Author: Elizabeth Harris (---.hsd1.ma.comcast.net)
Date: 05-27-08 09:00
For several years I have been working on a book about the life of my great-great grandmother. Hers was a fascinating and tumultuous life. In this blend of biography and social history, I include many excerpts from her autobiographical sketches of frontier life, which are in my possession.
I would very much appreciate it if some of you could look at a rather typical "sketch" and tell me if you think I could interest a publisher (and an audience) for these historic materials. I think my great-great grandmother's life will be of interest to readers, but will the many excerpts from her own writings be a plus, or are they off-putting to a trade audience.
The scene below occurs when my great-great grandparents have just arrived in the Midwestern village where Mr. Mason will be minister to a small congregation. Mrs. Mason is writing her aunt about their experiences.
“Nov. ---[1843]. I have been looking over the last page of the kind of journal I promised to keep for you, aunt Lucy, and from its tone, I should not blame you if you tho’t I was a little discouraged, although I said I was not. But it was written the day after our baggage, left behind, arrived, and we found almost every thing spoiled. The largest box, containing the bedding, so carefully prepared by you, and much of my winter clothing, had by some means been broken open. Mr. Mason thinks it must have fallen off the wagon and split so as to admit the rain, and being left over some days on the way, the things moulded and spoiled.
I thought I would not tell you of it at first, but I would rather you would know just the fact than think I was discouraged without good cause. I feel quite ashamed to speak of such trifling losses and disappointments to the people here, who can tell of so much greater new country troubles than anything I can at this day realize.
But as I told you, we are settled at Mr. Caldwell’s for the winter. We spent days in going about, and almost begging people to take us, but all had some excuse. Some were sick – others had no room. It is very unfortunate for us that not more than three families of our people live in town. Ours are country parishioners entirely, and mostly poor, and struggling hard with new country privations.
We have but one room, which is the family parlor as well as our bed room, and also Mr. Mason’s study.
Goldsmith has introduced us to the poetry of what serves as
“A bed by night, and chest of drawers by day,”
But I assure you the poetry is altogether in the idea – not in the reality. The trouble is that the drawers have every night to be cleared to make room for more important bodies. As it is nearly bed time, suppose you step in and assist me in the process of clearing. The first thing to be done, is to put back the curtain . . . .
[I have skipped some text here.]
Now that the curtain is safely put aside, we will commence clearing by taking down all these dresses, coats and overcoats, for that strip of board, upon which they are hung, is not permanent, but merely slipped into those mortises on each side, and must be taken down every night and put up every morning; for, as it is, you see, it would be directly in the way of letting down and turning up our bed.
Don’t lay the dresses over those chairs; for, do you see that they, together with that table and the trunks under it, must be moved into the middle of the room to make place for the bed? Let us step softly, too, for this is Mr. Mason’s study, as well as a bedroom, and just now I saw him look up – at first he hitched about uneasily, as if feeling for the arms of his old study chair to lean upon; but they were not to be found, neither were they precisely what he wanted. So he turned his eyes this way, and impatiently said, (by his looks,) “please, Mary, be a little more quiet.” But how could I be, when I was tugging away, first at one end and then at the other, of that heavy black walnut table, to get it out from under my bed? Then the buckles on the straps of the trunks would rattle, and, forgetting that I had hidden away from little Sissy Caldwell my work basket upon the trunk under the table, I have knocked that off, and Mr. Mason’s meditations are enlivened by the jingling of scissors and thimble, the rolling of spools, and all the etcetera of a lady’s work basket.
At length, however, all is righted. The dresses, coats, cloaks and overcoats are laid out for the fiftieth time since this little room has been our home; the voices of the children in the dining room, separated from this by a thin, unplastered partition, are hushed, and Mr. Mason begins to feel that he is in his study, when Mrs. Caldwell steps softly to the door – ‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ she says, ‘but I find myself obliged to come to my drawers,’ which are directly under Mr. Mason’s writing desk.
. . . .
//Thank you for any comments on the above. They will help me to decide to what extent I should include my great-great grandmother's writings in the book. I think they explain a lot about her character and experiences, and I like her writing, though I of course am a bit prejudiced!
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