WHEN the cottage was originally built—about one hundred and thirty
years ago—it was probably just two rooms upstairs, one going out of the
other, and a kitchen and scullery downstairs. In the intervening years,
however, one owner has added on a couple of rooms on one side, and
another has put on two more and a pantry round the corner, and so on,
till it is difficult to say exactly what type of dwelling it really is.
There is a proper front door somewhere about the place, only no one
ever seems to find it; the path leading to it from the main gate
unobtrusively hides itself among the fir-trees, wandering round at the
rear of the house, and under some low apple-trees—of course, no one
who wasn’t familiar with the geography of the estate would think of
exploring such an out-of-the-way, narrow, grass-grown trail. No, they
would naturally follow along the irregularly-flagged broad path that is
kept by the handy man fairly free from weeds (except some little ferns
that will peep up at the edge, no matter what he does to them, and a
saucy white violet that has planted itself right in the very middle of
the walk and blooms vigorously).
Along this path most people go, whether they carry their best sunshade,
a bead bag and a silver card-case, or are merely delivering two
half-pounds of butter done up in dock leaves, and a cream-coloured duck
wrapped up in a coarse white tea-cloth with his liver tucked under
his wing, a big bunch of fresh sage stuck in his mouth—“and, please,
mother’s put in a couple o’ onions in case you didn’t happen to have
none.”
This broad path leads to a corner in the architectural conglomeration
where there are two doors at right angles—one moderately respectable
and one smaller and shabbier. If you carry a silver card-case, you
knock at the respectable-looking door—which promptly admits you into
the scullery: if you are merely someone anxious to dispose of a few
eggs or wanting to borrow a little flour, you knock more humbly at the
shabby door—to find you are battering at the coal-house.
Abigail deals with callers according to their status: the silver
card-cases are invited, in dulcet tones, to retrace their steps along
the broad path and take the narrow one to the front door. Sometimes
they do exactly as they are told; but more often, alas! they espy yet
another door, which they promptly make for, and this one precipitates
them right into the living-room and on top of me, no matter what I may
be doing.
Inside the cottage it is a similar jumble. You think you have found the
living-room all right, when you come in from the garden, only to pull
up in a large pantry, like a small room, with shelves full of delicious
mysteries in glass jars and jampots and pickle bottles.
You open a door in the living-room, thinking it is the one leading out
into the back hall, to find yourself confronted with a very steep and
narrow stone staircase, which is one way of getting upstairs! Of course
you get used to it all in a few days, and eventually cease to tumble
down over the odd step that is obligingly placed here and there in dark
spots, wherever the floor level changes in the halls or landings. But
to those who are not native-born it is a wee bit confusing at first.
* * * * *
The living-room was originally the kitchen. It has a large fireplace
with an oven, and wide hobs whereon you can stand a kettle or anything
else you want to keep hot. It has a crane, too—only we daren’t cook our
dinner in a pot suspended from it, because I don’t want Abigail to give
notice. We have therefore to content ourselves with giving the crane an
occasional swing.
The mantelpiece—of oak that is black with age—has two shelves, the
upper one projecting beyond the lower, which has a frill of chintz
beneath. Higher up still there is an ancient rack for holding a couple
of guns, and there are cupboards on each side, also of black oak, that
must have been put there when the house was built.
But I think the thing that delights my heart above everything else in
this room is the huge dresser.
When you start with a room like this—I forgot to mention that there are
oak rafters, with hooks for home-fed hams—it is easy to make it cosy.
The big wooden settle keeps off draughts, some chairs that belonged to
my great-grandparents are far more comfortable than anything I could
buy nowadays, with the wood worn to that smooth polish that can only be
attained by generations of handling.
The oak dower chest is heavily carved, though its iron hinges and
locks suggest a prison door for solidity and size; still it is a handy
receptacle for the miscellaneous collection of MSS. and papers that
haunts me wherever I go!
I do not expect everybody to admire this style of room. There was one
caller (who came out of sheer curiosity) who, after gazing around the
living-room, with manifest disapproval, at last said, “You really could
make this into quite a nice little drawing-room if you had those old
rafters and beams done away with, and a proper ceiling put. Then you
could easily have a nice tiled modern stove in place of that dreadfully
old-fashioned fireplace, with those great hobs. And if you moved the
dresser into the kitchen, and——” So she went on, winding up with the
encouraging assurance, “And you would hardly know the place when you
had got it all done.”
With one voice we said we could quite believe it.
People so often fail to realise that both a country cottage decked out
in imitation of a town villa, and a town villa decked out in imitation
of a country cottage, are equally unsatisfying. In each case the fake
and insincerity of the schemes jar.
* * * * *
If it isn’t bothering you too much, I should like you to look at
the ornaments—these, as much as anything else, give the room its
“unlikeness” to anything you see in the city. Here is a lovely fat
fish in a glass case among reeds and grasses. On the walls are antlers
of the fallow deer. Then there is a framed sampler, and likewise some
wonderful needlework of a bygone age when needlework was an art.
