DOLLS.
WE have sometimes wondered that more has not been written about Dolls, who are surely very important members of the -family. For they are nothing less than the children of the -children, of the mothers of the future, who rehearse with them the delights and cares of after years. There is no play, not even the business-like plays of manhood, that is more serious. To careless -older observers, even to some children, it seems a peculiarly sense- less amusement ; it really is a miniature life, earnest and even -anxious to a degree which is sometimes alarming. "There never," writes a friend, "was a more sobered, care-crazed mother than I, -from a mere baby-child up to the lamentably advanced age of sixteen." The relation between such girls and their dolls, girls to whom they are not playthings but children, is worth study, full
.as it is of psychological and moral interest, and affording sure tests and prognostics of character. Few things are more curious than to see how the little creatures, sometimes before they are -able to articulate, pitch upon some object which is to satisfy the -maternal instinct in them. The strangest object it often is.
Like savages when they worship, they are content with the \rudest imitation of the human figure. One young lady of -our acquaintance, then not two years old, set her affec- tions on a stone seltzer-water bottle, which she wrapped in diatmel, and staggered about with, to the alarm of her
mother, who was in constant fear for the little one's toes. Another has adopted a hot-water can, on which she bestows a -passionate affection, and with which she holds endless dialogue. 'These objects, of course, ard exchanged, as time goes on, for others which better satisfy newly developed tastes and feelings. A girl of .six will generally not be satisfied except her baby bears some resem- blance to her mother's. Helped by this concession to reality, the imagination knows no bound in its inventions. But it is checked, on the other hand, by too studied an imitation of life. The .splendid, elaborately dressed creature of wax is never really loved. Its tameness chills the fancy. It is imposed upon the affections, not created by them. And too large a doll is seldom much liked. Of course there are exceptions; but a small doll, not too hand- -some, is generally the favourite. With these darlings about them, some girls, like actors, who are said to look upon the world as a -show and upon the stage as a world, live a life which is more real to them than is their daily existence.
Madame Michelet, in her charming book the Story of .my Childhood, which was lately noticed in this journal, has some interesting chapters about her dolls. Every- thing in her circumstances favoured the development of the taste or, to speak more correctly, the passion. An imaginative .child, thrown much upon herself, neglected by her mother, who -bestowed all the affection she had to spare for her daughers upon an elder sister, she was driven and found it easy to create a world -of love for herself. Her first doll she had to make. Wood was too hard. Clay too cold. Linen and bran were the materials chosen. "I was like the savages," she says, "who desire a little god to worship. It must have a head with eyes, and with ears to listen ; and it must have a breast to hold its heart. All the rest is less important, and remains undefined." How she worked on this model ; how she breathed on what she made in the hope that it might live, remembering how the breath of God had given life to Adam ; what a troubled, anxious life she and her daughter led, but what endless joy and solace she found in her society, she tells with wonderful grace and truthfulness. "I was obliged to hide her in a dark corner of a shed, where the waggons and car- riages were kept. It was winter-time, and our meetings were
precarious and rare There were sonic occasions when I had an absolute need to have her near me, as when a sad night closed a day of penitence. After being punished, I could conceive no consolation equal to taking my child to bed with Inc. When I drew her shivering' from her miserable hiding-place, I would burst into tears and cover her with kisses When we were alone in the garden we held endless dialogues I scolded her a
little, but I never punished her. To send her early to bed, to feed her with dry bread, or, worse still, to strike her little tender body, seemed to me too cruel ; it would have been punishment to myself to do it. When I was in trouble I never told her of it, but I could think of none but the saddest tales with which to warn her, as how a little girl had been lost who had wandered out into the woods, far, far away. At night search was made with lanterns, and shouts were heard ; but the disobedient child was lost for ever." Her love was not lessened, but it was troubled by the uncouth appearance of her child, which she was continually endeavouring to improve. But she found in it at least one consolation. Dis- turbed about her own looks, which did not promise well, she could compare herself with her dolly. "Here I was certainly the hand- somer of the two ; and, although I loved her, I was not sorry to be prettier than my daughter. Many mothers are equally to blame." For her other experiences with her first child, and for the story of the handsomer Margarido, a young lady who had the advantage of being born in a fashionable shop, and who in course of time engrossed the young mother's affections, the reader must be referred to Madame Michelet's book, with which, indeed, he will be glad for many reasons to have made acquaint- ance.
