II.—ANNA GREEN WINSLOW(Boston 1771—1773)
(Boston 1771—1773)
In 1771, the very year little Hélène Massalski was passed through the wicket of the grill of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, and dressed in her pensionnaire’s uniform to begin her adventurous school career, a demure little maiden in far off America sat her down to writeherdiary too. It is impossible to imagine a greater or more piquant contrast than that between the little Catholic girl in her French convent, and the little Puritan who was sent to her “Aunt Deming” in Boston by her parents in Nova Scotia to be “finished” by Boston teachers. While Hélène was “spoiling her hand” scribbling memoirs which nobody could read but herself, and getting Mlle. de Choiseul to write her “copy-book” for her so as to avoid trouble with M. Charme, her writing-master, little Anna Green Winslow was recording in careful penmanship the events of her Puritan day “for the edificationof her ‘Hond. Mamma’” and her own practice in “making letters even.” Poor little girl! one feels that something more than the chill of the Boston winter has got into her frail little body; and one wishes for something better than the warmth of “Unkle Joshua’s” fire to cheer her on bitter days on her way from school. For in truth she is a very likeable little person, this “Pilgrim’s daughter,” and one feels that in a kindlier atmosphere she would have blossomed into something very dear and sweet. Sometimes in the midst of her notes of “Mr. Hunt’s” and “Mr. Beacon’s” sermons, one comes across the most naïve confession of personal vanity, and one cannot help loving her for it. It was all very well for Mr. Beacon to tell her that “true beauty consisted in holiness”; and to show her “Hond. Mamma” that she had been paying attention she even took the pains to copy his very words—his “lastly” to his dear young friends: “Let me tell you, you’l never be truly beautiful till you’re like the king’s daughter, all glorious within, all the ornimints you can put on while your souls are unholy make you the more like white sepulchres garnished without, but full of deformyty within. You think me very unpolite, no doubt, to addressyou in this manner, but I must go a little further and tell you, how cource soever it may sound to your delicacy, that while you are without holiness, your beauty is deformyty—you are all over black and defiled, ugly and loathsome to all holy beings, the wrath of the great God lies upon you, and if you die in this condition, you will be turned into hell, with ugly devils, to eternity.” That might be so; but it did not deter a certain little girl from “dressing all (even to loading) of her best” for “Miss Soley’s constitation” (“a very genteel, well-regulated assembly,” she informs her mamma). “I was dressed in my yellow coat, black bib and apron, black feathers on my head, my past (i.e., paste) comb, and all my past garnet marquesett and jet pins, together with my silver plume—my loket, rings, black collar round my neck, black mitts, and two or three yards of blue ribbon (black and blue is high taste), stripped tucker and ruffels (not my best) and my silk shoes compleated my dress.” Nor was there much consolation in the thought of “interior whiteness” on occasions when there seemed danger of Aunt Deming making her wear “‘the black hatt with the red Dominie.’ For the people will ask me what I have got to sell as I goalong the street if I do, or how the folk at New Guinie do? Dear Mamma, you don’t know the fation here—I beg to look like other folk. You don’t know what a stir would be made in Sudbury-street, were I to make my appearance there in my red Dominie and black Hatt.”
In contrast with Hélène’s exciting experiences, little Anna Green’s sedate goings to and fro to writing school to Master Holbrook, or “dansing-school” to Master Turner, or sewing school to Madam Smith seem very tame indeed. It is quite an adventure for her “to be overtaken by a lady who was quite a stranger to her,” and to be accosted by her with “how do you do, Miss?” “I answered her, but told her I had not the pleasure of knowing her.” She then asked, “What is your name, Miss? I believe you think it is a very strange question to ask, but have a mind to know.” It turns out that the lady is an old friend of Nanny’s mother, and sends her all kinds of affectionate messages, including one “to come up and live on Jamaîcaplain,” the attraction being “a nice meeting-house, and a charming minister, and all so cleaver.” Sometimes when there is absolutely nothing to tell, Nanny copies out, “with her Aunt’s leave,” somethingwhich pleased that good lady very much, “and which I hope will please you, my Papa and Mamma.” It turns out to be a rather dull joke wherein Mr. W., “who don’t set up for an Expositor of Scripture, yet ventures to send Dr. Byles a short comment on 1 Cor. ix. 11[17]in the shape of a dozen pounds of chocolate.” To which the Dr. returned the following very pretty answer: “Dr. Byles returns respects to Mr. W. and most heartily thanks him for his judicious practical Familie Expositor, which is in Tast.” To do Nanny justice, this “joke” is more in the “tast” of Aunt Doming than her own, for the little lady has a charming sense of humour, and sometimes employs it very prettily even against herself. She was subject on occasions to “egregious fits of laughterre,” and can give the drollest description of some things that tickle her fancy. For instance, a “heddus roll” which Mr. D., the barber, made for her. “This famous roll is not madewhollyof a redcow tail, but is a mixture of that and horsehair (very coarse) and a little human hair of yellow hue, that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. made it all cardedtogether and twisted up. When it first came home, aunt put it on, and my new cap on it; she then took up her apron and measured me, and from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I measured above an inch longer than I did downward from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than virtue and modesty without the help of fals hair, red cow tail, or Mr. D.”
