Read The Grenadillo Box: A Novel Online
Authors: Janet Gleeson
“There were many references.”
“Can it be a coincidence that the wood used in the box found in Lord Montfort’s hand and in this picture has the same name as our dead friend?”
“I think not,” she said. “He must have seen it as his signature. Moreover, there’s another question to address.”
“What’s that?”
“The timber grows only in Brazil, and as I said has been scarce for the past decades. We haven’t sold any for twenty years, nor I’ll vouch has any other wood merchant in London.”
“And what of that?”
“How then did Partridge come by a wood that has disappeared from view these past twenty years?”
Alice and I gazed at each other and fell into puzzled silence. An instant later Grace Webb threw open the door and glared at us like a gorgon.
L
ondon’s Foundling Hospital stands in the midst of the green expanse of Lamb’s Conduit Fields, off the road that leads from the city of London to the outlying villages of Hampstead and High-gate. The edifice was newly built to a simple but imposing design: two broad wings flanking a central chapel, and a rectangular courtyard extending to lawns on either side. Pleasant surroundings, charming inmates, and an estimable collection of paintings by masters such as Reynolds, Hogarth, and Gainsborough exhibited on its walls had established the hospital as a fashionable visiting spot among London society. From my desk I gazed through long sash windows at ladies in fur-trimmed cloaks. They stood in a small cluster admiring a picturesque curiosity: a dozen or more uniformed children digging frosty earth, sweeping the courtyard, and working the pump.
What would it be like to be an inmate here? To be dressed in regulation brown, to sleep in a dormitory with a dozen other children who knew no more about their parentage than you? The place seemed clean and pleasant enough, the food adequate. I supposed it would be preferable to being abandoned on the street or consigned to the miseries of the workhouse. But how different it would have been from my own tranquil childhood, where no doubts about who would care for me had ever intruded on my consciousness.
I was presently seated in the grand courtroom, where I had come to sift through the hospital’s records. I executed this task under the watchful eye of the warden, an elderly gentleman weighed down by a heavy braided coat and a flowing full-bottomed wig. Madame Trenti had told me that Miss Alleyn’s letter had supplied her with the date—the very day the hospital opened, March 25, 1741—when her child was deposited here. From this information she had traced records relating to Partridge, records that made her certain Partridge was her child. Since hearing her account I’d felt uneasy; instinct told me her story was a deception. Yet my only evidence for these qualms was a vague prickling at the back of my neck and a feeling of emptiness in the pit of my belly—nebulous sensations that, I acknowledge, weren’t a solid foundation on which to base my doubt. And so I’d resolved to come to the hospital to ascertain what exactly (if anything) she might have found to convince her that Partridge was her long-lost son.
I’d asked the warden about the events of that first evening. In answer to my inquiry he handed me the first committee book, in which the hospital’s opening was thus described:
March 26, 1741
Having according to the resolution of the general committee with all possible diligence put this hospital into a condition proper for the reception of children, this committee met at seven o’clock in the evening. They found a great number of people crowding about the door, many with children and others for curiosity. The committee were informed that several persons had offered children but were refused admittance, the order of the general committee being that the house should not open till eight o’clock at night and this committee were resolved to give no preference to any persons whatsoever. The committee were attended by the peace officers of the parish and two watchmen of theirs, who were ordered to assist the watchmen of the hospital. They had orders to prevent any child’s being laid down at our door and to give a signal to the parish watchman in case any child was refused to be admitted into the hospital, who thereupon was to take care that it was not dropped on the parish.
At eight o’clock the lights in the entry were extinguished. The outward door was opened by the porter, who was forced to attend that door all night to keep out the crowd. Immediately the bell rang and a woman brought in a child. The messenger let her into the room on the right hand, and carried the child into the stewards’ room, where the proper officers together with Dr. Nesbitt and some other governors were constantly attending to inspect the child. According to the director’s plan, the child being inspected was received, numbered, and the billet of its description entered by three different persons for certainty. The woman who brought the child was then dismissed without being seen by any of the governors or asked any questions, then another child was brought and so on constantly till thirty children were admitted, eighteen of whom were boys and twelve girls…. Two children were refused, one being too old and the other appearing to have the itch…. About twelve o’clock, the house being full, the porter was ordered to give notice of it to the crowd who were without, who thereupon being a little troublesome…and the governors observing seven or eight women with children at the door and more amongst the crowd desired them that they would not drop any of their children in the streets. On this occasion the expressions of grief of the women whose children could not be admitted were scarcely more observable than those of some of the women who parted with their children, so that a more moving scene can’t well be imagined.
The account continued in similar vein, describing the agonies of these poor wretches, which seemed to me at once remote and indescribably poignant. And yet I found none of the details pertaining to each child that I wanted. I coughed gently. “Forgive me, sir.”
The elderly warden stopped writing and peered at me between a frame of white-powdered curls.
“This ledger provides an admirable record of the hospital’s first night, yet nothing specific relating to the children accepted. What records exist of them?”
“There are entries for each infant in the billet books.”
I recalled Madame Trenti’s mention of such books. Perhaps this was a sign she had come here after all and her account was not the fabrication I took it for. “Has a lady been here recently asking for the same thing? A small foreign lady, finely dressed?”
He gave a brusque laugh and shook his head, causing the lappets of his wig to flap noiselessly. “Every day there are callers wishing to trace an infant from some date or other. Do you really expect me to recall them all?”
“Of course not, sir. But this lady is a famous actress—Madame Trenti. Perhaps you recognized her.”
He puffed himself up. “Do I look the type of man who is familiar with actresses?”
