What to do with Mrs. Barrie’s earrings?
I’ve recently been trying to organize my belongings better, and believe me there’s a lot of room for improvement. I’m not a pack rat, but I think I fall into that vast middle group who save too much stuff anyway. For me, a lot of it involves papers and photos I inherited when my mother died, which happened close to a decade ago. My brother has some of it, but I have a lot too, and it’s compounded by the fact that my mother was the only child of an only child and a great deal of memorabilia came down to her and to her alone.
In addition, my family came to this country in the 1840s, and so there’s a lot available and a lot of it is pretty old. Some of them were scrapbook keepers – for example, my great-grandfather, born in New York before the Civil War. His scrapbook contains things like his wedding invitation and the last letter his father (born around 1815) wrote before death. It’s in German, but my mother had it translated. There are also photos from the early days of photography, although to my great regret some of them were not labeled back when people still knew who they were.
Label your photographs!
Gone is the Victorian mourning jewelry made of the hair of the dead, which my grandmother showed me when I was a child. I think my mother threw it away over fifty years ago when my grandmother died.
I find that I can’t bear getting rid of the bulk of the other memorabilia and photos, so my goal now is to organize them better. At the moment, they’re stashed in many boxes in a corner of a room. The other evening I spent hours going through my mother’s old but more recent photos, of us and of her grandchildren. This was easier – much of it was redundant, and I saved only a small percentage of the best. I could be ruthless about that.
So, who is Mrs. Barrie? She’s not a relative; she was my ballet teacher, who died in 1957. She was a British woman whom I remember as being tremendously strict. She used to play the piano for class herself, not even looking at it, while she fastened an eagle eye on us. Mrs. Barrie used to test us on our memory of steps by making us turn on our backs and having us each do the combination one by one, alone. If we didn’t know it ourselves, we couldn’t look at others and draw from their knowledge.
When Mrs. Barrie became ill and stopped teaching, my mother made the obligatory sickbed call to her and discovered, to her surprise, that away from the classroom she was a charming and charismatic lady and they got along famously. So from then on, about every week, my mother visited her – which was a long trip. I remember that my mother was distraught when Mrs. Barrie died, and afterwards my mother always took care to be kind to her widower. He was quite a character himself, the quintessential British actor (here he is: Leslie Barrie) of a certain era, who had anecdotes about all the great stage actors of his time.
A few years after Mrs. Barrie died, Mr. Barrie was struck by a cab crossing Madison Avenue and badly injured. He wasn’t at all rich, and he was sent to Bellevue and then released before he was ready to live on his own again. Where did he go? To our place. He stayed for a couple of months in the room next to mine, and I could hear him groaning in the morning when he got up – he was still in considerable pain. The other thing I remember most about him was that he would say to me, whenever I referred to my mother with the pronoun she, “Who’s ‘she’, the cat’s mother?” I didn’t understand his remark at all; my mother had to explain it to me.
A few years later Mr. Barrie met a younger woman, married her, and they moved back to England. But his letters – those tissue-thin Aerogrammes – would arrive regularly, written in a tiny spidery hand that packed a ton of words into each missive. As he became older, he unfortunately got dementia, and his second wife took valiant care of him till he died in his eighties.
My mother saved the letters, plus some items from his first marriage that he gave her – including photos, and jewelry that had belonged to his wife, my long-ago dance teacher. The jewelry is worth next to nothing in monetary terms, and I’m not really attached to it. But still, I find I can’t dispose of this stuff, either. At least, not yet. It seems so callous and final to throw them out.
Here are the jewelry items:
A passing thought, perhaps practical (provided the necessary prerequisites are in place), perhaps not, especially since this thought traverses deeply personal space: nevertheless, here goes . . . commission a portrait of Mrs. Barrie, lifesize, and have provision to affix the jewelry upon it to frame upon the wall? Thus the jewelry can continue to do today (in a loose manner of speaking) what it once did long ago.
