My Yorkshire friend was saying that she hated being in an old house. She said that there seemed to be other people in it besides the living....
I am speaking of a peculiar sense, ineffable, indescribable, but which everyone knows again who has once had it, and which to many of us has grown into a cherished habit - the sense of being companioned by the past......
For though I should like to have seen ancient Athens, or Carthage, and though I have pined to hear the singers of the last century, I know that any other period than this of the world's history would be detestable to live in. For one thing - one among other instances of brutish dullness - our ancestors knew nothing of the emotion of the past, the rapture of old towns and houses....
This emotion, at times this rapture, depends upon a number of mingled causes, its origin is complex and subtle, like that of all things exquisite, the flavour of certain dishes, the feel of sea or mountain air, in which chemical peculiarities and circumstances of temperature join with a hundred trifles, seaweed, herbs, tar, heather and so forth, and like, more particularly, music and poetry, whose essence is so difficult in ascertaining. And in this case, the causes that first occur to our mind merely suggest a number more. Of these there is a principal one which might be summed up thus: That the action of time makes man's works into natural objects.
For, after all, painting, architecture, music, poetry are things which touch us in a very intermittent way...to the capacity of deriving pleasure from nature, not merely through the eye, but through all the senses...How different if we find ourselves in some city, nay village, rendered habitable for our soul by the previous dwelling therein of others, of souls!...the daily life, common joy, suffering, heroism of the past."
a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
excerpts taken from: In Praise of the Old Houses by Vernon Lee.
