BOOKS OF THE MOMENT.

THE QUEEN'S DOLLS' HOUSE.

By A. C. Telegraph by A. C. (Methuen.

The Book of the Queen's Dolls' House Library. E. V. Lucas. Vol. II. (Methuen. £3 3s. net.)

Edited by

TILE Queen's dolls' house is a contrivance prettier than any that Horace Walpole could buy even from Mrs. Chevenix, the toywoman, when he was negotiating his important

purchase of Strawberry Hill. Its fantastic perfection would have delighted the whole eighteenth century, from Swift—without whom it would perhaps never have existed— to old Mme. du Deffand—to whom Walpole would have had to describe it. Half that world would have loved it for its actual visible beauty ; for the appreciation of architecture and of the arts of the decorator and furniture-maker were then natural to every cultivated person. The other half would have loved so small a house for its implications and because a microcosm puts the sententious spectator at an advantage. Dr. Johnson, for instance, though at first shocked by the profusion implied by such petty costliness, would have been reconciled by the thought of the salutary light in which it placed magnificence and by its value as a graphic and permanent dictionary of manners. There would have been a rush to supply any possible deficiency.

Swift would have got in first with a treatise on the drains so that Voltaire would have had to content himself with a

monograph On the Use of the Back Stairs. Not that our age need envy that age. Books by Hardy, de la Mare and

Davies adorn tiny shelves of Sir Edwin Lutyens's designing. And besides, it was after all our generation who thought of this toy memorial, not the Augustans.

Swift and Vanbrugh sealed for ever the connexion of that time with mutations of size, and more than one con- tributor to the three volumes which expound and illustrate the dolls' house seems to have written with some tale of Zadig or of Rasselas of Abyssinia in his mind. Colonel O'Gorman's careful calculations of the probable habits of the Dollamites (the six-inch inhabitants of the house whom no one has seen at present) would have charmed the age that knew science when she still played at cup-and-ball. The Dollamites would be relatively much stronger than we are :-

" . . Muscular strength depends upon the cross-sectional area of the muscle'; and a being who has shrunk to one-twelfth our size has muscles which are I-144th as strong. That is to say, the cross-section of a muscle varies as the square of any linear dimension. But the weight of a body varies as the cube of any linear dimension, so that the midget who is one-twelfth our size weighs only 1-1,728th as much. . . . Thus after dinner, when the men join the ladies, we see elderly persons jump twelve steps at a time. . . . There is in the house a perfect cabinet gramophone, and if it should be wanted upstairs by the chatelaine to entertain her guests with the music from a new and unique record one inch in diameter, . . . a footman brings it in ono hand as he would do a salver with a letter But there are some difficulties under which the little people will suffer. Some of these occur with fabrics, some with the properties of viscosity and capillarity in liquids. For when liquid is poured from minute toy bottles (and there are dozens of good port in the Queen's dolls' house cellars), it is most reluctant to flow. . . . At the state functions, when the Dollamites rise to toast His Majesty the King of England—as they assuredly do—we notice that it is not sufficient for them to tip the glass on to their lips and tongue, but—shades of Chesterfield !- they suck the wine out of the glass. . . . Even in the pantry curious things are seen. There is a drop of water hanging from the nozzle of a tap. But what a drop ! It is nearly as tig as the tap itself, that is to say the size of a large pear. . . . The dish cloth is nearly as stiff as a man's collar and as awkward for dish wiping as would be a piece of brown paper to us. . . ."

" It is pretty," continues Mr. Percy Macquoid in describing the Queen's shagreen and mother-of-pearl bathroom, " to see a midget washing his hands at the alabaster basin. A pear-shaped drop. of water is allowed to grow until it is a pendant some two or three inches in diameter ; the tap is then turned off, but the drop clings to its silver support, and the midget first clouds its surface with soap, and then rubs and squeezes softly with his hands—it is marvellously pleasant to the touch, for which reason the mites spend several hours a day in washing. . . . It is a common thing for the children on cold nights to ask for ' a hot-water drop to take to bed, please,' and one is always detached--placed in a specially made oiled silk bag and given to them."

But there are grave doubts about the gramophone, the piano and the musical scores by eminent contemporary

composers. Would a midget be able to sing to the piano —what would be the pitch of a voice produced by vocal cords one-twelfth the length of ours, but, like the muscles, stronger ? And what would be the compass of midget ears ? Will the owners stamp their little indignation at human clumsiness when they try that piano ? Some people fear there may be a fuss about the electric light, too, for reasons to which the reader should turn either to the big or the little book.

It is rather appropriate that, except in the matter of typo- graphy and form generally, the short account of the dolls' house is to be preferred to the long one. Both books are compilations, and each writer, whether he was concerned with the pictures, the nursery arrangements, the cellar or the textiles, has not unnaturally tried to make his chapter sprightly as well as informing. In the big volume the effect is cloying, while in the condensed version, which has by no means been abridged out of fancifulness, it is delightful.

The book about the library has no popular parallel at present, which seems a pity as, in spite of a few surprising inclusions, it constitutes a really excellent modern anthology. There are some extremely witty and agreeable contributions from unexpected quarters, and practically all the best con- temporary writers are represented. For instance, work by such diverse writers as Mr. Hardy, Mr. Aldous Huxley, Sir James Frazer, Mr. Robert Graves, Sir Reginald Blomfield, and Mr. Walter de la Mare is included, and a famous surgeon contributes a grave treatise on operative procedure in the event of certain lesions or of emissions of sawdust. But among both the books and pictures there arc specimens that are all that the most pessimistic would expect in a " collec- tion of honour." This fact is indeed only remarkable because

of the austere and scholarly taste which has governed every architectural detail and every scrap of furniture and decoration —everything, in fact, upon which an architect could decide.

In this sphere there have been apparently no polite or even sentimental inclusions, for everything is absolutely and rigidly first rate. It seems, indeed, possible that the Queen's dolls' house has established a new standard of taste in domestic architecture and decoration.

A. WILLIAMS-ELLIS.