A website from the Massachusetts Historical Society; founded 1791.

Diary of Charles Francis Adams, 1863

Friday 18th

18 December 1863

Sunday 20th

20 December 1863
19 December 1863
523
Saturday 19th
London
CFA

1863-12-19

AM

Mild, fine day. Having finished up my correspondence. I went out rather early for the purpose of examining a collection of coins which is to be sold next week. I did not go through with it, being engaged to meet the ladies in Berners Street, to a private view of two full length portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales just completed by a Danish artist, Mr Jensen. The draperies are good, but the faces seemed to me feebly done. From thence to Pall mall to a private view of the sketches of Jerusalem and its neighborhood by a german artist, Mr Carl Werner. It had become so dark however when I was engaged in looking at them that I had to leave them . There is an interest to me in these scenes, and in the idea of the devotion paid to them by so large a part of the Christian world of which we in the West hardly know any thing. Home by way of Hyde Park. Evening, reading aloud from Vanity Fair. Thackeray is a keen painter of manners, always rather more skilful in the shades than in the light of the picture of life.

Cite web page as:

Charles Francis Adams, Sr., [date of entry], diary, in Charles Francis Adams, Sr.: The Civil War Diaries (Unverified Transcriptions). Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2015. http://www.masshist.org/publications/cfa-civil-war/view?id=DCA63d353