In Which We Discuss Hitty: Her First Hundred Years
Written by Rachel Field, illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop

HITTY Her First Hundred Years

Week of August 2, 2010

Chapter Sixteen:  In Which I Return to Familiar Scenes:

“Pincushion” Hitty is at the Church Fair and is being sold as a birthday present.  Great Aunt Louella, the 75 year old recipient of this “gift” lives in Boston, is very rich and very difficult to buy for.  Hitty was not received with enthusiasm.  “Humph, I’d like to know what Maggie Arnold thinks I’ll do that a thing like that.  Why, I’ve got enough pincushions in this house to stock an orphan asylum. . .”  When her old and dear friend arrives for a visit that afternoon and looks at Hitty, she is very interested and declares that “as a pincushion I don’t think much of it, but as a doll I think you’ve got something out of the ordinary.  It isn’t often you find one so perfectly made and with so much character.  Why, I haven’t got such a little gem in my whole collection.”  So, Louella, thankfully, gave the doll to her friend, Pamela Wellington, to join her famous collection of old dolls.

Miss Pamela carefully removed the stuffings and silk that turned Hitty into a pincushion and cleaned her up.  She told her maid that the doll must be going on a hundred years old.  Hitty  became the favorite doll in her collection and was kept in a little old yellow rocker on Pamela’s writing desk and always shown to her visitors as her most prized doll.  She deeply wished to know Hitty’s history and it made Hitty wish more than ever that she could speak or even write but there was no quill pen to help her write her story. 

Hitty stayed with Pamela for some time, and as Miss Pamela grew more and more feeble, it was decided that she should go to the country.  Unfortunately, while on the way Hitty accidentally flew out of the vehicle as it was traveling very fast.  Pamela and her friend searched and searched for Hitty but could not find her and she was left behind only to be found later by a group of young picnickers. The young people took Hitty with them in the horse drawn wagon back to the stable where they had hired it and promptly forgot her.  She was left sitting on the high back seat for a number of days and rather enjoyed it.  She listened to the stable workers and learned that she was in Maine again and not so very far from Portland. 

One day Hitty was discovered by the stable owner’s daughter and taken to his married daughter, Carrie, in Portland.  She had a little eating establishment in Falmouth, Maine, another name Hitty was familiar with.  However, Carrie decided to sell her as something old.  She was purchased by a woman who lived alone except for her maid.  As Hitty sat and looked at her surroundings, they became very familiar to her.  There was something about the paneling and corner cupboards.  There was a built-in preserve cupboard over the fireplace with a roughly cut letter “P” just above the latch.  Hitty stared at it and realized, incredulously, that she was back in the Preble parlor.  She wondered if the old lady was a Preble but learned later that she was not and knew nothing about the house and only that the Prebles were a seafaring family.

Hitty was placed in a cupboard with china animals and stayed there a long time.  She, at least, was able to look out at the ancestral pine from which she hung for many days after her crow experience many years ago.  She grew lonely when the old lady would depart for the city during the winter months, but she used this time to relive the memories of her life.

DISCUSSION: 

I'm glad Hitty is back in Maine and in the Preble house, but I feel sad that she is stuck in a cupboard for years and living virtually alone. 

The part about her flying out of Pamela's motor car seems a little unbelievable.  Maybe Rachel Field wanted a quick end to this part of the book.  And the young man "making love" to Hitty seemed a bit out of character for this young person's book.