Poor “Mr. D.” He does not seem to have been the beau idéal of barbers. Here is a picture of him at work. “In the course of my peregrination, as Aunt calls it, I happened into a house where D. was attending the lady of the family. How long she was at his opperation I know not. I saw him twist, and tug, and pick, and cut off whole locks of grey hair at a slice (the lady telling him she would have no hair to dress the next time) for the space of an hour and a half, when I left them, he seeming not to be near done.”
She certainly needed her sense of humour, for nothing could be more depressing than the company she was forced to keep. If she wasn’t ill herself, “with a whitloe on my fourth finger, and something like one on my middle finger,” and being ‘seasoned’ byAunt Deming with Globe Salts, she was visiting sick relations and neighbours. She goes to see Aunt Storer, and “finds Unkle Storer so ill that he keeps chamber. As I went down I call’d at Mrs. Whitwell’s and must tell you Mr. and Mrs. Whitwell are both ill, Mrs. Whitwell with rheumatism.” Later on: “It has been a very sickly time here, not one person that I know of but has been under heavy colds (all laid up at Unkle Storer’s).” The climate seems to have been abominable. Almost every entry deals with the weather, and it is only well on in May that there is any mention of warmth. Even in June we read: “All last week till Saterday very cold and rainy.” A snowstorm keeps her from dining with “Unkle Joshua” on 6th December, and another from Mrs. Whitwell’s on the 14th. Christmas Eve, 1771, was “the coldest day we have had since I have been in New England,” and all folk abroad “have to run to keep themselves warm.” The rain of Sunday froze on Monday, so that “walking was so slippery and the air so cold that Aunt choses to have me for her scoller these days.” February 13th was “a bitter cold day.” February 18th, “bitter cold” again. On February 22nd the weather entry reads: “Since about the middle ofDecember ult. we have had till this week a series of cold and stormy weather—every snowstorm (of which we have had abundance) except the first ended with rain, by which means the snow was so hardened that strong gales at N.W. soon turned it and all above ground to ice, which this day seven-night was from one to three, four, and, they say, in some places five feet thick, in the streets of this town. Last Saturday morning we had a snowstorm come on, which continued till 4 o’clock, p.m., when it turned to rain, since which we have had a warm air with many showers of rain, one this morning a little before day, attended with thunder. The streets have been very wet, the water running like rivers all this week, so that I could not possibly go to school.”
In spite of the weather Anna and Aunt Deming go to “meeting” with great frequency, sometimes favoured by kind neighbours like Mr. Soley and “Mr. Wales” with seats in their chaise. Anna is always supposed to write down the text and as much of the sermon as she can in her diary, and as sometimes Aunt Deming puts in her pen, the effect is slightly like that produced by the elder Mr. Weller’s letter to Sam. She likes Mr. Hunt’s sermonsbest, though she does not “understand all he said about the external and internal evidence” for the authenticity of the Bible. On an occasion when Mr. Hunt preached on “The Decrees of God” Anna had “set down some of his observations on a loose sheet of paper. But my Aunt says that a Miss of 12 years’ old can’t possibly do justice to the nicest subject in Divinity, and therefore had better not attempt a repetition of particulars, that she finds lie (as may be easily concluded) somewhat confused in my young mind. She also says that in her poor judgment, Mr. Hunt discoursed soundly, as well as ingeniously, upon the subject, and very much to her instruction and satisfaction.”
