Chapter 51.
The three months that we spent so happily at Mrs. Meadows’ farm were spent by my mother in the Northwest with my brother Graham, and she came home full of tales of his farm, his cheese making and his three little children, Carew, Carrie and Henry. Then she settled down for the winter in her little house on Bramley Street.
Those years in Port Hope were, I think, very happy ones for my dear mother, and I always feel thankful that she had such a peaceful eventide after her busy and often much tried life. My sister was everything that a good and affectionate daughter could be, and I believe she had real joy out of the grandchildren. What her influence meant to them, especially the older ones, I can never express. She constantly had them with her, not all together, but one at a time. She was so thoroughly good and honorable and honest that simply to be with her was an education in itself. Her presence near by meant so much to me too. She was always ready to help with a sick baby or to amuse a fractious one, if I had to go out. She helped dress dolls for them at Christmas, made original valentines for February 14th and always had some plan for a birthday or a picnic. And the stockings; who can say what a help it was to have the big bag of stockings carried off and brought back neatly mended. We had one source of contention, I remember. As Somerville grew up to be a sturdy boy he had a wonderful faculty for wearing out his knee. Stockings were few and could not be easily replaced, and mother began to put obvious patches on the knees. How mortified I was. She finally compromised by making him cloth knee caps.
The spring after she went to Manitoba mother moved into a larger and much more comfortable house at the corner of Augusta and Bramley Streets. How many times last summer I gazed at that house and garden and fancied I could see her comfortable figure bending over some favorite flower. For my mother’s recreation was always a garden. From the days long before, when first a widow in Port Hope, she would get up at five o’clock in the morning to dig and weed. Such beautiful begonias mother had in that Augusta Street house, and geraniums and flowers of all sorts. She had a great deal of trouble too, for the earth was full of broken brick and it took much time and patience to pick it out.
But she did not spend much time on her own entertainment. She visited the poor and needy all around and was often sent for if the neighbors were in any trouble. Her two special “clients”, if I may call them so, were Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Trinbeth. The former was an eminently respectable widow, living with a daughter who was a school teacher. They were great friends, and I think the meeting for old ladies, which mother carried on for years, was begun in Mrs. Walker’s house. The other old lady was a very different character. She lived with an old husband in a rather picturesque cottage. But alas, they were given to many fallings out. As she expressed it: “His tiresome rages brought on worrisome glooms”, and she would be sad and depressed for days together. I feel sure that there was much blessing to these old people and many more, from my mother’s ministrations. All these aged folk have gone to their rest now, but who will say that by and by they will be “a crown of rejoicing” to my dear mother. I will end this little sketch with a quotation from Dorothy’s “Remembrances”.
“Granny and Aunt Dora were now living in the Augusta Street house, a large, comfortable, red brick house. Granny made the drawing room very pretty. There was a new carpet of pale fawn. The piano stood at the back. Aunt Dora’s pretty secretary stood at one side. There were numerous little tables with ornaments and coral, and a number of good pictures. Granny liked to tell us about our grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, and tell us about the pretty ladies in the miniatures. The ornaments too all had a history, especially a brass ornamented box, which was said to have come from Stirling Castle, and a very funny old China man who had followed the family in all its wanderings. Granny’s drawing room was a link with the old world of gentility to which she belonged. Sometimes she would bring down an old album of songs from the attic and sing us sweet old songs.
“Aunt Dora loved knowledge and books and thoughts. Granny loved beauty, whether in flowers, birds, pictures or music. She put feeling first and reason second. She had an extraordinary charm of manner. Her exquisite breeding was her own, but besides that she was full of verve and grace and enthusiasm. She had a most fascinating smile. No one who lived with her could ever be dull. Even we children realized that this grown up person had more than the Olympian majesty of others. At times she would take us into her confidence, making us feel that there was scarcely a difference of years between us. At others she would scold us and make us very angry. She was always full of enthusiasm about anything she did. I remember how she worked at her garden. The bed around the house was full of bricks and stones. On her daily visits to us she would tell us how many baskets of stones she had picked out. At last it was all cleared and planted round. She had a begonia and a calla lily side by side, and the cats round about used to come night after night and fight just over these two plants. Granny’s indignation knew no bounds. Her begonias were her pride and she made a collection of them.
“I think she thoroughly enjoyed the doing of things. I remember the zest with which she would make beef tea or damson jam, and allow you to taste it, and expatiate on how strong and stiff it was. She at one time took a fancy to putting milk in beef tea, and almost came to blows with the nurse I had at the time because she took my part and insisted that her patient should not be forced to eat what she disliked. Grandmother could not believe anyone could dislike what she thought so nice. I know exactly how she felt, and also about her furious indignation at injustice and wrong.
“She had a Bible reading for the old women round. I remember one day I was present—not as part of the congregation. I was sitting exactly behind Granny, drawing pictures of the old women and their various queer headgear. Old Mrs. Trinbeth always wore a little black knitted or crochetted cap. Granny was discoursing on prophecy. The old ladies listened and groaned—at least Mrs. Trinbeth did. After the meeting Granny discovered my pictures, but to my surprise, instead of scolding me, complimented me on the likeness.
“The old ladies all had gardens, and Mrs. Walker had a night blooming flower which is supposed to bloom once in a hundred years. It had three blooms. Mrs. Walker invited all the neighbors to come and watch the flower open. As a very great treat Granny took me. We went over about ten o’clock and already there was quite a crowd of people in the house. A strange, exquisite fragrance already pervaded the house and the people came in quietly and reverently, as to a meeting. It was as if all were awed at some gracious and majestic presence. We tiptoed up to the piano where the plant was, like a silvery white lily unfolding its leaves and rearing itself up straight on its stern. The dead flower of the night before was there, and the bud which would open on the succeeding night. Mrs. Walker explained that at midnight the flower was perfect; by morning it had faded. We stayed and watched with those reverent people, and came away feeling as if we had been at a meeting.”
My mother and sister were not often alone in their new home; a succession of girls spent the winters with them. I cannot remember the order in which they came, but I know Dagmar Chowne was the first. Mr. Covert had died and Mrs. Covert went to England with Birdie, leaving Dagmar. I believe Kitty Smith, a motherless girl from the United States, was there at the same time. Winnie Galna from Parry Sound must have been there a year or two later. There were others too, who stayed for a longer or shorter time.