At a merry theatrical season in Paris in the late 1800s, the well-known British actress Ellen Terry presented her friend and sometimes thespian assistant Anna Held with a doll whose travels and adventures became legend. The doll, given to Held because she voiced concern about missing the children to whom she had once served as nanny, was named “Miss Olive Mishap.” During her life with Held, Miss Olive would have many adventures. They included road tours with famous entertainers of the late 19th century, as well as mischievous conduct and entertaining encounters Held imagined the doll having in La Jolla’s Green Dragon Colony when she came here to live in the mid-1890s. Miss Olive — who often wore a long blonde wig made from combings from Terry’s own hair and had fancy outfits made from various Shakespearean actors’ cloaks — became the star doll Ms. Held’s famous collection displayed and played with by numerous children at the Green Dragon Colony throughout her life in La Jolla from the 1890s through the late 1930s. She attended many tea parties with other dolls Held made and collected. The collection at one time included more than 200 dolls ranging from handmade rag dolls to highly-valued collectors’ items such as a Kathe Cruse doll, which Held admitted to paying an unheard-of price of $35. In an interview for Eileen Jackson’s “Tete-a-Tete” column in the San Diego Union of 1936, the pioneering Green Dragon founder said: “I have always said that I wanted two things very much before I died: a Cruse doll and a Steinway piano.” Held, a spirited German woman who was born in Berlin in 1849 and died in England in 1941 just before the Blitz (World War II had prevented her from returning to her homeland), endeared herself in the early La Jolla community, not only for a doll collection but, moreover, for the dozen unique cottages she built on the hillside near Goldfish Point. The cottages were visited by artists, musicians, poets, scholars and thespians from around the world. Much was added to the cultural life of La Jolla during this time. Held, who married musician Max Heinrich, came to embody the spirit of Green Dragon and in later years was endearingly referred to as “Tante” Heinrich. Almost all of Held’s La Jolla dolls were given away before she left La Jolla. But she continued to create more living in Oxford a few months before her death in December 1941. At age 90, she wrote to a friend: “I still can knit, and I have begun dressing dolls for next Christmas to give to the minister … He was delighted with them last year and told his congregation that an old lady, 90 years old, who came from California, dressed them so beautifully.” And what became of Miss Olive Mishap? Held sent the doll at some unknown point in time to a Mrs. Coonley Ward in Chicago for a visit. When Ward died, Olive disappeared and was still reported missing many years later in a La Jolla Journal column in 1963. She surfaced after a call to the writer of the column from Mrs. William Leroy Garth, saying she had Miss Olive stowed away. Miss Olive had somehow come into the possession of Mrs. Ernest Strout, a niece of Wheeler Bailey, who was a good friend of the Heinrichs. Her daughter, Virginia Strout, gave the doll to Harle Garth, the recently deceased philanthropist Harle Garth Montgomery who, according to a column report of 1964, had packed her carefully away in a cedar chest. But, perhaps, the columnist reported wrongly or serendipity entered into the historical picture somewhere along in the past five decades. An inquiry to Garth Montgomery’s estate indicated that Miss Olive was nowhere to be found. She’s still having mishaps, no doubt!