Improper Place for Ladies", 1805: Schooner Days MCXIX (1119) Happier Bride's Diary — 18

By C.H.J. Snider

ANNE MACDONELL'S diary of 1805, recounting her visit to New York from Toronto, makes her a living, laughing, theatre-going acquaintance even in 1953. She weighs 111 pounds, and likes ice-cream and honeysuckle and hummingbirds and jasmine. She has just triumphed over an old enemy, the toothache, by having two extractions "with only changing my position once and scarcely any pain." For four days she had been housebound, suffering agonies with a swollen face. She could not even go to church. And she has just splurged on a lace cloak, New York model, for five-pound-twelve, and silk stockings at one-pound-four for her 12-shilling white kid shoes, and three more thimbles for nine shillings, another big-town bargain.

Delighting in the theatre, Anne was even more assiduous as a church goer. To service every Sunday, twice if the weather permitted, and reading sermons and the prayerbook if it kept her at home.

"1st July — "Shopping all the morn ... in the evening to the theatre with Miss Glover and several other ladies. I did not wish to go, but being urged by Mr. Adamson, an old friend, I could not refuse. The play Hamlet very much pleased, tho' perhaps I might have enjoyed it more had some of our Canadian party been along. Mrs. McG. did not go, Sir Alexander gone to Philad., Mr. McLean I know not where, and I to bed both sleepy and tired."

ROCKAWAY AND RACING

By July 11 Anne had ventured to Rockaway "and passed several days agreeably. Rockaway at this season is a charming place and a great resort of company. Tis open to the sea and fine bathing and so cool at evening I really thought a greatcoat would have been comfortable. On our return home called and drank tea at Mr. Platts."

Anne went to the races, and did not like it.

"A fine day"—this was at the end of September, and her visit was drawing to a close—"The Miss Duyers and Miss Stag drank tea with me and insisted on my going with them to the races at New Market on Hempstead Plains.

"1st Oct. I went at twelve o'clock with Miss Duyers to the races. A great concourse of people of almost every description. Singing, dancing, hallooing, hooting, eating, drinking, riding — and rainy.

"It is a beautiful course, and I was much pleased with the first race. It was very beautiful, tho' only three horses ran. But after seeing two men fall from their horses as tho' lifeless I was sick and tired of it and began to think it an improper place for ladies.

"We stayed till near night, which was too long, among the throng . .. Mrs. and Miss Sell were of our party, Mr. Sell politely offering to take charge of a letter for Miss Glover I wrote ... I was much pleased with them, but sorry that in my absence an old boarding school friend. Miss Claws, had been to see me. I was sorry I went to the race and retired to bed quite sick."

YELLOW JACK

There was plague in New York, yellow fever, but across in Long Island with sea breezes and open country, Anne felt safe. She amused herself "for several mornings looking at the many humming birds which flew round and in the house, sipping the sweets from the honeysuckle and jasmine that twined round the gallery" . . . "We daily hear how many poor souls now become victims of the yellow fever—which has even found its way to Brookline, dreadful disease. How many are launched into eternity without scarcely time for a prayer."

Those who could were leaving New York to escape the plague. Clean air, fine weather, and frost were counted on to check it. Nobody had yet thought of the mosquitoes.