The Six-Inch Admiral
by George A. Best, illustrated from photogrphs by C. H. Park
London: Grant Richards, 1901
187 pp.

A story about a little girl who would like to be a Japanese dolly but would not want to marry one....!
 
 

Chapter I
The Lake of Tears

    Aldine was tired of her dolls. People who stare at one without moving a muscle of their faces are always bores, and the dolls stared horribly. So, on this particular evening, Aldine put six of them to bed before tea-time, leaving the seventh, a really handsome sailor doll, dressed in the uniform of an Admiral, to watch her further movements from an arm-chair which was the last remnant of a three-and-sixpenny suite of furniture.
    "You shall sit up till five o'clock, Beresford," said Aldine, graciously, "because you're not quite so stupid as the others. I'm going to have a look at the wonderful tear vase which Uncle George brought mamma from Japan. He says it contains nearly a quart of real tears which Japanese maidens have shed whenever their lovers were unfaithful to them. Fancy crying into a vase and bottling the tars up for years and years! I don't think that any English girl would be so silly as that. Do you, Beresford?  And Uncle George declares that, if any little maiden just tastes a single drop of the tear mixture, from the tip of her finger, the strangest things will happen, and any wish spoken at the time will be immediately gratified. What do you think of that, Beresford? You don't believe it? neither do I! But I'm going to take the stopper out of the vase and taste a drop, for all that! And while I'm tasting, I shall wish to be a lady doll, and to travel round the dollies' world with you for my husband."

The first illustration in this book shows a little girl in a white dress sitting on the floor, nodding with sleep, with a Japanese doll and a doll in a white dress lying on the floor also; standing against a chair leg is the little "Admiral" doll. In the next picture, the little girl is awake and has climbed up on the chair in order to reach a small table; the Admiral is lying on the table. Other items that were on the table in the previous picture have disappeared, and now there is a vase which the little girl has tipped over; the contents pouring on the floor have been drawn onto the photo. The Japanese doll is gone, though one can glimpse the doll in the white dress. In the third picture, a transformation has taken place, and the doll in the white dress, presumably the little girl transformed into a doll, stands facing  the Admiral, under the chair, posed as if in conversation.

Aldine was tired of her dolls
"Why, it's half full!" she cried, overturning the vase in her excitement
"Dear Admiral, do help me!" panted Aldine in a weak, squeaky voice

Aldine's wish has come true, and she is transformed into a "lady doll." With Beresford she crosses a lake formed by the spilled tears, travelling west across the doll-sized versions of the Atlantic, North America, the Pacific, Asia, and Europe. In Chapter VII, "The Home of the Chinese Mandarin," a brief stop in Tokyo is described. The photographic illustration is of a couple of Japanese boy dolls sitting up in bentwood or bamboo chairs with a silver tea service and a vase with a bunch of flowers in it on the table, and on the wall a couple of banners which have what look like Japanese characters on them. (The scene should show Japanese lady dolls kneeling on the floor with low lacquer tables and lacquer and ceramic teaware, and perhaps a flowering branch in an ikebana vase.)

The Japanese ladies were dressed in tea-gowns of many colors

From Chapter VII

    The first stop was made at Tokio, where the oil tanks [of the toy steamer crossing the Pacific] were refilled, and it was at this place that Aldine beheld for the first time the beautiful scenery of Japan, and became acquainted with the happy-looking little dolls of that country. It was a land of gardens, dotted here and there with tiny dolls' houses, built amongst the forests of sunflowers and sweet peas. The winding paths of the shrubberies were really the roadways of Tokio, along which dozens of toy mail carts were being wheeled by funnily-dressed Japanese men. Each mail cart contained a full-grown doll, who did not appear at all ashamed to be trundled about the streets in a baby carriage with a  barefooted "nurse" between the shafts.
    The Japanese ladies were dressed in tea-gowns of many colours; and they played at battledore and shuttlecock among the mignonette bushes and sunflower forests as merrily as little children. It was a country of overgrown babies; a land of laughter and mirth; a large garden of flower and blossom, peopled by a happy race of dolls, whose lives appeared to be scarcely more serious than those of the many-hued butterflies which darted hither and thither in the bright sunshine, while the bees hummed drowsily in the marigold plantations below.
    "I should like to be a Japanese dolly, Beresford," said Aldine as the steamer left Tokio to continue her journey to China. "I should dearly love to live in a bamboo cottage by the side of a garden path, and to go for long drives in a mail cart, or sit on the great leaves of the sunflower trees, or play at hide-and-seek among the marigold bushes."
    "It would be very nice, until one became tired a living a butterfly's life," answered the Admiral. "For my own part, Aldine, I would rather be an English-made doll, and wear the uniform of my King. That, at any rate, is a proof that the life of the wearer is not being entirely wasted in play."
    And as he spoke, the Admiral gazed proudly down at the war medals which he wore on his breast.
     Aldine kissed her husband.
    "I wouldn't marry a Japanese man, Beresford," she said, "although I like the country and the people so much. And, after all, I think that I, too, am proud of being an English doll. Japanese dollies are very cheap, because their dress material is inexpensive, and they wear not hats. But an English lady, such as I am, cannot be bought in any shop in London for less than three-and-sixpence."