| Description | As in recent years, Charlotte spends most of her time at home, reading, or being read to by Miss Parker, who also plays the piano for her, and runs various errands. Cecil and his family also visit regularly, and she receives visits from friends. She goes for occasional walks with Miss Parker, and is able to sit in the garden when the weather allows. She writes and receives so few letters that she has abandoned her previously established practice of keeping an index of letters sent and received at the rear of her diary.
Her health seems fairly good for most of the year. She suffers from a severe cough on 3 January and is visited by Dr Bland. and remains unwell in her bedroom for the next few days.The doctor visits her again on 10 January about her 'sore mouth' and on 23 January she writes that 'Dr Bland came early for pain in my right side, muscular, so he thought'
Sidney remains at Barnsley Hall, and she writes little about him. She does mention that Cecil has shown her a letter from the superintendent at Barnsley Hall about Sidney on 9 March and that Cecil has informed her on 4 May that Sidney has resigned from his position as vicar at Rous Lench.
Charlotte's detailed reading of newspapers is shown by her comments on national and international events. She notes 'The Duke of York's engagement to L[ord] Strathmore's daughter of Glamis Castle...' and the 'discovery of jewels in TutanKama's (sic) tomb', 16 January; and 'Prince Henry (sic) Duke of York was married at W[estminster] Abbey to Lady E. Bowes Lyon', 26 April. She also reports on 14 February that 'yesterday there was a meeting of the unemployed in Hyde Park' and records the the death of Bonar Law on 30 October, his funeral on 6 November and the annoucement by Stanley Baldwin of a General Election on 14 November. For several days after noting the 'full account of a very terrible earthquake in Japan, many casualties' on 4 September, she mentions reading accounts about this event in the newspaper, and it clearly preyed on her mind.
Reading matter includes 'Animal Life in Africa', 'Big Game in China', 'The Land of the Longest Night', 'The Life of General Gordon', 'The Life of the Empress Eugenie', 'The Life of the Empress Josephine', 'book on New Zealand', 'We Two on our Travels', 'The Lives of Famous Admirals', 'book on the New Forest', 'The Voyage of the Sun Beam', 'Among the Norwegian Fjords', 'book about Borneo and Ceylon', 'By the Ionian Sea', 'The Enchanting North', 'Queen Victoria's Life in the Highlands', 'book on Cornwall', 'book on Monastic Life', 'Rambles in Marshland', 'Life in a Caravan', 'Unknown Kent' and 'book on Tuscany'. |