The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames
Page 13
Secretary
The next month Lena sent another letter, this time enclosing £3 with a request that it be credited to her daughter’s account. A response was dispatched the same day her letter was received:
1st June, 1932
Dear Madam,
I am in receipt of your letter of the 31st ultimo and am glad to tell you your little girl is quite well.
Thank you for sending £3, which amount I have placed to her credit in the Savings Bank.
Yours faithfully,
Secretary
I wondered what had happened to the funds placed in the savings account. There was no indication either in the files or in my mother’s manuscript that it was spent on Dorothy, or that she had any knowledge of an account having been opened on her behalf. The letters continued, requests for information about Dorothy’s welfare arriving month after month. Then, a little over a year from the day that she had left her child at the Foundling Hospital, Lena made a bold request:
March 25th, 1933
Dear Sir,
I am writing to know how my little Girl is getting on, and also would you kindly state if I have a privilege to visit the child.
Yours truly,
Lena Weston
The reply was immediate, and it made no mention of Lena’s request:
28th March, 1933
Dear Madam,
I am in receipt of your letter and am glad to tell you your little girl is quite well.
Yours faithfully,
Secretary
I double-checked my files to see if perhaps I had missed an earlier response, one that had addressed Lena’s request. Finding nothing of the kind, I continued on to the next letter in the file:
March 29th, 1933
Dear Sir,
I have received your letter of Tuesdays date informing me that my little Girl is quite well, and I thank you for letting me know.
I should also like you to tell me if you could in my case grant me just the favour to see her, if only for a few minutes. I should not cause you the slightest expense and I hope inconvenience for just this favour.
Yours truly,
Lena Weston
This time, Lena’s request was directly addressed:
30th March 1933
Dear Madam,
I am in receipt of your letter. I am very sorry, but I cannot permit you to visit the child. We explained this to you when the child was admitted here.
Yours faithfully,
Secretary
Years would pass before Lena asked to see her daughter again, in a desperate bid attempted only when the world was on the brink of war. But she did continue to ask after the welfare of her child. Sometimes the letters were accompanied by gifts or a few pounds to be placed in the account in Dorothy’s name. Almost without fail, institutional replies would be sent the same day they were received—brief, typed letters, rarely more than a sentence or two. Almost all contained the same phrase: Your little girl is quite well.
A few letters contained brief descriptions of Dorothy’s health. In 1936, when Dorothy was four, the secretary of the hospital wrote to Lena informing her that “the little girl has developed measles.” At the time, measles was a dangerous disease, with a vaccine nearly thirty years away. That year, nearly six hundred people died from the disease in London alone, yet the secretary concluded his two-sentence typed letter with the reassurance: “There is however no cause for anxiety.”
I had held Lena’s letters in my hands, the paper delicate and worn with age, varying in size and color from blue to a faded, yellowing white, as if she had used whatever paper she could find. My mother’s manuscript made no mention of these letters, and as I parsed through the documents, it occurred to me that in all probability, she had never seen them. In 1977, when I was eleven, she had visited London to see her files for herself, taking a journey similar to my own in an attempt to understand the past and how it had shaped her. I have no childhood recollection of her sojourn, and certainly wouldn’t have been told about its purpose. It wasn’t unusual for my parents to take trips abroad from time to time, leaving me and my sister with babysitters. She must have had high hopes, I imagine, but her trip to London would be less fruitful than mine.
Upon her arrival, she was told that privacy rules would prevent her from seeing her files. “I was told that the files were now held in the London Metropolitan Archives and that I would not be able to view them until I was 110 years old! This sounded suspiciously like a denial,” she wrote. “The age limit was once 100 years, until a former Foundling had the audacity to live to be 109. Since I was not sure I could hang on that long, I was obliged to settle for the alternative—a summary of the file at the discretion of a ‘social worker’ on the Coram Family staff.” I don’t know what the summary contained, but the irony was unmistakable. The rules that barred my mother from seeing her files are still in place today, enacted to protect the identity of relatives who might still be alive. In a ridiculous twist, the obstacle preventing my mother from accessing her own files may have been the fact that she herself was still among the living. I was allowed to see the files only after I had provided proof that the people mentioned in the records were now dead. The application in which Lena detailed her desperation, the reports and interviews with her pastor, doctor, and brother, revealing the pressure those around her exerted on her to give up her child, the dozens of letters she sent asking about her little girl—I can only assume that my mother saw none of this.
As I thumbed through my grandmother’s letters, I felt her love for her child in every bend and curve of her rough, inelegant, and sometimes illegible handwriting. I wondered whether things would have been different for Dorothy had she known of their existence. Knowing about the letters wouldn’t have stopped her foster mother from criticizing her, kept Miss Wright from locking her in a closet, or prohibited Miss Woodward from beating her with a cane. But maybe knowing that someone out there cared for her would have given Dorothy some solace when she huddled in her bed at night, or in the corner of a closet, alone and afraid. She would have to find comfort elsewhere, and it would come at a high price.
