Produced by Nicole Apostola
RACKETTY-PACKETTY HOUSEAs told by Queen Crosspatch
ByFrances Hodgson BurnettAuthor of "Little Lord Fauntleroy"
With illustrations by Harrison Cady
[Transcribers note: see frontispiece.jpg, dance.jpg and fairy.jpg]
Now this is the story about the doll family I liked and the dollfamily I didn't. When you read it you are to remember something Iam going to tell you. This is it: If you think dolls never doanything you don't see them do, you are very much mistaken. Whenpeople are not looking at them they can do anything they choose.They can dance and sing and play on the piano and have all sorts offun. But they can only move about and talk when people turn theirbacks and are not looking. If any one looks, they just stop.Fairies know this and of course Fairies visit in all the dolls'houses where the dolls are agreeable. They will not associate,though, with dolls who are not nice. They never call or leave theircards at a dolls' house where the dolls are proud or bad tempered.They are very particular. If you are conceited or ill-temperedyourself, you will never know a fairy as long as you live.
Queen Crosspatch.
RACKETTY-PACKETTY HOUSE
Racketty-Packetty House was in a corner of Cynthia's nursery. Andit was not in the best corner either. It was in the corner behindthe door, and that was not at all a fashionable neighborhood.Racketty-Packetty House had been pushed there to be out of the waywhen Tidy Castle was brought in, on Cynthia's birthday. As soon asshe saw Tidy Castle Cynthia did not care for Racketty-PackettyHouse and indeed was quite ashamed of it. She thought the cornerbehind the door quite good enough for such a shabby old dolls'house, when there was the beautiful big new one built like a castleand furnished with the most elegant chairs and tables and carpetsand curtains and ornaments and pictures and beds and baths andlamps and book-cases, and with a knocker on the front door, and astable with a pony cart in it at the back. The minute she saw itshe called out:
"Oh! what a beautiful doll castle! What shall we do with thatuntidy old Racketty-Packetty House now? It is too shabby andold-fashioned to stand near it."
In fact, that was the way in which the old dolls' house got itsname. It had always been called, "The Dolls' House," before, butafter that it was pushed into the unfashionable neighborhood behindthe door and ever afterwards--when it was spoken of at all--it wasjust called Racketty-Packetty House, and nothing else.
[Transcriber's Note: See picture tidyshire_castle.jpg]
Of course Tidy Castle was grand, and Tidy Castle was new and hadall the modern improvements in it, and Racketty-Packetty House wasas old-fashioned as it could be. It had belonged to Cynthia'sGrandmamma and had been made in the days when Queen Victoria was alittle girl, and when there were no electric lights even inPrincesses' dolls' houses. Cynthia's Grandmamma had kept it veryneat because she had been a good housekeeper even when she wasseven years old. But Cynthia was not a good housekeeper and she didnot re-cover the furniture when it got dingy, or re-paper thewalls, or mend the carpets and bedclothes, and she never thought ofsuch a thing as making new clothes for the doll family, so that ofcourse their early Victorian frocks and capes and bonnets grew intime to be too shabby for words. You see, when Queen Victoria was alittle girl, dolls wore queer frocks and long pantalets and boydolls wore funny frilled trousers and coats which it would almostmake you laugh to look at.
But the Racketty-Packetty House family had known better days. I andmy Fairies had known them when they were quite new and had been abirthday present just as Tidy Castle was when Cynthia turned eightyears old, and there was as much fuss about them when their housearrived as Cynthia made when she saw Tidy Castle.
Cynthia's Grandmamma had danced about and clapped her hands withdelight, and she had scrambled down upon her knees and taken thedolls out one by one and thought their clothes beautiful. And shehad given each one of them a grand name.
"This one shall be Amelia," she said. "And this one is Charlotte,and this is Victoria Leopoldina, and this one Aurelia Matilda, andthis one Leontine, and this one Clotilda, and these boys shall beAugustus and Rowland and Vincent and Charles Edward Stuart."
