All this you could see in the dust of Devonshire House—two hundred years of it, duke succeeding duke; and all the time the new generations of wealth, power, and art moving up to that grey old portico.
As I passed it late one night I wondered if there are spirits—a queer doubt to express to-day! If so, I am certain that on calm nights fit for a lady's walk Georgiana, third Duchess of Devonshire, must have visited the ruin, looking with very straight brows and considerable "tut-tutting" at a big board on which was printed: "The magnificent building to be erected on this site will include offices, restaurants, and flats."
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Poor Georgiana! Time is a queer thing, and—you, in your time, would never have believed it, would you?
About Homes in Bondage
Do you wish to feel human emotion spring from inanimate things? Do you wish to meet ghosts? Then come with me to one of London's great furniture store-houses, in which a thousand homes lie piled to the roof, silent, sheeted, tomb-like.
A store-man switches on a line of lights, and we see stretching to the distance great pyramids of household goods, whole homes of furniture, neatly stacked and carefully ticketed against the time when a man and a woman will come to claim them. Some of the pyramids suggest Park Lane, others suggest Clapham Common.
Let us peep beneath this shroud, and what do we see: "Good morning, Mrs. Everyman, and what can I do for you? Kindly accept this cushion as a souvenir of your visit." There lies the gift cushion, there the once-so-loved instalment suite that was delivered in the plain van. Note the pictures by Watts, Rossetti, and others of the Victorians to whom the suburbs are so loyal. "Love's Awakening." Ah!
What do we see in the next tomb? Yes; here was an elegant home with a cheque-book behind it. The low satinwood dresser had a compartment like a knee desk, so that she might get close up when she rouged her lips, and three swinging mirrors in order that she might know whether her shoulders were evenly powdered before he took her out to the Berkeley. Engravings, a Japanese cabinet, a good one, a beautiful round table with a surface like that of a still pool. Little home and big home side by side, social differences forgotten. Do you see the ghosts of Mrs. Everyman and Lady Nobody meeting like sisters over their shrouded homes crying a little on each other's arms? I do. The tombs go on waiting ... waiting.