An article popped up on my social media feed, about a toy theatre exhibition at Strawberry Hill, the gothic home of Hugh Walpole, prime minister and author. When a friend showed the same article to me, it nudged me to get myself over there. Toy theatre and a gothic house – Verity, protagonist in my novel about toy theatre in Victorian London, would not have forgiven me if I’d let the chance go.
“Gothic” today means dark and menacing. His house is anything but. Bright white on the outside, it’s a fantasy of arches and turrets. Inside, it’s a mixture of deep colours and frothy extravagance. Walpole chose medieval designs for everything – the motifs painted on the hall walls, the fireplaces modelled on tombs, the library with its bookcases based on cathedral arches. He bought 16c stained glass from the continent, where it was being sold off cheap, and arranged his roundels and fragments to balance nicely in his windows.
Walpole, of course, wasn’t a medieval baron himself, but he filled the house with armorial hints of a martial past. He researched his ancestry and found a link to the time of the Crusaders, which surely meant his ancestors went on a crusade! – and for his family shield claimed the “Saracen head” that denotes this. The Saracen head appears throughout the house, on fireplaces and on the floor. There’s also a splendid arrangement of armour at the top of the stairs. My favourite heraldic addition, though, is the stags all the way up the bannisters, whose eyes follow you as you move up and down.
Hugh Walpole wrote the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. I confess to being disappointed when I read it at university, for our course on melodrama. The castle of the title is haunted by – a giant helmet! Gothic literature soon took on a more serious aspect, though, and its canon is a perfect fit for toy theatre (juvenile theatre, as it was called then), with its cardboard characters fixed in melodramatic poses of shock, outrage and heroism, and its backdrops of gloomy forests and castle ruins. Pollock’s Toy Museum has lent Strawberry Hill a wonderful selection of its paper theatres, set up for different plays, and they are displayed around the house. So for a while you can peer into the drama of gothic delights like “The Bottle Imp” (Hoffman), native romance like “Richard Lion Heart and Blondel” (enriched with a character called Mathilda who is also searching out the king while disguised as a blind minstrel), and, of course, an adaptation of The Castle of Otranto, turned rather fittingly, I’d say, into a pantomime. It’s a wonder many of these survived, when you read how the performances could be embellished with miniature explosions – red fire for heroic deeds, like the blowing up of the villainous Miller’s mill (“The Miller and his Men”) and blue for ghostly effects, like the revelation of Bluebeard’s skeleton chamber (“Blue Beard”).
Here is a selection of scenes from the exhibition.
Harlequin and the Giant Helmet; or, The Castle of Otranto, pantomime by J. R. Planché
Although serious adaptations of Walpole’s novel were made for the stage, when it was adapted for the toy theatre it was turned into a pantomime. This seems to have been a favourite treatment of toy theatre plays, involving the clown Harlequin and his comrades, and actors wearing huge papier mache heads. It reminds me of the stage adaptations of TV cartoons that are put on for pre-school children.
Rockalda, in The Flying Dutchman, melodrama by Edward Fitzball
While the toy theatre has its fair share of trembling damsels, it’s not short of more interesting women. This is Rockalda, the spirit of the deep. In Fitzball’s adaptation of “The Flying Dutchman” Vanderdeccken, protagonist of the tale, becomes her slave. I don’t know much about her, but I’ve discovered that the play script dictates “she” (acted by a man) should wear a sea-green dress trimmed with seaweed and shells, a tiara and a black veil down her back. Apparently Wagner’s opera does use some elements of the melodrama, but not, sadly, her.
The Bottle Imp, melodrama by Richard Brinsley Peake
This is an adaptation of a tale by E. T. A. Hoffman, more famous for “The Nutcracker”, which was turned into a charming ballet classic but in tale version is quite bizarre and rather scary. The story of the bottle imp is doubtless just as strange.. The Bottle Imp is claiming Albert here, crying, “You are mine!” It was rather dark in this room so I had to use my flash, and the shadows it threw added to the atmosphere rather nicely.
Der Freishütz (“The Free-Shooter), melodrama by W. Macgregor Logan
Adapted from Weber’s opera. Here, the hero prepares for a marksmanship competition by using magic bullets. This has unleashed a whole ballroom of chilling characters.
Mausoleum Toy Theatre
Jack Fawdry Tatham recently made this, as a collaboration between Pollock’s Toy Museum and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Boscastle. It doesn’t seem to represent a particular story or play, but it’s very atmospheric. It’s also an example, in my mind, of how the theatre itself can compete with the characters on stage for which is the most striking.
And some details:
Fatima in Bluebeard is a bit daft, but I love her costume.
The toy theatres have all the details of a live performance, including orchestra.
The procenium arches of the toy theatres are exhuberant. This unicorn really doesn’t want to be here!
The toy theatre exhibition is on until the 14th September 2022, but it you miss the date, the house is well worth the visit on its own.
My novel about toy theatre, Penny Plain, is something I’ve been wrestling with for several decades now. I’m currently writing something for children, but I will get back to Penny at some point. Verity, my protagonist, rescues a beggar child from the streets and finds the only way to reach her is through the colour and excitment of the toy theatre. But does Lily really understand that it’s just a fiction?
Quills, Quotes, Queens and Quests 