Thursday Dec 29.
Gent took Bummy’ final to Miss Steers today; & a note full of addenda to my note yesterday, to Mrs. Boyd. He has come back. As she was not at home, there is of course, no answer. And no letter for me by the post!! It is clear that Mr. Boyd did not, & does not, intend to write to me, notwithstanding what Mrs. Boyd said. Is it kind?— Perhaps it is better. I am not sure whether I ought or ought not to go to R C without waiting much longer for an intimation from him on the subject. After all, I can only be pained; & to that I am accustomed. So perhaps I had better go. If I do not, my staying away may be made an excuse for his quarrelling with me,—& to that I am not accustomed. I cd. not bear that kind of pain. I wonder what book Miss H M is reading with him. There is no use in wondering--
H & A have ridden to Mathon, to combat Mrs. Cliffes estravaganzas. Do I wish them all to sleep here tomorrow—really wish it?— I wish dear Annie to do as she wishes; & I wish Mrs. Boyd not to be displeased with me or any of us. But I am not, I believe, in a humour for a crowd of people. May I escape the Barton crowd tomorrow! Ora pro nobis—
I knew from the beginning, how it wd. be about Miss H M. Well! The last time I was at R C, I was very happy. The last time!--
H & A come back. Mrs. C intractable!— A brought a note for me from Mrs. Boyd. Mr. Boyd sends me a MESSAGE! of thanks for the turkey, and expresses himself “sorry at my not having come over, yet, AS” (What force there is in some words!) “he wishes the two rival Queens to meet”. And so I am to go to R C to be shown off & with Miss H M!!— The coolness of Mr. Boyd’s expressions, & the indifference he shows about writing to me, went to my heart; & when I was in the room by myself, I could not help shedding actual rears. He did not deserve one of them—and yet they were shed!--
Wrote a note to Mrs. B, in which I told her the real reason of my not having been to R C before. “I remembered that Mr. Boyd might have reading to do with Miss Mushet at the time of my arrival; & that such an interruption wd. be neither pleasant for him nor me. Certainly not for me”— Then I said—“With regard to the question of regality, tell Mr. Boyd that
A breath unmakes me, as a breath has made:[1]
and that I willingly & properly yield all my pseudo, Princess-Olive pretensions, to the legal claimant.”
My spirits were so depressed this evening, that it was an effort to me to talk even as little as I usually do. Write myself down an ass!—
1. This implies that E.B.B. had studied Isaac Disraeli’s Curiosities of Literature. In the 7th edn. (5 vols., London, 1823), IV, 147–148, Disraeli quoted the following couplet from Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village (London, 1770), p. 4: “Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; / A breath can make them, as a breath has made.” Disraeli then suggested that Goldsmith had drawn inspiration from a poem [“L’Horloge de Sable”] by [Gilles] de Caux, containing these lines: “C’est un verre qui luit / Qu’un souffle peut detruire, et qu’un souffle a produit” and felt that Goldsmith’s couplet should perhaps have ended “A breath unmakes them, as a breath had made.”