Born: 7 May 1797, United Kingdom
Died: 14 November 1885
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Elizabeth Grant
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Linde Lunney. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Smith, Elizabeth (1797–1885), diarist, was born 7 May 1797 in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, eldest child of Sir John Peter Grant, baronet, barrister, and laird of Rothiemurchus, Perthshire, and Jane Grant (née Ironside); two brothers and two sisters survived to adulthood. Her father’s family was closely related to the chief of Clan Grant, and she grew up among some of the last vestiges of traditional clan life. Her father’s mismanagement and attempts to live up to the feudal style of his ancestors plunged him into debt; when he lost his seat in parliament, he was pursued by creditors and had to flee to France. Elizabeth Grant’s substantial earnings from stories and articles published in magazines provided the family’s only source of income, and even helped to redeem their coach from a creditor when they were en route to France. She spent some time in India, where her father became a judge, and there met and married (1829) Col. Henry Smith (d. 1862), eighteen years her senior, then in the East India Company’s army. He inherited an estate of 1,200 neglected acres in Co. Wicklow, and in 1830 they came to live in Baltyboys House, near Blessington. Apart from visits to Scotland and England, and also the years 1843–5, which they spent (for reasons of health and economising) in Pau, in the Pyrenees, she lived in Wicklow for the rest of her long life. She began keeping a journal in 1840 and also wrote a memoir of her early experiences; both were intended for her own family, but were published after her death in several editions. The first extracts were published by Smith’s niece, Lady Strachey (mother of Lytton Strachey, the writer), in Memoirs of a highland lady (1898). The diaries contain a vast amount of information on the daily life and concerns of a gentry family, as well as material about the conditions of impoverished communities in Ireland and Scotland which has since been assiduously quarried by local, social, and economic historians.
Smith’s often unfavourable opinions of the people of all classes that she met, as well as of the political figures and events of the day, were trenchantly expressed. She was a forceful character, deeply involved in the management of the estate, and even more involved in the administration of the poor law in her area. She published several stories in 1846 in Chambers’ Journal; ‘My father the laird’ was particularly popular, and also wrote articles and fictionalised memoirs based on her experiences in Pau and India. She used her earnings partly to finance a national school for boys and girls near her home. After her husband’s death, she used a legacy from her aunt to buy land at Lacken, Co. Wicklow, and built another school there. The Smiths were never wealthy, but managed to repair or rebuild houses for their tenants. Particularly during the famine in the 1840s, they also distributed food and fuel, and helped many local people join the police, emigrate, or find employment. Smith was clearly deeply affected by the misery of people living in poverty, many of whom were well-known to her, but she frequently expressed her impatience with, and distrust of, the character of the Irish peasantry.
Her efforts to regulate the life of a country district in Wicklow were informed by her belief – typical enough for a nineteenth-century Scot – in the possibility of improving the human condition; at the same time, she was realistic enough to recognise the limitations of her influence, and had enough self-awareness and sense of humour to admit to herself that influence sometimes equalled bossiness. Few women of the period reveal themselves so clearly in their writings; even critics of her ambivalence and her apparently inveterate hard-heartedness have to acknowledge that her perceptiveness and powers of observation make her memoirs a very valuable historical source, and readers agree that the complexities of her personality and of her attitudes, and the vivid, ironic, and incisive idiosyncrasies of her style, contribute to the enduring interest of her diaries. Elizabeth Smith died 14 November 1885 in Baltyboys, and is buried in St Mary’s churchyard, Blessington.
Henry and Elizabeth Smith had a son and three daughters, one of whom died as a baby; her elder daughter married Alexander G. Richey; Dame Ninette de Valois was a great-granddaughter. Patricia Pelly and Moyra McGusty, also descendants, have helped to republish Smith’s writings. Her manuscripts are in the NLI. The name ‘Highland Lady’ and the photograph of Elizabeth (Grant) Smith are used as trademarks of a select Glenlivet malt whisky.