On the mantelpiece shelves are china cottages and castles, an old china
mill with a wonderful mill stream, on which are china ducks, each the
size of the mill-wheel! Then Red Riding Hood, in a little sprigged
pinafore, carrying a dear little basket, and patting affectionately
a most engaging, friendly-looking wolf, is always admired. Timothy’s
grandmother (a dignified-looking matron), teaching little Timothy out
of the Bible, is a relic from the days when Scriptural subjects were
among the ornaments found in most households. “Going to Market” and
“Returning from Market” are a choice pair of china subjects, showing
the lady riding behind her husband on a prancing steed that would do
credit to Rotten Row.
Mary and her little Lamb is one of the prettiest in the collection,
only she lost one of her arms over fifty years ago! There are various
cows and sheep (some with blue ribbons round the neck), and other
quaint china oddities.
Then there is a beautiful hen sitting on a most symmetrically woven
(china) straw nest packed full of eggs (each one, in proportion to the
hen, is the size of an ostrich egg). The hen (eggs and all) can be
lifted up, using her head, poor thing, as the handle, and then you find
she is the cover to an oval dish. I always intend—should any members of
our Royal Family get stranded on these hills, and drop in unexpectedly
to tea—to serve them with a poached egg in this identical dish.
And you must not overlook the shining brass candlesticks, some tall and
stately, some squat, with square trays and extinguishers, that have
been winking and glinting in the light for a century now—and are still
shining; nor the brass and horn lantern hanging from a beam. A lantern
is an absolute necessity on these rugged hills when there is no moon.
How friendly the old brass things are! Just look at the warming-pan
with its bright sun-face. I have no doubt modern radiators and
hot-water pipes are a boon to those who do not mind headaches and
dried-up air—but do they _look_ as warm and comforting as the gleaming
warming-pan?
That reminds me of the first time Abigail came down from London. She
looked at the warming-pan with interest, as she had never seen one
before. The weather was cold, and hot-water bottles were the order of
the night in town.
When I returned from an evening stroll with some guests, she met me
with an anxious face. “If you please, miss, will you kindly show me
how you keep the water inside that warming-pan? I can’t get it to stay
inside nohow when I start to lift it!”
* * * * *
I wonder if you have ever seen a dresser like this one? The oak
shelves forming the upper part are built into a deep recess in the
wall, one above the other, up to the rafters, and all set back in the
thickness of the wall—and you can see how thick these walls are from
the window-ledge, which is fifteen inches deep. But they need to be
solid, for the winter storms that thrash across these hills show scant
consideration for present-day building methods; and a modern “bijou
bungalow” would probably be found scattered about the next parish, if
it ever lived long enough to get its roof on!
The dresser is closely hung with jugs and mugs and cups, willow-pattern
plates and dishes make a good deal of white and blue against the walls,
which are a full buttercup yellow, while a collection of ancient china
teapots, with some square willow-pattern vegetable dishes and a tall
Stilton cheese dish with two big sunflowers on it, occupy the wider
ledge at the bottom.
Here are some uncommon specimens of lustre jugs. This is a rare lustre
mug, brown with green bars outside, and a purple band inside. A lustre
pepper-box stands on one of the dresser ledges, and salt-cellars of
glass, so heavy as to suggest paper-weights.
Do you know the fascination of old English mugs? On this dresser
they range from a tiny mug in Rockingham ware, only an inch and a
half high, to noble things that suggest long draughts of home-made
herb beer! There are mugs with bunches of flowers on them, others
with conventional bands or designs, some with landscapes, some with
butterflies, some with words of wisdom to be imbibed by the youthful
along with the milk.
Jugs, again, are most alluring, once you get a mania for them! One of
my jugs is of brown earthenware, smothered with a raised design showing
a trailing grape-vine, with big bunches of grapes here and there. Two
other jugs that belonged to a bygone ancestress are apparently made of
a white stone wall, with the most natural-looking ivy creeping up it
and displaying bunches of berries. Jug-makers of the past gave so much
interest to their goods by reason of this raised work, instead of being
content to transfer a flat design as they do now. One white jug has
off-standing deer around it, grazing among trees. Another has a hunt in
full progress, horses and riders, dogs and all—though it always hurts
me to see the running hare.
A real, proper dresser is a useful bit of furniture, provided it
has plenty of hooks. It holds such a quantity of things. I have all
sorts of odd cups and saucers on mine, relics of past treasures that
have somehow survived the hand of the hired washer-up; little bits
that remind me of all sorts of pleasant things, such as tea-services
my mother had when I was little, some that have belonged to other
relatives.
In passing, I may say that a dresser of this sort is a great incentive
to good works. Many a relation, on looking at it, has said, “_I_ have
an old jug that belonged to your great, no, your great-great-aunt; I
shall give it to you, as you like things of that sort.”
