refused to soil his hands in trade; his old family title was the magic
key he carried to open the treasure-chests of the New World. So he
arrived in America armed with a despatch-box full of introductions to
money magnates there. He called upon a banker in New York, and
presented a letter of introduction. The banker asked him what he knew
about business. "Nothing," replied the nobleman; "I am a cavalry
officer." "Sorry I cannot help you," said the banker; "the circus left
our town yesterday." The nobleman was floored. Enraged at the magnate's
laconic insolence, he destroyed all letters of introduction contained in
his despatch-box and tackled the world on his own. He folded up his
family pedigree, laid it in lavender, went into the market and sold jam.
In the market-place a long head is a better weapon to fight with than a
long pedigree. He worked out his own salvation, and returned home and
lived contentedly amongst the orange-groves and sunshine of Southern
Italy.
*VIII*
*THE LURE OF OLD FURNITURE*
Eight old Chippendale chairs and two settees sold recently at Christie's
for 5,600 guineas, and report says quickly after the auctioneer's hammer
dismissed the lot they changed hands again at L1,000 profit to the
buyer. There must be great charm in old furniture when people scramble
for it regardless of cost. I suppose money is dull stuff to own heaps
of unless you can exchange it for things that give the heart a passing
thrill of pleasure (the great sport is in the making it); and the more
money you make, the more it takes you to work up the thrill. A
millionaire's smile is an expensive hobby to cultivate. Gathering a
bunch of wild primroses in the sunny April woods gladdens the heart of a
child amazingly, and he dreams the pleasure over again in his sleep. It
costs over 5,000 guineas to tingle the feelings of a rich man. The
child's outlay is more economical, but it fetches as much enjoyment.
Wherein lies the secret charm of old furniture? I love it myself, and
for that reason ask the question for the pleasure given in answering it.
I am only a trifler in antiques, possessing a few pieces of exquisite
old oak of the seventeenth-century period; also several pieces of walnut
furniture which are old Italian. The Italian pieces lie fallow in a
villa just outside the barriera St. Domenico, Florence, where we live
with them half the year round. Beautiful old walnut furniture counts
much more in its own homeland, while the alien oak of England, which we
love here, is cold and expressionless in the rooms of an Italian villa
on the sunny slopes of Fiesole. It loses its aura in a strange land.
Old furniture with a time-worn glossy face on it is interesting because
it is made by the hands of man; and the man used his brain in making it,
as well as his hands; surely man's delight is in man's work. A piece of
old furniture reflects the mind of its maker in every detail of its
construction, and that is a very fascinating feature to me; for we are
told on high authority that "hand-work possesses character, almost
personality," and we believe the high authority with all our heart.
Modern furniture has no personality, and so it transmits no message; it
is machine-made, and I hold no kinship with machinery to cherish warm
feeling in its favour; but handcraft ever commands our respect, and when
well done wins our widest admiration.
Machine-made work carries a lie on the face of it; it imitates handwork.
The machine simulates a trouble that has not been taken. It produces
beautifully designed and ornamented imitations of ancient handcraft at
trifling cost. Who cares for beauty produced by formula? Beauty is the
flowering of noble labour linked to useful purpose. Cheapness and
showiness are the flaring advertisements of the mechanical cabinet-maker
to-day, and he hits with precision the public taste.
Give me to admire something a man has laboured lovingly and honestly to
produce, not what a machine vomits out standard pattern; something a man
has put the power of his brain into as well as the dexterity of his
hand. William Morris quaintly remarks: "If you have anything to say,
you may as well put it into a chair or a table." The cabinet-maker
speaks to us with his tools in a language of his own invention. The
cabinet-maker has helped to make English homes comfortable to live in,
and for so doing we owe him a debt of gratitude. His tools are not the
sword and the cannon, but the plane, the chisel, and the swift-moving
saw. His art is not destructive to life, piling on misery to man's many
woes, but he enriches life manifold by adding comfort and luxury to the
widening circle of human happiness. His rewards are not stars and
garters and hereditary honours conferred by princes for brave deeds done
on the field of battle, but just the recompense that the master of the
tools' true play appreciates; the simple pleasure of good work well and
truly done sent forth to take honourable place in the stately homes of
England, knowing that by such fine hand-craft he will speak from his
grave to people unborn; and he even cherishes the inspiring hope that
those who are possessors of his treasured work done in oak and walnut
and sweet satinwood will, in the hereafterward, in the quietude of their
sequestered homes, surrounded by familiar furniture of high lineage,
bestow on the workman a passing measure of praise; for these worthy
craftsmen put the best of their lives into the labour of their hands.
