by Shelley Wood
At 2:00 in the afternoon, we bundled the babies in fresh sheets and blankets and readied ourselves to rush them across the street. A steady drizzle was falling, and the wind had whipped up, carrying the first real sting of autumn frost. Oliva Dionne stood with his father in the shadow of the porch, their faces inscrutable. None of the children came to watch, which was a blessing—perhaps they’d been herded upstairs by Mme. Dionne, because she, too, was absent.
Ivy carried Yvonne, of course, and Dr. Dafoe, Marie, still the smallest and frailest of the five. I was expecting to carry Émilie, whom Ivy always refers to as mine. At the last minute, however, Dr. Dafoe asked me to hand Émilie to Lauren and sent me across to the new hospital to help the police constables keep reporters and well-wishers at bay. Lauren had never even held one of the babies before! Then I thought of the newspapermen and Mr. Davis with his cameras, and how this short journey across the street would be captured for all the world in photos and print. Lauren is quite attractive, in her way.
Dr. Dafoe had me take the blankets back to the Dionne farm: he wants everything from our makeshift nursery—all of the babies’ clothes and bibs and diapers and towels, even the new blankets we’d used to ferry the babies across the road—incinerated on the Dionne property. It seems such a terrible waste. Most families could never dream of having all of this for their own babies.
I walked back to the farmhouse and stole quietly up the steps of the covered porch, then set down the blankets, folded, by the kitchen door. Through the mesh screen I took a last glimpse at the kitchen: the wide plank shelving covering two walls; the big ceramic sink with working faucets, wide enough to bathe the babies; the bulky woodstove brooding in the corner; and the five sleeping cots, impossibly small, now earmarked for the bonfire.
In the dim light, made murkier still by the darkening sky outside, I almost failed to spy Mme. Dionne seated at the table, her broad shoulders heaving, her head in her hands.
September 23, 1934
DR. DAFOE HAS worked a miracle once again. I’m sorry I doubted him, even for a second. The babies’ fevers are gone and their color is back. On Dr. Dafoe’s orders they are spending several hours sleeping on the side porch in the full sun, oblivious to the birds chirping over their good health and the steady traffic pulling up beyond the front gate. A fence is being built that will keep any nosy parkers from slipping around the back. What’s more, the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapper has been captured in New York City! I’m so relieved I could cry.
My classes start tomorrow. I held Émilie for as long as I possibly could tonight before heading out to St. Joseph’s Hospital. For the next eight months the nurses’ dormitory will be my home. I’ll be back, I promised little Émilie. Wait for me.
October 5, 1934 (Ottawa Citizen)
* * *
PUBLIC NOTICE TO THE READERS OF THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
The St. Lawrence Starch Company takes this occasion to acknowledge publicly the receipt of the above letter and is proud of this expression of confidence in its product. The company is particularly gratified at the part Bee Hive Golden Corn Syrup has played in this world-famous case.
Mr. W. T. Gray, Vice President
St. Lawrence Starch Co. Ltd.
September 17, 1934
Mr. W. T. Gray, Vice President
St. Lawrence Starch Co. Ltd.
Port Credit, Ontario
Dear Mr. Gray:
I have made inquiries, and I find that Bee Hive Golden Corn Syrup was the Corn Syrup used as a carbohydrate milk modifier in the first feedings of the Dionne quintuplets by Dr. Dafoe, and I have pleasure in advising you that full permission is granted to the St. Lawrence Starch Co. Ltd., the manufacturers of this brand of Corn Syrup, to advertise this fact.
It is also understood that should Corn Syrup be included in the diet of the Dionne quintuplets again, that Bee Hive Golden Corn Syrup will be used, by reason of the success attending its use to date.
In view of the above facts, and advertising permission granted, the Guardians of the Dionne Quintuplet Fund agree that no other brand of Corn Syrup will be similarly endorsed, as it is understood that this letter gives to the St. Lawrence Starch Co. Ltd., Port Credit, Ontario, exclusive Corn Syrup advertising rights as pertaining to the use of this food in the first feedings of the Dionne quintuplets and also its future use should the attending physicians so decide.
