green dampness, and peeling
off here and there. I suspect that the fashion of castellated, stuccoed
villas may have been set in the eighteenth century by Horace Walpole
when he built that marvellous edifice known as Strawberry Hill. I first
saw that achievement twenty years after the time of which I now write,
and recognized in it, as I thought, the parent of my former Rock Park
home and of innumerable of the latter's kindred. Strawberry Hill is
sprawling and vast, the progeny are liliputian, but the family likeness
is striking. The idea is to build something which shall seem to be all
that it is not. The gray-white stucco pretends to be stone, and the
lines of the stone courses are carefully painted on the roughened
surface; but nobody, since Horace's time, could ever have been deceived
by them. The castellated additions and ornamentation are all bogus, of
the cheapest and vulgarest sort. It is singular that a people so sincere
and solid as the English are supposed to be should adopt this fashion
for their dwellings. But then they are used to follow conventions and
adopt fashions set them by those whom they esteem to be their betters,
without thought, or activity of individual conscience. It is rather
matter for wonder, remembering what rascals and humbugs many of their
"betters" have been, that middle-class England is not more of a whited
sepulchre than it is. I do not mean to cast any reflections upon the
admirable and beguiling Horace; but he was a highly civilized person,
and had a brother named Robert, and perhaps solid sincerity should not
be expected from such a combination.

Our villa, within, was close and comfortable enough, for its era
and degree; but the furniture was ponderous and ugly to the point of
nightmare. The chairs, tables, and sofas wore the semblance of solid
mahogany, twisted and tortured in a futile struggle to achieve elegance;
the carvings, or mouldings, were screwed or glued on, and the lines of
structure, intended to charm the eye, accomplished only the discomfort
of the body. The dining-table was like a plateau; the sideboard
resembled a cliff-dwelling. The carpets were of the Brussels ilk:
acanthus-leaves and roses and dahlias wreathed in inextricable
convolutions, glowing with the brightest and most uncompromising
hues. The lace curtains were imitation lace; the damask curtains
were imitation damask. The bedsteads.... But this is not a History of
England. After all, we were snug and com