Georgina is a 7.5” tall antique wax-over paper mache doll with glass eyes. Her arms and legs are carved from wood. But her most amazing feature is her feet, which look a lot like Hitty’s and Kitty’s. It’s my guess that all three dolls were made around the same time, since the style is so similar. I named her Georgina after Georgina Hogarth, sister-in-law of Charles Dickens and Mekitty’s Great Aunt. Restoring Georgina When I purchased Georgina on ebay, she was in frightful condition. The area surrounding her glass eyes had lost its coating of plaster, resulting in a scary, wide-eyed look. Her face was dirty, and she had a…
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Virtual Kitty
You may be wondering what “Virtual Kitty” means. Compared to the original, physical doll, which you can touch and see, a virtual doll only exists as digital bits in a computer file. So why would I want to create a doll that doesn’t even exist in the real world? Because a virtual doll is the first step towards my ultimate goal of making the fictional version of Kitty a reality. I love my antique Kitty doll (see Meet Kitty), who inspired A Tale of Two Hittys. I really enjoy dressing her and taking photos of her with my other dolls, but her fragile nature means that I have to be…
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A Real Ghost Story
The ghost story that Charles Dickens tells Mekitty in A Tale of Two Hittys is based on a real event. Click on the link to read Chapter 2 first, if you haven’t already done so. My ghost story was inspired by a letter which Charles Dickens wrote to Wilkie Collins, a fellow author and the brother of his son-in-law, Charles Collins, on Wednesday, October 24th, 1860. In my version, I pushed the timeline to December of the same year. I also elaborated on some of the details and changed the dialog to make the story more understandable and accessible to modern readers. Original letter from Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins:…
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The Dickens Dresses
A Tale of Two Hittys begins in the year 1868. During the era, little girls wore bloomers, petticoats, a chemise (loose cotton undershirt), stockings and boots with buttons or laces. Depending on the age of the child, she might have to wear a corset. The dresses were often elaborate with lots of trimmings. For outerwear a little girl needed a coat, and the coat of choice was a paletot (pronounced “pal-uh-toe”). The paletot was a woman’s or girl’s jacket, usually worn over a skirt with a crinoline or bustle. Now, if you remember in the book, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, Rachel Field describes Hitty’s Dickens outfit: “the watered-silk dress…
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Mary Angela “Mekitty” Dickens
Charles Dickens had several grandchildren, but Mary Angela, nicknamed “Mekitty,” was the eldest. Her father was Charles “Charley” Dickens, Junior, and her mother was Elizabeth “Bessie” Matilda Moule Dickens (née Evans), the daughter of Charles Dickens’ former book publisher, Frederick Mullett Evans. It is a wonder that Mekitty came to be such an important part of her grandfather’s life, because when his son Charley married Bessie, Charles Dickens didn’t even attend their wedding. Fortunately, after Mekitty was born, he reconciled with the family, and they became frequent guests at Dickens’ country home in Kent, Gad’s Hill Place. On October 31, 1868, when the book, A Tale of Two Hittys begins,…
