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WTF?!

Very early real doll?

This dude needs to get out more often !

Date written on negative is 4/26/13

Thanks to all for the interest in this series of photographs. We will add James Montgomery Flagg's full name to the source data and then reload the description to Flickr.

Quite possibly from 1924 and certainly by mid-1925, Dudley Eglinton had lost his eyesight and could no longer observe. He still wrote articles which were published and indeed his final article ‘The Southern Cross’ for the Queensland Agricultural Journal was published in December 1936. He managed this by dictating to his third wife Anna Catherine Sophie Cordes Eglinton (born 1860 but one source states 1880). But Anna was not a mere helper. She was very competent, and as later described, considerably ameliorated the shortcomings brought about by his blindness. John Henry Nicholson and his wife Anna Cordes Anna Cordes and John Henry Nicholson – State Library of Queensland. (wrongly ascribed as 1890… but must be after 1905 when married.) Dudley Eglington had married Anna on 4th August 1926 when he was already blind. She was the widow of John Henry Nicholson – schoolmaster, poet and author of ‘Halek’ and other works (1838 -1923). Nicholson’s first wife had died in 1901. Anna had married him in 1905 but after three months suffering from ‘melancholia’, Nicholson had spent much of his remaining time at the Goodna Mental Hospital7. Anna had a German background, was intellectually accomplished, and perhaps she enjoyed the mental stimulation even though living in a position of a carer for old men. She survived Eglinton by 11 years, dying in 1948, and together with Eglinton and his family members is buried in Toowong Cemetery, Brisbane. In his final decade, his wife attended to his secretarial work and he would dictate correspondence, articles and papers. From at least one article that appeared under both their names, she appears to have collaborated with him. You may well visualise an intelligent articulate person able to perform the research, collaborating with a person with the experience and background knowledge, but whose blindness severely limited him. His wife attended for him and presented a paper to the first official meeting of the newly formed Astronomical Society of Queensland on 3rd October 1927. An interesting snippet is that Mrs Eglinton (Anna) was in receipt of a literary pension from the Government – undoubtedly as the widow of J. H. Nicholson. This amounted to £52 in 1932/33. It only appeared in a listing in the newspaper9 because there was a controversy about a political inclusion of three persons in the grant including the Prime Minister’s chauffeur and a typist. Another recipient was Mrs G. Essex-Evans (widow of the poet). She was a sister of Dudley Eglinton and received an identical amount of £52. Source: www.aaq.org.au/dudley-eglinton/

This would be the lovely Aida de Acosta: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aida_de_Acosta Aida de Acosta (1884-1962) married magnate Oren Root, then later married lawyer Henry S. Breckinridge; both marriages ended in divorce. She was blind in one eye from glaucoma, and as a result put her efforts into raising funds for medical research, establishing the Wilmer Eye Institute and the Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration. Legend has it that six months before the Wright Brothers flew a plane, Aida de Acosta piloted an aircraft solo in Paris, but it was kept quiet to preserve her reputation. Her sisters were also notable: Mercedes de Acosta (poet, playwright) and society beauty Rita Lydig: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_de_Acosta en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_de_Acosta_Lydig Rita's portrait was another recent LOC upload:

Very interesting. Thank you for the additional identification. Well correct the source data and reload the description.