Monday July 4th.
Dearest Arabel’s birthday. She is 18; and an interesting intelligent amiable feeling girl. I should love her even if she were not my sister; & even if she did not love me.
As Bummy told me to go into her room before I went away, I undrew her bed curtains before she was awake. I wondered what she cd. have to say to me, & was perfectly provoked when she asked me to promise not to mention at Ruby Cottage, anything of our unhappy business. I promised that I would not, if the subject were not mentioned to me.
How I do hate & abhor this reserve, so foreign to my nature, so contrary to my professions, to be forced upon me! What is the use of a friend, if my heart is to lock itself against him? “No confidence,”—as Mr. Boyd once said to me—[“]no friendships”. I cd have cried with mortification: but there is enough to cry about, without this!— Maddox & I drove away at seven, after my having had a partial breakfast in the nursery. Arrived at Ruby Cottage at 8. Mrs. Boyd in bed. Mr. Boyd up,—but he had gone back again into his bed room. So I desired that my name shd. be unnamed for the present: & when the dining room door was shut upon me, out of the window I jumped. My hat I left behind, & ran up thro’ the grove to the hill where I let my hair blow about & my feet walk about ad libitum. But I was not there long. I ran back again; & then came a message from Mrs. Boyd who wished to see me. I went into her bed room & sate down upon the bed, & talked. Presently Mr. Boyd wanted to see me, which I gladly heard. Found him at breakfast. He is suffering from a painful boil on his upper lip. “I wish” he said, “that I cd. get rid of my boil, as well as Bently did, of his”—[1] He talked of the difference between moral & physical pain,—& preferred as I have heard him do before, suffering the former to the latter. The fact is, he is singularly constituted,—for the enjoyment of intense pleasure, rather than for a sensibility to intense pain. In general,
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure,
Thrill the deepest notes of woe—
but his chords are not so strung.[2] He asked me if I had heard from Papa; and said little more on the subject. His anxiety about it, can scarcely be very great.
After I had been down stairs to breakfast with Mrs. Boyd, I came up again & began to read Æschylus. We read the 2d. chorus; & I felt happy while I was reading it. A kind of happiness which cannot now last long!— Certainly, which may not! My voice trembled once, as I thought so!— I wish I were constituted like Mr. Boyd.
We talked about Euripides & Sophocles & Æschylus; & I observed that Euripides was the more pathetic writer. He wd. not allow that Euripides can produce more pathetic passages than some in the Œdipus Colonœus: & dwelt upon the pathos of one sentence in the Persœ—where Atossa exclaims to the messenger, “Tell me of those who are not dead”.[3] He accused Euripides of verbiage—but owned to a personal prejudice against him, on account of his conduct to Æschylus. We talked comparatively about Homer Æschylus & Shakespeare: and positively about Æschylus’s Prometheus— Praises of the speech in the Medea.[4] After dinner, we had some politics; and indeed before dinner. Then I examined his memory in the chorus’s of the Agamemnon, in Casandra’s three speeches,[5] & in Gregory’s orations on Cœsarius & Basil.[6] Then we talked about a fourth edition of his Select Passages,[7] which I urged him to put in motion. No! he wd. not—he cd. not—nobody wd. take the trouble of being his amanuensis without being paid for it: & to anyone who was paid, he could not commit the task of correcting the press, without his own attention being strictly directed to every sheet; which wd. fatigue & make him nervous. I longed to beg him to trust me with the employment; but I was too afraid that he wd. say something I might dislike hearing: So I observed first—“I shd. think that you might easily find somebody who would correct the proof sheets for you.” “Easily! You dont know how difficult it wd. be. My sister corrected the proof sheets of the first edition of my Select passages: and attention was not paid to them. You see even my own sister did not like the drudgery”.
