A day of east wind + incessant (at times very heavy) rain. I had a full day’s work first motoring in the town, Ettrickhaugh, Caddonfoot, Sunderland Hall, Bridgelands + Knowepark. Wrote Lizzie Guthrie Smith1 : Forsyth2, Young + Turnbull, Hawick3 with the waistcoat of my heavy suit. At 4.30 got ‘phone to Wm Blaikie, Mt Benger Cottage4 + at Yarrow P.O. got messages to Jas. Lewis5 + Mrs Ovens, Tower Street6. Got back at 7 to find Mrs Ovens just better. Saw James Lewis after dinner. Helen7 + Peter8 were to have gone to Kirklea9 [?] but it was far too wet.
1 Elizabeth Orr ‘Lizzie’ Guthrie Smith née Rennie (1858-1926), daughter of the Reverend James Rennie (1826-1924), Church of Scotland minister and Catherine Stewart Rennie née Muir, thus Dr Muir’s niece.
2 Dr Muir had seen a tailor, perhaps R W Forsyth, outfitters at Princes Street, Edinburgh, several times in July about a suit.
3 The Editor has been unable to identify this local tailor.
4 William Blaikie, farm worker, was Inhabitant Occupier of a house at Mount Benger, Yarrow [1922 Valuation Roll, VR011700009-/389, Selkirk County, page 389 of 611].
5 James Lewis (about 1857-1924), stationer and publisher, of Marion Crescent, Selkirk, who Dr Muir had been attending.
6 Wilhelmina Scott Brown had married Thomas Waddell Ovens, police constable, 24 June 1921 at Lockie’s Temperance Hotel, High Street, Selkirk; by 1922 they were staying at a house 34 Tower Street, Selkirk where Thomas was Tenant Occupier [sources: Ovens, Thomas Waddell and Brown, Wilhelmina Scott, Statutory registers Marriages 778/ 17, page 9 of 23; 1922 Valuation Roll, VR007900012-/268, Selkirk Burgh, page 268 of 644].
7 Helen Frances ‘Mousey’ Muir (1880-1963), Dr Muir’s third daughter and sometime housekeeper.
8 Peter Allan [sic], evidently a charge of Dora’s, is Peter Muir Spurgeon Allen (1914-2005), who was at Thorncroft, Selkirk, aged 7, in the 1921 Census [taken 19 June 1921], born 4 June 1914, Chorlton [Lancashire], the son of the Reverend Willoughby Charles Allen and Catherine Ellen Allen née Green; a head teacher (retired), he died 16 February 2005 at the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh, usual residence Hope Cottage, Stenton, Dunbar, East Lothian.
9 Kirklea, Ashkirk (if that is the correct reading) home of the Ogilvie family.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/25, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1922]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 