This is only tangential, but I recently stumbled upon The 1815 Diary of a Nova Scotia Farm Girl: Louisa Collins, of Colin Grove, Dartmouth. It’s a hyperlinked text-imported diary of — well, it’s in the title. You see how much labor was expected of the eldest children. The diary is written by the 2nd eldest daughter and much of her time is spent on farm work and spinning. It’s a peek inside a lost world, with a young girl quoting various poets in her diary, talking about neighborly visitations and the occasional mention of current events, like rumors of Napoleon’s demise (greatly exaggerated).
I found this serendipitously. Coincidentally, I was reading a blogger specializing in Napoleon, who mentioned that Napoleon loved to badly sing the works of Rousseau to his friends. Yes, the philosopher Rousseau wrote music, and some of it is good. Napoleon’s favorite work was Le devin du village, and I concluded that what he loved to sing was certainly “Dans ma cabane obscure”, as he related to the figure of Colin singing with love about his wife. Anyway, the figure of Colin is a European symbol of the pastoralist hero in pastoral works, introduced by Edmund Spenser. It’s likely that “Colin’s Grove”, the home of this farm girl, was named in the same pastoralist tradition. And so while this young girl wrote about Napoleon in her diary in Colin’s Grove, Napoleon was singing a song of the pastoral hero Colin. I love the intricate connections of Western Europe you come across from burrowing into history!
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Notes -
This is only tangential, but I recently stumbled upon The 1815 Diary of a Nova Scotia Farm Girl: Louisa Collins, of Colin Grove, Dartmouth. It’s a hyperlinked text-imported diary of — well, it’s in the title. You see how much labor was expected of the eldest children. The diary is written by the 2nd eldest daughter and much of her time is spent on farm work and spinning. It’s a peek inside a lost world, with a young girl quoting various poets in her diary, talking about neighborly visitations and the occasional mention of current events, like rumors of Napoleon’s demise (greatly exaggerated).
I found this serendipitously. Coincidentally, I was reading a blogger specializing in Napoleon, who mentioned that Napoleon loved to badly sing the works of Rousseau to his friends. Yes, the philosopher Rousseau wrote music, and some of it is good. Napoleon’s favorite work was Le devin du village, and I concluded that what he loved to sing was certainly “Dans ma cabane obscure”, as he related to the figure of Colin singing with love about his wife. Anyway, the figure of Colin is a European symbol of the pastoralist hero in pastoral works, introduced by Edmund Spenser. It’s likely that “Colin’s Grove”, the home of this farm girl, was named in the same pastoralist tradition. And so while this young girl wrote about Napoleon in her diary in Colin’s Grove, Napoleon was singing a song of the pastoral hero Colin. I love the intricate connections of Western Europe you come across from burrowing into history!
That's an excellent snapshot. of the early 1800s. Thankyou so much for sharing!
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