Vladimir Nabokov & The Golliwogg
For me, Bill Casselman, the most elegantly phrased autobiography in 20th century English is Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and other novels and novellas. A Russian by birth, an aristocrat by temperament, Nabokov’s great ear for the manifold amplitudes of human language permitted him to develop and to wield some of the most pleasing sentences ever composed in English.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
(Владимир Владимирович Набоков)
Pronounced: vlah-DEE-meer nah-BAWK-awf; Russian author, English author, lepidopterist, chess problemist.
Two passages from Nabokov’s Golliwoggs: Lodi Reads English 1899-1909 by D. Barton Johnson (available on the internet) detail Nabokov’s love of the Golliwogg and fascinating trivia about the golliwog dolls.
“…Nabokov’s fondest memories of early childhood reading are reserved for those large, flat, illustrated books in which the text was adjunct to the picture story: “I particularly liked the blue-coated, red-trousered, coal-black Golliwogg, with underclothes buttons for eyes, and his meager harem of five wooden dolls” (82). He goes on to recount favorite scenes from several of the thirteen Golliwogg books that appeared in London between 1895 and 1909. The earliest is The Adventures of two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. The story opens in a toy store on Christmas Eve. As midnight strikes, the toys come to life and begin to frolic. Among them are several “Dutch” dolls, also called “penny-woodens,” which have jointed limbs so that they can be arranged in various poses for sketching. (Often used by artists as models, the sexless dolls can be gendered and clothed as one wishes.) The two larger dolls, “Peg” and “Sarah Jane,” immediately set about making themselves outfits out of an (illegally) ripped up American flag. Peg uses “the motherly stripes;” Sarah Jane—the pretty stars. (The other, smaller doll characters, the twins, Meg and Weg, remain unclothed, as does the tiny “Midget.” ). As the toys prepare to dance, they hear a sound:
“They all look round, as well they may
to see a horrid sight!
The blackest gnome
Stands there alone
They scatter in their fright.”
More Golliwogiana
This fascinating lore is an excerpt from Nabokov’s Golliwoggs: Lodi Reads English 1899-1909 by D. Barton Johnson.
“. . .Golliwog dolls became enormously popular in the nursery where in 1903 they were soon joined by the first “Teddy Bears,” named for Theodore Roosevelt. The Golliwogs appear in many memoirs of Edwardian childhood’s. Sir Kenneth Clark, the art historian, tells of the joy brought him by the books, adding that the Golliwogg was “an example of chivalry, far more persuasive than the unconvincing Knights of the Arthurian legend. I identified myself with him completely, and have never quite ceased to do so.” And, of course, Vladimir Nabokov, as a proper (Russian) Edwardian child, owned a Golliwog doll, together with the Upton books. French composer Claude Debussy was so entranced by his young daughter’s Golliwogg books and doll (thought to have been introduced into the household by an English nanny), that one movement of his Children’s Corner Suite is entitled “The Golliwog’s Cakewalk.” First published in 1908, the Suite had on its cover Debussy’s own drawing of Upton ’s Golliwog. To most people today, the name “Golliwog” suggests Debussy’s piece rather than the doll—except among collectors who pay thousands of dollars for early examples.
There is, incidentally, an International Golliwogg Collectors Club, with its own newsletter and web site. Golliwogs were an international industry. According to Norma Davis, Upton ’s biographer, there have been Golliwog card games and post cards, penknives, wall paper, china, pottery, paperweights, and jewelry. In the twenties and thirties, de Vigny of Paris made “Le Golliwog” perfume which was marketed internationally in a Golliwog-shaped bottle using sealskin hair on the stopper.”
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Return to page 2 about the origin of the word wog.
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