Perhaps you hate wearing a brand-new reputation. It sets on you like a misfitting coat. You are an heir of the glorious past, and exult on the length in your ancient lineage. Remember also you are a trustee of the splendid future; the shining days to come demand your thoughtful consideration. Do rare credit to your sacred trust. It is better to transmit honour to your descendants than to borrow fame from your ancestors. It is better to be lovingly remembered than nobly born. That grim old ancestor of yours who built the family fortune out of nothing and grimly fought every inch of the way up to renown single-handed would despise you for a poltroon lying derelict in the ditch of despair. If the family fall throws you to the ground, are you going to lie there indefinitely and rot like offal? Sell jam.
An Italian nobleman went to America to repair his fallen fortunes. He refused to soil his hands in trade; his old family title was the magic key he carried to open the treasure-chests of the New World. So he arrived in America armed with a despatch-box full of introductions to money magnates there. He called upon a banker in New York, and presented a letter of introduction. The banker asked him what he knew about business. "Nothing," replied the nobleman; "I am a cavalry officer." "Sorry I cannot help you," said the banker; "the circus left our town yesterday." The nobleman was floored. Enraged at the magnate's laconic insolence, he destroyed all letters of introduction contained in his despatch-box and tackled the world on his own. He folded up his family pedigree, laid it in lavender, went into the market and sold jam. In the market-place a long head is a better weapon to fight with than a long pedigree. He worked out his own salvation, and returned home and lived contentedly amongst the orange-groves and sunshine of Southern Italy.
VIII
THE LURE OF OLD FURNITURE
Eight old Chippendale chairs and two settees sold recently at Christie's for 5,600 guineas, and report says quickly after the auctioneer's hammer dismissed the lot they changed hands again at £1,000 profit to the buyer. There must be great charm in old furniture when people scramble for it regardless of cost. I suppose money is dull stuff to own heaps of unless you can exchange it for things that give the heart a passing thrill of pleasure (the great sport is in the making it); and the more money you make, the more it takes you to work up the thrill. A millionaire's smile is an expensive hobby to cultivate. Gathering a bunch of wild primroses in the sunny April woods gladdens the heart of a child amazingly, and he dreams the pleasure over again in his sleep. It costs over 5,000 guineas to tingle the feelings of a rich man. The child's outlay is more economical, but it fetches as much enjoyment.
Wherein lies the secret charm of old furniture? I love it myself, and for that reason ask the question for the pleasure given in answering it. I am only a trifler in antiques, possessing a few pieces of exquisite old oak of the seventeenth-century period; also several pieces of walnut furniture which are old Italian. The Italian pieces lie fallow in a villa just outside the barriéra St. Domenico, Florence, where we live with them half the year round. Beautiful old walnut furniture counts much more in its own homeland, while the alien oak of England, which we love here, is cold and expressionless in the rooms of an Italian villa on the sunny slopes of Fiesole. It loses its aura in a strange land.
Old furniture with a time-worn glossy face on it is interesting because it is made by the hands of man; and the man used his brain in making it, as well as his hands; surely man's delight is in man's work. A piece of old furniture reflects the mind of its maker in every detail of its construction, and that is a very fascinating feature to me; for we are told on high authority that "hand-work possesses character, almost personality," and we believe the high authority with all our heart.
Modern furniture has no personality, and so it transmits no message; it is machine-made, and I hold no kinship with machinery to cherish warm feeling in its favour; but handcraft ever commands our respect, and when well done wins our widest admiration.
Machine-made work carries a lie on the face of it; it imitates handwork. The machine simulates a trouble that has not been taken. It produces beautifully designed and ornamented imitations of ancient handcraft at trifling cost. Who cares for beauty produced by formula? Beauty is the flowering of noble labour linked to useful purpose. Cheapness and showiness are the flaring advertisements of the mechanical cabinet-maker to-day, and he hits with precision the public taste.
Give me to admire something a man has laboured lovingly and honestly to produce, not what a machine vomits out standard pattern; something a man has put the power of his brain into as well as the dexterity of his hand. William Morris quaintly remarks: "If you have anything to say, you may as well put it into a chair or a table." The cabinet-maker speaks to us with his tools in a language of his own invention. The cabinet-maker has helped to make English homes comfortable to live in, and for so doing we owe him a debt of gratitude. His tools are not the sword and the cannon, but the plane, the chisel, and the swift-moving saw. His art is not destructive to life, piling on misery to man's many woes, but he enriches life manifold by adding comfort and luxury to the widening circle of human happiness. His rewards are not stars and garters and hereditary honours conferred by princes for brave deeds done on the field of battle, but just the recompense that the master of the tools' true play appreciates; the simple pleasure of good work well and truly done sent forth to take honourable place in the stately homes of England, knowing that by such fine hand-craft he will speak from his grave to people unborn; and he even cherishes the inspiring hope that those who are possessors of his treasured work done in oak and walnut and sweet satinwood will, in the hereafterward, in the quietude of their sequestered homes, surrounded by familiar furniture of high lineage, bestow on the workman a passing measure of praise; for these worthy craftsmen put the best of their lives into the labour of their hands.