Playthings of the Past
Children's Toys of Bygone Days. By Karl Groeber. Trans-
. bated by Philip Hereford. (Botsford. 32s.)
CHILDREN, throughout the ages, have probably played with -very-mu& the same toys, for toys are merely miniature copies of those objects which come within a child's field of vision. Dolls, animals, and various household implements have therefore always been amongst children's playthings. No doubt, as we learn from Herr Groeber's fascinating book, in ancient Egypt children played with toy crocodiles, in the Middle Ages with armoured knights on horseback, in the days of Frederick the Great soldiers were naturally the vogue, and the French Revolution-was the signal for toy guillotines. A story is told of no less a person than Goethe, who, in December, 1793, " asks his Mother in Frankfurt to get him such a guillotine for his son August ; and in reply he certainly got some home truths. In her decisive manner she wrote to him by return of post : Dear Son, Anything I can do to please you is gladly done and gives me joy ;—but to buy such an infamous implement of murder—that I will not do at any price. If I had authority, the maker should be put in tho stocks, and have the machine publicly burned by the common executioner. What ! let the young play with anything so horrible—place in their hands for their diversion murder and bloodsheddingi 'No, that will never dol ' " .
To-day, in our age of machinery, boys may want aeroplanes and steamships and engines, but girls still demand dolls and animals.
The 'child; however, does not appreciate any better elabor- ately contrived' copies of originals than he does the simplest type of toy ;. for everything is to the child whatever he chooses to make it. A .clothes peg with a bit of rag round it may be the most exquisitely beautiful princess, or an old wheel tied -to a stick the fastest express train that ever ran. In fact, most imaginative children love simple toys best : there is more scope for their imagination. The supply of toys has at all times necessarily corresponded to the demand. One interesting change, however, is worth noting ; in the sixteenth century and well into the nineteenth century " the doll was always a lady, dressed with the very latest fashion, or as in dolls' houses, the working mistress of the house surrounded by her maids and attendants," whereas present day dolls for children are almost invariably babies or little girls. We seem, in some ways, to be less sophisticated to-day. On the other hand, the educational or, perhaps, one should say constructional, toy is now rapidly becoming popular.
-The history of the toy industry in Germany is most interest- ingly told. Its centre from the fifteenth century has been NureMberg, where dolls; dolls' houses, tin soldiers, and toys of most varied descriptions have been made, diminishing in artistic merit as they have ceased to be the work of individual craftsmen and have -been turned out by the thoUsand in factories.
;More than half of this book is devoted to the most fasck noting illustrations of toys of the past. The elegant Parisian dolls are,indeed, charming as are also many of the Swedish and Qerman dolls. Not one of the, toys illustrated in this book is grotesque. Perhaps our present day atrocities date from the birth ,of the Gollyvog. , We heartily congratulate the author of this book for his sympathetic treatment of so delightful a theme, in so attractive a setting.
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