Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/189

Rh regard Noah's ark with indifference, but the smaller shops, where the stock is limited to the reasonable requirements of the children of the masses, and to some in particular, where the line is drawn at dolls.

To the mind given to hasty generalization, dolls are apt to appear monotonous, possibly inane; but what a mistaken notion that is, it needs only inspection of a good stock of them, and inquiry into the method of their production, to be convinced. The autumn lounger who cannot be attracted by a doll-shop must be hard to please and of restricted sympathies, for it is a world in little, and represents society not only in its simplest elements, but in its complicated forms and varieties. There is, indeed, a deficiency in masculine interest; only in French doll-shops are "Monsieur, Madame, et Bébé" impartially represented; in ours, gentlemen dolls are few and unattached; mothers and children have the shelves and the window-fronts all to themselves, and occupy them in a variety undreamed of by the doll-buying world when the mothers of the present day played with dolls, and those works of art, as deficient in "outline" as Mr. Mantalini's countess, were fashioned with a serene disregard to anatomy which even gutta-percha would be ashamed of now. Where is the Dutch doll of those vanished ages, whose unassuming joints worked on the principle of the axle, and whose stomach was as flat as those of the most unpleasant of Sir Samuel Baker's clients on the White Nile? Where are the dolls with red dabs for mouths, and bodies composed of one thick pink-kid sausage, terminating in two thin pink-kid sausages (say, a Lyons and two Cambridge), with their ends shaped to the fineness of the feet of Miss Knag's mamma, as mentioned in the annals of Kate Nickleby's fortunes? They are no more to be seen, not even in the humblest shops; they have vanished, with that zoological nondescript, a short barrel on four upright pegs, with a fragment of fur nailed at one end, and red wafers stuck all over its surface, which was last seen in the hands of Mr. Toole, when, as Caleb Plummer, he pathetically, declares that "it is as natural as he can make it for sixpence."

Modestly attired in silver paper, and curiously foreshortened by reason of their legs being doubled up to economize space, the cheaper order of dolls of the period return the gaze of the flâneur at the shop-window, with very little simper, and hardly any stare — the dolls of other days were all simper and stare — and exhibit a delightful variety of hair-dressing. Who does not remember the neat wig of tow curls of the corkscrew pattern which prevailed in our youth, and what middle-aged man cannot successfully search his conscience for a surreptitious removal of the small tin tacks which fastened that wig to the wooden skull of his sister's doll, and for a chuckle of delight when he had succeeded in poking the black beady eyes back into the hollow cavern behind them, and heard them rattle? There were no real eyebrows and eyelashes in those days, no parted lips, and pearly little teeth — the first dolls provided with "real" teeth, made from quills, were regarded with an almost fearful curiosity — and the children for whom dolls were bought were popularly supposed to make clothes for them. Very likely they never did, but the notion is not even entertained now, and the more important dolls take their trousseaux to their new homes in miniature Saratoga boxes. A modern little girl not only does not make her doll's clothes, but she actually puts out her washing! She knows nothing of the delight of the doll's laundry-day, with the drying-lines stretched across the inside of the high fender, and the loan of the private Italian iron with which nurse got up her caps. If she has any imagination, and has been given a very splendid specimen of the modern doll, she is rather afraid of the brilliant waxen lady in a Worth costume, tied back, and flounced, with piles of golden hair, and face marvellously moulded to the last fashionable expression of flirtation or ennui. This is not a person to be patted off to sleep upon one's pillow, propped up on the table while one is learning one's lessons, or surreptitiously dipped in the nursery bath. Of grand dolls of this kind it may fairly be supposed that they are more blessed to the giver than to the receiver, and that the former are of the wealthy-bachelor, god-papa order, whose intentions are good, but whose domestic education is imperfect. They are beautiful objects in the shop-windows, and they faithfully represent every fashion and every folly of the moment. But what healthily-constituted child, with brains, would really care to have a model of a skating-rink, with two couples of rinkers, in correct attire and the daintiest miniatures of Plimpton's skates, moving mechanically over the floor? Such a toy has nothing but its cost to recommend it, and the youthful proprietor who should pull it to pieces to see how it was done would command our approval. Other 