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Histoire de Pierre Pons, Pantin de feutre
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Trans. Edwin Gile Rich Illus. P. Guignebault (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1929) |
This is probably the most serious literary work for children discussed on these pages. It is fanciful and satirical, but also rather serious in its presentation of the relations among a group of toys who identify themselves as dolls, those whom they judge to be knick-knacks, and various kinds of animal figurines.
Pierre Pons is a felt toy made in England and sent to France, where he is given to a little boy named Camille. He is certainly the finest toy in the house and is acclaimed king by the others. However, Camille's sister receives a Japanese girl doll, the Marquise Yorisaka, for her birthday; she joins Pierre on the sofa and instantly becomes the love of his life. She, however, is betrothed to a Japanese soldier, fighting under General Kuroki (hero of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war, giving us a good date for composition). Another Japanese item comes into the household, a porcelain princess who informs Yorisaka that her soldier lover had fallen in love with the princess herself, and had died in battle. Yorisaka despairs, falls ill, and attempts suicide. Pierre nurses her faithfully, but as she is recovering he himself is the victim of the cruelty of one of Camille's friends, Auguste, who kidnaps and abuses him and reports him dead. The Marquise finds Pierre's diary and realizes that she loves him; she goes into mourning. After a battle with rats, and the humiliation of having coins sewn on his nose and ears, Pierre returns to his realm and marries his beloved Marquise.
The French edition mentioned above has a second part, in which Pierre acquires three new doll subjects: a valet, Balthazar, who is an escaped slave; Theodore, a soldier doll (as Pierre himself is) with a gun; and the poet Jimmy. In their company, he becomes ambitious and undertakes what he believes to be a just war to obtain information about a lost friend. The Marquise is unhappy about this, but finally accepts his decision. He has however been deceived into believing in this cause, and after literally melting his enemies down to make coins, he realizes that the Marquise's pacifism was after all right.
Yorisaka, the Japanese doll, is above all an aristocrat, who speaks with great elegance and courtesy. Her soldier fiancé and her suicide attempt suggest Japanese history, but even more so a general aristocratic quality (Pierre himself considers suicide when his suit is first rejected). She is very dramatic, donning a black veil when Pierre is said to be dead and trampling it under her feet when he turns out to be alive. In the second part, she becomes more gentle and maternal, and advocates peace in a very un-Japanese way.
The book is however unusual in that it presents Japan in a way usually reserved for adult literature. There is none of the charming stuff about sleeping on the floor and eating odd food. Although the title Marquise is reserved for the wife of a Marquis (in France and in Japan), it was indeed a title the Japanese had borrowed for their Westernized class system in the Meiji era. The doll Yorisaka looks forward to her arranged marriage, is extremely class-conscious and deferential to the porcelain Princess, and has a vivid sense of the horrors of the Russo-Japanese war. The combination of repression and artificial good manners, a sincere desire to please others, and dramatic outbursts of emotion fits with a different Japanese psychology than the "happy Jappy" profile more usually found in doll books.
As will be seen, the illustrations for the two editions
are quite different, though both artists seem to have similar ideas about
what Yorisaka looks like and how to create a composition around this large
Japanese doll. Mlle. Daujat provides mostly two illustrations per
chapter in black and white, each taking up about a third of a page. The
Guignebault edition is larger in size and richly illustrated, to the point
where the layout often suggests a "graphic novel"; 5 or 6 small illustrations
crowd a page, or one large picture occupies the upper left and lower right
quadrants of the page, with the text in the two remaining quadrants; the
page openings alternate black line and full color in a rather comic-book
style.
