Week of May 21, 2007

Chapter Sixteen: In Which I Return to Familiar Places:

Hitty is to be sold as a pinchushion doll at the Church fair. I think she has a bit of the “devil” in her as she knew the ladies would be scandalized if they knew that “the doll who sat among their other cushions, pin trays, and needle cases had once been the object of heathen worship.” You almost get the impression that she wants to blurt it out to the ladies.
________________________

I liked this chapter a lot, although I get the feeling that by this time Field was a bit sick of the story and was moving it along very fast! Compare how many 'hands' she passes through in this chapter, compared to the Preble story!

Again, Hitty is displaying very human emotions--she is gratified to be made over by the elderly women, and proud to have kept her feet so nicely.
________________________

Hitty is purchased at the church fair by Maggie Arnold as a gift for her Great-Aunt Louella for her 75th birthday. Louella lives in Boston. She is not enthusiastic about Hitty at all. Her friend, Pamela Wellington came to visit and takes great interest in Hitty. Pamela has a lot of dolls but hasn’t “got such a little gem in my whole collection.” Louella gladly gave Hitty to Pamela.

Pamela removed the pinchusion section from Hitty and was overjoyed to see such perfect wooden legs and feet. She believes Hitty must be going on one hundred years old. Hitty was redressed and became the favorite of Pamela’s collection of dolls. She sat in a little yellow rocker on Pamela’s desk and was always shown to visitors as her most prized doll. She regretted that she did not know of Hitty’s history and Hitty wanted so badly to find a way to tell her about herself. Hitty regretted that she never saw Pamela’s other dolls. There were hundreds of them dressed in all manner of costumes.

As Pamela grew more feeble, she decided to go to the country. It was to be a motor trip and Hitty was very excited as she had not left her room for a number of years.

Unfortunately for Hitty she was kept in a satchel and could not see where they were going. Miss Pamela took Hitty out of the bag and passed her to her friend to hold while she looked for her gloves. Unexpectedly, the car hit a bump and Hitty bounced out of their hands and out of the car.

The ladies looked in vain for Hitty but couldn’t find her and left. I find this part of the story very strange. She couldn’t have flown too far away from the car. Hitty is Pamela’s prized doll. I can’t imagine her just driving off without her. Granted, she is an old lady, not in the best of health, but still . . .

Hitty is found a week or so later by some picnickers, and learns that she is in her native State of Maine. They didn’t treat her very well but did take her back with them in a wagon to the stables where she was left sitting on the high back seat of the wagon for a number of days. She was discovered by the stable man and set on a window ledge of his office. She was discovered again by the stable man’s daughter and claimed by her. She was going to take Hitty to her sister Carrie’s in Portland. She had an eating place on the Falmouth Road. Hitty is filled with pleasure at the sound of the old names. She entertained the thought of seeing Phoebe Preble again but knew this was not likely as Pamela Wellington said she was about 100 years old and when Hitty was sitting in the stable office she noticed the calendar now had a nine in the row of figures for the year instead of an eight.

Carrie has a plan to sell Hitty as she’s old and people are paying good money for old things. She is purchased by an elderly lady for a couple of dollars. Hitty was taken to reside in the old lady’s house. As she looked around that first evening, something about the paneling and corner cupboards struck her as curiously familiar. There was a built-in preserve cupboard over the fireplace with a roughly cut letter “P” jut above the latch. Hitty looked at this incredulously, looked away and then looked back again a number of times. She knew she was back in the Preble parlor again after all these years. She recognized the trunk of the ancestral pine tree outside the window and saw the branch where she had once hung.

She knew the old lady could not be Phoebe but wondered if she might turn out to be a relative. She heard her telling visitors one day that she knew nothing about the house but had heard it once had belonged to a seafaring family by the name of Preble. Again Hitty wanted to speak so she could tell the old lady all about the house and the Prebles.
________________________

In thinking about Hitty being sold, passed around to other new owners, lost, it makes me look at my dolls differently. How could I part with any now knowing they might wind up like Hitty – abandoned on the river, stuck in a box for years (although I do have several in boxes), being mistreated, left on a burning ship, etc. I enjoy my dolls immensely, even the ones that just sit there. I’m always moving them around, putting new accessories with them. I am much more mindful of that since reading the Hitty book. I feel kind of foolish saying this, they are dolls, but . . . .
________________________

I didn’t care for this chapter of the book as I didn’t like the thought of Hitty just sitting in that cupboard year after year. What a lonely existence for such an “active” Hitty. I guess the old lady purchased her because she was old and in good condition and thought maybe she could sell her. She may have liked Hitty, but she never spent any time with her or did anything with her. She put Hitty into the cupboard and that was that.

At least in the spring and summer Hitty was able to see the lilacs blooming, the shrubs, day lilies, moss roses and honeysuckle. She could hear the crows. She “entertained” herself with memories of the past during the long winters while she was alone. Perhaps this was when she started thinking of her life’s adventures and mentally preparing her memoirs.

From Hitty Timeline:

1886?? Summer: Hitty is rejected by Great-Aunt Louella, and given to Miss Pamela Wellington. Miss Pamela guesses her age to be almost one hundred years old.

Many Years Later, July: Hitty is lost again. We don't know how long Hitty spent with Miss Pamela, for she is very vague--"...I had not left her room for a number of years..." and "...I shall pass lightly over the next years of my life." When she is lost among the tree roots, she merely states that it had been "...years...since I had been alone with the elements." However, we do know that it was July, or so Hitty guesses.

A few weeks later, still summer: Hitty is found by picnickers, left in a wagon, and discovers she is once more in Maine.

"I was left sitting on the high back seat for a number of days." Most likely, this 'number of days' is not months.

1913, summer: Hitty sees a calendar in the stable office. --"There were still four figures in a row, but now there was a nine instead of an eight...next there had been another one, and last of all, a figure three." Hitty clearly gives us the date here--1913.

1913 – 1916: Hitty is taken by Carrie and put up for sale. ---"...what seemed to me like two or three years at the least..." 'At the least' suggests that she could have been there even longer.

1916, summer to, roughly, 1920 something: Hitty is purchased by the 'old lady' and returns to the Preble home. She lives with the old lady an undetermined amount of years. The last concrete date we have is 1913. She was up for sale in 1913, stayed with Carrie a minimum of three years (1916), and then stayed with the 'old lady' until September of at the least 1920, and probably later than that. There is no suggestion that she is in the antique shop for nine years!

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.
Chapter 15: Found floating in a basket on the Mississippi River; given to a little Negro girl, Car’line who lived on a plantation; recognized by the planatation owner’s daughter as the doll who disappeared from the Cotton Exposition; is packaged and mailed back to New Orleans; then mailed to her former owner, the Artist, Mr. Farley, at his address in New York, but as Mr. Farley could not be found, Hitty winds up in a dead letter office at the post office; is eventually put in a grab bag and sold; carried to a tobacco shop by the new owner and accidently left there; picked up by a ticket agent and taken to his home and then made into a doll pincushion by the ticket agent’s wife to be sold at the Church Fair.
Chapter 16: To Boston as a gift for Great Aunt Louella. Given to Louella’s friend, Pamela Wellington. Goes on a motor trip with Miss Pamela to the State of Maine. Lost by Pamela, found by picnickers, found by stable man, given to stable man’s daughter, taken to her sister Carrie’s restaurant on the Falmouth Road in Portland, Maine. Sold by carrie to an old lady and taken to the old lady’s home which turns out to be the Preble House in Maine where Hitty was carved and started her travels.

home