| Description | Particular entries give details of Charlotte and Mary's daily activities. Mary is busy with Sunday school teaching, committees, and teachers classes, while Charlotte attends church services and continues her hospital visiting. She also helps with household chores, which include washing all the dining room china on 6 May. Cecil is living at home but dining out regularly, while Sidney is a deacon at Haywards Heath. Charlotte goes to visit him 1on 6 February and she speaks with the vicar, and is shown around the church. She is pleased that he has this 'desirable opening for his ministry'. He is ordained as a priest at Chichester on 18 December.
Charlotte's preparations for, and events surrounding the Diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria are mentioned: 'ordered B's jubilee hat', 31 May and enquires about jubilee lights on 9 June. Charlotte visits the 'Victorian Era' exhibition on 14 June. There is a jubilee procession on 22 June and a concert the following day.
Charlotte has a tooth stopped on18 February and suffers 'so much sharp pain' in her stomach that she does not leave the house on 22 Mar. She also suffers from frequent headaches.
She goes with Mary and Sidney to Whitby in Aug and September. She is treated to a donkey bath chair, and they visit the ruined abbey and old church on 6 August. Other events include a visit to Ruswarp for a picnic via Smelter castle on 11 August, a trip to Staithes, which Charlotte describes as a 'most picturesque fishing village', on 25 August and an outing to Robin Hood's Bay on 30 August: 'a most beautiful place' . They also visit a jet works on 1 September, and 'Mary had a piece of jet polished with her name & date'. Cecil takes Mary to see her first opera, Carmen, for her birthday on 13 October and Charlotte visits Harpsden with Mary on 23 October and prays by Fred's grave.
Reading matter includes 'The Lord our Refuge' by Liddon, Church's 'Particular Providence', 'The Undying One', 'Milligan on the Resurrection', 'Le Journal d'un 'Eveque', 'Life of St Cyprian', 'The Devotional Life', 'Letters from Constantinople', 'Historic Faith' and 'Church Bells'. |