I’ve already mentioned that I like the notion of letting books inspire your life. When I was young, there were two books in particular that filled me with dreams of dolls with interesting wardrobes and furniture. I’m not very good with my hands, so the dreams came to nothing. But maybe the books will inspire you or your children. If not, they’re good stories in and of themselves.
The Fairy Doll is one of Rumer Godden’s lesser-known books. A prolific British author, Godden is best known for Black Narcissus and The Greengage Summer, as well as for many of her children’s books about dolls. Hitty, which won the Newbery Medal in 1930, is by Rachel Field. She was also author of Prayer for a Child, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1945.
The Fairy Doll is a short book about Elizabeth, the youngest of four children. Next to her brothers and sisters, Elizabeth feels klutzy and stupid. They order her about and tease her mercilessly. One Christmas her great-grandmother proclaims that Elizabeth needs a good fairy, just as the family’s tree topper — a fairy doll — falls off the tree.
Elizabeth uses a bicycle basket, moss, and sawdust to make a home for her fairy doll. Then she fills it with a seashell bed and other things.
She asked Father to cut her two bits from a round, smooth branch; they were three inches high and made a table and a writing desk. There were toadstools for stools; stuck in the sawdust, they stood upright. On the table were acorn cups and bowls, and small leaf plates. Over the writing desk was a piece of dried-out honeycomb; it was exactly like the rack of pigeonholes over Father’s desk. Fairy Doll could keep her letters there, and she could write letters; Elizabeth found a tiny feather and asked Godfrey to cut its point to make a quill pen like the one Mother had, and for writing paper there were petals of a Christmas rose.
As an adult, I realize that Fairy Doll’s home would be relatively easy to make. When I was a child, I was both enchanted and intimidated by the idea. Since I didn’t have a fairy doll to make such a home for, I never even attempted it. But I read the book over and over again, entranced by the story of a child who begins to grow up after acquiring a seemingly magical doll.
In sewing they began tray-cloths in embroidery stitches; perhaps it was from making the small-sized fairy things that Elizabeth’s fingers had learned to be neat; the needle went in and out, plock, plock, plock, and there was not a trace of blood. “You’re getting quite nimble,” said Miss Thrupp, and she told the class, “Nimble means clever and quick.”
“Does she means I’m clever?” Elizabeth asked the little boy next to her. She could not believe it.
I haven’t read all of Godden’s doll books, but there is at least one more among them that inspires the same sort of doll-house dreams. Like The Fairy Doll, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower involves an awkward child in a family of six. In this case, the child is Nona, a girl who has been sent from India to England to live with her aunt, uncle, and three cousins. She is sad and fearful, but then a package of Japanese dolls arrives. Nona blossoms as she works to make the dolls their own house. My original copy, which I no longer have, had a floor plan for a Japanese doll house. Even without that, a handy person could make a good start on such a house based on the information in the book.
Hitty concerns a little wooden doll that travels from owner to owner over the course of 100 years. Hitty is lost and found, hidden away and found again, over and over. In India, she acquires a coral necklace; in Philadelphia, her young Quaker owner sews her appropriately plain clothing. At one point, a woman uses her to show off her skills as a seamstress. Through it all, Hitty retains her original chemise with her name cross-stitched on it. Although Hitty sometimes has a few belongings in addition to her clothes, such as a cradle and a sea chest, it was her wardrobe that captured my imagination when I was young. Again, nothing came of it, but I wanted to dress one of my dolls in all of the outfits that Hitty had during her first hundred years.
[H]ow she could sew! I am sure no doll ever underwent so great a change in two short weeks. No butterfly emerged more resplendent from its cocoon than I from the hands of Miss Milly Pinch. Except for my corals, only my chemise remained of my former wardrobe. I doubt if this would have been kept had she not thought it a remarkably fine piece of linen cloth. How is it possible for my poor pen to do justice to my new attire — to the watered-silk dress with draped skirt, fitted waist, and innumerable bows? How can I describe the blue velvet pelisse embroidered with garlands no bigger than pinheads? How tell of the little feathered hat and muff of white eiderdown?
I’ll warn potential readers that it had been a long time since I’d read Hitty when I sat down to write this. As I skimmed through it, I found that it was full of stereotypes that I’d managed to forget. There has been one time when I chose not to write about a book because its contents were not what I remembered. In this case, I’m willing to write Field’s stereotypes off as ignorant, not hateful.
If you love dolls or have a child who loves dolls, or if you enjoy making things, consider picking up The Fairy Doll or Hitty… or Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, for that matter. All of these books are easily obtainable online, if not in bookstores. Enjoy the stories and, if you wish, allow the books to inspire you to create something for a doll.