Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/190

184 dolls are the fine ladies in promenade costumes, with "realistic," lank cheeks, tight mouths, wasp-like figures, and languishing eyes, with all the effects of bistre and belladonna faithfully presented. Perhaps it would be absurd to talk of a doll as a moral, immoral, or unmoral agency, but children are at least as well without suggestions of Madame Benoiton.

Supposing the flâneur to be also an intending purchaser, his difficulty of choice will grow with every moment, as he catches sight of the waxen beauties which hang, like Bluebeard's wives, in corners, who form garlands of florid cherubs across the window-tops, or peep at him from glass cases with shy blue eyes or bright black ones, with sweeping lashes, distractingly real, and such lovely hair! It is brushed back from their snowy temples in rippling silken waves, or laid flat on their beautifully-shaped heads in soft little curls; it is braided in high coronets over the brows of the more intellectual — for there are dolls of talent and character among the collection, whose bumps have been studied — or it is tied up in irresistible "clubs" and "pigtails." The dark-haired dolls are less costly than the fair-haired, because fair hair (human) is much dearer than dark; and fair mohair is less successful, though it looks wonderfully bright and silky too, spread out on the shoulders of a beautiful waxen lady in a white dressing-gown, who is contemplating herself in a looking-glass. If one can get a peep behind the window, one may see scores of waxen busts not yet stitched on to their respective bodies, and discern, in half-opened drawers, hundreds of rosy, dimpled limbs; baby hands and feet — which look very funny in their unassociated condition: and one may quickly learn to distinguish the composite doll, whose foundations are laid with paper and whose wax is merely "run," from the solid person, with no pretence about her, who is all wax. On a counter, in a small armchair, sits a demure waxen child, with a book on its knee, a mechanical finger following the printed line; and close to him lie a heap of "nigger" dolls, scantily clothed in a single garment, but so red-lipped, smiling, woolly, jolly, and natural, that one feels at once those are the dolls for one's money, and for one's young friends. They will not want any clothes, and knocking about will come quite naturally to them. So one walks on, with Mumbo in one pocket and Jumbo in the other, wondering admiringly at the pitch to which high art in dolls has been brought, but a little doubtful whether they were not pleasanter to their possessors in their lowlier estate.

The most intelligent child with whom the present writer is acquainted has attached herself with unwavering constancy to a gutta-percha doll, whose original costume was exceedingly limited in extent, and who was introduced to her as "Jemima." The young person in question was not quite up to dressing her new acquisition, she was only equal to undressing her, which she did, reducing her attire to the prettily-ribbed stockings and smart shoes, which she could not take off because they are integral portions of Jemima's gutta-percha legs. The love of that child for that doll is curious to see. No toy, however admirable in mechanism or art, has any chance against Jemima; even the whiskers and the truncheon of a gutta-percha policeman, colored with an almost painful brilliancy, have displayed themselves in a vain rivalry. Jemima's mistress inaugurated their mutual relations by biting off Jemima's nose, thus rendering her horribly like a mutilated Montenegrin; this apparently satisfied her wish to learn what Jemima was made of, and ever since she has been convinced that her doll is all that is charming and beautiful. She sleeps with Jemima, she entrusts Jemima for brief, privileged intervals to the care of highly-favored visitors, she shares her meals with Jemima; and if she permits her attention to stray into other channels for a while, she sits on Jemima, in order to keep her safe and have her handy, as Dickens describes the selfish old man at the seaside reading-room sitting on one popular newspaper while he reads another. Jemima never was handsome, she is now most unprepossessing; but she possesses two attractions which, in the belief of the present writer, would outweigh in a child's mind the charms of the grandest doll in our shop-window. She is flexible, and no one would dream of locking her up, and only giving her out to be played with "when little people are very good."

A propos of Dickens and dolls, how mistaken he is in making Esther Summerson, in "Bleak House," address her doll as "Dolly"! No child whose doll was her real friend would ever do such a thing, any more than any man who boasts the real intimacy and confidence of a cat would call his four-footed friend "Puss."