On all sides, the grave little grey stone cottage breaks into surprises. Its high slated roof makes it look like a French farm-house, and one approaches the plain cottage door by a tiny colonnade, the pillars of which came from the pavilion which used to stand on the bridge near-by, and which was carried away to another part of the park to become the Park School. Windows from the old dairy are set into the rounded apse at the end of the dining-room, and the ‘æil-de-bæuf’ in the bedroom overhead is like a port-hole. The small turret in the centre of the house might be a pigeon cote. Its sides are decorated with little clusters of columns and with recesses which hold monograms. We added a long wooden room to the southwest comer of the house and now its walls are quite covered with roses and honeysuckle. G. M. Young once compared this room to the British Empire, saying that it began as a shanty and ended as a palace. When we first built it, it was undisguisedly a hut, its sections clearly indicated by thin lathes of dark wood, and in those days only the pointed roof protected us from winter cold or summer heat. Its walls were distempered in apricot colour and the mantelpiece was merely a rough beam of old oak found in a barn at Quidhampton.
Since then my friends have practically remade the room. Rex Whistler classicized it with a ceiling and a formal panel above the fireplace; and he painted the amusing little wreaths on its beams as a surprise for me one night when I was dressing for dinner before a party. Geoffrey Taylor and John Stuart-Wortley laid the large squares of pale brown ash wood, which now make the floor; and the pictures are mostly presents from their painters. Willie Walton chose the piano, and bookcases encroach more and more on to the wall space. It is now a very pleasant room in which to sit, either alone or with a few friends.
Chapter Eighteen
REMEMBERED VOICES
Visitors to the Daye House nearly always remark on the green silence which seems to encircle it, and this quietness is truly one of its chief characteristics. Yet, outside and in, some of my happiest memories there are memories of voices—the birds outside and conversation within.
Throughout the spring months, the Daye House lies within a ‘Charm of birds’. The park wall encloses a bird sanctuary, and from four in the morning until past sunset, there rises from the woods and copses in the park a confused medley of harmonious jangling songs. At this time in the year, the house seems to become actually a part of the wood. It is possible to distinguish the separate notes of those birds who happen to be singing near-by; but beyond and behind these, there continues away into the distance a widening circle of sound. The whole air is full of it.
Till I lived in the Daye House, I had no idea of how elaborate is the language used by birds. Thrushes especially have an immense vocabulary; and I copied down one morning, as carefully as I could, the actual words sung by a thrush in the laburnum outside window. This was his song:
Wit. Wit. Willy, Willy, Wit
Tchelitchef. Tchelitchef.
O-o-o-oy.
Dirt. Dirt. Dirt
Birdy, birdy, pretty birdy
Quick. Quick.
Give me a Liqueur. Give me a Liqueur.
Tch. Tch. Tch.
He’s wheeling in tea and balloons.
See. See. See.
Be brave. Be brave.
Wor-r-rds. Wor-r-rds. Wor-r-rds.
Be a cheat. Be a cheat.
Give me some tea.
Just now. Just now.
I’ve been wet. I’ve been wet.
Not a word. Not a wor-r-rd.
Beer. Beer. Beer.
No he won’t. No he won’t.
Happy. Happy.
Wobble a woodle too.
Piano. Piano.
Cruel. Cruel.
Stand. Come here.
Did you see? Did you see?
Boys boiling in oil.
Willy cot. Willy say
Oh we know. Oh we know.
We go wheeling along.
Se-e-e. Where is he? See sir. See sir.
Let me kiss you.
Chicken beef and ham
Give him gurls. Give him gurls.
Is he going to scream! to scream?
What a spree! What a spree!
I cannot pretend that the talk inside the house often reaches this level of unexpectedness, but conversation has always been the chief amusement in the Daye House. This is because there is not room in it for a large party. When there are many people staying in a house, games will bring them together, but they only come between a handful of intimates. For them, talk is the thing.
During our first two years here, Mildred’s talk made the charm and the character of the house; and now, nearly thirteen years after her death, it is hard to recapture and to express its peculiar quality. It was pitched in a very quiet key, yet never was conversation more full of surprises. So demure she looked as she sat there, and yet so unexpected were the things she said. People, their lives and their characters, were her absorbing interest, and she saw far more deeply into things than do most gossips. For gossip was what she enjoyed— talking about things which are happening to one’s acquaintances; but with Mildred this gossip was threaded on to a tiny silken cord of inspired knowledge of the characters of the people about whom she gossiped. She cared for them more than for the things