MY MOTHER HAD no friends in her adult life, at least none that I knew of. From time to time a letter would arrive with a European postmark from my mother’s “friend from Europe.” But no neighbors stopped by for a cup of tea, no girlfriends tagged along on shopping expeditions. Occasionally she would mention a woman’s name, referring to her as a “friend.” It was rare that I would hear the same name twice. Sometimes I would ask my father what had happened, where a particular “friend” had gone. His response was always characteristically vague: “You know how she is.”
This isolation fit the profile for a child raised with an absence of early attachments, I learned. The University of London researchers who interviewed adults raised at the hospital echoed much of what was already known about the daily experiences of foundlings—the harshness of institutional life, the rigid discipline preparing the children for domestic service. But through their interviews, the researchers also uncovered something surprising. Given the children’s seclusion from the outside world and emotional isolation from the adults who managed their care, the researchers expected that friendships might have formed among them, as a refuge from the horrors of daily life at the Foundling Hospital. Instead, close friendships were the exception rather than the rule.
The regimented atmosphere emphasized group activities, allowing little time for personal bonds to form. But the researchers cited the dullness and invariability of the children’s daily routine as a central reason why the children didn’t create meaningful bonds with one another. A former foundling, a seventy-five-year-old man who went on to join the army, remarked that “funnily enough there weren’t close friendships. It was odd because we just knew each other. We were all doing the same thing. There was no excitement. There was nothing to talk about.”33
Another former foundling, ninety years old at the time of her interview, recollected that she al
ways wanted a special friend “but it didn’t really do to make friends particularly with one person. . . . I suppose I thought there’s no good making a friend because they’ll be taken away anyway.”34
While the University of London study attributed the lack of friendships to the sameness of the children’s daily lives, research conducted by John Bowlby, a British child psychiatrist, revealed a more consequential explanation for why children raised in institutional settings have difficulty forming attachments with others. His groundbreaking conclusions provide invaluable insights into the workings of the human mind and would lay the groundwork for the sea change that resulted in the Foundling Hospital finally shuttering its doors in 1954.
For Bowlby, bonds established—or lacking—at a young age would affect the ability of a person to form healthy and meaningful attachments throughout life. The reasoning behind his claim was both simple and profound—early attachments are based on a need for survival. For an infant, toddler, and young child, closeness to his or her mother is quite literally a matter of life or death. No primary caregiver means no food or shelter. But the repercussions of this biologically necessary attachment go deeper. If a child has a caregiver who is reliable and dependable, Bowlby maintained, the world seems secure, and the child can thrive. Without that security and nurturing, a child cannot grow to trust others or form healthy attachments.
Harry Harlow, the researcher known for his experiments on the effects of solitary confinement on monkeys, attempted to replicate the results of Bowlby’s so-called attachment theory by taking monkeys from their mothers at birth. The question he sought to answer: Can you raise a healthy child without love? An early experiment involved taking infant monkeys away from their mothers within hours of their birth. The monkeys were fed meticulously, and were healthy and “disease free without a doubt,” Harlow remarked, but in many other ways “they were not free at all.”35 They would sit and rock, staring into space while sucking their thumbs. When confined with other monkeys their age, they chose to stare at the floor of their cages rather than interact with their peers. In another of his experiments, monkeys were confined but given a choice between a “mother”—a cylinder of wood covered with a sheath of terry cloth or a wire mesh that held a bottle, emulating lactation. The monkeys spent far more time clinging to the terry-cloth “mothers,” who offered them a bit of comfort, than to the wire mesh that gave them the nutrients they needed to live.
The need for nurturing, for love, trumps the need for food, Harlow’s experiments showed. Without tenderness and security in early childhood, the ability to form meaningful and healthy attachments is irrevocably damaged.
Reading about Harlow’s experiments, I couldn’t help but wonder whether my relationship with my mother conformed to the dynamic he had discovered. She never lifted a hand to me, and at least on the surface, she dutifully cared for me. I received an excellent education and had all of my needs tended to. And while I diligently curated a mental list of my mother’s failings, I knew intuitively that it wasn’t a broken coffee table or a dollhouse smashed into tiny pieces that had severed our bond irreparably. While beyond the norm, these events could not explain why I recoiled from my mother’s touch, finding even the brush of her hand against mine unbearable. Learning more about childhood bonding, how a lack of touch could shape a child’s view of the world, it seemed more than possible that the fate of our relationship had been sealed in those first few months following my birth, before conscious memories could form. Perhaps my mother, who had received no love as a child, had been unable to hold and cradle her own tiny infant in her arms.
It wasn’t surprising that the foundlings, raised to distrust, deprived of their basic instincts to bond with others, did not seek comfort from one another. Their constant togetherness did produce something unique, however, as I learned from the pages of my mother’s manuscript: a special language that allowed them to keep secrets from the staff and at times stave off some of the abuse they received. “Skit,” for example, was short for Quick! Someone is coming. Stop whatever rule you are breaking! “Hatch up” meant to pretend, and “glish” meant to look forward to. But more often the words of this secret language reflected the foundlings’ isolation, and the punishing culture that existed among the girls. “Monk” meant miserable, and to “dob up” was to hand over food to a bully.
