A Garden of Girls; Or, Famous Schoolgirls of Former DaysConcannon, Thomas, Mrs.
History
A Garden of Girls; Or, Famous Schoolgirls of Former Days
Concannon, Thomas, Mrs.
Catholic Church -- Education; Girls -- Biography; Women -- Education -- History
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 made _wholly_ of a red _cow 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 carded together 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’ by Aunt 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 of December ult.
we have had till this week a series of cold and stormy weather—every
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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