I am sorry to have to add that Anna was a dreadfully bigoted young person, and would not keep Christmas, “as the Pope and his associates have ordained.” Moreover, she has a horror of anything savouring of “episcopacie.” She is properly contemptuous of Dr. Pemberton’s and Dr. Cooper’s “gowns.” “In the form of episcopal cassocks we hear the Docts. design to distinguish themselves from the inferior clergy by these strange habits (at a time too when the good people of New England are threatened with and dreadingthe coming of an episcopal bishop).” She pokes irreverent fun at the doctors’ sleeves: “I don’t know whether one sleeve would make a full-trimmed negligee as the fashion is at present, though I can’t say but it might make one of the frugal sort, with but scant trimming ... Aunt says when she saw Dr. P. roll up the pulpit stairs, the figure of Parson Trulliber recorded by Mr. Fielding occurred to her mind, and she was really sorry a congregational divine should, by any instance, give her so unpleasing an idea.”
She had her politics, too, as well as her religious convictions, though there are only slight indications in the diary of the storm that was to burst so soon, and of which Boston was to be the centre. She speaks incidentally of the famous “Boston Massacre” (1770), when the British troops sent to Boston to enforce the Townshend Acts fired at and killed several unarmed citizens (and, as Daniel Webster said, the Revolution began,) as the “murder of the 5th March last.” She had an account of the first anniversary celebrations of the Boston Massacre, “yesterday’s publick performances and exhibitions” ready to send to her “hond. Mamma,” “but Aunt says I need not write about ’em because nodoubt there will be printed accounts.” She could have wished to be there herself, but could not, her face being swollen with a heavy cold. She knew James Lovell, the famous Boston patriot, who delivered the Anniversary Address. “Master Jimmy Lovell,” she calls him in another place.A proposof a “very beautiful white feather hat,” for the purchase of which she had long been saving up “papa’s kind allowance,” we learn she is, “as we say, a daughter of liberty. I chose to wear as much of our own manufactory as possible.” In which respect she is very much in the “fation,” as she dearly loves to be. “Daughters of liberty,” we read elsewhere, “held spinning and weaving bees, and gathered in bands pledging themselves to drink no tea till the obnoxious Revenue Act was repealed.” Young unmarried girls joined in an association with the proud declaration, “We, the daughters of those Patriots who have appeared for the public interest, do now with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of foreign tea.” When she went “a-visiting to Colonel Gridley’s with Aunt, and had danced with Miss Polly Deming to the ‘musick of the minuet’ sung by Miss Becky Gridley, the Colonel brought in the talkof Whigs and Tories, and taught me the difference between them.”
But in reality one suspects she understood even less of Col. Gridley’s political lecture than of Mr. Beacon’s sermon—and led her quiet life from day to day without the slightest suspicion of the great events whose shadows were thus cast before. She got through her day’s work—whether it were “spinning 30 knots of linning yarn (partly), new-footing a pair of stockings for Lucinda, reading a part of the pilgrim’s progress, coppieing part of my text journal,” or, as on the 9th March, a “piece-meal” day’s work, when she “sew’d on the bosom of unkle’s shirt, mended two pair of gloves, mended for the wash two handkerchiefs (one cambrick), sewed on half a border of a lawn apron of aunt’s, read part of the xxist chapter of Exodus, and a story in the ‘Mother’s Gift,’” without suspecting that anything more exciting was in store for her than the “constitations” of which she has given us such a graphic picture.
Very dull, I am afraid, these gatherings would have seemed to Hélène Massalski, accustomed to her brilliant school balls during the carnival, when “they left aside their school uniforms, and the mothersvied with each other in dressing their daughters,” or to her representations of “Esther,” when their costumes were designed after those of the Comédie Française, and Hélène, as Esther, wore a gown all white and silver, sparkling with diamonds valued at over one hundred thousand crowns, lent by the Duchesses de Mortemart, de Gramont, and de Choiseul. But little Anna Green Winslow thought them perfectly delightful, and told her mamma about them very prettily:—
“I told you I was going to a constitation with Miss Soley. I have now the pleasure to give you the result, viz., a very genteel, well-regulated assembly which we had at Mr. Soley’s last evening, Miss Soley being mistress of the ceremony. Mrs. Soley desired me to assist Miss Hannah in making out a list of guests, which I did some time since. I wrote all the invitation cards. There was a large company assembled in a handsome, large, upper room in the new end of the house. We had two fiddles, and I had the honour to open the diversion of the evening in a minuet with Miss Soley.... Our treat was nuts, raisins, cakes, wine, punch hot and cold, all in great plenty. We had a very agreeable evening from five to ten o’clock. Forvariety we woo’d a widow, hunted the whistle, threaded the needle, and while the company was collecting, we diverted ourselves with playing of pawns, no rudeness, mamma, I assure you.”
