Sunday. Nov 27.
Heard Mr. Higgins twice at church, & once in the Eastnor dining room.[1] Dont like him—or rather, cant tolerate him! Walked on the terrace with Miss Baker & Lady Margaret, et cum silentio.[2] Lord Somers cd. not help admiring the manner in which my hair was dressed—!! at dinner today—just like Vandyke’s pictures—or Sir Peter Lelys.[3] Mem. to repeat that compliment whenever my long locks make themselves unpopular. Looked into Phillips’s Sacred Literature, where Gregory’s orations against Julian, are called “pointed thunder”.[4]
How stupid we are!!—And how wise I am! to have brought my desk, & left my key!--
1. The Rev. Joseph Higgins (1770–1847), Rector of Eastnor since 1795.
2. “And in silence.”
3. Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) and Sir Peter Lely (1618–80).
4. T[homas] P[hillips], The Study of Sacred Literature Fully Stated and Considered (London, 1756), p. 35: “The Invectives of the Former [St. Gregory the Divine] against the Apostate Emperor Julian, carry with them a Thunder as pointed as that of the Philippics.”
