Date: 1762
"One only hope remains, that you, my first and dearest friend, will not abandon me; that whatever cloud of melancholy may hang over my mind, yet you will still bear with me, and remove your abode to a place where I may have the consolation of your company."
preview | full record— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)
Date: 1763
"The once smiling scene has a melancholy gloom, which strikes a damp through my inmost soul."
preview | full record— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)
Date: 1765 [1764]
"Manfred, though persuaded, like his wife, that the vision had been no work of fancy, recovered a little from the tempest of mind into which so many strange events had thrown him."
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)
Date: 1778, 1779
If "I may now judge of the time to come, by the present state of my mind, the calm will be succeeded by a storm, of which I dread the violence"
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1778, 1779
"He went, and presently returning, produced a great quantity of hair, in such a nasty condition, that I was amazed she would take it; and the man as he delivered it to her, found it impossible to keep his countenance; which she had no sooner observed, than all her stormy passions were again raised."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1778, 1779
"The first fortnight that I passed here, was so quiet, so serene, that it gave me reason to expect a settled calm during my stay; but if I may now judge of the time to come, by the present state of my mind, the calm will be succeeded by a storm, of which I dread the violence!"
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1778, 1779
"Yet oh!--shall I not, in this last farewell, which thou wilt not read till every stormy passion is extinct,--and the kind grave has embosomed all my sorrows,--shall I not offer to the man once so dear to me, a ray of consolation to those afflictions he has in reserve?"
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1782
"Passion not merely banished his justice, but clouded his reason, and I soon left the room, that at least I might not hear the aspersions he forbid me to answer."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1788
"Mary observed his character, and wrote down a train of reflections, which these observations led her to make; these reflections received a tinge from her mind; the present state of it, was that kind of painful quietness which arises from reason clouded by disgust; she had not yet learned to be r...
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: 1788
""Ah! will you not there hear me? Will you still inhumanly smile; will you still look so gentle, while your heart is harder than the rocks we shall see--colder than the snow that crowns them!--an heart on which even the pen of fire which Rousseau held would make no impression!"
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)