AESOP’S MIRROR

A former restorer of antiques debuts with a love story/scholarly adventure as she pursues the uncertain provenance of a large 19th-century mirror with a wooden frame featuring a carving of an image from Aesop’s “The Fox and the Grapes.”

For Huggins—now a consultant and shopper for museums, decorators and collectors—it was love at first sight. In 1995, a friend was selling a farm and its furnishings. Huggins went to take a look, and thus began a decade-long obsession with the Rococo mirror, a quest that temporarily drained her bank account and sent her all over the East to visit historical societies, courthouses, archives, private homes, authorities at museums and auction houses. The search took her into the family histories of the Browns (as in Brown University), the Vanderbilts and even Ireland’s celebrated Charles Parnell, once dumped by Abby Woods, daughter of Anne Brown Francis, in whose home the mirror once hung. Broken-hearted, says Huggins, Parnell returned to Ireland. The author impulsively bought the mirror, borrowed money from her accommodating brother to complete the purchase and began her quest to determine where it was made—America? England? Ireland?—and who owned it. She discovered that the wood was American white pine, but it could have been imported. The glass had long ago been replaced, and there were no identifying marks anywhere. Undaunted, Huggins spoke to just about anyone who might have the flimsiest filament of a clue. The author became consumed by the histories of the families and takes us along for too many pages on an interminable European vacation. The author eventually discovers that love makes no sense—and doesn’t need to.

A buoyant first-person chase story sometimes overburdened with superfluous archival baggage.