assembled a substantial volume of his prose and verse, printed in an edition of 200 copies for circulation among his friends in 1794, and subsequently published with Beattie's own poems in 1799 |
| Description | Letter from James Hay Beattie, London, to James Dun, providing an abridgement of James Hay's journal of the Beatties' activities in London between Tuesday 1 May to Thursday 17 May.
Entry for 17 May talks about the Beatties' overturned carriage: "Thursday May 17th. I have just now received your letter, and am glad to hear that you are well, and amuse yourself with fishing. As you desire to know it we have received any hurt in coming to England, as I suppose you have heard a report of our being overturned. I shall give you an account of it. About a mile from Easingwold, which is the next stage North from York, the horse, on which our driver rode, fell, and threw the driver from his back; the other horse did not stop, but rode on, by which means he dragged the wheel of the chaise first over the body of the horse, then of the driver, whose side was much cut, and so the Chaise was overturned. I got no hurt but a scratch or two on my face, by the broken glass; and a strain in my arm, which I kept in a sling a day or two. We sent the driver back to Easingwold for another chaise, and other horses, and got very well on to York. I have not got much accquainted with any young people here, there being but few in the houes where we commonly visit". |