November 19, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Aunt Dora has moved into a beautiful new house. It is just like a house in a story book. It is of dark brown wood and it sits in the middle of a lovely garden and it is full of tiny windows that open out and they all have window boxes of red geraniums. Inside, all the rooms have big fireplaces and all the windows have window seats with cushions, so you may either curl up and go to sleep in them or read. And the rooms have one or two steps going from one to another. Grandmother says the steps are just crazy, that they are only good for people to break their necks on. I love them, I don’t know why but it seems exciting to go up a few steps and then come down a few steps into another room. I love sitting on them and just sit and pretend about the rooms and imagine having parties in each one. The kitchen is all blue and white, like a picture in a story book I have about a little boy and girl who live in Holland. And there are so many books on both sides of the fireplace. The books are not for children but I found a long poem called “Hiawatha.” It is about an Indian boy who is very brave and strong and he knows all the animals in the forest and loves them. Reading it is a little like listening to music. Sometimes it sounds like a bar in four-four time. When I came home and told Aunt Tillie about it, she was angry because I was supposed to be punished for not keeping my room neat and Aunt Tillie told me that I wasn’t to read for a whole day and I forgot. I didn’t mean to break my word but now I may not read for two whole days.

November 14, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I love spelling lessons because there are always new words in them. Today one of the new ones was “ancestors.” I was the only one in class who knew what it meant. That is not because I am smart but because I saw it in “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” Alma explained it to me then. When Cedric was in the art gallery of his grandfather’s castle, the Earl of Dorincourt showed him the pictures of his ancestors and Cedric thought they were his aunt’s sisters. Our ancestors are all our great, great grandparents, and all their great, great grandparents forever and ever back in time to Adam and Eve, I guess.

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Today Hilda gives us an example of a “mondegreen.” Former San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll wrote about them often and his columns always made me smile. One of my few claims to local fame was when he included in one of his columns a mondegreen I had sent him.

November 8, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today Miss Cashen asked us if we would like to go back to Europe and we all raised our hands and yelled yes. So she said fine, where were we? Margaret remembered that we were in Norway, so then Miss Cashen said well, let’s go to Sweden next. Sweden is famous for very clean people. Also for fine carpenters and weavers and for a Mr. Nobel who invented dynamite. He said that when he invented it, he thought people would blow up ugly things, like the statue that we have at the top of our stairs, or maybe Tante Esther’s ugly parlor. He didn’t think that they would use it for wicked things like blowing up each other in a war. And then when they did, he was very sad and tried to think of what he could do to make up for it. So now, every single year he gives wonderful prizes to the people who write the best books or invent the best medicines or discover some new germs and the top prize is a prize for the person who did most to make peace in the world. Then we went on to Denmark. She said that the Danes are the gentlest people in the whole world. I asked if Great Danes came from Denmark and she said yes, and that a friend of hers who lives in Denmark has two of them and they are called Hamlet and Horatio after two good friends who are characters in a famous play. She said that the play was written by England’s most famous poet and that we would talk about it when we got to England. She said that we still had lots to talk about all the things that Denmark is noted for and that there is still a tiny country near Denmark called Finland that we should visit and talk about too. Then she said that Denmark has beautiful dishes called Royal Copenhagen after their city and beautiful silver. And Denmark is the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen who wrote such wonderful fairy tales like the “Ugly Duckling.” Robert asked if Denmark is also famous for Danish pastry and Miss Cashen said that she supposed so.

November 4, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

This afternoon I went shopping with Grandmother. I always get tired going to the stores so today, just to reward me for not whining, Grandmother let me select a book in the Book Department while she was buying curtains. The lady in the book department said that I was a little too young to read it but that it is a book I’ll enjoy my whole life. It is “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott. I love having a book on my shelf waiting for me but I think I will try to read it soon because I know a lot about Louisa May Alcott from my book of famous women. Right now it looks very beautiful on my book shelf.

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Hilda told us about the book on famous women in her September 1st entry.

October 21, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I keep thinking of England and of “Little Lord Fauntleroy” and of how nice the English people must be. In England, you are a lady even if you are poor, so long as you speak softly and have pretty manners but if you yell and shout and scold, you are not a lady no matter what beautiful clothes you have. That is how the servants in Dorincourt Castle knew right away that Little Lord Fauntleroy’s mother was a lady.

