The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames Read online

  And so my mother had gotten her way, traveling with us through London. Hers was a constant and familiar voice in my head, fading only when our plane landed back in the States. We had gone together, after all.

  As the wheels touched the ground, I reflexively reached for my phone.

  My mother would always call after my adventures, sometimes several times, ostensibly to make sure I had arrived home safely. I resented those calls, knowing they would inevitably lead to arguments, harsh words, tears, and phones slammed down onto the receiver, followed by the inevitable follow-up call from my father. Why couldn’t you just keep the peace? As soon as technology gave me the gift of caller ID, I would send her straight to voice mail, only calling her back when guilt overcame my misgivings.

  This time there would be no call from my mother. No one checking to see if I’d made it home in one piece. My older sister and I had been estranged since my father’s funeral, eleven months after my mother’s. In the space of a single year, my birth family had vanished.

  I’d have expected to feel relief in my mother’s absence. Instead warm tears streamed down my face as the plane taxied toward the gate.

  I had spent a lifetime loathing my mother, moving thousands of miles away to be rid of her, only to be haunted by her after she was gone.

  When I returned home, instead of organizing photos or turning my focus back to work, I began my search for Dorothy Soames.

  IT STARTED SLOWLY, as small chunks of time surfing the web. I don’t know what I expected to find, or even exactly what I was looking for. My efforts amounted to aimless googling of a few words in various combinations—“Dorothy Soames” and “England,” for example—each of which yielded disappointing results. I found a reference to Lady Mary Spencer-Churchill Soames, best known as a member of London society and the daughter of Winston Churchill. A connection to Winston Churchill wouldn’t have been unwelcome, but even if his daughter had married into a Soames clan with some relationship to my mother, it was difficult to imagine how they could have been connected. My search uncovered various other people named Dorothy or Soames, but none of them wound up giving me any clues into my mother’s past.

  I could have stopped there. At that point, my level of curiosity hadn’t progressed beyond a vague interest. But ever since I returned from London, I had felt a growing sense of unease. My mother’s letter, the one she sent all those years ago, kept on tickling the back of my brain—along with the specific word she had used to describe herself.

  I stared at the computer screen, the cursor blinking as if awaiting instructions. I placed my fingers gently on the keyboard and typed:

  Foundling London

  And there they were, right there at the top of the page, the words that would take me back across the Atlantic to find the answers to questions I didn’t yet know I had: the Foundling Hospital.

  “I THINK SHE may have been my mother.”

  I had no idea if anyone at Coram would be able to help me when I sent an email through the general contact channels, asking for any information about a girl named Dorothy Soames.

  The Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, or the Foundling Hospital, as it was commonly called, was founded by a shipbuilder named Thomas Coram and granted a royal charter in 1739. Its stated mission was to care for “helpless Infants daily exposed to Destruction.”1 More than two hundred and fifty years later, the institution still exists, though now it’s known simply as Coram, in honor of its founder.

  I waited for a reply, checking my in-box multiple times a day.

  A few days later, it came. Yes, someone would look into the files to see if the institution had records on Dorothy Soames. But the promise of assistance came with a caution—don’t expect much. Even if they could find her records, it would be unusual for a search to unearth many details. The most I could hope for would be a confirmation of whether and when a child had been at the Foundling Hospital. Only in exceptional circumstances would there be anything more.

  At the time, Patrick and I were living in Florida. He had landed a job on a team creating high-end video games, and we’d packed everything up and headed south from Atlanta. Leaving behind my position as the director of a nonprofit environmental law firm had been a difficult decision to make. Holding polluters accountable had once been my dream job, the reason I’d gone to law school. I filed lawsuits against unscrupulous paper mills, coal plants, and waste management companies for spewing dangerous toxins like mercury, arsenic, and lead into the air and water. Each case was grueling, the stakes always high, and my never-ending responsibilities ran the gamut from supervising staff to drafting briefs, managing the budget, and raising money for the cause. I was filled with an intoxicating sense of purpose. But after thirteen years, I was exhausted.

  Overnight, my life morphed from a continuous flurry of court hearings, meetings, and phone calls to days with seemingly endless hours to fill. We’d moved to Orlando’s historic district, a tree-lined neighborhood with an eclectic mix of 1920s Craftsman bungalows and Mediterranean-style homes. I took on a few clients, but spent most days roaming the brick streets shaded by ancient oaks laden with Spanish moss, their sturdy branches fanning out above me as the humid air weighed me down like a blanket. I sat for long hours on a bench at a nearby lake, monitoring the progress of a pair of swans giving flying lessons to their cygnets. I wandered through the old cemetery, where I discovered an eagle’s nest in the fork of a lone pine tree and a pair of nesting owls perched on the branch of a cypress. The days spread out with a slow pulsing rhythm, my mind freed from the specter of endless meetings and impending court deadlines.

