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Miss Elizabeth asked Maddy Freeman to "come up and be dead" whenever she felt like it; she goes there every week now, to copy pictures, and get rare little bits for her designs out of the Penningtons' great portfolios of engravings and drawings of ancient ornamentations; and half the time they keep her to luncheon or to tea.
It is a sole turned up at the edges and held on by a series of straps and plaited ornamentations useless in mud or wet, which penetrates through it in all directions. We arrived at an open space and halted for lunch. Water had to be fetched.
The unbreeched artist of four summers never tired of scrutinizing the statues, monsters, gargoyles and other outer ornamentations, while the story of the pious architect Erwin and of his inspirer, Sabine, was equally dear. Never did genius more clearly exhibit the influence of early environment. True child of Alsace, he revelled in local folklore and legend.
Sometimes, however, we find them crudely executed as if they had been taken direct from the mold. Clockmakers of that time were not so inventive as we; neither had they had training in design, and as a result we see little variety in these brass ornamentations. At one period all these spandrels took the form of cherub's heads, an idea that may possibly have been copied from the Italians.
Most of theses ornamentations, as well as the paintings, were the work of brothers of the order, who must have spent half a life-time in their consummation.
There lay the curved, brazen helmet with its comb arching over and edged with its plume, the scaled cheek-straps that held it in its place, the leathern breast and back-piece moulded and hammered into the shape of the human form, brazen shoulder-pieces, ornamentations and strengthening, the curved, oblong shield and short sword with lion's head to its hilt and heavy sheath.
So far has this custom of knowing everything proceeded, that at a leading dressmaking establishment in Melbourne when a friend of mine was ordering a dress, the fitter after the lady had chosen the stuff, and pattern, said, 'Of course you'll leave the details to me, ma'am, the details including the length of the skirt and all the gatherings and miscellaneous ornamentations, which make all the difference between a pretty and a tasteless dress, and in which individuality has a chance of showing itself.
To his great surprise they passed a busy marketplace and rough-looking shops, the dwellings of traders and makers of horse trappings and camel saddles; others displayed cotton fabrics, some even with ornamentations of silk; then makers of brass work, swords, and spears with the round shields carried by so many of the fighting men; and as they rode on through crowds of busy people he found that his companion was evidently noting his surprise and ready to smile with satisfaction at the interest he displayed.
There are quaint ornamentations on the narrow side of this house facing us, human figures and wreaths, and in the centre of the design a star. This old house has a little story to tell. Long ago, possibly in the sixteenth century, it was an inn, or a lodging-house, was said to be haunted, so the great-grandson of the last innkeeper there gave up taking lodgers and became a confectioner.
Therefore, at a period when a strict and jealous architecture ruled construction, when the Middle Ages were not even considered, at a time when literature was not as clearly welded to art as it is now, La Fontaine said of the chateau de Blois, in his hearty, good-humored way: "The part that Francois I. built, if looked at from the outside, pleased me better than all the rest; there I saw numbers of little galleries, little windows, little balconies, little ornamentations without order or regularity, and they make up a grand whole which I like."
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