... something a young girl would have stashed in her family home in London in 1765 or thereabouts, before running away to France.
It must be something, or a handful of small things, that would be somewhat important - ie more than merely sentimental - for her granddaughter to find in 1812.
I thought at first of something proving the granddaughter's identity/link with the longago runaway, but she's already been accepted by the family of her grandmother. So now I need something else.
Any suggestions?
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50,107 / 50,000
nov. 21, 2008 - 20 52
A journal? Some family jewels? Some newspaper clippings?
Wait, I know. A corpse! Dun-dun-DUN! Drama!
----------“Women desire six things: They want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous, obedient to wife, and lively in bed.” -- Geoffrey Chaucer
“There's no workman, whatsoever he be, That may both work well and hastily.” -- Geoffrey Chaucer
54,929 / 50,000
nov. 21, 2008 - 22 27
A sampler? A doll?
----------Intriguing question. :-)
"We could get along very well without philosophy if we surrounded ourselves with beautiful things." ~ Oscar Wilde
0 / 50,000
nov. 22, 2008 - 12 10
Letters from the grandmother's lover who is now a powerful political figure
----------Madame X, MD
21,775 / 50,000
nov. 22, 2008 - 13 28
I'm still stumped.
Although the journal and letters have distinct possibilities, the bulk of the story is set nearly 50 years later. After all that time, it's hard to think of a secret that would still be important to anybody. Hmm... maybe an illegitimate birth on which the fate of some current inheritance rests?
I was hoping for something less complicated, but c'est la vie, n'est pas?
66,952 / 50,000
nov. 22, 2008 - 16 30
I'd second a sampler. They were a lot of work (trust me, I made one) and they were where girls practiced stitch patterns so they were important. They sometimes had scenes as well as the alphabet, and often dates, and maybe there's something plottishly interesting in the scene.
Maybe if she wasn't done with it, she hid it with her sewing box (or basket, or bag...). That could include stuff like the thread she worked with, like a needle case (depending on her class, anything from a little flat leather pouch to a little wooden or silver cylinder), pincushion (picture a heavily embroidered hard pillow, not the tomato-look-alikes of today), a little scissors, thimble (metal if she was wealthy, leather if she wasn't). BTW, if she was still working on it, the sampler might have pins stuck in it as markers: it's just like cross-stitch, except with finer threads, so you count threads, and put in a pin to mark it. Maybe she did other crafts, she might have those things in there too, or the stuff to do it. Like knitting needles, a crochet hook, or a tatting shuttle. There may be notes in it too, where she's written down pattern stuff... and maybe something else, if your plot needs. If she's wealthy, she may have been embroidering with beads, so they might be in there too. If your plot wants, maybe there's a little note rolled up inside her needle case or a code in her patterns.
Maybe instead of a sampler, it's her sewing kit with something she was working on in it, like she was embroidering a section of skirt or a sleeve, that was stuck in there.
ETA: you must have posted while I was typing! Still relevant... Maybe she hid something valuable planning to come back for it and embroidered the map onto a peice of clothing she'd take with her, but left the pattern or notes in her sewing kit. Would she have robbed her family before running away, but not been able to pawn it? Would she have planned to come back? Maybe the scene atop a sampler shows her family, but there's someone extra who isn't listen in the family tree in the family Bible because they were disowned... Or there's someone listed in the family Bible who isn't in her sampler, because they adopted them as her replacement after she ran away. Or maybe her dates don't match up with "official" dates because the family modified them to avoid a scandal: pregnancy at time of marriage, some kid born too late after the supposed father's death...
After fifty years... maybe it's some scandal relating to older family members. Maybe your MCs grandmother was actually the daughter of chambermaid, adopted by the family. Maybe there was something hinky with some inheritance. Maybe the family was up to something criminal all those years ago, like smuggling, and stuff is still stashed or there's a tunnel/hidding places...
50,001 / 50,000
nov. 22, 2008 - 16 34
A bible with heretical writings in the margin.
A philosophy book where she writes in the margins showing that she can poke holes in it all.
Beautiful drawings that she made of female nudes.
Something that shows her as being someone with secret, lost potential that is out of synch with her eventual role in society.
----------21,775 / 50,000
nov. 24, 2008 - 10 09
Thanks for all the suggestions. Definitely food for thought.
I can't stay stumped on this point forever, so I'm making it a handful of miniatures of Grandma as a young woman, done just before she ran away, along with a list of the people she intended to give them to. Granddaughter will seek out as many of these people as are still alive and available. I don't know which of these folks will turn out to be relevant to the main plot or how, but I've got to trust it will all make sense eventually and get moving on. I'm already about 15,000 words behind.
50,460 / 50,000
nov. 24, 2008 - 14 33
Personally, I'd go with a doll in which a now deceased relative had placed a religious relic for safekeeping, whether she knew it was there or not is optional. This of all the plot possibilities!!!
----------"You can go much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
Al Capone