[This appeared in Aunt Maggie's after the Incident with Gilbert, as I came to call it.]
I hate to see people suffer. I especially hate to see warm, wonderful people like beginning quilters suffer. And so I'd like to take this opportunity to say a few wise words about diamonds and their look-alikes, rhomboids.
Huh? you say. What's a rhomboid? Well, let's go back to diamonds for a minute. According to the dictionary, a diamond is "a geometric shape having four sides that are equal in length, and two interior obtuse angles and two interior acute angles." It's one of those dictionary definitions where you're more confused after you've read the definition than before.
Simply stated, and in terms meaningful to a quilter, a diamond is any shape that isn't square but where the four sides are identical in length.
This, then, is a diamond, because all four of its sides are identical in length,
and it isn't square.
This is also a diamond.
And so is this.
Diamonds can be fat and they can be thin, and when cut to certain dimensions (with those interior angles the dictionary talks so blithely about) will fit together in the interesting geometric pattern we call Baby's Blocks. And there is no place in the firmament where diamonds shine more brightly, so to speak, than in stars, and the Texas Lone Star is the most heavenly of them all.
Here is where my cautionary words about the diamond's evil twin the rhomboid become important. A rhomboid is "a parallelogram having unequal adjacent sides." Such a help the dictionary is! Practically speaking, what this means is that a rhomboid looks like a diamond, and has four sides like a diamond, but the four sides are not all the same length. Two of the sides are one length, two are a different length. Like this:
rhomboid
diamond
See the difference? Two of the rhomboid's sides are longer than the other two.
The difference between a diamond and a rhomboid becomes important when beginning quilters get stars in their eyes and decide to create a Lone (or any other) Star. As their teacher, I have them study the pattern carefully to make sure they're dealing with diamonds, not rhomboids. Why? Because rhomboids are tricky. Since their four sides are NOT the same, there is a right-hand and a left-hand way of looking at them and sewing them together. Like this:
left-hand rhomboid
right-hand rhomboid
See? You can't simply pick your rhomboid up and sew it any which way to the adjacent piece. No, you've got to make sure that you're sewing right-hand pieces to right-hand pieces, and left-hand to left-hand. Advanced quilters may love this challenge, and the slightly unusual appearance rhomboids give, but beginners are frequently frustrated by the rhomboid's quirks, and make a lot of mistakes sewing the wrong pieces together—or the wrong sides—and I personally hate to hear quilting accompanied by the sound of gnashing teeth.
I composed a little poem about the hazards to the unwary of the rhomboid. It goes like this:
Avoid
the rhomboid.
Of joy
it is devoid.
For if you tinker
with the rhomboid
you may be—
ANNOYED!
For the beginning quilter, diamonds are still a girl's best friend.
5/ The Lincoln Deathbed Quilt
During the 1950s, Spotsburg was swept by one craze after another. One month it was the Mouseketeers, and everyone was arguing furiously about whether Darlene or Annette was prettier and more talented. Then it was hula hoops, and several of our most august citizens actually dislocated parts of their anatomies trying to get the hang of them. At some point Elvis Presley burst into our collective consciousness, and earnest Spotsburg mothers and fathers trembled in fear that their children would come home with their hair in d.a.'s and pegged pants. (Not their hair in pegged pants. Their bodies!)
But none of these fads could match the frenzy that erupted the day word got out that the Lincoln Deathbed Quilt might be secreted in one of Spotsburg's attics.
Until that balmy September's eve, none of us had even heard of the Lincoln Deathbed Quilt. It began innocently enough—as crazes do—at a meeting of the Spotsburg Historical Society. Spotsburg Historical Society meetings are inclined to be long and dreadfully BORING, and more often than not are simply an excuse for old-timers to gather 'round a plate of cookies and tell each other yarns everyone else got tired of hearing years ago.
So I don't usually attend, and certainly didn't attend that particular meeting. Ramona gave me the details. As a lawyer, she seems to have more patience with boring than I do.