  With little to occupy my time, I ordered one of the books I had come across during my brief inquiry into the Foundling Hospital. Written by a former chief executive of the institution, it was a quick read, and soon I purchased another, this one by an academic and historian. Each page was dense with facts and statistics chronicling the early years of the hospital, and I would sit on my back porch, turning the pages slowly as I listened to the chorus of frogs that lived among the ferns and bromeliads, occasionally glancing up to see a lizard scamper across the burnt-orange Saltillo tiles.

  Eventually I heard back from Coram. A woman named Val confirmed what I had already suspected: my mother had been raised in the Foundling Hospital under the name of Dorothy Soames. Val provided me with some general information—a timeline, a confirmation of my mother’s stay at the institution. If I wanted to know more, I would need to come back to London to look at the files in person.

  Months passed as I stalled on making any kind of decision, the contents of the books I’d read fading away in my mind. I was beginning to imagine that my dive into the Foundling Hospital’s history had been a momentary diversion, a fleeting detour into some mildewing family archives, when Patrick nominated Barcelona as his destination of choice for our annual getaway.

  “We could stop off in London first,” I responded, the words spilling from my mouth without forethought. “There’s a direct flight,” I added, as if I were indifferent to the outcome, my suggestion only a matter of logistics.

  Looking back, I don’t believe that I consciously decided to return to London to research my mother’s past. Why would I? The five years since my mother had died had been calm, even peaceful.

  Nothing would be served by stirring up the past.

  During the summer days of my youth, I’d taken riding lessons at an equestrian center nestled below the ridge that ran from Santa Cruz to San Francisco. After hours of demanding instruction, I would sneak away and ride through the labyrinth of trails that crisscrossed the adjacent hills and mountains. The sun would soon disappear as I followed the well-worn bridle path through a gap in a stand of giant redwoods. I would ride aimlessly for hours, no map or plan to guide me, turning onto one path or another, enticed by the way a root curved along the ruts and grooves worn down by rain, the bend of a tree limb, or how a ray of dwindling sunshine snuck through the canopy to
cast a shadow on a flowering bush, all of it demanding further investigation. The air was cool and damp, and in the dappled light, I would let the reins go lax. Allowing my steed to choose the path, I would stroke her wide neck as if to encourage her to make her own choice, content to see where she would take me next. When I lifted my chin toward the sky, I could see only ancient trees towering over me. And without any conscious aim or desire on my part, there I would be.

  Deep in the forest.

  That is how my journey began—without a blueprint or master plan, or any carefully weighed options. Yet once our plane landed in London that second time, there would be no turning back.

  After a fitful night of rest at our hotel, I found myself in the lobby of Coram, in the heart of Bloomsbury, a fashionable area of central London. I anxiously tapped my feet, glancing nervously over at Patrick as a woman approached us with a purposeful gait, a file folder tucked under one arm. Her gray hair was thick and wavy, with white tresses that cascaded around her face. Her attire was understated and professional, an unassuming button-down blouse and a simple wool skirt. She introduced herself as Val, and while up until that time we had exchanged only emails, I felt instantly at ease in her presence. She smiled sympathetically as she greeted me, as if she knew that my journey of discovery would not be easy.

  She led me to a small room, then placed the file folder carefully on a table. I recalled her earlier words of caution about managing my expectations, not to hope for much. Still, my heart beat a little faster when I noticed that the folder was several inches thick. I tried not to look at it as we exchanged pleasantries about my flight.

  “We can make copies to take with you, if you’d like. And after you have looked at the files, we can head over to the museum.”

  Once Val had stepped out of the room, Patrick put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. I took a breath and turned my attention to the file, which seemed to pulse with anticipatory energy. As I began gently spreading out the thick stack of documents yellowed with age, my eyes fell on a bundle of letters dating back to the 1930s. Some were delicately handwritten in thick black ink, faded with time and difficult to decipher. Other letters were more formal, usually a sentence or two, with no name, just the word Secretary typewritten where a signature would be. There were a few photos interspersed among the letters, and what appeared to be reports, some several pages in length.

  On some of the letters, I could make out a signature: Lena Weston. The first name didn’t ring any bells. But the last name did. It was my mother’s maiden name, and my stomach churned at the sight of those six familiar letters.

  I’d never heard my mother mention anyone named Lena. Then again, I’d rarely heard my mother mention anyone beyond the immediate sphere of our neighborhood, my school, and my father’s office. From time to time she mentioned a friend who lived in Europe, but I knew little about her—only that her name was Pat.

  There were too many files to review, and the feeling in the pit of my stomach gave me the sense that I’d be better off examining the contents on my own, somewhere private. After flagging a stack of promising documents for Val to copy, we walked over to the Foundling Museum, located just a few steps away at 40 Brunswick Square. The Georgian-style brick building, once the site of the Foundling Hospital’s administrative offices, had been turned into another kind of public institution: a place for the curious to learn about the history of the hospital and the “foundlings” who were raised there.

  A foundling, I’d learned over the course of my initial research, was not an orphan. And the Foundling Hospital was neither a hospital nor an orphanage.