So many layers of emotion. I have similar type jewelry, a few pins, from my grandmothers, one who died when my mother was a small child and the other who died when I was 4 years old. The pins and a literal handful of photos are my only mementos of those women, who lived difficult lives in difficult times. I feel an obligation of loyalty to them for my own life, in the chain of ancestry. I long to have known them, as a child and as an adult, to have known their thoughts and feelings and favorite flavor of ice cream. I long to have memories to cherish with that jewelry, but alas there are none. Hiraedd. My heart alongside yours, Neo.
I have similar issues with photos, letters, and a variety of things that relate to my mother (war bride) & father (Army Lt). I hope to get things together, write the “story”, and then see if a museum would be interested. Since the things relate to WW2, the museum in NOLO might be interested, if I can provide the context.
When my aunt passed away, I donated some pictures and items to the local history museum since the items related to the early days & businesses of Ft. Myers.
There might be a place that would be interested in your items, perhaps somewhere in England.
My wife and I share your problem. The easy thing to do is to pass them on, but our daughter does not want them. I have sold some things. Some things we have sent to a niece who is interested. Mosty will probably go to Goodwill or the dump when we’re gone. 🙁
I thought of another option for the letters and photos – write a book.
See 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. That book had letters back and forth, but you could use his letters to your family and then fill in the pieces, unless you have carbon copies of letters sent. Add your recollection of conversations while he was recuperating at your home as well as pictures. It would be a good read…
Hmm, I need to find my copy of the book – I hope I didn’t donate it to the library!
Vintage clothing and jewelry is quite popular in some circles. You might put the pictures of your item on Facebook marketplace or some local market place and include the story of their origins. The people who are into vintage things such as this would treasure them and enjoy telling the story of their acquisition.
Just a thought.
Another gem from neo.
Great post. It reminds me of the story of Vivian Maier. She was a nanny most of her life and a compulsive photographer who had a genuine talent for it. But because her work was never shown or recognized, upon her death containers of her 100,000 photos and negatives were auctioned off, sight unseen from a rented storage room. By a stroke of luck those photos were taken seriously by the buyer.
The documentary: Finding Vivian Maier
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2714900/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_4
On AppleTV and AMC+
The bio:
http://www.vivianmaier.com/about-vivian-maier/
Some photo collections:
http://www.vivianmaier.com/
(I love the self-portraits.)
I live in a medium sized city. We have a wonderful store called Scrap. They accept donations of anything that could conceivably be arts-n-crafts raw material. They then sell these donations to cover the overhead of the store. It’s wonderful. I’d look for a store like this. Another option is antique stores. I’ve sold old costume jewelry to antique stores. Their wares typically end of in the hands of people who know what they’re buying and will love them.
Reminds me of a passage in the memoirs of British general Edward Spears, close friend of Churchill and emissary to France during the campaign of 1940. Spears had grown up in France, and in the 1960s he returned to the house he had lived in. There, he found a picnic basket filled with his grandmother’s old letters:
“The next letters I opened dropped me back two generations into a land of other people’s memories but with an occasional sharp glint as they recalled things I had heard of as a child. They were the letters of a poor sick young woman written to her absent husband whilst she was immobilised awaiting her first and only child, my mother.
I never imagined my grandmother other than I had known her, white haired, stout, and dignified. The picture painted in these letters of a girl frantic with loneliness and longing, exasperated at the threat of a miscarriage which kept her lying on her back, begging her husband to come to her, all told in the reserved language of that day, filled me with a kind of fond protective amusement. It was so unexpected. Time, so long imprisoned in these boxes, was revealing itself in an entirely new guise, oscillating quite regardless of years from one generation to the next or back again–more, it was taking me, an elderly man in the 1960s, and leading me back to the year 1864, there to watch over, with infinite tenderness, a young woman I had never known, my grandmother as a young wife…”
Assuming there is no real value to the jewelry: Find a good, well-established ballet studio for young girls, write a short monograph on the story behind the jewelry, put it all together in a small box and donate them for future costumes. That way, the girls can read the story whenever they are using the jewelry and it will contribute to their excitement.
Aggie–
That’s a great idea!
