On Watt’s return to Soho, Boulton proceeded to London on financial affairs, as well as to look after engine orders. He there found reports in circulation among the engineering class that the new engine had proved a failure. The Society of Engineers in Holborn, of which Smeaton was the great luminary, had settled it that neither the tools nor the workmen existed that could manufacture so complex a machine with sufficient precision, and it was asserted that all the ingenuity and skill of Soho had been unable to conquer the defects of the piston. “So said Holmes, the clockmaker,” wrote Boulton,--Holmes being the intimate friend of Smeaton; “but no language will be sufficiently persuasive on that head except the good performance of the engines themselves.”[145] Boulton, therefore, urged the completion of the engine then in hand for Cooke and Company’s distillery at Stratford-le-Bow, near London. “Wilby,” [the managing partner,] said he, “seems very impatient, and so am I, both for the sake of reputation as well as to begin to turn the tide of money,”--the current of which had as yet been all outwards. Boulton went to see the York Buildings engine, which had been reconstructed by Smeaton, and was then reckoned one of the best on the Newcomen plan. The old man who tended it lauded the engine to the skies, and notwithstanding Boulton’s description of the new engines at work in Staffordshire, he would not believe that any engine in existence could excel his own. [145] Boulton to Watt, 23rd April, 1776. Boulton MSS. In the course of the summer Watt again visited Glasgow,--this time for the purpose of bringing back a wife. The lady he proposed to marry was Miss Anne Macgregor, daughter of a respectable dyer. The young lady’s consent was obtained, as well as her father’s, to the proposed union; but the latter, before making any settlement on his daughter, intimated to Watt that he desired to see the partnership agreement between him and Boulton. Now, although the terms of partnership had been generally arranged, they had not yet been put into legal form, and Watt asked that this should be done for the cautious old gentleman’s satisfaction without delay.[146] About his love affair Watt wrote,-- “Whether a man of the world, such as you, look upon my present love as the folly of youth or the dotage of age [Watt was then in his fortieth year], I find myself in no humour to lay it aside, or to look upon it in either of these lights, but consider it as one of the wisest of my actions, and should look upon a disappointment in it as one of the greatest of my misfortunes.... I have had better health since I left you than has been my lot for years, and my spirits have borne me through my vexations wonderfully. I have lost all dread of any future connexion with Monsieur la Verole, and, if I carry my point in this matter, I hope to be very much more useful to you than has hitherto been in my power. The spur will be greater.”[147]