Yours very truly,
Dr. Allan R. Dafoe
Official Guardian
Used with permission.
October 9, 1934
Miss Emma Trimpany
Nurses Dormitory
St. Joseph’s Hospital
North Bay, ON
My dear Emma,
What on earth are they teaching you up there? Haven’t you told them you’d learn heaps more if you just came and helped us at the Dafoe Hospital? I miss you terribly and I know the babies do too. Émilie has started kicking at me when I try to change her nappy and makes this ominous smacking sound with her lips.
They are all doing so well. You would scarcely think they are the same babies as those little blue-green corpses we had to whisk across the street last month. All of them have put on at least seven pounds and are gobbling down their milk as if they’ve been wandering the desert and this is the first liquid they’ve encountered. They are smiley and strong, and their hair is really coming in thick again. I can’t tell you what a difference it makes to be in this beautiful bright hospital, without Mme. Dionne barging in with her holy water and prayers, or M. Dionne slinking all over the place and scaring the daylights out of us.
Captain de K says you will be coming here for some of your practicum soon, but surely you could come by on the weekends as well. The weekend after next, the newsreels are coming to make a short film about the quintuplets and the Dionne family.
The older Dionne children have taken to standing at the fence to watch all of the furniture and supplies being loaded into the hospital. We had our first big delivery of groceries for the staff larder, and I can tell you, my eyes were popping out of my head, so you can imagine what those children must have thought. Eggs, cheese, buttermilk, and cream; sacks of flour, oats, beans, coffee, and sugar; sides of pork, mutton, and beef; plus barrels of carrots, potatoes, parsnips, and turnips, and a crate of apples that will keep us in fruit until Christmas, I’d think.
But yes, the tall wire fence is now finished, and we feel so much safer in here than we did in our shack across the street. Cars are driving from heaven knows where each day because the papers have reported that the babies take their afternoon nap in the sun on the south-facing porch and we’ll now get hordes of people lining up along that stretch of fence, trying to catch a glimpse. The Captain says we’ll have to put a stop to this soon, but they are so very dear in their itty-bitty cots, I understand why they are drawing such a crowd.
There is a superstition going around that will make you laugh. Visitors have started taking pebbles from the road outside the Dionne farmhouse: the myth is that the stones can bring prosperity and fertility—as if anyone else would want to have five babies all at once! I didn’t believe Nurse Clouthier when she told me, but I’ve since seen people hunting for the perfect stone. I’m waiting for M. Dionne to invite people into the scrub that borders his west pasture and tell them to take all the bushes and rocks they want. Not a bad way to get the field cleared.
Last piece of gossip, Mr. Davis tells me that a drugstore company is paying for Dr. Dafoe to travel to New York, where he will give a talk about our quintuplets at Carnegie Hall! The doctor will go first to New York City, then to Baltimore to speak at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, then to Washington, D.C., where—brace yourself—he is going to meet the president of the United States! It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? It never occurred to me that President Roosevelt would care so deeply about our girls.
Come and see us, Emma. We miss you, all of us. Come and change Little Em’s nappy for me, won’t you?
All my love,
Ivy
Callander, ON
November 15, 1934
Strange to be back in my old bedroom, sitting at my old desk, and I’ll be sleeping under my old eiderdown again tonight. Even having a spare hour for jotting something in my scribble book is an odd luxury. These days my notebooks are full of anatomical diagrams, but nothing more.
Have they missed me, Mother and Father? I truly can’t tell. Father had plenty of questions for me over supper tonight about school and the Sisters and what sorts of things I’m learning about. But as for the quintuplets and the day I spent with them today, he either feigns disinterest or truly doesn’t care.
The fact is, nursing school isn’t so much different from high school. The other girls are not unkind, but they are not particularly friendly either. And despite everything that’s happened to me in the last six months, I’m still on the periphery, someone they see but don’t. When word got out that I would be doing all of my practicum hours at the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery, they were positively gobsmacked and, for the first time, pressed me with questions. But it was too late, wasn’t it? I simply said it had been arranged with Dr. Dafoe and left it at that.
