Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

"No doubt, no doubt," said the Duke, "and there is nothing so interesting. Even the workmen come to take an interest in all they bring to light. Our workmen were quite proud when they found any thing, and so careful not to injure what they found. Do induce your husband to restore Wenderholme, Lady Helena; it would make such a magnificent place!"

This talk about Wenderholme and restoration had gradually reached the other end of the table, and John Stanburne, feeling no doubt rather a richer and greater personage that evening than usual, being surrounded by more than common splendor, announced his positive resolution to restore the Hall thoroughly. "It was lamentable," he said, "perfectly lamentable, that the building should have been so metamorphosed by his grandfather. But it was not altogether past mending; and architects, you know, understand old Elizabethan buildings so much better than they used to do."

It was a delicious evening, soft and calm, without either the chills of earlier spring or the sultriness of the really hot weather. When the ladies had left the room, and the gentlemen had sat long enough to drink the moderate quantity of wine which men consume in these days of sobriety, the Colonel proposed that they should all go and smoke in the garden. There was a very large lawn, and there were a great many garden-chairs about, so the smokers soon formed themselves into a cluster of little groups. The whole lawn was as light as day, for the front of the Hall was illuminated, and hundreds of little glow-worm lamps lay scattered amongst the flowers. The Colonel had managed to organize a regimental band, which, being composed of tolerably good musicians from Shayton and Sootythorn (both musical places, but especially Shayton), had been rapidly brought into working order by an intelligent band-master. This band had been stationed somewhere in the garden, and began to fill the woods of Wenderholme with its martial strains.

"Upon my word, Colonel," said the Duke, stirring his cup of coffee, "you do things very admirably; I have seen many houses illuminated, but I think I never saw one illuminated so well as Wenderholme is to-night. Every feature of the building is brought into its due degree of prominence. All that rich central projection over the porch is splendid! A less intelligent illuminator would have sacrificed all those fine deep shadows in the recesses of the sculpture, which add so much to the effect."

"My wife has arranged all about these matters," said John Stanburne; "she has better taste than I have, and more knowledge. I always leave these things to her."

"Devilish clever woman that Lady Helena!" thought his Grace; but he did not say it exactly in that way.

"All these sash-windows must be very recent. Last century, probably—eighteenth century; very sad that eighteenth century—wish it had never existed, only don't see how we should have got into the nineteenth!"

The Colonel laughed. "Very difficult," he said, "to get into a nineteenth century without passing through an eighteenth century of some sort."

"Yes, of course, of course; but I don't mean merely in the sense of numbers, you know—in the arithmetical sense of eighteen and nineteen. I mean, that seeing how very curiously people's minds seem to be generally constituted, it does not seem probable that they could ever have reached the ideas of the nineteenth century without passing through the ideas of the eighteenth. But what a pity it is they were such destructive ideas! The people of the eighteenth century seem to have destroyed for the mere pleasure of destroying. Only fancy the barbarism of my forefathers at Varolby, who actually covered the most admirable old wainscot in the world, full of the most delicate, graceful, and exquisite work, with lath and plaster, and a hideous paper! They preferred the paper, you see, to the wainscot."