THE FAMILY DOLL

 

In the earlier days of THE HISTORY GIRLS, we used to have a 'Cabinet of Curiosities.'  I think this family heirloom I am briefly going to talk about would make an interesting addition to the said cabinet.  


 My family has a wax doll that has been handed down the generations in the female line (of my father's side)  to the youngest daughter in the family since the mid 19th century.  It's first owner was a little girl called Mary Lees, who was born on June 9th 1775, fourteen years before the French Revolution.  On her tenth birthday, her uncle presented her with a wax doll in a glass and wooden case and she kept it and passed it on to her daughter in due course.  We know this because there is a note inside the doll's case that tells us her intentions for the doll for when she had passed away. 

"This doll is the property of Mary Blunt and was presented to her by her uncle on her 10th birthday in the year 1785.  And at her death she wishes it to be for her youngest daughter Elizabeth. October 24th 1857"

 Mary Lees married a William Blunt, and the doll became the property of their youngest daughter Elizabeth, born in 1823. Elizabeth passed it to her youngest daughter, Martha, who in turn passed it on to her own youngest, Elizabeth, my great aunt, born in 1901,and now it has come to me. 
We don't know the purchase place of the doll. Oral family history says Paris, but it wasn't written down. She stands in her glass case, blue eyes, bright rosy cheeks and ash-blonde hair, surrounded by a hoop of artificial flowers, and two delightful,  smiling china poodles either side of her body -which is stuffed and encased in linen.  The face and the hands are the only parts made from wax as far as we can tell. She was never a child's toy in the way that toys are played with today, but certainly a treasured piece handed down from mother to daughter through the centuries.  Who knows what she has heard and seen! 

 Her flocked gown is in two layers and the white, semi-transparent upper fabric turns her gown a soft pink.  The under-dress is a fabulous rose-coral.  She has stood in her case down the generations of my family and with her written provenance for two hundred and fifty years. The next custodian will either be my niece or my granddaughter, but that will be decided in time.  For now she dwells with me.  It has been said that she is a bit creepy, but when I look at her smiling poodles, I am totally reassured that she is a benign heirloom.

  I wonder if my great, great, great, great grandmother's uncle ever thought when he gave his niece Mary Lees this doll for her 10th birthday in 1785, that although generations have come and gone, his gift would still be here now, seeing in 2025 with her family.  

Foundling Stories - Stacey Halls and Rose Tremain by Judith Allnatt

In 1747, in a fine room at the splendid buildings of London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright holds her one-day-old baby girl. Alongside other mothers, Bess draws a ball from a bag in a lottery held to decide who will win a place for their child as a pupil. This game of chance is played out under the eyes of invited benefactors, wealthy ladies and gents, who witness the show of human drama. Thus starts ‘The Foundling’ by Stacey Halls. 

In 1850, a baby, wrapped in sacking is abandoned at the gates of a wintry park in London where she is scented by wolves from the Essex marshes. She is found by a policeman, who hears the wolves’ howling and takes her to the Foundling Hospital. Thus begins ‘Lily’ by Rose Tremain. 

A separated family is a powerful engine to drive a story and perhaps the most poignant separation of all is that of a mother and baby. Stories of ‘foundlings’, babies found abandoned by parents or handed over in desperation to foundling hospitals, start with this heart-breaking premise and immediately fire the reader with a strong desire to see parent and child reunited. For me, this desire would probably be enough on its own to keep me reading but the two books above offer so much more in their examining of the relationships of adults caught up in the drama.

Receiving day at the Foundling Hospital. Wellcome Images

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/fgqknntr

In ‘The Foundling’ poverty and the shame of illegitimacy force Bess to give up her baby, Clara. Like other brokenhearted mothers, as well as leaving the baby’s name and details at the hospital she leaves a token to identify her – half of a heart made of whalebone given to her by the baby’s father. All kinds of things were used as such tokens: slips of paper, embroidered ribbons, rings and pierced coins. Then if the mother were able to drag herself out of poverty and also save enough to pay a fee to the hospital for the child’s upkeep (a difficult feat), even when the hospital had given the child a new name they could be sure of reclaiming the right child by describing the token they left with them. 

Token on Marchmont Street, Author: Matt BrownNo changes made https://www.flickr.com/photos/londonmatt/53413014277/

                                  

The story takes a leap and the stakes are raised when Bess, after six years of scrimping, returns to claim her child only to find that a stranger has claimed her the very day after Bess had placed Clara in the hospital’s care. Avoiding spoilers - the exploration of what it is to be a mother deepens as the two women are brought up against each other. The genius of the book for me is the way in which Stacey Halls balances the representation of the needs of the two women so that despite the reader’s natural urge to see mother and daughter reunited there is also feeling for the damaged woman who has claimed Clara. This creates powerful dramatic tension and pulls the reader’s emotions in different directions, resulting in a gripping read that one can’t put down.

The Foundling Restored To Its Mother 1858 painting by Emma Brownlow
  1858. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

In 'Lily', subtitled ‘A Tale of Revenge’, Rose Tremain writes of poverty, cruelty and crime in Victorian London. The infant Lily is first placed in a loving foster family but is then wrenched away and returned to hardship as a pauper at the hospital. Now, as an adult, Lily has committed a murder and lives in fear of discovery. Tremain holds back the nature of the murder and the identity of the victim, masterfully managing the dramatic tension and creating a mystery that kept me turning the pages into the night.
However, the truly fascinating thing for me was the relationship between Lily and the policeman who rescued her as a baby. She feels he may hold the key to her salvation but she dare not confess to him for fear of the rope.

Tremain writes with all her usual subtlety and feeling, imbuing everyday objects with the emotional charge they hold for her characters so that they become powerful symbols of love and loss: a scarf that Lily knits for her only friend at the hospital, a deep, black well at the farm where Lily was happily fostered that comes to symbolise her worst fear of discovery and execution.

One of Tremain’s great strengths is that she looks unflinchingly at human darkness whilst still maintaining a feeling of authorial empathy and understanding. This novel moved me to tears – it is heartrending, compassionate and brilliant.

To find out more about the fascinating history of the Foundling Hospital and see examples of the tokens left by parents, do visit https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk