Daddy’s Toy Soldiers

My Daddy’s first set of toy soldiers was a plastic set of toy soldiers made by Britains LTD to be found under the Christmas tree by young British boys. It had somehow made it to an early Sears and Roebuck brick-and-mortar store in Saugus, Mass.

Route 1 to the north of Boston made the region north of Boston more accessible. I remember going there at first to visit the Saugus Ironworks Restoration — monument to the heroic and (historically, at least) physically demanding work of manufacturing.

To what I was convinced in our childhood was an elite intellectual class we were allegedly part of, it had no relevance. But the Sears retail store had been a way for my brother and me to enjoy a showcase of toys without braving the Boston traffic.

It was Daddy who walked away with the best toy of all — A set of British soldiers with a drum major and some instruments.

My father was a trained composer and arranger with a master’s degree from Harvard and some work under very distinguished artists of his day — including Aaron Copeland and Igor Stravinsky. One of his classmates at Harvard was a young whiz whose career was starting to skyrocked — Leonard Bernstein. Lennie used to fly off to New York City on weekends to conduct the symphony orchestra.

Daddy stayed away from pursuing a high-profile career to be with his family: wife, two small children, and a Jewish Mother who kept him on a tether. He settled for a career as a junior high music teacher in public schools.

He loved his toy soldiers — especially the military band. I didn’t memorize the instrumentation, but Daddy did. He took them and played with them and marched them up and down the kitchen table. He wanted more.

I asked for some clay and made my Daddy a Napoleonic drum major. The uniform was accurately reproduced from the (Napoleonic) Polish Lancers.

Of my father’s three eight-foot tall cabinets full of toy soldiers that finally ended up at the parlor in Chelsea, my Polish lancer ended up in the deepest back of the deepest cabinet at the back of the living room.

Daddy sent me to Paris (and France) with orders to make him a member of the “Sabretache” or “swaddle pouch” society — the French national society of scholars of military history, with a focus on pre WWI sorts of things. I researched and ordered several thousand dollars worth of Napoleonic military musical figures.

The remainder of the collection was military musical figures made according to out-of-the box directions, generally of British origin.

These were made by my mother.

She did any and everything Daddy said she should. She copied parts for the arrangements he wrote for his school band out of sheer obsessionality. After all, she didn’t read a note of music.

I offered to at least help her, but she said I wrote messy notes and this was her personal assignment and besides Daddy said not to let me do it.

Getting Daddy into the Sabretache was really easy.

I had never seen an apartment so luxurious, and bigger than most people’s entire house, until I visted the aged and distinguished president of the Sabretache.

All it really took to get Daddy into the Sabretache was an envelope stuffed with a few hundred-franc notes.

I remember my first visit to an artisan Daddy wanted me to see and order some figures from was when I burst in on him in the Palais Royale.

Strange, that I remember no proper names from this period. Or is hard for me to admit that, I just was not that passionate about this strange employment, which Daddy had presented to me as a sort of job to help me pay for life while I was a medical student. I will never forget how my mother rolled her eyes heavenward when he said that.

I found the documentation for a mounted kettledrummer of the particular regiment Daddy wanted. It was not hard to find the documentation, although I remember photocopies at the National Museum of the Army were rather overpriced.

The artisan invited me to his apartment in the old Latin Quarter to pick up (and pay the few hundred francs I still owed him).

The figure was magnificent. He especially pointed out the reins, attached to the rider’s knees, so that he could control the horse and play the kettledrums at the same time.

This was an older, bald man who in his apartment (as opposed to his shop at the Palais Royale) surprised me by flirting with me shamelessy, telling me how rare it was to find a young woman so knowledgeable about Napoleonic history. He told me — no pleaded — I did not have to return so quickly to Amiens.

I gave him my apologies. There were few trains to Amiens, and one does not trust other people to take your notes in medical school.

I am surprised I came up with anything to say to him — I was so awkward then. I suggested he make some figures for women, so he would meet more women. He told me his widowhood was lonely.

I felt bad for him, and making sure I had my grenadier mounted kettledrummer nicely packed away, I planted a kiss on his forehead as I made a run for it to the northern station and Amiens.