The Golly started life in 1893. He was invented by Florence Upton, a teenager living in England. She was born of English parents in the USA but left the family home when she was in her early teens to live with her mother, Bertha, in London. She was a genius, and, far from her parental home, as she sought an outlet for her creativity, she created an adultless world of childhood union that was to become a world-wide phenomenon, and, in the creation of the Golliwogg,  she created an emblem of innocence, mischief, courage, humour, and empathy.

The Golly was a noble, upstanding, highly regarded and respected member of the world of the Victorian playroom. A precursor to the Teddy Bear, he fulfilled the child's desire for a friend, a peer, who was free of society's constraints, who could behave like a child but had none of the 'telling off's' or the demands placed on him by parents or teachers or 'society' at large. As such, the Golliwogg became the child's best friend - an object of unconditional love, a love which worked both ways - the children loved their golly, and the golly (they believed), loved them.

Where did it all go wrong for this loveable, gentle, harmless creature? Florence Upton's creation had tapped into the psyche of the child in a way that would have impressed Freud. He didn't become merely an item of cultural devotion - he became a worldwide phenomenon, an international best-seller, and he transcended national boundaries to become, truly, the first world-wide idol of the nursery world. Only Barbie, in today's terms, comes close. Generations of children became fixated on this loveable character, only to find that 100 years later, he would be excommunicated from life in the western world, treated as a villain, an emblem of racism, an expendable item of the PC children's playroom. Who was he? Why has he become so vilified? What was he?

Who was he?
The Golly was an odd-looking beast. Florence Upton's mother wrote the verse to her daughter's genius drawings, describing him in the very first introductory verse as a 'dreadful gnome'. The fact is that they struggled to describe him. He was unique. He frightened the 'Dutch Dolls' who were the centrepiece of Florence's first book -'The Tale of Two Dutch Dolls'. He was in fact an afterthought, not even worthy of mention in the title page. Florence introduced her nursery characters in the book and gave them life, so that girls and boys could indulge in the toytown world she had created, using all the most popular toys of the day. Early on, she introduces a Jack-in-the box, a rabbit with a drum, a toy soldier, an African baby girl, a Japanese character - and more. In fact her toys are born of all the influences of worldwide culture, based no doubt in the influences of the British Empire. But there are no negatives in this introduction, just respect and admiration and humour. One gets the sense, reading this first book, that Florence was wondering where to go with her two Dutch Dolls and the characters she introduced. Somehow, she seemed to realise that her narrative was flawed, perhaps a little boring or predictable. She needed to grab the attention of her audience and introduce a focal point, something scary, or at least challenging and of interest in her book. She chose an odd item in her nursery for this, not the kind of toy that every other child would have at Christmas (her books were launched as Christmas annuals). She chose a glove puppet.

The original Golly is a glove puppet - tiny and inconsequential in comparison to her other toys. He resides today in the Bethnal Green Museum of childhood, London. Tiny, just a few inches high. A black glove, two buttons for eyes, a bit of felt for the mouth - "And there you have it" as might be said on Blue Peter today. And then, lovingly, an addition of red trousers and a blue coat. This rag doll, improvised from a simple glove, was Florence Upton's best friend, her mentor, her comfort blanket. From the second she introduced him in her book she was destined to be come the first international and best - selling author of children's illustrated stories. Her method was to become a blueprint for children's books from then on - and yes, even influencing children's stories and art today.

Why 'Golliwogg?'

We are going to be a little serious here, but the story is fascinating. If you have read 'Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis' (FILP) you can skip this paragraph. The chances are that you haven't, but this book impressed me 20 years ago and it is with some satisfaction that I am able to invoke the name of such a great man in defence of Florence Upton. It is a strange name isn't it, 'Golliwogg'? One wonders where it comes from. I have wondered for many years. Let me tell you something interesting that Freud had to say. He said, in FILP, that the human subconscious mind is very powerful.  So powerful that we often do and say and think things which are influenced by our subconscious and we have no knowledge of it. This is really important for understanding the Golliwogg, as will become even more apparent later. Freud would often play a game with patients in which he would ask them to think of a name, but instead of a name of someone known to the patient, the name a someone who was NOT known to the patient. The patient might say, 'Christopher', or, 'Sandra'. Freud would pause, and then insist that the patient was wrong - it was IMPOSSIBLE to think of a name that was not associated in the subconscious mind.  The patient would then be amazed at this challenge, only to find that after reflection they did indeed know someone of that name.

