1878
Dr Jenner … horrified me with his ugliness which is something suggestive to me of Voltaire
8 April 1864: … Garibaldi is in England, which fact makes everyone stand on their heads; & I suppose all young ladies will shortly appear in red shirts, which, to my disgust, have come into fashion
Rome 27 November 1867: The wretched Fenians have been condemned to death; & out of the 5, 3 have been executed. It is very sad & terrible, as they are the first who have been executed for a political offence; but it seemed inevitable. There have been deputations & demonstrations against the sentence in London. Foreigners think England must be in danger; somehow one can't feel that a bit. Never did I take in better the immense strength we have in our fearless freedom of press, opinion & discussion, than now, when there are anxieties & disturbances & an impending revolution in national power
There were Dickens & Landseer; neither very pleasant to look at, though one saw wit & genius in Dickens odd eyes
5 May 1864: … a long pull at Mill On Liberty which shakes & bewilders nearly all my opinions, leaving my head in a bag
4 May 1865: Pre-Raphaelism seems, like homeopathy, to be becoming less a school apart & more infused into schools than it was … still some tinny, paper mache, gaudy skies, solid green seas, ugly red haired pink faced women in all colours of the rainbow & cotton velvet grass
The underground from S Kensington to Portland Rd was charming & wonderful & far less underground than I had expected
18 March 1869
… a nice new house near Longstone … [with] some Rosettis, very clever & with wonderful colour, but rather hateful, I think, from self-consciousness & a sort of sensuousness; & I cant see why all his unfortunate damsels should be in such haggard & wasted ill health
… a pretty villa [in Italy] where Morris the decorator-poets wife & daughters are. Mrs Morris might have stept [sic] out of any of Burne-Jones pictures & is in fact the original of the favourite PB [sic] lady (having sat to Rosetti) - haggard & wistful eyed with a heavy bush of black hair penthouse-style over the forehead; certainly handsome
December 1877
Lady Frederick Cavendish had a governess who was 'over-severe & apt to whip me for obstinacy when I was only dense … At Brighton I used to be taken out walking on the parade with my hands tied behind me, terrified out of my wits by Miss Nicholsons declaring it was 10 to 1 we should meet a policeman'
Kathryn Hughes: The Victorian Governess
Kathryn Hughes: The Victorian Governess
