The Dolls’ House

by Rumer Godden

  For Janaki Paula Mary Foster with love – R.G.

  Fain am I to work these nosegays

  Gathered from my tranquil days

  In gentle rain, mild storm and sunny weather . . .

  From Great-Grandmother’s sampler

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 1

  This is a novel written about dolls in a dolls’ house. The chief person in it is Tottie Plantaganet, a small Dutch doll.

  Dutch dolls are scarce now, but Tottie was made a long time ago when they were plentiful and sold in every shop that had toys for sale; and large ones cost a penny the middle size a halfpenny and very small ones, like Tottie, were sold for a farthing each.

  At present she lived in the nursery of two little girls called Emily and Charlotte Dane. I say ‘at present’ because Tottie had lived a long while; once she had lived with two other little girls who were Emily and Charlotte’s great-grandmother and their Great-Great-Aunt Laura.

  How strange that a little farthing doll should last so long. Tottie was made of wood and it was good wood. She liked to think sometimes of the tree of whose wood she was made, of its strength and of the sap that ran through it and made it bud and put out leaves every spring and summer, that kept it standing through the winter storms and wind. ‘A little, a very little of that tree is in me,’ said Tottie. ‘I am a little of that tree.’ She liked to think of it.

  She was made of that wood, neatly jointed at the hips and shoulders and sockets (she had sockets for elbows and knees), with a sturdy inch-wide yoke for shoulders and a round little head with glossy painted hair. She had glossy pink cheeks and her eyes were painted with bright firm paint, blue and very determined.

  Emily and Charlotte had chosen two other dolls to be Tottie’s father and mother; their names were Mr Plantaganet and Mrs Plantaganet, but Mrs Plantaganet had another name and that was Birdie. Of course Tottie knew, just as you and I know, that Mr and Mrs Plantaganet were not her real father and mother, that she had no real father and mother, unless it were that felled tree of whose wood she was made. She knew that, just as she knew that her little brother Apple, the doll they had given her for a little brother, was made from plush (which is a kind of velvet), and Darner, the dolls’ house dog, had a backbone made from a darning needle; if you have ever played at Fathers and Mothers, and of course you have played at Fathers and Mothers, you will remember what a very good feeling it is; that was exactly the feeling between Tottie and Mr and Mrs Plantaganet – Birdie – and little brother Apple and Darner the dog.

  It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot ‘do’; they can only be done by; children who do not understand this often do wrong things, and then the dolls are hurt and abused and lost; and when this happens dolls cannot speak, nor do anything except be hurt and abused and lost. If you have any dolls, you should remember that.

  Listen to the story of Mr Plantaganet (before he was Mr Plantaganet); for a long while he was hurt and abused and lost. He was a delicate little doll, rather larger than Tottie, with a china face and brown glass eyes and real brown hair. He was a boy doll and he always said he remembered once being dressed in a kilt as a Highlander, with toy bagpipes stuck to his hand with hard painful glue, painful when you tried to get it off. He was bought for some children – not, I am glad to say, Emily and Charlotte, quite other children – who took no care of him at all. It was they who dragged the bagpipes off and took some of the painted skin off the palm of his hand as well, and tore his clothes off too, and let their puppy bite his foot until it looked half nibbled. One of the boys drew a moustache on his little top lip with indelible pencil (‘indelible’ means it can never come off); then they threw him into the cold dark toy cupboard, where he lay for weeks and months and might have lain for years if they had not been ordered to tidy the toy cupboard because children were coming to tea. As it was, they left him lying on the floor under the table and Emily, who was one of the visitors, nearly trod on him.

  ‘Oh! I am sorry,’ cried Emily, but nobody seemed to think it mattered. ‘What a dear little doll,’ said Emily, picking him up. ‘Who is he? Whom does he belong to?’ He did not seem to belong to anyone. She noticed that his eyes were filled with dust. The children said Emily could have him, and she wrapped him up in her handkerchief and took him home.

