expert. I know now that it is no good listening to a Chippendale chair
to see if it is really Chippendale; one must stroke it in order to
find out whether it is a "genuine antique" or only a modern
reproduction; but it is obvious that years of stroking would be
necessary before an article of furniture would be properly responsive.
Is it worth while wasting these years of one's life? Indeed, is it
worth while (I ask nervously) bothering whether a chair or a table is
antique or modern so long as it is both useful and beautiful?


Well, let me tell you what happened to us yesterday. We found a
dresser which appealed to us considerably, and we stood in front of
it, looking at it. We decided that except for a little curley-wiggle
at the top it was the jolliest dresser we had seen, "That's a fine
old dresser," said the shopman, coming up at that moment, and he
smacked it encouragingly. "A really fine old dresser, that." We
agreed. "Except for those curley-wiggles," I added, pointing to them
with my umbrella. "If we could take those off." He looked at me
reproachfully. "You wouldn't take those off----" he said. "Why,
that's what tells you that it's a Welsh dresser of 1720." We didn't
buy that dresser. We decided that the size or the price was all wrong.
But I wonder now, supposing we had bought it, whether we should have
had the pluck to remove the curley-wiggles (and let people mistake it
for an English dresser of 1920) in order that, so abbreviated, it
might have been more beautiful.


For furniture is not beautiful merely because it is old. It is absurd
to suppose that everything made in 1720--or 1620 or 1520--was made
beautifully, as it would be absurd to say that everything made in 1920