Thursday I went down to Slough alone in Fanny's carriage, as Lestock was not well, and she would not leave him. There was no company, and the evening was delightfully spent in hearing and talking. I had made various pencil notes in my copy of his book to ask for explanations, and so patient and kind and clear they were.
On Saturday I began to grow very anxious about six o'clock, and Mrs. Herschel good-naturedly sympathised with me, and we stood at the window that looks out on a distant turn of the London road, and at last I saw a carriage glass flash and then an outline of a well-known coachman's form, and then the green chaise, and all right.
There were at dinner the Provost of Eton in his wig, a large fine presence of a Provost—Dr. Goodall; Mrs. Hervey, very pretty, and gave me a gardenia like a Cape jessamine, white, sweet smelling—much talking of it and smelling and handing it about; Mrs. Gwatkin, one of Sir Joshua Reynold's nieces, has been very pretty, and though deaf is very agreeable—enthusiastically and affectionately fond of her uncle—indignant at the idea of his not having himself written the Discourses; "Burke or Johnson indeed! no such thing—he wrote them himself. I am evidence, he used to employ me as his secretary: often I have been in the room when he has been composing, walking up and down the room, stopping sometimes to write a sentence," etc.
On Sunday to Windsor Chapel; saw the King and the Queen, and little Prince George of Cambridge, seen each through the separate compartments of their bay window up aloft. The service lasted three hours, and then we went, by particular desire, to Eton College, to see the Provost and Mrs. Goodall, and the pictures of all the celebrated men. Some of these portraits taken when very young are interesting; some from being like, some from being quite unlike what one would expect from their after characters. We saw the books of themes and poems that had been judged worth preserving. Canning's and Lord Wellesley's much esteemed. Drawers full of prints; many rare books; the original unique copy of Reynard the Fox—the table of contents of which is so exceedingly diverting I would fain have copied it on the spot, but the Provost told me a copy could be had at every stall for one penny.
Got home to Herschel's while the sun yet shone, and I having the day before begged the favour of him to repeat for Fanny and Lestock the experiments and explanations on polarised light and periodical colours, he had everything ready, and very kindly went over it all again, and afterwards said to Mrs. Herschel, "It is delightful to explain these things to Mrs. Wilson; she can understand anything with the least possible explanation."
It was a fine moonlight night, and he took us out to see Saturn and his rings, and the Moon and her volcanoes. Saturn, I thought, looked very much as he used to do; but the Moon did surprise and charm me—very different from anything I had seen or imagined of the moon. A large portion of a seemingly immense globe of something like rough ice, resplendent with light and all over protuberances like those on the outside of an oyster shell, supposing it immensely magnified in a Brobdingnag microscope, a lustrous-mica look all over the protuberances, and a distinctly marked mountain-in-a-map in the middle shaded delicately off.
I must remark to you that all the time we were seeing we were eighteen feet aloft, on a little stage about eight feet by three, with a slight iron rod rail on three sides, but quite open to fall in front, and Lestock repeatedly warned me not to forget and step forwards.
Monday, our visit, alas! was to come to an end. Mr. Herschel offered to take Lestock to town in his gig, which he accepted with pleasure, and Fanny and I went with Mrs. Herschel to see Sir Joshua's pictures at Mrs. Gwatkin's. There is one of Charles Fox done when he was eighteen: the face so faded that it looks like an unfinished sketch, not the least like any other picture I have ever seen of the jolly, moon-faced Charles Fox, but some resemblance to the boy of thirteen in the print I begged from Lord Buchan. The original "Girl with a muff" is here; the original also of "Simplicity," who has now flowers in her lap in consequence of the observation of a foolish woman who, looking at the picture as it was originally painted, with the child's hands interlaced, with the backs of the hands turned up, "How beautiful! How natural the dish of prawns the dear little thing has in her lap!"
Sir Joshua threw the flowers over the prawns.
There appeared in this collection many sad results of Sir Joshua's experiments on colours; a very fine copy of his from Rembrandt's picture of himself, all but the face so black as to be unintelligible. There was the first Sir Joshua ever drew of himself—and his last; this invaluable last is going—black cracks and masses of bladdery paint. He painted Mrs. Gwatkin seven times. "But don't be vain, my dear, I only use your head as I would that of any beggar—as a good practice."