Lures of Life

by Joseph Lucas

I dare say Ellin had a thin slice of vanity in her nature; we all have, and would like our names printed somewhere imperishably. During two hundred and twenty years the moss and lichen, the sun and the frost, conspire together to obliterate any lettering in churchyard stones, but the writing in tablet-oak on the armchair is as brave as ever. The name is only a legend, but it keeps her memory green.

I do not turn my house into a museum of antiques, but certainly I choose interesting old furniture to live with where choice is possible; it has a cheery influence on your temper. I love to walk amongst my treasures and touch them with my hand and admire their cloistered beauty. I started housekeeping in Victorian days, after the orthodox manner of Englishmen about to marry, by buying new furniture. To get the genuine article I bought it in framework and had it upholstered and finished at home, under my eye. As years rolled on, piece by piece the Victorian furniture vanished from our rooms and old pieces supplanted them, and the rooms grew pleasant to look upon and cosy to sit in. Your furniture has a subtle influence on your disposition. You live with it daily all the year round as you do with your wife, and you married her because she was the girl you loved best in the world, and since the wedding-day her influence has coloured your life more than you can measure and contributed mysteriously to make you the manner of man you are. Your furniture adds much to your pleasure and quiet enjoyment of home life if you have the right sort. Old furniture with quietness of line is the best to live with--it is suggestive of repose.

I love old furniture because its workmanship is artistic. Style in a chair or table is the all-important thing. A piece of furniture, however simple in design, if it is wrought artistically, stimulates the imagination, arouses the emotions, and provokes endless delight in the connoisseur. We are keen observers to-day, and curious over work done centuries ago. We handle a well-bred piece of furniture with respect as we trace the skill shown in beauty of line; the eye travels joyously over its well-balanced proportions and hovers with admirance over its downright dexterity of carving. No literal copy of antique furniture made in the forcing factories of to-day has feeling in it. It is very accurate in line and detail but it lacks expression, and that is where the artistic spirit enters, that is where the charm holds us. As old Higgery the carpenter explained himself out of it when Lord Louis Lewis complimented him on being the finest carpenter of his age: "Ah, sir," he replied, "Chippendale was the finest cabinet-maker of his age and Sheraton of his; but they went beyond that. They had the Idea. I can use my tools as well as either of them--better, maybe, for 'tis a subtle thing to give a semblance of age to a new piece, but I haven't got the Idea, and never had. If the imagination had gone with the craft, King George might have seen his period of furniture as well as any of the others."

Chippendale and Sheraton were without doubt the cleverest cabinet-makers of their age; but many an unnamed workman of their period has left us the splendid legacy of his "ideas" in furniture which is scattered over the comfortable homes of England, with no pedigree attached except the imprimatur of a master craftsman's genius.

Speaking of artistic furniture, I do not mean elaborate furniture overladen with a heavy ornament which confuses its lines and perverts its beauty into vulgarity. Simplicity is the fairest form of art. Simplicity consists not so much in plainness of production as in singleness of purpose. The essence of simplicity is the absence of self-consciousness. A combination of simplicity of character and great artistic power is difficult to find, but when found it is the most perfect combination and produces finest work. Art is often self-conscious, and quickly runs to seed in superfluous ornamentation. The Louis Quinze style is unwholesome as poison. It is brilliantly clever, but it is fascinatingly demoralizing. It reflects in art the luxury and insincerity, the licentiousness and effeminacy of the age that invented it.

Gaudy and overornamented furniture is teasingly self-conscious, and conceited stuff to live with. Its lines are vulgar and sensuous curves. It is always staring at you, grinning at you, ogling you, and saying, "Observe me, and admire." Just the very character of the frivolous women, the Pompadour and the Du Barri, who ruled the voluptuous Court of Louis XV., and who squandered the royal revenues in extravagance of art and craft, so that the artist's taste was wasted in riotous designing and the craftsman's skill debased in excesses of ornament.

Sumptuous furniture and splendid apparel are closely wedded together, and cannot be separated with success. If I lived among Louis Quinze furniture I should often see in the room with me ghosts of gallant courtiers, dressed in long silk coats, embellished with gold braid, and vests of rainbow hue, with cravats and ruffs of billowy lace, carrying at their hips a long rapier, and toying with a bejewelled snuff-box as they moved noiselessly with an elegant devil-may-care swagger, mixing with superbly decorated marqueterie cabinets and tables and bronze statuettes and Sèvres china bleu du roi; and shadowy ladies of high degree would be there, wearing capacious and flowery dresses and powdered hair, sitting in the chequered light of evening on seats richly upholstered in pale rose Gobelin tapestry, smiling dreamily on the exquisites of the old régime--all of them fatally gifted mortals with manners polished as the hard, shining surface of the parquet floor they gaily tread: the whole scene a vision glorious, composing an harmonious blend of colour, grace, and beauty. Modern men lounging in tweed Norfolk jackets, or dressed sombre in black swallow-tail coats, with a cigarette lolling on their lips, and ladies tailored into close-fitting costumes of neutral tints, however beautiful in themselves, would be completely out of the picture.

A peculiar reason why old furniture is coveted by many people is because it is fashionable and scarce. The quantity that remains in the country, drawn from the homes of our easy-going port-wine-drinking Georgian forefathers, is decreasing, and buyers are increasing, so competition runs riot for really good pieces.

There is plenty of worthless old furniture for sale, as there are worthless "Old Masters" asking for buyers. Americans are the greedy collectors who raid the market with their unlimited dollars and pay sensational prices for the prize pieces to adorn their town houses in New York or Chicago.

Collecting is a fascinating hobby. I have found pleasure hunting for antiques far away from the heated atmosphere of Christie's auction-rooms. The joy of the chase is great, and the habit grows upon you. I have made many enjoyable excursions into the country with a clear-cut object in view which gives zest to the journey. Rummaging through second-hand shops in the back streets of provincial towns or in out-of-the-way villages searching for spoil is an alluring pastime to indulge in, and if you love the country through which you travel for the country's sake you will be very happy on the trail, and want to go again whether much or little plunder falls to your quest. Old cathedral towns yield the best results. There are many sleepy second-hand shops loitering round the cathedral waiting for customers to step in after visiting the sacred fane. There is much lumber and little treasure in most of them; but if you don't find what you want, in looking for it you may find something that pleases you better, like the man who was digging a hole in his garden to bury a dead dog and unburied a Greek statue of Venus.