The Dolls’ House
Authors: Rumer Godden
For Janaki Paula Mary Foster with love – R.G
.
Fain am I to work these nosegays
Gathered from my tranquil days
In gentle rain, mild storm and sunny weather . . .
From Great-Grandmother’s sampler
This is a novel written about dolls in a dolls’ house. The chief person in it is Tottie Plantaganet, a small Dutch doll.
Dutch dolls are scarce now, but Tottie was made a long time ago when they were plentiful and sold in every shop that had toys for sale; and large ones cost a penny the middle size a halfpenny
and very small ones, like Tottie, were sold for a farthing each.
At present she lived in the nursery of two little girls called Emily and Charlotte Dane. I say ‘at present’ because Tottie had lived a long while; once she had lived with two other
little girls who were Emily and Charlotte’s great-grandmother and their Great-Great-Aunt Laura.
How strange that a little farthing doll should last so long. Tottie was made of wood and it was good wood. She liked to think sometimes of the tree of whose wood she was made, of its strength
and of the sap that ran through it and made it bud and put out leaves every spring and summer, that kept it standing through the winter storms and wind. ‘A little, a very little of that tree
is in me,’ said Tottie. ‘I am a little of that tree.’ She liked to think of it.
She was made of that wood, neatly jointed at the hips and shoulders and sockets (she had sockets for elbows and knees), with a sturdy inch-wide yoke for shoulders and a round little head with
glossy painted hair. She had glossy pink cheeks and her eyes were painted with bright firm paint, blue and very determined.
Emily and Charlotte had chosen two other dolls to be Tottie’s father and mother; their names were Mr Plantaganet and Mrs Plantaganet, but Mrs Plantaganet had another name and that was
Birdie. Of course Tottie knew, just as you and I know, that Mr and Mrs Plantaganet were not her real father and mother, that she had no real father and mother, unless it were that felled tree of
whose wood she was made. She knew that, just as she knew that her little brother Apple, the doll they had given her for a little brother, was made from plush (which is a kind of velvet), and
Darner, the dolls’ house dog, had a backbone made from a darning needle; if you have ever played at Fathers and Mothers, and of course you have played at Fathers and Mothers, you will
remember what a very good feeling it is; that was exactly the feeling between Tottie and Mr and Mrs Plantaganet – Birdie – and little brother Apple and Darner the dog.
It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot ‘do’; they can only be done by; children who do not understand
this often do wrong things, and then the dolls are hurt and abused and lost; and when this happens dolls cannot speak, nor do anything except be hurt and abused and lost. If you have any dolls, you
should remember that.
Listen to the story of Mr Plantaganet (before he was Mr Plantaganet); for a long while he was hurt and abused and lost. He was a delicate little doll, rather larger than Tottie, with a china
face and brown glass eyes and real brown hair. He was a boy doll and he always said he remembered once being dressed in a kilt as a Highlander, with toy bagpipes stuck to his hand with hard painful
glue, painful when you tried to get it off. He was bought for some children – not, I am glad to say, Emily and Charlotte, quite other children – who took no care of him at all. It was
they who dragged the bagpipes off and took some of the painted skin off the palm of his hand as well, and tore his clothes off too, and let their puppy bite his foot until it looked half nibbled.
One of the boys drew a moustache on his little top lip with indelible pencil (‘indelible’ means it can never come off); then they threw him into the cold dark toy cupboard, where he lay
for weeks and months and might have lain for years if they had not been ordered to tidy the toy cupboard because children were coming to tea. As it was, they left him lying on the floor under the
table and Emily, who was one of the visitors, nearly trod on him.
‘Oh! I am sorry,’ cried Emily, but nobody seemed to think it mattered. ‘What a dear little doll,’ said Emily, picking him up. ‘Who is he? Whom does he belong
to?’ He did not seem to belong to anyone. She noticed that his eyes were filled with dust. The children said Emily could have him, and she wrapped him up in her handkerchief and took him
home.
She and Charlotte saw at once that he was made to be a little man doll. They sponged the dust and glue off him with hot water and dried him carefully and, though the moustache would not come
off, they knitted him a sock for his spoilt foot and put plaster on the palm of his hurt hand; and their mother made him a check flannel suit and a blue shirt and a tie of red silk ribbon. Emily
cut him tiny newspapers out of the real ones to read.
‘I like him with a moustache,’ said Emily.
‘It makes him look more like Mr Plantaganet,’ said Charlotte.
