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 9, 2010

Chapter Seventeen:  In Which I Am Sold at Auction:

Hitty is still in the cabinet and waiting patiently for spring to arrive and the old lady to return to the Preble home.  However, summer came and went and she did not return.  A number of men arrived in September and started putting numbered tags on all the items, even on Hitty.  There is gong to be auction and Hitty will be auctioned off.  She was glad to get away from the china animals but very apprehensive of what was to come.  On the day of the auction, she was shocked to see how the clothing had changed over the years and was glad Mrs. Preble was not able to see the women and children in their brief clothing. 

Hitty was very interested in watching the auction process.  Finally it was her turn.  A bidding war ensued between a big woman in a tight pink dress and an Old Gentleman, but in the end she was purchased by the Old Gentleman for $51.00.  She was very thankful that he won the auction and couldn’t wait to get out of there before the other bidder possibly got her hands on Hitty.

It was a beautiful blue September day, just like the one she enjoyed with the Prebles while on the way to Portland and then Boston.  Except for an added house or two, strange ships in the harbor and cars flashing by them, she could not see that things had changed much since Phoebe Preble’s day.  “Yet they had said that was a hundred years ago.” 

They boarded a train and the Old Gentleman said “You’re beginning your travels now, Hitty.  I don’t suppose you were ever out of the State of Maine before.”  “And that,” Hitty thought to herself, “only goes to show that even the wisest people don’t know everything.”

DISCUSSION: 

It just hit me during this re-read, that Hitty was sold at auction for $51.00.  That is quite a lot of money.  They must have thought highly of her as an antique.

Hitty’s Travels Thus Far:

Chapter 1: In Maine with the Preble family;
Chapter 2: To Portland, Maine;  Boarded a 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 plantation 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 accidentally 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 and winds up in 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. Purchased by 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.
Chapter 17: Hitty is sold at auction and taken by her new owner, the Old Gentleman, to New York to the antique shop.