  An orphan was a child whose parents were dead, whereas a foundling likely still had parents, somewhere. Perhaps due to poverty, or more likely because of illegitimacy, those parents had given their child over to the care of the Foundling Hospital. Which meant that, despite its name and the fact that it did provide medical care, the “hospital” was more akin to an orphanage. The term foundling was technically a misnomer in the case of the children who’d ended up at the institution, for only a child who had been abandoned could be properly described as a foundling. For most of the hospital’s history, admissions were limited to children who were personally handed over by a parent, following a rigorous process of review.

  The files I’d begun to thumb through contained some early clues, in the form of a document on parchment, from an era before ballpoint pens and mechanical typewriters. “The Foundling Hospital” was written across the top in elegant calligraphy; just underneath was a simple title in block print—“Rules for the Admission of Children.” As I scanned the document, my eyes lingered on a few choice phrases: previous good character, in the course of virtue, the way of an honest livelihood. I would learn more later.

  At the museum I wandered through exhibits on the daily life of the foundlings, photos of identically dressed children filling row after row of a chapel. There was a small black iron bed, along with a display of the uniforms that the children were required to wear. They hung neatly in a row, on rounded pegs. The serge cloth was thick and coarse, a homely russet brown, chosen as a symbol of poverty, humility, and, as I would later learn, disgrace.

  The garments were strangely familiar to me.

  I had grown up in a wealthy family, but while other children at my school wore clothes purchased at upscale department stores, my mother frequently sewed my clothes by hand. I remember watching her work, hunched over her sewing table, lips pursed as she skillfully guided the fabric under the rapidly dancing needle. The clothes were flawless, with tight stitches and straight hems, but always brown and loose-fitting. I would plead with her to let me wear something else. The drab and shapeless clothes would make me the target of ridicule, I told her. She told me that I was too fat to wear anything else, and that children wouldn’t tease me. Both statements were equally false.

  I remember standing in the center of the playground, wearing one of the brown skirts that my mother had carefully sewn for me. The hem fell below the knees, too long to be fashionable. The outfit was completed by an oversized shirt, plain white socks, and sturdy brown shoes, which did nothing to help the cause.

  My eyes were fixated on the rectangles forming a hopscotch pattern in the asphalt beneath me. I counted the numbers drawn in brightly colored chalk as I tried to drown out the taunts of my classmates.

  When my mother picked me up, she had a different take on the playground dynamics. I wasn’t the freak, the weirdo in ill-fitting clothes—and the children’s taunts were just a cover. “It’s because you play the violin,” she whispered as if she were sharing a secret. “They’re just jealous.” I turned my head and watched her as she spoke, but the expression on her face revealed nothing other than a pure, fiery certainty in her convictions. I remember it vividly, her breathless voice and wide eyes. It was a small, insignificant moment, but it may have been my first realization that I wasn’t the only member of my family who was out of step with the outside world.

  As I gently ran my fingers over the uniforms the foundlings had worn, I wondered whether they were the reason my mother had dressed me as she did. Perhaps, for her, coarse brown sacks that might as well have been used to transport potatoes were simply what children wore.

  I headed upstairs to the Court Room, the place where the “governors” of the Foundling Hospital had conducted their business. This room, where the men responsible for the administration of the hospital had spent countless hours debating the fates of their charges, had a familiarity about it as well—the formal furniture and lush Persian rugs reminded me of pieces my mother had chosen to decorate our home.

  As I wandered into the picture gallery, adorned with large-scale portraits and a marble fireplace, my breath caught in my chest at the sight of two tall, ornate chairs. Featured prominently in the center of the expansive room, with intricate carvings that crept up their upright backs, they looked stately, like wooden thrones. They’d been used in the chapel, I was told. The resemblance was more than uncanny.
The chairs were indistinguishable from a pair that were prominently displayed in the living room of my childhood home.

  Wandering through the museum, I was overcome with a certainty that this was the place where it had begun—the darkness that consumed my mother, smothering any chance for tenderness or affection in our household.

  Everyone I encountered treated me with kindness—the docent who showed me around the museum, the curator I met with later that afternoon. They must have known my interest wasn’t purely academic. Maybe my reddened eyes gave me away. Some appeared to know to exactly what had brought me to the museum. One woman approached me and explained that she herself had been a ward of the hospital in the early 1950s. We chatted for a while.

  “We were fortunate,” she volunteered. “Where else would we have gone?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised by the woman’s gratitude to the institution. I’d passed right by Coram’s motto that very morning: “Better chances for children since 1739.” And as I roamed through the halls of the museum, I was surrounded by portraits of the dukes, earls, and other noble men extolled for their roles in creating and managing the Foundling Hospital throughout the centuries. The men in their elegant clothing, perched atop richly brocaded furniture, seemed to radiate pride in their philanthropic achievement.

  I stood for a long time under the portrait of Thomas Coram, depicted in his later years, with white hair and a ruddy face, wearing a sturdy coat spun of worsted wool, and surrounded by evidence of his travels and station in life. The oil painting was mounted in a burnished golden frame. As I contemplated the face of the man whose vision had carved out a place for children like my mother, I felt a familiar bitterness rise up in my chest.