Quick March

6 March, in the year of our Lord 2022

Lords day. Up, it bright but the wind very cold. After breakfast, by coach to have the customery feathers stuck up nose and down throat for a Covey test, the date for my chirurgerie being not the ninth day of April, but of March, three days hence, there having been a misteak by Heather at St. Jude’s, who last week was obliged to send me a letter of correction, which vexed me for the slipshod nature of sending the first. After, must isolate myselfe for 3 days, which is a great rigmerole. After dinner, to the office, where concluded the purchase on the line of some tickets for certain Events to be held this month, among them some payntings to be exhibited in the City, and the Opera. By the Messenger that my new coach may not be so delayed as was feared, and that it might arrive in seven or eight weeks, all the way from Bavaria, so a little cheered in my isolation.

 

9 March, in the year of our Lord 2022

Up very betimes, though slept ill for it a very windy night and myself not quiet in my mind, this being my day of chirurgerie, with instrucktions not to eat after a certayne hour, nor drink any drink after another, which I followed; and after, kindly taken by Mr. M. Jones in his coach to St. Jude’s Hospitalle for a half past ten a-clock, and with me a book to read and a night shirt, lest I must stay there, which I hoped not to do.
  I withdraw from setting down the detail of the day, feeling that to repeat the affairs of Medicine would make the report of them tiresome. Suffice it that there were five hours of boardom during which the only occurrance [was] that they wrote down Observations upon the steadyness of my pulse and the tension in my vessels, only the tension in my vessels that was recorded was, very clearly to my mind, too high, and after observing how she had done it, I must tell the mayde that the figures she wrote down were those of the man in the previose bed, she having failed to set the machine anew after him, which I think a very careless state of affaires; this done, I fell asleep reading my book. Then came a man who woke me up to tell me it was his job to put me to sleep, so I told him that if he wished to put people to sleep he could do worse than have them read the Life of Thos. Cromwell by the Rev. D. MacCulloch; and then he asked me some questions about whether I ever had an Aneasthetique, and how I breathed normally, which is in and then out, as I shew him. As to the rest, I cannot write of it for, thanks be to God, I must have dozed again, and only awake after all the busyness done, and amaz’d at the time’s going. Then comes to my bedside a chirurgeon, who I never saw before but tells me he is my Consultant, and says that the etchings made by the great Contryvance shew some anomalies, very minor, and of no import, but were of great artistic merit, and that the great Lesion that I observed to fill the magick screen in January hath this day been removed. At which collapsed I in a fit of tears and relief, for it joyed me as much as anything that was yet done to me that something of such monstrous size be taken away with no peril or gross disfigurement; only he did then explain the element of magnifickation that is created upon the magick screen of the Cysterscope, and that I must pull myself together, for removing a piece of flesh the diameter of one quarter-inch is not a huge endeavore. So dressed, I bid good bye to the man in the bunk above me, a poor farmer, there since yesterday and now till tomorrow, who continued to pass blood, and wished him well, and gave thanks to God for my state of health, onlie that now I must wait, to settle all in my mind, for a Report upon my lesion.
  Home at a quarter past seven a-clock by way of Many Bridge, where we collected some fish in batter, with chips and a sauce of Currie, and after supper discoursed a little. And so, Mr. Jones gone by his coach and I very tired for spending so much of a long day asleep, to bed. 

 

22-25 March, in the year of our Lord 2022

These days advantaged of the fine weather (which makes me to think that we are in for a warm spring, perhaps the warmest we ever had), so abroad with Mr. Jones in the City, where walked in Hide Park and all around the Serpintine lake, and the next day by some canals, where I never went before, which is called Little Venice, though in truth the number of canals is only three, which is very little; thence a quick march to dine at the house of Sir R. Wallace, where there is a nice caff in a court yard and some payntings. After, met at the Museum with Mr. L. Moran, an old friend, who came on a bycicle lent him by the First Lord of the Treasurie, and all of us to see the Stonehege exhibition there, with a great many there to see it with us, and it a very fine exhibition, I think the best I ever saw of Stonage in my entire life, though there were not the big stones there, which they kept on the plain near Sarum, so Mr. Moran said he was a bit disappointed by it, though he hath a droll sense of humour so we did not know if he meant it; and after to a tappers bar where they served tiny plates of food, which I did think were too small, but we had a lot of them and so filled us. In the evening to the Opera, where saw ‘Peter Grymes’, a play for singers and a band composed by Mr. Britain, though I was not so much smitten with the musique, but it a decent play and Mr. Terffle sung well as a man called Balustrade. The next day, which was Thursday, by water to Somerset House stairs, and, not being able to get into an exhibicion by Mr. Vangough, of all the portraits of himself that he paynted, saw all the others that were there, which I saw before, but not for a few years, and after dinner to a bacon exhibition at the Royal Academie, which was all the art works we saw, and I think it enough. In the evening after a fish supper sat to write my Journall for the last few days, which I had not done, and so to bed.