favour them with the following interesting details, which she forwarded through Sir Henry Ponsonby.
"Her Majesty was very much devoted to dolls, and indeed played with them till she was nearly fourteen years old.
"Her favourites were small dolls—small wooden dolls, which she could occupy herself with dressing, and who had a house in which they could be placed.
"None of Her Majesty's children cared for dolls as she did, but then, they had girl companions, which she never had.
"Miss Victoria Conroy (afterwards Mrs. Hanmer) came to see her once a week, and occasionally others played with her, but with these exceptions she was left alone with the companionship of her dolls."
In a postscript to the above letter Sir H. Ponsonby adds:—"Since writing the above. I have been informed that it is not correct that 'none of Her Majesty's children cared for dolls,' as the four eldest Princesses were very fond of them."
In a subsequent note Sir Henry adds:—"The Queen usually dressed the dolls from some costumes she saw either in the theatre or private life."
There is, indeed, ample evidence in the care and attention lavished upon the dolls of the immense importance with which they were regarded by their Royal little mistress; and an additional and interesting proof of this is to be found in what one might call the "dolls' archives." These records are to be found in an ordinary copy-book, now a little yellow with years, on the inside cover of which is written in a childish, straggling, but determined handwriting: "List of my dolls." Then follows in delicate feminine writing the name of the doll, by whom it was dressed, and the character it represented, though this particular is sometimes omitted. When the doll represents an actress, the date and name of the ballet are also given, by means of which one is enabled to determine the date of the dressing, which must have been between 1831 and 1833, when, Sir Henry says, "the dolls were packed away."
Of the one hundred and thirty-two dolls preserved, the Queen herself dressed no fewer than thirty-two, in a few of which she was helped by Baroness Lehzen, a fact that is scrupulously recorded in the book; and they deserve to be handed down to posterity as an example of the patience and ingenuity and exquisite handiwork of a twelve-year-old Princess.
The dolls are of the most unpromising material, and would be regarded with scorn by the average Board school child of to-day, whose toys, thanks to modern philanthropists, are of the most extravagant and expensive description. But if the pleasures of imagination mean anything; if planning and creating and achieving are in themselves delightful to a child, and the cutting out and making of "dolly's clothes" especially, a charm to a little girl only second to nursing a live baby, then there is no doubt that the Princess obtained many more hours of pure happiness from her extensive wooden family than if it had been launched upon her ready dressed by the most expensive of Parisian modistes. Whether expensive dolls were not obtainable at that period, or whether the Princess preferred these droll little wooden creatures, as more suitable for the representation of historical and theatrical personages, I know not; but the whole collection is made up of them, and they certainly make admirable little puppets, being articulated at the knees, thighs, joints, elbows and shoulders, and available for every kind of dramatic gesture and attitude.
It must be admitted that they are not æsthetically beautiful, with their Dutch doll—not Dutch—type of face. Occasionally, owing to a chin being a little more pointed, or a nose a little blunter, there is a slight variation of expression; but, with the exception of height, which ranges from three inches to nine inches, they are precisely the same. There is the queerest mixture of infancy and
