Week of May 7, 2007

Chapter Fourteen: In Which I End My Hay-Days and Begin a New Profession:

A lot goes on in this chapter, first an artist prop, then getting dressed in the wedding finery by the elderly women, then being on display at the Cotton Expo, then getting stolen and going to church revival...we know what's coming next, but that won't happen until next week.
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Hitty covered a lot of ground in this chapter. From New England to New Orleans in several real years, but in only two pages of the book, then up the Mississippi River after being stolen from the Cotton Exposition exhibit.
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I think that Rachel and Dorothy made a mistake! In the beginning of Chapter 14 Hitty says her coral necklace was scattered to the four corners of the hayloft. But this is the chapter about the Cotton Expo, where the sisters make her dress from the wedding hankie. OK--in the picture Dorothy drew her in her bridal finery, and she is wearing her coral necklace! It doesn't say the sisters gave her a necklace, and in the remaining pictures in the book, she doesn't have one.

Am I wrong? Did I miss something? Or am I the first to notice??? Or is this common knowledge and I never knew it?
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The human mind is a wonderful thing. It tends to fill in missing details. My mind never questioned Hitty's necklace with her wedding dress, after losing it in the barn, because "of course", with all the detail the Larraby sisters put into her wedding outfit, they would have made her a beautiful pearl necklace to wear with it. Since the picture was black and white, who is to say whether the necklace was red or white.
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And in this chapter (14) we do find out that the beads were lost in the hayloft. The illustration in Chapter 13 was placed one page too early in the book!
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A lot did happen in this chapter, it was rather exciting. I read the chapters on Sunday evenings and then listen to the chapter on tape on the drive to work Monday mornings. I'm not missing much this time. Notice though that in the previous chapter Hitty says her beads are all over the floor in the hayloft and then when she is pictured in the wedding dress she has them on. That's strange.
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That's the mistake I mentioned a few months ago, and then forgot when we got to the chapter!! It is a continuity problem on the part of Dorothy Lathrop, I would think, as she drew the pictures after the text was written. I wonder if anyone else ever noticed it. I never heard mention of it. I'll put it on hittygirls.com and we can be the first!
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I never thought that the sisters would just make her another necklace. We have heard so much about coral beads that my mind saw only coral beads on Hitty.
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Yes, but the Larraby sisters would have no way of knowing that she had had a coral necklace. The necklace was gone when Mr. Farley purchased Hitty. The chapter picture indicates that the sisters provided Hitty with a pearl necklace to compliment the wedding gown (unless, of course, Dorothy Lathrop totally forgot that the corals were broken and lost in the hayloft and “accidentally” put them in the wedding picture).
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I don't know if we should blame Dorothy Lathrop or the publisher! If they had put the illustration back just one page it would have fit in perfectly with the text. Can you tell I have issues with book publishers??
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Regardless of questions about the pearls, I particularly love this chapter. Perhaps because I have always wanted to visit New Orleans (but since Katrina maybe not so much now). Anyway, I love that Hitty gets to travel with the artist, Mr. Farley, and his respect and care of Hitty, and their arrival in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. I think Hitty was a blessing to the Larraby sisters and she gave them something important to focus on in getting Hitty ready for the Cotton Exposition. I can just envision them in their beautiful home with the Spanish Moss everywhere and beautiful flowers blooming over the wrought iron railings.
I find it interesting, too, that Hitty winds up living in a “Southern” home after staying with the “Yankee Pryces”. She has seen suffering on both sides of the War. Both Larraby sisters lost their fiancés during the Civil War.
In getting Hitty ready for the Exposition, the sisters decided that she could keep her chemise since every bride should wear “something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” So, she has lost her corals, but still has her chemise. As for her “necklace”, I think the Larrabys must have made one for her in pearls, or else Dorothy forget the corals were broken and lost in Chapter 13. I can’t imagine the Larrabys making such an elaborate dress and underskirts without providing a new necklace.
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After Sally stole Hitty from the Cotton Exposition, and then went to church and heard the sermon on “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, she must have thought God was coming after her for sure during that thunderstorm. I thought she might go and tell her father what she had done as her guilty conscience was definitely at work. She was telling God that she would give Hitty back and wouldn’t keep her another minute. I believe she thought she was doing the right thing, and clearing her conscience at the same time, by tearing down to the river to “give Hitty back”. Poor Hitty knows what is coming.
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The Hitty timeline states that Hitty considers the Larraby sisters would not have been more than 45 to 50 years old, which actually sounds about right. (She was with the Larrabys before the 1884 Cotton Exposition. The Civil War ran from 1851 to 1864. Assuming they were betrothed as young women maybe around 20 or so when the War started, that would make them between the ages of 40 and 50.) Field describes them as “wrinkled old ladies in their shabby silks”; “too frail to be in the crowds”; “fingers were still tapering but worn and yellow as ivory”; Miss Hortense “nodding her head till the light twinkled on the high comb which caught up her ‘white’ hair.” One gets the idea from the book that the ladies must be in the 70’s or so. I wonder if Field just did not pay enough attention to the dates.
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I'm guessing she just didn't figure anyone would be studying the book like we are!!! She could never have imagined her children's book would become a cult classic as it has.
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Chapter 14's description of the sisters Larraby absolutely makes us feel they are much older than their 40s, and so Rachel Field's private timeline must be in error. Or she used artistic license again to make the story flow better.
From Hitty Timeline:
Between 1870 and 1884 Hitty is found, and becomes an artist's model. She travels to New Orleans, celebrates Easter there, and is given to the Misses Larraby. We know that it had to be after 1870 when she was lost in the hay, yet before 1884, when the Cotton Exposition occurred. Also, since Easter occurred shortly after Mr. Farley's arrival in New Orleans (and was ‘late that year’), it was April.

