Saturday, March 17, 1832

1832 March

Saturday 17

8 50/..

12 25/..

Fine morning, F 59° at 9 in my room and 50° at 10 in the balcony.

Letter from Lady Stuart de Rothesay – a full 1/2 sheet and 1 page and ends of envelope, enclosing letter from Charlotte with some music for Miss Hobart, merely saying that all the illness at Wimpole was the reason she had not written before.  Very little said of Miss H-, and asking for herself my name as subscriber to a little work for young people, Italian selections published by Madame Galvani who, from Mrs. Beilby Thompson’s account to Lady Mexborough, had been in great distress –

§ My letter to Lady Gordon (vide line 7 above), merely saying I concluded from not hearing from her, her plans were still unfixed as ever – If I did not go to Dover direct from here, should hope to see her in London – ‘If you do not fix your summer quarters at Leamington or Tunbridge Wells, both places of excellence in their kind, but still hang suspended by a single hair between Paris and Brussels, Geneva and Florence (supposing, perhaps a gratuitous supposition, Spain out of the question), give me the fatal scissors, and I will cut that hair so that you shall gently fall upon the Place de la Concorde at Paris; and let us try if there be any virtue in the name – But, if you please, no Brussels, good neither for our health, nor for the best education of our respective children –

Geneva is in the high road to Florence, Florence is in Italy, and to Italy I mean to make an offering of my next winter – Think of the genial sun, the cloudless sky, and say if you are Sampson  enough to resist.’  Ask to hear from her – Think Miss H- no better for her winter here – ‘her medical man here is decided in his opinion she ought not to spend next winter in England, and ought to get off before the autumn’ –

Breakfast at 10 1/2 – A little joking talk.  Said I had buried my only child wrapt up in douceurs in All Saints Church on Tuesday morning.  Miss H- said it was perhaps not dead, but only asleep.  She thought I could bring it to life again if I liked.  I laughed and said, Oh no, it was a lovely child,  miraculous, all my own making, but it was a mercy it had pleased God to take it etc. in that style.

She says we have turned over a new leaf.  It is better at this actual time, but she does not know whether it will be so in the end.  I don’t think she was quite happy about it or quite knows what to make of me for my spirits are as good as ever –

Came upstairs at 11 3/4 –  Reading over the newspaper till 12 35/.. – Then a few minutes asleep – Then till 1 1/4 wrote the above of today – From 1 1/4 to 4 20/.. (Miss H- Hobart came up to me twice and staid a little while 10 minutes at least each time), wrote and finished Letter rough draft of to Isabella about Holland – Hints for her own journey proposed for May next if not previous –

Went out at 4 40/.. (reading French vocabulary as I went).  Walked to Ore Church, London road – In returning, called at Wooll’s.  Some time there talking to Mrs. Wooll – Brought away to look at, No. 1,  Account of the Pyrenees with 6 views (Bagnères de Bayonne), dedicated to the Duchess of Kent, 12/. and  came in at 6 40/.. –

Dressed – Dinner at 7 – Music, while I read the Account of the Pyrenees (neither text nor prints tempting to me) – Coffee at 8 1/2 – From 8 3/4, in one hour, played and lost 1 gammon and 1 hit at backgammon – From 9 50/.. to 11, read aloud from page 194 to end of page 245, end of Chapter 55, Volume X, Gibbon –

Came upstairs at 11 7/.. and to my room at 11 10/.. – Very cheerful and equally proper.  She is afraid of my being too much so.  I persevered, she said, so long and then got over it for nothing, an insinuation whether all the regard could be real if so easily got over –

Finish day but windy – a shower between 2 and 3 – F 65° at 11 10/.. in my room and 41° at 12 1/4 in the balcony –

WYAS Finding Number SH:7/ML/E/15/0041