Final disposition, perhaps, look for a historical society that might appreciate it…?
Museums are also a possibility, they may find use or value in it, but historical society would be my first bet.
Just a great post, such interesting story threads woven together. Pieces like this are why I visit the site daily.
I do not envy your situation.
The courage that my mother had
Edna St. Vincent Millay – 1892-1950
The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.
The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.
Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!—
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.
The jewelry is quite beautiful! It’s a shame if you have no young relatives or friends who go ape over that style. I hope you can find a good consignment store to put them on the market, because someone will be absolutely delighted to buy them.
My aunt Leona solved the problem of old family photographs by burning them all when my grandmother died. There were photos of my great grandfather who had 12 children but none of their descendants seem to have any copies. I have old photos of my mother’s family but few of my fathers’.
I do have one artifact of my great grandfather, though. He came out to Illinois as a young man from New York about 1850. He worked in a glass factory in Peru, IL and, when he quit his job to return to New York to marry my great grandmother, about 1860, he made himself a glass cane. I have that cane, framed on my wall. He stayed in New York during the Civil War and one son (of 9 sons) was born there. Two of his brothers died in the War so the family did participate. After the War, he and my grandmother came back to Illinois and were farmers.
“Label your photographs!”
My wife would heartily endorse this admonition. She’s an archivist who has hundreds of photographs accumulated over a century or so that could only be labelled “Unknown persons standing in front of unidentifiable wall at unknown time for unknown reason.” It’s maddening to her.
My father was a Biblical scholar and historian of Israel and neighboring countries/civilizations. He returned to the Middle East every year and took thousands of photos — color slides, mostly — from Tunis to Turkey and every place in between.
When he died none of my siblings was interested, so I took them all and have carried them around the world with me in my professional life. Retired now, I look at those boxes of slides sitting in a corner and wonder what will ever become of them. They certainly have historical value: his first trip to the Holy Land was in 1952 and his last one was in 1978. But I, regrettably, don’t share his interest in the subject and have no idea what to do with them.
I have thought about sending them to the Smithsonian (we have done this with some of our Africana), but don’t even know how to tell that institution what they are. I have also thought about throwing them in the trash, but couldn’t bring myself to do that. Perhaps one of my daughters, who is interested in family history AND in photography, will take them, but to what end? Will she end up in 30 years wondering what to do with boxes of slides she has never looked at, as I do now?
I share your frustration, Neo. Butt I don’t have an answer for you or for me.
F., that’s fascinating.
What a treasure!
Have you thought of donating the collection to an institute?
For example:
W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research:
“We are an American non-profit research center located in Jerusalem, dedicated since 1900 to the study of the ancient Near East.”—
https://aiar.org/
https://aiar.org/home/about/
There are other places—institutes, universities, museums—maybe closer to where you are, that I imagine would be thrilled to have something like that in their collection.
Try googling “universities + digs + [M.E. country, e.g., Israel]
Neo, If your town has a local historical society (or the town(s) where your parents/grandparents lived), you should contact them to see if they are interested in any of your memorabilia. My small town has an active historical society with all kinds of treasures, including many years of journals of a local farmer that illuminate what life was like “back then” which they post daily on FB. The whole town follows their saga.
Our local paper just donated tons of photos from decades ago and the Hist Soc is posting them daily on FB asking if anyone recognizes the people, place or date. They are identifying a lot. I donated a photo of my 4 great-great uncles in their WWI uniforms. They joined together and since they were all musicians they were drafted into the Army band. Just now it occurred to me, I wonder if they knew John Philip Sousa!
Keep the memories alive!
Barry Meislen:
Excellent suggestion. I will contact them. Thank you.
Barry:
I have written the AIAR (formerly the American School of Oriental Research, where my father had an honorary lectureship on several occasions, BTW) and offered them the collection.
Thank you again for the suggestion. I will post a note if they accept the donation.
Neo, since I discovered your blog, I’ve known that we are kindred spirits.
I still have several boxes of photos and scrapbooks from my grandparents and parents to go through. I’m delighting in the family recipes I’ve found, and I plan to scan the hand-written ones.
