Account of Grandmother's last illness, continuation (page 4)

Scanned page 50 of Book 1 — Scan of original. Open full size →

A single sheet of lined paper closely written in faded brown ink, in cursive.

following with her lips the rest of the beautiful hymn — Then turning to Aunt Ally, “which was little Ally’s hymn?” “the one she called her Sunday hymn?” the book was brought and Aunt Ally being entirely overcome Father who was nearest her on the other side took it & read “Like Noah’s weary Dove” — She recalled the very tones and childish emphasis of parts “that’s the way she said it.” — Her Mother seems to have been continually in her thoughts waking & sleeping. Since January last, she told me, her youth & life with her had been vividly before her so that little things tones of voice, & traits of manner which had faded with the lesser incidents of that time, in ~~the~~ long lapse of years, came before her ^now like startling images of [words? of] ~~illegible~~ those passed away. "She was a wonderful character so that all "difficulties in our whole family circle were left "for her to settle & each was perfectly satisfied "with Aunt Gaillard’s decision — yet so gentle, yet “equal to a degree” — When any one would consult "my Father he would say "don’t come to me “go to Nellie she will tell better than I can” — and again, of as if half waked from a dream she said "My Mother…! about my Brother. I always “prayed to die with my head in your lap” — this had been a wish of her early life returning to her now in the dreams of age & sickness.

AI Notes

Fourth page of the seven-page account of Grandmother’s last illness. Continues the July 18 entry. Records the household reading of ‘Like Noah’s weary Dove’ — the Sunday hymn of ‘little Ally,’ Aunt Ally’s deceased daughter (one of the children mentioned in the 1834 bereavement on page 049) — and Grandmother’s subsequent reminiscence of her own mother (her family’s matriarch, known to all as ‘Aunt Gaillard’) and of her childhood family circle, in which her father deferred all consultation to her mother (‘don’t come to me, go to Nellie she will tell better than I can’). ‘Nellie’ is the family pet-name for Grandmother’s mother (b. into the Gaillard family). Aunt Gaillard and Nellie thus refer to the same person — Henrietta Catherine Gaillard’s mother — at two layers of remove. The manuscript carries the cancellation in ‘in ~~the~~ long lapse of years’ and the interlinear ‘^now’ above ‘come before her now,’ and reads ‘My Mother…! about my Brother.’

Account continues on next page. “Like Noah’s weary Dove” is the popular nineteenth-century hymn by William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796–1877), beginning “Like Noah’s weary dove, / That soared the earth around”; it was the Sunday hymn of “little Ally,” Aunt Ally’s daughter — one of the children whose deaths in 1834 were the seed of Grandmother’s recurring Dark River dream-vision (page 049). “Nellie” is the family pet-name for Grandmother’s own mother (HC Gaillard’s mother), elsewhere called Aunt Gaillard.