Old furniture is delightful in your home because it is old. Age has an alchemy of its own that ennobles the work of man. A brand-new house is deadly unromantic, even if it is a dream of architectural excellence. Its appearance is garish and crude. New stones and raw bricks are ugly in the days of their youth, but age transforms the place, be it manor-house or thatched cottage, until enchantment haunts the fabric. I dearly love the grace of antiquity that mellows the venerable homesteads of England and blends the intermingling lustre of tradition with the roll of their lengthening years.
Age likewise has a mellowing influence on furniture. Obliteration of exactitude of form is essential charm in it as it is in a man or woman. You resent the loudness of a newly made rich man. His manners smell strongly of varnish just put on; his vanity and self-importance are unsavoury morsels to swallow without salt. He is a terror to his polite neighbours and a stranger to himself. Wait and see; he will tone down as the mills of life grind off the sharp angles and smooth him into a decent fellow.
Good taste resents primness and self-assertiveness in new furniture; its raw outlines and sharp angles offend the eye. When these stubborn features are subdued by centuries of wear and tear and the wondrous old-time bloom of rich deep colour glorifies the ripened oak with softness and transparency of tone, that quality so delightful to sight and touch which distinguishes genuine antique furniture, then sentimental feeling waxes strong and renders the work attractive to us.
Vague and visionary thoughts of past owners flit across the mind, and kindle emotions in the presence of an ancient piece of furniture of good repute. It idealizes in our minds, and becomes beautiful to us. It is a call of the past. It is an unwritten chapter in some old family history, and we want to handle the key of the legend locked up in it. There may be tragedy or comedy, or a mixture of both, recorded in the family log-book, and the stately old carved-oak court cupboard dozing in the banqueting-hall, generation after generation, saw it all through from beginning to end, but it whispers away no family secrets to inquisitive people. An evil day broke the family fortunes. The venerable court cupboard vacated its place of honour which it occupied for centuries in the Yorkshire manor-house, and has taken up quarters with us in our Sussex home. It is no longer mere chattel; there is human interest in it.
I wonder if it takes kindly to its new home? Land, they say, sometimes resents change of owners, especially passing from a family who had held lordship of the soil for generations. When the old squire dies, the last of his line, the land grieves. It seems to know that it is going to be sold and broken up, and it loses heart. It goes rotten like apples. A patch goes wrong here and a patch goes wrong there, and the rottenness spreads and runs together. It takes the land long to get used to a new master.
Has our old oak court cupboard sensitive feelings like the ancestral acres? Or is it silently and sullenly indifferent to all the changes of fortune that befall it?
I have an oak armchair with a unique story to tell. The back of it is one large panel carved with heavy flora and foliated decoration; on the cross-rail below the panel is carved in bold raised letters:
16 ELLIN RYLAND 94
The two arms are bountifully carved, and the carving terminates in a large Tudor rose forming a knob at the end of each arm. The arm-tops, through constant use, are smooth and shine like unto burnished bronze. The supports and front legs are twisted in good Jacobean manner, and the broad stretcher is carved with two long feathery, flowing acanthus-leaves curling round gracefully at the tips as if under pressure of a strong breeze, and crouching within their embrace nestles a rose in ambush. The chair has been mothered with lifelong care, and the bloom and beauty of age sit upon it like a crown of glory. So Ellin Ryland has won for her name immortality among the roses.
We often think of Ellin and question the chair about her, but information does not flow freely from that quarter. Did Ellin order the chair from the cabinet-maker herself? I think not; perhaps her lover gave it her on her birthday, or her husband on their wedding-day. No doubt the chair's existence celebrates a red-letter day in the annals of the family. The name now is only a legend to us, but there it is, legible after the flight of two hundred and twenty years. The old chair is a better monument to Ellin Ryland's memory than a stone slab in a damp churchyard, with her name graven on it in crumbling letters.