The Dolls’ House

by Rumer Godden

  ‘The carpets are filthy,’ said Mother. ‘I will take them to wash and iron.’

  ‘What did I say?’ said Tottie.

  Meanwhile Charlotte was brushing down the walls and roof, Emily was brushing out the rooms and stairs. Then Charlotte fetched a pail of water and a cake of soap and her nail brush.

  ‘Charlotte, do you think you ought to use that?’

  ‘Hush!’ said Charlotte, beginning to use it. She washed the walls and roof and Emily, after watching a moment, joined in and, fetching her nail brush, began to wash the floor and walls and ceilings. She was a little astonished because she was the one who usually thought of things; it was unusual for Charlotte to be the first. ‘H’m,’ said Emily, scrubbing hard. ‘Charlotte must like the dolls’ house very very much.’ The grime was so deep, the dust so thick, that they had to change the water in the pail three times.

  ‘London grime,’ said Tottie, watching. ‘A hundred years of London grime.’

  ‘I hope she doesn’t miss the front steps,’ said Mr Plantaganet, but Charlotte did not miss the front steps. She missed nothing at all. By the time she had finished she herself was filthy, with a filthy overall and dirt marks on her cheeks. Then she took a dry cloth and dried the walls and roof and steps all over; then took a duster and polished them. Emily watched again and followed her.

  ‘Good work, Charlotte,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, good work,’ said Tottie.

  ‘Good work,’ cried all the Plantaganets.

  ‘Why it begins to look new,’ said Emily, stepping back from the dolls’ house.

  Indeed it looked much better. The good paint, and paint was good in those days, had come up well, and the wallpapers, from their brushing, had lost their look of grime. Charlotte had knocked down a few more shells from the pictures, but Emily had fetched the glue and glued them on again, which was unusual for Emily because she did not usually do things for Charlotte. She also brushed and dusted the furniture and rubbed the rust off the stove with sandpaper; she pulled the curtains down from the windows to which they had been fastened with drawing-pins and ripped the covers off the sofa and the chairs. Soon beds, chairs, and windows were left quite bare.

  ‘Are you still wishing, Tottie?’ asked Mr Plantaganet anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tottie firmly.

  ‘You – see what I mean, don’t you?’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘You must wish about the curtains,’ said Tottie. ‘You must wish about the couch and chairs. You must wish about the beds.’

  ‘Curtains, chairs, beds,’ said Mr Plantaganet. He wished he could shut his eyes in order to wish harder but, of course, he could not because they were not made to shut.

  ‘Over and over again,’ said Tottie. ‘You must never leave off wishing.’

  ‘Beds, chairs, couch, curtains; beds, chairs, couch, curtains; beds, chairs . . . ’

  ‘My cot. My own little cot,’ wished Apple.

  ‘My bird-broom-feather.’ Birdie still did not know which to think of first.

  ‘Beds, couch, curtains, chairs . . . ’

  The door opened and the children’s mother came in.

  ‘Could she have washed those carpets already?’ asked Mr Plantaganet suspiciously.

  She answered him herself. ‘I have washed the carpets,’ said Mother. ‘They have come up beautifully. Now I have brought the scrap bag; we shall need new mattresses and pillows and sheets and blankets for the beds.’

  ‘And pillow cases,’ said Charlotte, ‘for mouse-size pillows.’

  Emily stared at Charlotte, and so did the Plantaganets. It was not usually Charlotte who said things.

  ‘Could I have a mouse-size pillow?’ asked Apple, excited. ‘A pillow for a very small mouse?’

  ‘I shall fetch the cotton wool,’ said Emily, ‘and then I can stuff them as you make them.’

  ‘But – but – I don’t want cotton for mine,’ cried Birdie, ‘I want – want – want –’ Her head rattled so that she could not say what it was she wanted. Tottie began to wish.

  ‘I think Birdie ought to have a feather bed,’ said Charlotte suddenly.

  ‘A-aah!’ said Birdie rapturously.

  ‘Here are some bits of flannel for blankets. We can nick them round the edges,’ said Mother. ‘And what do you think? Shall we make Apple a patchwork quilt for his cot?’

  ‘Could you make the patches small enough?’ asked Emily. Mother thought she could.