Anyway, once she'd found her reading glasses, Secretary Eunice Pemberton read the minutes of the previous meeting in her interminable adenoidal whine, and Eldred ("no relation to the General") Herkimer droned through the treasurer's report, and then Society President Hilda ("No relation to James Fennimore") Cooper called for Remarks from the General Public. This was the cue for Eldred to stand up and ask for clarification regarding the geographic location of the Potawatomi Indian settlement before the 1837 Removal. They discussed this for a while. (Another reason I avoid Historical Society meetings is that I get very upset about the way the white settlers treated the Indians. This viewpoint mystifies everyone else.)
Then Jonathan ("no relation to the Jonathan") Edwards rose and wondered out loud if anything further had been done about the restoration of the outhouse for Standard School #2. Standard School #2 has been the Historical Society's ongoing historical project for about a thousand years, and on-site bathroom facilities have been a thorn in the group's side, with Society members evenly (and acrimoniously) divided between those who want modern indoor plumbing, and those who think it would be a terrible historical travesty to have anything other than two old-fashioned two-seaters out in the back. President Hilda appointed a committee to look into the other committee that was already looking into it.
Finally, Charlene Cuthbertson rose and announced she'd found a most interesting letter in a trunk in her attic. Charlene is one of the many Spotsburg residents who have lived here all their lives, and whose parents and grandparents have lived here, too, and all these old-timers have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of old trunks containing old letters, old locks of hair, old Bibles, and other old memorabilia in their attics, which are also old.
Charlene apologized for not having gone through the trunk in question a decade or so sooner. It seems she had tumbled onto a correspondence between her grandmother, Emma Bankert, and Emma's best friend, Elizabeth, last name unknown, whose letters also bore a Spotsburg postmark. (Why so many Victorian ladies wrote each other, even when they lived only a few blocks apart, I've never understood.)
Charlene told the eager Society members that most of the letters she'd found were from the mysterious Elizabeth to Emma. (A few, wrapped in a blue ribbon, were Emma's letters to Elizabeth. Another mystery. Why—or how—had Emma gotten her letters back?)
Charlene recounted several happenings of the day (as described in the letters), including a riveting lecture on women's suffrage that had been shut down by the Spotsburg constabulary, and the scandalous news that the minister of the First Baptist Church had been discovered to have a second wife and family (many exclamation marks) in Hobart, eight miles away!!!
And then Charlene dropped the bombshell. In one letter (dated June 1865), correspondent Elizabeth indicated she'd just been given a quilt that had been on President Abraham Lincoln's bed as he lay dying! As Elizabeth explained (and Charlene read—and I corroborated in a history book), after he was shot, the wounded Lincoln was carried from Ford's Theater to the house of William Petersen, a tailor, several doors down. Elizabeth, in her florid Victorian hand, wrote that her Uncle Thaddeus was "in attendance on Mr. Lincoln" (in what capacity he attended she did not say), and was given the quilt after the President died, and Uncle Thaddeus sent it to Elizabeth. It was a lovely quilt, Elizabeth wrote, although it "bears many terrible stanes [sic] of President Lincoln's prescious [sic] blood."
&n
bsp; Charlene could not have sent the Historical Society into a greater tizzy if she'd run around the room naked shouting "Fire!" The questions came fast and furious: Who was Elizabeth? (She didn't know.) Had Charlene read every letter in the correspondence? (She hadn't.) What did the Lincoln Deathbed Quilt look like? (Charlene didn't know that, either.) And most important of all, where was it now? (???)
President Hilda called the meeting back to order. A communication of such importance, she said, must be investigated in a systematic fashion. She appointed a committee to read all the correspondence in Charlene's attic. (Charlene objected to this suggestion, but was gaveled out of order. Hilda and her gavel are not to be trifled with. Did I ever tell you about the time she banged the gavel so hard it broke, and the working end of it flew across the room, nearly taking out Chester Smith's eye?) Furthermore, President Hilda ordered, a systematic study must be made of the city's genealogies, to find out who the unnamed correspondent Elizabeth might be. (Good luck, I thought when I heard that. Elizabeth must be just about the most common name of that era—right up there with Victoria and Mary.) Furthermore, President Hilda said, she would meet with the editors of the Spotsburg Sentinel and have them urge all high-minded historic Spotsburg citizens to scour their attics and basements for quilts, to see if the Lincoln Deathbed Quilt was among them.