  She and Charlotte saw at once that he was made to be a little man doll. They sponged the dust and glue off him with hot water and dried him carefully and, though the moustache would not come off, they knitted him a sock for his spoilt foot and put plaster on the palm of his hurt hand; and their mother made him a check flannel suit and a blue shirt and a tie of red silk ribbon. Emily cut him tiny newspapers out of the real ones to read.

  ‘I like him with a moustache,’ said Emily.

  ‘It makes him look more like Mr Plantaganet,’ said Charlotte.

  He could still not quite believe he was Mr Plantaganet. He was still easily made afraid, afraid of being hurt or abused again. Really you might have thought that Tottie was the father and he was the child; but there are real fathers like that.

  Mrs Plantaganet was not quite right in the head. There was something in her head that rattled; Charlotte thought it might be beads, and it was true that the something made a gay sound like bright beads touching together. She was altogether gay and light, being made of cheap celluloid, but, all the same, nicely moulded and joined and painted.

  She came to Charlotte on a cracker at a party. Yes, Mrs Plantaganet started life as part of a cracker, to which she was fastened by silver tinsel. She had been dressed in blue and green feathers. At first they had not thought she was anything more than part of the cracker. First Charlotte kept her on the cracker; then off the cracker; then one day she decided to dress her and pulled the feathers off.

  The feathers were glued on Mrs Plantaganet and here was her difference from Mr Plantaganet: the glue coming off did not hurt her at all; it came off easily with hot water, leaving not a trace, and her body only gave out a warm celluloid smell and turned even more pink.

  ‘There is something brave about this little doll,’ said Emily. ‘I don’t usually like celluloid dolls.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Charlotte. ‘But I like her.’

  Emily made Mrs Plantaganet a red skirt with blue rickrack braid on the hem, a blue blouse with red spots; the spots were pin spots, but they looked large as buttons to Mrs Plantaganet. ‘I think she likes them large and bright,’ said Emily. They sewed her hair, which was fluffy yellow cotton, into a bun; but Emily thought again and let the hair out of the bun, loosed and flyaway. ‘I think she was wishing we could let it fly away like that,’ said Charlotte. ‘I think she likes her hair.’

  They put her next to Mr Plantaganet and they seemed to suit one another at once. They seemed to suit Tottie too. Tottie had on a little apron that was embroidered with red daisies; both Mr and Mrs Plantaganet thought she looked the very pattern of a nice small wooden girl; they were to think even more of her later.

  ‘We must get Mr Plantaganet a walking stick,’ said Emily. ‘And Mrs Plantaganet must have a hat with a tiny feather.’ />
  There were still something of the cracker and feather look about Mrs Plantaganet as there was still something of the dark toy cupboard about Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘But Tottie has been ours always,’ said Emily.

  ‘Even before always,’ said Charlotte.

  As for Apple, there were no fears for him. Come fog, come fine, no one could be unkind to Apple. He was as big as Emily’s thumb, plump and made of warm plush, coloured pink-brown. He felt nice and he was nice, with chunky little arms and legs and sewn-in dimples and a wig of brown darning-wool hair. Perhaps it was the darning wool that made Darner so fond of him. Apple wore a buster suit, scarlet felt trousers and a white cambric blouse, white socks, and red felt shoes that were fastened with the smallest of small pearl buttons you can imagine. No one ever saw Apple without exclaiming, ‘What a little love of a doll!’ Tottie and Mr Plantaganet felt that too, through they knew how naughty he was; Birdie, Mrs Plantaganet, felt it, but she did not know that he was ever naughty; she only loved him.

  You had to be very careful how you touched Darner because he had a prick at his head end; it was his darning-needle backbone and it made him difficult to handle. The rest of him was clipped wool, gone a little grey with London grime, over pipe-cleaner legs. Emily and Charlotte used to take him, in his turn, as they took the rest of the family, to the Park, where he liked to be stood in the shelter of a fallen leaf (if it were autumn and there were fallen leaves), so that he could bristle at other and real-size dogs. He also liked staying at home.

