Sunday Oct. 23.
“Heigho the wind & the rain!”[1] I wish they had come last Thursday instead of this morning!— No going to church. My squirrel has eaten three chesnuts out of my hand, & has tried to eat my hand besides. It did not bite much. I should grow very fond of it, if it wd. but grow fond of me, & if I cd. but persuade it to become more odoriferous. We have brought a myrtle tree up into the room, for it to have leaping room upon. Arabel’s proposition.
A long conversation down stairs this morning about our leaving Hope End. Bummy seems to have very very little hope .. I have none. Charlotte [Butler], if she comes to England at all, must come the last week of this month— And where is she to go? Dear Bummy is anxious & embarassed between the desire of receiving her, & the dislike of parting with us!—and no letter from Papa. There is one from Mrs. Boyd, who says, “Mr. B sends his kind love: he is going to send you two or three epigrams; but as he does not like to be the cause of your reading such things on Sunday, you may expect to receive them by Monday’s post.” So I suppose he will write with them,—or I shall be as burning hot as ever Amreeta cup made Kehama!—[2] Annie is not well,—& Mrs. Boyd attributes her indisposition to distress of mind at Mr. Biscoe’s secession. How distress of mind can be the consequence of the secession of a man whom she does not, did not, cannot love, I do not understand. That is one of the things which are “not dreamt of in my philosophy”.[3] Annie & Miss Boyd are to be sent here on the first fine day. Annie said something when I was at Malvern about bringing her nightcap some day, & sleeping here. I could not object; but there will be objectors. At any rate, if she comes with only Miss Boyd, she will not like Miss Boyd to return alone.
Bummy & I walked to the gate, because there was an interregnum in the rain. No preacher there!—
1. The Clown’s song, Twelfth Night V.i.375 ff.
2. Southey’s poem, The Curse of Kehama (London, 1810), pp. 263–264, tells how, after Kehama had drunk from the cup.
3. Cf. Hamlet I.v.166–167.
