The Mansion

Henry Van Dyke

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Description

Henry van Dyke's The Mansion opens on the Weightman mansion, a house of calm and reserved opulence on an avenue no longer fashionable for residence. Its chocolate-colored stone front, heavy cornices, and broad plate-glass windows are not beautiful, van Dyke says, but eminently respectable and imposing. The house seems half-disdainful of the jewelers, milliners, and florists crowding its neighborhood, since its foundations lie in high finance.

John Weightman is like the house he built himself into thirty years ago: solid, correct, and justly successful, a self-made man who followed an esteemed pattern. Inside are a Louis Quinze reception-room, an Empire drawing-room, and a Jacobean dining-room, with Barbizon pictures, Barye bronzes, Rodin marbles, Persian carpets, and Chinese porcelains, all carefully kept up to date. Van Dyke builds his tale on a rich man's house as the portrait of his soul.

Catalog record

CREATORHenry Van Dyke
COLLECTIONBOOKS
FORMATTXT
FILE SIZE66 KB
LICENSEPUBLIC_DOMAIN
RIGHTSPUBLIC DOMAIN
SOURCEProject Gutenberg

Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/704

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