The Dolls’ House

by Rumer Godden

  All the dolls looked at Marchpane. Then they all looked at Tottie.

  ‘It is in our nursery now,’ said Tottie.

  ‘You stole it while I was at the cleaners.’

  ‘It was sent to us, as you were sent to the cleaners. It needed cleaning and taking care of,’ said Tottie. ‘We cleaned it and took care of it.’

  ‘How dare you!’ cried Marchpane. ‘You think because the Queen noticed you, you can do anything. Wait and see. Wait and see,’ cried Marchpane. ‘I shall have that house back.’

  ‘How can you?’ asked Tottie. ‘It’s in our nursery.’

  ‘Wait and see,’ said Marchpane. ‘Wait and see.’

  The Exhibition was closed. The dolls had been taken away, the room was empty, and when the caretaker’s child came in the evening there were only long blank tables where Tottie and Marchpane and Queen Victoria’s dolls and the walking doll and the wax doll and the other dolls had been.

  Did the caretaker’s child think of the wax doll? And the wax doll, in her lonely box, think of the caretaker’s child and of the finger that had touched her satin dress? Did the dolls think of Tottie’s welcome home by Emily, Charlotte, Birdie, Mr Plantaganet, Apple, and Darner?

  I think they did.

  Chapter 13

  It was winter when Tottie came back to the dolls’ house. If you would like to know how winter looks to a doll imagine yourself as looking into a crystal ball, a ball of glass, in which a Christmas-frost snowstorm is being shaken down on little splinter trees and cardboard houses. Children were given those snowstorm balls when Great-Great-Aunt Laura and Emily and Charlotte’s great-grandmother were young. Winter looks like that to dolls because they are not often taken out in the winter, and they see the snow and snowflakes through the windowpanes of glass.

  Tottie came back and it was winter, but so far there was no snow.

  Emily and Charlotte took her with them when they went to Mrs Innisfree’s house to fetch the couch and chairs.

  ‘Tottie ought to go, because it was Tottie who really got the chairs for us,’ said Emily.

  ‘Are the couch and chairs really coming, Tottie?’ asked Mr Plantaganet. ‘We have been wishing and wishing. I have never really stopped wishing,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘But it was you who got them for us, Tottie,’ he said.

  ‘Dear Tottie, but I should have been quite content with cotton reels,’ said Birdie.

  ‘Oh, Birdie dear!’ said Mr Plantaganet impatiently. Sometimes he found it hard to be patient with Birdie.

  Apple was not there. He had a plan, unknown to Tottie, that he might climb up to the dolls’ house chimney. He thought he might climb up the ivy, it looked so real, but of course it was painted too flat and the paint was far too slippery.

  Emily made Tottie a cotton-wool cap and a cotton-wool muff to go out in, as it was beginning to be bitterly cold. ‘But we are cosy in the dolls’ house,’ said Mr Plantaganet. The whiteness of the cotton wool looked pretty with Tottie’s glossy black hair and painted cheeks; she shone with happiness. Birdie did not want a cap or a muff. She wanted a feather boa.

  ‘What’s a boa?’ asked Apple, forgetting the ivy.

  ‘It’s a long scarf, but made out of feathers, and it is round all the way down,’ explained Tottie.

  ‘Like a caterpillar?’ asked Apple, who had seen a caterpillar in the park.

  ‘Yes, a caterpillar would make a very good boa for Birdie,’ said Tottie.

  ‘If it were made out of feathers,’ said Birdie. ‘But it’s not.’

  Tottie was carried along to Mrs Innisfree’s on the palm of Charlotte’s hand. Charlotte had on a red woollen glove, Tottie had on her red woollen cloak, her cap and muff. They went well together.

  It was a clear, pale, cold sunny day; the bare branches of the trees in the Park stood out against a clear pale sky. The cold touched Tottie’s cheeks and the sunlight made them glisten.

  Emily and Charlotte were talking of Christmas, and Tottie was suddenly reminded of a little sunshade, a parasol, not made, like the walking doll’s parasol, from satin, but of paper from a cracker. ‘I saw one long ago,’ said Tottie. ‘It was gay as a little paper wheel. How Birdie would love that,’ thought Tottie. ‘How I should like to give her one for Christmas. She would like it better than the feather boa, but you don’t see them nowadays. I wish . . . ’ said Tottie, sitting on Charlotte’s hand; ‘and for Apple a marble. A marble would make him a good ball, and for Darner a tiddlywinks plate, a nice big purple one. And for Mr Plantaganet? I wish they would think of getting him a toy post office,’ thought Tottie. ‘Then he could go to business; if he went to business every day he would be very happy. I wish and wish they would get him a toy post office.’

