The Imaginaries

The imaginary characters are a family of characters that perhaps Queen Victoria may have read about in a book or came directly from her vivid imagination.  Half of the imaginaries are the Arnold family which have an extensive family tree. 

Here we have Sir William Arnold, the young Miss Arnold in the center and Lady Gertrude Arnold on the right. Lady Arnold seems to have been one of the Queen’s favorites as she appears in at least five different costumes.

Sir William Arnold is one of the 6 or 7 male dolls in the collection and is described by Frances Low as “a comical-looking elderly gentleman in wide green trousers and a long, snuff-coloured overcoat, with a turn down collar opening at the neck to show a blue waistcoat.”

Lady Gertude Arnold to the right is a matronly and majestic lady in dark green velvet who wears a goodly quantity of jewelry with a quaint article looking like a perfume bottle made of amber hanging upon her left arm.

The centre figure is the favourite doll of the writer Frances H. Low, a young Miss Arnold. He writes, “the most loveable creature in the whole collection is Miss Arnold. She is just a sweet natural young girl- a gentlewoman every inch of her - in the simplest of white muslin frocks with a faintly tinted lilac sash and neck ribbon. Over her shoulders is a lace fichu reaching in long ends to her feet. You forget for an instant about wooden joints and painted cheeks; and peering beneath her coal-scuttle bonnet, look eagerly for the fair and serious face that goes along with this Puritan maiden. “