[Boston—Monday, 22 January 1872]
Monday Jany 22. Tea at Louisa’s. Sainte Beuve comes slowly on. Read “Liza” today by Turganieff. He was in London last summer when Mme Viardot and her children were there. Viardot has almost utterly lost her voice. She sings two songs still beautifully but her method and feeling are so fine that she always interests her hearers. How Dickens admired that woman. I was glad to hear of Mamie and Katie going in their black dresses to dine with her at Mrs Lehmann’s and Mrs Benzon’s otherwise gay dinner-tables. No one thinks Katy pretty now that her father is dead. I hear she has wept her beauty all away. But he thought he[r] very pretty as indeed she was in those days a-gone.
Met Dolby today—the same queer fellow “I shall do him some day” dear Dickens used to say. “A poor show-man like myself” says Dolby, “never knows from one minute to another what he has to do” (by way of apology for not calling upon me here). Speaking of the Majiltons he made us laugh much by saying they were the children of one of the Vergers of Westminster Abbey and I assure you he continued stammering very much “i i-if you were t o me e t Charley Majilton tomorrow and he were to be introduced as John Smith you would find him a particularly gentlemanly young fellow”.
Jamie has gone to the Harvard Musical Club dinner tonight.
Came a note from Longfellow today. He is evidently much “cut up” by the careless notices of his book. “Snappish” is the word he uses.
Dolby recalled one very amusing story dear Dickens used to tell of the woman who never got names of anything right. Going one day to dine with her married son he uncovered a dish of which she was fond. It contained Sweetbreads—oh said she here we have them, Turnpikes again.
I remember he used to say of himself that he could never call a squirrel anything but a nightingale.
