This morning up late.... After dinner, contrived an apparatus for slinging my work round my neck while at painting. Set off with it; began a little landscape in a hurry and fluster--attempting to paint corn-sheaves and cart while they are going; I fear it will not repay the trouble, for I cannot paint in a hurry.... Sunday.--... Cholera all round. Worked all day at sketching the charcoal of _Beauty_; twice missed it, at last all right. About 4 p.m. set some accessories, and drew them in this evening: at it for about two hours; all well yet (five hours). On last Friday, some frames came home; and I passed the evening in great glee, putting-in the pictures--all old rubbishing things saved to sell to the dealers or others. The study for _Waiting_ finished into a picture. The study of a little girl’s head, painted in two views at Southend in ’46 on a table napkin, now lined and re-touched. The drawing for the Emigrants, and the charcoal of _Beauty_. 12th September.--yesterday.... To work at the Brent by 11 a.m. Emma and the child brought me my dinner there at two, in a little basket. Hot hashed mutton and potatoes in a basin, cold rice pudding, and a little bottle of rum and water, beer being bad for cholera. Very delightful and very great appetite.... This evening worked at the kitten in _Beauty_, for which Emma and I went out after dark and stole one yesterday. White cometh not; only £5 in the money-box. This is all till the quarter’s rent of the wharf comes in, £26, not for five or six weeks yet. What to be done I scarce know. I ought to go and take Lucy a pound’s worth of things, and can’t. I ought to buy shoes, and can’t. We ought to send money to Emma’s mother. To-morrow Emma means to send her a parcel of things by the carrier, with five bob as a breather. This is all can be done just at present (seven and a-half hours). 14th.--Yesterday up at eight.... This morning up at half-past eight.... Rain all day; so worked at the confounded charcoal of _Beauty_, which seems as though it never could get done. No doubt people would accuse me of folly for wasting so much time over it, but work to the best of one’s power is never wasted. I am true to my intention of finishing everything I have begun, to the best of my power; and moreover whatever an artist works at with pleasure to himself must be good if he is worth anything. It is near done, thank goodness; and the figure and face of _Beauty_ pleases me, though I shall not paint the picture. The idea is now safe and intelligible. I intend it for what the story is--a jumble of Louis XV. and Orientalism. The glories of Eastern luxuriance mixed with household common appurtenances to tickle the fancy at both ends; nothing serious, yet nothing without purpose. Works of this kind should be intentionally full of anachronisms: to endeavour after unity is to injure the subject and not illustrate it (ten and a-half hours).