[a] Friday August 11th – All this day I have been in a dream, half-miserable & half ecstatic miserable because I could not follow it out uninterrruptedly, ecstatic because it shewed almost in the vivid light of reality the ongoings of the infernal world.19 I had been toiling for nearly an hour with Miss Lister, Miss Marriott & Ellen Cook striving to teach them the distinction between an article and a substantive.20 The parsing lesson was completed, a dead silence had succeeded it in the school-room & I sat sinking from irritation & weariness into a kind of lethargy. The thought came over me am I to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage, forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness the apathy and the hyperbolical & most asinine stupidity of those fat-headed oafs and on compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience & assiduity? Must I from day to day sit chained to this chair prisoned within these four bare walls, while these glorious summer suns are burning in heaven & the year is revolving in its richest glow & declaring at the close of every summer day it the time I am losing will never come again? Stung to the heart with this reflection I started up & mechanically walked to the window. a sweet August morning was smiling without The dew was not yet dried off the field. the early shadows were stretching cool & dim from the hay-stack & the roots of the grand old oaks & thorns scattered along the sunk fence. All was still except the murmer of the scrubs about me over their tasks. I flung up the sash, an uncertain sound of inexpressible sweetness came on a dying gale from the south, I looked in that direction Huddersfield & the hills beyond it were all veiled in blue mist, the woods of Hopton & Heaton Lodge21 were clouding the waters edge & the Calder silent but bright was shooting among them like a silver arrow. I listened the sound sailed full & liquid down the descent. it was the bells of Huddersfield Parish church. I shut the window & went back to my seat. Then came on me rushing impetuously, all the mighty phantasm that we had conjured from nothing from nothing to a system strong as some religious creed. I felt as if I could have written gloriously – I longed to write. The spirit of all Verdopolis – of all the mountainous North of all the woodland West of all the river-watered East22 came crowding into my mind. if I had had time to indulge it I felt that the vague sensations of that moment would have settled down into some narrative better at least than any thing I ever produced before. But just then a Dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited.
[b] In the afternoon Miss E—L—was trigonometrically oecumenical23 about her French lessons she nearly killed me between the violence of the irritation her horrid wilfulness excited and the labour it took to subdue it to a moderate appearance of calmness. My fingers trembled as if I had had twenty four hours tooth-ache, & my spirits felt worn down to a degree of desperate despondency. Miss Wooler tried to make me talk at tea-time and was exceedingly kind to me but I could not have roused if she had offered me worlds. After tea we took a long dreary walk. I came back abymé to the last degree for Miss L—and Miss M—t24 had been boring me with their vulgar familliar [sic] trash all the time we were out if those Girls knew how I loathe their company they would not seek mine so much as they do The sun had set nearly a quarter of an hour before we returned and it was getting dusk – The Ladies went into the school-room to do their exercises & I crept up to the bed-room to be alone for the first time that day. Delicious was the sensation I experienced as I laid down on the spare-bed & resigned myself to the Luxury of twilight & solitude. The stream of Thought, checked all day came flowing free & calm along its channel. My ideas were too shattered to form any defined picture as they would have done in such circumstances at home, but detatched thoughts soothingly flitted round me & unconnected scenes occurred and then vanished producing an effect certainly strange but to me very pleasing.25 the toil of the Day succeeded by this moment of divine leisure had acted on me like opium & was coiling about me a disturbed but fascinating spell such as I never felt before. What I imagined grew morbidly vivid. I remember I quite seemed to see with my bodily eyes – a lady26 standing in the hall of a Gentleman’s house as if waiting for some one. it was Dusk & there was the dim outline of antlers with a hat & a rough great-coat upon them it was dusk she had a flat candle-stick in her hand & seemed coming from the kitchen or some such place she was very handsome it is not often we can form from pure idea faces so individually fine she had black curls hanging rather low on her neck a very blooming skin & dark anxious looking eyes I imagined it the sultry close of a summer’s day and she was dressed in muslin not at all romantically a flimsy, printed fabric with large sleeves & a full skirt. as she waited I most distinctly heard the front door open & saw the soft moonlight disclosed upon a lawn outside, & beyond the lawn at a distance I saw a town with lights twinkling through the gloaming. Two or three gentlemen entered one of whom I knew by intuition to be called Dr Charles Brandon and another William Locksley Esqr27 The Doctor was a tall handsomely built man habited in cool ample looking white trowsers and a large straw hat which being set one one side shewed a great deal of dark hair & a sun-burnt but smooth & oval cheek. Locksley & the other went into an inner room but Brandon stayed a minute in the hall. There was a bason of water on a slab & he went & washed his hands while the lady held the light. “How has Ryder borne the operation she asked. “Very cleverly he’ll be well in three weeks was the reply – “But Lucy28 won’t do for a nurse at the hospital – you must take her for your head servant, to make my cambric fronts & handkerchiefs & to wash & iron your lace aprons. little silly thing she fainted at the very sight of the instruments Whilst Brandon spoke a dim concatenation of ideas describing a passage in some individual’s life a varied scene in which persons & events features & incidents revolved in misty panorama29 entered my mind. The mention of the hospital, of Ryder, of Lucy each called up a certain set of reminiscences or rather fancies it would be endless to tell all that was at that moment suggested. Lucy first appeared before me as sitting at the door [of] a lone cottage on a kind of moorish waste sorrowful and sickly – a young woman with those mild regular features, that always interest us however poorly set off by the meanness of surrounding adjuncts – it was a calm afternoon her eyes were turned towards a road crossing the heath. A speck appeared on it far far away – Lucy smiled to herself as it dawned into view – & while she did so there was something about her melancholy brow, her straight nose & faded bloom, that reminded me of one who might for anything I at that instant knew be dead & buried under the newly plotted sod.30 It was this likeness & the feeling of its existence that had called Dr Brandon so far from his daily circle & that made him now when he stood near his patient regard her meek face turned submissively & gratefully to him with tenderer kindness than he bestowed on employers of aristocratic rank and wealth Her eye said No more I have not time to work out the fiction vision. a thousand things were connected with it, a whole country, statesmen & Kings, a Revolution, thrones & princedoms subverted & reinstated meantime the tall man washing his bloody hands in a bason & the dark beauty standing by with a light remained pictured in my mind’s eye with irksome and alarming distinctness I grew frightened at the vivid glow of the candle at the reality of the lady’s erect & symmetrical figure31 of her spirited & handsome face of her anxious eye watching Brandon’s & seeking out its meaning diving for its real expression through the semblance of severity that habit & suffering had given to his stern aspect. I felt confounded & annoyed I scarcely knew by what. At last I became aware of a feeling like a heavy weight laid across me. I knew I was wide awake & that it was dark, & that moreover the ladies were now come into the room to get their curl-papers – they perceived me lying on the bed & I heard them talking about me. I wanted to speak, to rise – it was impossible. I felt that this was a frightful predicament – that it would not do, the weight pressed me as if some huge animal had flung itself across me32 – a horrid apprehension quickened every pulse I had. I must get up I thought & I did so with a start. I have had enough of morbidly vivid realizations. every advantage has its corresponding disadvantage. tea’s read[y] Miss Wooler is impatient.