Lady Lilian and the Modern Doll
I3y JAN STIWTHER.
IT is with us once again—the annual pageant that is spread before our eyes by invisible powers from All Saints to Hogmanay. Sometimes it is called Toy Fair, sometimes Christmas Bazaar, sometimes, I regret to say, Kiddie Land ; it may have as its central set- piece Aladdin's Cave, the Enchanted Castle, the Pirate Ship or even—since we must all be up to date— the Magic Air Liner : but it is always the same thing in a different disguise, and its real name is Paradise Recurring.
I went there by myself : partly because it is the best way to enjoy it—send the children with their nurse by all means, but don't have them tagging around after you wanting to look at Red Indian outfits when you are absorbed in trains, or saying " But, Mummy, you're touching things "—and partly because I wanted to carry out some serious research. I had read so many articles, listened to so many lectures, on the Modern Woman, the Modern Girl, the Modern Child : it was time, I thought, that somebody went into the question of the Modern Doll. So I set out for Paradise to make my investigations.
When I say that I went alone it is not strictly true, for I took Lady Lilian with me, wrapped up in tissue paper to protect her waxen nose ; it seemed a pity for it to get damaged when 'I had somehow kept it intact for twenty-five years. There is one great difference between the Modern Girl and the Modern Doll : the man who writes about the former never has an Ancient Girl handy for reference and comparison, because all the Ancient Girls are now either grandmothers or great-aunts ; he is, therefore, compelled to write either from hearsay or from memory, both of which are distorting mirrors. That is why he often writes such nonsense. But with the Modern Doll it is easy : you simply take one of the ancient ones along with you and look at them side by side. That is, if you have been careful enough or lucky enough to preserve one.
Lady Lilian was given to me for Christmas a quarter of a century ago, when I was six years old. I like to put it that way, because it sounds so venerable. I christened her—with real water, which disfigured her wax forehead a little, but it didn't show if you pulled her hair well forward—I christened her Lady Lilian because she was so like the heroine of that name in a novelette which my nurse was devouring at the time and which I (having picked up the art of reading rather early by studying advertisement hoardings) used to dip into whenever I was left alone. She—Lady Lilian—had to have a new head a few months later owing to a brush with my brother, and a new body the following spring owing to my stabbing her too realistically with a paper-knife when she was the villainess in a play: so that I have often wondered whether she is really Lady Lilian at all, and whether, canonically speaking, the christening still holds good. Be that as it may, I took her.
The lift shot us up and shot us out. Three people hurried forward to attend to us—for it was soon after nine o'clock in the morning, an hour when shop assistants have not yet become tired or blasé, when you may even see, if you are lucky, a saleslady spontaneously stroking a plush pig.
• " Dolls ? "- they said. " Dolls and Cuddly Toys straight on, through the Mechanicals and the Kinder- gartens."
I passed the Mechanicals with reluctance and the Kin- dergartens with' relief. There flashed across my mind's eye a kaleidoscopic vision of the plaited shiny paper mats, the gilt cardboard hair-tidies, which my own mother was so often forced to accept from me a quarter of a century ago. And so we came to the section labelled " Dolls and Cuddly Toys."
Now when I was a child Cuddly Toys hardly existed. Gollywogs were just going out, Teddy Bears just coining in ; we had some stuffed animals, certainly, but they were hard, breakable creatures, modelled to scale and covered with real skin ; the era of dyed plush and mass production was not yet at hand. In those days dolls were still the thing ; then came a generation—that mys- terious, unknown generation between one's own and one's children's—which indulged in an orgy of comic dogs, grotesque cats, grinning monkeys and' apocryphal beasts of no known breed ; dolls, for a time, were considered &mode ; in the children's world, as elsewhere, it was the day of the empty cradle and the full dog-kennel. Nowadays the pendulum has swung hack, and dolls arc again the thing. Nevertheless, Cuddly Toys have clearly come to stay ; and here I found myself faced with a difficulty—should they be included in my treatise ? It is true that they have certain doll-like qualities ; yoU can take them to bed with you, or out in your pram ; they can even be made to sit up and fill a gap at a dolls' tea-party, though I for one do not care to see performing animals : but on the whole, though engaging to look at and comforting to the very young, they arc a lower grade of being and have no place (I decided) in a serious disquisition on the Modern Doll.
So I resisted the temptation to linger among the acres of sky-blue bears, the waves of apple-green monkeys, the banks of rose-pink elephants which lay on either side of me, and found myself at last among the dolls proper.
I unwrapped Lady Lilian. If I did not know for a fact that she has no blinking apparatus, I could swear that she blinked at the sudden light. At any rate, she sat bolt upright in my arms, staring disdainfully at the younger generation, while the younger generation stared back at. her with a thousand tiny faces. As I watched the comedy I felt that my "Treatise on the Modern Doll" was as good as. written. Comparisons and generalisations, couched in the best journalese, came thronging into my head.
" The Modern Doll is in every way superior to the doll of twenty-five years ago. Gone are the unhealthy pallor of wax and the consumptive flush of painted china : the. Modern Doll's face (whether of felt or unbreakable com- position) is sun-tanned, her cheeks are aglow with health.' Gone are the unbelievably flaxen ringlets : the Modern Doll's hair is hair-coloured, and no curlier than it should be. Gone are the impossibly enormous eyes, the im- probably tiny mouth, the expression at once simpering and supercilious : the Modern Doll is a natural, normal being, with intelligence and character written in every line of her features. She is hardier, too, than her pre- decessors : the infant mortality among dolls has fallen from 956 per 1,000 in 1907 to 15.3 per 1,000 in 1932. . . "
Yes, it was going to be quite easy to write. Eager to get home and begin on it, I turned round rather too, quickly and collided with a rocking-horse which two workmen were carrying past. Alas for Lady Lilian !. Like her namesake in the novelette, she fell to the floor a lifeless wreck. Her haughty stare and her aristocratic nose tumbled in one direction ; her pointed chin and her. tiny petulant mouth rolled in another. Healthy, • heart- less and retrousse, the younger generation watched her die. I gathered up the pieces in my handbag and went home with a heavy heart. My ". Treatise on the Modern. Doll ". will. never be written, now : there are some dis- loyalties at which.even a journalist must draw the line.
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