The girls used another term that would lead to one of Dorothy’s most painful ordeals during her time at the Foundling Hospital—“Coventry.” To be placed in Coventry meant that none of the other children would speak to you, for days, a week, or even longer. Dorothy never found out why she’d been placed in Coventry by one of the senior girls, but it was one of the worst ordeals she experienced during her time at the Foundling Hospital. For a week no one would look at her or speak to her during the stolen moments between classes or meals, when the girls would typically talk among themselves.
Next to Miss Woodward’s abuse, it was emotionally my most painful experience at the school. It was devastating. From the moment I woke up and all day long the pain was with me.
Feeling that she’d do anything to stop the agony of solitude, she made a choice—a choice to bargain, using the only currency she had. One by one, she gave them all away, the gifts that had come from her real mother and were her most precious possessions. She gave away the toy, the doll, the brooches—and the ivory box with its rubies that sparkled in the light. While they would disappear from her grasp, she would remember them for a lifetime.
11
Healing
It was a clear day, and the view of the golden-brown hills canopied with oak and hickory trees should have been breathtaking. I was seventeen, in my third year at Thacher, a prestigious boarding school located on the outskirts of Ojai, a hippie-chic town nestled in the foothills of California’s Los Padres National Forest. My feet felt like lead as I made my way up the narrow path past the tennis courts and pool. I climbed a set of stairs that opened onto the courtyard near the dining hall, a particularly good vantage point for gazing out over the valley. But I was too tired to notice the view. Instead I headed toward the infirmary for the third or fourth time, my face wet with tears, hoping that this time, the nurse would believe me.
“You’re depressed, and that’s what’s making you tired,” she had said when I’d first come in, complaining of exhaustion.
“No, that’s not it—I’m depressed because I’m tired,” I snapped, but she sent me away, unimpressed with my argument. My symptoms only worsened.
This time, I didn’t wait for the unsmiling nurse to speak.
“I need to see a doctor,” I insisted. “There’s something wrong with me.” Perhaps the urgency in my voice got through, or my condition had deteriorated to the point that I was visibly ill, but she finally arranged for me to be taken into town to see a doctor. He examined me only briefly before declaring that I had mononucleosis.
I was placed in the infirmary, quarantined from my classmates. The nurse made perfunctory visits to check in on me, but I spent most of my time alone, fading in and out of sleep. When awake, I was listless, tangled in starched white sheets, staring at the sage-green walls.
“Please call my parents,” I finally pleaded with the nurse one night. “Tell them to come get me.”
“Nonsense, you are staying right here,” she responded, convinced that I was somehow trying to avoid getting back to classes.
I don’t know how I found the strength to sneak into her apartment later that day. Cell phones were years away from making their way to the general public, and you needed a long-distance code to use the school’s phones. The nurse lived on campus, as did most of the faculty, in a small apartment attached to the infirmary. I waited until I was alone in the building and there’d be a good chance she had gone out for dinner. Her apartment was sparely furnished, and I quickly found the phone. When I heard my father’s voice on the other end I cried out, “Dad, please come get me!”
He must have driven all night, because he was there by mor
ning. He barely spoke two words to the nurse when he arrived. Instead he lifted me into his arms and carried me outside, placing me gently in the back seat of his car. Overwrought with exhaustion and emotion, I threw up all over the seat. He cleaned it up without complaint, and we headed home.
Our family pediatrician confirmed the diagnosis, adding that it was the worst case of mono she had ever seen. I had an enlarged spleen, she added, which could have ruptured. My condition had become serious, and I was very ill.
For the next several weeks my mother nursed me back to health with broths made from meat and fresh vegetables that she simmered on the stove, stroking my hair to comfort me when I was frightened by my fever-borne hallucinations. She rarely left my side, and when she did, she placed a small brass bell in my hand, wrapping my fingers carefully around it, whispering to me that she would come running, that I didn’t have to be alone. My mother’s tenderness as she nursed me back to health seemed boundless.
I hadn’t appreciated my mother’s kindness all those years ago. Perhaps I was too weakened by fever, although I suspect that resentment had already taken too strong a hold of me, repelling not just her criticisms but any affection she may have had to offer. I viewed her actions with suspicion, questioning her motives. I certainly didn’t conclude that her ministrations were inspired by love.
But it may well have been love that filled each spoonful of warm broth she fed me during those long weeks. Or perhaps the root of her fleeting gentleness came from the sickbeds she had experienced as a child.
DR. RICHARD MEAD customarily arrived at the Foundling Hospital in a gilded carriage drawn by six horses with two running footmen, strolling into the building with a gold-headed cane in hand. An eighteenth-century physician was rarely seen without his cane, its hollow perforated head filled with aromatics to stave off contagions that spread through the air. The “vinegar of four thieves” was a favorite concoction, consisting of a white wine vinegar steeped in herbs such as wormwood, sage, and rosemary and believed to guard against the plague. A physician might use the cane to make a dramatic entrance, striking the floor with its heel to release the cane’s protective odor.