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- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z
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- nothing had been altered. The cellars were full of great grim, arched
bins of blackened brick, looking like the ancient tombs of Templars,
while overhead were shown the first floor timbers, huge, square, and
massive, all red oak, and through long eld, of a rich and Indian colour.
So large were those timbers, and so thickly ranked, that to walk in
those capacious cellars was much like walking along a line-of-battle
ship’s gun-deck.
All the rooms in each story remained just as they stood ninety years
ago, with all their heavy-moulded, wooden cornices, panelled wainscots,
and carved and inaccessible mantels of queer horticultural and
zoological devices. Dim with longevity, the very covering of the walls
still preserved the patterns of the times of Louis XVI. In the largest
parlour (the drawing-room, my daughters called it, in distinction from
two smaller parlours, though I did not think the distinction
indispensable) the paper-hangings were in the most gaudy style.
Instantly we knew such paper could only have come from Paris--genuine
Versailles paper--the sort of paper that might have hung in Marie
Antoinette’s boudoir. It was of great diamond lozenges, divided by
massive festoons of roses (onions, Biddy the girl said they were, but my
wife soon changed Biddy’s mind on that head); and in those lozenges, one
and all, as in an over-arboured garden-cage, sat a grand series of
gorgeous illustrations of the natural history of the most imposing
Parisian-looking birds--parrots, macaws, and peacocks, but mostly
peacocks. Real Prince Esterhazies of birds; all rubies, diamonds, and
Orders of the Golden Fleece. But, alas! the north side of this old
apartment presented a strange look; half mossy and half mildew;
something as ancient forest trees on their north sides, to which
particular side the moss most clings, and where, they say, internal
decay first strikes. In short, the original resplendence of the peacocks
had been sadly dimmed on that north side of the room, owing to a small
leak in the eaves, from which the rain had slowly trickled its way down
the wall, clean down to the first floor. This leak the irreverent
tenants, at that period occupying the premises, did not see fit to stop,
or rather, did not think it worth their while, seeing that they only
kept their fuel and dried their clothes in the parlour of the peacocks.
Hence many of the once glowing birds seemed as if they had their
princely plumage bedraggled in a dusty shower. Most mournfully their
starry trains were blurred. Yet so patiently and so pleasantly, nay,
here and there so ruddily did they seem to bide their bitter doom, so
much of real elegance still lingered in their shapes, and so full, too,
seemed they of a sweet, engaging pensiveness, meditating all day long,
for years and years, among their faded bowers, that though my family
repeatedly adjured me (especially my wife, who, I fear, was too young
for me) to destroy the whole hen-roost, as Biddy called it, and cover
the walls with a beautiful, nice, genteel, cream-coloured paper, despite
all entreaties, I could not be prevailed upon, however submissive in
other things.
But chiefly would I permit no violation of the old parlour of the
peacocks or room of roses (I call it by both names), on account of its
long association in my mind with one of the original proprietors of the
mansion--the gentle Jimmy Rose.
Poor Jimmy Rose!
He was among my earliest acquaintances. It is not many years since he
died; and I and two other tottering old fellows took hack, and in sole
procession followed him to his grave.
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