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Home is the Sailor: Dedicated to the Memory of our Friend, George Kieffer

Requiem
by Robert Louis Stevenson



Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
"Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
and the hunter home from the hill."

Vintage Cloth doll of a 19th c. sailor

Home is the Sailor
by A.E. Houseman



Home is the sailor, home from sea:
Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
The plunder of the world.

Home is the hunter from the hill:
Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will'
And every fowl of air.

'Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit save is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from  the hill.

Dolls representing the family from Godden's Home is the Sailor

I was born near an ocean, and my great grandfather, grandfather, and cousin were all sailors.  These two poems inspired the title of one o f my favorite novels on dolls, Rumer Godden's Home is the Sailor.  The book means even more to me because Godden herself wrote to me when I was writing my dissertation.

The Doll's Shell Garden from Home is the Sailor

Years later, I would present conference papers and write articles about Rumer Godden, but sad serendipity reminded me of the poems that launched the title of her novel about a family of doll house dolls in Wales suffering loss because three of their sailors disappeared, and ultimately, returned home.


Here is an excerpt from one of my papers on Godden, with emphasis on Home is the Sailor:

Godden is also seen as a post colonial,§ white writer, who writes in the last days of the British Empire as it was then know, as Le-Guilcher writes, Godden written “when the British Empires struggled to yield the last vestiges of global Power (Le-Guilcher 2010).  Of her geographical settings, which are as much Godden’s characters as any Nona or Belinda, or Tottie,  Le-Guilcher and others comment that Godden’s settings  “engage a modernist uncertainty about her own position as representing such nomadic Others as gypsies, as well as the displacements of war and discontents of domestic and family life “ (Ibid).  This last theme of domestic discontent and displacement often dominates her children’s’ works like Home is the Sailor, A Dolls House, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, Little Plum, The Story of Holly and Ivy and Impunity Jane.  It is a running theme in China Court, An Episode of Sparrows, Peacock Spring, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy,[1] and her other adult novels.  It is uncommon for Rumer Godden to write of the “condition of enforced and elected exile within the changing political and cultural borders of colonial and postcolonial nations” (Le-Guilcher Introduction 2010).

 

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§ Note that “Post-colonial” . . . refers to the period after independence but it covers all the cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day . . .” (Zabus 2).

[1] Greengage Summer deals with “adolescent and midlife angst.” Chisholm writes the subject of GGS is “emotional growing pains and the potent mixture  of guilt and pleasure that accompanies the discovery of sex” (Chisholm 199, 250 quoted in LeGuilcher, Introduction 2010.  The same theme appears in Peacock Spring.

How do You Finance your Doll Collection?

It occurs to me from time to time that dolls are indeed a luxury. Theoretically, we don't need them. ( I know, I know!  That's highly debatable, but let's just suppose they are a luxury for argument's sake!).


I've had the eye for so called high end or elite dolls cine I was at least seven.  I could spot a Bru a mile away, and I knew the basic differences between French bisque and German bisque dolls.  I could say and spell "Jumeau" before I could spell my own, very long last name.

Yet, the budget was always in the way. $20 was considered very high for a doll, especially a doll to play with.    I depended on the James and Clara Tsagaris Charitable Trust for additions to my doll collection.  In other words, my parents generosity and my allowance paid for my dolls.  I remember saving pennies and quarters to buy an Infant of Prague figure, complete with a crown and beautiful red velvet robe.

Later, I looked for dolls that I could afford, sometimes good reproductions of antiques.  When I was old enough, I headed for flea markets and yard sales.  I filled in my modern doll collection using Pat Smith's series on Modern Collectors' Dolls, and I read and read.


I still look for bargains and fixer-upper dolls wherever I could, and I studied price guides with great devotion.


The dolls pictured here are mine; some are expensive, but most are not.

Many collectors sell dolls they are tired of, or "upsize" buy selling a doll till they get an example that is Mint or better.  Others become dealers to finance the very expensive dolls they crave.  I have a friend who sells dolls and related items at shows to buy French dolls for her own collection.  Another friend deals to collect large German bisque dolls.

Margaret Woodbury Strong was always buying, and allegedly took out low interest loans to fund her 34,0000 plus item doll collection.

Some doll makers sell dolls or start doll companies so that they can buy the dolls they like.


There really isn't a right or wrong way to fund your dolls.  At one point, I wrote many doll articles for magazines, and used the proceeds for dolls.


I'd like to hear ideas from my readers on how they fund their dolls, and how they keep collecting, even though dolls are still luxuries, and even when times are tough.