terrestrial globes. The fireplace was in keeping with the room, being a wide affair with a carved marble mantelpiece, the top slab upheld by Atlas-like gentlemen with suffering expressions, and the crosspiece decorated with carefree and rather charming putti. The huge metal basket below, which had been designed for logs, was empty, and in front of it, inside the leather-seated high fender, stood the unlovely device which was heater and humidifier all in one. The library had once been my favourite of all the rooms at Ashley; I could remember the firelight on the mellow leather of the books, and the warmth of the big rug before the blaze, and being allowed to turn one of the big globes while my father told me about the countries which passed by so quickly under my childish hands.
Now its only beauty was one of proportion; it was a sad ghost of a room, with the cool north light showing the empty shelves, or, sadder still, the shelves where two or three worthless and abandoned volumes took the space of twenty, and lay fallen in their places. Under the glass of the display tables the faded velvet showed darker patches where treasures had once lain. The globes had gone long since under the hammer. In the farthest bay were the locked sections, three sets of shelves behind gilded grilles. The section which had held valuable books was, like the display tables, empty of them; the other two were still filled with the books that Emory had striven in vain to be allowed to read—the private collections of Scholar William, and of Nicholas Ashley, his son.
The guide was saying something about Nick Ashley now, and people were smiling. One or two of them drifted over to look at the titles behind the grille, and I went with them.
The topmost shelves in William's section were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of volumes: a herbal, a few bird books, a county history or two, and a book of county maps, books on hunting and game preserving, a history of the Clan Chattan, and one or two thin reprints about local affairs. There were also a few stray volumes from the Journal of Emma Ashley. But on the more accessible shelves, Shake speare predominated. The Complete Works, in a massive, illustrated edition, comprised ten of the volumes, and I could see at least three other editions, flanked by commentaries and essays, and a few separate copies of some of the plays. Notably, there were three different copies of Romeo and Juliet, and beside them the volume which explained this interest, a book entitled A New Romeo to His Juliet, which contained, I knew, William Ashley's poems to his wife, Julia McCombie, whose badge he had scattered so lavishly through the house. It was a marvel, I thought, that he had not removed the Italian putti and put Julia's badge there instead: it ap peared in every other room; it was scrolled over the front gate, carved in the panels of the staircase, even in two of the misericords of the church choir. It was also carved—a country job this—in the pavilion which stood at the center of the maze. Even looked at down the centuries, such devotion was a trifle overpowering; and to William's contemporaries, and possibly even to Julia herself, it must have been formidable, not to say stifling. After her death at twenty-six her widower, distracted with grief, had shut himself away with his books and his writing, and had had little, if anything, to do with the son who was too like the dead wife.
Our guide was telling the story now, under the portrait of Nicholas, aged eighteen, which hung over the chimneypiece.
". . . He was only seven when she died, and he was more or less left alone, one gathers, except for a series of tutors, none of whom lasted very long. He grew up wild, and he got wilder. I suppose it all sounds very corny and over- dramatic now, because it's been overdone as a story line, but of course this story's true, and it did have a really dramatic ending."
It was certainly dramatic, and it was probably most of
Now its only beauty was one of proportion; it was a sad ghost of a room, with the cool north light showing the empty shelves, or, sadder still, the shelves where two or three worthless and abandoned volumes took the space of twenty, and lay fallen in their places. Under the glass of the display tables the faded velvet showed darker patches where treasures had once lain. The globes had gone long since under the hammer. In the farthest bay were the locked sections, three sets of shelves behind gilded grilles. The section which had held valuable books was, like the display tables, empty of them; the other two were still filled with the books that Emory had striven in vain to be allowed to read—the private collections of Scholar William, and of Nicholas Ashley, his son.
The guide was saying something about Nick Ashley now, and people were smiling. One or two of them drifted over to look at the titles behind the grille, and I went with them.
The topmost shelves in William's section were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of volumes: a herbal, a few bird books, a county history or two, and a book of county maps, books on hunting and game preserving, a history of the Clan Chattan, and one or two thin reprints about local affairs. There were also a few stray volumes from the Journal of Emma Ashley. But on the more accessible shelves, Shake speare predominated. The Complete Works, in a massive, illustrated edition, comprised ten of the volumes, and I could see at least three other editions, flanked by commentaries and essays, and a few separate copies of some of the plays. Notably, there were three different copies of Romeo and Juliet, and beside them the volume which explained this interest, a book entitled A New Romeo to His Juliet, which contained, I knew, William Ashley's poems to his wife, Julia McCombie, whose badge he had scattered so lavishly through the house. It was a marvel, I thought, that he had not removed the Italian putti and put Julia's badge there instead: it ap peared in every other room; it was scrolled over the front gate, carved in the panels of the staircase, even in two of the misericords of the church choir. It was also carved—a country job this—in the pavilion which stood at the center of the maze. Even looked at down the centuries, such devotion was a trifle overpowering; and to William's contemporaries, and possibly even to Julia herself, it must have been formidable, not to say stifling. After her death at twenty-six her widower, distracted with grief, had shut himself away with his books and his writing, and had had little, if anything, to do with the son who was too like the dead wife.
Our guide was telling the story now, under the portrait of Nicholas, aged eighteen, which hung over the chimneypiece.
". . . He was only seven when she died, and he was more or less left alone, one gathers, except for a series of tutors, none of whom lasted very long. He grew up wild, and he got wilder. I suppose it all sounds very corny and over- dramatic now, because it's been overdone as a story line, but of course this story's true, and it did have a really dramatic ending."
It was certainly dramatic, and it was probably most of
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