Voice from the past

I have been transcribing the 1889 diary of great-great-aunt Lou, which I must send back to Canada via my aunt at the end of our upcoming Oregon trip. I have become quite proficient at reading Lou's handwriting, but she left so many mysteries hanging. Were my friends and I like this when we were 16 years old? Flitting from crush to crush, eternally feuding for a moment with our girl friends, only to make up just as melodramatically? Secretly reading romance novels, and searching for the perfect dress?

"Macduff" was waiting for us when we got there. (“Sit still my heart!”) We had great fun as everyone was so jolly we went into Mrs. Matheson’s when we got cold and had coffee and sandwiches. Alick gave me back my ring after a great deal of “fuss.” A great many other “side scenes” which I won’t relate here but which are treasured up in a remote corner of my heart.

I would love to publish GGAunt Lou's entire diary, but I am not their owner so I suppose there are copyright issues. Enrico said, "just transcribe the good parts," but the thing is, there are none. What makes it so compelling is the whole. A year of mundane entries, a precise half-page per day, which slowly reveal this girl's life and times. They take classes in Scripture, and Roman History, and Music, and Grammar. They take walks nearly every day, even in the harsh Winnipeg winter. To the sign-board. To the post-box. To the deaconry.

Nora and I walked together to the concert, met the Rev… Had a very pleasant time, a gentleman sang “Till the moon grows cold.” H.N. took me home, and I froze my ear. Very tired after effects, my ear like a sail.

The first third of the year she is completing school, followed by a summer of leisure, and then her first work experience, as a housemaid. Though it is alluded to with so much discretion as to be easily missed, I know that Lou becomes engaged during this time, only to lose her fiance to an unknown death, after these cheerful journals end. By I have not transcribed that part yet; she is still a schoolgirl.

Went in Lily’s room in the afternoon, ate cherries and read. Saw a lot of people pass up. Mrs Mulligan’s invitation is bothering me a great deal, hang it! Why can’t my poor relations leave me alone? Had lovely jelly-cake for tea.

The girls are banned from seeing their brothers, presumably due to the threat posed by the brothers' friends. They write letters to their families far away in the north. They go to church twice on Sundays. They frequently have cranberries and buns for tea. When not walking to the sign-board, with an eye out for boys.

The Detectives are evidently on the watch. I’m afraid they have found out something, for somebody (?) has been mean enough to read Rose’s diary. I hope no one will ever read this, if they do they will find it rather mysterious for there are too many abbreviations.

Indeed. Mysterious, and yet not mysterious at all.