Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/30

18  by a strong brick wall, stuccoed white, and about five feet high. On the east side this boundary was distant about a hundred and fifty yards from the house; and immediately within the wall, and exactly east of the main building, was Captain Sparrow's house — or, as it was generally called, the Lodge, — the wall at this point being indented, and projecting into the outer road, so that the back wall of the house was without the general line of the boundary wall. The carriage entrance was about fifty yards to the north of Sparrow's house. There was no gate here, but only an opening in the wall about twenty feet wide, whence the road led by a slight sweep up to the portico on the north side of the house; a rough barricade of carts and carriages removed from their axles had been placed in this gap. Fifty yards more to the north came the end wall of the stables, which ran along the enclosure, their back wall corresponding with it, the open front of the stalls facing the park. In continuation of the stables was the range of servants' huts, also running along the wall and extending up to the north-east corner of it. The north wall was distant about two hundred and fifty yards from the house, and three hundred yards long. The west wall met the north wall at an obtuse angle, and ran obliquely to meet the west end of the south wall, which latter was more than a quarter of a mile long, and nearly three hundred yards from the south side of the buildings. Thus three sides of the park boundary were parallel to the house, and the fourth inclined to it, — the whole enclosure forming a trapezoid, the triangular portion of which was occupied by the vegetable and fruit garden. This garden was separated from the lawn, at the distance of some fifty yards from the house, by a thick hedge. Outside the park wall on the east side ran the road from cantonments to the city, about three quarters of a mile off, traversing a plain on which stood the court-house, surrounded by a grove of scattered trees. Opposite Sparrow's house, on the other side of this road, was a village surrounded by a mud wall. On the other three sides the park was surrounded by fields, at this season bare of crops. A line of well-grown trees ran along the wall on all sides; the park itself was dotted with timber, and laid out with grass, the turf being at this season of the year as hard as the roads and of a bright red colour. The garden, on the west side of the park, was thickly planted with bushes and fruit-trees.

The building itself has already been described in general terms. It was a very large rectangular block, substantially built of brick without regard to economy in the thickness of the walls, stuccoed red outside, flat-roofed, one storey high, with the floor raised about five feet from the ground. The portico was on the north side, and from underneath it a flight of broad steps gave access to the house, the centre rooms of which consisted of an anteroom, dining-room, drawing-room, and billiard-room, leading in order from one to the other, all very lofty and spacious, and communicating by two large folding-doors in each wall. On the left or east of the landing-place was a sort of pantry and storeroom, used to heat the dishes brought from the distant cook-house before dinner; and on the right a guard-room, communicating with the top of the steps, and in which also was the staircase to the roof. Next to these four public rooms on the west side was a suite of four large rooms, used in ordinary times as the commissioner's private office and dressing-room, his wife's bedroom, her boudoir, and her maid's room, communicating with each other and with the public rooms by folding-doors. A similar suite of four rooms, one of which was used as an office and occasional dining-room, the other three being usually reserved for guests, was on the east side. Outside these two suites of rooms were wide and lofty verandas, supported on substantial pillars, extending along the east and west sides, and terminated by bathing-rooms which projected into them at the four corners. There was a similar veranda on the south, outside the billiard-room. Part of the middle of the east veranda was also occupied by bath-rooms attached to the guest-chambers. The centre rooms were somewhat higher than the outer, and were lighted when the doors were closed by rectangular clerestory windows. The outer rooms, again, were higher than the veranda, and were lighted in the same way.

South of the house, and about thirty yards from it, was the bath-house — a rectangular building containing a swimming-bath about thirty feet long by twenty broad, enclosed on all sides by a wide platform, raised a few inches above the level of the water. The roof was supported partly on pillars which ran round the edge of the bath, and externally by a wall resting on brick arches which extended round the building on the outer edge of the platform; the spaces between the arches had been filled up with a brick wall seven feet high for the sake of 