A few months back, when I was preparing my first playthings and working out what order to follow, I was fairly certain that Pumpie would be the second portrait. However, I soon realised this would mean that the first two playthings would be from England and date from around the same time, which was not ideal in terms of conveying my idea for the project. With this in mind, I ended up choosing the 2300-year-old pig rattle from Cyprus instead, and then I turned to Japan for the third portrait, and so on, until I reached week 27.
According to the V&A Museum of Childhood, Pumpie was likely based on a stuffed animal made by a company such as Steiff. There are several Steiff elephants that can be found (some lovely ones on wheels, also made of felt like Pumpie), and in fact the first toy sold by Margarete Steiff when she set up the company was a little felt elephant (see information about the company here, and scroll down to see the elephant). I recently found one dating to 1905, which is sitting like Pumpie and is also wearing a sailor’s outfit, but is made of mohair rather than felt.
He was recently the subject of a little BBC documentary, where you can see him being lovingly handled by conservation specialists, and you can appreciate the great work they did restoring him. There is also a post on the V&A Museum blog about making the documentary, which includes details about the Cattley family, and photos of their other soft toys, and a further blog by a relative of the Cattleys, with more photos and information about the family.
One thing that has surprised me over these months is quite how many playthings in museums and collections date from a specific time period – 1890s to 1910s – in Europe and the US. Now that I have done a good number of portraits, I try to focus mostly on whether an object is appealing and worth looking into, rather than worrying too much about its date or provenance, but I have found it quite revealing to see the weight of this period and these areas in the collections I have looked at. There are many reasons behind this, but perhaps it has made me more aware than ever of skewed narratives and histories, and made me keener to stop and analyse certain details or gazes.
At the same time, I have frequently been frustrated and uncomfortable when researching toys from other continents and cultures, because the focus often seems very different from that given to what I will term ‘Western’ playthings – I feel the commentary frequently dwells on how resourceful or how creative something is, or on describing something from a very detached anthropological point of view. There seems to be a clear line between Western toys and ‘other’ toys, as there is with most aspects of life.
It was interesting to re-read the brief notes and thoughts I jotted down about Pumpie at the start of the project, when I simply saw a wonderful toy:
Pumpie plumply sits in storage at the V&A Museum, dressed in his smart ship’s officer uniform, one of several outfits that were made for him (including a kilt). He lived in the Cattley household in Ealing and was hand-made by the Cattley children (Maud, Donald, Constance or Connie, Helen or Nellie, and Gilbert; all born between 1885 and 1892), who crafted him out of felt, wood shavings and cork. He had plenty of company — there is a whole range of soft toys belonging to the collection, which the family seemed to be extremely fond of, taking them along to little trips and even doing portraits of them.
He was repaired not long ago by a conservator, as he was coming apart and moth-damage was evident, so he does not look pristine, but I feel this only adds to his personality and his story. To me, Pumpie looks as though he is permanently bewildered, mild-mannered, polite to a fault, and an excellent companion at tea parties (he comes sitting!). He is a ship’s officer, but I can’t really imagine him giving any orders.
What draws me especially to Pumpie is that he is a one-of-a-kind character, and it is easy to imagine the Cattley children interacting with him, addressing him, and fussing over his smart outfits. He also tells us a lot about the sort of family they were and how they spent time together. Five children playing with a menagerie of stuffed toys were likely to have had loud fun.
And I do love this elephant and his demeanour: his worn nose and face, his stitching, the way his legs (arms?) stick out. He was created to enjoy as a playmate and a member of the family, and you can tell he had a good life as a toy. Might the Cattley children have given him a specific voice? He is very much a storybook character, in the vein of Winnie-The-Pooh, Piglet and the others a few years later. Perhaps I am always won over when playthings look like they have stepped out of a book.
But having pored over hundreds of photographs of toys and objects, I have come to realise that I have developed an uneasy relationship with certain quintessentially English ideas of childhood, and the complexity of what lies beneath. I am referring to childhoods with imagery of nannies and nurseries, wild overgrown gardens to get lost in, picnics in the countryside, lazy sunny afternoons, plump summer strawberries, tangled blond hair, and rosy cheeks.
Out of curiosity, I checked the dates of several children’s classics that popped into my head: Peter Pan (play 1904; novel 1911), Five Children and It (1902), The Secret Garden (1910-1911), all written at the height of the British Empire, and coinciding with the dates for which I have found so many interesting toys in collections.
When I look at Pumpie now I still see a lovely plaything, but I also see an idea of the British Empire, and its relationship with the inhabitants of its colonies, both human and animal. Pumpie manages to embody the Empire quite perfectly – an ‘exotic’ creature from the colonies (India, it seems) dressed in ‘civilised’ British clothing.
I thought of the controversy surrounding Babar the Elephant, and read a couple of articles (see e.g. Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, 2008.)
Interestingly, I now also see the British Empire in our lovely Shoe Doll – the other side of the coin, as it were. How different our gaze is when we look at both objects; both made to play with by children with what they had available, the difference being the Cattleys had a great deal more than the girl who owned the doll.
I like thinking about the children planning out how to make him. Picture them, some sitting, some standing; one holding the sewn-up felt body open while another pours in the wood shavings and the cork. We’ll call him Pumpie.