Laughing House Book

ouse by WARWICK DEEPING 1 1947 NEW YORK THE DIAL PRESS V WARWICK DEEPING PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA LAUGHING HOUSE - 3. so . J ..,..- J, j OCT171947 THIS is the story of a House, a house which was born in more spacious days, and sat placidly for many years like a white bird in a green nest, a house that suffered one war and grievous sorrow, and survived to suffer in yet another war. Its history is human his tory, as a houses history should be, if it has strength and breadth, beauty and dignity. Many such houses are doomed to die. Some will survive to live strange, new lives, for the new rhythm like jazz music is not of the age that created them. To me old houses are alive they are persons, impreg nated with the memories of those who have dwelt in them, old farmhouses, old cottages, old mansions. They are not mere boxes of brick, hygienic but hideous, in which people seem to live like hens in a Battery. My prejudices, if they can be called prejudices, are those of an old man, and to the young the old can be boring. I understand that to some of the young we are known as Bumbles. Well, this is the book of a Bumble. Beech Hill was built by my great grandfather in the year of Waterloo, a white and spacious house, always 2 Laughing House suggesting to me that if Nash had designed country houses this might have been one of them. It stands on the lower slope of a hill, facing south-east, and looking over its high blue railings at a pool walled with local stone, a great wreath of rhododendrons, and a steep green valley rising to the splendid beeches of Beech hanger Wood. A country road from Framley Green to Roman Heath runs between the railings and the pool, a quiet road not well known to week-end motorists. All about the place the ground rises steeply, green fields and woodland, yet the house catches all the sunlight. It stands on a gentle slope, with the great white pil lars of its portico-porch set solidly and almost defiantly in massive paving. A semi-circular drive linked two fine iron gates, but they went to the war, poor dears, like the iron railings. My earliest recollections are of those two great white portico pillars, and of my father standing there after breakfast and saying good morning to the beech trees on the hill. I remember swarming up one of the pillars, and sliding down with a precipitancy that left my backside sore for a week. The broad, flat paving of the portico provided a parade-ground for my lead soldiers, horse, foot and artillery. It was about the most inconvenient spot I could have chosen so far as the rest of the household were concerned, but it pleased me to see all that coloured soldiery, red, blue, green and white embattled on the old grey stones. Beech Hill was built in the shape of an L, with broad, Laughing House 3 low gable ends, and a slated roof with a generous over lap which gave a deep shadow-band. Attached to the rearward wing was a little orangery in the classic style. The great sash-windows showed white between green shutters. Back of the house was a base-court, and beyond it the stables and outhouses in stone and old red brick, with a little belfry and clock and wind-vane rising above the coach-house. You could stable a dozen horses here, and four carriages or gigs. Two cottages housed my chauffeur and his wife, and the Potters, my gardeners. All the doors were painted a soft blurred blue. The garden sloped upwards in lawns and terraces to the glass-houses and walled fruit garden and orchard. The terraced borders were filled with flowering trees, roses, and herbaceous plants. Below lay a tennis court and a croquet lawn. Beyond and above the fruit and vegetable garden towered the Scotch firs and oaks and cypresses of High Wood. From the front windows you could see the pool, glassy and black and still, with its old stone wall, lilies and bulrushes and yellow flags, and the moorhens pad dling. In the spring its great wreath of rhododendrons filled it with reflected colour...Read More