There is nothing remarkable in these experiences beyond the grace and skill with which the writer has given expression to them. They may be matched in households without end ; our own limited inquiries have given us an embarrassing choice of materials. Of these phenomena the first and chief cause is obviously the mother- instinct. Hence the satisfaction of the very young child, whose faculties of observation and comparison are as yet feeble, with the rudiest effigies of the human form, and hence the partiality,— a touching suggestion of a familiar fact in real life,—on the part of older children for the weakest and least-favoured of the doll family. Sometimes other feelings, the sense of beauty, for instance, in an unusually early development, comes into conflict with this instinct. So it was with one young lady of our acquaintance. She, being then two years old, had placed her dolls in a row, and among them one, Miss Betsey by name, of preternatural ugliness. She was seen, as she held a spoon with food to the mouths of each of her family in turn, to administer a slap on the face to her ill-favoured daughter. A short time, however, wrought a marvellous change. About a year after this event she had placed her little family, after their Saturday wash, to warm before the fire. One who had a delicate indiarubber constitution shrivelled before the blaze. Returning to them, she caught Bight of the horrible face of her once comely child. With a shriek of grief and terror, she ran to her mother, crying, "Take it ; don't let me see it again ; oh, my poor Mary ! " But in the midst of her agony she remembered the others, and mastering her horror of their possible condition, ran off to their rescue, and happily found them unhurt. The injured Mary was sent to the hospital and cured ; that is, a lac-simile was with infinite difficulty procured. Happily it bad a little scar on its neck, which passed as the remains of hospital treatment and cure. Another epoch in the child's moral growth was marked by a catastrophe which happened to a later favourite. "Katie" had her cheek torn open by the mischievous fingers of a baby brother. Too old now to be imposed upon by offers of hospital cure, the child wept inconsolably for days. Alarmed at the violence of her grief, her mother attempted consolation. She should have a new doll, the image of that which she had lost. With a reproachful glance, the child said, still weeping bitterly, "Oh, it will never be my own, own Katie!" "And," writes the mother, "I felt positively ashamed of myself at having suggested such a thing ; I saw that Katie was dead to the child, and that I had wronged her as much as if, instead of burying some woman's dead child and weeping with her over it, I had offered to buy or borrow another baby in its place."
An observer of course asks, how can an affection so passionate contrive to maintain itself, in spite of the utter passivity of the objects on which it is bestowed ? Doubtless this is the crux. Where the imagination of the child is less active, it is overpowered by the difficulty. In the genuine lover of dolls it is vigorous enough entirely to overcome it. "I was never disillusionnee," writes the friend whom we have quoted before, "because my dolls did not eat. I had a wash of my doll's clothes every week, and thanked Heaven they did get really dirty." If they would only have worn out as well, everything would have been perfect. "1 rubbed the tiny socks very hard and dragged the dolls shoe- less on the ground, in the hope I might but once before I died have to darn 'baby's' socks." How genuine and thorough the illusion was in this case may be judged from a little trait which every mother will appreciate. " I never woke in the night without getting up to turn my dolls in their beds." But even so lively an imagination as this did not disdain assistance from without. There was a sister very clever at imitat- ing sounds. " When, at my own request, she would imitate for me a sick or suffering fretting baby, I declare I felt my heart ache, and felt aged and worn with care as I lulled my 'Freddy' or ' Selina ' on my lap." We cannot refrain from giving one more extract from the letter of 'our friend, who, we ought, per- haps, to tell our readers has had from babyhood a passion for books at least equal to her passion for dolls. "I once cried my- self myself nearly ill because my brothers had to perform a surgi- cal operation on my doll. Its winking machine would not go, and total blindness or permanent leer and hopeless squint were threatened. I would not abandon my doll, but, mother-like, stood by while my brothers, with infinite skill, beheaded my baby, and wound up its eyes to go right, and then sewed the head and shoulders on for me. I do not think agony is too violent a word for my grief at the sight which my headless babe presented."
The purely domestic life to which these experiences belong satisfies most children. Some, indeed, like to realize in their dolls the wider interests which are awakened by their reading, to repro- duce incidents of travel or of history. "He," said a young lady of our acquaintance, when questioned about the disappearance of a favourite doll, "he has fallen down that crack, but they (the other dolls) don't know it. They think that he has gone to India." We have heard of the niece of a distinguished historian, accustomed to hear of great personages, who identified her dolls with kings and queens, and who, when the Revolution of 1848 occurred, promptly accepted the situation, and treated her Louis Philippe with indignity, as a monarch who could not keep himself upon his throne.
Here we must bring to an end our record of experiences, which many, doubtless, of our readers will be able to supplement with others equally strange and significant. After the fashion of some teachers, who like to conclude their prelections with some problem which seems likely to puzzle their audience, we shall give an anecdote with which the friend so often quoted before reluctantly supplies :—" I can vouch for the fact of a dog once having taken so desperate a fancy to a large wax doll, that she aban- doned her puppies, and they were nearly starved to death, because in spite of all beatings and chasings she would take every oppor- tunity of stealing up to the room where her favourite was, and lying down to sleep by its side. I hope this won't degrade my love of dolls in your eyes ; but I feel a little uneasy about it."
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