A Galway author, Mary Rose Tobin, has just published her debut novel inspired by the Foundling Museum. I’ll let her tell you about it herself…
’I was visiting the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square — you may know it — and I turned a corner and there they were. A group of girls in brown serge uniforms with white aprons, standing in a chapel, hands clasped in prayer. The painter was a French-born artist called Sophie Gengembre Anderson, and she had painted them in the 1870s. Real children. Real faces. The painting is called Foundling Girls in the Chapel.
I stood in front of it for quite a long time. And I found myself asking a question I couldn’t answer. Who were you? What became of you?
Nobody knew. The records of the Foundling Hospital tell you a child’s name, a token left by the mother — a scrap of lace, a bent coin, a mother-of-pearl button — and a date of admission. They don’t tell you what it felt like to be five years old and separated from the only mother you know. They don’t tell you what it meant to grow up in a place that raised you for usefulness rather than happiness. And they certainly don’t tell you what happened afterwards.
That question — What became of you? — is where this novel began.
And then there is Handel. George Frideric Handel supported the Foundling Hospital through annual benefit performances of his Messiah. He conducted it in that chapel. And those children — some of them too young to understand the words — sang it. They stood in the chapel where my girls stand in the painting, and they sang about redemption, about God’s love for the forsaken.
When I discovered that, I actually gasped. Because I’ve sung Messiah myself, many times. I know that music in my bones. And the thought of those children singing I Know That My Redeemer Liveth when their own redeemer had left them at a hospital gate — was almost too much to hold.
Lucy is my protagonist. She is nine years old when we meet her, one of fifty girls in a narrow dormitory that smells of damp wool. When Sophie Anderson arrives to paint the girls in the chapel, it is the first time anyone has looked at Lucy and seen something worth keeping. That moment — of being genuinely seen — is what the whole novel is about.
I’m not going to tell you how it ends. You’ll have to read it for that.’
But do go and visit the Foundling Museum - you won’t be disappointed.
I’m delighted you are enjoying London, my Twins are doing the Leaving Cert so I am tiptoeing around the house and trying not to make eye contact, like a captive in a house!!
This is an advance recommendation, but My Son’s A Queer (But What Can You Do?) is coming to the Apollo Theatre in mid September - October and it is a JOYOUS show that I highly recommend!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foundling-Girls-Chapel-Write-Publications-ebook/dp/B0GZFFVSQ2
Oh wow, thank you for all this information! It sounds fascinating
A Galway author, Mary Rose Tobin, has just published her debut novel inspired by the Foundling Museum. I’ll let her tell you about it herself…
’I was visiting the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square — you may know it — and I turned a corner and there they were. A group of girls in brown serge uniforms with white aprons, standing in a chapel, hands clasped in prayer. The painter was a French-born artist called Sophie Gengembre Anderson, and she had painted them in the 1870s. Real children. Real faces. The painting is called Foundling Girls in the Chapel.
I stood in front of it for quite a long time. And I found myself asking a question I couldn’t answer. Who were you? What became of you?
Nobody knew. The records of the Foundling Hospital tell you a child’s name, a token left by the mother — a scrap of lace, a bent coin, a mother-of-pearl button — and a date of admission. They don’t tell you what it felt like to be five years old and separated from the only mother you know. They don’t tell you what it meant to grow up in a place that raised you for usefulness rather than happiness. And they certainly don’t tell you what happened afterwards.
That question — What became of you? — is where this novel began.
And then there is Handel. George Frideric Handel supported the Foundling Hospital through annual benefit performances of his Messiah. He conducted it in that chapel. And those children — some of them too young to understand the words — sang it. They stood in the chapel where my girls stand in the painting, and they sang about redemption, about God’s love for the forsaken.
When I discovered that, I actually gasped. Because I’ve sung Messiah myself, many times. I know that music in my bones. And the thought of those children singing I Know That My Redeemer Liveth when their own redeemer had left them at a hospital gate — was almost too much to hold.
Lucy is my protagonist. She is nine years old when we meet her, one of fifty girls in a narrow dormitory that smells of damp wool. When Sophie Anderson arrives to paint the girls in the chapel, it is the first time anyone has looked at Lucy and seen something worth keeping. That moment — of being genuinely seen — is what the whole novel is about.
I’m not going to tell you how it ends. You’ll have to read it for that.’
But do go and visit the Foundling Museum - you won’t be disappointed.
I’m delighted you are enjoying London, my Twins are doing the Leaving Cert so I am tiptoeing around the house and trying not to make eye contact, like a captive in a house!!
Oh god. It’s the worst!!! I always have so much sympathy for the parents…
This is an advance recommendation, but My Son’s A Queer (But What Can You Do?) is coming to the Apollo Theatre in mid September - October and it is a JOYOUS show that I highly recommend!
Ooooh this sounds RIGHT up my alley. Will add to the list xx
we should hang out!!
Yes!! 🙌
Have you been to the Foundling Museum?
I have not! Tell me everything