Today was the first day I’ve seen Ivy in almost eight weeks, and she looks happy and content, with lovely color in her cheeks again. I can see that she is absolutely smitten with Fred Davis, although she will never admit it and he’s at least fifteen years her senior. He comes every morning from 10:00 A.M. until noon and takes photos of the babies sitting in the sun, taking their breakfast, or lying on their mats in the playroom. They are just too sweet right now.
Ivy persuaded Dr. Dafoe to let me come to their christening—their second, technically: this time with a flock of reporters on hand and Fred snapping photographs. The babies themselves looked so plump and healthy, I had to fight back tears. My Émilie is by far the feistiest and kept plucking off her white booties while Mr. Davis was trying to fix her in his viewfinder, which made us all laugh—with the exception of the Dionnes. They are such an unusual couple, I can’t help but think of Jack Sprat and his wife. Mme. Dionne looks like a different person from the weak and trembling mound who brought these babies into the world. She really is an imposing woman, not unattractive on the rare occasion that she smiles, but her resting face could snuff out a candle. She was none too pleased to see any levity whatsoever during the christening. She is a pious woman and clearly thought this was an occasion for solemn prayer, not joy. I disagree. I can’t remember a day I’ve felt so happy. It is my eighteenth birthday tomorrow. Mother will make a little fuss, I expect, but I feel as if I got everything I might want today.
December 25, 1934
A HORRENDOUS SET-TO with Father tonight. Not exactly Christmasy! I should never have agreed to spend the night here in town. I should have stayed out at the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery with Ivy and the babies, where I’m needed.
It all began after I’d sat down for supper with Mother and Father. I was telling them about Christmas lunch earlier in the day, out at the nursery: “The Dionnes—all of them: Maman and Papa and the five other children—came across the road first thing this morning and the tension was thicker than a plum pudding. They were very rude, insisting on reciting prayer after prayer and being quite rough with the older children. Madame thinks nothing of reaching out and cuffing them for the smallest misdemeanor, which makes her whole brood jittery.”
Father’s voice was quiet, but his carving knife started sawing the turkey faster and faster, as if it were a piece of timber. “Emma, surely even you can see that this is a preposterous situation for the Dionne family? Today, especially.”
Mother frowned at her mashed potatoes.
“But, Father, you of all people should understand. You’re always saying religion is too often used for the wrong purpose. The Dionnes are so intractably Catholic, they seem to employ their faith with the sole aim of sucking the fun out of everything.”
“Emma!” This from my mother. “Please. It’s Christmas.”
The problem, I continued, is that gifts have been arriving for the quintuplets from all over the world, for weeks on end. “So many that the Captain—Nurse de Kiriline—arranged for truckloads to be taken to the relief offices in Corbeil and Callander, where they can be distributed to families in need.”
Mother nodded at this and passed me the stuffing.
“Of course, Dr. Dafoe can’t allow the quintuplets to play with any toys made of cloth that could carry germs, so that meant there were heaps of dolls and soft toys given away. Well. The Dionnes got wind of this and insisted that all the toys belonged to their family and should have only gone to the other Dionne children. Ivy said you could have filled a freight train with these toys! Plus the eldest boy must be eight or nine years old by now, so he knows full well where these gifts are coming from. These are dolls and clothes for girls, or other toys intended for much younger children.”
Father said nothing, just thrusting out his hand for my plate and spearing a piece of breast meat with the serving fork.
“The really funny thing is that everyone already spent a very happy Christmas together last week—the quintuplets, Dr. Dafoe, the nurses, and M. and Mme. Dionne, although not the other children, who have been sick with colds. They had an early Christmas so Mr. Davis could get his photos, and Pathé could get the newsreel, and all the reporters, at least a dozen of them, according to Ivy, could get a Christmas story.” I took my plate from Father. “Apparently it was a real hoot: Dr. Dafoe dressed up as Santa Claus, and the girls were so confused at his big white beard they all started jabbering at once.”