Due to some comments made by the sisters (that they had both lost beaus in the Civil War) and Hitty’s comments as to the sisters' ages, we wonder if she considered them to be old when they could not have been more than 45 to 50? The Civil War ran from 1861 to 1864, and even if the beaus had been killed on the very first day of the war (and we know one was killed in the battle of Vicksburg), that would still have only made it 20 years before the Cotton Exposition in New Orleans, which occurred in 1884-85.
1884-85: Hitty goes to the Cotton Exposition.
1884-85, August: Hitty is stolen from the Cotton Exposition by Sally Loomis, rides on the Riverboat Morning Glory, and is set afloat on the Mississippi. It had to be August when Sally stole Hitty from the display case, for she is not on the boat too long. Indeed, Hitty mentions casually that the days were busy, and seems to have let that suffice. I assume it to be August for three reasons. One, Hitty describes the sun as blazing hot, and two, the sisters sewed for some time on the outfit before she was sent to the Cotton Exposition. Hitty never really says how long she was on display, or how long she floats in the basket. Three, Cooky finds her in September.

World Cotton Centennial:

The 1884 World's Fair was held in New Orleans, Louisiana. At a time when nearly one third of all cotton produced in the United States was handled in New Orleans and the city was home to the Cotton Exchange, the idea for the fair was first advanced by the Cotton Planters Association. The name World Cotton Centennial referred to the earliest surviving record of export of a shipment of cotton from the United States to England in 1784.

The planning and construction of the fair was marked by corruption and scandals, and Fair Director Edward A. Burke absconded to Brazil with over one and a half million dollars of the Fair treasury.

Despite such serious financial difficulties, the Fair succeeded in offering many attractions to visitors. It covered 249 acres (1 km²), stretching from St. Charles Avenue to the Mississippi River, and was notable that it could be entered directly by railway, steamboat, or ocean-going ship. The main building enclosed 33 acres (130,000 m²), and was the largest roofed structure constructed up to that time. It was illuminated with 5,000 electric lights (still a novelty at the time, and said to be 10 times the number then existing in New Orleans outside of the fairgrounds). There was also a large USA Government & State Exhibits Hall, a Horticultural Hall, an observation tower with electric elevators, and working examples of multiple designs of experimental electric street-cars. The Mexican exhibit was particularly lavish and popular, constructed at a cost of $200,000 dollars, and featuring a huge brass band that was a great hit locally.

The Fair opened on December 16, 1884 (two weeks behind schedule), and closed on June 2, 1885. In an unsuccessful attempt to recover some of the financial losses from the Fair, the grounds and structures were reused for the North Central & South American Exposition from November 10, 1885 to March 31, 1886 with no great success. After this the structures were publicly auctioned off, most going only for their worth in scrap.

The site is today Audubon Park and Audubon Zoo in Uptown New Orleans.

Hitty’s Travels Thus Far:

Chapter 1: In Maine with the Preble family;
Chapter 2: To Portland, Maine;
Aboard ship bound for the South Seas on a whaling expedition;
Chapter 6: Lost on a South Sea Island;
Chapter 8: Rescued at sea and arrival in Bombay, India; traveling back and forth across India with the snake charmer;
Chapter 9: A new home with a missionary family in India; on board ship with Little Thankful and headed to Philadelphia in America to live with Little Thankful’s grandparents;
Chapter 10: A new family, the Pryces, in Philadelphia;
Chapter 12: To New York to reside with the Van Rensselaer family;
Chapter 13: From Washington Square in New York to become a gift for Tim Dooley’s cousin, Katie. Travels to Katie’s home in Rhode Island, then to the country so that Katie could recuperate from her illness; lost in the hay and tossed into the hayloft and there for “years”.
Chapter 14: Hitty is finally found and sold to a traveling portrait painter for a quarter. She travels the country posing for portraits with little girls. Many times to New York and Philadelphia, then down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Stays in the French Quarter with the Larraby sisters. Appears at the Cotton Exposition in New Orleans and is then stolen by little Sally Loomis and taken onboard her father’s river steamboat, Morning Glory, to travel up the Mississippi delivering cotton.

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