He could still not quite believe he was Mr Plantaganet. He was still easily made afraid, afraid of being hurt or abused again. Really you might have thought that Tottie was the father and he was
the child; but there are real fathers like that.
Mrs Plantaganet was not quite right in the head. There was something in her head that rattled; Charlotte thought it might be beads, and it was true that the something made a gay sound like
bright beads touching together. She was altogether gay and light, being made of cheap celluloid, but, all the same, nicely moulded and joined and painted.
She came to Charlotte on a cracker at a party. Yes, Mrs Plantaganet started life as part of a cracker, to which she was fastened by silver tinsel. She had been dressed in blue and green
feathers. At first they had not thought she was anything more than part of the cracker. First Charlotte kept her on the cracker; then off the cracker; then one day she decided to dress her and
pulled the feathers off.
The feathers were glued on Mrs Plantaganet and here was her difference from Mr Plantaganet: the glue coming off did not hurt her at all; it came off easily with hot water, leaving not a trace,
and her body only gave out a warm celluloid smell and turned even more pink.
‘There is something brave about this little doll,’ said Emily. ‘I don’t usually like celluloid dolls.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Charlotte. ‘But I like her.’
Emily made Mrs Plantaganet a red skirt with blue rickrack braid on the hem, a blue blouse with red spots; the spots were pin spots, but they looked large as buttons to Mrs Plantaganet. ‘I
think she likes them large and bright,’ said Emily. They sewed her hair, which was fluffy yellow cotton, into a bun; but Emily thought again and let the hair out of the bun, loosed and
flyaway. ‘I think she was wishing we could let it fly away like that,’ said Charlotte. ‘I think she likes her hair.’
They put her next to Mr Plantaganet and they seemed to suit one another at once. They seemed to suit Tottie too. Tottie had on a little apron that was embroidered with red daisies; both Mr and
Mrs Plantaganet thought she looked the very pattern of a nice small wooden girl; they were to think even more of her later.
‘We must get Mr Plantaganet a walking stick,’ said Emily. ‘And Mrs Plantaganet must have a hat with a tiny feather.’
There were still something of the cracker and feather look about Mrs Plantaganet as there was still something of the dark toy cupboard about Mr Plantaganet.
‘But Tottie has been ours always,’ said Emily.
‘Even before always,’ said Charlotte.
As for Apple, there were no fears for him. Come fog, come fine, no one could be unkind to Apple. He was as big as Emily’s thumb, plump and made of warm plush, coloured
pink-brown. He felt nice and he was nice, with chunky little arms and legs and sewn-in dimples and a wig of brown darning-wool hair. Perhaps it was the darning wool that made Darner so fond of him.
Apple wore a buster suit, scarlet felt trousers and a white cambric blouse, white socks, and red felt shoes that were fastened with the smallest of small pearl buttons you can imagine. No one ever
saw Apple without exclaiming, ‘What a little love of a doll!’ Tottie and Mr Plantaganet felt that too, through they knew how naughty he was; Birdie, Mrs Plantaganet, felt it, but she
did not know that he was ever naughty; she only loved him.
You had to be very careful how you touched Darner because he had a prick at his head end; it was his darning-needle backbone and it made him difficult to handle. The rest of
him was clipped wool, gone a little grey with London grime, over pipe-cleaner legs. Emily and Charlotte used to take him, in his turn, as they took the rest of the family, to the Park, where he
liked to be stood in the shelter of a fallen leaf (if it were autumn and there were fallen leaves), so that he could bristle at other and real-size dogs. He also liked staying at home.
That was the trouble. There was no home.
The shortage of dolls’ houses was acute.
There were a few in the toyshops but they were very expensive and made of cheap papier-mâché or plywood. ‘Not worth the money,’ said the children’s father.
‘They wouldn’t last any time.’
‘I want one to last,’ said Mr Plantaganet with a catch in his breath. ‘I want one to last for always.’ More than anything in the world Mr Plantaganet wanted a home.
‘One that will shut. One that will last. Do you think they will ever buy a house for us?’ he asked. Being a doll, he could not say, ‘Do you think we shall ever buy a house?’
He had to wait until Emily or Charlotte, or Emily and Charlotte’s father, had the idea of buying one for him. Even if they had the idea, these days it was too expensive and he knew that the
money Emily and Charlotte put into his pockets was only gold and silver paper. ‘I don’t think we shall ever have a house,’ said Mr Plantaganet.