Theodosia Marie Foster Toll
"Faye Huntington"
Theodosia Maria Toll Foster was Pansy's best friend as well as one of her co-authors. She was an intimate friend of both the Livingston and Alden families. Docia, as Isabella called her, was the kind of friend who saw the good in a story, even though its author considered it worthy of the fire. Docia rescued "Helen Lester" from the fireplace and submitted it to be judged in the contest it was written for. The result was Pansy's first published book.
Docia, whose pen name was Faye Huntington, was a wonderful writer with 31 published books to her credit. Her first, however, was written for an audience of one—her best friend, Isabella! She presented Belle with a beautifully bound, handwritten book full of advice on how to navigate in the kitchen. In later years, the two friends authored a number of books together, and Docia was a regular contributor to "The Pansy" magazine. There were also a few books written by the close-knit group of The Aldens (Isabella, Rev. G.R. Alden, and Raymond), The Livingstons (Rev. C.M. Livingston, Isabella's sister Marcia Livingston, and her niece Grace Livingston) and, of course, Docia. Her family's life is recounted in the book "Home School for Girls" by Annie HanChett Coddington.
In her book "Stories of Remarkable Women", she writes of "Pansy", numbering her first among women such as Queen Victoria and Joan of Arc. She gives us one of the few descriptions of Pansy's appearance:
As to personal appearance, the impression which I carried away was of a rather slight figure with a graceful carriage, a shapely head with an abundance of brown hair and brilliant dark eyes....She looks like her mother, and her mother is a very beautiful woman.
Sadly, none of the correspondence between these two friends is known to exist. We find her in name only in Pansy's book "Docia's Journal". Isabella speaks lovingly of Docia in her book "Memories of Yesterdays," and we can also get a sense of who Docia was by reading the "Chatauqua Girls" series of Pansy books where the two girls and two more of their friends are the books' characters.