Two funerals and a union

8 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

This morning to the funeral of Mr. Melvin Jones, bone setter of renown and an old friend, only a little younger than I, dead of a stroke these few days. Here were all physicians and chirurgeons from St. Thomas Hospitalle, and so many more that they must stand outside the church, in thick coats and gloved and hatted against the cold; and all feeling for his stricken wife, and his daughter who spoke a fine Eulogy. Only a month since, or there abouts, did he hail me from the road side, stopped with his cycle, all in Licra and with a helmet for safety upon his head, his wife on her cycle beside him, and we three in lively discourse, it being some time since we met. I am glad that we had that conversation, for it was to be our last.

 

9 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

Up, it being bitter cold weather again, and in the morning to the Conservatoire, still with an armcrutch to walk secure and it painfulle to drive my coach; thence home, where packed for the night. At five a’clock, it dark and very cold, met with Mr. Rees, a Lecturer in Musique, and his wife, and with them in their coach beyond the Marches to Abertitswithy for the funeral tomorrow of Mr. P. Donovan, a very old and dear friend of mine, and mutually of theirs, dead of a malignant Tumor too lately manifest, they shewing me a great kindness in travelling with them for the trouble I still have with my back. All three of us in merry discourse the while, so that the journey seemed lessened, though it begun to snow and it lay upon the roads and the hills we passed through. Our inne at night was the Starling Cloud, 6l 2s., all very fine, though after resting we must cross the icy courtyard to supper, and I feared to slip on the cobbles, so walked with great care with my crutch, like an old man.

 

10 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

After breakfast, paid the reckoning, 2s. 6d. to servants and 1s. to the poor. The horses readied, found the coach windows iced so that we could not see through them till Mr. Rees scraped them, vexed that he had not covered them with sacking, or some other precaution, whereupon I related to him that in the gazette this very morning it was counselled that the rubbing of the cut side of half a potato across the glass to prevent frost was a notion not to be trusted, which he admitted an approach he had never considered. Thence by a half-past nine a’clock to the Church of Welsh Martyrs for the Mass for the Dead in the Roman rite. There met with my oldest friend, Mr. Bowen, who at the eleventh hour had entered in a Civil Union with Mr. Donovan, which was performed, thanks be to God, in a ward in the Hospitall, no more than two days before he died, though I think it a thing to break the heart that a celebration that should be of joy should be so hard by the end of life, so that all happiness be stolen from it; only for the saving grace it were managed before the hourglass finally emptied, which I hoped might assuage, however little, the anguish of loss. By and by there comes as great a crowd as I ever saw at a somber occasion, all gathered outside where some little flecks of snow did fall the while; and inside, with the punctuation of bells and all the flummery of smoke and scent of incence, a gallant sermon from the priest, and a forthright eulogy, well received, from Mr. Bowen. After, to the crematory, and thence to dinner at an inne by the sea, where much lively discourse and remeniscince by all. And though it is a great Paradox that a sad circumstance should nourish merriment, grief merely postponed, it bespoke a life well lived. In the afternoon, home with Mr. and Mrs. Rees in their coach, and thence parted. After supper comes the Messenger from my aunt, who asks if I have received any letter from my father these few days, for she hath no word since he told her a Physician might call; but being very tired, my back aching from the journey and my house and my soul cold, I dismissed him and will leave reply till the morrow. And so to bed.