Old furniture is delightful in your home because it is old. Age has an
alchemy of its own that ennobles the work of man. A brand-new house is
deadly unromantic, even if it is a dream of architectural excellence.
Its appearance is garish and crude. New stones and raw bricks are ugly
in the days of their youth, but age transforms the place, be it
manor-house or thatched cottage, until enchantment haunts the fabric. I
dearly love the grace of antiquity that mellows the venerable homesteads
of England and blends the intermingling lustre of tradition with the
roll of their lengthening years.
Age likewise has a mellowing influence on furniture. Obliteration of
exactitude of form is essential charm in it as it is in a man or woman.
You resent the loudness of a newly made rich man. His manners smell
strongly of varnish just put on; his vanity and self-importance are
unsavoury morsels to swallow without salt. He is a terror to his polite
neighbours and a stranger to himself. Wait and see; he will tone down
as the mills of life grind off the sharp angles and smooth him into a
decent fellow.
Good taste resents primness and self-assertiveness in new furniture; its
raw outlines and sharp angles offend the eye. When these stubborn
features are subdued by centuries of wear and tear and the wondrous
old-time bloom of rich deep colour glorifies the ripened oak with
softness and transparency of tone, that quality so delightful to sight
and touch which distinguishes genuine antique furniture, then
sentimental feeling waxes strong and renders the work attractive to us.
Vague and visionary thoughts of past owners flit across the mind, and
kindle emotions in the presence of an ancient piece of furniture of good
repute. It idealizes in our minds, and becomes beautiful to us. It is
a call of the past. It is an unwritten chapter in some old family
history, and we want to handle the key of the legend locked up in it.
There may be tragedy or comedy, or a mixture of both, recorded in the
family log-book, and the stately old carved-oak court cupboard dozing in
the banqueting-hall, generation after generation, saw it all through
from beginning to end, but it whispers away no family secrets to
inquisitive people. An evil day broke the family fortunes. The
venerable court cupboard vacated its place of honour which it occupied
for centuries in the Yorkshire manor-house, and has taken up quarters
with us in our Sussex home. It is no longer mere chattel; there is
human interest in it.
I wonder if it takes kindly to its new home? Land, they say, sometimes
resents change of owners, especially passing from a family who had held
lordship of the soil for generations. When the old squire dies, the last
of his line, the land grieves. It seems to know that it is going to be
sold and broken up, and it loses heart. It goes rotten like apples. A
patch goes wrong here and a patch goes wrong there, and the rottenness
spreads and runs together. It takes the land long to get used to a new
master.
Has our old oak court cupboard sensitive feelings like the ancestral
acres? Or is it silently and sullenly indifferent to all the changes of
fortune that befall it?
I have an oak armchair with a unique story to tell. The back of it is
one large panel carved with heavy flora and foliated decoration; on the
cross-rail below the panel is carved in bold raised letters:
16 ELLIN RYLAND 94
The two arms are bountifully carved, and the carving terminates in a
large Tudor rose forming a knob at the end of each arm. The arm-tops,
through constant use, are smooth and shine like unto burnished bronze.
The supports and front legs are twisted in good Jacobean manner, and the
broad stretcher is carved with two long feathery, flowing
acanthus-leaves curling round gracefully at the tips as if under
pressure of a strong breeze, and crouching within their embrace nestles
a rose in ambush. The chair has been mothered with lifelong care, and
the bloom and beauty of age sit upon it like a crown of glory. So Ellin
Ryland has won for her name immortality among the roses.
We often think of Ellin and question the chair about her, but
information does not flow freely from that quarter. Did Ellin order the
chair from the cabinet-maker herself? I think not; perhaps her lover
gave it her on her birthday, or her husband on their wedding-day. No
doubt the chair's existence celebrates a red-letter day in the annals of
the family. The name now is only a legend to us, but there it is,
legible after the flight of two hundred and twenty years. The old chair
is a better monument to Ellin Ryland's memory than a stone slab in a
damp churchyard, with her name graven on it in crumbling letters.
