Wednesday. August 3d.
Read very little Antoninus, before Eliza came. Painted at the picture, which never will be like me until I change my nose mouth & eyes. Yes! Mrs. Griffith (who called here today with Miss Glasco & Miss Peyton to be congratulated on the new Peyton[1]) declared that the eyes & the forehead are “extrame like.” In which case, I must be extrame wrong. Miss Glasco is an agreable, very agreable woman; agreable without effort: but, as to her interesting me, or anybody else, that is out of the question. Mind—I like her.
Eliza stayed until quite the eveng.: long past eight. I amused her in the morning by telling the story of the White cat and the man with the nose.[2] I thought or dreamt that my vanity had fallen to cinders: but it must indeed be easily redivivus[3] if I could be pleased by Eliza & Arabel telling me that my storytelling was “admirable”. And yet such was actually & deplorably the case. Am I more difficult to be reformed than the House of Commons? The Ayes have it!—
Eliza has seen Hope End advertised by name in the Worcester paper.[4] I wd. & cd. ask no particulars. I was so afraid of her telling me on what day it is to be sold. To be sold!— How like a dream! But from this dream we shall not wake. No letter.
Settled. I am to go to Malvern tomorrow. When this was suggested Bummy advised me to do so—“Your Papa may be at home, you do not know when”. Does she know when.? I am sick of thinking. But I will go. No last opportunity of being with my dear friend, shall be lost “for want of thought.[”]
Bro & Sam went with Mr. Martin, who breakfasted here, to the Hereford assizes.[5] Mr. Martin had tea here, on their return. Poor Eliza “abhorred”—, but for what reason, deponent saith not. I argued that this was the highest compliment which cd. be paid to any individual. That the person who professed to abhor her, should be unable (willing he must be, in his own defence) to find out one cause for the abhorrence.
1. Nicholson Julius Peyton (1831–1915), the 5th son and 9th child of the Peytons.
2. Although E.B.B. appears to refer to a single story, we have been unable to find any story combining these two elements. If, as we believe, she told two stories, they can be tentatively identified as: a) “The White Cat,” derived from “La Chatte Blanche,” one of the Contes Nouveaux of Marie Catherine, Comtesse d’Aulnoy (1650?–1705), and b) [Charles Lamb], Prince Dorus: or, Flattery Put Out of Countenance. A Poetical Version of an Ancient Tale (London, 1811). Stanza 8 predicts: “From your unhappy nuptials shall be born / A Prince, whose Nose shall be thy subjects’ scorn.”
3. “Revived.”
4. Sale notices revealing the name of the estate first appeared locally in the Hereford Journal, 27 July 1831; the Worcester Herald, 30 July 1831; the Gloucester Journal, 30 July 1831; and Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 4 August 1831. A London paper, The Sun, carried the advertisement on 30 July 1831. The auction was to be conducted in London on 25 August.
5. The opening day of the Assizes. The Hereford Journal, 10 August 1831, recorded that of the 25 prisoners found guilty, 20, including one woman, were sentenced to death.
