Thread Herrings

by Lea Wait

  “How many auctions have you been to?” I asked, curiously.

  “Hundreds, I guess. In Australia there weren’t as many as here in New England. Now I get to thirty or forty a year.”

  “Wow.” I’d had fun so far, and the action hadn’t even started. But thirty or forty a year? I was pretty sure the fascination would wear off after a while.

  Sarah checked her own notes and asked, “What’s the highest lot number you’re interested in?”

  I glanced through my (short) list. “267.”

  “Good,” she nodded. “My highest item is 301. We should be able to leave around noon or a little after.”

  “How many lots does the auctioneer sell an hour?” I asked as a tall, heavy-set, bearded man put a wooden gavel on the high desk in the front of the room.

  “Depends on the auctioneer,” Sarah answered. “Between sixty and a hundred at most auctions like this. At high-end art auctions, not as many.”

  “In one hour?”

  She nodded. “You’ll see.”

  “Everyone take their seat,” the auctioneer bellowed. He didn’t need the microphone on his desk. “Preview is closed. Runners, bring lots one through fifteen to the front.” I had to listen closely; he spoke faster than anyone I’d ever heard. “Remember. All items will be sold where is as is. If you haven’t examined an item ahead of time, don’t bid on it. Small items will be delivered to you. Large items will be held with your number in the back of the hall. All items must be paid for before they’re removed from the building, and all items must be removed today unless other arrangements have been made. All bidders must be registered and have numbers. Raise your numbers high when you bid. The auctioneer has the discretion to determine which bids are successful if more than one person bids at a time. Any disputed bids or claims should be referred to the Maine Board of Licensing of Auctioneers in Augusta.”

  He stopped and sipped from a large bottle of Poland Spring water. “Lot number one, to the front!”

  A middle-aged woman with graying hair wearing a yellow “Augusta Auctions” T-shirt over her jeans walked quickly to the front of the room, holding a large, mounted owl. I’d missed that in the preview. How many other items had I missed? And who would buy an old stuffed owl?

  Turned out the elderly man in the first row would. The runner handed him the owl and immediately a second runner appeared next to the auctioneer. Item after item came to the front, was described, and then was hammered down. Fast.

  The woman I’d heard earlier talking about her grandmother’s wedding ring china bid on it, despite frowns from the man with her. She smiled triumphantly as several boxes were delivered to her seat just off the center aisle.

  She also bid on a mahogany dressing table, but so did a redheaded woman four rows in back of her. They bid each other up and sent dirty looks toward each other. The redheaded woman was the successful bidder. I glanced at the catalog. She’d paid a thousand dollars over the estimate. She might be the Josie the couple had mentioned.

  Sarah saw me checking. “Depends on how much bidders want something. Estimates can be high or low.”

  I nodded.

  Sarah was the successful bidder on the first two embroideries we’d seen, Charity’s sampler and the memorial sampler. I was surprised that the depressing depiction of the tombstone and mourners went for a higher price than the sampler.

  “People collect mourning art and jewelry,” Sarah whispered as we made space by our feet for the two framed pieces.

  I didn’t ask what mourning jewelry was. It sounded depressing.

  The small platinum and diamond earrings went for $500: much less than I’d anticipated, but still over my budget. I didn’t bid.

  Sarah got the genealogical sampler.

  But she’d been right about Amity’s sampler, the most elaborate in the auction and in the best condition. Three people, including Sarah, bid to start. Then, when a woman in a red turtleneck dropped out, a serious-looking couple in the back started bidding. Sarah stopped at $2,000. Bidding didn’t.

  “Wow,” I said. “Sorry you didn’t get it.”

  “Those people are with the Saco Museum,” Sarah said, looking at the couple who’d bought it. “They have a great collection of Maine samplers. If I couldn’t get it, I’m glad it went to them, and not to a dealer or private collector.”

  I refocused in time to see the coat of arms come up. At first, no one bid. “Going to pass!” the auctioneer said. By now I knew that meant that with no interest, he wasn’t going to sell it. I took all my courage and raised my number. “One hundred dollars!” I called out, to my own (and Sarah’s) surprise.

  He nodded, glanced around the room, and then pointed back at me. “Sold, to the young lady in the third row.”

  I felt dazed as the runner dropped the large frame in my lap. Carefully I put it at my feet, as Sarah had put her framed items. I’d made my first auction purchase.

  Sarah shook her head. “What are you going to do with that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. But I liked it.” Was fascinated with it, actually. I could hardly wait to get home and take it out of the old frame so I could see it better.

  Sarah bought six cups hand-painted with flowers, and a set of twelve Nancy Drew first editions. I’d seen items like that in her shop. She had customers for them.

  The woman with the blond highlights bought three lots in a row: a set of chairs, an elaborately framed mirror, and a high-backed wicker chair. The redhead bought a mahogany dining room table, a sideboard, and some Chinese porcelain birds. If she was Josie, I was glad she’d gotten the dining room table she’d wanted.

  The two women watched each other constantly. Both family members? Maybe. But, at least today, rivals.

