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STAIRCASE HALL AND GALLERY
The Vestibule opens on to the Staircase
Hall, which at once reveals the skilled craftsmanship and the
literary characteristics of the building-Lord Astor requiring
a house which would personify literature in addition to being
representative of art, craft and architecture.
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The Staircase Hall is panelled
in oak, and has a fine chimneypiece in pavonazetto marble.
The floor is of marble, jasper, porphyry and onyx laid in
geometrical patterns, by Robert Davison, who was responsible
for the marble work throughout the building.
The Staircase rises in three
flights to the Gallery on the first floor, and from balustrading
to treads is carved in solid mahogany.
The seven beautifully carved
wood figures on the newel posts at once attract attention.
They were the work of Thomas Nicholls, who insisted upon
their being kept in his bedroom before his eyes, and they
were not delivered until this great craftsman died. |
| The figures represent the chief
characters in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, which
Lord Astor considered to be the finest novel ever written.
On the left, at the bottom of the stairs, there is the resourceful,
gallant Gascon, 'D'Artagnan', one of the greatest figures
in romance and described by Stevenson as 'a man so witty,
rough, kind and upright that he takes the heart by storm'.
On the right there stands 'Madame Bonacieux', who, it will
be remembered, was sacrificed by her avaricious husband in
order that he should gain favour with Cardinal Richelieu.
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The figure higher up on the left
is represented as slipping off a scholar's gown and simultaneously
reading a love letter. This is 'Aramis', the mildest and most
gracious of the trio, who, torn between the gentler sex and the
Church, ultimately 'retired into a convent'. Next to him, on the
right, is the character known as 'Milady', that beautiful adventuress
who 'would have seduced a saint', and paid the penalty for her
misdeeds at the hands of the Executioner of Lille. Behind her
sits 'Bazin', the valet of Aramis, a studious person who afterwards
became a lay brother. He is depicted as studying theology whilst
he brushes his master's clothes. The stately figure half-way up
the stairs is 'Athos', the melancholy Musketeer who, when he was
the Comte de la Fere, married Milady and found that she was branded
with the fleur-de-lis. The trio is completed by the burly, truculent,
good-hearted 'Porthos', who, with his musket on his shoulder,
occupies a commanding position at the upper post. If there is
any truth in the suggestion that Two Temple Place is too ornate,
then Porthos, with his inordinate love of display, finds himself
in congenial surroundings.
| The arcading surrounding the
Gallery on the first floor has ten pillars of solid ebony,
specially imported, and now irreplaceable. On six of the carved
oak capitals surmounting these pillars there are statues by
Nicholls of characters from the novels of three American writers.
Two of the figures are from the 'Leatherstocking Novels' of
Fenimore Cooper, the first being The Last of the Mohicans,
the nickname of Uncas, a leading character in the book. The
second statue is that of The Pathfinder, one of the names
given to Leatherstocking (otherwise Natty Bumpo), whose 'bravery,
resolution and woodland skill make him a type of the hardy
race who pushed westward the reign of civilization'. These
two figures were subsequently taken by Lord Astor as the supporters
of his Coat of Arms, possibly because in the intrepid Leatherstocking
he saw his great grandfather, John Jacob Astor. a Pioneer
ranking with those whose 'great commercial enterprises have
enriched nations, peopled wildernesses and extended the bounds
of Empire'. |
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Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter
is represented by the unfortunate 'Hester Prynne' and the sensitive
'Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale'. Hester Prynne is seen with the scarlet
A embroidered on her breast, which the God-fearing pioneers of
New England required her to wear, by way of penance for her sin
with Dimmesdale, her husband's friend. These two figures remind
us that the Puritans, whilst demanding liberty for themselves,
were the keenest persecutors of those who disagreed with them.
The two remaining characters are those of Washington Irving's
Rip Van Winkle and his daughter. At the feet of Rip Van Winkle
will be observed his dog, 'his sole domestic adherent', and below
his daughter there is the gnomes' keg of liquor, from which Rip
had quenched his thirst and was freed from a termagant wife by
twenty years' sleep.
Between these six carved oak figures
and the stained glass ceiling, which admirably lights the figures
and is coved and panelled with carved pendants, there is a frieze
in rilievo by Nicholls. In carved oak, its eighty-two characters
portray readily recognised scenes from Shakespeare's Henry the
Eighth, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and Macbeth.
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