Mary Powell Deborahs Diary | Page 3

singing and
lambs bleating and distant cocks in farmyards crowing, and a distant

dog barking to an echo which answered his voice, and when the hedges
and banks were full of wild flowers with quaint and pretty names.
"Next to that, I have found the best time soon after early tea, when my
companions were all in the garden, and likely to remain there till
moonlight."
Not very much by way of a literary portrait, and yet one can fill it in for
oneself, can place her in old-world Reigate, fast, alas! becoming
over-built and over-populated like all the rest of the country over which
falls the ever-lengthening London shadow. As one ponders upon Forest
Hill for Mary Powell's sake--is not Shotover as dear a name as
Shottery?--and Chalfont for Milton's sake, one thinks on Reigate
surrounded by its hills for Anne Manning's sake, and keeps the place in
one's heart.
Mary Powell, with its sequel, Deborah's Diary--Deborah was the
young thing whom to bring into the world Mary Powell died--is one of
the most fragrant books in English literature. One thinks of it side by
side with John Evelyn's Mrs. Godolphin. Miss Manning had a beautiful
style--a style given to her to reconstruct an idyll of old-world sweetness.
Limpid as flowing water, with a thought of syllabubs and new-made
hay in it, it is a perpetual delight. This mid-Victorian, dark-haired lady,
with the aquiline nose and high colour, although she may not have
looked it, possessed a charming style, in which tenderness, seriousness,
gaiety, humour, poetry, appear in the happiest atmosphere of sweetness
and light.
KATHARINE TYNAN.
April 1908

Bibliography
The following is a complete list of her published works:--
The Household of Sir Thomas More, 1851; Queen Phillippa's Golden

Booke, 1851; The Colloquies of Edward Osborne, Citizen and
Clothworker of London, 1852; The Drawing-room Table Book, 1852;
Cherry and Violet, a Tale of the Great Plague, 1853; The Provocations
of Madame Palissy, 1853; Chronicles of Merry England, 1854; Claude
the Colporteur, 1854; The Hill Side, 1854; Jack and the Tanner of
Wymondham, 1854; Adventures of Haroun al Raschid, 1855; Maiden
and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterwards Mistress Milton, 1855;
Old Chelsea Bun-House, 1855; Some Account of Mrs. Clarinda
Singlehart, 1855; A Sabbath at Home, 1855; Tasso and Leonora, 1856;
The Week of Darkness, 1856; Lives of Good Servants, 1857; The Good
Old Times, 1857; Helen and Olga, a Russian Tale, 1857; The Year
Nine: a Tale of the Tyrol, 1858; The Ladies of Bever Hollow, 1858;
Poplar House Academy, 1859; Deborah's Diary, 1859; The Story of
Italy, 1859; Village Belles, 1859; Town and Forest, 1860; The Day of
Small Things, 1860; Family Pictures, 1861; Chronicle of Ethelfled,
1861; A Noble Purpose Nobly Won, 1862; Meadowleigh, 1863;
Bessy's Money, 1863; The Duchess of Tragetto, 1863; The Interrupted
Wedding: a Hungarian Tale, 1864; Belforest: a Tale, 1865; Selvaggio:
a Tale of Italian Country Life, 1865; The Masque at Ludlow, and other
Romanesques, 1866; The Lincolnshire Tragedy (Passages in the life of
Anne Askewe), 1866; Miss Biddy Frobisher: a Salt-water Story, 1866;
The Cottage History of England, 1867; Jacques Bonneval, 1868;
Diana's Crescent, 1868; The Spanish Barber, 1869; One Trip More,
1870; Margaret More's Tagebuch, 1870; Compton Friars, 1872; The
Lady of Limited Income, 1872; Lord Harry Bellair, 1874; Monk's
Norton, 1874; Heroes of the Desert (Moffat, Livingstone, etc.), 1875;
An Idyll of the Alps, 1876.
LIFE.--C. M. Yonge, Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign,
1897.

THE MAIDEN AND MARRIED LIFE
OF
MARY POWELL

AFTERWARDS MISTRESS MILTON
JOURNALL
Forest Hill, Oxon, May 1st, 1643.
. . . Seventeenth Birthdaye. A Gypsie Woman at the Gate woulde faine
have tolde my Fortune; but Mother chased her away, saying she had
doubtlesse harboured in some of the low Houses in Oxford, and mighte
bring us the Plague. Coulde have cried for Vexation; she had promised
to tell me the Colour of my Husband's Eyes; but Mother says she
believes I shall never have one, I am soe sillie. Father gave me a gold
Piece. Dear Mother is chafed, methinks, touching this Debt of five
hundred Pounds, which Father says he knows not how to pay. Indeed,
he sayd, overnighte, his whole personal Estate amounts to but five
hundred Pounds, his Timber and Wood to four hundred more, or
thereabouts; and the Tithes and Messuages of Whateley are no great
Matter, being mortgaged for about as much moore, and he hath lent
Sights of Money to them that won't pay, so 'tis hard to be thus prest.
Poor Father! 'twas good of him to give me this gold Piece.

May 2nd, 1643.
Cousin Rose married to Master Roger Agnew. Present, Father, Mother,
and Brother of Rose. Father, Mother, Dick, Bob, Harry, and I; Squire
Paice and his Daughter Audrey; an olde Aunt of