Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2Tytler, Sarah
History
Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2
Tytler, Sarah
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
The house is built of reddish granite in what is called the baronial
style, with a sprinkling of peaked gables and pepper-box turrets, and
a square tower with a clock which is said to keep the time all over
the parish. Above the principal entrance are the coats of arms,
carved, coloured, and picked out with gold. There are two bas-reliefs
serving to indicate the character of the building--a hunting-lodge
under the patronage of St. Hubert, supported by St. Andrew of Scotland
and St. George of England, the stag between whose antlers the sacred
cross sprang, forming part of the representation. The other bas-relief
shows groups of men engaged in Highland games.
Within doors many a relic of the chase appears in antlered heads
surmounting inscriptions in brass of the date of the slaying of the
stag and the name of the slayer. The engravings on the walls are
mostly of mountain landscapes and sporting scenes, in which Landseer's
hand is prominent, and of family adventures in making this ascent or
crossing that ford.
The furniture is as Scotch as may be--chairs and tables, with few
exceptions, of polished birch hangings and carpets with the tartan
check on the velvet pile, the royal "sets" in all their bewildering
variety: "royal Stewart," strong in scarlet; "Victoria," with the
check relieved on a white ground; "Albert," on a deep blue, and
"hunting Stewart," which suddenly passes into a soft vivid green,
crossed by lines of red and yellow.
Drawing-room, dining-room, billiard-room, and library are spacious
enough for royalty, while small enough for comfort when royalty is in
happy retreat in little more than a large family circle rusticating
from choice. The corridors look brown and simple, like the rest of the
house, and lack the white statuary of Osborne, and the superb vases,
cabinets, and pictures of Buckingham Palace and Windsor. By the
chimney-piece in the entrance hall rest the tattered colours once
borne through flood and field by two famous regiments, one of them
"the Cameronians."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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