  ‘It is getting better and better and better,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘Yes!’ said Birdie.

  ‘Yes, but you must go on wishing,’ said Tottie. ‘You mustn’t leave off wishing.’

  ‘While I am in this cleaning mood,’ said Charlotte, ‘I am going to wash the windows. What shall we do about curtains?’ asked Charlotte.

  ‘They should be lace,’ said Mother.

  Then Emily spoke. ‘They must be real lace,’ said Emily.

  Mr Plantaganet smiled.

  ‘Real lace is very expensive,’ said Mother.

  ‘I shall get my money box,’ answered Emily.

  ‘Get mine too,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘What is the difference between real lace and not-real lace?’ whispered Birdie.

  ‘It is made by hand and not by machine,’ said Tottie slowly, ‘and it shows the care that was taken to make it, and besides being fine, it is strong, every least bit of it, and it looks different and it feels different. You would know the difference if you saw the two together.’

  ‘Do you think I would?’ asked Birdie humbly. ‘Real things and not-real things, they seem the same to me. My bird and its songs –’ She knew one was real and one was not, but she could not say now which was which.

  Emily came back with the money boxes. They were rather empty; hers had a threepenny bit, a half-crown and a florin and a sixpenny bit in it. ‘Five shillings and threepence,’ said Emily. Charlotte’s had a florin, sixpence, four three-penny bits, and a penny. ‘Three shillings and sevenpence,’ said Emily, ‘eight and tenpence altogether. That might be enough but – there are other things we want as well,’ said Emily. There was a gleam in her eyes as she looked at the old couch and chairs.

  ‘I shall measure the windows,’ said Charlotte and she measured them with Mother’s tape measure. They were six inches long. ‘Six inches, and there are four windows. Four times six is twenty-four, twenty-four inches, and twenty-seven inches is three-quarters of a yard. We should have to buy three-quarters of a yard of that real lace,’ said Charlotte. ‘And we should have three inches over. We could make a lace apron for Tottie.’

  ‘Yes, but we need a new couch and chairs.’

  The couch and chairs, now they were stripped, certainly looked in very bad repair; their wooden arms and legs were scratched and stained and they had no stuffing left on their seats and backs at all.

  ‘Not a little patch of that red velvet,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘There are others in the shops,’ said Charlotte uncertainly.

  ‘Yes, ordinary ones,’ said Emily scornfully.

  ‘Wouldn’t – wouldn’t ordinary ones do?’ Charlotte was a little like Birdie. She was happy with ordinary things, but Emily was not.

  ‘This dolls’ house is special,’ said Emily. ‘You know it is, Charlotte. It is an antique,’ said Emily.

  ‘What is an an—what she said then?’ asked Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘What is it, Tottie?’

  ‘Old things are antiques,’ said Tottie. ‘Things that have lasted for many years, usually because they were beautifully made of good materials in the beginning.’

  ‘Like real lace,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘Yes, and usually they have been given great care or they would not have lasted all that time,’ said Tottie.

  ‘Like the dolls’ house?’ asked Birdie. ‘It is an antique. Emily said so.’

  ‘Are you an antique, Tottie?’ asked Apple suddenly.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ said Tottie.
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  ‘I know what would look very beautiful on that holly-green carpet,’ Emily was saying slowly. ‘Do you know, Charlotte?’

  ‘What?’ asked Charlotte.

  ‘Do you remember looking at that shop in Wigmore Street?’ said Emily, ‘where they had that little set of dolls’ house chairs and couch? They were very old and they were made of real oak – it said so – and they were red velvet too.’

  ‘And there was a table,’ said Charlotte dreamily, ‘and it had a red runner and a fringe.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emily.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Plantaganets.

  ‘I shall have sixpence for my tooth when it comes out,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Oh, Charlotte! Don’t be silly,’ said Emily. ‘Those were terribly expensive.’

  ‘Then – we shall have to have ordinary lace and chairs.’

  ‘Oh no!’ cried Mr Plantaganet. ‘Oh no! Please no!’

  ‘I don’t mind ordinary chairs,’ said Birdie. ‘I can make do with anything.’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Emily. ‘We shan’t.’

  ‘But – what shall we do?’

