The Marquis Goes Donkey-Riding by Adeline Adams
Cousin Felix Bradford, a color manufacturer turned collector of Colonial silver, spends decades chasing the missing bowl of the Fairlee porringer, whose fluted silver cover he inherited from his grandmother, Madam Bradford (born Lydia Fairlee). As a boy Felix loved handling that cover, with its flame-topped finial, while his grandmother told how, as an indulged only child of eight, she had set the porringer on the porch after supper, only to have her young dog Rover seize the bowl and run off toward the Ellicksenders' house, a family she calls "no better than a den of thieves." Too frightened of punishment to admit what really happened, Lydia hid the truth for two years, until a bout of scarlet fever made her rave about Rover and the porringer and gave her away. By then it was too late to accuse the Ellicksenders; one of the sons had already died in jail, while the youngest, she notes, "turned out real good" and became a celebrated minister. The porringer's silver cover carries a French engraving Lydia's mother once translated as showing Lafayette on a donkey in Egypt, attended by a servant, with the caption "Lafayette in Egypt." Young Felix, skeptical even as a child that a donkey ride suited so heroic a figure, later reasons as an adult that the porringer was ordered in Paris in 1779, too early for Lafayette to have been famous enough for such an engraving, so he privately discounts the family legend, though he continues collecting Colonial silver seriously, amassing tankards, platters, braziers, caudle cups, and especially porringers, and indulging his wife and children, including his daughter Felicia ("Flickey"), in the long, fruitless search for the missing bottom. Felix has copies made of his grandmother's old tracing of the bowl's outline and distributes them to his family as identification aids. Flickey's suitor, Jimmy Alexander, a Princeton student, suggests consulting his aunt, Amanda Alexander Blakeney, a noted silver authority and widow living at Lost River, who turns out to be the very "A. A. Blakeney" whose monograph Felix already relies on. Visiting her, Flickey recounts the whole porringer story, including the Ellicksenders, which visibly startles Mrs. Blakeney. Examining Felicia's tracing against her own locked collection of French silver, Mrs. Blakeney fits an engraved bowl exactly to the outline: it is the long-lost piece. The engraving actually depicts not Lafayette but the Flight into Egypt, Mary and Joseph fleeing with the Child on a donkey, captioned in French "La Fuite en Egypte," which Grandma Bradford's mother had misread as "Lafayette in Egypt." Mrs. Blakeney explains that the bowl came to her through her grand-uncle, Judge Alexander, whose father, Dr. Phineas Alexander, had originally been one of the "Ellicksenders," the family Lydia's story maligned, and who had raised the family's fortunes and become the celebrated minister mentioned earlier in the tale. Despite her own attachment to the piece, Mrs. Blakeney later gives it as a wedding gift to Jimmy and Felicia when they marry. Felicia keeps the recovered bowl reunited with its cover for her father's lifetime, and Felix continues to prize the reassembled porringer above the rest of his collection, still repeating, as an old habit, his boyhood gesture of wetting his fingers before touching its silver flame.
By Adeline Adams · Genre: Literary Fiction, Humorous Fiction, Family Saga · 3 chapters · 7,209 words
First lines
My great-grandmother was by no means an accomplished French scholar. Was yours? And even in English, my great-grandmother's spelling was far from faultless. In those well-thumbed receipt-books of hers, written by her own hand, and still beautifully legible, you will note that she sometimes doubles the _t_ in butter, and sometimes not; she generally gives an _h_ to sugar, and seldom allows an egg more than one _g_ to stand on. But the far-flung fame of her cooking did not suffer in consequence. And had her prowess in languages and in orthography been equal to her skill in the household arts of her day (spinning, weaving, brewing, and the like), my cousin Felix might never have known the joyous adventures of a collector of Lafayette silver. For frankly, it was my great-grandmother, who, owing to a slip in her French, first sent the marquis on his donkey-riding. Lafayette in Egypt! Cousin Felix never rested until he got to the bottom of the matter.
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The Marquis Goes Donkey-Riding is listed on Textopian as a short story by Adeline Adams, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Short story
- Author: Adeline Adams
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Literary Fiction, Humorous Fiction, Family Saga, Historical Fiction, Mystery Fiction
- Length: 7,209 words
- Structure: 3 chapters, 83 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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Genres
- Literary Fiction — Sophisticated narrative technique, complex character development, and thematic depth regarding beauty, collecting, and family legacy are elevated through refined prose style and reflective storytelling beyond plot-driven narrative.
- Humorous Fiction — Consistent wit permeates the narrative voice with comedic characterization evident in Felix's childhood art education, Felicia's personality, and the deeply ironic resolution that the engraving depicts the Flight into Egypt rather than Lafayette.
- Family Saga — Narrative spans three generations from the great-grandmother through Felix to Felicia, chronicling family history, inheritance, and the evolution of a central family mystery across decades of changing cultural contexts.
- Historical Fiction — Story is grounded in late 19th and early 20th century America with references to historical figures including Lafayette and Paul Jones, and incorporates period-specific social anxieties regarding American cultural inferiority to Europe.
Tags
Colonial silver · Porringer · Antique collecting · Family heirloom · Lost artifact · Genealogy · Family secrets · Redemption · Material culture · Aesthetic appreciation · Irony · Satire