Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/32

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24
DALHOUSIE'S WORK IN INDIA

when it shall again be found[1].' To the triumphant majority against him he bade farewell in a good-natured joke: 'Ye're daft to refuse the Laird o' Cockpen.'

The defeat, indeed, sat lightly on the brilliant young man with whom politics then mingled with love. Soon afterwards, in January 1836, he married Lady Susan Hay, eldest daughter of his neighbour and family friend, the eighth Marquess of Tweeddale. Lady Susan Hay is described as a tall and very beautiful girl, a perfect mistress of French, and an accomplished musician. Her love of horses and dogs became proverbial in India, where she rode her husband's tours march by march, and was a familiar figure on the Calcutta Course, driving a pair of spirited steeds in excellent form. Somewhat impassive in society, her genuine Scottish kindness of heart, intellectual gifts, and charm of manner, made her adored in domestic life. Her death in 1853 completely overshadowed the remainder of her husband's existence on earth.

Two daughters filled up the happiness of their seventeen years of married life. The younger, Lady Edith, married in 1859 the Right Honourable Sir James Fergusson, Bart., the distinguished Colonial and Indian Governor. She died in 1871. The elder, Lady Susan, after nobly devoting herself to her father's declining years, and ministering to him to

  1. The Times article on Dalhousie's death.