1894, December 7, Friday a
Slight rain nearly all day. Drove Bell and Rosa to Bloxham to lunch with Mrs Kershaw. Left about 3.45. The roads were dreadfully stony and our progress was very slow in consequence.
Rev J Goodwin, Vicar of Milcombe and Mrs G (who were recently married) called just before we left. She told us that Miss M Dix and her niece Mary Thame who had been in the habit of attending choir practice at Swalcliffe in Dr Wilkinson’s time and, as regards Mary Thame, playing the organ when required, went one evening soon after the new Vicar arrived. He asked them what they wanted. They replied that they had been in the habit of attending the practice. The vicar said he could not allow it and showed them out. Mary Thame said she had a key of the organ, which their late “Dear Vicar” had given her in order that she might practise when she could, to which he replied that the key which their “Dear Vicar” had lent her must be given up to himself. I fear that the youthful vicar is boiling water to scald himself with. This only one of the very indiscreet things he is said to have done in his new Parish.
Visited Job Harris’s who is better but has not yet been to work. Also visited Thomas Keen, who is better. He was sitting in front of his fire and seemed as well as I have known him for several years. Matilda, Mark Barnes’s daughter is at home again. I saw her standing outside her father’s gate as usual this morning at 11.45 and this evening at 9.45. It is a pity she comes “home”, for she has no society there and her father spends nearly all his evenings at “the public”