  That was the trouble. There was no home.

  Chapter 2

  The shortage of dolls’ houses was acute.

  There were a few in the toyshops but they were very expensive and made of cheap papier-mâché or plywood. ‘Not worth the money,’ said the children’s father. ‘They wouldn’t last any time.’

  ‘I want one to last,’ said Mr Plantaganet with a catch in his breath. ‘I want one to last for always.’ More than anything in the world Mr Plantaganet wanted a home. ‘One that will shut. One that will last. Do you think they will ever buy a house for us?’ he asked. Being a doll, he could not say, ‘Do you think we shall ever buy a house?’ He had to wait until Emily or Charlotte, or Emily and Charlotte’s father, had the idea of buying one for him. Even if they had the idea, these days it was too expensive and he knew that the money Emily and Charlotte put into his pockets was only gold and silver paper. ‘I don’t think we shall ever have a house,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘One will come. One will come,’ sang Birdie.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Mr Plantaganet.

  Birdie could not say how she knew. The thought of it rattled in her head with the thought of that tiny raffia hat that Emily had now found for her; it was no bigger than a half-crown and Emily had fixed in it a feather from her aunt’s canary. Remembering that, Birdie suddenly remembered what she had thought about the house. ‘Emily fixed the hat,’ she said. ‘Someone will fix the house.’

  Of course there were dolls’ houses advertised in the newspaper, even sometimes in the part of the newspaper Emily cut up for Mr Plantaganet. Dolls’ houses for sale. Four rooms, fully furnished, electric light, loggia. Garage with miniature cars. £25.

  ‘That’s an enormous heap of money,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘But I don’t want electric light,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘A little pretending candlestick would do for me, and I wouldn’t know how to drive any kind of car.’

  But even the plain dolls’ houses, Four rooms . . . Two rooms . . . Some furniture . . . were seven or eight or three even four guineas each, and neither Emily and Charlotte nor their father had that much money to spare. ‘We shall never get one,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  At the moment the Plantaganets were as uncomfortable as anyone in London; they had to live crowded together in two shoe-boxes that were cramped and cold and that could not shut; when they hung their washing out to dry, even the smallest pattern duster, it made the cardboard sodden and damp. ‘You can’t play with them properly,’ wailed Charlotte.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like home,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘Though of course it is ever so much nicer than the toy cupboard,’ he added hastily. ‘But I am too heavy for it, and so is Apple. It doesn’t feel safe.’

  ‘I don’t mind it,’ said Birdie, but then Birdie, aggravating creature, never minded anything. She was happy anywhere.

  ‘It slips about. Everybody knocks it over. It doesn’t feel safe,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘Long long ago,’ began Tottie in her comforting voice (and it is the best wood that gives out the most comforting voice – ask the men who make pianos and violins and flutes), ‘long long ago, I knew a dolls’ house. I lived in it. It belonged to Laura. She was Emily and Charlotte’s great-great-aunt. That was a hundred years ago,’ said Tottie.

  Tottie had stayed the same all that time, for all that hundred years. Does that surprise you? It is easier for dolls than children. From the moment they are made, finished, they never have to alter, they never have to grow. ‘I wouldn’t be a child for anything.’ Tottie often said. ‘First you have to be a baby, then a little child, then a bigger child, then a schoolboy or girl, then a big boy or girl, then grown up.’ Of course Tottie knew she could not, even if she would; there is no power of growing in dolls, and she knew that was why, for instance, any live little girl, however stupid, had power over her. ‘I am as I am,’ said wise little Tottie. ‘I couldn’t be all those things. In all these years, these hundred years, I can still only be me.’ It is very important for dolls that children guess their right ages; some thoughtless children make their dolls vary between six and six months. Mr Plantaganet for instance was born twenty-eight years old. Tottie was about seven. Apple would always be three. Darner was so cross that it was easy to guess he was old. Birdie was more difficult, it was her flightiness, but even Birdie was easily seen to be between twenty and thirty.