  A high mahogany bed covered with mythological carvings was next. It would need a large room. “Wealthy people in the nineteenth century and before had high beds, for warmth in the winter,” Sarah said, quietly. “Hot air rises. Usually there’s a step stool matching the bed to help people climb up.”

  Both the streaked-blond woman and the redhead raised their bidding paddles and left them up. The auctioneer moved from one to the other, increasing the bid with each move. The bidding got high enough that the room quieted as other buyers watched the competition. Then, when I was almost sure the redhead had won the bed, at $5,500, a tall, skinny man in a Bowdoin College sweatshirt yelled out, “Seven thousand.”

  The auctioneer hesitated only a moment before asking if anyone would bid $7,500.

  Both women who’d been bidding against each other looked furious.

  The bed was knocked down to the man in the back.

  After that he outbid both the streaked blonde and the redhead several times. Both of them were looking angrier every minute.

  I’d guessed the two women were related. Was that man a relative, too? Or maybe a dealer. He was spending a lot of money.

  I was tempted again when the diamond earrings in gold that I’d liked went for only $400. Bidding was contagious. But I was a new business owner. Custom needlepoint was an interesting business, but time-consuming and not as dependable as a salaried profession. I had a lot of years ahead to buy diamond earrings. And now I knew auctions were a good place to look for heirloom jewelry.

  Sarah bought a box of miscellaneous Santa Clauses from the 1940s and ’50s, and a handsome nineteenth-century mahogany travel desk. (A box that opened to display a writing surface and space for pens and papers and blotters.)

  All the items she’d been interested in had come up by a little before twelve-fifteen. As we stood in line to pay for our purchases, I heard another bidding war between the three people I’d been watching—this time for the grandfather clock. They’d all spent thousands today, no matter who ended up with the clock.

  “Want to stop in Hallowell for lunch?” Sarah asked as we took our purchases to the van. “It’s been a long time since we ate those donut holes this morning, and the Liberal Cup is a fun brewpub.”

  I agreed. Hallowell w
asn’t far, and I was happy to fill up on beer-battered clams, while Sarah ate an enormous veggie burger. We both ordered the Bug Lager, which was perfect with both our lunches.

  A sign on the wall read: “Hallowell is a drinking town with an antiques problem.”

  What would Gram and Patrick think about my first auction purchase? Patrick might not be as intrigued by the embroidery as I was, but I hoped Gram would be interested in trying to restore it.

  And, of course, Trixi would be fascinated with smells dating back a couple of hundred years.

  I could hardly wait to get home and tell them both about my day.

  Chapter 4

  “Be sovereign grace the guardian of my youth,

  May Heaven-born virtue in my breast preside,

  While wisdom, honour, innocence and truth,

  Attend my steps, and all my actions guide.”

  —Sampler stitched at the Westtown School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1802 by Mary Lea of Wilmington, Delaware. Mary died in 1810, when she was twenty-three.

  By the time Sarah dropped me at my house it was after four, dark, and close to suppertime, although I was comfortably full after our stop at the brewpub.

  Trixi, of course, was sure she was starving, and immediately circled my feet, and then led me to the kitchen, where her stainless steel food bowl was shiny and empty. I gave her some more dry food and half a can of her favorite salmon paté cat food. Some days she ate better than I did.

  While she was gulping her supper, I covered part of my (not cherry) dining room table with an old blanket and put my auction purchase on it, facedown.

  The glass was already broken, and by taking the frame off and removing the linen I could see more clearly what condition the stitching was in.

  I carefully pulled out the handmade four-sided nails that held the wooden backing in place and lifted the wood off.

  Below it was a piece of off-white wool, torn and stained from the wood and dampness. I suspected it had originally been padding to protect the embroidery from being stained by the wood. I lifted it off carefully, expecting to find the embroidered linen below it.

  Instead, I found a piece of thick paper, folded into a packet. Maybe it identified the person who’d embroidered the coat of arms?

  I unfolded it carefully. The paper cracked at several seams no matter how painstaking I was. Inside was a twelve-inch-long pale blue silk ribbon, embroidered in alternating yellow and red flowers, with a narrow lace edge and a small embroidered red heart at the end. It must have been there for years, hidden from sun and air. The colors were still bright, unlike the faded silk threads on the coat of arms.

  I picked the ribbon up carefully and smoothed it out on the blanket.

  Then I looked more carefully at the creased paper.

  “Foundling Hospital,” was printed on the top, with “October 26, 1757 at two o’clock” filled in by hand beneath the printed words. The script was elaborate, and the purple ink faded. A magnifying glass and a brighter light helped me read it. “Number 12876” was written below the date, and the rest of the form was also filled in. “A male Child about two weeks old. Has been baptized Charles.”

  No last name. Or Charles was his last name? Underneath a list of clothing Charles had brought with him (only a few items), it read “Let particulare Care be Taken off this Child as it will be call’d for again.”

  What did it all mean? I put down the paper and looked at the coat of arms. Sarah had been right. It was in poor condition.

  But where was the Foundling Hospital? And how did a piece of paper from a foundling hospital end up tucked behind an embroidered coat of arms? Had it been hidden? By whom? Why?

