Raftered House - How the Old Folks Lived on the Hills

摘要

These early memories are no doubt unwittingly supplemented with information learned afterwards, which has dripped into them, and it is not worthwhile, even if it were possible, to strain the two apart.'The quotation comes from the most delightful book 'As We Were' by E.F.Benson, a second reading of which is perhaps even more enjoyable than the first. The words occur where Mr.Benson is describing the preparations for a dinner party in his boyhood days at Wellington College, where his father, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was Headmaster. The book contains no illustrations, but, by the greatest of good fortune, there happened to be, in the room where I was reading it, a few pieces of old china, which illustrated the passage better than any sketch could have done. The china had been brought to Kotagiri by M.D.Cockburn something like ninety years ago, when he retired from the Madras Civil Service, and pioneered coffee-planting on the Eastern Nilgiris. The pieces now adorn the mantelpiece of a room in his old home. The coincidence is that they are of the identical make -Copeland, late Spode - which Mr.Benson speaks of in his book as being in use at Wellington College in his parents' time. Dinner then was Dinner with a capital D.