It is a girl’s tiny notebook, a treasure perhaps to her, in which she writes down occasional memoranda as they occur to her, but as we turn the leaves it seems to bridge with a familiar touch the centuries which lie between us and that vanished time. There is a page of figures, a little poetry (“The Contented Marter”), a list of household matters, “3 bras candlesticks, 4 bras kittles, driping pans,” and so on. An allusion to a servant—“Betty came to my Mother”—is on another leaf.
One fancies, somehow, that Anne kept this book by her bedside, jealously clasped, along with her little store of devotional reading. She filled it full of writing in pencil, quite easy to decipher, save that time has made it pale and dim.
Some of the sentences are in the French she came to know very perfectly in later days, and speak of a long dead romance.
“Je n’en vey mourir d’amour, mais ce n’est pas pour un infidèle comme vous.—Anne Hyde.”
“Adieu pour jamais, mais n’oubliez pas la plus misérable personne du monde.—Anne Hyde.”
Was the “infidèle” meant for Spencer Compton or Harry Jermyn? Do the plaintive words point to the bitterness of supposed desertion by one higher than either? When were they written? There is no date to guide us.
Elsewhere there is a mention of one, her aunt Barbara Aylesbury, greatly beloved:
“Je l’aime plus que moy-mesne mille fois.—Anne Hyde.”
But on another page (it must have been much earlier), the girl, as girls will, sets down gravely the short story of her young life, here transcribed:
“If I live till the 22 of March 1653, I am 16 yeare old. My dear Aunt Bab was when she died 24 yeare old and as much as from Aprell to August.”[[2]] (This is the Barbara Aylesbury of the other entry.) “I was borne the 12 day of March old stile in the yeare of our Lord 1637 at Cranbourne Lodge neer Windsor in Barkshire and lived in my owne country till I was 12 yeares old haveing in that time seen the ruin both of Church and State in the murtheringe of my Kinge. The first of May old stile 1649 I came out of England being then 12 yeares old 1 month and 15 days. I came to Antwerp 6 of May old stile the August following I went to Bruxells for 3 or 4 days and returned againe to Antwerp where I stayed 3 weekes being loged at the court of her Highness the Princess Royall. I returned to Antwerp in May where I have been ever since February 8 1653. I am now 15 years old.”