Freud goes to great lengths to establish this subconscious connection and he uses this to help his case in reasoning that the subconscious mind is powerful and that it acts even on simple mental thought processes. This is more important than you might think.... When Florence was thinking of a name for her 'rag' doll, made from a glove, with big white button eyes, and a red felt grin, she must have thought about how scary he was. But to her he was a dear friend, a toy she kept her whole life. How could she make him acceptable to children reading her book? And what name should she give him? Is it possible that the 'gnome' looked something like a tadpole to her? Tiny - big white eyes? Black body and lage head? A kind of child in the Frog world? You may think this is crazy, but, in the USA, where she spent her childhood, tadpoles were a very popular character for children, as they are today. Even in England in the 1960s (and today too?) it was common to introduce children to tadpoles, the little babies that grow into frogs (adults). And we marvel at them and we love them. Is it possible to see the tadpole as the inspiration for the Golliwogg? Well. the common word for 'tadpole' in the USA, is POLLYWOGG.  Freud would get the connection. Whether consciously or subconsciously, the roots of the name 'Golliwogg' are in the simple tadpole, the North American 'Polliwogg'. Further to this, Florence drew a little sketch in the margin of the page opposite the first introduction of the Golliwogg. I overlooked it for years, even after i had re-published the book. Then, eurika! I gazed at the drawing and couldn't believe my eyes. All her little sketches in the margins follow the story - so what had she drawn here? - She drew a frog in a bed of reeds. Why is it there? It's snowing outside, or at least cold and snow-strewn. Why draw a frog basking in a spring-time scene?


Florence changed just one letter of a common word, a word symbolic of a loving, happy childhood, a symbol of gestation and pre-adult innocence. a word from a world in which children lived happily  with adults. Consciously or unconsciously, Florence Upton not only invented the perfect childhood toy - she invented the perfect word to describe him. And in so doing she emancipated the Victorian child from loneliness and adult intolerance.  Imagine how stunning that first book must have been to children, enthralled at the events that took place in the book. A child can't get up in the middle of the night and go into the snow and play with his friends and get in to mischief- but Golly can!

Villain
So popular was the Golly in the 1920s an 30s that he appeared on greetings cards in great number. He was the number one choice of toy for any child - rivaled only by the Teddy Bear. The design for him was not copyrighted, and that may have encouraged his notoriety throughout the world. By the late 1920s, Robertsons were using him as their mascot on jars of jam, and he was a successful emblem for them up until 2001. It was shame that as a mascot for them, he remained a two dimensional character in every way. His image was spot coloured rather then richly drawn in watercolours, his face always faced straight on to the looker - no sideways views, and he lost his friends. Whilst for many the Golly is the Robertson's golly - he was to become a simple sandwich eating icon of the post war era and the subtlety and mischieviousness that Florence Upton had blessed him with was lost.

Added to this he seems to have taken on human form. He has hands instead of mits and his hair is tied back in a possibly African/ West Indian fashion. There is nothing wrong in this, but it was a diversion from the original golly, and subsequently led to taunts that was no longer a doll, and had become a 'person of colour'. Even if he had - was it such a crime? Robertsons also, confusingly, made the golly in female form. Again, this was a mistake. Florence changed his clothes from time to time as he went through different adventures, but he never changed gender - he was always a child in an adult world - just like another great child icon - Peter Pan.

Here we have a rag doll, made from a black glove, whose name is inspired by a tadpole and whose image is appealingly used to sell jam. Whether by accident or design, the Golly was never a negative parody of black culture, and should never have been treated s such. To the extent that this mistake has been made, the Golly of Florence Upton would have done any race proud.

