Queen Anne's Lace

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Please keep me posted,” I added. “And let me know when you decide to get the word out.”

  “It’ll be after the surgery,” Helen said more briskly. “We’ll know more then. Right now, the challenge is to keep from being overwhelmed. We’re doing this one step at a time, as we see what’s next. And hoping for the very best outcome, of course. We have a great team of doctors, and they’re optimistic. We’ve caught the tumor early and we’re all hopeful.”

  “Of course,” I said emphatically. “Thank you for telling me. Please let me know when it’s time to talk to Caitie about this.”

  After I hung up, I sat there for a moment, struggling with my feelings. Kevin’s family was close-knit and loving and his grandmother was a nurse. It wouldn’t be easy, but whatever came, they would be holding hands all the way through, and the rest of us would be holding them in our hearts. When something like this happens, we’re all part of the family.

  And then, worriedly, I thought of Caitlin. She had already lost far too many of the most important people in her young life: her mother, her father, and her beloved aunt Marcia, who had taken her in and cared for her after her parents died. And then died, too, of cancer.

  This wasn’t going to be easy for Caitlin. Or for any of us.

  * * *

  • • •

  HELEN had remarked on Jessica’s persistence, which was why I wasn’t surprised when the next telephone call came from Jessica herself. She covers local crime for the Enterprise, and we have connected several times on stories she was writing. She has a serious nose for news and she knows that Sheila and I are good friends.

  “Do you know what’s going on with Chief Dawson?” she demanded, without any introductory pleasantries. She likes to catch people off guard.

  “Hello to you, too, Jessica,” I said pleasantly. “Why? Is something wrong with the chief?”

  “EMS took her to the hospital this morning.”

  “Gosh,” I said innocently. “That’s terrible! Did you ask at the hospital? I hope she’s okay!”

  “Nobody would talk to me over there.” Jessica sounded disgruntled. “I was hoping you could tell me, China. What is it? What’s going on?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Wish I could help but I can’t. If you find out anything, will you let me know?” I said good-bye, feeling pleased with myself for answering Jessica’s questions without telling an actual lie. As I ended the call, my eye was caught by the photograph on the bulletin board. Even though Ruby had been positive that Lori had nothing to do with it, it wouldn’t hurt to check.

  But the lunch hour was more hectic than usual and I didn’t see Lori until mid-afternoon, when she came downstairs to get a quick sandwich between classes. When I pointed to the photo and asked if she had put it there, she shook her head.

  “No, sorry,” she said. “Wasn’t me. Maybe Ruby? She opened the shops this morning.”

  “She says it wasn’t her.” My voice sounded a little uneven, and I cleared my throat. And then, because I knew I shouldn’t put her on the spot, I added, “Just one of life’s little mysteries, I guess.”

  And the bell dinged, of course, cheerfully agreeing.

  * * *

  • • •

  AT four, Ruby and I left Jenna in charge of the shops so we could go upstairs for the meeting with Professor Vickery. I didn’t know the professor, so I had taken a moment that morning to peek at her bio on the university’s website. She had earned her PhD in the textile arts program at Ohio State, and had been teaching courses in historical textiles for twenty years. She had written several papers on lacemaking, so if anybody could tell us anything about the lace, she was certainly the one.

  Professor Vickery, a small, slender woman with attractively graying hair and dark-rimmed glasses, arrived a few minutes after four, and we introduced ourselves. Christine—she asked us to call her that immediately—took one look at the collection of lace items we had laid out on the table and exclaimed, “Oh, what a treasure!” She looked from one of us to the other. “Who does it belong to? Where did it come from?”

  “It belongs to China,” Ruby and Lori said together.

  “We found it on a top shelf when we were cleaning out the storeroom yesterday.” I nodded toward the door at the back of the room. “There’s no telling where it came from or how long it’s been there.” I added, “The flower on the lid looks like it’s hand carved.”

  “Queen Anne’s lace, isn’t it?” Christine asked. “Fascinating. You know the story behind the name of that flower?”

  “I’ve heard that it was named for one of the two Queen Annes of England,” Ruby offered.

  Christine nodded. “Some say that, yes. Others say that it’s named for St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Who just happens to be the patron saint of lacemakers—so I think there’s something to that connection.”

  “Lacemakers have a patron saint?” Lori asked. “I didn’t know that.”

  I chimed in. “After the Protestant revolution in England, Catholic saints were politically incorrect. Some plants that were associated with them got renamed. Which could be why the flower got transferred from a Catholic saint named Anne to a queen with the same name.” This was something I had only recently discovered. Even when you think you know everything there is to know about a plant, there’s always something new to learn.

  “Well, then, let’s see what we have here.” Christine got down to work immediately, identifying each of the laces by the way it was made—bobbin lace, needle lace, tatted lace, crocheted and knitted lace—and then by how old it was, generally.

  “To get really specific about the age,” she said, “I’d have to do a detailed study. But there are some things we can say about these right away.” She held the lady’s lace cap in one hand and what she called a fichu—a triangular lace scarf worn around the neck—in the other. “Judging just from the style, I think these are the two oldest pieces. They may have been made in the early 1800s. The fichu is tambour embroidery with silk threads on a fine net, and it’s almost perfect. Which is amazing, given its obvious age. It’s two hundred years old, give or take a decade.”

