French Doll
These babies for fashion models came to be made in large numbers for the use of milliners; and as the finest ones came from the Netherlands, they were called "Flanders babies." To the busy fingers of Dutch children, English and American children owed many toys besides these dolls. It was a rhymed reproach to the latter that—
"What the children of Holland take pleasure in making,
The children of England take pleasure in breaking."
Fashions changed, and the modish raiment grew antiquated and despised; but still the "Flanders babies" had a cherished old age. They were graduated from milliners' boxes and mantua-makers' show rooms to nurseries and play-rooms where they reigned as queens of juvenile hearts. There are old ladies still living who recall the dolls of their youth as having been the battered fashion dolls sent to their mammas.
The best dolls in England were originally sold at Bartholomew Fair and were known as "Bartholomew babies." The English poet, Ward, wrote:—
"Ladies d'y want fine Toys
For Misses or for Boys
Of all sorts I have Choice
And pretty things to tease ye.
I want a little Babye
As pretty a one as may be
With head-dress made of Feather."
In Poor Robin's Almanack, 1695, is a reference to a "Bartholomew baby trickt up with ribbons and knots"; and they were known at the time of the landing of the Pilgrims. Therefore it is not impossible that some Winslow or Winthrop maid, some little miss of Bradford or Brewster birth, brought across seas a Bartholomew baby and was comforted by it.
A pathetic interest is attached to the shapeless similitude of a doll named Bangwell Putt, shown facing page 370. It is in the collection at Deerfield Memorial Hall. It was cherished for eighty years by Clarissa Field of Northfield, Massachusetts, who was born blind, and whose halting but trusting rhymes of longing for the clear vision of another world are fastened to the plaything she loved in youth and in old age.
Nothing more absurd could be fancied than the nomenclature "French" attached to the two shapeless, inelegant creatures, a century old, shown on pages 364 and 367. Yet gawky as they are, they show signs of hard usage, which proves them to have had a more beloved life than the case of elegant Spanish dolls, on page 389, which were evidently too fine ever to be touched. The "White House Doll" spent the days of her youth in the White House at Washington, with the children of the President, John Quincy Adams, and is still cherished by his descendants.