So animated were the members of the Historical Society by all these goings-on that they adjourned without touching their refreshments—even though Ruth Wallace brought her absolutely irresistible Double Devil's Food Chocolate Brownies! (For all the good they do, sometimes the members of the Historical Society lack a sense of purpose.)
As I say, I was oblivious to all this excitement because I missed the Historical Society meeting, but Ramona filled Arden, Karen, and me in when we gathered at Arden's house to work on her latest treasure, a splendid Mountain Meadows for her brother Fred, who climbs mountains for fun. I'll be honest with you: the prospect of finding an interesting and no doubt valuable old quilt somewhere within the city limits of Spotsburg was mildly exciting, but I had an unpleasant feeling that this could turn into a donnybrook, and I might get dragged into it.
How right I was. One evening after dinner, about a week after that fateful meeting of the Historical Society, I got a call from Charlene Cuthbertson, the owner of the letter that had started the excitement. Her attic had been examined within an inch of its life. Every trunk had been opened. Every box had been unpacked. Every letter had been read. Every newspaper had been studied for clues. Every old book had been shaken for mementos tucked in its pages. She had (she told me) drawn the line at letting the members of the Historical Society rip up her attic floor boards. She was now the proud owner of a somewhat better organized attic, and countless treasures from between the pages of old books: locks of hair, ladies' hankies, and enough pressed flowers to make a large (albeit flat) table arrangement.
And—I'd known this was coming—they'd found a quilt. Actually, she said, they'd found two quilts, but one of them, wrapped in brown paper and string, had several suggestive brown stains on it. Since I was Spotsburg's quilting teacher, a published authority and expert, etc., etc., could they bring it over for my opinion?
Sure, I said. In thirty minutes, driving at about ten miles an hour in her old McCord, Charlene arrived with Historical Society President Hilda Cooper barely at bay.
Please don't misunderstand me. Charlene is a nice old lady of about seventy, rather frail, rather slow, but a nice old lady. But I was tired that evening from helping Officer Ted Dancer's wife with their new twins (Ted ought to spend more time on his police beat, and less time fathering children—they now have four under the age of five!), and I'd been looking forward to stretching out and reading the latest Agatha Christie mystery.
Charlene trudged up my steps, knocked and, when I opened the door, shuffled in, with Hilda close behind her, pawing the ground and snorting. Hilda's eyes glittered and she kept muttering, "Stay calm, Charlene. Stay calm."
Under her arm Charlene had an old cotton quilt. I motioned for her to set it on my kitchen table, where the light is good. Very carefully, I opened it up. Charlene sat down slowly and watched. Hilda stood and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, breathing heavily.
"What did the wrapping paper say?" I asked Charlene, wishing she‘d brought that, too.
"Not a word," she said.
"That's right," said Hilda, nodding vigorous agreement.
It was a double bed-sized quilt, a gorgeous blue and ivory Log Cabin, in a barn-raising set. As you know, Log Cabin is an ancient American patchwork design, so it was certainly conceivable this quilt could have been in existence in 1865, when Lincoln was assassinated. Along one side were two rust-brown spots about the size of dinner plates, plus some rust-colored specks, and all those spots bore a very great likeness to blood. I must say, it gave me a little shock to see those stains. Whether or not this was what we were all now calling the Lincoln Deathbed Quilt, there was a story here. Quite likely it was not a pretty one.
I examined the front carefully, especially the bars of light color, where an inscription or a date might have been embroidered. Nothing obvious.
Then I turned it over. The back was unbleached muslin. I ran my fingers along the edge: sometimes your fingers are better than your eyes at catching details. And I felt a small raised area under my fingertips.