  “Somebody’s family heirloom, I’m sure,” Lori said in a tone that was almost wistful.

  “Just imagine,” Ruby murmured, fingering the lace. “A woman wore this, two hundred years ago.”

  “Tambour embroidery?” I asked curiously.

  “That’s right,” Christine said. “To make it, a piece of net was stretched tight across an embroidery hoop—tight as a drum, hence the name, tambour. The embroidery was done through the spaces in the net, using a tiny hook and very fine silk thread, colored. Beads were often used, as well, and colored threads, especially gilt. The work was popular from the mid-eighteenth century until the 1830s.” She made a face. “Then a Frenchman invented a machine that turned out a piece about a hundred and fifty times faster than a tambour worker.”

  Lori sat down at the end of the table. “That’s the story of technology, isn’t it? Machines replacing craftspeople.” She waved her hand at the spinning wheel that sat off to one side. “Like the spinning machines that replaced the wheel.” She paused, pursing her lips. “Although of course, spinning with a wheel replaced hand spindling.”

  “A natural progression, isn’t it?” Ruby asked. “From spindle to spinning wheel to machine.”

  “Exactly.” Christine nodded. “Several of my textile students are interested in tambour work as an art form. They’re doing some interesting things with it.” She pushed the older pieces to one side and pulled another group of laces toward her. “Now, these are from the middle of the nineteenth century, I’d say. They’re mostly crocheted lace, some knitted, with silk, cotton, and linen thread.” She picked up a cream-colored piece of airy filigreed lace and turned it in her fingers. “And there are several pieces of bobbin lace, like this one. Do you know how that’s made?”

/>   Lori nodded yes, but Ruby and I chorused “No,” and Ruby added, “Tell us, please.”

  “The lacemaker worked on a pillow she held on her lap. The pattern—it was called a ‘pricking card’—was pinned to the pillow. The threads were pinned over the pattern with large dressmaker pins. The thread was wound around little bobbins—bone, in the old days, later wood or even plastic. The lacemaker passed pairs of bobbins over and under each other, creating the stitches as she followed the pattern. The more pairs of bobbins, the greater the intricacy of the pattern.” She put the lace on the table and smoothed it with her hand. “If you want to see a famous painting of the process, take a close look at Vermeer’s The Lacemaker. It’s quite beautiful. And accurate.”

  “I’ve always wanted to learn to make bobbin lace,” Lori said thoughtfully. “Maybe now is the time.”

  “I’ll be glad to show you what I know about it,” Christine said. “One of my students is working with bobbin lace, and we’ve found several very good tutorials online.” She gestured to the largest group of pieces. “Now, these look to be the most recent. They were made between 1860 and 1900, I’d say. This embroidered bridal veil—see the dual initials?—is quite lovely, and very well done. The quality of the other pieces is good, but perhaps a bit uneven. I wonder if these might be pattern samples.” She leaned back with a smile. “But that doesn’t make the collection any less valuable, of course. Altogether, China, I’d say that you have an important group here—not in terms of money, perhaps, but as an illustration of more than two centuries of women’s needlework. You might consider framing some and hanging them in your shop. They’d make a lovely decoration. They could help to enhance the historical importance of your building, as well.” She added, “I noticed that you now have a historical plaque beside the door.”

  “I’d love to do that,” I said, struck by the idea. “You’re right—they’d be gorgeous, framed.”

  “We could hang some in the tearoom,” Ruby suggested. “There’s more wall space there.”

  I nodded, agreeing. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to tell where the pieces were made.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true,” Christine replied. “Unless there’s some external documentation—a list of the contents, say, or a diary. Many lacemakers kept records of what they made. It was a business, of course. Lace could be an important source of income.”

  “We haven’t found a diary,” I said. “All we have are the laces—and one earring.” I reached into the chest and took it out.

  Ruby peered at it. “Pretty! That’s an amethyst, isn’t it?”

  “Looks like it,” Lori said, as Ruby passed it to her. “What lovely filigree work.”

  “Do keep an eye out for some sort of written record, China,” Christine said. “It would be wonderful to have some documentation, and family collections often come with a list.” She picked up one of the early pieces, holding it up to the light for a better look. “Lace was such a precious luxury item, you know, and cherished. Pieces like these were handed down in the family and often mentioned in the owner’s will, or in an inventory of the family’s most important possessions. Lace could be the costliest part of a dress, and was frequently designed to be detachable—lace collars and cuffs, for instance—so it could be worn with several different garments.” She picked up another piece. “Until machine-made lace came along, lace signified a certain level of wealth and social sophistication, so it was prized. Just that little bit of adornment on your dress suggested that you had a refined taste and could appreciate the finer things. Larger pieces like this one”—she picked up the embroidered veil—“were often used ritually and passed down from one generation to the next. Because they weren’t in everyday use, they were a sign that you had enough money to buy something that you would use only once or twice in a lifetime. Or that you were an accomplished needlewoman and had the skill—and the free time—to make it yourself.” She smiled. “Of course, if you could spend your time making lace, somebody else had to be doing your family’s laundry and cooking your meals. There are layers of privilege here.”