October 15, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Alma is not American. She is English. England is a beautiful country. Peter Rabbit comes from England. Also Mother Goose. Mother Goose wrote all those beautiful poems that Alma reads to me when she wants me to go to sleep. Like “Hi Diddle Diddle the Cat and the Fiddle.” I love that one. I always think of one of Grandmother’s special blue and white soup plates running away with one of those silver spoons with ugly mermaids on them. Alma says that England had other people besides Mother Goose and Beatrix Potter, that’s the lady who wrote “Peter Rabbit” and who wrote other wonderful poems. There is the man who wrote that lovely poem that says the people who pray best are the ones that love best every single thing that God made, even tiny things like ants and maybe even fleas. Of course I suppose it must be hard to love a flea while it is biting you but then it can’t help being a flea. Grandfather says that nothing can help being what it is, that if our parents are fleas or mice or snakes we must also be fleas or mice or snakes and that your parents couldn’t help it either because of what their parents were.

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The poem Hilda recalls is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The following stanza is at the end of Part VII:

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

September 30, 1912

Note: Today’s post includes racist language. Click on the links to read posts about racism in children’s literature which discuss the poem Hilda quotes below:

• Live Your Poem…Racism in Children’s Literature

• But I wouldn’t Want My Son To Read It:” Adapting A Child’s Garden of Verses for a New Millennium

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Aunt Tillie is very good to me. Besides the embroidered collars and cuffs, she also buys me nice presents and today she bought me a beautiful book of poems. They are by Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a great Scotch poet and he loved children and wrote these verses for them. They are called a “Child’s Garden of Verses.” My favorite one is:

Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
How I wish that I were thee.

I love the word “frosty” in front of Eskimo. It makes you feel so cold as the Eskimo is.

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In every version I found of this 1902 poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child’s Garden of Verses, the last line of the first stanza is “O! don't you wish that you were me?” Hilda’s version changes the tone and meaning completely: rather than exhibiting a sense of superiority or racism, she shows interest in others, and in fact envies the lives they live. 

September 19, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I forgot to write what the prize was and I suppose that when I am eighty years old, I will want to know. It was a book of poems. All the ones I have read so far are very beautiful. Grandmother says that I read too much and when I am a grown-up no one will marry me because men don’t like smart women. They want to be the smart ones.

September 6, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

This morning I am visiting the Bauers again and Ernestine and I had a lovely time together. We climbed the hayloft and jumped from one stack of hay to the other. Then we went outside and made lots of mud pies and then we went to see the new foal. It is so darling and it is so smart. It can stand and walk already. It stands right under its mother and drinks milk from her. My cousin Helen Violet can’t even stand up and she is over six months old. Mr. Bauer said that I could name the foal, it’s a girl. It was really hard to decide, there are so many lovely names that I wish I could have just for myself, like Allegra or Mimi or Elaine. Elaine was a very beautiful lady with golden hair who floated down a river on a barge with a lily in her hand, only it is a sad story and she is holding the lily because she is dead. Then I thought of Belinda. Belinda is a yellow hen in one of my books. Of course a little hen doesn’t remind me of a horse, but it doesn’t make any difference, I like the name. I told Mr. Bauer that I want to call the foal Belinda and he said fine, we would have a christening. He told Ernestine to go back to the house to fetch a pitcher of milk and some cookies and Mrs. Bauer, too. When they arrived, he began the ceremony and dipped his fingers in a watering pot and sprinkled a few drops of water on the baby horse and he said, “I christen thee Belinda in the name of The Father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.” I know all about the Father and The Son but I don’t know about the Holy Ghost or what he has to do with it, I guess I will find out. Then we ate the cookies and drank the milk. I wanted to give Belinda a cookie, but Mr. Bauer said that she is too young yet.

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Hilda recalls the story of Elaine’s unrequited love for Lancelot. Perhaps she had read Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “Lancelot and Elaine” from Idylls of the King, 1859-1885 or “The Lady Lady of Shallott,” 1832.

I could not find a reference to a children’s book about a yellow hen named Belinda -- perhaps Hilda was recalling Billina the chicken in the Oz books. She was introduced in Ozma of Oz in 1907. For me, it’s an odd coincidence that the hen’s name is so close to my grandmother’s birthplace in Bohemia – Bilin, called Bílina in Czech.

September 1, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Alma and I are in Ross. We are at Aunt Hermine’s house. Aunt Hermine invited me because she thought it would be good for my tonsils, even if I haven’t them any more. This is because Ross is warmer than San Francisco.

Aunt Hermine is a sweet lady even if she is Tante Esther’s daughter, and everything here smells so lovely, like perfume and honey mixed. Tante Esther is also here but I don’t have to see her much. Her maid is always taking her on little walks or reading to her in her own room.

