QUEEN ANNE’S DOLL

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21084, 9 July 1938, Page 7 (Supplement)

QUEEN ANNE’S DOLL

Queen Anne is dead but not her doll. The dear ugly thing has just come out of her retirement. She belongs to Sir William Hart Dyke, the famous old man of Kent

who still lives in his Lullingstone Castle at 93 defying age, enjoying his ancient oaks and his lovely park, and his memories as the oldest of Queen Victoria's Ministers still left among us. Sir William realises that such a venerable person as Queen Anne’s doll must dislike the noise and bustle of this modern world, for Anne was born in 1665 and the doll must be not less than 260 years old. So it is that Sir William has kept the doll through all these years in the quiet of Lullingstone, one of the many treasures of his beautiful home. But when charity calls who can be deaf?

Little princesses have always had plenty of toys and not scrupled to treat them vigorously, but wooden dolls do not mind that. Perhaps this doll was a gift from James the Second, whose pet Anne was, and who burst into tears when he learned that she had taken sides with William and Mary against him. Or it may have come from goodnatured Uncle Charles or even have been given to her by the doomed Monmouth. Anne loved dolls and she loved babies, but all her own children died in infancy except one princeling, who lived to be eleven. When he died Anne’s heart was broken,

and she believed it was a punishment for deserting her father. Perhaps the doll would not have survived if Anne had had grandchildren to inherit it. Now Anne is gone, with all her kinsmen, and their curled wigs and stately clothes, and their cruelties and their griefs and their loves. Gone, too, are the men who made her reign famous: Marlborough, Pope. Defoe, Addison, Swift. Little is left of those stirring times but a few books and an old doll.

Q.: Why does a puss purr? A.: For an obvious purpose