  A chuckle ran around the table. “You said something about pattern samples,” Lori said. “Are you thinking that some of these later pieces might have been work that was made for sale?”

  Christine nodded. “It’s possible. In both Europe and America, women were seriously interested in lacework as a means of making money. It was something they could do at home—and in the right market, it might produce enough income to make a woman independent. Just last week, I ran across an article that was published in the New York Times in 1900, encouraging women to take up lacemaking as a business opportunity. Around that same time, lacemaking classes were being taught in Boston and Philadelphia.”

  “But wasn’t there plenty of machine-made lace available by then?” Lori asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Christine said. “Machine-made laces had simply eclipsed handmade lace by the turn of the twentieth century. But that didn’t mean that women stopped making lace—luckily, because when machines came along, the craft was in danger of dying out.”

  “I suppose the machine-manufactured lace made handcrafted lace that much more valuable,” I said. “Which might have encouraged people to do it.”

  “Exactly,” Christine agreed. “In some communities, women got together and produced laces for sale—sort of like a co-op. Their success, of course, depended on whether they were able to find a reliable market for their work. That might have happened around here, I suppose. A group of craftswomen could have produced lace for sale in Austin or San Antonio—especially in San Antonio, where there was a community of wealthy Spanish women and a great many Catholics. Lace has always been important for religious vestments and altar cloths. The women might also have sent their work to Dallas or Galveston. Until the 1900 hurricane wiped it out, Galveston was a more important social and business center than Houston.”

  “I wonder if that’s what we have here,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe the Pecan Springs Historical Society knows something about it.”

  “That’s why it would be so good to have documentation,” Christine said. “I recently learned about a lacemaking group of a half dozen women in Dallas in the early 1900s. We were lucky with that group, for one of the women wrote letters to her sister describing her work, and the letters were saved. In the late 1800s, in several Catholic orphanages around the state, the nuns who had come from lacemaking centers in Ireland or Western Europe taught the girls to make lace. They were hoping to give them a skill that might help them earn money later in their lives.” She paused, looking down at the pieces spread on the table. “I’d like to take these back to my office and photograph them for more study, if you don’t mind. Some of the patterns are a bit unusual.”

  Ruby had been listening intently. Now, with the tip of her finger, she pushed the black lace collar toward Christine. “Tell us about this piece,” she said. She sounded hesitant, and I remembered what had happened when she had picked it up the day before.

  “Well, it’s a crocheted collar, as you can see,” Christine said. “It was made to be worn with an important dress, probably sometime before 1900. It’s black, so it’s probably a mourning collar. Women typically wore deep mourning—black—for at least a year.” She smiled a little. “It was a practice that was begun, formally, with Queen Victoria. She wore mourning for forty years after Prince Albert died. She made widowhood socially respectable, you know. Until then, widows were often social exiles.”

  “There’s something else,” Ruby said softly. “You may think this is silly, but I’ve heard that sometimes traumatic events can create a psychic imprint on an item or object, sort of like . . . well, like energy fingerprints. When we invest a great deal of attention and emotion in something, we leave a deep impression on it. And that impression stays, even after we’re dead.” Gingerly, she touched the collar again. “Yesterday, when I picked this up, I suddenly felt as if I had
lost . . . well, everything. I felt I was drowning in sadness. If this was worn for a long time by someone who was in deep mourning, that makes perfect sense—at least to me.”

  Christine raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly, and I expected her to pooh-pooh Ruby’s remark. But she didn’t.

  “Other historians might not agree with me,” she said. “But I’ve worked with women’s clothing long enough to understand its importance. We care deeply about the clothes we wear, especially when we spend a great deal of time making something and when we wear it repeatedly, or for very special occasions. I’ve seen the kind of deep personal significance, and social significance, too, that’s attached to certain costumes, especially ritual clothing. In our culture, that might be bridal gowns and veils, christening dresses, mourning wear, and the like. It’s easy for me to believe that, when we are wearing these things, we may actually invest them with our emotional energy—happiness, grief, anticipation, excitement.” She laughed a little. “Of course, my male colleagues and people who approach textiles as a science will laugh at this idea. But maybe you understand.”

  Ruby smiled gratefully. “Yes, I do understand. It’s like smelling a faint perfume, maybe—very evocative. Or hearing an echo.”

  Hearing an echo? I thought of the quiet humming I’d heard in the storeroom, and the vagrant scent of lavender, and the photo on the bulletin board downstairs. I shivered. I don’t like it when I’m confronted by things that are beyond my ability to explain. But I couldn’t deny that they had happened.

  “Something like that, yes,” Christine said, replying to Ruby but answering my unspoken question. “I’ve felt it before, myself, in certain instances, when I was deeply involved with a piece—as if I were hearing an echo of someone’s excitement or her eagerness, or her grief.” She turned, regarding me with a small smile. “You’re skeptical about this, China?”