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Updated: May 1, 2025
The wallpaper was old and discoloured; a few almanacs and unframed prints were fixed to the walls, and on the mantelshelf were some cracked and worthless vases and ornaments. At one time they had possessed a clock and an overmantel and some framed pictures, but they had all been sold to obtain money to buy food.
Yet Gian Maria did not seem to deem that there was light enough for such purpose as he entertained, for he bade Martin fetch him the candelabra that had been left behind. Then he turned his attention to the group standing by the window, where the light from the overmantel fell full upon it.
The large open-grate fireplace had an artistically carved overmantel sadly chipped and smoke-blackened, a tiled hearth in fragments; the wall-paper in a tasteful design of dark-green and gold was blotched and discoloured, and hung in peeling strips and gigantic 'dog's-ears'; from the poles and rings over the windows the tattered fragments of a lace curtain dangled.
And by the stairs was an oaken marriage chest. Save for two skin rugs, these were all the furnishings. But Ricky had crossed hesitatingly to that cavernous fireplace and was standing there looking up as her brothers joined her. "There's where it was," she said softly and pointed to a deep niche cut into the surface of the stone overmantel.
"The chapel" and priests' holes may still be seen, and a fine old stone fireplace that was stripped of its overmantel, etc., of carved oak by the "pursuivants" in their vain efforts when Father Gerard was concealed in the house. The old Essex family of Wiseman of Braddocks were staunch Romanists, and their home, being a noted resort for priests, received from time to time sudden visits.
Later as the classic taste became stronger the carving gave place to a plain architrave and the over-door took the form of a pediment. Mantels were of marble, large, beautifully carved, with the fireplace sunk into the thickness of the wall. The overmantel usually had a carved panel, but later, during the sixteenth century, this was sometimes replaced by a picture.
It has substantially the same overmantel frame and mantel treatment. Incidentally it furnishes an excellent example of the complete paneling of one end of a room with the familiar six-panel ordinary inside doors each side of the fireplace.
Standing by the hearth, one foot on the stone kerb, one elbow leaning lightly on the overmantel, she proceeded leisurely to remove her gloves. The Seneschal observed her with eyes that held an odd mixture of furtiveness and admiration, his fingers plump, indolent-looking stumps plucking at his beard. "Did you but know, Marquise, with what joy, with what a "
Miss Joliffe had purchased this piece-of-resistance when Mrs Cazel, the widow of the ironmonger, had sold her household effects preparatory to leaving Cullerne. "It is an overmantel, my dear," she had said to dubious Anastasia, when it was brought home.
Two handsomely carved consoles resting on the fillet of this ovolo molding support the superb molded panel of the overmantel some three by five feet, in which to this day not a joint is to be seen. A band of exquisite floreated carving in high relief fills the long, narrow, horizontal panel between the consoles. The precision of the tooling in this intricate tracery is indeed remarkable.
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