Friday, November 28, 1834

1834

November

Friday 28

8 35/..

12 1/4

No kiss.  Very fine morning, Fahrenheit 48° at 9 1/4 a.m.  Breakfast at 9 35/.. –

Had Charles Howarth at 10 to say he found Spaldin best to deal with –

Ann and I out at 10 1/2 for an hour – Went to 2 or 3 bookseller’s shops for Rennie’s pamphlet on railroads – Learnt that he had been surveying for a railroad from Burlington to York (I think) and that his pamphlet was probably on that subject – Wood’s work, 1 volume octavo on railroads, gone through 7 or 8 editions, not to be had in Hull –

Went to Wilson’s, paid for inkstand, an improvement on the India rubber stopper – The top of the box part fixing on with a spring instead of screwing –

Went into the Joint Stock Bank, corner of Silver street, to ask them to give smaller Bank of England notes for the note for £500, No. 3884 dated Leeds 21 June 1833 signed J. Booth, that Ann got some time ago from Briggs’s Bank – The people civil enough, but against rule to exchange so large a note for a stranger unless taking some respectable known person as guarantee – as the note might have been lost before coming into my hands – I thanked the people for the information and walked off – mentioning the circumstance to Lofthouse, the druggist, in the marketplace on paying him for his Palmer’s wax candles –

Wilson could get me Chalmers’s biography, 32 volume octavo bound, for fourteen guineas – Would let me have for 55/. + 20/. a copy (got for a subscriber and thrown upon his hands) of Walker’s (published by Nicolls of Wakefield) map of the canals and railways of England and Wales, published a few years ago at 3 1/2 guineas with a quarto at 2 guineas or an octavo at 1 guinea volume of text by Priestley, agent to the Aire and Calder Navigation – but the map was mounted for hanging up and the back, at least, looked a little soiled –

Back at the Cross Keys at 11 1/2, and had the agent of Messers B  .  .  .  and Spaldin, and paid him for 120 (six scores to the hundred of deals), 21 foot red Petersburg deal at 5 1/2 pence per foot,  50 America Pine, 12 foot picked at 4/3 per deal, and 10 Riga oak logs at 4/9 per foot – The red Archangel deals are 1/4 pence per foot dearer than the Petersburg – The man said Charles Howarth had explained what I wanted the deals for – for railing or thin rafters; and the Petersburg would do better for these purposes than the Archangel, which latter is of stronger coarser grain, but works better than the Petersburg, that Charles Howarth chose the Petersburg against himself – Thomas Greenwood buys the Wiburg deals (and it is Wiburg I have had from him) which are 1/4d pence per foot cheaper than the Petersburg – There is a rise of 1/4 pence per foot since Greenwood was last at Hull – Charles Howarth says we have paid 6/. instead of 4/3 per deal (12 foot) of America Pine at Halifax and that I have paid for Riga oak 6/. instead of 4/9 – I gave the agent the £500 bank of  England note described at the bottom the last page and in 1/2 hour he sent me the change (£400 in Bank of England notes) as I had paid the odd money over the £100 out of what I had in my purse – The very best Archangel timber to be had of Spaldin at 2/1 per foot cubic –

Ann and I out again at 1 35/.. to call on the 2 Miss Bedingfelds, Humber bank – The proprietors of the row of houses there are gaining 30 or 40 yards breadth of ground from the river – Driving larch piles and filling up, which ground costs them 3/. or 4/. per yard for every yard measured on the surface – a great improvement and not dear –

20 minutes in going – Found the 2 ladies at home, and their niece Mrs. Steel, çidevant Isabella Waterton, with them , – Looking well and vulgar – All very civil to us both – Sat 40 minutes –

Detained in returning about 10 minutes by the bridge being thrown open for a vessel to clear out of the dock – Back at the Inn at 3 – Ann had a mutton chop and I 1/2 of one, and off from Hull (Charles Howarth with George in the rumble and Eugénie inside crowding us) at 3 57/.. –

Hull is a town abominable for its radicalism – a meeting last night in favor of Hutt and Hill the present radical members, their constituents declaring they were ashamed of the name of Whigs and should in future call themselves radical reformers –

Wilson (our bookseller) a conservative, a Tory, a sensible man, but says he is left in the lurch by all his high Tory friends – the Tory interest divided – Mr. Corruthers (the Tory candidate from London who was to speak at 2 p.m. today, has not much chance of success –

Off too late (at 3 57/..) to see much – a 16 miles stage to North Cave where we arrived at 5 53/.. in dark, and were told we should be four hours in reaching Selby, 21 miles, for no horses kept at Howden – to change at Booth Ferry, would not expedite us – it being a mile round about and we should have to wait for horses from the other side of the water –

Just 2 hours in reaching Lofthouse bridge – and at Selby (George Inn) at 9 1/2 by York for my watch (as entered in travelling account 9 3/4) is 1/4 hour too soon – Very bad Tea – Ate and enjoyed our score of nice smelts brought from Hull – too early for them here by 2 months – Sat talking till 11 1/2 –

We had had in the master of the house (Hawdon) – The Selby people not for the railroad being continued to Hull – everything would then pass through Selby without stopping – The Selby line estimated at £160,000 – has cost above £300,000 – They have borrowed of government £90,000?  Walker of London, the Engineer – Had Mackintosh contracted for the job (he did the last Hull dock and had just taken the new dock to do at Goole), it would have been done long ago; but he was a few thousands too high § and they have expended far more than that – The Line from Selby to Hull estimated at £300,000 but it will cost at least twice that sum –

§ Mackintoshe’s estimate of the Selby line £7,000 above Walker’s estimate, which Hawdon said was £160,000 or £150,000) –

Fine day – A smartish shower at Lofthouse bridge at 8 5/.. but tolerably fair again in about 1/2 – Fahrenheit 51° at 12 1/4 tonight in my dressing room (no fire) –

 

WYAS Finding Numbers SH:7/ML/E/17/0114 and  SH:7/ML/E/17/0115