  When they arrived in Mrs Innisfree’s house, Tottie forgot even about Christmas and Christmas presents. There, on the table in Mrs Innisfree’s drawing room, were the couch and chairs.

  Emily did not recognize them.

  Charlotte did not recognize them.

  Tottie did not recognize them.

  Their wood, having been carefully sandpapered, had been polished by Mrs Innisfree’s French polisher until it shone with a real furniture dark wood shine of its own. Then the petit-point seats and arms and backs had been fastened over new cushions. Mrs Innisfree had worked the cream background and the tiny roses and leaves; she had even worked their shadings, though the flowers were scarcely bigger than knots or dots.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Emily.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Charlotte.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Tottie. ‘Oh! It was worth going to the Exhibition.’

  ‘Even the Queen’s dolls’ house,’ said Emily, ‘hasn’t a better set than that.’

  ‘Yes, that is perfectly right,’ said Tottie. She felt now she knew something about queens.

  Mrs Innisfree put down on the table two pairs of fine white lace curtains, each curtain six inches long. ‘I saw the piece of lace,’ she said. ‘It was the right width and just the right length, and there is a piece, three inches, over, so I made an apron for Tottie. Do you see, Emily, the lace is worked with ferns? Your great-grandmother’s drawing room might easily have had lace curtains worked with ferns. They were very fashionable then.’

  ‘We shall keep them always, we shall never change them,’ said Emily solemnly. ‘Nor will our children’s children.’

  ‘Do you suppose Tottie will see them?’ asked Charlotte. ‘I mean our children’s children, not the chairs.’

  ‘She may,’ said Emily.

  ‘That makes me think,’ said Charlotte, and she added, ‘I seem to have been thinking a great deal of thinking lately.

  It was a solemn morning. Mrs Innisfree and Emily did an account and it seemed that the cost of the lace curtains, of Mrs Innisfree’s French polisher and upholsterer, and of the silks and canvas for the chairs, came to eight and tenpence, which was just the money they had had in their money boxes, though Charlotte now had the sixpence for her tooth and Emily had saved another half-crown.

  ‘I believe you are saying eight and tenpence,’ said Emily, looking hard at Mrs Innisfree, ‘because you knew it was eight and tenpence that we had,’ said Emily.

  ‘And if I am?’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘If I enjoy it?’

  ‘And we can’t pay you for the time,’ said Charlotte, ‘nor for the thinking. I wonder what makes thinking,’ said Charlotte. ‘It is funny how one thing begins another.’

  ‘And how it all leads on,’ said Emily.

  ‘Yes, it joins,’ said Charlotte, wrinkling her forehead. ‘I have been thinking of thinking. And there is no knowing where it leads to, or when it will end, or where.’

  Chapter 14

  On Christmas morning the Plantaganets woke to hear real carol singers in the street outside.

  ‘Peace and goodwill among men,’ sang the carol singers.

  ‘And among dolls,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘I hope among dolls.’

  ‘Peace and goodwill.’ The voices brought Christmas into the dolls’ house. ‘Can such a large
thing as Christmas be in a dolls’ house?’ asked Mr Plantaganet. ‘It is so large. See, it has spread over the whole world, and for so many years, nearly two thousand years,’ said Mr Plantaganet, the dark brown of his eyes looking large too. ‘How large it is,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘It is beautifully small too,’ said Tottie. ‘Perfectly small.’

  You might think that, to a doll, many things would seem too large, but no. A doll is not as small as a beetle, for instance, and a beetle’s world is just right for a beetle. When, too, you have lived as long as Tottie, you will learn that small things are not as small as they seem, nor large things as large; nothing is small and nothing is large when you have become accustomed to the world. Now the carols brought the spirit of Christmas into the dolls’ house.

  ‘I like “Peace and Goodwill”,’ said Tottie.

  ‘I like “The Holly and the Ivy”,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘They are like the colours in this house. I like “Prince of Peace”; that suits it too. I know about peace now,’ said Mr Plantaganet. ‘In the days of the toy cupboard –’ he began and his eyes looked darker and he did not go on. ‘Yes, I like “The Prince of Peace”, but the one that I like best of all is “God Bless the Master of This House”, because I am the Master,’ said Mr Plantaganet.

