The week before Christmas

17 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

At a half past twelve a-clock comes Mr. M. Jones, across the City in his coach, bringing hither my new cloake and cerecloth coate, and with them also my Indian gown that was altered, my linning stockings, embroidered gloves (very costly) and jerbil-skin breeches (fur-side to the skin, against the cold), and many other clothes besides, my state now being that I do not know how long I must stay here, only that it may be for a great time; and with him also my documents, that grant me safe passage for travel abroad in the states of Evrope, that I may use them against any obligation to act as my father’s Attorny, as well as for my mother, and thereby prove my right to deploy the Powers theretofore, all of which gives my mind another great unease, for the process is obscure to me. At dinner my mother joyned us in a meagre plate of old scratchings from the recesses of her store cupboard. ‘Which flavour would you like?’ ask I, proffering two packets, each presenting in a different colour the faded cartoon of a cute animal clutching an acorn. ‘That one,’ says she, choosing the red; so Mr. Jones and I have the contents pertaining to the grey, and, after, did essay to mend the door to the Applyance for washing clothes, it being now removed, and in sundry parts, one of them a new catch, together with a spring to secure it. But, Lord! how it did thwart our every attempt to place the mechanism this way or that, and confound every conjecture that it must work that way or this, even with a man from Ye Tube who come to help. After some hours, Mr. Jones taking leave, for he hath an extra poudle to walk (for reasons beyond the scope of this Journall to disclose, save that Mr. Rominick and his wife have entrusted their poudle to him, they to the Antipodes for Christmas — which is, in short, the disclosure), give up on it. Thus parted, I to visit my father, now upon a ward for Miasmatic Diseases and Disorders of the Phlegm, in a fine and peacefull new room with a change of sawdust and a bed of his own, where I did find him in a more measured condition, his breathing ameliorated a very little and able to say to me that the one thing he craved was golden Scottish strong water in a large glass — only a Mrs. Salt hath decreed him Nill By Mouth. Suppered and my mother abed, a brief splurge on papers and accounts, of which I now glean there to be a dispiriting quantitie. This done, settled before the magick screen with a pint of wine to watch Strickly Come Galliard where a man danced very lively, only a miserable judge found fault with his grève droite.

 

18 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

Lords Day. Slept poorly, for my mind would not settle, though my father, praise be to God, not worse today than these last. In a fit of determinacion, took into my hands the old door from the washing applyance and enferred how must fit the new catch, for it must fit the grooves worn by the old, and so mended it! (and all without Mr. Jones aid, which, God forgive me, joyed me more than it ought). After, though my heart heavy for the doing of it, summoned the Messenger, first, to the Conservatoire to make a request — viz. that my Cycumstance being now of some extraordinary nature, I must crave extentions to all my work that remayns, and my mind begun to turn to that which I feared, which is that I may be fain to defer my course in Musick — and second, to my fathers Lawyer, that I might meet with him to discuss the terms of my acting as Attorny for my parents. After supper, my mother to bed early, all a-fret that they must send my father home and that she did not remember how he had come to be where he is, I did find among a great pile of volumes set upon the floor (pertaining mostly to the subjeckt of Horology, which was my father’s great pastime) a Journall, not, like this one, in my own hand, but in that of my mother, with a little writ by my father, and the date of it 1636, when I was three years into this world. And I read by a candle’s light the year’s story of how my parents were making this house their home, this very house where I grew up, still with the same rug upon those boards there, and the same portrait upon this wall here; and how they were planting their new garden, the very garden that hides now in the winter’s dark beyond window glass and velvet curtayn, but still with the same roses in this bed here, and the same apple tree in that corner there; the account recorded in my mother’s assured hand, all full of the Certainety of youth, and of hope for a future that I pray to God be not quite yet behind them.