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Updated: May 18, 2025
Behold the chapel crowded to the doors, aisles and window-seats crammed, and faces peering in from without, those of boys and girls who had perched themselves on the outer sills. A student audience is at the same time most critical and the most generous. I spoke on Literature and Democracy. Hester approved my effort. "How does it feel to be great?" she laughed. "How does it feel to be cruel?"
Lovers found their way to deep window-seats; and lovers of yet another sort to brimming glasses and colonial toasts, and perhaps to wigs awry. It was the old-time Shirley, the strange, incongruous Shirley that was a bright bit of English manor life within; and, without, wilderness and savages and tobacco-fields and Africans.
In former days the house had doubtless been the scene of lavish living, he thought from time to time, and he would have liked to explore the many rooms with their polished floors and deep window-seats, their carved paneling and marble mantels; and when, in the afternoon, he found himself alone for a few minutes in the vast hall, he paced off its sixty feet of length and its twenty of width to know their number, studied the winding staircase with its white pilasters and mahogany rails, scanned hurriedly the portraits in their tarnished frames, some with the signatures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, some with Stuart, and others of lesser fame, which hung above the wainscoted walls; and as he looked he did not wonder at Claudia's love for her home.
It may be simply an oriel window swinging forward to catch the sun or a distant view, an entire gable pushing the guest-chamber hospitably forth, or the whole upper story may extend beyond the lower walls, giving large chambers, abundant closets, and cosey window-seats. Of course, such projections must be well sustained.
They would not be able to finish it all inside, and there was a nook left for an addition when they needed it. Polly was to have some of grandmother's furniture, and John's mother would provide a little. Corner cupboards were quite a substitute in those days for china closets, and window-seats answered for chairs. But there was bedding and napery, and no one thought of levying on friends.
On the window-seats of the basement, hidden in the hollow, are more flowers and curtains. In the less frequented streets there are bird-cages on either side of the windows, boxes full of growing plants, clothes and linen hung out to dry. Indeed, innumerable articles of varied colors dangle and swing about, so that it all seems like a great fair.
The next day further search revealed a cushion which just fitted the window-seat, not surprising in view of the fact that the window-seats throughout the dormitories were fairly uniform in size. The cushion cost them two dollars. It was covered with faded green corduroy and in places was pretty well flattened out by much service.
The room was empty; the baron's dinner had been over hours ago; there seemed no fear of any one coming, so she grew bolder and jumped upon one of the window-seats to consider what she should do with herself all night.
It was made sweet with flowers too. A basket of pink tulips set in moss occupied the central position on the supper-table, and some pots of primulas, fully in bloom, were on the window-seats; above that window upon the corner of whose seat Miss Deleah Day liked to sit, her slight and supple body curled into as small as possible a space in order not to incommode the primulas, a brass birdcage holding a canary was hung.
I remember Maude's naive delight when we inspected it. "You'd never guess what the inside was like, would you, Hugh?" she cried. From the panelled box of an entrance hall one went up a few steps to a drawing-room which had a bowed recess like an oriel, and window-seats. There was a "den" for me, and an octagonal reception-room on the corner.
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