In contrast to Madame de Rochechouart,grande dameto her exquisite finger tips, grave, gracious, beautiful and intellectual, poor Aunt Deming, with her laboured jokes about “Mr. Calf,” and her appreciation of Dr. Byles, cuts a sorry figure. We feel genuine compassion for poor Nanny, obliged to spend so much time with her. Nothing can better illuminate “Aunt Deming’s” character than a letter of hers to her “dear neice,” when her “dear neice” had left her to go home to her mother. She begins by congratulating her on having had a less “troublesome journey” than she (Aunt Deming) anticipated. “I was always unhappy in anticipating trouble—it is my constitution, I believe—and when matters have been better than my fears, I have never been so dutifully thankful as my bountiful benefactor had a right to expect. This also, I believe, is the constitution of all my fellow-race.”
After condoling with her “neice” on her indisposition as well as that of Flavia and her mamma, she goes on to her own pettheme: “I’m at too great a distance to render you the least service, and were I near, too much out of health to—some part of the time—even speak to you. I am seized with exceeding weakness at the very seat of life, and to a greater degree than I ever before knew. Could I ride, it might help me, but that is an exercise my income will not permit. I walk out whenever I can. The day will surely come when I must quit this frail tabernacle, and it may be soon—I certainly know I am not of importance enough in this world for anyone to wish my stay—rather am I, and do I consider myself a cumberground. However, I shall abide my appointed time, and I desire to be found waiting for my change.”
No wonder it was a relief for a little girl to get out even to see Madam Storer’s funeral, or to visit Elder Whitwell’s rheumatic wife, or to see “my Unkle Ned, who has had the misfortune to break his legs.” She very much enjoyed a “setting-up” visit she paid to “Aunt Suky” to see the latter’s new baby; more, one suspects, for the opportunity it gave her of “dressing up just as if I was to go to the ball,” than for the sake of Nurse Eaton’s “tow-cakes,” which cost her a “pistoreen” in good money. “I took care to eat them beforeI paid for them,” she remarks shrewdly. She loves babies, one can see, and sends affectionate messages to her own little baby brother. On one occasion he “has made an essay for a post script to your letter, mamma. I must get him to read it to me when he comes up, for two reasons, the one is because I may have the pleasure of hearing his voice, the other because I don’t understand his characters. I observe that he is mamma’s ‘Ducky Darling.’”
“Cousin Charles Storer” seems to have been interested in the little girl’s reading. He lends her “Gulliver’s Travels abreviated,” which “Aunt says I may read for the sake of perfecting myself in reading a variety of composures.” With her “nihil obstat” Aunt Deming slips in an incidental lesson on “literary history.” “She sais farther that the piece was desin’d as a burlesque upon the times in which it was wrote, and Martimas Scriblensis and Pope Dunciad were wrote with the same design and as parts of the same work, tho’ wrote by three several hands.” Later on, Aunt Storer lent her three of cousin Charles’ books to read, “viz., The puzzeling cap,[18]the female Oraters,and the History of Gaffer too-shoes.” She got the “History of Joseph Andrews abreviated” for a New Year’s Gift, and began “Sir Charles Grandison”—whether she ever finished it or not. The works of Fielding and Samuel Richardson “abreviated” seem to have been favourite books for children, and figure in booksellers’ lists of the period as suitable for the “Instruction and Amusement of all good Boys and Girls,” together with “The Brother Gift, or the Naughty Girl Reformed”; “The Sister Gift, or the Naughty Boy Reformed,” and “Mr. Winlove’s Moral Lectures.”
Compared with Hélène, who read the best literature of the day, under the careful eye of Madame de Rochechouart, and was saturated in the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine from her theatrical triumphs, poor Anna’s literary pabulum seems very thin stuff indeed.
In 1773, Anna’s parents came from Nova Scotia to live in Marshfield, and their little daughter left Aunt Deming’s house to return to them. At this date, the diary therefore comes to an end.
She lived to hear of some of the greatest battles of the War of the Revolution, and must have been rather puzzled which sideto pray for, seeing her own family divided on the question. But soon she was beyond all earthly troubles, for she died of consumption in 1779.