The Doll Game

Emile DuMontegris was the first son of a middle class procelin maker in the Alsace region of France. Born in 1796, Emile proved to be very much a prodigal son. At the age of seventeen Emile rejected the aspirations of his father to inherit the family's modest business and set out to find romantic fame and fortune, reportedly raging as far as Alexandria. Five years later Emile returned to his ancestral home with a beautiful young bride of questionable origin. However, she was a Christian, and Emile was back, and so even his younger brother found it possible to welcome the wayward rebel back into the roost.

Emile took up the family trade, and while his brother tended to the finances and negotiated lucrative distribution agreements, Emile proceeded to modernize and expand the factory. Nineteen months after Emile's return, his wife bore their first child, a daughter they christened her Capucina. To commemorate the birth of his first child, Emile created a fine bisque doll for his daughter, a special plaything for when she grew older. Thus the legend of the Montegris Belle Capuci dolls was born. Never made in such quantities or as commercially successful as the Bru or Jaumeu dolls of his contemporaries, Emile nonetheless was able to carve out a small and successful line of dolls and eventually porcelain figurines in addition to his stock in trade of tableware. The original Victorian era dolls are now extremely prized by collectors and sought after not only for their exquisite craftsmanship, but also the naturalistic tendencies and sculpting that reflect more of the German aesthetic than the French of the day. In fact the brand exists to this day, manufactured by Gotz of Germany, and you can find a version of this story printed in the cardstock collector's pamphlets bundled in the box of each doll.

The rarest of all the dolls Emile produced, and certainly the most exquisite, were the dolls he continued to make for birth of each of his children. During the next thirteen years, despite two miscarriages and one crib death, Emile's wife gave birth to eight more daughters. For each he made a special doll, uniquely designed and costumed in unmatched finery. These exquisite creations were more miniature works of art than the playthings he now mass-produced as part of his still growing porcelain offering. One would be better off comparing them to the jeweled eggs of Faberge, and in fact, Emile did produce ninety-eight custom dolls for the royalty and nobility of Europe (only fifty-six are now known to be in the hands of collectors). Despite the great material cost of those dolls, many dressed in fine jewels and rare furs, none matched the thirteen he produced for his family. They were played with when the girls grew old enough, but even then only on very special occasions, twice a year at Christmas and Easter. The children in their finery and the dolls in theirs were very much a part of Emile's social presentation during the holidays, and it was during the holidays that Emile emerged from the cocoon of work that normally surrounded him and properly doted on his family.

Which is not to say the dolls weren't played with, that is a doll's purpose after all, without which it's merely a figurine, a sculpture, and in the average case a not very refined one. Emile's doll's were played with, albeit a special kind of play, conscious of the great importance of the dolls, and for the children playing with the dolls was as much a part of the solemn ritual of the holiday as the decorations and songs and parties. Understandably some of the children were reluctant to let such festivities end, to return the dolls to their massive presentation cases in the grand hallway. That was actually how the doll game began. Each doll, and their corresponding daughter, naturally resisting their ultimate fate, petitioned Emile for a few more minutes in the fire's light. Pair by pair they were judged, and as the judgment was pronounced, one doll went to the cabinet and one daughter to bed, while the other pair remained for a few more minutes among the happy evening chatter of the adults. At first the game was little more than a begging contest, the child's recent behavior being heavily weighted in so that there was an almost court like proceeding. Yet soon it became more of a whimsical challenge to feats of etiquette, memory, or other parlour games. Eventually it evloved into direct competition between the girls with complicated decorum for the issuing of challenges and convoluted and mercurial score keeping. And each year the game began earlier, finally beginning as soon as the dolls were released from captivity.

The more arithmetically inclined among you may be already wondering how there came to be thirteen dolls since Emile had only nine daughters. There were thirteen dolls, because Emile had begun work on three for the daughters that would not survive. Those he locked in his in his workshop office in a glass cabinet behind his desk. The final doll of the thirteen was made in commemoration of the birth of his first and only son, and it became the only boy doll Emile ever made. Of all the dolls Emile made, Amie's was perhaps the finest. Emile had long wished for a son, but had many years since ceased to hope. Reworked quite extensively, practically re-imagined when Emile heard the happy news, the doll was the culmination of Emile's artistry. Obsessively doting on his new son, his own prodigal treasure, Emile envisioned a doll that would rise above the craft arts of which he was an undisputed master. With the most ingenious artifice and clever devices, weighted glass eyes and layered bisque glazes, Emile attempted a naturalism to rival the ancient greek masters. Indeed accounts of the doll suggest that Emile succeeded, eliciting great compliments from some witnesses, while other suggest that the creation was too effective, eerie and uncanny.

Yet Amie never had a chance to play the doll game with his older sisters, or even to play with the doll on his own, for he unexpectedly died in his crib at nineteen months. The boy's death devastated his father, who grew distant, distracted and abandoned his business to his younger brother. Refusing the company even of he became prone to long solitary walks, eventually late into the night. Some who knew him recorded that Emile was 'fighting with God' during these walks, though wether this was a metaphor for introspection or signs of an unhinged reaction to tragedy is not clear. Certainly the magnitude of Emile's reaction was extreme and unusual, for in those days death was not a stranger to the nursery. November of that year Emile disappeared while on a walk along the sea cliffs in his wife's native Catalonia. She was convinced he was dead, but no body was recovered. In any case Emile was never seen again, and as you might expect, the company's current marketing materials make no mention of Emile's despondency and demise.

That was the year the doll game changed, the Christmas it really began.

It was a somber Christmas indeed that year, but forms were to be observed, family expectations to be met. His brother still hoped that Emile might yet appear, again the lost brother returned miraculously. Somewhere in that hustle and bustle of strained joy, haunting guilt, and silent loss, the girls began to whisper. The game was different this year, the winner could go to see father. There was a new viscious urgency that year, as the girls met and prepared their riddles, puzzles and dares. And driven by desperation born of defeat, the case in the workshop was unlocked, the dead sisters joined in the game, and the first penalties entered the game.

It's been nearly two hundred games since that Christmas, and today the dolls have been scattered, practically to every end of the earth. Some of their new owners are familly, distant relations. Some are collectors, very rich or very persistent. Some were just at the wrong place at the wrong time, because no matter where they lie, each year the dolls are still driven to play the game. Through the gardens that lie on the other side of every mirror they lead their owners, inward, onward, towards the old abandoned house, towards their final judgment.

This year one child will receive a very special doll. Our story will begin, and the game will end.

...


Which is by the way of saying that as part of National Guilty Pleasure / Crappy Anime Download Week I've been watching Rozen Maiden. It's pretty good, for what it is, and certainly captures the imagination as basis for some more CLAMP(Clover don'cha know)esque idle musings. It's also delightfully Moe-less, depsite being an excersize in EGL aethetics. Who can resist a haughty porcelin doll ordering around a teenage boy forced into featal servitude?! Best of all (as I've mentioned before) its' part of the delightful new twelve episode a season trend - less filler, less time wasted on drek, less investment in partially tolerable series!

Oh and if you couldn't tell, the above is a product of mine own fevered imagination, a strange reflection of what could have been... did you notice there's actually a fourteenth doll?