[Boston—Saturday, 28 September 1867]
Saturday night. Let me see, what have I done today! I have a general sense of wishing to rest and to stop working with a feeling of gladness that tomorrow is Sunday, but I fancy the doing won’t count up for much.
Before breakfast wrote letters from dictation for J., letters of introduction to American colleges for Mr Macmillan.
It was nearly half past 8 before we came to breakfast since it was our guest’s first nights’ sleep here and he heartily enjoyed it. Mr Macmillan is an upright Scotsman with a good knowledge of books and a pure taste as well as mind and heart. His two books are Plato and Maurice! He knew Mr Crabb Robinson & is about to publish his remarkable diary—remarkable for the number of years wh. stand recorded there if for nothing else, but his acquaintance was wide and intimate with some of the greatest men of his time. Mr M. has much to tell us of the Carlyle’s and described to me a call he made at C’s home a few evenings before he left for America. The time to call there being at his tea hour, 8 o’clock. Ruskin was there on one side the fire, C. on the other, M. between them. The two geniuses were firing penny-worths of small shot at the genius of liberty while Ruskin screamed though a penny whistle of a voice hardly doing better than to echo the expressions of the elder. Mr M. is evidently much impressed by Carlyle. The honesty of the man, the true manliness, in short and his genius, carries away all capacity for criticising his work. Even “Shooting Niagara, and after!” fails to disgust! I wish I could say it sweetly and convincingly as I feel, that the English fog has got into the great man’s brain and he cannot see beyond it. But I feel that I make pitiful work at talking politics and high philosophy and I do not wish to be entrap[p]ed into it, yet in the case of Mr M. I feel it is the duty of each one to stand ably by his colors.
He stayed talking until eleven o clock, when furniture cleaners & painters & butcher claimed me. I had given scarcely an hour to house-keeping when who should come running up to my chamber without warning but Mary Abby Dodge (Gail Hamilton). She brought her poor old mother in a carriage to see our house and her sister also. I was truly delighted to see the old lady. I dare say even the bit of a visit did her good. I gave them lunch wh. they hardly found time to taste and then they departed. Mary was bright as ever full of sweetness vivacity mingled with an under current of solicitude for her mother’s health whom she watches tenderly.
I had scarcely began my chamber draperies when dinner was ready, so after that I lay down & read a mss. J. wants to know of. About 5 went at my draperies again—had just finished one room & began another when Charlotte Dana came, then tea, then dressing & writing while I wait for J. & Mr M. to return from their Saturday dinner, it being the regular monthly club day.
I have great cause for gratitude in my cook. If my other people turn out as well I shall see my way clear; if they do not I mean still to be brave and fight well, but it will take more time than will be pleasant or exactly profitable for me to give, looking at the matter from one point of view. But I shall use all my abilities to find the right people, than to make them happy and to keep them. But as these things do not lie in unaided endeavor I really hope and believe the best.
Mr M. tells me that Dante G. Rossetti lives in a house where Queen Elizabeth passed a portion of her girlhood. It is most quaintly fitted up. He corroborates Charlotte Cushman’s story about Mrs Carlyle being “cleverer than Carlyle.” He is sadly left alone now. “Why she never wrote I cannot divine” said Mr M.
She loved to cultivate flowers from the gardens of her friends & after her death Carlyle showed him bits as they walked in the garden from Farringford and Eversley.
I praised the “Life of Sterling”—“Ah!” he said with a shadow of disgust creeping over his face. “Car-r-rlyle does not wish to be measured by that you know! His French Revolution is the great book.”
