Thursday. Nov. 24.

Obliged to go to Mathon with Bummy & Arabel. The latter slept at the Bartons last night. I hope she had enough of it.

Went with the Cliffe’s to see poor Col. West’s house:[1] Cards lying on the table,—Bro’s among them! I could not bear looking at anything. So soon passeth it away, & we are gone!— Mr. Cliffe sulky.[2] Only saw him at dinner and at tea. Never heard him—& none the worse for it. Mr. Allen Cliffe goodnatured, & nothing beside. Had guitaring & fortune telling & “all that” in the evening. And reading Mrs. Sherwood’s Roxabel.[3] Bad & vulgar.

1. Mathon Lodge, the home of the late Col. James Dawson West, who had died on 2 August. The Worcester Herald, 22 October, announced its sale by auction on 14 December, and the issue of 19 November, the sale of the contents.

2. William Bateson Cliffe (1803–85), the elder brother of Eliza and Allen.

3. Mary Martha Sherwood, Roxobel, 3 vols. (London, 1830). Mrs. Sherwood was a friend of the Cliffes and was one of the witnesses at the marriage of Mary Catherine Cliffe to Thomas Best in 1827.


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