I dare say Ellin had a thin slice of vanity in her nature; we all have,
and would like our names printed somewhere imperishably. During two
hundred and twenty years the moss and lichen, the sun and the frost,
conspire together to obliterate any lettering in churchyard stones, but
the writing in tablet-oak on the armchair is as brave as ever. The name
is only a legend, but it keeps her memory green.
I do not turn my house into a museum of antiques, but certainly I choose
interesting old furniture to live with where choice is possible; it has
a cheery influence on your temper. I love to walk amongst my treasures
and touch them with my hand and admire their cloistered beauty. I
started housekeeping in Victorian days, after the orthodox manner of
Englishmen about to marry, by buying new furniture. To get the genuine
article I bought it in framework and had it upholstered and finished at
home, under my eye. As years rolled on, piece by piece the Victorian
furniture vanished from our rooms and old pieces supplanted them, and
the rooms grew pleasant to look upon and cosy to sit in. Your furniture
has a subtle influence on your disposition. You live with it daily all
the year round as you do with your wife, and you married her because she
was the girl you loved best in the world, and since the wedding-day her
influence has coloured your life more than you can measure and
contributed mysteriously to make you the manner of man you are. Your
furniture adds much to your pleasure and quiet enjoyment of home life if
you have the right sort. Old furniture with quietness of line is the
best to live with--it is suggestive of repose.
I love old furniture because its workmanship is artistic. Style in a
chair or table is the all-important thing. A piece of furniture,
however simple in design, if it is wrought artistically, stimulates the
imagination, arouses the emotions, and provokes endless delight in the
connoisseur. We are keen observers to-day, and curious over work done
centuries ago. We handle a well-bred piece of furniture with respect as
we trace the skill shown in beauty of line; the eye travels joyously
over its well-balanced proportions and hovers with admirance over its
downright dexterity of carving. No literal copy of antique furniture
made in the forcing factories of to-day has feeling in it. It is very
accurate in line and detail but it lacks expression, and that is where
the artistic spirit enters, that is where the charm holds us. As old
Higgery the carpenter explained himself out of it when Lord Louis Lewis
complimented him on being the finest carpenter of his age: "Ah, sir," he
replied, "Chippendale was the finest cabinet-maker of his age and
Sheraton of his; but they went beyond that. They had the Idea. I can
use my tools as well as either of them--better, maybe, for 'tis a subtle
thing to give a semblance of age to a new piece, but I haven't got the
Idea, and never had. If the imagination had gone with the craft, King
George might have seen his period of furniture as well as any of the
others."
Chippendale and Sheraton were without doubt the cleverest cabinet-makers
of their age; but many an unnamed workman of their period has left us
the splendid legacy of his "ideas" in furniture which is scattered over
the comfortable homes of England, with no pedigree attached except the
imprimatur of a master craftsman's genius.
Speaking of artistic furniture, I do not mean elaborate furniture
overladen with a heavy ornament which confuses its lines and perverts
its beauty into vulgarity. Simplicity is the fairest form of art.
Simplicity consists not so much in plainness of production as in
singleness of purpose. The essence of simplicity is the absence of
self-consciousness. A combination of simplicity of character and great
artistic power is difficult to find, but when found it is the most
perfect combination and produces finest work. Art is often
self-conscious, and quickly runs to seed in superfluous ornamentation.
The Louis Quinze style is unwholesome as poison. It is brilliantly
clever, but it is fascinatingly demoralizing. It reflects in art the
luxury and insincerity, the licentiousness and effeminacy of the age
that invented it.
Gaudy and overornamented furniture is teasingly self-conscious, and
conceited stuff to live with. Its lines are vulgar and sensuous curves.
It is always staring at you, grinning at you, ogling you, and saying,
"Observe me, and admire." Just the very character of the frivolous
women, the Pompadour and the Du Barri, who ruled the voluptuous Court of
Louis XV., and who squandered the royal revenues in extravagance of art
and craft, so that the artist's taste was wasted in riotous designing
and the craftsman's skill debased in excesses of ornament.