  Birdie liked the rocking carol, only she mixed it with ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby’, but after all it was nearly the same thing.

  ‘Peace and goodwill,’ sang the carol singers.

  The dolls’ house, that Christmas, looked very pleasant. Emily and Charlotte had decorated it; they made wreaths of moss on curtain rings, that looked like holly wreaths, and they had strung holly berries for garlands. Emily had even made a paper chain with very small links. Birdie liked the paper chain best of anything. The new chairs and couch looked handsome in the drawing room, and there was a Christmas tree, six inches high, standing in a wooden pot. It was the kind of Christmas tree you have on Christmas cakes; it was just right for the Plantaganets.

  ‘Would you like to give one of the Plantaganets this for Christmas?’ asked the children’s mother, coming into the room. ‘I must have had it at a party long ago.’ She showed them a parasol made of white paper printed with a pattern of purple and scarlet feathers. It could be put up and down, and had once fitted into a cracker.

  ‘Oh! For Birdie,’ cried Emily at once.

  ‘How odd,’ thought Tottie. ‘How lovely and how odd.’

  ‘And for Apple, a marble. Wouldn’t a marble make a ball for Apple?’

  ‘More and more odd,’ thought Tottie, ‘and still more lovely.’

  ‘Darner might have a new plate,’ said Charlotte, looking in the toy cupboard. ‘This big tiddlywinks would do. The rest are all lost. It’s a purple one. That would suit him nicely.’

  ‘More and more odd,’ thought Tottie again, ‘and more and more lovely.’

  For Mr Plantaganet they hung a buttonhole on the tree. It was made of woollen flowers. ‘I don’t much like that,’ thought Tottie.

  Mr Plantaganet did not much like it either. ‘Is my Christmas spoilt?’ he whispered to Tottie.

  ‘No. No,’ said Tottie. ‘But I wish I could make it better.’

  ‘I wish that too,’ said Mr Plantaganet. He suspected it was spoilt.

  At that moment the postman’s knock sounded from the front door. Emily and Charlotte ran to open it. He had brought two parcels, a light thin one, the shape of a flat cardboard box, and a small one, the shape of a child’s shoe-box. It was very heavy.

  Emily opened the flat light one first.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Charlotte. ‘What is it? Oh!’ she cried as Emily set up a cardboard counter painted with netting. ‘Oh! It’s a post office. A toy post office.’

  ‘Oh!’ cried Tottie, and she caught Mr Plantaganet’s eye.

  ‘Look at the stamps,’ said Emily, ‘and the stamper.’

  ‘Let me look at the stamps,’ cried Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘Let me look at the stamper,’ cried Apple.

  The toy post office was complete. It even had two letter boxes labelled PACKETS AND NEWSPAPERS and LETTERS. It had stamps and certificates and postal orders and telegraph forms and letter paper and postcards and stamped envelopes. It had a red tin telephone and a purple inkpad for the stamper.

  ‘But what shall we do with it exactly?’ asked Charlotte.

  ‘We can tell you,’ wished Tottie and Mr Plantaganet together, and Emily, as if she had felt them wishing, looked at them. Then she looked only at Mr Plantaganet. ‘I know,’ said Emily slowly. ‘I know, Charlotte. It shall be Mr Plantaganet’s office. He shall go there to business every day.’

  ‘As a postman?’ asked Charlotte.

  ‘As a postmaster,’ said Emily.

  ‘A postmaster!’ said Mr Plantaganet, and his waistcoat seemed to swell and grow bigger. ‘Did you hear, Tottie? I am a postmaster. Did you hear, Birdie dear? Now I have nothing left to wish for. Did you hear, Apple? Oh, how happy I am. Did you hear –’ He was about to say, ‘Did you hear, Darner?’ when he remembered that Darner was a dog and could not be expected to recognize the difference between Mr Plantaganet, Postmaster, and plain Mr Plantaganet. He stopped. His attention was caught by Darner.

  Darner was looking at the other parcel. All his wool stood on end. ‘Prrickckckck,’ said Darner at the parcel. ‘Prrick. Prrick. Prrick! Prrick! Prrrrrrickckckck!’

