Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Preface
- Author's Note
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Scotland: Border Farm to Literary Edinburgh (1789–1820)
- 1 The Elfin Band
- 2 Edinburgh: the Shallows
- 3 Edinburgh: at the Flood
- 4 A Long, a Last Adieu!
- Part II The Cape Frontier: Pioneer, Settler Leader (1820–1821)
- Part III Cape Town and Genadendal: The Stand Against Power (1822–1825)
- Part IV The Frontier, Karroo: Rural Retreat and the ‘Great Cause’ (1825–1826)
- Part V London Literary Life and The Anti-Slavery Campaign (1826–1833)
- Part VI Scotland and Highgate A Poet Returns to his Roots and Last Works (1830–1834)
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - A Long, a Last Adieu!
from Part I - Scotland: Border Farm to Literary Edinburgh (1789–1820)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Preface
- Author's Note
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Scotland: Border Farm to Literary Edinburgh (1789–1820)
- 1 The Elfin Band
- 2 Edinburgh: the Shallows
- 3 Edinburgh: at the Flood
- 4 A Long, a Last Adieu!
- Part II The Cape Frontier: Pioneer, Settler Leader (1820–1821)
- Part III Cape Town and Genadendal: The Stand Against Power (1822–1825)
- Part IV The Frontier, Karroo: Rural Retreat and the ‘Great Cause’ (1825–1826)
- Part V London Literary Life and The Anti-Slavery Campaign (1826–1833)
- Part VI Scotland and Highgate A Poet Returns to his Roots and Last Works (1830–1834)
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
At 30 Pringle was back where he had been at 20, after an experience of literary life that had been unhappy and financially unrewarding. He wrote to a friend:
My present occupation is inadequate to the support of my family in the most moderate way I can devise; I see little or no prospect of materially improving my circumstances in this country and I have already incumbrances on my shoulders which threaten every day to become heavier, and at last to overwhelm me in hopeless debt. Now this is a state of life the most intolerable that can well be imagined, and which one must experience fully to estimate. It paralyses the very blood and heart of man; and I cannot and will not endure it while a prospect remains of extricating myself by my exertion, or sacrifice, that can be made with honour and a good conscience.
Along with extricating himself he held to his great hope, that the family of Robert Pringle could be held together as economic decline shattered the unity he had treasured in the Blaiklaw days. They had begun to scatter when the lease of Blaiklaw was coming to an end, before 1812.
Thomas's letter to his father of 17 January 1812 shows him to have been, even then, the leader among his full and half- brothers and sisters. It shows also that John, 21, and Alexander, 19, were already employed away from home, John, we know, was living with a cousin, John Riddell, son of Robert Pringle’s eldest sister Isabella, a corn miller, before moving on to the management of ‘a Gentleman’s estate for several years’, according to Robert Hart, who was to employ him in the Cape Colony in 1821. Alexander already wanted to emigrate to the United States, to ‘the settlement on the Ohio river where his uncle and cousin William are’ (These two are unidentified. Thomas wrote in an account of the family the previous year that his maternal grandfather’s family had all died, ‘except for one cousin, if still alive’).William, Robert’s eldest son, who seems to have stayed on to wind up affairs at Blaiklaw in 1812, married Anne Scott of Coldstream, Berwickshire, before joining his father in Co Durham.
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- Information
- Thomas PringleSouth African pioneer, poet and abolitionist, pp. 47 - 64Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012