Just facing the turn-stile through which one passes into the first hall of the South Kensington Museum, in London, stands a large doll-house, about eight feet high by six wide, an object of great interest to all little girls and most mammas who visit there. The baby mansion, with its doll master and mistress, children and servants, was given originally to a daughter of the Archbishop of York.
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| Queen Anne's Doll House, called "baby house" was one of the original English dollhouses recorded in history from that period. It was passed down from Princess Anne to her goddaughter, Ann Sharp. The house is said to date from 1691. Unlike Queen Mary's dollhouse, it was made for play and filled with handmade play items. It is referred to as the "Heydon Hall Doll House." and here again. The Last Stuart Monarch Part 1. |
The donor was Queen Anne, generally known as "good Queen Anne," probably because the chief desire and aim of her life seemed to be the making others happy. Queen Anne was the last of the unfortunate line of Stuarts, who occupied the English throne, and was, like the present good queen, queen regnant, a term which means one who reigns in her own right. Her husband was Prince George of Denmark, they lived together in perfect happiness for twenty years.
She was the mother of seventeen dear babes, of whom sixteen died in infancy, only one, the Duke of Gloucester, living to the age of eleven. There is a portrait of him at Hampton Court, which represents a bright and handsome boy, dressed in blue velvet and diamonds. There are many stories told of this young prince, such as his telling King William (his uncle) that he possessed two dead horses and one live one (his Shetland pony and two little wooden horses), and the king's saying that he had better bury the dead ones out of sight, and his consequently insisting on burying his playthings with funeral honors and composing their epitaph.
His tutor one day asked Him, "How can you, being a prince, keep yourself from the pomps and vanities of this world?" To this the child gravely responded: "I will keep God's commandments, and do all I can to walk in his ways."
When only ten years, he was so forward in his studies that he was able to pass an examination four times a year on subjects which included jurisprudence, the Gothic law, and the feudal system! But on his eleventh birthday the little duke was taken ill, and five days after (July 30th, 1700), died at Windsor Castle, in the arms of his grief-stricken mother, who had loved him as only a mother can love who has seen her treasures taken from her, one by one.
We can all fancy how sad her life must have been, though she lived in a palace, and had wealth and splendor at her command, and how sorely she missed the baby voices and baby fingers which mothers always hear and feel, no matter how great the din of life about them. Perhaps this very loneliness and longing made her more thoughtful for other little ones, and caused her to have this house prepared for the tiny maid, whose home was away off in bleak Yorkshire. I can see the little girl now in my "mind's eye," on that Christmas morning nearly two hundred years ago, when she received the royal gift. There she stands, in the great hall of the archiepiscopal palace, the huge logs snapping in the open fireplace, the carved oak chimney-piece surmounted by stag's antlers, the walls in their holiday dress of ivy and holly, and a thick bunch of mistletoe berries over the door (do you know what for?) -- there she stands, this bright-eyed maid in her scarlet merino frock, her yellow hair tied back with colorful ribbons, looking not unlike the robin redbreasts which twittered and chirped then, as now, in the Cathedral Close, picking up the crumbs scattered over the crisp snow for their daily feast.
What fun she and her little friends had over their doll families when lessons were ended, what fasts and feasts, what weddings and funerals, mimicking all the events of this mortal life. And doubtless, when she grew up and put aside her childish toys, the house, grown somewhat shabby with age and use, still found favor in her eyes, not only for the sake of her who gave it, but because of the fair memories which the sight of it conjures up, of the days when:
"She had life like flowers and bees
In betwixt the country trees;
And the sun the pleasures taught her
Which he teacheth everything."