  ‘I was telling you about the dolls’ house,’ said Tottie. ‘It was not too big. It could stand comfortably on the table and outside it was a glossy cream colour painted with ivy. It looked as good as real ivy,’ said Tottie.

  ‘It would be better than real ivy,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘Real ivy chokes things and can even pull down a house. Painted ivy is safer. I like painted ivy. Go on.’

  ‘Go on. Go on,’ cried Apple. Emily had put him on a chair, but he had deliberately fallen off upside down because he wanted to practise standing on his head.

  ‘Don’t do that, Apple dear,’ said Tottie. ‘The dolls’ house? Oh, yes. In the front there was a front door with steps leading up to it.’

  ‘How many steps?’

  ‘Six,’ said Tottie, ‘and the door was painted green with a knocker; it didn’t really open but that didn’t matter, because the whole of the front swung open, leaving the inside ready to be played with.’

  ‘Leaving the steps?’ asked Mr Plantaganet anxiously.

  ‘Leaving the steps,’ nodded Tottie, and she added, remembering, ‘On the steps was fixed a little tiny scraper.’

  ‘Would my foot go on it?’ asked Apple, ‘my foot, in its red shoe?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Tottie. ‘And yours,’ she said to Mr Plantaganet before he need ask. ‘There was a kennel,’ she said, ‘just outside.’

  ‘For Darner?’ asked Apple.

  ‘But would he go in it?’ asked Mr Plantaganet doubtfully.

  ‘In this kennel I think he would,’ said Tottie.

  Darner did not growl as he would have if he had thought the kennel was dangerous. He always growled ‘Prrick’ at danger.

  ‘There was a hall with a staircase and a polished wooden floor. I remember the floor particularly,’ said Tottie, ‘because it looked like a draughtboard. Draughts is a game you play on a board checked in squares of light and dark wood,’ she explained to Apple. ‘The walls of the hall were red. Red paper,’ she said, ‘that looked like satin.’

  ‘Are you sure it did?’ asked Mr Plantaganet doubtfully. ‘I haven’t se
en any paper like that.’

  ‘You would have once,’ said Tottie. ‘I am quite certain. I remember it looked cosy and rich. There was a hall window with lace curtains; the white looked pretty on the red; there were Christmas scraps for pictures and a clock glued on the wall, and two dolls’ house dark wood chairs and a tiny rug.’

  ‘Everything!’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘Everything. And in the hall,’ said Tottie, ‘was the figure of a butler.’

  No one asked her why she said ‘the figure of a butler’ instead of ‘a butler’. They knew that whoever had made, or tried to make, that butler had not been successful. There are some dolls like that. There was no need to pity him because he never had been a butler.

  ‘We could put him outside,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘Go on.’

  ‘To the left was the kitchen,’ Tottie went on. ‘You know which the left is, Apple, your left hand, the one you don’t shake hands with. On the left, then, was the kitchen.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘There was a blue tin stove with saucepans and a kettle. There was a heavy iron on a stand, no bigger than Emily’s fingernail. There was a rolling pin and a wooden pudding basin smaller than a thimble. There was a dresser with flowered china cups and plates on it, a table and another rug and kitchen chairs and a mangle and a pot of pretending geraniums on the window sill.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Mr Plantaganet longingly.

  Up to now the thought of the house and the thought of her hat had been knocking together in Birdie’s head; now she asked, ‘Was there a little feather broom?’

  ‘I think there was,’ said Tottie.

  ‘Dear!’ said Birdie, and the feather broom and the feather in her hat seemed to float before her eyes.

  ‘Could you make buns for tea in that kitchen?’ asked Apple. ‘What is a bun?’

  ‘To the right of the hall,’ said Tottie, ‘you know your right hand, Apple dear, the one you do shake hands with, to the right was a sitting room. It had a green carpet,’ said Tottie, ‘the colour of holly leaves, and it had real wallpaper, like the hall, only this one was white with cream stripes. On the wallpaper were two little pictures; their frames were made of glued-on shells that Laura had picked up at the seaside. There was another window—’