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A Child of the Twenties
A suburban childhood of the Twenties
seen from the Ninteen Nineties
by John Robert Laws 1921-2008
Part 5.
Surely the most elegant piece of furniture
stood opposite the fireplace behind the settee. A china cabinet to match the
rest of the furniture, standing around six feet high by four feet six, with its
mirrored back multiplying the pretty little collection of china and figurines.
Although fragile in appearance it has survived a war and several house removals
and is still with us, No doubt my mother lived in fear and trembling when I was
in the same room and hence my feeling that the room was little used.
The front door of the house led into a
normal hall and passage with a long red and green 'Turkish' carpet runner, over
the linoleum which covered all our floors. The hazard of a slip mat guarded
every door and a matching carpet strip ascended the stairs, held in place by
gleaming stair rods, another regular chore. The wall of the hallway carried a
wooden moulding about three feet from the floor, below which it was papered in
a heavy moulded paper and painted. The wall above was papered in the normal
way. As in all rooms there was the obligatory picture rail with pictures, of
which more anon.
The stairway was straight and
unremarkable, once I tumbled from top to bottom in a careless moment with no
worse effects than considerable surprise. Going up or down in a more
conventional manner could be aided by a substantial banister rail which was not
however very good for sliding down on account of the newel post sticking out at
the bottom. The stairs faced the front of the house and at the top a passage
went on down to the back and a landing turned round to the front and led to the
main bedroom.
As a small infant I had my cot in there
with my parents but must have generally slept like a log as there are few
memories of wakefulness. Perhaps it is just one winter of memory before I had a
little room of my own. There were venetian blinds at the windows and an
occasional motor vehicle would trundle past before I slept and its lights
throwing the pattern of the slatted blinds on the wall and moved it round the
room as it passed. It must have been that year that the electric light was put
in. I was in my cot with some childhood ailment and watched as a rising and
falling two light filaments were put above the dressing table in the window bay
and wired up through the ceiling. What a pity to have missed the rest of the
performance.
Each main bedroom had a marble topped
washstand with a set comprising a hand basin, water ewer, soap dish, and
toothbrush vase, in the double cupboard below were a pair of chamber pots in
the matching pattern. This set was patterned with large red roses, but of these
only the hand basin now survives. Being a large one, it has gone through a
number of uses, from the earliest being I was told. My bath in the earliest
weeks, to mixing Christmas puddings in succeeding years and holding wine much later.
Now
Gas fires were fitted in the main bedrooms
to provide a trifle of heat at bedtime and a brass jar of water stood in front
to stop it drying out the air. Not that the furniture stood in any danger of
drying out in those days although it was all solid wood, even plywood does not
seem to come in, till much later. There must have been more furniture, but
nothing built in except the larder and the dresser in the kitchen. The
freestanding wardrobes were big since one needed plenty of clothing and were supplemented
by large chests of drawers and blanket chests. Bedroom furniture was only
slightly less ornamented than downstairs.
The beds varied through the plain iron,
and the iron with brass knobs and fittings to the wooden headboard and
footboard veneered in burr walnut which could not have been part of the
original set up in 1912 as it did not match anything else. The bed springs of
that day were a sort of lightly stretched steel spring fabric which became a hammock
with the passing of years and can be consigned to the past without a trace of
nostalgia. Sheets were white and cotton, or linen for the fortunate, blankets
thick and numerous and the eiderdown de rigueur though with often no trace of
eider ancestry. The white quilts were not quilted but of a heavy cotton
material with an embossed pattern. These whites and white lace curtains fitted
the general darkness of the furniture and decor as did the use of mirrors in
the furniture and over fire places wherever possible.
I was moved into my own minuscule bedroom
at an early age and the one thing that has stuck in my mind is the wallpaper.
It had vertical pink stripes perhaps three inches wide with ovals holding
arrangements of roses a little over a foot above each other and the stripes
separated from the ivory background by thin silver lines. It is the only
wallpaper I recall from that house but the bed was tight to the wall and I had
time to gaze at it. In that room my Mother would read me a chapter from a
handsome volume of 'Robinson Crusoe' or from 'Tom Sawyer' once I was settled
in. Although occupying that room for five or six years it was never dark in
memory. I can however remember reading under the bedclothes with a torch after
the light had been put out so winter darkness did exist Surely the most elegant piece of furniture
stood opposite the fireplace behind the settee. A china cabinet to match the
rest of the furniture, standing around six feet high by four feet six, with its
mirrored back multiplying the pretty little collection of china and figurines.
Although fragile in appearance it has survived a war and several house removals
and is still with us, No doubt my mother lived in fear and trembling when I was
in the same room and hence my feeling that the room was little used.
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With grateful thanks to Simon Knott for permission to reproduce his photographs on this site see :-http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/
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