Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, bart / by J. Duns.

  • Duns, John, 1820-1909.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, bart / by J. Duns. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    member of a family, which, singly, had been possessed by individual ancestors. Thus He has laid his hand on treasures not used in the past, sanctified them to himself, and sent forth their owners to do Him special service in that profession, calling, or work on which they have entered by their own free choice. It was given to James to carry the outstanding features of his relatives into a sphere of great influence. The decision of character, the strong purpose, the shrewdness, or the spirit of enterprise, distributed unequally among his uncles and father, were in him united to the high sentiment, refined tastes, and loving disposition of his mother, or of other members in the maternal line of descent. Every Scottish man has a pedigree. Tt is a national prerogative as inalienable as his pride and his poverty.1 James's maternal grandfather, John Jarvey, farmer at Bal- bardie, near Bathgate, was descended from a Huguenot family, who had been settled for some time at Torwood, Stirlingshire, whence they removed, at the latter end of the seventeenth century, to the farm of Boghall, Bathgate, which members of the house held for nearly a hundred years. John Jarvey, like his father and grandfather, became connected by marriage with a family of higher social position than his own. He married Mary Cleland, whose mother was a Cleland of Auchinlee, the representative branch of the Clelands of Cleland. Her grandmother was one of the Wardrops of Cults. James Simpson's inalienable prerogative thus links him, on the father's side, with a family of vigorous limb, strong will, great shrewdness, and persevering industry. On the mother's side, he was associated with the gentle blood of Scotland, and was, of course, too true a Scotchman and antiquary not some- times to linger over that little link in the pedigree, by which he could claim relationship with the Clelands of that Ilk. There were noted names in the family. Alexander, the first Cleland that history has deigned to mention, married a daughter of 1 Sir Walter Scott's Autobiography. Lockhart'a Life of Scott.