Author: Maria Popova / Source: Brain Pickings
“Everybody knows that children see a great deal which is hidden from grownups.”
In 1921, Princess Marie Louise, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, conceived of a most unusual and imaginative present for her cousin, Queen Mary — an elaborate dollhouse populated with miniature replicas of artifacts in Windsor Castle, equipped with running water and electricity, and adorned with original works by prominent artists.
Completed in 1924 and intended as a present from the people of England for their monarch, Queen Mary’s Dollhouse became part homage, part masterwork of craftsmanship, part time-capsule and singular historical document.A lover and patron of the arts, Princess Marie Louise envisioned the project as a showcase for some of the era’s greatest artists and craftspersons, who created an astonishing array of items — from miniature monogramed linens to tiny paintings to a working elevator. But the crowning achievement was a library containing one hundred and seventy-one books by the most celebrated authors of the time — original stories by titans like Joseph Conrad, A.A. Milne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Thomas Hardy, and J.M. Barrie, inscribed by hand into miniature tomes.
Among the contributing authors was the poet, novelist, and famed garden designer Vita Sackville-West (March 9, 1892–June 2, 1962). Although most of the other stories in the dollhouse library have become part of the literary landscape over the past century, Sackville-West’s has remained largely unknown, even to her own heirs.
It was only recently rediscovered and is finally published, nearly a century after it was written, as A Note of Explanation (public library) — a lovely cloth-bound picture-book with illustrations by the contemporary artist Kate Baylay in the Art Deco style of the era, evocative of Harry Clarke’s haunting 1925 illustrations for Goethe’s Faust and William Faulkner’s forgotten Jazz Age drawings.
In Sackville-West’s irreverent meta-fairy-tale, visitors queue up to see Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, eager to spend a shilling on the attraction. But despite their hungry squints and gloved hands and magnifying glasses, they fail…
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