Thursday Novr. 4th. [sic, for 3 November.]

Going to the Peytons today!— Henrietta & I are north & south about it. I would cry; if crying would keep me at home.—

They have arranged some plan about going in the close carriage, with carthorses. If we are to be upset, I hope it may be in going,—as by those means, the dinner may be averted. Six of us going!!— I am sure they might have left unus multorum at home—una it shd. be![1]

Reading Plato. Some kind of philosophy certainly necessary.

Carthorses wdnt do: so we are to go in the wheelbarrow—two wheelbarrows full.

Went—nobody there except ourselves. My cough was the pleasantest part of the evening; & that was very bad & disagreable. I am going to have a “prodigious” cold. Nem. con:

Miss Glasco gave me a comico-botanico-poetico-kind of composition to read, by Baron Smith.[2] There are some clever things in it. But why shd. people who can think, write in a hurry. Why cant they understand that there is no merit in being in a hurry?

They wanted me to sleep at the Bartons tonight. If I had known, what I knew afterwards,—that the people there mean to go to Malvern tomorrow, & thought of taking me with them, I wd. have dared it all!— All means the bed & the breakfast & the company. How ungrateful!—

1. Unus multorum (masc.), una multorum (fem.): “one of the many.”

2. We cannot trace a peer styling himself Baron Smith at this time. In view of E.B.B.’s habitual carelessness with names, it seems likely that she meant Percy Clinton Sidney Smythe (1780–1855), 6th Viscount Strangford and 1st Baron Penshurst. His Poems, from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoëns (London, 1803) were well received, but we cannot identify any published work meriting the description “comico-botanico-poetico.” As he was a close friend of Thomas Moore, it is possible to hypothesize that this was a manuscript composition, given to Moore, who in turn lent it to his friend James Corry, who was on visiting terms at Barton Court, and so might have shown it there.


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