DOLLS OF YESTERDAY.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19156, 12 November 1927, Page 13

DOLLS OF YESTERDAY.

I ■ | TOE THI ?ut|.} i (By Mrs Malcolm Ross.) LONDON, September ao. Whether it be owing to the decreasing birthrate or the Eton crop, it is certain that as a youthful friend of mine told rue: "Dolls are out." Of course, the Victorian era, with its feminism and motherliness, was the .apotheosis of the doll. Now, children have toys in infinite variety, and very rarely does one see a little maid nursinc a doll. Nevertheless, the children's room at the top of the London Museum attracts young people hugely. And it has, too, more distinguished visitors, for her Majesty, to whose generosity one owes most of the- exhibits, often pays it a surprise visit. She has lent her own doll's house, given her by her mother. She arranged it herself, and often re-arranges it. She is like a child in her frank enjoyment of her old playthings, and her half wistful regret at parting with them. She sheds her majesty among her toys, and will talk about them to any interested visitor. Her sweet democracy contrasts keenly with the aloofness of President and Mrs Wilson, who required that when they entered a shop those in should retire. Queen Mary, for all her stateliness, is very human, and a man told me he had onco seen her in the Victoria and Albert Museum, shortly after she, as Princess of Wales, had been in India with the Prince, gaily catch up her skirts and show her companions some steps of a Burmese dance. It must have been a wrench to part with her dolls' house and with the -myriad miniature things—so tiny and so perfect that she lias been years collecting. There are woe gold caskets filled with necklaces, earrings, tiny china services fit for cives, little musical internments, writing deeks, work boxes, all made and fitted with such minute perfection one wonders how mortal fingers could have fashioned them. Queen Mary's favourite doll reigns supreme among the quaint puppets of bygone days, but for all her bridal array, satins, ppsi'ls. and real lace, she is not as interesting as her neighbours, except for the fact a Queen has dandled her. The very earliest dolls were of stoneware, two weird busts with crooked eyes and indeterminate features. They were found in Greenwich Park. The children who nursed them must have been dust and daisies centuries ago. Next came the wooden dolls, so interesting as showing the dress of the various periods. One had a huge bonnet with a flowerpot crown and carried a muff and a satchel filled with tiny papers—suspiciously like bills. One stately lady —of Stuart times —had two miniatures hanging from black ribbons on her brocaded furbelowed frock, and another, given by a bye-gone Queen of Denmark to a little girl, wore long earrings and a pearl necklace. A sportsman, gun in hand and game-bag ol his shoulder, was garbed in Lincoln green with gold braid, and had a feather in his wide-brim-med hat. One of the earliest china dolls had long flaxen plaits, and frilled white trousers to her ankles, and a wax doll—born in George IH.'s reign, lay with closed eyes in her cradle. Every detail of .tblet —in tiniest in this case, even to the dantiest samplers, pincushions, and needlebooks. The room has another rolls' house —a stately Georgian residence, with a double flight of steps leading to the imp'osing portico, and bow windows curtained with puffed shot taffeta. One could spend hours in examining this, so true a mirror is it of the domestic fashions of that time, even to the elaborate Chinese wallpapers and the dimity hangings of the servants.' beds. The case of penny toys collected for twenty-fiva years by one.Ernest King is a magnet to all the the youngsters; Queen Victoria's dolls are almost as popular. They are all little wooden dolls, fifty years ago they cost a. penny, so the little Princess was not extravagant, and they have dangling legs and arms and painted hair. But they look grotesquely life-like as they sway on their supporting wires, and Taglioni, with wreath and old-time ballet skirts, does quite a pas-scul. (The Princess's governess, Baroness Lutzen, helped her to dress them, and a few of the most elaborate are the work of "Sarah," whoever she may have been. Thoy aro all named, but one imagines most of the titles must have been fictitious, for who has heard of Ducheses called Juno, Lesbra. or ThisbeP Victoria had a quaint taste in dolls, and preferred types to the cuddlesome babies most little girls love. Among her dolls is a woman hawker, complete with black hood, fed cap, and basket with sundry waAs, including skewers and bellows, and another d!ressed as a girl of the foundling hospital, with their quaint cap and uniform the children wear to-day. One should go to the Abbey and see the little one 3 who played with some of these old-time dolls—strange figures in their muffs and farthingales, like miniatures of their parents on whose tombs they kneel. Their toys have survived them. Silks and satins may be dim and faded, laces tattered, and complexions dtingg, but when one thinks" of the love and pride lavished on them when toys were few and a child's life so limited in pleasures, t they have a charm that is lacking in the most costly of modern dolls.