I once thought I had
found a man who had been allowed into his own "Smoking-Den," but on
closer examination it turned out he was only a portrait.
Sometimes one is given "Vistas." Doors stand open, and you can see
right away through "The Nook" into the garden. There is never a
living soul about the place. The whole family has been sent out for
a walk or locked up in the cellars. This strikes you as odd until
you come to think the matter out. The modern man and woman is not
artistic. I am not artistic--not what I call really artistic. I
don't go well with Gobelin tapestry and warming-pans. I feel I
don't. Robina is not artistic, not in that sense. I tried her once
with a harpsichord I picked up cheap in Wardour Street, and a
reproduction of a Roman stool. The thing was an utter failure. A
cottage piano, with a photo-frame and a fern upon, it is what the
soul cries out for in connection with Robina. Dick is not artistic.
Dick does not go with peacocks' feathers and guitars. I can see Dick
with a single peacock's feather at St. Giles's Fair, when the
bulldogs are not looking; but the decorative panel of peacock's
feathers is too much for him. I can imagine him with a banjo--but a
guitar decorated with pink ribbons! To begin with he is not dressed
for it. Unless a family be prepared to make themselves up as
troubadours or cavaliers and to talk blank verse, I don't see how
they can expect to be happy living in these fifteenth-century houses.
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