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.