It is so warm and lazy and quiet here and there are so many lovely places to take walks. There is one road named Shady Lane with a gray stone church, just like the one in “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” All afternoon, I can lie in a hammock and read. Aunt Josie sent me a wonderful book while I was in the hospital. It is called “Girls Who Became Famous.” Florence Nightingale is in it, also a girl named Rosa Bonheur who was French and painted horses and cows and loved to travel around France from one country fair to another and a girl named Louisa May Alcott. She was an American and her father was a very famous teacher and she was terribly smart too and she wrote books. Her first book is called “Little Women.” And there was another girl called Margaret Fuller Ossoli and she wrote poems. She went to Italy and married Mr. Ossoli, only he wasn’t really her husband, she just said he was, and that is the only thing she did that wasn’t quite nice. They were both drowned on a ship that sank while they were returning to America. I think George Eliot did the same thing, not drown but say she was married when she wasn’t. 

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“Lives of Girls Who Became Famous” by Sarah Knowles Bolton was first published in 1886 and can be read online through Project Gutenberg.

Hilda is enjoying herself at Aunt Hermine’s and will return on September 4.

August 29, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I stopped yesterday because I was tired. Now I can go on…

Her father explained to her that there were two doors opening into the arena. She knew that already as she had always gone to see the Christians being eaten, only it is very different when you go to see a Christian that you know. The he said, “Your lover can choose either door. Behind one will be a hungry tiger and behind the other will be a very beautiful lady. If he chooses the one with the beautiful lady, he will be married to her right away and get a beautiful house and garden for a wedding present. Of course, if he chooses the other with the tiger we know what will happen, he will be eaten.” Now, the princess had a big secret that no one knew, not even her father the king. She knew which door was which. Someone told her. So on that day, the page boys blew on their trumpets and the band played, and the poor lover was brought into the arena, and he looked at the princess just to make himself happy with seeing her beauty before he died, and she gave him a signal.

Then Alma stopped. She said that was the end of the story. That Mr. Stockton, the author, wanted everyone to make up their own ending, to end it any way he pleased. Alma asked me which door I would choose. I said I wasn’t sure. She said it was very naughty of me, that every nice young lady would choose the door with the beautiful lady so she would know that her lover would be happy and secure the rest of his life. I guess so, but it is interesting to suppose how she might feel not being able to have him no matter what.

August 23, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I am home again. I had a lovely time in the hospital. I had a nice nurse called Miss Comagy. She was so very clever. She took a piece of paper and cut carefully like a pattern and when she was finished there was a whole line of children holding each other’s hands. She let me color them in with crayons and I turned them into boys and girls. Mrs. Adler, who owns the hospital, it really isn’t like a hospital more like a pretty house. Well! She made wonderful ice cream of different flavors that tasted so good, and I could eat as much as I wanted because it cooled my throat.

The operation wasn’t so bad. Dr. Otto stood right next to me and he was dressed in funny white clothes. I didn’t see Dr. Selton at all, but I didn’t want to because I hate him. They put me on a table and held something next to my face, and some very sweet nurse told me to think of sheep in a meadow, and to see if I could count to ten and imagine the ten sheep jumping over a fence. I can’t remember how many I counted. I guess I fell off to sleep, and when I woke up there were a lot of people standing around me telling me what a brave girl I was. After that, every day I got presents. Flowers, books, paper dolls. Only Dr. Otto forgot to send me a present, so I asked him why, and Grandmother said that I had no manners, but he laughed and said I was right to remind him that it was naughty of him to forget and he asked me what I wanted. I said, “A book,” and the next day he brought me a beautiful book called “Black Beauty.” I have not read it yet but I know that it is about a horse.

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It is amazing how similar some of Hilda’s childhood experiences were. Black Beauty was hugely popular when I was a child and is still published today, almost 150 years after it was first published in 1877. Making paper dolls never goes out of fashion.

June 29, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

My father will be here tomorrow so I had to learn a poem that I really know already. It is called “The Children’s Hour,” and it was written by an American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He wrote the poem for his own children. He loved them very much. One daughter was called Allegra. I think that is a most beautiful name and I like it so much better than Hilda. I wish that children were able to name themselves.

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Hilda wrote the poem in her diary. Below is a typed transcription. She remembered it almost word for word. On the following page of her diary, she included her favorite poem, which she attributed to A.A. Milne. I found “Seven Times One” by Jean Ingelow.

June 28, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

The piece I am going to play for my father is a very pretty one. It is called “Auf der Wiese.” That means the meadow and Grandfather said to remember to pronounce the “W” like a “V” in German. How could I forget? Sometimes I think that grown-ups, even Grandfather, just keep reminding children that they are the smartest. The poem I haven’t chosen yet and Alma tells me that I have to hurry up, I only have two days left.

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Hilda probably played a Mozart song based on a poem by Goethe: Das Veilchen ("The Violet"). The first line is Ein Veilchen auf der Wiese stand (“A violet in the meadow stood”).