Sumptuous furniture and splendid apparel are closely wedded together,
and cannot be separated with success. If I lived among Louis Quinze
furniture I should often see in the room with me ghosts of gallant
courtiers, dressed in long silk coats, embellished with gold braid, and
vests of rainbow hue, with cravats and ruffs of billowy lace, carrying
at their hips a long rapier, and toying with a bejewelled snuff-box as
they moved noiselessly with an elegant devil-may-care swagger, mixing
with superbly decorated marqueterie cabinets and tables and bronze
statuettes and Sevres china _bleu du roi_; and shadowy ladies of high
degree would be there, wearing capacious and flowery dresses and
powdered hair, sitting in the chequered light of evening on seats richly
upholstered in pale rose Gobelin tapestry, smiling dreamily on the
exquisites of the old regime--all of them fatally gifted mortals with
manners polished as the hard, shining surface of the parquet floor they
gaily tread: the whole scene a vision glorious, composing an harmonious
blend of colour, grace, and beauty. Modern men lounging in tweed
Norfolk jackets, or dressed sombre in black swallow-tail coats, with a
cigarette lolling on their lips, and ladies tailored into close-fitting
costumes of neutral tints, however beautiful in themselves, would be
completely out of the picture.
A peculiar reason why old furniture is coveted by many people is because
it is fashionable and scarce. The quantity that remains in the country,
drawn from the homes of our easy-going port-wine-drinking Georgian
forefathers, is decreasing, and buyers are increasing, so competition
runs riot for really good pieces.
There is plenty of worthless old furniture for sale, as there are
worthless "Old Masters" asking for buyers. Americans are the greedy
collectors who raid the market with their unlimited dollars and pay
sensational prices for the prize pieces to adorn their town houses in
New York or Chicago.
Collecting is a fascinating hobby. I have found pleasure hunting for
antiques far away from the heated atmosphere of Christie's
auction-rooms. The joy of the chase is great, and the habit grows upon
you. I have made many enjoyable excursions into the country with a
clear-cut object in view which gives zest to the journey. Rummaging
through second-hand shops in the back streets of provincial towns or in
out-of-the-way villages searching for spoil is an alluring pastime to
indulge in, and if you love the country through which you travel for the
country's sake you will be very happy on the trail, and want to go again
whether much or little plunder falls to your quest. Old cathedral towns
yield the best results. There are many sleepy second-hand shops
loitering round the cathedral waiting for customers to step in after
visiting the sacred fane. There is much lumber and little treasure in
most of them; but if you don't find what you want, in looking for it you
may find something that pleases you better, like the man who was digging
a hole in his garden to bury a dead dog and unburied a Greek statue of
Venus.
Calling at the smart antique dealers' spacious establishments in London
is an edition de luxe version of the same story. Here choice pieces are
assembled, polished and poised adroitly to arrest attention. Some of
these elegant salons resemble museums; the surroundings breathe order,
calm, refinement. Prices rule high as the aristocratic character of the
place you visit.
Nothing is cheap in these sanctuaries of the old nobility of furniture
and art treasure except courtesy and affability, which are supplied
gratis by the faultlessly accoutred gentleman of the department, who
checks you on entering and conducts you round. Any object you look at he
explains for your edification. He rivals the showman at Windsor Castle
or the Tower of London for knowing his part and throwing at you torrents
of information as he strides along. He revels in it, and his importance
and intelligence mesmerize you and keep most of your five senses
stirring. You admire him as an oracle of antique lore, and listen to
him with fear and trembling. His beaming smile encourages you to live,
and politely you ask another question.
Here the business of selling is practised as a fine art. The attendant
is so well bred, well groomed, so condescending and obliging you feel
yourself a criminal if you escape him without making a purchase. You
say: "I should like to go back and see that satinwood chair again."