Love matters more than artifacts, but oh, how wonderful those artifacts are.
If you have some old lockets — don’t throw them out unopened.
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2022/7/21/23271786/does-image-joseph-smith-exist-what-one-descendant-found-forgotten-family-heirloom-lds
There is no way to confirm that the picture is of Joseph Smith jr, but the fact that a potential one was discovered after all this time is amazing.
–
1) see if Mrs. Barries’ hometown has [a town/local museum], or [ a historical society], and 2) [call and ask] how you can donate these items, to one of these places.
I think these places would LOVE to receive these types of items.
Albright himself was a giant in the field; and an American in an area dominated by extraordinary Brits (and also French, often Jesuits).
So, perhaps the “American” connection might help.
I suggested other universities because a significant number of them (not just US schools) organize digs in Israel, and other places the region, and send their archeological students for a summer “season”, or several, to gain practical experience in actually conducting and organizing digs, and…”digging”.
These digs are generally sponsored and funded by the foreign university in conjunction, or coordination, with the Israel Department of Antiquities.
In 1979-80 I had the good fortune to volunteer/work on a half-dozen digs around the country, from North Sinai to the northwest of the country. Best time of my life…
}}} “Label your photographs!”
I long ago solved this by not bothering with photographs… they always disappointed. 😀
When I was 12, I was taking an early morning flight, and the sun on the clouds below was gorgeous. Took a photo, and what came back just lacked everything of what I saw. Part of it was the camera and film (old “Instamatic”, early 1970s film stock which lacked any kind of vibrant color), but it also is the fact that I have a pretty good visual memory, and so feel less need for pictures.
I’ve done some modern stuff with my phone-camera, but it’s more for informing and showing something to other people than for my own memory.
For example, I was out in Phoenix a couple months ago, and a pair of geese — yes, geese — decided to take a low takeoff pass over the road… right at bumper height maybe 10y in front of me as I came down the road at 45-50mph.
Took one of them out, but the other was literally lodged into the rental car’s grill. 😀
And it was alive… (8-X
It was actually in surprisingly good shape, for what happened — both wings were effed but it seemed to be ok other than that. I reached out to a local bird rescue sanctuary, and they came to get it. The whole thing is an amusing story, and the pics I took help. They said that they have gotten pretty good with wing issues, so it may even have been able to restore it to flight ability. I can’t tell because, when I called to ask about it, they indicated “policy is to not discuss”. :-/ So no idea what eventually happened, whether they had to put it to sleep or if it is grounded and in a nice place for flightless geese or if it got released back into the wild after recuperating…
But that’s the primary reason for the pictures, to show to others — I can still recall most of the event in my head, down to fairly significant details, even though it was like 4 months ago. No doubt that will fuzz up over time, but it’s an amusing story so it’ll get reinforced by the telling, too.
I start to throw away stuff. It always brings back memories. I have to stop and read the card or the letter or the book and then I get sentimental and, plop, there goes the afternoon and I’m tired.
You should never throw away anything except old appliances. Always leave it to your kids to do after you have croaked. They can do it without memories.
Of course the Scandanavians have a thing….death cleaning. The exact opposite of the previous post. Arrange your space to lighten the burden on your survivors, in the event of your unexpectedly hurried departure from this world.
My mom is 90 and lives with my brother, who is 68, neither could live alone. Should some unfortunate event happen, a health care worker refers you to Family and Protective Services. You will be deemed unable to live alone and forced to live in a health care facility. Life can really suck, sometimes. Hopefully that fate will miss you.
Does the performing arts department at the school maintain an inventory of props with enough care that her jewelry could have a safe place to be stored yet be used from time to time?
Matthew M:
She had her own school that ended in the late 1950s.
Line from”Taking Chance”:
“You’re his witness. Without a witness, he …just disappears.”
I have donated items to the local college theater department. The items live on in my mind and I am happy with that thought. But I do take pictures so I have the image and can write a note. Also, I am putting together a “book” for my children that will include some of those details.