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.