I took courage & begged him to employ me, & assured him of my liking & wishing for the employment. “Ah! I am well aware that you would do it for me sooner than any body else would. But I should not like you to drudge for me. And suppose you should be ill—” “Ill! I am not going to anticipate being ill. Do let me manage it for you. I should like it so very much!” “But we must see first whether you leave Hope End or not”. I said that whether I left Hope End of not, the sheets might be sent to me—& I said more—& he said more—& I think it will end by my doing what I wish to do.
My dear friend Mr. Boyd!— If he knew how much it gratifies me to assist him in any way (I wish I cd. do so in every way) all his ‘drudgeries’ wd. devolve upon me. It pleased me to hear him acknowledge that I would do more for him than for other people would! And is not that true? I think so.
I left Malvern somewhere between 7 & 8, & got home to the relics of tea. Bummy --- at my being away so long. Bro D[itt]o. Well! I may not pass many more such long days with Mr. Boyd—perhaps not any more. But I cannot bear to think that—I will not bear it—I will not think it.
Mrs. Boyd & Miss Steers had intended driving here today; & I had some difficulties & delicatus about putting them off until Wednesday or Thursday. After all nobody at home, is satisfied. Neither am I, quite. I wd. rather that they did not come just now.
The auction of the crops, at the farm today. I am glad it is over. Oh if there is no chance of our staying here altogether; & I believe there is little chance: and if Mr. Boyd were not at Malvern, I would yearn to be away from the sight & hearing of all that we see & hear every day. But it is God’s will!-- And I have in spite of everything, felt happy several times today!—
Mrs. Boyd called me Miss Barrett. She used to call me Ba. Quœre why? Another Quœre—Why should I care? Certainly I dont care very much for Mrs. Boyd. Mr. Boyd (backed by Mrs. B’s reported opinion) still maintains, that jealousy of Eliza Cliffe, is the occult cause of Annie’s late conduct to me. Fudge again; said Mr. Burchell.
Bummy proposes my proposing to Mrs. Martin, when she is driving me to Eastnor tomorrow, to call on Miss Baker at the Pindars.[8] How provoking it will be, in the case of our not going to Eastnor, if Bummy proposes my calling on the Pindars instead of my going to Malvern!—
1. A punning allusion to the celebrated feud in 1697–99 between Richard Bentley and Charles Boyle (later Earl of Cork and Orrery), regarding the authenticity of the Epistles of Phalaris.
2. Robert Burns, “On Sensibility” (1786), v. 4:
Dearly bought the hidden treasure
Finer feelings can bestow;
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe.
3. LCL–A, I, 135, lines 293–295: “Compose thyself, and even though thou groanest at our loss, yet unfold the sum of our disaster and speak out! Who is there that is not dead?”
4. Beginning: “O children, children,” (LCL–E, IV, 364–367, lines 1021–80).
5. LCL–A, II, 100–113, lines 1178–97, 1214–41, 1256–94.
6. Orations 10 and 20 (GNO, I, 160–176 and 316–373). The notes made by E.B.B. on the flyleaf of WG included the comment: “Peroration of the funeral Oration on Cæsarius— I am uncertain whether this be not the finest passage, I have read in Gregory.”
7. His book of Select Passages of the Writings of St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Basil was the first published in 1806. A fourth edition never appeared, although in the Preface of An Essay on the Greek Article; to which is Added, an Essay on the Atonement, 2nd. edn. (London, 1835) Boyd said: “In the beginning of 1834, I was employed in preparing a new and much enlarged edition of my Select Passages.”
8. The Rev. Reginald Pyndar (1755–1831), Rector of Madresfield since 1793, and a local magistrate, cousin of the 1st Earl Beauchamp, lived with his family at Upper Hall, near Ledbury. Miss Harriet Baker is believed to have been his niece from Worcester. In a letter to Henrietta, [23–24 February 1827], E.B.B. described her as “a particular friend” of Lady Margaret Cocks, of an “age a good deal past ‘the certain age’!” (see BC, 2, 29–31).