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Updated: July 21, 2025
The room itself was long, narrow, and comparatively low; the latticed windows were sunk several feet into the massive walls; lengths of brownish-green and yellow tapestry, none the fresher for its two centuries and more of existence, still protested against the modern heresy of wallpaper; and in a panel-frame over the fireplace was seen the portrait, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, of the Jacobite baronet.
We dined in a depressing room with dark brown wallpaper decorated with dusty stags' antlers, an enormous green-tiled stove dominating everything. The General and his son ate solidly through the courses while the lady pecked furtively at her plate. As for myself I could not eat for sheer fright. Every nerve in my body was vibrating at the thought of the evening before me.
A machine that is an artist like a man. It means a revolution in the wallpaper trade." "But," queried Frantz with some anxiety, "have you invented this Press of yours yet, or are you still hunting for it?" "Invented! perfected! To-morrow I will show you all my plans. I have also invented an automatic crane for hanging the paper on the rods in the drying-room.
The shadows played incessantly on the brown wallpaper as the window curtains swung back and forth with the air currents and lightened and plunged his prison into oppressive twilight alternately. A fly made a complete toilette on the bed cover before his interested eyes, now brushing the gauzy wings, now twisting its head this way and that way, as if indulging in a form of calisthenics.
Hitherto life had moved them from one established and comfortable home to another; their worst affliction had been the modern decorations of the Palace at Princhester, and it was altogether a revelation to them to visit house after house, ill-lit, ill-planned, with dingy paint and peeling wallpaper, kitchens for the most part underground, and either without bathrooms or with built-out bathrooms that were manifestly grudging afterthoughts, such as harbour the respectable middle classes of London.
The curtains want washing. The carpet is frayed. The table looks as if it would go over the instant anything was rested on it. The grate is cheerless, the wall-paper hideous. The ceiling appears to have had coffee spilt all over it, and the ornaments well, they are worse than the wallpaper. There must surely be some special and secret manufactory for the production of lodging-house ornaments.
And if you desired a bedroom suite, a pair of corsets, a box of pastels, an anthracite stove, or a new wallpaper, the Bon Marché would never shake its head. And Audrey was now of the Quarter. Many simple sojourners in the Quarter tried to imply the Latin Quarter when they said the Quarter. But the Quarter was only the Montparnasse Quarter. Nevertheless, it sufficed.
“I do!” went on Papa No-Tail, hopping a bit nearer. “You shall never eat her as long as I am alive!” “And who are you, if I may be so bold as to ask,” went on the bear, stopping so he could laugh. “I am the brave Mr. No-Tail, who works in the wallpaper factory, but I can’t work to-day as the bad Pelican bird took the ink,” replied Bully’s and Bawly’s papa.
I fear that its glories are of the past, but it is at least small, and the wallpaper is modern. I have ordered coffee and the card-tables there. Shall we go?"
In the faded wallpaper were dark patches where furniture had stood, where pictures had hung. The sense of walls, dry, thin, flimsy-seeming walls, and a flimsy flooring, pale with its artificial black edges, was neutralising to the mind. Everything was null to the senses, there was enclosure without substance, for the walls were dry and papery.
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