Matters of every complexion

11 January, in the year of our Lord 2023

A desolate day, all optymism dashed, for today my father’s breathing worse again, his scores lower despite the abundance of his treatments, which are styroids, pastilles to make him pass more water, active physick against the Covey plague its very selfe, and his air being so much fortified that they can fortify it no further. His Physician for this week thinks to treat him also with a great deal of albumen, such as is to be found in the white of an egg, which she hopes will pull fluid from his lungs back into the circulation, this being the Compartment (as she says it) where it should belong. After dinner, weighted with a great dispondency not only for this new turn of events but also (and more) for its contrast with the confidence of yesterday, took coach to the premices of Helping Hands on Alerton road, which company provides maydes not just to visit in the day, but to live in a house, where they sleep, and live as if in their own house, that they might thus care for my mother in her own home if it prove a necessity, the notion being put into my mind by a message sent by Dr. Francis. Only the cost! which is an excess of 100l for one week. At supper my mother asked why my father hath not come home, for she frets his absence, and so I explayned with all the gentleness I could summon the circumstances of the day. And though she remembered our discourse of last night, she hath forgot why he went into the Hospitall at the outset, so I gently explayned that too. ‘I cannot get my memorie to work properly,’ says she, sadly. And I could find no answer except to squeeze her hand.

 

12 January, in the year of our Lord 2023

Up but as tired as ever I was in my life, my night restless and my mind occupied with matters of every complexion. My father was today out of his isolation, it being one week since they found the Covey.

 

14 January, in the year of our Lord 2023

Today, satisfactory arrangements made to repatriate the Rominick poudle, her owners being returned from the Antipodes, and for care to be provided for his own, Mr. Jones come to stay, for which my gratitude is boundless. My father had the strength to ask him how his flood was, which took him (which is Mr. Jones) by pleasant surprise, that my father’s mind be still so alert. After supper in dispair at the stock we must take of all practickle matters — a pile of manuscripts here and a mountain of accounts there, an accumulation of correspondence in this file and a hoard of papers in that — and gasped at how hard it is to decide what to do, and in what order to do it. But it must be done, for I must have foreknowledge of the accounts, at the very least, if I am to manage all the payments that must be made, for the invoices that come daily; and so we set about it.