Now! Then! Children’s author Annie Keary is born at Bilton-in-Ainsty, to the alarm of sister Lucy (7), as she recalls 50 years later

3 March 1825: Children’s author Annie Keary is born at Bilton-in-Ainsty, to the alarm of sister Lucy (7), as she recalls 50 years later

Eliza Keary. 1882. Memoir of Annie Keary by Her Sister. London: Macmillan and Co. Get it:

Excerpt

How clearly I recalled that bright March morning, when I ran off by myself to this sheltered corner of the dear old shrubbery to look for the earliest violets of the season. It had always been my great pride and delight to bring to our mother the first bunch of violets from the roots that she and her sisters had planted in their happy childish days. How my heart beat with anxiety on that particular day, how my eyes swam with foreboding fear, for it was still rather an early search in that cold northern home. It was the 3rd of March, darling, your birthday, and early in the morning, when Bella the ill-tempered nursery-maid dressed me, she had said in a half-triumphant way several times, “No more fine times for you, Miss Lucy, mamma won’t think nothing of you now; she’s got another little daughter a deal prettier than you are.” I firmly believed all she said, and I thought that, if added to this new claimant on my mother’s love, there should be such a failure on my part as the want of the usual spring nosegay, there could indeed be no further chance for me. How strange it was that I should have received with tears and sad forebodings that which brought me the priceless treasure of a sister’s love, my first precious sister, the first link in that threefold cord that bound us sisters together in a bond stronger than death, sweeter and deeper than any tongue can tell, and such as few hearts can understand.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Comment

54 years later, in Eastbourne, after a long illness:

The morning and the afternoon passed, and towards evening a change began; Annie asked to be taken to bed again, and said to her attendant: “I am going home soon, Fanny, and I am very happy.”

During the night consciousness failed, and she fell into a state of torpor from which she never awoke. Four hours after her spirit passed away, early on the morning of her birthday, the 3rd of March. As she was lying down, the last night, she said to her cousin, “Now I will say a baby hymn,” and then she repeated a verse which she had been used to say to the children at the hospital:

Whether I wake, or whether I sleep,
I give my soul to Christ to keep,
Sleep I now, wake I never,
I give my soul to Christ for ever;

adding, “Your soul, Emily; yours and mine.”

With the words of little children on her lips, and with joy and tenderness in her heart, she was taken home. Home she called that life of which we can form no image. It revealed itself to her by the name that was dearest to her of any name on earth.

I guess Fanny is not the “determined pedant” of her schooldays. More on Annie, Eliza, Lucy and the extended family in Michael Keary’s book, which says that Emily is a cousin, and that Annie was killed by breast cancer (Keary 2021).

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Original

The eldest sister well remembers that 3rd of March which gave her first sister to her. More than fifty years afterwards, when on a visit to the old Yorkshire home, she speaks of it thus in a letter written to Annie, then drawing very near to death:

“How clearly I recalled that bright March morning,” she wrote, “when I ran off by myself to this sheltered corner of the dear old shrubbery to look for the earliest violets of the season. It had always been my great pride and delight to bring to our mother the first bunch of violets from the roots that she and her sisters had planted in their happy childish days. How my heart beat with anxiety on that particular day, how my eyes swam with foreboding fear, for it was still rather an early search in that cold northern home. It was the 3rd of March, darling, your birthday, and early in the morning, when Bella the ill-tempered nursery-maid dressed me, she had said in a half-triumphant way several times, ‘No more fine times for you, Miss Lucy, mamma won’t think nothing of you now; she’s got another little daughter a deal prettier than you are. I firmly believed all she said, and I thought that, if added to this new claimant on my mother’s love, there should be such a failure on my part as the want of the usual spring nosegay, there could indeed be no further chance for me. How strange it was that I should have received with tears and sad forebodings that which brought me the priceless treasure of a sister’s love, my first precious sister, the first link in that threefold cord that bound us sisters together in a bond stronger than death, sweeter and deeper than any tongue can tell, and such as few hearts can understand.”

317 words.