| Title: | Agnes Shakespeare (Nesta), Alberta to "My darling Mother" |
|---|---|
| ID | 2419 |
| Collection | Irish Emigration Database |
| File | Shakespeare, Agnes/22 |
| Year | 1897 |
| Sender | Shakespeare, Agnes |
| Sender Gender | female |
| Sender Occupation | unknown |
| Sender Religion | unknown |
| Origin | Alberta, Canada |
| Destination | Ireland |
| Recipient | unknown |
| Recipient Gender | female |
| Relationship | daughter-mother |
| Source | D3590/M/4/1-16: Deposited by Godfrey Higginson Skrine Esq. |
| Archive | The Public Record Office, Northern Ireland |
| Doc. No. | 9909228 |
| Date | 24/06/1897 |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | EMG |
| Log | Document added by LT, 21:09:99. |
| Word Count | 1747 |
| Genre | |
| Note | |
| Transcript | High River, Alberta. June 24, 1897 My darling Mother The dear knows when you will get this, for down came the floods last week, and railway bridges are broken, and the mail service of course is dislocated, and I don't know if they will carry the letters at all between High River and Calgary for a fortnight to come. If they do, it will have to be across two creeks in flood, by boat somehow. I only hope you won't take it into your head to be alarmed, if my letters are delayed some weeks, indeed I'm sure the last letter I wrote will be delayed too, for I took it to Pekisko to post, and it was the very next morning that this flood came. We have had a good deal of heavy rain of late, and everyone was rejoicing on account of the hay. Well Walter had promised to take me up to stay a few days with Mrs. Bedingfeld:- the old lady has been continually asking me; - and though we put off the start two days, on account of the pouring rain, we thought the third day we had better go, and I went in the wagon, instead of riding, by way of keeping dry. It was all for politeness, and to keep the engagement. But by the time we got to the house, the rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind was getting up. It didn't alarm me at all, and Walter didn't seem to mind. We both went to bed, and slept like tops. But the poor old lady was always recalling the time she had been actually flooded out, in 1884, and she couldn't sleep and kept prowling about the house. Frank Bedingfeld, her son, was up very early, as usual, and about 7 o'clock in the morning he came and informed her - "the creek had broken loose." (just as if it was a horse on picket!) Then she could contain herelf no longer, and was just obliged to wake us up. It must have irritated her fearfully that we slept so well that night. Walter was dressed in no time. When I looked out, there were two perfectly new streams of water lacing like mad one on each side of the house, besides the legitimate creek which we had crossed the evening before, and now no horse could have swum it. The first thing Walter did was to jump on Billy (we had brought him too) and go for his team; then he harnessed them to our wagon, and took it up to safe ground, for it might have been washed away. Meantime Frank was splashing and dashing about on a litle black mare, rescuing his loose lumber which lay on the ground, and piling it onto the roof. He came into breakfast as calm as a cucumber, and Walter had a fatal inclination to laugh. The old lady was rather bad by that time, and I'm sure it annoyed her that I didn't get into a fuss too. The water was beginning to flood her kitchen, and altogether - what with this and that and everything else! But the worst time was about noon. The rain was as hard as ever, and the creeks even harder. The kitchen had some inches of water on the floor. It gurgled in at one side and gurgled out through the loose boards. Luckily the other part of the house was higher. But between the two racing streams on each side of the house, the water had spread and deepened, and now it was washing against the walls below the windows. The house had a stone foundation, so we had no fear of it falling. But when Walter and Frank came in again, they said that unless the rain stopped very soon we should have to pitch a tent up on the hill and take blankets and something to eat, and spend the night there: for it would be fatal to wait for night, and then get flooded out in the dark. Walter kept Billy all that time on a picket near the house, and splashed off himself in long gum-boots to help Frank in the corrals. Poor Mrs. Bedingfeld kept telling me, "It's a blessing Frank has Mr. Skrine to help him, anyhow." For you see, the two other men of the household were away on the round up. And they have no servant at all. We could do nothing in the kitchen of course. But on the fire in the living room we made some very good potatoe-soup, with milk and the very last cold potatoes: the cellar was completely flooded, and all the potatoes were stored there. So I learnt [learned?] to make