Quartermaine Hall

Artisan: Unknown
Date: Unknown
Dimensions: 53 x 48 x 10 mm. / 2 x 2 x ¼ inches (height x width x depth)
Inventory number: 2021.065
Intended Room: Isabella’s Bedroom
Category: Toys & Games

Provenance: Bought via eBay in 2021

Harriet enjoys a distinction not afforded to the other toys: she lives in the rarefied world of Isabella’s bedroom. She can also remember further back than anyone in the Quartermaine family, for Harriet dates from the early 19th century and has passed through several hands, all of whom, fortunately, have treated her with the utmost care. She first belonged to Elizabeth’s Aunt Kitty, a kindly woman who (with Uncle Henry) took Elizabeth in when she arrived from India to go to school – thirteen years old, dazed by the discovery of smog and drizzle and constant, cloying damp. Harriet was presented to Elizabeth as a present when she arrived, and kept her company as she found her feet, came out in society and, eventually, accepted the suit of Charles Quartermaine.

When Isabella turned thirteen, Elizabeth passed Harriet on to her: not a doll to be played with, but a companion, a silent witness to the struggles of adolescence. Now Isabella is about to be married and, doubtless, Harriet will go with her, to be presented in due course to another girl in need of her quiet company and sympathy. You wouldn’t know Harriet’s age from looking at her, because her costume has been renewed several times.

When we bought this little doll, whose maker is unfortunately unknown, she was described as a ‘Hitty doll’. I did some research and discovered that this refers to Hitty (short for ‘Mehitabel’), a wooden doll dating from around 1830 who is in the collection of the Stockbridge Library in Massachusetts. She has become very famous in the USA thanks to a children’s book published in 1929, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, written and illustrated by Rachel Field and Dorothy Lathrop, who had found the real Hitty in an antique shop. The original Hitty is wooden, but many dolls have been made in her image in various media, including porcelain.

Our Harriet may be a Hitty doll, but she looks a little more grown up (Hitty is a little girl; our Harriet is a young lady). She also has a bisque head and torso, forearms and lower legs. I’m not sure whether she is really related to Hitty or whether she’s simply meant to be a doll from the same early Victorian period. Either way, she’s very elegant, with her checked dress, lace shawl and even a lace underskirt over her bloomers. We feel that, kept well away from grubby hands and babyish exuberance, she’s likely to delight many generations of Quartermaine children yet to come.