Tuesday June 28th.
Bro rode to Worcester. I wrote a note to Mrs. Boyd.
Bummy H & I drove immediately after breakfast to call upon Mrs. Martin who lent me the two last Edinburgh Reviews,[1] & Lamartine’s poems.[2] I have admired two of them already. No conversation about us. Then we went to the Bartons. Mrs. Peyton invisible. I wish Mrs. Griffith had been inaudible. My attention distracted both morally & physically, by the thoughts of Papa’s letter & by the sight of the thunderclouds. However, the latter broke away. What will the former do? We came home. No letter. The boy did not go until 12 & had not returned. We had dinner. Still no letter. Struck three! Still no letter.— How my heart is beating inwardly, as it always does, when I am agitated!
Well. The boy came & brought no letters of any kind. Papa has not written as he said he wd. Are we to attribute this omission to a favorable or unfavorable cause? Bummy says the former—but I—I will not throw myself again into the agonies of hope.
Bro returned from Worcester rather late than otherwise, & says of Eaton, that he will say nothing of my books till he sees them. How provoking that Bro shd. have left his catalogue[3] at Mrs. Trant’s!
A battle fierce between Henry & Georgie. I dreadfully frightened. But I wont make my being hysterical, historical.
Read the second Olympic today.
I wonder Mr. Boyd did not write about my Thought on Thoughts—
1. The issues of March and June 1831.
2. Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine (1790–1869). The quotation used by E.B.B. on 23 July indicates that the volume here mentioned was Méditations Poétiques (Paris, 1820).
3. The Worcester Herald, 5 February 1831, advertised Eaton’s Catalogue “CONTAINING History, Antiquities, Voyages, Travels, Biography, Arts, Sciences, &c. Also, Works in the Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and other Languages; together with a Supplement of English Divinity.”
