Canto 15 – Dolls with White Wigs
Dora McMaster had been carefully studying the doll that she thought she had somehow made and forgotten. She seemed especially interested in the white-haired wig the doll wore.
“This wig on the doll… Did you know that it is made with real human hair?” Dora asked Brittany.
“No, I did not. It is the only thing that isn’t like my own daughter. She has black hair.”
“Molly had black hair too before…”
“Before what?”
“The news came about her father, and both she and her mother took sick. Apparently high fever, or something like it, turned Molly’s hair ghost white.”
“That’s strange.”
“Yes, and stranger still that I don’t remember ever making a white wig before. But I have been planning to make one for the doll who is supposed to be Molly. To remember her as…”
“…As she was before you lost your chance to save her.”
“Yes. But where did the doll-maker who made this wig get white human hair? And why put it on my creation in Aunt Phillia’s horrible store?”
“Is it dyed, perhaps?”
“No. It contains strands that still have black roots, and the color all seems natural, just like Molly’s own. But it couldn’t be made from Molly’s hair… not after the fire.”
“You will make the Molly doll with white hair?”
“Yes, of course… but where to get white-colored human hair to make such a wig?”
“Mention her own white hair,” said Molly to Brittany in a voice Dora apparently couldn’t also hear.
“You have some white hair on your own head the same color as that,” said Brittany.
“Why, yes… I do. It will take time to grow out enough to use it without making myself bald,” Dora said, giggling to herself.
“Why do you have white hair?” Brittany whispered to the doll.
“Not here. We will talk later in private. I can show you at the witching hour.”
Brittany nodded to herself at the doll’s answer. She didn’t much like how demonic and spooky the doll seemed. But the doll was also so like Hannah, and endearing enough to make it necessary for Brittany to know everything. In a ghost story, it is the unknown thing that scares you the most. And it could only be a good thing to make the unknown a little more known.
Dora had taken out the pieces of a doll’s skull cap and began singing softly to herself as she began to sew and prepare the cap to have human hair added.
“Dora? Would it be all right if I step out in the yard for some air while you do that?” Brittany asked.
“Certainly. And thank you so much for the inspiration.”
Brittany took the doll with her out onto the veranda in the back of the house opposite the flower garden.
“Okay, Molly. I need some answers.”
“Honest answers? Or do you prefer to be lied to?”
“Honest answers, of course!”
“About what, then?”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“You mean to Dora’s house?”
“I mean, this time… this place… this world?”
“I paid the toy man to get my momma back again.”
“What? What does that have to do with me?”
“The toy man said that if I chose you to play with, that could help me get momma back.”
“Play with me? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know all the details… yet. But you are alive… and my momma is not. I need to use you to make her alive again.”
Brittany stared at the smiling porcelain face. The creepy smile chilled her to the bone.
Catch a Falling Star 
Winsor McCay
One work of comic strip art stands alone as having earned the artist, Winsor McCay, a full-fledged exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Little Nemo in Slumberland is a one-of-a-kind achievement in fantasy art.
Winsor McCay lived from his birth in Michigan in 1869 to his finale in Brooklyn in 1934. In that time he created volumes full of his fine-art pages of full-page color newspaper cartoons, most in the four-color process.
As a boy, he pursued art from very early on, before he was twenty creating paintings turned into advertising and circus posters. He spent his early manhood doing amazingly detailed half-page political cartoons built around the editorials of Arthur Brisbane, He then became a staff artist for the Cincinnati Times Star Newspaper, illustrating fires, accidents, meetings, and notable events. He worked in the newspaper business with American artists like Winslow Homer and Frederick Remington who also developed their art skills through newspaper illustration. He moved into newspaper comics with numerous series strips that included Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland. And he followed that massive amount of work up by becoming the “Father of the Animated Cartoon” with Gertie the Dinosaur, with whom he toured the US giving public performances as illustrated in the silent film below;
The truly amazing thing about his great volume of work was the intricate detail of every single panel and page. It represents a fantastic amount of work hours poured into the creation of art with an intense love of drawing. You can see in the many pages of Little Nemo how great he was as a draftsman, doing architectural renderings that rivaled any gifted architect. His fantasy artwork rendered the totally unbelievable and the creatively absurd in ways that made them completely believable.
I bought my copy of Nostalgia Press’s Little Nemo collection in the middle 70’s and have studied it more than the Bible in the intervening years. Winsor McCay taught me many art tricks and design flourishes that I still copy and steal to this very day.
No amount of negative criticism could ever change my faith in the talents of McCay. But since I have never seen a harsh word written against him, I have to think that problem will never come up.
My only regret is that the wonders of Winsor McCay, being over a hundred years old, will not be appreciated by a more modern generation to whom these glorious cartoon artworks are not generally available.
Leave a comment
Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, artwork, book review, cartoon review, cartoons, comic strips, commentary
Tagged as Little Nemo in Slumberland, Winsor McCay