In contrast to Madame de Rochechouart, grande dame to 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 pet theme: “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 before I 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 side to 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.
