In the afternoon went to Lady Dacre's.... She read me the first act of a little piece she has been writing; while listening to her I was struck as I never had been before with the great beauty of her countenance, and its very varied and striking expression.... At home spent my time in reading Shelley. How wonderful and beautiful the "Prometheus" is! The unguessed heavens and earth and sea are so many storehouses from which Shelley brings gorgeous heaps of treasure and piles them up in words like jewels. I read "The Sensitive Plant" and "Rosalind and Helen." As for the latter—powerful enough, certainly—it gives me bodily aches to read such poetry.
What extraordinary proceedings have been going on in the House of Commons! Mr. Percival getting up and quoting the Bible, and Mr. Hunt getting up and answering him by quoting the Bible too. It seems we are to have a general fast—on account of the general national misconduct, I suppose; serve us right.
Sunday, 29th.—Went into my mother's room before going to church. Henry Greville has sent her Victor Hugo's new book, "Notre Dame de Paris," but she appears half undetermined whether she will go on reading it or not, it is so painfully exciting. I took Mrs. Montague up in the carriage on my way to church, and after service drove her home, and went up to see Mrs. Procter, and found baby (Adelaide Procter) at dinner. That child looks like a poet's child, and a poet. It has something "doomed" (what the Germans call "fatal") in its appearance—such a preternaturally thoughtful, mournful expression for a little child, such a marked brow over the heavy blue eyes, such a transparent skin, such pale-golden hair. John says the little creature is an elf-child. I think it is the prophecy of a poet. [And so, indeed, it was, as all who know Adelaide Procter's writings will agree—a poet who died too early for the world, though not before she had achieved a poet's fame, and proved herself her father's worthy daughter.] ... In the afternoon, I found my mother deep in her French novel, from which she read me two very striking passages—the description of Esmeralda, which was like a fine painting, and extremely beautiful, and the sketch of Quasimodo's life, ending with his riding on the great bell of the cathedral. Very powerful and very insane—a sort of mental nightmare, giving one as much the idea of disorder of intellect as such an image occurring to one in a dream would of a disordered stomach. Harmony, order, the beauty of goodness and the justice of God, are alike ignored in such works. How sad it is for the future as well as for the present!
Monday, 30th.—King Charles' martyrdom gives me a holiday to-night. Excellent martyr! Victor Hugo has set my mother raving. She didn't sleep all night, and says the book is bad in its tendency and shocking in its details; nevertheless, she goes on reading it....
Tuesday, January 31st.— ... Went to Turnerelli's. He is making a bust of me, that will perhaps be like—the man in the moon. Dall was kind enough to read to me Mrs. Jameson's "Christina" while I sat. I like it extremely. After I came home, read Shirley's play of "The Two Sisters." I didn't like it much. It is neither very interesting, very witty, nor very poetical, and might almost be a modern work for its general want of power and character. The women appear to me a little exaggerated—the one is mad and the other silly. At the theater in the evening the house was very good indeed—the play, "Katharine of Cleves;" but poor Mr. Warde was so ill he could hardly stand.
Wednesday, February 1st.— ... Drove out with Henry in the new carriage. It is very handsome, but by no means as convenient or capacious as our old rumble. Oh, these vanities! How we sacrifice everything to them!
Thursday, 2d. ... Rode out with my father. The whole world was abroad in the sunshine, like so many flies. My mother was walking with John and Henry, and Henry Greville. I should like to tell him two words of my mind on the subject of lending "Notre Dame de Paris" about to women. At any rate, we vulgar females are not as much accustomed to mental dram-drinking as his fine-lady friends, and don't stand that sort of thing so well.... In the evening we went to the theater to see "The Haunted Tower." Youth and first impressions are wonderful magicians. (I forget whether the music of this piece was by Storace or Michael Kelly.) This was an opera which I had heard my father and mother talk of forever. I went full of expectation accordingly, and was entirely disappointed. The meagerness and triteness of the music and piece astonished me. After the full orchestral accompaniments, the richly harmonized concerted pieces and exquisite melodies lavished on us in our modern operas, these simple airs and their choruses and mean finales produce an effect from their poverty of absolute musical starvation.
Great Russell Street, January 31, 1832.
My dearest H—— G——,
You are coming to England, and you will certainly not do so again without coming to us. My father and mother, you know, speak by me when I assure you that a visit from you would give us all the greatest pleasure.... Do not come late in the season to us, because at present we do not know whether June or July may take us out of town.... With my scheme of going to America, I think I can look the future courageously in the face. It is something to hold one's fortune in one's own hands; if the worst comes to the worst it is but another year's drudgery, and the whereabouts really matters little.... We hear that the cholera is in Edinburgh. I cannot help thinking with the deepest anxiety of those I love there, and I imagine with sorrow that beautiful, noble city, those breezy hills, those fresh, sea-weedy shores and coasts breathed upon by that dire pestilence. The city of the winds, where the purifying currents of keen air sweep through every thoroughfare and eddy round every corner—perched up so high upon her rocky throne, she seems to sit in a freer, finer atmosphere than all the world beside! (I appear, in my enthusiastic love for Edinburgh, to have forgotten those Immonderraze, the wynds and closes of the old town.) I hope the report may not prove true, though from a letter I have received from my cousin Sally (Siddons) the plague is certainly within six miles of them. She writes very rationally about it, and I can scarce forbear superstitiously believing that God's mercy will especially protect those who are among His most devoted and dutiful children....