JBW-MW [MWE], 19 Nov. Addr: Liverpool. MS: NLS, 601.1. Hitherto unpbd. The letter is without punctuation. Jane Baillie Welsh, only daughter of Dr. John Welsh and Grace Welsh, first cousins, was born 14 July 1801 and was eleven when this, her first surviving letter, was written. She attended a local school at Haddington, where she was taught by Edward Irving who also gave her private tuition in Latin. Afterward, when she was about sixteen, she spent some time at a boarding school in Edinburgh, Miss Hall's school in Leith Walk. Mary Welsh was Jane's aunt by marriage, wife of John Welsh, her mother's brother, and mother of the Liverpool cousins Helen, Jeannie (“Babbie”), Margaret (“Maggie”), Mary, Walter, Alexander, and John, who appear often in the correspondence later. She was a domineering woman, and in later years Jane adored her cousins and her uncle but disliked Aunt Mary.

1. Not identified.

2. Clearly spelled so, but Jane probably means Mrs. Hemmings, who was the former governess of the family of the Chief of Coll in the Western Islands, married to an “ex-military person.” Jane was removed from her boarding school in Haddington when glaring deficiencies were discovered there. See “Jane Welsh Carlyle” in Carlyle's Reminiscences and Hansons, NE, p. 11.

3. James Brown (1786?–1830) was educated at Edinburgh University, where he graduated with an M.A. in 1815. He was licensed to preach in 1816, appointed to an Indian chaplaincy in 1821, and ordained in 1822. He received the D.D. degree from Aberdeen in 1826 and died at Malacca, 23 Sept. 1830. When Edward Irving left the Mathematical School at Haddington in Aug. 1812, Brown took his place. In 1813 the Mathematical School and the English School there were combined with Brown as headmaster, and the school came to be called James Brown's Public School. Both Irving and Brown found Jane to be a very brilliant pupil. See Reminiscences, I, 74; II, 43.