My Doll Room

My Lawtons

I've been lucky to score a couple of lovely Wendy Lawton dolls recently. I've wanted Lucy Gray, inspired by the Wordsworth poem we read senior year of high school, for nearly as long. She has a wooden body and is gorgeous. Frolic, the little Amish girl, is all porcelain and signed by the artist, so is a find. I've got an antique doll who I have dressed in an Amish dress, and she makes a nice little sister. There are a couple of others that I will likely pick up some time: Marcella and Red Riding Hood. These dolls are made in America, so extra special and well made. Like myself, I'd think Wendy was inspired by antiques, and they are still around. 
 

Lucy Gray

Have decided against a twelfth Himstedt, eleven is enough. Instead, totally excited to have scored Wendy Lawton's Lucy Gray. It has been a favorite poem of mine since high school. I used to be a big Wordsworth fan like Keats, Yeats, and Tennyson until I got a gorgeous complete works leather and gold edition at the mission shop for two dollars along with the Keats. I read them both cover to cover and still adore Keats, but Wordsworth is depressing as anything and only has a couple of good poems, Lucy Gray is one of them. Wendy Lawton dolls are not only entirely American made, but Lucy has a wooden body, and I expect will make a great friend for my Schoenhut, Frannie, who I got a handmade crochet cape on the Easter train. I've wanted this doll since the nineties when she cost a small fortune. I'd seen her in the doll magazines. 

 Lucy Gray

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
--The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night--
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."

"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon--
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!"

At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work;--and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.

At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.

They wept--and, turning homeward, cried,
"In heaven we all shall meet;"
--When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.

Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;

And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none!

--Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.

O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.

[1799]