I looked from Mother to Father, both of them chewing and swallowing, their eyes lowered, saying nothing.
“Ivy said she and the other nurses and staff were laughing so hard they could scarcely pull themselves together for the cameras. And the Dionnes, apparently, looked like they couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.”
Father’s throat was reddening above the collar—never a good sign. He set down his knife and fork. “Ivy said this, Ivy said that.” He had adopted a high, sugary voice that is nothing like mine. “Emma, can you even begin to imagine what it must be like to have to visit your own children for Christmas? To have two Christmases: one for the cameras and one for yourselves?”
I should have bit my tongue, I suppose. But he’s never even met the Dionnes. In fact, neither Mother nor Father knows anything about the efforts Dr. Dafoe has expended to keep the girls healthy and how cautious he must be, every single day. They never bothered to visit the Dionne farmhouse last summer, and they’ve never been out to the new hospital to see the work we’re doing. If they did, they’d understand right away that we’re doing the right thing by the babies. The parents simply can’t give the girls the care, or the love, they need.
“It’s not like that, Father. The Dionnes are . . .” I was at a loss for the right word. “They’re quite hard people. They’re not gentle folk. You can see it in the faces of the other Dionne children—they startle like rabbits when their father or mother so much as looks at them.”
Now Father’s whole face was a mottled red, quite like my own really, and his beard was bristling. “Emma Trimpany, you have no right to an opinion on parenting until you have children of your own, do you hear me? That nursing school of yours has given you airs of superiority, and I won’t sit here and listen to them.”
Now it was my turn to get my hackles up, because I will surely be the last person on earth to develop “airs.” Father and Mother know as well as I do the chances of me, with my disfigurement, marrying and settling down—having a family—are vanishingly small. I opened my mouth to say just that, but closed it again when I saw Mother dabbing at her eyes with her napkin.
“Both of you: stop it,” she said, her voice strung thin. “You are ruining Christmas. I don’t want to hear another word about the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery, or the Dionnes. Not another word.”
1935
March 20, 1935
/> Miss Emma Trimpany
Nurses Dormitory
St. Joseph’s Hospital
North Bay, ON
Dear Em,
I don’t know whether to tell you to come and don your battle garb or to stay as far away from the Dafoe Nursery as possible. You are still coming down this Friday, aren’t you? I’m not entirely joking when I say that you should try and lay your hands on some arsenal. Does your father, perhaps, have a rifle?
Let me reassure you, the girls are fine. Annette is so chubby these days you can plunk her down on a blanket and she just sits there gurgling and blinking at you like the presiding cherub. You couldn’t tip her sideways if you tried. Even the little ones, Émilie and Marie, are filling out beautifully. Those two are as thick as thieves, always clutching and burbling at one another. Cécile, Yvonne, and Annette all have their upper front teeth coming in and are starting to look like bunny rabbits, and all five of them have hair that is darker and thicker than ever. Their eyelashes are long and lovely, and they will flutter them at you coquettishly if you attempt to deny them a thing.
So why the rifle? It started two days ago. Nurse Garnier and I had managed to get all of the girls bathed, weighed, measured, dressed, and fed their breakfast and cod-liver oil and were waiting for Dr. Dafoe’s daily visit. All at once we heard a door slam followed by loud voices, and an instant later, Mme. Dionne burst into the playroom. As you know, the Captain has extraordinarily strict rules about visitors, and the Dionnes are only permitted to visit between 11:00 A.M. and noon, or 3:00 P.M. and 4:00.
The Captain was hot on her heels, demanding in her stern, clipped French that Mme. Dionne must remove her shoes and follow the hygiene processes. Doctor’s orders. Then Constable James stepped in—he’s the shorter one, with the big ears—and asked to speak privately to Nurse de Kiriline, which meant it fell to me to try and coax Mme. Dionne to go and remove her coat and shoes, wash her hands, put on a gown, and all the rest of it. These days she’s as large and stubborn as a tractor and wears this horrible frown. I looked at her yesterday and thought, My goodness, if she frowns any more deeply, the sides of her mouth are actually going to meet up on the underside of her chin.