  Chapter 15

  At the moment Darner barked at the parcel the Plantaganet family were all in the post office that Emily had set up on the table. Apple was playing with the scales, Birdie was tinkling the telephone; it had a bell and Birdie liked the sound of it. She wondered if a musical box sounded like that. Tottie had told her about musical boxes and she often longed to hear one. Tottie was looking at the postcards. Mr Plantaganet was trying not to wish that they would all go away and leave him alone with it.

  As Darner barked, Tottie remembered the other parcel, and for no reason that she could put a name to, she found herself wishing and wishing and wishing that Emily would put them all back in the house. She must have wished very purposively, as Emily raised her head and said, ‘I think they must all go back into the dolls’ house now.’

  ‘In the house, and behind the door. Shut the door,’ wished Tottie.

  ‘After all, Mr Plantaganet wouldn’t go to the office on Christmas Day,’ said Emily.

  ‘Wouldn’t he?’ asked Mr Plantaganet.

  ‘Wouldn’t a postmaster? The postman does,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘A postman doesn’t go the office,’ said Emily, ‘he goes on his rounds. You can’t send parcels on Christmas Day, you only get them.’

  ‘I wish you didn’t,’ said Tottie. She felt worried, a little frightened and a little angry; she felt as if her wood had gone stiff.

  Charlotte put the Plantaganets tidily back in the house: Apple on the stairs, ready to somersault; Birdie in her bedroom, with the pink carpet, taking off her hat with the feather; Mr Plantaganet on one of the new chairs in the sitting room; and Tottie in the kitchen. ‘Now you are all in your happy little house,’ said Charlotte. She did not close the front.

  ‘Our happy little house,’ sang Apple as he began his somersaults. He reached the bottom and to his great joy Charlotte looked up and said, ‘Oh, he has fallen downstairs, poor little Apple,’ and put him up again.

  ‘Our happy little house,’ sang Birdie, twirling her feather.

  ‘Our happy little house,’ hummed Mr Plantaganet, ‘and office,’ he hummed as he read his paper. He went on humming: sometimes ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, sometimes ‘Peace and Goodwill among Men’.

  Charlotte had given Tottie the pudding basin tied in a scrap of white muslin and said she was turning out the Christmas pudding, but Tottie felt too nervous to think about puddings. She could hear Darner in his kennel still saying ‘Prrick,’ and Darner never said ‘Prrickck’ except for danger.

  Through the open front of the dolls’ house Tottie watched Emily undo that parcel.

  Emily
undid the string and then carefully she unwrapped the paper. It was a small shoe-box. Tottie shivered all through her wood. ‘Shoe-boxes are unlucky for this family,’ she said. ‘The last shoe-box made Mr Plantaganet awfully unhappy.’

  The shoe-box was padded with cotton wool and paper. Emily and Charlotte lifted it out, piece by piece, and then Emily gave a cry of admiration and pleasure. ‘Look, Charlotte. Look. It’s a doll. That doll. That lovely doll.’ And she lifted Marchpane from the box.

  There was a sudden light clatter in the dolls’ house kitchen, but nobody heard.

  ‘Oh! I loved her at the Exhibition,’ cried Emily. ‘You remember her, Charlotte. She has been sent to us because she was Great-Great-Aunt Laura’s doll. Look, the letter says she would have come before only she was sent to the cleaners and the Exhibition. She goes with the dolls’ house, you see.’

  ‘Does she?’ asked Charlotte doubtfully. She looked at Marchpane and then at the Plantaganets so happily settled in the dolls’ house. Emily had no eyes for anyone but Marchpane. ‘Look at her clothes,’ said Emily.

  ‘My clothes,’ said Marchpane in a complacent voice.

  ‘They take off and on. Look at the tiny buttons and the lace edgings.’

  ‘The lace edgings,’ said Marchpane still more complacently.

  ‘And her hair! We can really brush it and comb it.’

  ‘It’s real hair,’ said Marchpane.

  ‘And her eyes. Look. They open and shut. None of the others’ can open and shut.’

  ‘Mine open and shut. They are the best blue glass,’ said Marchpane.

  ‘She doesn’t smell very nice,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Oh, Charlotte. I loved her at the Exhibition,’ said Emily ‘and now she is ours.’

  ‘I don’t remember her very well at the Exhibition,’ said Charlotte slowly. ‘She wasn’t ours then and we went there to see Tottie.’

  ‘Yes, but we looked at her.’

  ‘I didn’t. I looked at Tottie.’

  ‘Don’t be such a little silly, Charlotte,’ said Emily. ‘What is the matter with you?’