Historical Value of the Queens Dolls House (book excerpt)

The second chapter of the official Queens Dolls House book addresses the idea of the House as a timecapsule and miniature three-dimensional snapshot of life in the 1920s.

Chapter 2: "Historical Value of the Queen's Dolls' House"

Much of its value as a message to the future depends upon our consciousness of the historical value of the House. Mr. Benson make this clear —

" A further purpose in the minds of those who designed, constructed, and furnished the Queen's Dolls’ House was to present to Her Majesty a little model of a house of the twentieth century which should be fitted up with perfect fidelity, down to the smallest details so as to represent as closely and minutely as possible a genuine and complete example of a domestic interior with all the household arrangements characteristic of the daily life of the present time. It is intended to be a pleasant spectacle for contemporary eyes, in its neat contrivance, its careful planning, and its artistic finish, and at the same time to be an interesting and lifelike memorial for future times of the sort of way in which people of our own days found it desirable and agreeable to live.

" The house thus represented is not a palace nor a ceremonious residence, but essentially a home, a family mansion belonging to a Monarch who seeks relief from cares of state in a quiet family life and a comfortable rather than luxurious routine. It is dignified rather than magnificent, commodious without being ostentatious; it is not a house to contain many guests, nor is it adapted for profuse or sumptuous entertainments; it would give a reasonable degree of comfort and privacy. The approaching dinner hour would not be announced by an insistent smell of cookery, nor would the incense of the smoking-room be wafted into the children's schoolroom. The comfort of the domestics and labour-saving apparatus are carefully provided for, the ventilation, lighting and warming are kept sensibly in mind, the sanitation is perfect; motor-cars for daily use are not neglected, and the little garden is designed for recreation and contemplation.

: " The inmates are people of cultivated interests and tastes. The pictures are well-selected, and the library is rich in the works of contemporary authors. They are fond of the open air; there is a modest array of guns and fishing rods, and the leather golf bag, though it hardly as yet shows signs of constant use, is well supplied with clubs. There is a good cellar of wine; and though there is hardly space for lavish hospitalities, a few trusted and honoured friends can be comfortably entertained.

: " The Royal Mistress of the House is evidently a domestic genius: the nurseries are planned for health and happiness. The store of linen might gladden any housewife's heart. Careful regard is paid to the welfare of the staff; the offices are airy and large, and the bedroom and bathroom accommodation is careful and ample. We may be sure that such a Mistress is little troubled by what is amiably called the domestic problem, and the house from top to bottom is as neat as a new pin. ...

: " How delightful it would be, we may think, if some such plan as this had been carried out at previous dates of our history. If we had a Saxon manor we should find it a mixture of a fortress and an isolation hospital. If we had an exact model of a mediaeval castle – cold, ill lighted, draughty, dirty, bathless, scantily furnished, with the stale rushes deep in the hall full of dog-gnawed bones—we should recognize the discomfort of romantic conditions. If we had an Elizabethan mansion with its tapestries and panelled rooms, its halls and galleries, we should discover that for all its dignity and elaboration of ceremony and pageant, of costume and jewellery, the world was still kept for a few wealthy and well-dressed persons, and that the humbler sort lived a rough-and-tumble sort of life in much drudgery and discomfort. If we had a Queen Anne house, with its pillared porticoes and classical parlours, we should find it had a rude and plentiful sort of comfort, but that in the matter of books and games, of lighting, heating, washing and sanitation it served a life lacking not so much in comfort of a solid kind, but in most of the recreations and refinements that make up so much of our modern life.

: " And stranger still, if we suppose that the present Queen’s House lasts for, say, two hundred years, the little mansion which seems positively the last word in convenience and beauty, the utmost that a reasonable man could desire, by way of ‘a legitimate extension of personality’ as we are told a house should be, we may be sure that our successors will look at it in astonishment, and wonder that men could ever have deigned to live in so laborious and cumbrous a way, faced with so many domestic problems of which the solution is no doubt staring us in the face, if only we could perceive either the problem or the solution. But, at the same time, how they will value the House as an historical document ! "

Considering the House for its historical value, two questions immediately occur. The first is, what things in it would most delight a character resuscitated from the past? Supposing that Queen Elizabeth came with her court to inspect this as a token of our age, what would she find most interesting? "Painted ceilings and marble staircases," says Mr. Dent, the musical critic of the Illustrated London News, in answer to this question, "would be nothing very new to them. Motor-cars and electric lifts—would those have been the chief things to interest Elizabeth, Mary, and Edward, or even their father, if they had brought him with them? No–they would all of them have made straight for the music-room." That answer presupposes, perhaps, that their legitimate curiosity were subordinate to things which spiritually they most valued. Eventually their pleasure would reside in matters common to both them and us, which have been developed, but not changed fundamentally, since their time. But would not they be waylaid by strange ingenuities en route? Surely their excitement would be great, however temporary, over the lifts, the motor-cars, the sewing-machine, the bathrooms? Queen Elizabeth would revert to the pianoforte, not entirely dissimilar (as Mr. Dent remarks) to the instrument or which she played “to shun melancholy”; but perhaps she would first listen to the gramophone. So would Sir Philip Sidney seek at last the Library, though he might try the fountain-pen upon the blotter ere he was lost in poetry. So would Raleigh reach the Atlas though he had attempted earlier to grasp the mysteries of a Rolls-Royce engine. So would Francis Bacon borrow the fountain-pen that Sidney dropped and balance his promises against the cheque-book, but only after he had read the leader in The Times. The actions of such figures form fascinating speculations. What would Shakespeare do? Or one of his creations, Falstaff?

The other type of question will not remain, as these, unverified.

What things will be of greatest interest to the people of the future, when they examine the House? Here the judgment is of even greater difficulty. Perhaps matters to us ordinary and unrememberable -- the kitchen range, the fire screens, the bath sponge, the A B C, the matches -- will most strike their fancy. At any rate, every effort has been made to attend to such details, so that a complete picture will remain from which the future may select what pleases it. In the House is made a statement more convincing to the historian than any show of words. "There and there only," says Sir Lawrence Weaver "will be seen the unchanged facts of a life of dignified simplicity in the early part of the twentieth century." The House of course, is finer,

“ more adorned ,

Than in the common aspect, daily garb,

Of human life,”

but in no way out of keeping with the character of a home which is the ideal of our age.