Rose at 6. Transferring & arranging books, these to stay, then 7 to Παντέκνικον. Breakfast. Letters from Ann, & Gussy Bethell ― the latter note delighting ful. Arranged folios, carpets, boxes, books, &c. &c. &c. all day. Horrid weariness! Lunch. Slept, but bitterly. O nature! ― Waking, (the little dog.) arranged my oil canvasses &c. ― to go to H. Hunt’s ― & went in a cab at 5. ― Planted myself there ― piano & all: Susan, ― Mrs. Reynolds? &c. &c. ― & home by a Bus at 6. Dressed & took drawings to 9 Stratford Place. W.F.B. better than I have seen him for a long while. Full of funny stories: ― one, of Judge Patterson: deaf: ― case of bestiality ― ἄνθρωπος κ’ γαρούνιον.1 ‘God bless me’ said the foamingly angry judge, when at last he had come to know the horror ― “You Sir! you saw this Sir ― & why in the name of all that is good ― &c. ― why Sir did you not stop the man Sir!” ― “Please Sir, it wasn’t my pig Sir” ――― all the Court roared. ― A second was, that at some Yorkshire assizes, the same J.P. was angry at a low=speaking witness & said, ― “now Sir! The next question asked you ― speak out so that all those Ladies can hear you!!” ――― (pointing to the galleries.) “And what did the man say to you,” said the Counsel ― “when he told you to put down the package?” ―― He said ―  (shouting ―) he’d be G―――d before he’d let me go on.

All the evening was pleasant ― though Mrs. B. seems worn, & I wish this confinement were well over ― it is her 18th!! ― W.F.B. ― the grandest of good men, had been all day at Mrs. Strachan’s:2 ― no one ever worked so hard to do kindness. ― Shewed them  my drawings of Judea: but they are too many perhaps. ―

Home by 11¼. Hansen goes on Saturday to Germany with Dr. Twiss.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

  1. “Man and pig” (D. Harvey). [↩]
  2. Perhaps Mrs. Strahan, whose husband had been, perhaps unjustly, accused of fraud and sentenced to be transported for fouteen years in 1855; see SL, 134 and 298. [↩]