Just as I am asking myself this, I meet Chilvern on the roof. He is
examining the chimneys. The others are below choosing their rooms. It
appears that no one has been up the narrow staircase except myself. He
shows me a different way down.
We take another turn over the house. This time more observantly. Various
orders of architecture. Chilvern, as an architect, makes a professional
joke. He says, "The best order of architecture is an order to build an
unlimited number of houses."
_Happy Thought._--Who was the first scientific builder?
_Answer._--Noah, when he invented arky-tecture. (N.B. This will do for a
Sunday conundrum.)
Part of it is very old, (the staircase and tower part where I've been),
and wall of the yard at the back, overgrown with ivy, shows the remains
of a genuine Norman arch.
Another quarter is decidedly Elizabethan, while a long and well
proportioned music room,--of which the walls and ceiling, once evidently
covered with paintings, are now dirty, damp, and exhibiting, here and
there, patches of colour not yet entirely faded,--is decidedly Italian.
Of this apartment, the crone can tell us nothing. She never recollects
it inhabited. We undo the huge shutters for ourselves, and bring down a
cloud of dust and cobwebs.
The rays of light, bursting violently, as it were, into the
darkness--become--after once passing the square panes, or where there
are no panes, the framework--suddenly impure, and in need of a patent
filter before they are fit for use.
Chilvern admires the proportions, and asks what we'll make, of this
room?
A pause.
_Happy Thought._--A Theatre. Nothing more evident; nothing easier.
I notice that both Boodels and Milburd catch at this idea. From which I
fancy, knowing from experience Boodels' turn for poetry, that they have
got, ready for production, what they will call, "little things of their
own that they've just knocked off."
Almost wish I hadn't suggested it. But if they've got something to act,
_so have I_. If they do _theirs_, they must let mine be done.
Settled, that it is to be a theatre.
Odd that no one part of the house seems finished. Saxons started it;
Normans got tired of it; Tudors touched it up; Annians added to it.
_Happy Thought._--(_Alliterative, on the plan of "A was an Apple pie."_)
Saxons started it:
Normans nurtured it:
Tudors touched it up:
Annians added to it;
Georgians joiced it:
Victorians vamped it.
"Joice," I explain, is a term derived from building; "to joice, _i. e._
to make joices to the floors." Chilvern says, "Pooh!" To "vamp" is
equal, in musical language, to "scamp" or to dodge up. The last owner
evidently has done this.
_Happy Thought._--Good name for a Spanish speculative builder--Don Vampa
di Scampo. Evidently an architect of _Châteaux d'Espagne_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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