For a long time they led a very gay and fashionable life. They hadparties and balls and were presented at Court and went to RoyalChristenings and Weddings and were married themselves and hadfamilies and scarlet fever and whooping cough and funerals andevery luxury. But that was long, long ago, and now all was changed.Their house had grown shabbier and shabbier, and their clothes hadgrown simply awful; and Aurelia Matilda and Victoria Leopoldina hadbeen broken to bits and thrown into the dust-bin, and Leontine--whohad really been the beauty of the family--had been dragged out onthe hearth rug one night and had had nearly all her paint lickedoff and a leg chewed up by a Newfoundland puppy, so that she was asight to behold. As for the boys; Rowland and Vincent had quitedisappeared, and Charlotte and Amelia always believed they had runaway to seek their fortunes, because things were in such a state athome. So the only ones who were left were Clotilda and Amelia andCharlotte and poor Leontine and Augustus and Charles Edward Stuart.Even they had their names changed.
[Transcriber's Note: See picture ridiklis.jpg]
After Leontine had had her paint licked off so that her head hadwhite bald spots on it and she had scarcely any features, a boycousin of Cynthia's had put a bright red spot on each cheek andpainted her a turned up nose and round saucer blue eyes and acomical mouth. He and Cynthia had called her, "Ridiklis" instead ofLeontine, and she had been called that ever since. All the dollswere jointed Dutch dolls, so it was easy to paint any kind offeatures on them and stick out their arms and legs in any way youliked, and Leontine did look funny after Cynthia's cousin hadfinished. She certainly was not a beauty but her turned up nose andher round eyes and funny mouth always seemed to be laughing so shereally was the most good-natured looking creature you ever saw.
Charlotte and Amelia, Cynthia had called Meg and Peg, and Clotildashe called Kilmanskeg, and Augustus she called Gustibus, andCharles Edward Stuart was nothing but Peter Piper. So that was theend of their grand names.
The truth was, they went through all sorts of things, and if theyhad not been such a jolly lot of dolls they might have had fits andappendicitis and died of grief. But not a bit of it. If you willbelieve it, they got fun out of everything. They used to justscream with laughter over the new names, and they laughed so muchover them that they got quite fond of them. When Meg's pink silkflounces were torn she pinned them up and didn't mind in the least,and when Peg's lace mantilla was played with by a kitten andbrought back to her in rags and tags, she just put a few stitchesin it and put it on again; and when Peter Piper lost almost thewhole leg of one of his trousers he just laughed and said it madeit easier for him to kick about and turn somersaults and he wishedthe other leg would tear off too.
You never saw a family have such fun. They could make up storiesand pretend things and invent games out of nothing. And my Fairieswere so fond of them that I couldn't keep them away from the dolls'house. They would go and have fun with Meg and Peg and Kilmanskegand Gustibus and Peter Piper, even when I had work for them to doin Fairyland. But there, I was so fond of that shabby disrespectablefamily myself that I never would scold much about them, and I oftenwent to see them. That is how I know so much about them. They wereso fond of each other and so good-natured and always in suchspirits that everybody who knew them was fond of them. And it wasreally only Cynthia who didn't know them and thought them only alot of old disreputable looking Dutch dolls--and Dutch dolls werequite out of fashion. The truth was that Cynthia was not aparticularly nice little girl, and did not care much for anythingunless it was q
uite new. But the kitten who had torn the lacemantilla got to know the family and simply loved them all, and theNewfoundland puppy was so sorry about Leontine's paint and her leftleg, that he could never do enough to make up. He wanted to marryLeontine as soon as he grew old enough to wear a collar, butLeontine said she would never desert her family; because now thatshe wasn't the beauty any more she became the useful one, and didall the kitchen work, and sat up and made poultices and beef teawhen any of the rest were ill. And the Newfoundland puppy saw shewas right, for the whole family simply adored Ridiklis and couldnot possibly have done without her. Meg and Peg and Kilmanskegcould have married any minute if they had liked. There were twocock sparrows and a gentleman mouse, who proposed to them over andover again. They all three said they did not want fashionable wivesbut cheerful dispositions and a happy, home. But Meg and Peg werelike Ridiklis and