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Updated: June 7, 2025
I once asked a village maiden why the people made firewood of carved arm-chairs, when painted pinewood, upholstered in American cloth, is, if lovelier, not so lasting. Her reply was "They get stalled on 'em." And she added: "Maybe a man 'll look at an old arm-chair that's stood on t' hearth-place as long as he can remember, and he'll say I'm fair sick o' t' seet o' yon.
"The surveyors assured us that the canal was pointed our way, though no one was sanguine of its speedy coming. We did occupy the geographical centre of the new county, and with that ends the tale of our pretensions." "We had Penelope Chubb!" The suggestion came from an old man in one of the arm-chairs immediately below. Interruptions never disconcerted Shelby.
It was a large house, in which there appeared to be three public sitting-rooms of ample size, one of which was occupied as the bar. In this there were congregated some six or seven men, seated in arm-chairs round a stove, and among these I placed myself. No one spoke a word either to me or to any one else. No one smoked, and no one read, nor did they even whittle sticks.
The deep arm-chairs by the fire and the many pipes savoured of the smoking-room; the guns, rods, polo sticks, whips, which were stacked or hung everywhere, and the heads of deer on the walls, gave it an atmosphere of sport. The pictures were few but good two water-colours, a small Raeburn above the fireplace, and half a dozen fine etchings.
The furniture of the time was firmly placed upon the ground, the arm-chairs had strong straining-rails, square or curved backs, scroll arms carved and partly upholstered and stuffed seats and backs. The legs of chairs were usually tapering in form and ornamented with gilding, or marquetry, or richly carved, and later the feet ended in a carved leaf design.
She had also suggested new ideas for shelves. They had not troubled furniture shops much. Save for a few comfortable arm-chairs, there was nothing solid and heavy in the house; but it was all pleasant and home-like, and the little rooms, bright with books and pictures and flowers, had about them the touch of welcome and restfulness that makes the difference between a home and a mere house.
The priests sat opposite to each other in cane-seated arm-chairs on either side of the square table, the head of which was taken by the landlady, who seemed to dominate the whole from a high chair raised on casters, filled with cushions, and standing very near to the dining-room stove. This room and the salon were on the ground-floor beneath the salon and bedroom of the Abbe Birotteau.
In the old days buying clothes was well-nigh as irrevocable as marriage. Our flat is furnished with glittering things wanton arm-chairs just strong enough not to collapse under you, books in gay covers, carpets you are free to drop lighted fusees upon; you may scratch what you like, upset your coffee, cast your cigar ash to the four quarters of heaven.
My curtains were blue chintz, and the sofa and chairs were covered with the same; the ascetic aspect of my two hair-cloth arm-chairs was entirely concealed. The walls were painted amber color, and varnished. There were no pictures but the shining shadows. A row of shelves covered with blue damask was on one side, and my tall mirror on the other.
So they retreated into Palestine, with the shadow of yet a greater cataclysm upon them. This, then, was the work accomplished by those early pioneers, and scarcely the half of it has been told. Let those who sat in their arm-chairs in England demanding querulously what we were doing in Egypt judge of their achievement.
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