June 6, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Now I can finish the story….

There isn’t much more to tell. Only that at the time, the only ladies who would take care of the sick people were dirty old ones who had been in prison and men were the main nurses and no one was very clean, not even the doctors. All the rest of Florence’s life, she went around begging all the hospitals to be very clean and asked the doctors and nurses to wash their hands. And they found out that she was right and that there were really germs all around and they had to be careful, just like she said, and everything in the hospitals got antiseptic, sparkling white and they all lived happily ever after.

June 4, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Now I can tell the rest about Florence Nightingale….

She lived to be a very old lady and if it hadn’t been for her, we wouldn’t have nice clean hospitals or nice clean nurses today because before Florence began nursing, they did all kinds of terrible things to sick people, they really didn’t know very much, especially about cleanliness. They always kept the windows shut tight and everyone thought that night air was unhealthy but Florence asked her doctor about night air when she was very young and she doubted that the air at night was any different than the air during the day. That was very smart of her, wasn’t it? And in the hospitals, they let the very sick sleep with people who had all kinds of other things wrong with them and then they all got sicker than they were already. When people had fevers they stuffed them with soup and hung silly things like rabbits’ feet or onions and garlic around their necks or tied them up with stockings soaked in bear’s grease. They must have smelled terrible.

June 3, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

This is the day that Miss Hare wanted us to tell her why a day in June is so rare. I didn’t know because I thought about Florence Nightingale instead. It didn’t make any difference though, because the whole class talked about it anyhow. Miss Hare started off by asking us what the word rare meant, and Robert said that it meant a steak that wasn’t well cooked and still looked bloody. Miss Hare said that was only one meaning but not the meaning of rare in the poem. She said in the poem the word meant something precious and beautiful like a diamond or a pearl or a perfect sunset. Then she went from one pupil to another and asked each of us what we thought was rare about a June day. Someone said that most of the month of June the school was closed and then vacation began and someone else said “June Bugs” but Miss Hare said that bugs aren’t beautiful but that’s not true as they are so I raised my hand and told her so. I said that ladybugs are very beautiful, all shiny, brown and red with little white specks. She said perhaps I was right, that she had never noticed them and then everyone else said all kinds of different things like red roses and clouds and sunshine and the smell of woods. I’m still not sure what rare means.

June 2, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I should be thinking of the word rare and why a day in June is that but I really want to write some more about Florence Nightingale in case I forget and if someone doesn’t return the book because I really love this story.

Well, she lived in this beautiful, big house and had everything she wanted but she didn’t want all the things she had. She wanted only to be a nurse. In those days, it wasn’t polite for a lady to be a nurse and her parents didn’t want her to be one but one day something very nice happened. There was a big war between England and Russia. All the English soldiers had to go to Russia to fight and they needed lots of doctors and nurses so Florence said that she was going even if it was impolite for ladies to be nurses. She went to visit hospitals so she could learn how to take the best care of patients and she also taught other young ladies how to do it because they too thought that the job of nursing was not just a man’s job and she and all the young ladies went to Russia to take care of sick soldiers. Everyone loved Florence very much. The soldiers used to kiss her shadow on the wall as she went from one to another during the night.

June 1, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I must stay home today and do my homework because I am far behind the rest of the class. Grandfather says that it is not because I was stupid but because I was sick. My homework for today is to think about what is rare about a day in June. In class today, Miss Hare made us take our pens and write in our blank books, “And what is so rare as a day in June.” She said it is the first line of a beautiful poem by an American poet whose name is James Russell Lowell and she made us write down his name too so we would remember it but she said the poem was very long and for now the first line was enough. We must think about the first line over the weekend and on Monday morning we must be able to tell her why a day in June is beautiful and what the word rare means.

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Apparently many people have asked the same question. A google search for the meaning of “And what is so rare as a day in June” brought up 361,000,000 results! The poem is from the Prelude of a much longer poem called “The Vision of Sir Launfal.”

May 31, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I had my arithmetic lesson and I am learning and it isn’t as hard as I thought it was so now I can write a little more about Florence Nightingale….

All the children in the neighborhood used to bring their sick animals to Florence. She put a splint on the leg of a little fox terrier, and a salve on the wound of a tiny kitten who had been bitten.

Kitten and Bitten rhyme and together, they make poetry, but if I say that the kitten was bitten by a dog, then the poem is spoilt, so I won’t say it, but she was.

Well, besides the kitten and the terrier Florence tried to nurse a goldfish that had jumped out of his bowl of water but though she rubbed him ever so hard and put him in a bowl of fresh water, he died anyhow and Florence cried tears all over him.