"Ah," he replies, "that is a most interesting piece; King Edward often
sat in that chair. It belonged to the Hon. Oliver Grimes, a great
friend of King Edward; it was the King's favourite seat when he visited
the Hon. Oliver at Redcote Manor. And here is the oak table you admired
so much as we passed along. We know the pedigree of it. It came from
Monkwood Hall, Derbyshire. It has been in possession of the family
since the year 1620. We bought it at the Hall last week, and so it has
never been in the trade. How beautifully the frieze is carved; what a
fine patina it has formed; it shines like a mirror; surely the butler
must have polished it every week when he waxed the oak floor. It has
never been damaged or repaired; it is genuine all over. It is a
precious and faultless piece of Jacobean oak, and the price is only...!"
There are dangers and pitfalls besetting the buyer of old furniture.
Even in the garden of antiques a slimy serpent spoils the smiling
landscape. Fraud is not unknown side by side with honest dealing. Not
all furniture is old as it looks. That is where that predatory rascal
called the faker creeps in and preys upon humanity in general and the
innocent amateur in particular.
There are sly manufactories of old furniture busy to-day in shoddy
workshops, building up immaculate high-grade chairs, tables, cabinets,
out of oddments of oak and mahogany collected from the scrap-heap of
broken and decayed furniture. New wood is added in parts where
necessary to complete the transformation, and when these modern antiques
are blended, stained to harmonize in colour, and a glowing patina rubbed
on by the artful dodgers, it takes a keen eye to detect the villainy of
the deed, as that arch-swindler Gaspero Bandini said to his
fellow-conspirator: "We must make it as antique as possible: we must
sell the old wine with the dust on the bottle."
There is no fixed market value to old furniture as there is to
postage-stamps or War Loan stock. The dealer sets his own price on his
goods, and the cupidity of the public guides him how best to do it. He
is a keen observer of human nature, and plays up to its little
weaknesses for his own advantage, and he does it smilingly.
It is wonderful how environment works on our feelings and baffles our
judgment. In the twinkling of an eye it changes the value we place on
things. Dress the same man in two different suits of clothes, and you
have all the difference in our cursory opinion between a lord and a
tinker. The same article exhibited in shop-windows East or West of
London changes its value appreciably, and we are blindly content to buy
in the dearest market if it is the most elegant, and fancy we get full
value for money.
I know a man in Florence who wanted an old Tuscan table, and he padded
round the city looking for one. In a small shop where much furniture
was crowded into little space he saw the article that pleased him. The
dealer asked twenty-four pounds for it. He tried to beat down the
price, but the dealer would not humour him, so he left without buying.
Presently a large dealer in antiques entered the shop, fancied the
table, and paid twenty-four pounds for it straightway, and removed it to
his own premises, which are spacious and commanding. The man in quest
of a Tuscan table visited the spacious premises and saw the table in its
grander home, fell in love with it again, and bought it for forty
pounds. Afterward he told the dealer in the small shop that he had
found the table he wanted at Mr. So-and-so's, and, quite elated, he
described his purchase. "Yes, I know about it," replied the rejected
dealer. "You have paid forty pounds for the table I offered to sell you
for twenty-four." The buyer looked foolish, and said: "But it was so
much better displayed at Mr. So-and-so's shop that I did not recognize
it being the same table; it looked worth twenty pounds more in his place
than it did in yours."
The auction-mart frequently governs the price of old furniture and gives
it an upward lift. The psychology of the auction-room is an interesting
study. The loaded atmosphere of the place has a compelling influence
that gets the better of one's judgment. In a shop a man scoffs at the
tall price of a piece of furniture and haggles doggedly with the dealer
to reduce it thirty shillings; in the auction-room if the same piece
were offered he would compete with the crowd to raise the price of it
incontinently. It is the consistent conduct of inconsistent human
nature. It is that bellicose little devil who hides himself at the
bottom of every human being, impelling him down into the danger zone to
fight, who is guilty of the rash and feckless deed. A man enters the
auction-room in a happy, breezy frame of mind, not to buy, just to look
on and see what things are fetching. The serpent of the place tempts
him, and he is a lost soul. His good resolutions evaporate like water
on a hot plate, leaving no trace behind. The fighting impulse in him
leaps up, and he bids and bids again, and eventually he finds himself
the possessor of a rare old mahogany bureau hatched in the reign of our
King George, but inadvertently described in the catalogue as a
masterpiece of the cabinet-maker's craft composed in the times of Queen
Anne!
*IX*
*THE LURE OF PERSONALITY*