  Was it connected to the Providence family whose name was on the embroideries Sarah had purchased? The paper was dated 1757. That was forty years earlier than the samplers. Had it been in back of the coat of arms since 1757? Or had it been placed there much later, when the coat of arms was framed?

  And how were the coat of arms and the Foundling Hospital paper connected to Maine?

  My mind filled with questions.

  I poured myself a glass of red wine and called Sarah. “I removed the back of that coat of arms I bought today. Behind the embroidery was a folded paper from a Foundling Hospital, a receipt for a baby named Charles, and an embroidered ribbon.”

  “Weird,” Sarah agreed. “I can’t imagine what that means, or how it got into the lot you purchased. Sounds like you have research to do.”

  “Were there any people named Charles listed on that genealogical sampler you bought?” I asked.

  “I’ll check. I don’t remember. And, although not all the samplers are dated, the earliest birth listed on the family tree one is in the 1770s. After 1757, for sure. I would have remembered a date that early.”

  “Wow.” I sat, looking at the paper and the ribbon and the coat of arms. “When I bought the coat of arms I’d hoped to find out who it represented. But now I have a whole other mystery!” I picked up Trixi, who was sniffing the treasures I’d spread on the dining room table.

  “Have you Googled foundling hospital?” Sarah asked.

  “No. But I will. Although there must have been foundling hospitals in lots of places.”

  “True. But the paper you found was in English, right?”

  “So the hospital I’m looking for would have been in the United States. Or England.”

  “Or any of the British Isles, or Canada.”

  “Or Australia,” I added.

  “Not Australia,” Sarah corrected. “Australia wasn’t founded until 1788. And the convicts who settled it then wouldn’t exactly have been equipped to establish a foundling hospital.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But you’ll check the genealogical sampler you have for dates and names?”

  “I will. I’d check it right now, but I left my purchases from today downstairs in my shop, and I’m tired. I was about to take a shower and call it a night.”

  “Then, tomorrow. I don’t think a day will make a difference considering the date we’re talking about. And, Sarah—thanks for taking me with you today. I had fun. The world of antiques is more complicated than I’d imagined.”

  “Come with me any time,” she said. “Next auction is in Bangor early next week.”

  “Not next week. But maybe some time. In the meantime, I have Mainely Needlepoint work to do, and a foundling hospital to find.”

  “I’ll let you know if I find a Charles tomorrow,” she promised. “Good night. And good luck!”

  I carefully picked up the paper, ribbon, and embroidery and tucked them in a drawer in the dining room unreachable by kitten paws, moved to my living room, which doubled as the Mainely Needlepoint office, and turned on my computer. Sarah was right, of course. I should look online.

  According to Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, in 1757, a foundling was a “child exposed to chance, without a parent or owner.” Interesting definition, especially the “owner” bit. I’d always thought the word foundling meant orphan. Maybe it did in some circumstances, but not all orphans were “exposed to chance.”

  My search quickly turned up two foundling hospitals in English-speaking countries: The New York Foundling Hospital and the London Foundling Hospital. The New York institution (still in service, I noted) was founded in 1869. Too late by over a hundred years to be the organization I was looking for.

  The London Foundling Hospital, on the other hand, was founded in 1739. It, too, had survived until today, but with changed programs, and under the name the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children.

  The paper I had was dated 1757. I kept reading, fascinated. When a baby was entrusted to the hospital, no records were kept of the mother’s or father’s name, but the child was registered with a number (“Number 12876” was written on my paper), and family members were encouraged to return and reclaim their child when they could. The parent kept half of a “token” left with the child that was kept with the registration paper, called a “billet,” to identify the child if
a parent came to reclaim him or her. Frequently these tokens were pieces of fabric torn from the child’s clothing, or a ribbon (!), or embroidery.

  Sadly, of the 16,282 children who were admitted to the London Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1760 only 152 were reclaimed. Two-thirds of the infants admitted died, although the sources I read reminded readers that the infant mortality rate for all children born in London during those years was fifty percent.

  Fifty percent. What was the mortality rate for the women who’d given them birth?

  So it appeared that “Charles” had been entrusted to the London Foundling Hospital. Since all children there were renamed, his name would have only been known to his biological family, whoever they were. Had he been one of the few reclaimed? Or one who’d died?

  But if he’d died, then how had his registration billet ended up tucked behind an embroidery more than three thousand miles across the sea from London?

  I kept reading. During some years all infants left at the hospital were accepted, leading to incredible overcrowding. In other years, a limited number of babies were accepted every month, and the children to be accepted were determined by a lottery. A mother seeking to leave her infant had to reach into a bag holding black and white balls. If she withdrew a white ball her infant was accepted for admission. If she picked a black ball, her child was not accepted. There were many more black balls than white in the bag. My eyes filled. How painful it must have been to decide to relinquish an infant—and then have your child rejected. What would you do next?

  Once a fatherless child myself, although luckily with Gram to take over after Mama died, I found it fascinating that it wasn’t only mothers of illegitimate children who gave up their infants. (In many years the hospital only took in children two months old or younger.) At least a third of the babies’ parents were married, forced by separation or hardship to hand over their babies. As I’d suspected, some of the mothers had died.

  I sipped my wine and read further.