Enid Blyton and 'Noddy'

It is difficult to know Enid Blyton's motives for treating the Golly as she did. She would have grown up on Florence Upton's books. She would have been as deeply in love with the Golly as any child of her age. So why did she make the golly a 'nuisance' character in her books? Where did she get the idea for 'toytown' from? Could she, in the 1930s, have sought to re-invent the popular children's books of her youth? Her characters and stories are amazingly similar to those of Florence Upton. But of course there is a difference. The drawings accompanying her stories are two dimensional, spot coloured and pedestrian - there is nothing like the richness and vitality of Florence Upton's work. The words too are simple and unedifying compared to the humorous and inventive rhyme of Bertha Upton, who wrote the accompanying verse to Florence's drawings. And of course there is the final insult. Golly doesn't even appear in most of Enid Blyton's toytown books. Florence, by the way, called her setting - 'Doll-Land' - a word that isn't very far removed from  Toy-Town - is it?

He is substituted in this Toy-Town by someone far more acceptable to Enid - dressed similarly in red and blue, but with blue eyes and blonde hair, you may have heard of him.... NODDY. Do you remember our earlier discussion of Freud and the subconscious memory of names? Can it not be inferred that GOLLY and NODDY are born from the same mould, both in inflexion and pronunciation? I believe that whether consiously or unconsciously, Enid Blyton used Florence Upton's toytown world as a template for her own, and she consigned the Golly to a bit-part role, more villain than idol, substituting Noddy in in his place. Not only this, but the stories themselves borrow something from the creations of Florence Upton.

The Golly is a Minstrel and therefore must be racist

At fist glance is is difficult to argue with the case for the Golly being a Minstrel. Vaudeville was huge at the time he was created and Minstrels dressed in garish, over-sized suits. However, a rag-doll (for this is surely was) should be dressed in garish clothes. As a children's toy, he would have had any bit of colourful cloth used to dress him. The Dutch Dolls are introduced to us naked! (Heaven forbid we should find the book banned for this reason). They look around for suitable bits of cloth to use as dresses, and find the American Stars and Stipes banner. They cut it up and turn the material into dresses. Here is the clue to the development of the Golly. His creator simply got inventive with some blue and red cloth. Not convinced? Well, if Golly is a minstrel, where is the ubiquitous banjo or guitar? Where is the big smiling grin. Where is the southern American drawl? Where are the songs? Where is the 'performance?'. Florence could have got a lot from such a character, but she, instead, introduces him as an object of fear and then goes on to show that he is really a very loveable character - speaking without an accent, not singing, not performing, and not in make-up. How politically correct this would seem today - an ugly black gnome becomes a loveable and courageous character, admired and respected by children all over the world. Amazing isn't it that the Minstrel, a very popular figure in the 1890s USA, should not be recognised by the two Dutch Dolls a such? Added to this, on page 45, Florence introduces another toy to the group who have assembled. He is a minstrel, a tall thin parody of a black man, who plays a banjo and sings as the others dance. She calls him Sambo. Should this be the real focus of the anti-race lobby? In fact it is worth quotiing the lines involved. If Golly was a minstrel, would she write:

"And Sambo sings a song
While in their midst the artist head
Of Golliwogg appears" ?

The Golliwogg simply is not a minstrel. He is the central character of a children's comic book. He was the first of a long line of child-heroes who are central to an adventure which is played out in drawings and involves innocence, fear and then joy at overcoming the cause of that fear. In this repect he has more in common with Peter Pan, Rupert the Bear,  Superman, Batman, Noddy and all the other comic book heroes of the 20th century than any Vaudeville minstrel of the 1890s.

Victim
There is no one to sing the praises of the Golly. He has been consigned to the PC dustbin of the new millennium. Shop owners are arrested and told not to display him in their shop windows. But at least he is appearing once more. There is a resurgence of interest and rightly so. After all, he is based on a tadpole, a youngster who will eventually become an adult,  but who for now is a an enterprising cry-baby, an adventurer, a friend. A darling.