  ‘We shall do what other people do when they want things,’ said Emily. ‘We must make money.’

  ‘But how?’ asked Charlotte.

  ‘How?’ asked all the Plantaganets.

  ‘Somehow,’ said Emily.

  Chapter 6

  Tottie and the dolls’ house were not the only things in the house that had belonged to Emily and Charlotte’s great-grandmother and Great-Great-Aunt Laura. There was, as well, a sampler.

  ‘What is a sampler?’ asked Apple.

  ‘It is a needlework picture to hang on a wall,’ Tottie explained to him. ‘It is all worked in cross-stitch on fine canvas and sometimes most times the stitches are very fine indeed. Do you remember, in The Tailor of Gloucester,’ asked Tottie, ‘when it says, “the stitches were so small – so small, that they could only have been made by mice’? Well, the stitches in samplers look like that, but they were not made by mice,’ said Tottie. ‘They were made by little girls; and hours and hours of stitching went into them. They had letters and alphabets and a great deal of writing. I remember them well,’ said Tottie. ‘I feel glad that little girls do not have to make them now,’ said Tottie.

  Great-Grandmother’s sampler hung in the children’s room. It was long in shape and framed in a narrow wooden frame. It was worked in baskets of flowers on a cream background, and it had a verse that said in tiny pale-blue stitches:

  Fain am I to work these nosegays

  Gathered from my tranquil days

  In gentle rain, mild storm and sunny weather,

  A friend to flower, flesh and fur and feather,

  Content, please God, my time on earth to dwell

  Till death shall claim me and I say farewell.

  ‘I remember those f’s,’ said Tottie. ‘They gave her a great deal of trouble.’

  Charlotte did not like to look at the sampler, she said it gave her a headache and she did not understand the poem in the least, but Emily liked it. Sometimes she begged Mother to give her a certain little set of clothes, Tottie’s first clothes, as old as the sampler. These clothes were not beautiful ones like Marchpane’s; they were the ordinary clothes that might have been made for any little doll in those times: a bodice with infinitesimal tucks where stay-bones should have been, a pair of long-legged drawers scalloped to match, and a dress of India muslin embroidered in blue flowers, and a very little blue bonnet to mach that had white embroidery that looked like quilling on the edge. Emily liked to dress Tottie in these and stand her underneath the sampler.

  ‘Let’s put her there today, Charlotte,’ said Emily next afternoon. ‘Mrs Innisfree is coming to tea.’

  Both the children loved Mrs Innisfree, who was gay and serious as need arose and who was always interested in their dolls. Emily dressed Tottie and stood her under the sampler and even wrote a ticket that said, not unlike the cleaners’ notice for Marchpane: Example of a real old sampler worked by a little girl in 1846.

  ‘Poor little girl,’ said Charlotte indignantly.

  Emily took no notice. She wrote: Example of a farthing doll, dressed by that same little girl in 1846.

  ‘Her mother must have helped her,’ said Charlotte. ‘No little girl could make that quilling. You ought to put in about the mother, Emily.’

  ‘Well, I shan’t,’ said Emily. ‘It spoils the notice.’

  There was a sound of footsteps outside the door and Mrs Innisfree came in. She admired Tottie and the sampler and she admired the dolls’ house, and she sat down by the fire and listened to the whole story of it.

  ‘It’s a pity about the chairs and couch,’ said Mrs Innisfree.

  Emily told her about the set in Wigmore Street, and then she and Charlotte fell silent.

  ‘They sound the very thing,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘Will you buy them?’

  ‘No-o,’ said Emily.

  ‘No-o,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘At least, not yet,’ said Emily with a faraway brightness in her eyes.

  ‘I see,’ said Mrs Innisfree, and her eyes went to Tottie. ‘It is strange,’ she said, ‘that you should have arranged Tottie like that for me to see. I am having an exhibition,’ said Mrs Innisfree, ‘at least a part of it is mine. It is called “Dolls Through the Ages”, and it is to help the Blind Children’s Fund. I wonder if your little doll and sampler could be in it.’

