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?):—
GOOD NIGHT.
Sleep sweet within this quiet room,
Oh thou! whoe’er thou art,
And let no mournful yesterday
Disturb thy peaceful heart;
Nor let to-morrow scare thy rest
With dreams of coming ill;
Thy Maker is thy changeless friend,
His love surrounds thee still.
Forget thyself and all the world,
Put out each feverish light;
The stars are watching overhead,
Sleep sweet, Good Night, Good Night.
Another, bought the same day, is entitled:—
A QUIET RESTING PLACE.
And so I find it well to come
For deeper rest to this still room;
For here the habit of the soul
Feels less the outer world’s control,
And from the silence multiplied
By these still forms on every side,
The world that time and sense has known
Falls off and leaves us God alone.
For the Flower room, Canon Langbridge’s delightful book, Restful Thoughts for Dusty Ways, supplied me with a verse:—
HEAVEN COVERS ALL.
When the world’s weight is on thy mind,
And all its black-winged fears affright,
Think how the daisy draws her blind,
And sleeps without a light.
And for the Bird room, I have on the wall W. C. Bryant’s beautiful poem, “Lines to a Waterfowl.” You will remember these verses:—
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air—
Lone wandering, but not lost.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.
On more than one occasion visitors have thanked me for having left them these goodnight thoughts.
Of course, being a cottage in the midst of a flower-patch, we never run short of flowers, and you find plenty indoors. When they are in bloom, however, I always like to put a bunch of white moss rose-buds (one of my favourite flowers) in a blue mug on a visitor’s dressing-table.
But whatever the flowers, it is our custom to welcome all guests with rosemary, for I have discovered that the scent of it (even the sight of it) is a certain cure for the divers maladies caused by overdoses of unsatisfactory dressmakers, cooks who give notice every month, much boredom in crowded unventilated drawing-rooms, and all the many varieties of restlessness that have been invented to help women to kill time. It has also been known to prove efficacious in cases of people prone to overwork.
At any rate, if you come to visit me you will find a vase with sprigs of rosemary on the deep window-ledge in your room; and few of my friends go away without taking a slip from the gnarled bush by the door to plant in less congenial surroundings.
I believe Shakespeare said that rosemary typifies remembrance; Virginia unblushingly improves on Shakespeare by insisting that it means the remembrance of peace.
IV
Miss Quirker—Incidentally
Every visit to the cottage seems prefaced with a scramble. Either the work at the office suddenly does itself up in a tangle, or the domestic arrangements show signs of incipient paralysis, which it takes all my available energy to avert, or else it is people who inflict themselves upon me when I’m at my final gasp without a moment, or a single company smile, to spare for anybody. And of all the three forms of irritation, the uninvited people are the worst; for they always seem to absorb the last bit of vitality left me, which I had hoped would just carry me over the journey.
There is Miss Quirker, for instance. You don’t know Miss Quirker? How I envy you!
I can best describe her as a lady well over forty (or more), who apparently hasn’t anything at all to do, and who does it thoroughly well. She has a couple of very decided and conspicuous gifts—one is the ability to waste the time and dissipate the amiable qualities of every individual whose path she crosses; and the other is a positive genius for saying the wrong thing.
I was near the window writing for all I was worth, when she knocked at the door