“No, sir,” I said, chastened, “you misunderstood me. I merely thought you might recall her because she is very…flamboyant.” He glared at me again. “May I see the first volume?” I added hurriedly.
He made a great show of putting down his quill, rising from his chair, and hobbling reluctantly to an inner office. Some minutes later he returned, carrying a slender leather-bound volume, which he placed on the table before me.
I opened it. Each child was described on a separate sheet, to which were pinned various poignant mementos and a record of any note left with them. On the back of each sheet was a number, the name of the nurse to whom the child had been sent, and one or two words which indicated the child’s fate—
died
or
apprenticed.
I turned my attention to the first pages, which ran thus:
March 25, 1741
1. A female child about a fortnight old with the enclosed paper: “March 2, 1741. This child is baptized and her name is Dorritey Hanton.”
2. A male child about 2 months old, gown flowered on white with a white dimity mantle with the enclosed note: “Robert Chancellor, born January the 29.” Piece of fabric enclosed.
3. A male child 4 or 5 weeks old, a clout marked “FA” pinned on the breast, came in a brown cloak.
4. A male child about 3 weeks old, blue satin sleeves turned up with sarcenet.
5. A female child 6 or 7 weeks old, white dimity sleeves, laced ruffles, and white ribbon about the head. “Elizabeth Ayers born Feb 14, 1741, christened at St. Clement Danes, I beg the favor that this paper may be kept with the child.”
6. A female child about 3 weeks old, almost starved.
7. A male child, cleanly dressed, wrapped in a red cloak, with the enclosed letter: “Whether this child live or die, be pleased to send account there of it to the Old Bell Inn, Holborn, in one month’s time. Direct it to C.—it will be acknowledged a great favor.”
8. A male child about 4 weeks old, with the enclosed letter pinned on its breast: “This child is not christened, the father has not been found, the mother has deserted it. The mother’s name is Dorothy Smilk.”
9. A male child about 1 month old very meanly dressed.
10. A female child about 1 day old with the enclosed letter: “I am daughter of Samuel Wilde, water gilder, who died February 24, I was born March 24, pray let my Christian name be Alice…”
So far as I could see, there was no mention here of any child who could conceivably have been Partridge. I looked up from the page, shaking my head in bewilderment. “These children were all extremely young, no more than infants?”
There was a great silence, during which my words seemed to hang in the air like a pall of smoke on a windless day. Eventually the warden looked up, flaring his nostrils as if infuriated by the crass stupidity of such a question. “It is a matter of record that the governing body stipulated only children under the age of two months should be admitted.”
“And the infants accepted were all raised here?”
He put down his pen wearily, as if resigning himself to the fact he was dealing with a half-wit. “This building had not yet been constructed. The hospital was then quartered—as you would have read, had you paid proper attention to the committee book—in a building in Hatton Garden.”
“And that is where they were raised?”
“No, Mr. Hopson. It is not. They were dispatched to nurses in the country, where it was felt the clean air would assist their chances of survival. Only at the age of five or six did they return to the hospital. Whereupon they were educated until about eleven or twelve years, then apprenticed to trade.”
This was what I had suspected all along, and yet I was heavy with dismay. Far from confirming Madame Trenti’s story that she had found a record of Partridge here, this information disproved it. The problem was one of date. If Partridge had been left in March 1741, as Miss Alleyn had claimed in her letter, he must have been about four or five years old. Far too old for the hospital directors’ specification for children aged not more than two months. I pursued another track.
“If, for argument’s sake, an older child had been presented, what would have happened to it?”
“Such a child would not be eligible to be granted a place—it would have been rejected. As you saw in the notes, there were guards and watchmen to ensure no child was abandoned.” His tone was growing overtly snappish, and he gazed regretfully at the ledger from which I was still distracting him.
“Who was the warden that night?”
“My predecessor, James Barrow.”
“Is he employed here still?”
“No longer. He retired some years ago.”
From the way he glared at me I could see his patience was at breaking point. Still I was stubbornly determined to persist. “One last question if you please…. Where may I find James Barrow?”
“He lives in Hatton Garden, I believe. Nearby the old premises of the hospital. More I cannot tell you. Now I really must—”
“My heartfelt thanks, sir. What you’ve told me has been most enlightening.”
I deflected my gaze to avoid antagonizing him further, and my eye came to rest on a painting in a massive gilt frame suspended above his head. A small plaque indicated the painting was by Hogarth and gave its title,
Moses Brought Before Pharaoh’s Daughter.
Another foundling story. Hogarth depicted Moses as a small child, returned to the palace by his nurse. There was a touching humanity in the way the child clung to his nurse’s dress, reluctant to greet the princess. The background was filled with a jumble of smoking buildings—not unlike a London landscape. Had Hogarth understood that the agonies of not knowing whether you belonged to a princess or a serving girl were as acute in modern London as in ancient Egypt?
I turned back to the description in the committee book of the first day that children were accepted. Certain lines now seemed to jump out at me: “They had orders to prevent any child’s being laid down at our door and to give a signal to the parish watchman in case any child was refused to be admitted into the hospital, who thereupon was to take care that it was not dropped on the parish.” Had some incident prompted the authorities to give this order to the watch? Could it be that earlier in the day—before the guards and watch were assembled—a child
had
been left who wasn’t eligible? If not, why had such precautions been necessary?
I consulted the billet book once more. Halfway through the entries a thought struck me. One of the entries was different from the rest. I turned back and reread them. I hadn’t imagined it. The discrepancy was there, as I thought. Child number seven had been entered without any mention of his age. I took out my pocketbook and transcribed the entry word for word.