  ‘You mean, just as they are now?’ asked Charlotte. ‘“Example of a real old sampler worked by a little girl in 1846” (poor little girl), and “Example of a farthing doll dressed by that same little girl in 1846” (only you ought to have put in about the mother doing the quilling),’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Yes, I mean that,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘I think your mother would let you, and,’ said Mrs Innisfree, looking at Emily and Charlotte and at the shabby little chairs and empty windows of the dolls’ house, ‘we pay for some of the dolls, and I should like to pay you for Tottie.’

  When Tottie heard these words she gave a little gasp, but no one heard her.

  ‘How much would you pay?’ Charlotte was saying. ‘Would you pay a whole pound?’

  ‘Charlotte!’ said Emily and tried to kick her gently on the ankle.

  ‘But we need a whole pound,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘We should pay a guinea,’ said Mrs Innisfree.

  Tottie gave another sound and this time it was a groan, but Apple was tugging at her skirt.

  ‘How much is a guinea?’ whispered Apple.

  ‘A pound and a shilling,’ said Tottie faintly. ‘Mrs Innisfree is giving that for me. O-oh! Oh!’

  ‘That would be enough,’ said Charlotte, nodding her head.

  ‘After a hundred years!’ cried Tottie.

  ‘Then will you let me take Tottie and the sampler away?’ asked Mrs Innisfree.

  ‘Take Tottie away –’ cried Mr Plantaganet, and stopped.

  ‘Tottie? Going away?’ asked Birdie.

  ‘Tottie go away?’ asked little Apple, and he said firmly, ‘No.’

  ‘Now, Apple –’

  ‘No! No! No!’ cried Apple.

  ‘It is to get the chairs,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘Don’t want any chairs.’

  ‘Now, Apple!’

  ‘I don’t want any either. Bother the chairs,’ said Birdie. ‘Can’t we sit on cotton reels? They would do.’

  ‘We have to have elegant chairs,’ said Mr Plantaganet slowly. ‘Here is a good way of Tottie earning them. Isn’t it like Tottie,’ asked Mr Plantaganet, ‘to be the one to earn us a couch and chairs, and the table with the runner, and the real lace curtains perhaps as well?’

  Tottie said nothing at all. She stood as if, instead of being wood, she had turned to stone, and when Emily picked her up and wrapped her in white paper to give to Mrs Innisfree, Tottie lay cold and heavy in her hand. Emily felt misery and reproach from Tottie, but she did not understand why
. Can you guess why?

  Tottie was wrapped up and packed in a box, the box laid on top of the sampler with the two notices, and they were all handed to Mrs Innisfree.

  Chapter 7

  In the night Apple would not sleep without Tottie, Birdie had no wish to sleep, and even Mr Plantaganet did not feel quite comfortable.

  ‘Go to sleep, Apple, do,’ he said.

  ‘You go to sleep,’ said Apple.

  But Mr Plantaganet could not. Emily and Charlotte were strangely restless too.

  ‘Emily,’ said Charlotte at last from her bed.

  ‘Yes, Charlotte.’

  ‘You will be cross,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ said Emily. ‘I-I think I know what you are thinking, Charlotte.’

  ‘Well,’ said Charlotte, and she lay on her back looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. ‘Well, people usually do, don’t they?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Lend, not be paid,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Emily miserably.

  ‘I mean, for an exhibition like that, which is to help people, people usually lend their things, don’t they, to help the other people?’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking-remembering,’ said Emily. ‘Do you remember the animal carving exhibition we went to see? It had labels: Head of a deer, lent by Mr So-and-So. Rabbit, lent by Mrs Somebody Else.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘It didn’t say, Hired from Mr So-and-So,’ said Emily, ‘and that is what being paid means. We have hired out Tottie.’

  ‘That is what she didn’t like,’ said Charlotte, and she was near the truth though that was not the whole truth.

  ‘I felt her being miserable, but I didn’t take any notice – then,’ said Emily.

  ‘Nor I,’ said Charlotte. ‘But I wish I had.’

  ‘I believe Mrs Innisfree offered to pay us because she was sorry we couldn’t get the chairs,’ said Emily.

  ‘We shall go to Mrs Innisfree in the morning and tell her,’ said Emily. ‘I believe she knew we really ought not to have been paid.’

  ‘I believe we really knew that too,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was my fault,’ she added. ‘I said we needed a pound.’