potatoe-soup, as one result of the flood. But the little slithery onion, the soul of it all, had to be omitted. It was very funny to see Billy all this time. As the waters rose round him, he stared and stared at them, and then at the high green hill in front of his eyes, and he got very uneasy. I opened the door and went out to speak to him. When he heard me he gave a little pull at his picket rope, then threw up his head and stared at the green hill, and neighed. I never heard a horse speak so plain. "Let me off this blessed rope, and get up, so I can take you right up that good green hill, out of all this water and mess." I think animals hate to see water rising round them. Later on I saw all the Bedingfelds horses - theirs is a horse ranch - clustered together high up on a hill. At length and at last, about one o'clock, it stopped raining. But it wasn't for some hours after that, that the water began to go down, there was such a lot of it up in the mountains. As soon as we were quite certain that the water had sunk half-a-foot, we decided not to pitch the tent. And I was rather glad. The old lady is very rheumatic, and I think a night up there on the wet ground, however wrapped up, would have finished her. With all her faults, she is a fine old lady; and she has chosen to be very kind to me, whatever other people she may dislike, and she dislikes a good many! I have discovered that the Mrs. Bedingfeld you knew in Mauritius was someone who married Philip Bedingfeld, a cousin of her husband's, whom she hardly knew, and has lost sight of since. So the similarity in character is all the odder, as you see they are no relations. She said another cousin, an Admiral Bedingfeld, had been in Mauritius too. I think you can hardly imagine what the amount of work is that old lady had done in her life-time - or even in the fourteen years she has been on that ranche with her son. Imagine yourself in a house, however small, in which you have to do every bit of the work yourself. If you have a cook, as we have, it's nothing at all. But that old lady has to cook every meal that she eats, and - which takes a great deal more time - to wash up pots, pans, and plates afterwards. All the house-work, from scrubbing the kitchen floor, to dusting the sitting room is hers. I don't think she would dream of leaving her room to get breakfast, till she had made her bed and carried away the water. The cooking of course is simply endless. She bakes all the bread - there are no bakers in the West - and she makes all the butter too. There are four people to 'do for' - as ordinarily speaking there are three men in the house, all of them about the hardest workers in the country. When it got fine again, one afternoon she and I went for a ride; and it was funny the way my feelings were changing about towards Mrs. Bedingfeld in the course of that ride. I must tell you the old lady was once the finest rider in the country, and I think she can't help feeling a little jealous about "young women who think they can ride." I was on a grey horse of theirs called 'Tom'. And after we started she began to tell me how Tom could kick when he chose (not buck, of course, but kick) and what spirits he had, etc. I fancied I saw from a sort of side-look in her eye that she wanted to see if she could frighten me. So I said "Good old Tom!" and didn't even draw up my reins. She was not quite pleased to see Tom taken in that nonchalant way; but you needn't think there was any particular courage on my part, for I had a firm conviction that Frank Bedingfeld would not have put me up on Tom without a warning if any were wanted. Just as I was thinking that the old lady showed herself rather small, we came to a rather difficult place and she suddenly pushed her horse in front, and she said she wanted to lead the way down here, and I might follow her exactly. From her voice I saw that she was thinking of nothing but taking proper care of me, and would not really have had me hurt for anything. Finally we got on a height where there was a glorious view of the mountains, and I should have liked to stay longer to look at them. But she said in a peculiarly hard voice, "After fourteen years of it, I think I've looked enough at them; and if the fire goes out while we are away the beef for supper will be spoilt." As we rode home I was thinking what must it be like? - fourteen years of always remembering the beef for supper or the bread for breakfast. But that habit of self-denial and of constantly recollecting other people's wants must be worth all the mountain views in the world, and all the fine sentiments they can inspire. One gets cured of looking at everything from the aesthetic point of view principally here. After all, that's the idler's way. A person can't keep two minds, and both going. Well, I do wonder when this will reach you. Your loving daugter Nesta. |
