The
house consisted of an early Tudor keep, married to a Jacobean house of
rose-coloured brick, which Lady Tatham had since her widowhood succeeded
in freeing from the ugly stucco which had once disguised and defaced it.
It could not claim the classical charm, the learned elegance of Threlfall
Tower. Duddon was romantic--a medley of beautiful things, full of
history, colour, and time, fused by the trees and fern, the luxuriant
creepers and mosses, and of a mild and rainy climate into a lovely
irregular whole; with no outline to speak of, yet with nothing that one
could seriously wish away. The size was great, yet no one but an
auctioneer could have called it "superb"; it seemed indeed to take a
pleasure in concealing the whole extent of its clustered building; and by
the time you were aware of it, you had fallen in love with Duddon, and
nothing mattered.
But if without, in its broad external features, Duddon betrayed a
romantic freedom in the minds of those who had planned it, nothing could
have been more orderly or exquisite than its detail, when detail had to
be considered. The Italian garden round the house with its formal masses
of contrasting colour, its pleached alleys, and pergolas, its steps,
vases, and fountains, was as good in its way as the glorious wildness of
the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought--"How
clever is man who can make all these things!"--so diverse, and so
pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its
refinement, the rightness of every touch.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116