Perfectly & wondrously calm, bright, & lovely ―― all day.

Yet, for all that, a strange & sad day. It is inconceivable how my days distance all speculation as to their nature. ― I got wrong ― between 7 & 8, ― over the Thebes picture, getting it all hard & gaudy with Color too red. ―

Then breakfast was uncomfortable ― as nearly always here. Then, unwilling to return to work I doubted if I could mend, I dawdled & read “the Bertrams”1 ― & then working again, made my work worse. Indigestion also, & then

X quite suddenly ―after so many days & such mending health.

After that I finished the Bertrams & worked no more ――――: so that the day ― so clear & calm, ― was lost.

But I own this sitting in the back room & as it were shutting my eyes on all nature ― does madden me.

Again I did work though ― & from 5 to 6.30. ―

Letters from Egg, & Mrs. Hunt ― wrote to the latter & intend to go there on Saturday. ―

At 7 walked ― moonlight ― & 7.30 dined at the “Sussex” ― & walked again. Wrote to Mrs. Clive.

Pale cold moon: yet now, as in 1823 ― ever strangely influencing me. Do you remember the small yard & the [pump] at ――― in 1823, & 1824, when I used to sit there in the cold looking at the stars, &, when I heard that Lord Byron was dead, stupefied, & crying?

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

  1. Anthony Trollope’s 1859 The Bertrams. A Novel. [↩]