Friday, May 15, 1829

1829

May

Friday 15

5 50/60

11 35/60 

Staid 3/4 hour undressed, reading la Grammaire des Grammaires, then sat in my dressing gown looking at 1 book or other, and lastly reading through the whole of Sir James Lawrence’s excellent little work ‘On the Nobility of the British Gentry’ till 10 35/60 – Then read from page 130. to 146, Des Instituts d’Hofwyl par le Comte L. de V., admirable reasons of M. Fellenberg’s for beginning the Study of languages with the Greek, vide –

Breakfast from 11 1/4 to 11 35/60 – Then read the 5 or 6 first chapters, Liber i., Herodotus, to see if I had very  much forgotten my Greek – No, not irrecoverably –

Then read the first 71 pages William’s Treatise on the Study and Practice of the law – Lord Mansfield’s plan for reading ancient and modern history from page 40 to 72. Excellent – all this took me till 2 1/2 – Then till 2 50/60, reading the first 10 pages, Worthington’s Precedent of wills –

Dressed – went out at 3 20/60 – To the rue de Bourbon No. 9 – Might do for us, but little doors, the carriage could not turn in the court, not at all an apartment for receiving company – The kitchens below the level of the ground, but  plenty of room there and comfortable enough, and 2 garrots upstairs – Bad entrance, next to no anteroom – A small place close to it for a lady’s maid – Drawing room, dining ditto, 2 bedrooms all small and a sort of entresol room where Colonel and Mrs. Peacock’s nurse and children now sleep, and a sort of lesser place a servant might sleep in, and a little garden – Mrs. Peacock said they had the house till October, but the proprietor would lengthen their lease, if they could let the apartment furnished as it was – Very poor furniture – They had asked 4000/. a year for the apartment, but would now take 3500 – It cost them 2700 – paid 2200 to the proprietor, then there were coachhouse and stable and taxes – Said if I thought more of the apartment would write to Mrs. Peacock –

Then looked at several other apartments in the same street, of which the only 2 at all likely were Numbers 74 and 34 – The former 4000/. per annum, the latter 3000/. per annum and loftier rooms, though not so nice looking a staircase – Goth these nice apartments with coachhouse and stable, No. 34 three bedrooms then large salon, dining room, another bedroom and kitchen close by – More taken with this last apartment than any I have seen since that in rue Saint Florentin –

Went to Mrs. Barlow’s for an hour and got home at 6 1/2 – Dinner immediately – Mrs. Barlow very good, but said I was very insouciante she had known me very different, would like me to go to Italy with them, but I think begins to despair about it.  Told her of Charles Lawton’s narrow escape, but that he was now thought out of danger.  She made no comment –

My aunt has been rather poorly ever since my return – More so these last few days – Today, could not walk to dinner.  George and I carried her on a chair there and back – She says it is both gout and rheumatism – Her knees and ancles swell, and her head also, and she is not well – Will she rally and live some years or not –

Came to my room at 8 1/2 wrote the last 20 lines till 8 3/4 – Read from p. 72 to 104,Williams’s Study and Practice of the Law –

Coffee at 9 25/60 – Came to my room at 10 1/2, having told my aunt all about the apartments –

Fahrenheit  60° hung out at my window at 11 5/60 p.m.

WYAS Finding Number SH:7/ML/E/12/0023