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A character in Ladies Almanack

Doll Furious

The one the others chase and the one Dame Musset keeps. She interrupts, she exclaims, and she tells the story of Sheba and Jezebel.

What they want

Musset's attention, which she gets and then immediately wants more of. Her contributions to conversation are mostly interruptions asking for it.

The book

Cover of Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes
Ladies AlmanackDjuna Barnes, 1928

A mock almanac about the lesbian circle around the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney in 1920s Paris, written by Djuna Barnes in deliberately archaic English, printed privately in 1928 and sold by hand.

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At a glance

In the book
Musset's companion in three chapters
First seen
In ample dimity sprigged with apple blossom, chasing Señorita Fly-About
Where
The Luxembourg gardens; Musset's bedroom
The real person
Dolly Wilde · 1895–1941 · London

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Doll Furious is an invented character in Ladies Almanack, the 1928 mock almanac by the American writer Djuna Barnes. She is the youngest-seeming presence in the book and the one most often in somebody's arms: introduced in January chasing another woman across the greensward, discovered in May in Dame Evangeline Musset's bed, and walking on Musset's arm through the Luxembourg gardens in the chapter headed "The Fourth Great Moment of History".

She is usually identified with Dolly Wilde, Oscar Wilde's niece, who was part of Natalie Clifford Barney's circle in Paris and for years one of Barney's lovers. The name is barely a disguise.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • First seen at a runHer introduction is a single image dropped into Patience Scalpel's opening complaint: Doll in sprigged dimity, going fleetly after Señorita Fly-About, while merry laughter rises around the woman who cannot understand any of it.
  • The May bedroom sceneMusset brings her, in the book's phrase, to a certainty, while Patience Scalpel stands in the same room asking what women see in each other. Doll's entire dialogue in the scene is "But oh!" and, a moment later, "A grain, a grain!" — and Musset tells her, in her friendliest voice, to get down.
  • Ignored during business hoursWhen two visitors bring news of a woman loose in the town, Musset buckles on her cravat and goes hunting; Doll's lament goes unanswered in the middle of it. The book notes that Musset was "regarding not".
  • The story she tellsWalking on Musset's arm in the Luxembourg, she announces that it is time Musset heard the fourth great moment of history, and tells the story of Sheba and Jezebel: Jezebel calling from her window to the kings going by, until the Queen of Sheba passes underneath and Jezebel calls once more. It is her only extended speech, and it is a proposition dressed as a history lesson.
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