Or another time it will be: “_What_ a collection of odd cups! Good
gracious, if a little thing like _that_ amuses you, I’ll turn out a lot
I have stored away somewhere, glad to get rid of them; it only annoys
me to look at them, as it reminds me how all the rest of the set got
smashed. You can have them and welcome.”
There has been a good deal of this sort of “give and take” about the
furnishing of this cottage. And it is so much more interesting to me
as the owner to know the history of the various items, than if I had
merely bought antiques by the houseful, as I have known some people do.
In the latter case, a room is so apt to look like nothing but an old
curiosity shop; as it is, the things all seem to “belong,” just as much
as we do.
* * * * *
But I mustn’t weary you with a catalogue of household furnishings,
though I know, if you could actually _see_ the china and the little
bedrooms, with white, washable handwork everywhere, and wonderful old
patchwork and knitted quilts, you would love it all. The Bird room is
the general favourite, with its unique crochet; there are swallows
flying across the curtain-tops, swans sailing among bulrushes on the
washstand splash, wild geese flying above the tree-tops at another
window, ducks swimming sedately along towel-ends, more swallows (in
cross-stitch this time) on a table-cover, parrots (in darned filet)
on the dressing-table cloth, while seagulls float along a frieze, a
glass case of rare birds is over the mantelpiece, and a large wool-work
pheasant, balancing itself ingeniously on the top of a small basket of
grapes, and endeavouring to look as though it were quite its natural
habitat, is framed, and hangs on the wall. I don’t think the far-back
relative who worked it had much of an eye for proportion, however!
On the mantelpiece stands a sedate row of china fowls, a marble
fountain basin in the centre, with white pigeons basking around the
edge.
* * * * *
Just one other room you must look into—the sitting-room, because I
want you to see my dolls’ things. Yes, I know it sounds imbecile, but
I never had a dolls’ house. When I was young, the rest of us were
brothers, and it wasn’t considered economical, therefore, to present
a toy that would only be serviceable to one out of the bunch. Besides
which, in those days children didn’t immediately get what they stamped
for. So I had to go without the thing I yearned for above all others.
But you may be sure I took care of what dolls’ things did chance to
come my way.
Dolls themselves were very scarce, but I had several sets of dolls’
tea-things, given by discerning aunts, and here they are, in a funny
old glass cupboard in the corner of the sitting-room. One is a very
small set, with teeny pink rosebuds on it; another is a larger set,
that my small friends drank tea out of (and occasionally smashed a cup
for me). There are two dinner services, one in plain white—a round soup
tureen, a gravy boat, a square vegetable dish, with some remaining
plates and dishes; the other a gorgeous affair, with Dickens scenes on
each plate—one dozen meat and six soup plates, with dishes and tureens
galore, and oh! such lovely china soup and sauce ladles, all _en suite_.
These dolls’ things seem to affect people in different ways. Some look
at them with eyes that go back to their own childhood, and memories
that recall similar treasures that they wanted when they, too, were
little, and did—or did not—get. Such people know exactly why I value
these things. They handle them lovingly, but don’t say much.
But there are others who gaze at the dolls’ china (and the little
wooden animals, and the glass slipper I was certain Cinderella wore,
and the china grand piano, and the dolls’ brass fender, and all the
other oddments), and then look at me in blank astonishment. It is
evidently incomprehensible to them that any sane woman, in these days
of strenuous intellectuality, can hoard such childish rubbish. And I am
powerless to explain my reasons.
Occasionally, however, light breaks across one of these amazed
countenances, and a woman will suddenly exclaim: “_I_ have part of a
dolls’ dinner service somewhere in the attic at home, I believe. I
shall get it out, and put it in _my_ china cabinet. It looks quite
smart, doesn’t it?”
To which I reply: “Yes; and I hear they are going to be _much_ worn
this season.”
* * * * *
All the decorations in the house are on the most homely lines, one room
has each deep window-ledge filled with seashells and coral. If you want
silver boxes and cut-glass scent-bottles in the bedroom, you must bring
them yourself. _We_ think the wooden dressing-table looks all that
can be desired, clothed in a blue-glazed lining petticoat, with white
dotted muslin on top. And who could want a silver-backed hand-glass,
when they have the chance of using one that has its back encrusted with
small seashells!
There are plenty of pictures all over the house, many of them without
frames. Haulage is an expensive matter on these hills, and we always
take this into consideration. Several of the rooms have friezes made of
brown paper, to which have been affixed a series of coloured plates.
The charm of this arrangement is that you can take down the old frieze
and put up a new one—or stick a fresh picture over some old one—as
often as you please.
All pictures, however, show beautiful views of outdoor scenery:
heather-clad hills, flowering gardens, snow-covered peaks, and rolling
waves. Whether they are original paintings that famous artists have
given me, or plates from art magazines, they are all views of large
spaces, and induce big, restful thoughts.
Some cards that hang on the bedroom walls have been singled out again
and again by my friends for special commendation. I happened to see
them one day when I was going round the Book Saloon of the R.T.S. in
St. Paul’s Churchyard. One special favourite has these lines on it
(possibly you know them?):—