Autobiographical fiction; England -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Teachers -- Fiction
Sawston was already familiar to him. But he knew it as an amateur, and
under an official gaze it grouped itself afresh. The school, a bland
Gothic building, now showed as a fortress of learning, whose outworks
were the boarding-houses. Those straggling roads were full of the
houses of the parents of the day-boys. These shops were in bounds,
those out. How often had he passed Dunwood House! He had once confused
it with its rival, Cedar View. Now he was to live there—perhaps for
many years. On the left of the entrance a large saffron drawing-room,
full of cosy corners and dumpy chairs: here the parents would be
received. On the right of the entrance a study, which he shared with
Herbert: here the boys would be caned—he hoped not often. In the hall
a framed certificate praising the drains, the bust of Hermes, and a
carved teak monkey holding out a salver. Some of the furniture had come
from Shelthorpe, some had been bought from Mr. Annison, some of it was
new. But throughout he recognized a certain decision of arrangement.
Nothing in the house was accidental, or there merely for its own sake.
He contrasted it with his room at Cambridge, which had been a jumble
of things that he loved dearly and of things that he did not love at
all. Now these also had come to Dunwood House, and had been distributed
where each was seemly—Sir Percival to the drawing-room, the photograph
of Stockholm to the passage, his chair, his inkpot, and the portrait of
his mother to the study. And then he contrasted it with the Ansells’
house, to which their resolute ill-taste had given unity. He was
extremely sensitive to the inside of a house, holding it an organism
that expressed the thoughts, conscious and subconscious, of its
inmates. He was equally sensitive to places. He would compare Cambridge
with Sawston, and either with a third type of existence, to which, for
want of a better name, he gave the name of “Wiltshire.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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