Friday. June 17th.
Papa was in very good spirits at breakfast this morning; but when I observed it to Bummy, I was plainly from her manner, that there was no happy cause for them. Hope is all vain!— We shall leave this place!—& all that is dear, in it, & near it!— Where shall we go? To Brighton? To the neighbourhood of London? Anywhere but in those suburbs!— Anywhere where there can be a chance of my having at some time, dear Mr. Boyd’s society. And yet is there any chance of that, anywhere, for me? Tais toi Jean Jaques—[1] Today’s journal shall be no duplicate of yesterday’s.
Did not go out all day. Mrs. Griffith called;[2] & groaned all the groans of Testy & Sensitive.[3] Miss Peyton came with her; & what is still worse, I sate by Miss Peyton.[4] How hard it is to make some people talk! The labouring & the progeny of the mountain!— But I wont be more illnatured than usual.
After dinner, Papa unfortunately walked after me out of the room, because like “good Madam Blaize,”[5] I walked out before Papa. The consequence of this was a critique on my down-at-heel shoes; & the end of that, was, my being sent out of the drawing room to put on another pair. So while Anne[6] is mending the only pair I have in the world I am doing my best to write nonsense & catch cold without any. I dreamt last night that I was staying at Mr. Boyd’s house. Almost before the tail of the dream was out of sight,—& certainly before my eyes were quite open, I said “Never again!” I was too right. Never, never again!—
Very busy today. Reading Æschylus & learning the verb τυπτω!![7] This is being et Cœsar et nullus,[8] at once!-- But nobody ever was so ungrammatical in Greek as I am, since Greek was spoken or written in any way. Tea is ready; so I must go—or something besides the heels of my shoes will be found fault with.
1. This is taken to refer to the childhood incident recounted by Rousseau in his “Quatrième Promenade” (Les Confessions de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, suivies des Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, 2 vols., Geneva, 1782.) As a result of a prank of his young cousin, the tips of two of Rousseau’s fingers were trapped and crushed in the rollers of his uncle’s mill. Rousseau gave a piercing cry, but his cousin, fearing to be punished, begged him to be silent; conquering his pain, Rousseau obeyed, and told his aunt and uncle that a large stone had fallen on his hand.
2. Charlotte Griffith (1762?–1837), the widow of Thomas Griffith (b. 1754), was at this time in nominal possession of the Barton Court estate, having inherited it from her uncle, Henry Lambert (d. 1814), but his will was disputed, and it was not until after her death that her heirs’ ownership was confirmed.
3. A reference to [James Beresford’s] The Miseries of Human Life; or the Groans of Samuel Sensitive and Timothy Testy. With a Few Supplementary Sighs from Mrs. Testy. (London, 1806).
4. Charlotte[?] Peyton, sister of Nicholson Peyton, of Barton Court.
5. [Oliver Goldsmith], “An Elegy on that Glory of her Sex Mrs. Mary Blaize,” The Bee, No. 4, 27 October 1759, p. 128, v. 5: “Her love was sought, I do aver, / By twenty beaus and more; / The king himself has follow’d her,— / When she has walked before.“
6. Ann Mason (1805–89), second daughter of John Mason, of Colwall, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Ward). She became a maid in the Hope End household in 1822 and remained with the family until they left Sidmouth for London in 1835. On 2 May 1836 she married, in the priory church of St. Mary at Great Malvern, William Gent.
7. “To beat or smite.” This verb was the grammarian’s delight, and was frequently used in textbooks to illustrate the declension of the class of verbs ending in πτω.
8. “Both Cæsar and nobody.”