Saddity, 1894

[Douglas Wilson]

 Anyone have an idea what writer and historian Henry Adams meant by 
 "saddity," below? 
 [March 16, 1894:  Adams writes to Elizabeth Cameron from Santiago de
Cuba.] 
 "We were two or three hours in getting breakfast, and things moved
so 
 slowly, that at last King and I, with Don Tomas, our host -- I never
learned 
 his full name, but he was rather a Ravenswood sort of saddity --
took to our 
 legs and walked up the hill, which he said was a mere twenty
minutes." 
 (From _Letters of Henry Adams_ [1892-1918], edited by W.C. Ford
[Boston: 
 Houghton Mifflin Co., 1938], p. 42.) 
 Only a guess. I suppose "Ravenswood" refers to the tragic figure
Edgar (Lord of Ravenswood) in the Scott novel "The Bride of
Lammermoor" (and the subsequent Donizetti opera "Lucia di
Lammermoor"). I suppose "saddity" is a frivolous term here meaning
"sadness" (+ "tragedy"?) = "sad/tragic person" or perhaps "sadness" +
"oddity" = "sad odd person". A few examples of "saddity" =
"sadness"/"tragedy" can be found by Google.
 -- Doug Wilson

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