"Cousin
Annie" A letter from Annie Fellows Johnston to Mrs. Henry Lawton
("Mrs. Walton") from Boerne Texas, April 19, 1908.
Boerne, Kendall Co. Texas April 19,
1908
Dear Mrs. Lawton -
A rainy Easter Sunday - just one long continual downpour,
on the grand scale by which Texas does things. There was no getting
out to church, no doing anything, and even the lily Mary tended so carefully
did not quite bloom. Indeed so carefully has she nursed it that she
has won the title squarely of Tennyson's Elaine - "The Lily maid!"
But you letter came, and told us what we have so much
wanted to know about yourselves and the babies, and the arrangements Frank
was able to make.
I am writing at once for two reasons - one the rainy day
that brings a longing for a cozy talk with you, the other because if
you letters not answered at once, it may get snowed under.
Alas and alack, I have been persuaded into post-poning my
"rest" one more year, and writing This summer instead of
next. I have begun a MARY WARE book, which may be called
"Mary Ware"; Copy-cat", or simply her name. It is not
fully decided.
So you see my summer's work is all laid out for me, and a
good hard summer it will be. Mamie expects to go back to Pewee in May
for part of the summer. I want her to go farther North and to the
coast before she comes back, in order (?) have the radical change of climate
that she needs.
John has been better the last few months, and is so
interested in his little orchard, this garden and alfalfa field and his
varied assortment of live stock. He is certainly making a brave fight.
I am so glad that your mother is better. I want to
enclose a letter if I can find it for Miss Fanny. She may recognize
the name of the child who claims her as her father's Sunday school teacher
years ago.
You ask what will be a help to me this summer? Why
"Cranford" of course! "Cranford"
first last and always, any scrap of news or gossip - but oh dear, how the
old order is changing! My Cranford is so fast slipping away and I
can't be there to get used to the girls growing up, and the strangers coming
in. When you become accustomed to such things by inches you don't
notice it so much as then your attention is drawn to the ills that have
appeared in your absences.
The Carnival begins tomorrow in San Antonio with its
Battle of Flowers and parades., and we are thankful we are up in the hills
"far from the madding crowd.'
Monday morning --- Was interrupted yesterday, so did not
get half through.
it's a work-a-day world this Monday morning - Here goes
for the tussle with MARY WARE. I do not think I could have managed her
at all if it had not been for the bright, enthusiastic letters of two of my
nieces. Lara Heilman is at the University of Wisconsin and Margaret
Bacon at the Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington. I wrote to them for
school girl experiences and they came to my rescue, nobly.
I wish the "Little Lawtons" could make daily
calls at "Penacres". I never see real sure enough American
girls any more. The few girls I know here, so plainly bear the tag
"made in Germany" that they don't fit into my plays at all.
Love to Manley and the girls and all the dear people
"just over the way", and most of all to your own dear self.
Yours most affectionately,
"Cousin Annie"
Note:
Cranford is a book written in 1851 by English
author Elizabeth Gaskell. References to the book are made in
The Little Colonel's Christmas
Vacation, published 1905,
Chapter 13,
Humdrum Days (as well as other places in the Little Colonel books).
"That reminds me of the
game I spoke of, "said Miss Allison. "I invented it when I
was about your age.
I had just read 'Cranford,'
and the story of life in that simple little village seemed
so charming to me that I wished with all my heart I could
step into the book and be one of the characters, and meet
all the people that lived between its covers. Then I heard
some one say that there were more interesting happenings and
queer characters in Lloydsboro Valley than in Cranford. So I
began to look around for them. I pretended that I was the
heroine of a book called 'Lloydsboro Valley,' and all that
summer I looked upon the people I met as characters in the
same story....
...."This is not malicious gossip," explained Mrs. Walton,
in an amused undertone, smiling with Lloyd and Katherine at
a remark which unintentionally reached their ears. "But in a
little community like this, where little happens, and our
interests are bound so closely together, the smallest
details of our neighbours' affairs necessarily entertain us.
It is interesting to know that Mr. Rawles and his great-aunt
are not on speaking terms, and it is positively exciting to
hear that Mr. Wolf and Mrs. Cayne quarrelled over the
leaflets used in Sunday school, and that she told him to his
face that he was a hypocrite and no better than an infidel.
It doesn't make us love these good people any the less to
know that they are human like ourselves, and have their
tempers and their spites and feuds. We know their good side,
too. Wait till calamity or sickness touches some one of us,
and see how kind and sympathetic and tender they all are;
every one of them."
"You'll hear more gossip here in one afternoon than at all
the Cranford tea-tables put together," said Katherine Marks.
"But it is a mild sort, like the kind going on behind us."
Interestingly, Mrs. Lawton also refers to Pewee Valley as Cranford in
one of her letters to AFJ dated 1906.
It appeared to be kind of a pet name for Pewee, especially when she was
regaling AFJ with the local "Cranfordy" type gossip.
The town of Cranford certainly had some parallels to Pewee Valley at
the time the Little Colonel books were written, since it was mainly a
summer community of women and children whose husbands worked in town.
This is how the first chapter begins:
"In the first place, Cranford is
in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a
certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in
the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly
frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford
evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his
regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week
in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant
only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become
of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do
if they were there? The surgeon has his round of thirty miles,
and sleeps at Cranford; but every man cannot be a surgeon. For
keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed
to speck them; for frightening away little boys who look
wistfully at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing
out at the geese that occasionally venture in to the gardens if
the gates are left open; for deciding all questions of
literature and politics without troubling themselves with
unnecessary reasons or arguments; for obtaining clear and
correct knowledge of everybody's affairs in the parish; for
keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable order; for
kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, and real tender
good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the
ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient. "A man," as one of them
observed to me once, "is so in the way in the house!" Although
the ladies of Cranford know all each other's proceedings, they
are exceedingly indifferent to each other's opinions. Indeed, as
each has her own individuality, not to say eccentricity, pretty
strongly developed, nothing is so easy as verbal retaliation;
but, somehow, good-will reigns among them to a considerable
degree. "
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