I went to my desk and got a magnifying glass, but I didn't really need it. Embroidered in ivory stitches on the ivory back, in very tiny letters, were the words, "To Maud from her Loving Mother on the Occasion of Her Wedding." I read the words out loud.
"Really?" said Hilda, who's too vain to wear her glasses. If she had worn them, she would have seen the inscription.
"Oh," Charlene said, looking very disappointed. "My Mother's name was Maud. I think that quilt must have been a gift from my grandmother to my mother when she got married."
"Where did they live?" I asked, wishing that Charlene's forebears had been residing in Washington, DC, at the time of Lincoln's death. . . .
"Here in Spotsburg," she said. "Mother was married in 1886. I was born the next year. She died birthing me."
We were all three of us quiet for several minutes, thinking the same thing: that the bloody stains were associated with Charlene's mother's lying-in and death. Very slowly, Charlene stood up and began folding the quilt.
"It was foolish of me to have brought this to you."
"No," I said. "It was a privilege to see it." And I added, "Don't try to clean it. It's too old. Just wrap it in a clean, white sheet and store it in a cool, dry place."
"All right," Charlene said, but she looked so forlorn (as well as unhappy to encounter such a vivid reminder of her mother's death) that I visited her later that week, and let her show me her prize-winning nasturtiums, which I generally appreciate about as much as poison ivy.
After this reverse, the members of the Historical Society redoubled their efforts. They were having no luck in figuring out who Elizabeth, author of the letter about the quilt, was. Arden had the excellent idea of scanning old Spotsburg Sentinels to see if there were any articles about the arrival of such a quilt in Spotsburg. In those days the Sentinel was only four pages, but it still took her two weeks to read every issue published in 1865.
My next visitor was Edna McCoy, who brought me a tattered red and white gingham quilt, soiled with what looked like axle grease. In fact, it also exuded a faintly oily smell. Edna is bossy and loud, but I was trying to be nice. (It's always a struggle with her.)
She appeared on my doorstep without phoning ahead, threw her shoulder against the door, and barged into my living room. "This will only take a minute," she said, "but I want you to look this over right away."
"I was just going out," I lied.
"Never mind that," she said. "This is important!" She unfurled her quilt like a flag and dropped it on my living room floor.
"I think," I said firmly, rolling up the quilt up and carrying it out of the living room
, "that we need to take this into the kitchen and look at it under a brighter light. Now, of course, I can't give you a definitive opinion, but a scientist could probably do something with carbon-14 dating. It might, however, mean he would have to DESTROY part of the quilt. . . ."
She muttered "Humph!" at me, and followed me to the kitchen table. "Naturally," she said, "I can't pay you for your time and your trouble, but I knew you'd be interested."
How Edna McCoy would have the vaguest notion of what would interest ME was a puzzle, but I bit my tongue. (I still have scars on my tongue from biting it during a previous encounter with this lady and her husband, who sells insurance. Even at church suppers. If you see him approaching you with an ingratiating grin and an outstretched hand, plead an urgent need for the bathroom!)
Anyway, this quilt was easy. "What you've got here," I said, "is a Lindy's Plane, and since Charles Lindbergh flew that historic flight to Paris in 1927, I think I can say without fear of contradiction—" (okay, I was showing off) "—that this quilt is too new to be the Lincoln Deathbed Quilt."
Edna was not to be deterred. "I'm positive," she cried, "that this quilt has some great historical importance! I'm very sensitive to these things! Almost psychic! At least TWO of my friends think so, too."
"Well, they may be right," I said, trying hard not to let my extreme irritation get the best of me. "This stain certainly looks like grease. Perhaps," I said, deciding to suggest something that was obviously ludicrous, "Charles Lindbergh used this to wipe off his hands after doing repairs on the Spirit of St. Louis."
"That's it!" she said, roughly gathering up the quilt in a heap and heading toward my door. "It's got to be worth a lot of money!" She stormed out.
"I think I'd get another opinion on that," I called after her, but she was already at the end of my drive.
The Name of the Quilt: Tales of Patchwork, Mayhem, and Murder Page 4
