I first came across Dismal Desmond a few months ago, when I saw a pair of ads on postcards, showing the soft toys displayed under taglines printed in 1920’s font:

Every silver lining has a cloud!

and

Come let us all be miserable together!

[You can view the postcards here]

I had been looking at something rather serious at the time, and the contrast in tone took me by surprise and delighted me. For some reason, in my head the words were spoken by Jack Lemmon’s Daphne character in Some Like It Hot – eyes twinkling, shrugging her shoulders, and crinkling her nose.

When I found out the ‘official’ backstory it was given, it captured my interest further – Desmond was born white all over, and perfectly happy, but when his owner Daisy Doodah died he came out in black blotches and has been depressed ever since. Those details make for a brand of hard-hearted humour that seems to be particularly of its time and somehow feels deliciously refreshing.

The toy was brought out in the UK by Dean’s Rag Book Company in 1926 and became first a success and then a craze of sorts, on which more later.

Dean’s Rag Book Company was created in 1903 by Henry Samuel Dean and started out specialising in rag books, later branching out into soft toys. Their rag books are interesting objects, made out of pieces of cloth with zigzag edges, as though cut with pinking shears. The idea was that they were durable, practical, and virtually indestructible, and they often focused on animals and alphabets (e.g., Animal ABC). This advert from the magazine Chatterbox (1908) includes a mention of The Pig Book, a rag book for young children available for sale in cloth as well as, fittingly, in pigskin!

[As a side note, Chatterbox is a fascinating magazine to look into, founded in 1866 by John Erskine Clarke, a British clergyman. The magazine was published weekly, and was primarily aimed at pre-teens, packed to the brim with illustrations, stories and poetry. You can view fully digitised magazines at the Internet Archive here.]

There is a good example of a Dismal Desmond at the V&A Museum of Childhood made of cotton, rather than velveteen plush like ours, though my drawing is based on a combination of images of Desmonds found online. The toy was produced in different stances, both standing and sitting, as well as different sizes (you can see a long-legged one Desmond here, c. 1928) and there was a whole variety of additional merchandise that would eventually appear.

Desmond took the world by storm, not just in the UK but also abroad (the soft toy at the V&A bears a 1927 US patent). The V&A page and others mention him being the mascot of the England Cricket Team in 1926, as well as a mascot in the ladies changing rooms at Wimbledon, though I have not been able to find any further references. The image that perhaps best illustrates the craze is a famous photograph of US actress Louise Brooks holding a Dismal Desmond in one arm and a Bonzo in another. Bonzo was based on a cartoon character which first appeared in a weekly journal called The Sketch.

There was even a special song recorded in 1927 called Dismal Desmond, The Despondent Dalmatian (click here to hear it) performed by Charles Penrose (sometimes a.k.a. Charles Jolly), a music hall entertainer/comedian best known for his 1922 song The Laughing Policeman (listen here – it is likely to sound familiar!). You can see an advert for the song here, which reads:

A ‘Howling’ Success
The New Song and Dance Craze

The lyrics to the song include highlights such as:

I called at a house once unawares
They said you’ll find the body upstairs
I’m Dismal Desmond
Dismal as can be

 And

If you’re full of grief and woe
I can make you worse
On my wedding day
I’ll get an undertaker’s hearse

With the chorus

I’m Dismal Desmond
Dismal as can be
Dismal Desmond
Full of misery

A little bit more digging led to finding a whole range of photos from the German magazine Auto Magazin from 1928, picturing Desmond being held by a number of actresses including Mary Kid, Iris Arlan, Ica Lenkeffy and none other than Marlene Dietrich (see here and here) – all photos on a Pinterest board taken from the digitised magazines from 1928 freely available here. The only equivalent I could think of was a photoshoot of Kermit or another Muppet, but it made me think that there are few toys iconic enough to feature in a spread like that.

Interestingly there is a little white cloth dog with a similar air to Dismal Desmond’s, which appears in Clara Bow’s 1927 film It – she holds it close to her face, a lot like Louise Brooks does in her photograph with Desmond and Bonzo. Bow’s dog has a large tear on its face and is practically identical to the cloth dog Buster Keaton buys in the 1929 film Spite Marriage. Clearly sad-looking stuffed animals were the must-have accessory.

All of the above makes it seem like it was a toy that was originally created for children but ended up being adopted by grown-ups, but in fact it was also very popular with young kids. There were Dismal Desmond party hats (see this great example at the V&A), Dismal Desmond birthday greetings, rattles, chocolate figures (see chocolate mould), sweeties and so on.

Out of interest, I checked when the magnificently sad and depressed donkey Eeyore made his first appearance in the Winnie-the-Pooh world, and confirmed it was also in 1926 like Desmond. Dean’s Rag Book Company did issue a Cheerful Desmond in 1929, but that did not take off in the same way. And why would it? ‘Dismal’ is infinitely more interesting and juicier than ‘cheerful’ – what is more human (however distasteful it may be) than to look at the misery of others to gauge the extent of ours, and be able to say we’re not doing so badly? And what is more liberating than not having to be cheerful, and being free to mope?

I like Desmond, with his droopy tongue, his pleading eyes, and his soft velveteen fur. He might bring disaster after disaster, but there’s a chance he might just be worth it.

Come let us all be miserable together! We’ll have a jolly old time.