" In
each other's houses they peer at the pictures, handle the selvage of
hangings, look at the bottoms of china....
I wonder if it IS the old pawnshop in the blood.
I doubt if Lady Drew and the Olympians did that sort of thing, but
here I may be only clinging to another of my former illusions about
aristocracy and the State. Perhaps always possessions have been Booty,
and never anywhere has there been such a thing as house and furnishings
native and natural to the women and men who made use of them....
VI
For me, at least, it marked an epoch in my uncle's career when I learnt
one day that he had "shopped" Lady Grove. I realised a fresh, wide,
unpreluded step. He took me by surprise with the sudden change of scale
from such portable possessions as jewels and motor-cars to a stretch of
countryside. The transaction was Napoleonic; he was told of the place;
he said "snap"; there were no preliminary desirings or searchings. Then
he came home and said what he had done. Even my aunt was for a day or
so measurably awestricken by this exploit in purchase, and we both went
down with him to see the house in a mood near consternation.
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