Madame D’Arblay joined the party as Mrs. Thrale’s guest on the 26th October, and on the 28th she writes: 

“At dinner, we had Dr. Delap and Mr. Selwyn, who accompanied us in the evening to a ball; as did also Dr. Johnson, to the universal amazement of all who saw him there:—­but he said he had found it so dull being quite alone the preceding evening, that he determined upon going with us:  ‘for,’ he said, ‘it cannot be worse than being alone.’  Strange that he should think so!  I am sure I am not of his mind.”

On the 29th, she records that Johnson behaved very rudely to Mr. Pepys, and fairly drove him from the house.  The entry for November 10th is remarkable:—­“We spent this evening at Lady De Ferrars, where Dr. Johnson accompanied us, for the first time he has been invited of our parties since my arrival.”  On the 20th November, she tells us that Mrs. and the three Miss Thrales and herself got up early to bathe.  “We then returned home, and dressed by candle-light, and, as soon as we could get Dr. Johnson ready, we set out upon our journey in a coach and a chaise, and arrived in Argyll Street at dinner time.  Mrs. Thrale has there fixed her tent for this short winter, which will end with the beginning of April, when her foreign journey takes place.”

One incident of this Brighton trip is mentioned in the “Anecdotes”: 

“We had got a little French print among us at Brighthelmstone, in November 1782, of some people skaiting, with these lines written under: 

  ’Sur un mince chrystal l’hyver conduit leurs pas,
    Le precipice est sous la glace;
  Telle est de nos plaisirs la legere surface,
    Glissez, mortels; n’appuyez pas.’

“And I begged translations from every body:  Dr. Johnson gave me this: 

  ’O’er ice the rapid skater flies,
    With sport above and death below;
  Where mischief lurks in gay disguise,
    Thus lightly touch and quickly go.’

“He was, however, most exceedingly enraged when he knew that in the course of the season I had asked half a dozen acquaintance to do the same thing; and said, it was a piece of treachery, and done to make every body else look little when compared to my favourite friends the Pepyses, whose translations were unquestionably the best."[1]

[Footnote 1:  By Sir Lucas: 

  “O’er the ice, as o’er pleasure, you lightly should glide,
  Both have gulphs which their flattering surfaces hide.”

By Sir William: 

  “Swift o’er the level how the skaiters slide,
  And skim the glitt’ring surface as they go: 
  Thus o’er life’s specious pleasures lightly glide,
  But pause not, press not on the gulph below.”]

Madame D’Arblay’s Diary describes the outward and visible state of things at Brighton.  “Thraliana” lays bare the internal history, the struggles of the understanding and the heart: 

“At Brighthelmstone, whither I went when I left Streatham, 7th October 1782, I heard this comical epigram about the Irish Volunteers: