The Village Squire, 1981-07, Page 34Last Word
by Eileen Cade -Edwards
The absence of attics
Where do we hide our love letters nowadays?
How strange that the modern home
v 'i all its labor saving devices and its
L k;,phasis on recreational facilities,
should so sadly lack that enchanted
storehouse of sentiment and family
Tore --the attic. How indeed, did those
spacious "hold -alts" ever become out of
date when their usefulness was so
obvious?
Besides being the perfect place to store
those leftovers from the family's past,
think what a wonderful place it was to
keep youngsters amused on rainy days.
There were endless possibilities! A boy or
girl could spend hours rummaging
through the nameless objects of a past
age. Very often there would be handmade
toys such as rocking horses with black
painted saddles and manes and doll
houses carefully made from orange
crates. There might be dolls with rag or
wooden bodies and painted china faces.
Youngsters could dress up in unbeliev-
ably elaborate garments. When they tired
of that pastime they could explore the
yellowed pages of treasured old books.
some of them perhaps, guarding mes-
sages or small mementoes or even
pressed flowers.
And the love letters! Oh, the love
letters, so poetically gentle and polite!
Where do people hide their love letters
nowadays? Or do they use the telephone
instead? Historians tell us many a
"missing link" in a family tree has been
located through a letter, postcard or
diary, found quite accidentally in the
attic of an old house. Philatelists quite
frequently turn up valuable stamps from
the same source.
As a child I longed for a rainy day. for it
was only then that I was permitted to
climb the steep and narrow stairs from an
upstairs bedroom to "the room above",
where, with the gentle sound of rain
falling on the roof and the dim light
filtering through the dust and the grime
on the skylight window, I would rifle
greedily through the treasures that once
belonged to aunts and great-aunts,
uncles and great-uncles and probably
their parents before them.
In their day almost everyone owned his
Eileen Cade -Edwards is a London writer
whose last contribution to Village Squire
was the St. Luke's -in -the -Garden chapel
daytrip in June.
PG. 32 VILLAGE SQUIRE/JULY 1981
or her own trunk so it was easy to form
mental pictures of these shadowy rela-
tives by the treasures, also by the odds
and ends they had seen fit to save. Their
choice of books and magazines was also a
help in giving them shape.
From the fly -leaf on a child's annual in
one of the trunks was the identifying
message: "This is the property of Ben
Locke, without whose permission this
book may not be borrowed" (I used to
wonder how he would respond if he could
know how often I had "borrowed" his
precious book --without his permission).
There were also several sketches of
very -early -model cars, a bundle of maps
tied with red string and a set of hand
carved ivory (I think) elephants. Perhaps,
someone who had a weakness for
travelling, by one means or another.
No one seems to know what happen.
ed to Uncle Ben. Perhaps he settled in
some distant land and might even now
return one day and claim the old t! link
that, as far as I know, still reposes in a
corner of the attic of my childhood.
Then there was Aunt Millie. Some-
times I would go through her trunk, but
not often because the dark. heavy clothes
depressed me, as did the yellowed,
musty -smelling church magazines and
the torn sheet music.
I never could remember who owned the
two sand -coloured, hump -backed trunks
that squeaked as one opened their lids.
But they were as exciting and mysterious
as Aunt Millie's was depressing. Nothing
in the pair of them made much sense but 1
used to imagine they contained details of
hidden treasure and that if I could only
open one of the old volumes at the exact
right spot there would be clues enough
to direct me to vast family fortunes.
But of the five trunks sheltered in our
spacious attic by far the most interesting
to me was that of great-aunt Agatha's.
She must have been quite a gal! In
contrast to the dull grey outside the
window, the attic would literally glow
with the wealth of color from her trunk.
There were frocks of applegreen and
lavender -blue silk and striped mauve and
orange cotton of the finest weave. There
was a ball gown in stiff eggshell blue
satin and a lovely white wedding dress.
and all of them gathered or tucked and
decorated with tiny colourless beads or
• fine lace. 'There were silk roses (possibly
from discarded hats) badly crushed but
never -the -less still beautiful, and lengths
of heavy silk and satin ribbon.
And there were birthday and Valen-
tine's Day cards and dance programs.
And Aunt Agatha kept a diary. Not even
my mother knew this. In neat handwrit-
ing she told of her nervous excitement as
she prepared for a dance, a trip on the
river and what must have been her first
ball.
Oh, they were great places all right --
those attics! All the magic, the mystery
and the mad moments of people who now
were only names, lived there --only a
short flight of stairs above the rest of the
house, but countless years and miles
away. ❑
Church -lloue
Antique6
We have a large selection of
dressers, tables, chairs, and some
fine Huron County primitives in-
cluding desks flat to the wall and
butter nut sideboard. length 63"
Just west of Hwy. #4
in the Village of Hensel)
Call 262-2192
Open Most Weekends
10 - 5 p.m.
88 Queen St.
Weekdays 3 - 5 p.m.