The lady was the widow of Shuckburgh Ashby Apreece, the eldest son of Sir Thomas Apreece; she was the daughter and heiress of Charles Kerr of Kelso, who had been secretary to Lord Rodney, and had made a fortune in the West Indies. She was also a “far-away cousin” of Sir Walter Scott, and on the occasion of his tour in the Hebrides with his family, “his dear friend and distant relation,” as he calls her, accompanied them. She had been, he says, “a lioness of the first magnitude in Edinburgh” during the preceding winter; and in one of his letters to Byron in 1812, inviting him to Abbotsford, he mentions as one of the visitors that would make his house attractive “the fair or shall I say the sage Apreece that was, Lady Davy that is, who is soon to show us how much science she leads captive in Sir Humphry; so your lordship sees, as the citizen’s wife says in the farce, ‘Threadneedle Street has some charms,’ since they procure us such celebrated visitants.” How Scott regarded her is further indicated in the letters which he addressed to her on the occasion of his son’s marriage, and during the financial crash which overwhelmed him. When the marriage was arranged Davy thus wrote to his mother:-- “MY DEAR MOTHER,--You possibly may have heard reports of my intended marriage. Till within the last few days it was mere report. It is I trust now a settled arrangement. I am the happiest of men, in the hope of a union with a woman equally distinguished for virtues, talents and accomplishments.... “You, I am sure, will sympathise in my happiness. I believe I should never have married, but for this charming woman, whose views and whose tastes coincide with my own, and who is eminently qualified to promote my best efforts and objects in life.... “I am your affectionate son, “H. DAVY.” In the following letter to Dr. John Davy, who was then in Edinburgh as a student of medicine, we have also the announcement of another event:-- “Friday, _April 10th, 1812_. “MY DEAR BROTHER,--You will have excused me for not writing to you on subjects of science. I have been absorbed by arrangements on which the happiness of my future life depends. Before you receive this these arrangements will, I trust, be settled; and, in a few weeks, I shall be able to return to my habits of study and of scientific research. “I am going to be married to-morrow; and I have a fair prospect of happiness, with the most amiable and intellectual woman I have ever known.