The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog

Here’s a passage from Wilkie Collins, the great Victorian author of detective fiction. This is from a short story called “A Traveler’s Story of A Terribly Strange Bed,” originally published in 1852. The room described here is in a gambling house in Paris, but that strange bed is very British. It has a sinister functionality, too, which you’ll discover if you read the story.

“I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room–which was brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window–to see if it contained any pictures or ornaments that I could at all clearly distinguish. While my eyes wandered from wall to wall, a remembrance of Le Maistre’s delightful little book, “Voyage autour de ma Chambre,” occurred to me. I resolved to imitate the French author, and find occupation and amusement enough to relieve the tedium of my wakefulness, by making a mental inventory of every article of furniture I could see, and by following up to their sources the multitude of associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand may be made to call forth.

In the nervous unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found it much easier to make my inventory than to make my reflections, and thereupon soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre’s fanciful track–or, indeed, of thinking at all. I looked about the room at the different articles of furniture, and did nothing more.

There was, first, the bed I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all things in the world to meet with in Paris–yes, a thorough clumsy British four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz–the regular fringed valance all round–the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts without particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then there was the marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I had spilled, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping, slowly and more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then two small chairs, with my coat, waistcoat, and trousers flung on them. Then a large elbow-chair covered with dirty-white dimity, with my cravat and shirt collar thrown over the back. Then a chest of drawers with two of the brass handles off, and a tawdry, broken china inkstand placed on it by way of ornament for the top. Then the dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass, and a very large pincushion. Then the window–an unusually large window. Then a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It was a picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister ruffian, looking upward, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking intently upward–it might be at some tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At any rate, he had the appearance of thoroughly deserving it.”

I absolutely love the remark about the “multitude of associations.” Do you notice how the ornate beauty of the sentences written by Victorian authors closely resembles the beauty of antique Victorian furniture?

Technorati Tags: Bed, Chair, Chest, Drawers, Furniture, Literature, Mystery, Table, Victorian, Wilkie Collins

I turned up an article in the Baltimore Sun about a remarkable man named Paul G. Churchill.

Mr. Churchill, recently deceased, studied Latin and Greek, ultimately earning a Master’s degree. He also served in Vietnam and reached the rank of captain. Following his tour of duty, he began a career as a teacher, first in elementary school and then high school. After retiring he continued to teach as an adjunct professor at a local college.

In addition to teaching, Mr. Churchill’s lifelong passion was Sherlock Holmes, the Victorian era detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He was a member first of the Baker Street Irregulars in New York and then the Six Napoleons in Baltimore, groups dedicated to Holmes. He also co-founded a group called Watson’s Tin Box, named obviously after Holmes’s equally famous sidekick.

What makes this story particularly fascinating is that Mr. Churchill hunted for antique Victorian furniture and other objects in antique shops and on eBay, in order to turn his living room into a copy of Holmes’s flat at 221-B Baker Street in London. Now that’s a literary passion!

I suspect that many people who get interested in Victorian antiques do so through an initial love of Victorian literature. You have perhaps seen my own posts about finding passages that contain descriptions of furniture. I’m inspired now to dig into Sherlock Holmes myself and see what’s there. I’ve read most of it already, but I wasn’t looking specifically for furniture my first time through. But if Mr. Churchill was able to replicate 221-B Baker Street, there must be some detailed descriptions in there. I’ll certainly share what I find.

Another thing about this article. Mr. Churchill shopped eBay. If you search eBay for Victorian furniture, an enormous amount comes up. I know eBay scares a lot of people, and there’s nothing quite like meandering through an antique shop waiting for something to catch your eye. But the internet allows us to widen our gaze dramatically. Just a thought.

You can read about Paul Churchill here.

Technorati Tags: Antiques, Furniture, Holmes, Literature, Sherlock, Victorian

I mentioned in a post yesterday that I was going to start looking for passages in Victorian literature that had descriptions of furniture, and I mentioned Charlotte Bronte in that context. Well, look what I found. A passage from Charlotte Bronte’s great Victorian romance, Jane Eyre, that describes a room in a mansion, full of furniture: a Victorian bed, Victorian tables, and Victorian chairs. Lots of mahogany and lots of red. Hence the room’s name:

“The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.”

Charlotte Bronte lived from 1816 to 1855, and Jane Eyre was published in 1849. This “red-room” certainly predates the Eastlake era, doesn’t it? Pretty dark and ominous. Do you think it’s an accurate reflection of the times?

Technorati Tags: Bed, Bronte, Chair, Furniture, Jane Eyre, Literature, Table, Victorian

Which is the most famous of all Victorian mirrors? Well, obviously, that’s a speculative question, if you’ll pardon the pun. But here’s a piece of writing containing a mirror that would rank pretty high:

“Now, if you’ll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I’ll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there’s the room you can see through the glass — that’s just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair — all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see THAT bit! I want so much to know whether they’ve a fire in the winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too — but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because I’ve held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room. How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they’d give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn’t good to drink — But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little PEEP of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it’s very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking- glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it!”

Now admittedly, that’s a fictional mirror, or looking-glass, not a real one. But it’s a famous one nevertheless. Those lines were written in 1872 by English author Lewis Carroll. And the person talking to her Kitty is of course young Alice, in Carroll’s wonderful book Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There.

It dawned on me a while ago that there must be an enormous number of descriptions of furniture contained in the great works of British Victorian literature, written by the likes of Carroll, Dickens, and the Bronte sisters. And that there could be a rather interesting perspective to gain by reading them. What could be more intriguing to a lover of antique Victorian furniture than getting a description of a period Victorian table from the pen of Charlotte Bronte?

I got the idea of quoting Carroll here by reading a post in some random forum by a man who was thinking of doing a scholarly investigation into the symbolic meaning of mirrors in Victorian literature. He was led to this idea not only by Through the Looking Glass, but also by Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Hmmm. He could be onto something there.

In any case, I’ll pursue my own idea of tracking down passages in Victorian literature with furniture in them. Whenever I find a good one, I promise to share it here on The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog.

Technorati Tags: 19th Century, Alice, Lewis, Literature, Mirror, Victorian