Queen Alexandra’s doll dress
Penelope Hemingway delves into the story behind a dainty doll dress, knitted by Princess Alexandra and held in the collection of the Ruskin Museum in Cumbria
A LITTLE doll, wearing a lacy knitted dress, is on display at the Ruskin Museum in Coniston, Cumbria. It was originally owned by a Mrs Elizabeth Pepper, and was donated to the museum by her daughter, Abigail Reed. Abigail was one of the last of the hand spinners working in the famous Langdale linen industry in the Lake District, which had been established by the writer, art critic and social reformer John Ruskin in 1883.
The card displayed with this exhibit at the museum reads:
“... dressed by H.R.H Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra), as a present for Mrs Elizabeth Pepper, who had visited Sandringham in order to teach her and her ladies-in-waiting how to spin flax…”
After viewing the dress at the Ruskin Museum, I wanted to find out more about Elizabeth Pepper, and why she came to own such an exquisite item handmade by a princess. Elizabeth Pepper was born in 1854, in Borrowdale, Cumbria. Her mother was to be one of the earliest and most skilled spinners for the Ruskin Linen Industry, Eleanor Heskett. Eleanor, a blacksmith’s wife, can be found in the 1851 census listed as “Pauper”. She was destined to spin the linen that made up the pall for John Ruskin’s funeral cortege, and she taught her daughter, Elizabeth, to spin. Elizabeth, in her turn, was to teach a future queen to spin.
Elizabeth married a farmer, Robert Pepper, and they farmed near Coniston in the Lake District. By 1891, she was listed in the census at “Manageress of the Langdale Linen Industry” and in 1911, she self-described her occupation as: “Hand-spinning and weaving flax and wool and silk”.
Cottage industry
Spinning and weaving by hand were extinct by the 1880s. The Langdale Linen Industry, founded in 1883, revived the hand spinning and weaving of linen in the Lake District, as well as embroidery. It gave employment to working-class women in the valley of Langdale, and the business was seen as creative, fulfilling and non-exploitative, as well as environmentally sound. John Ruskin had bought a cottage to found the revived linen industry in Elterwater, which was named St. Martin’s Home. It was filled with old and new spinning wheels, and local women were taught to spin linen. When proficient, the women could borrow the wheels and take them home.
Eleanor Heskett may well have been one of the two locals who remembered, from their youth, how to spin and then taught the others, or maybe she was in the earliest group of local women who learned to spin at Elterwater. The linen thread was handwoven in an outbuilding of St. Martin’s by a man who, in his distant youth, had trained as a handloom weaver.
Elizabeth Pepper taught herself to dye embroidery silks with natural dyes, and embroidered flowers and animals in the tradition of Ruskin and the other pre-Raphaelite artists, finding inspiration in the nature all around her. Her undyed, natural handspun, handwoven linen backgrounds were canvasses for her art. She was a skilled spinner, weaver, natural dyer and embroiderer. She must also have knitted, as her needles are now on display at the Ruskin Museum in Coniston, along with examples of her work, and the doll given to her by Queen Alexandra.
The fame of the Langdale Linen Industry grew as the work of the Lakeland craftswomen travelled the country, in exhibitions and displays. By 1889 there was an office for Home Arts and Industries, which included spinning and knitting, on the top floor of London’s Albert Hall. One newspaper report remarked that on display there, as well as the linen, was knitting done by Lakeland
children, who were being “taught to knit socks and stockings, and work in rabbits’ hair - a very fair imitation of lambs’ wool…” Dolls’ dresses may well have been amongst the fancier types of knitting the children practised.
It was at the Home Arts Exhibition in London that Elizabeth’s work caught the eye of Princess Alexandra (1844-1925), who requested that Elizabeth came down to the royal estate at Sandringham in Norfolk to teach her to spin. Alexandra went on to start her own Spinning School on the estate, where girls learned to spin wool from the Sandringham estate’s sheep. In gratitude, the Princess knitted this doll’s dress and presented the doll and dress to Elizabeth. We can only imagine how much Elizabeth must have treasured it, on her farm at Langdale.
Natural silk
The doll’s bonnet and dress were knitted in undyed silk – now browned with age, but within its folds it is possible to see its original, cream colour. The lacy knitting echoes the woven, cut-thread and embroidered lace being produced in Elterwater, by the late 1880s and on until the First World War, when the industry finally died.
Elizabeth Pepper often embroidered with silk thread that she had dyed herself in beautiful, natural colours. The doll’s dress is knitted from similar silk. It’s possible that Alexandra used commercial silk thread, or even spun the silk herself. I wasn’t able to get the doll out of the display cabinet, and it would have to be examined more closely to determine whether it was knitted using handspun or commercial silk.
Dolls’ dress patterns were featured in magazines such as Weldon’s Ladies’
Journal, as well as patterns for knitted lace edgings. Yet the vast majority of patterns in periodicals in the mid to late 19th century were for sewn dolls’ clothes, not knitted ones. This dress may have been knitted using a commercially available pattern, or knitted using a commercial lace edging and an improvised bodice/sleeve. Alexandra would have been an able knitter.
Delicate stitches
Samples of lace knitting and handwritten patterns made by the women of the Wordsworth family are in the collection at the Wordsworth Trust, down the road, in Grasmere. Lace edgings were collected and documented by Victorian and Edwardian knitters.
The doll’s dress could also have been made from memory, assuming that knitting dolls’ dresses was something many women learned in childhood and Alexandra was a devoted and kind mother and grandmother - who had possibly knitted such little gifts for her own family.
The inclusion of a bonnet, however, suggests to me this is likely to be an outfit from a commercial knitting pattern. The lace edging is a shallow pattern, knitted sideways, with the rest of the skirt comprised of bands of stocking and garter stitch, alternating. The dress would be decreased at the waist, with eyelets for the waistband, followed by the bodice which is also knitted sideways and maybe of a piece with the skirt. The sleeves are knitted more conventionally, down from the armscye. The doll herself was a high-quality wax and composition doll. She is around six inches tall, which suggests the dress was possibly knitted on needles sized around 1mm.
Alexandra was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and was married to Queen Victoria’s son - who was to become Edward VII - in 1863. She was an affectionate woman and could be both extravagant and sensible (she spent wildly on designer clothing, yet had her stockings darned).
“...Spinning is a favourite occupation with the Queen. Her own wheel, decorated with the Danish colours, stands in the Spinning School at Sandringham, a room which is part of the Technical Schools founded by the Queen Alexandra for the training of village girls. Wool from the sheep on the estate is spun into yarn and made up into beautiful woollen goods…” !
ESSEX COUNTY CHRONICLE, JUNE 27, 1902 ".
Girls in the Queen’s Spinning School learned to spin, weave, knit and sew. All of this textile activity was the result of the Queen meeting with Elizabeth Pepper, the Langdale Linen Industry manager.