HOUSE OF WONDERS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 227, 23 March 1912, Page 8

HOUSE OF WONDERS

HEIRESS AND HER HEIRLOOMS. A novelist would have to be endowed with a fast-moving imagination to create a story that would equal the facts in the life of Miss Emilie Grigsby, the ward of the late Mr. Charles T. Yerks, the New York and London street-ear magnate. One of the most magnificent collections of vertu in the world belongs to her, but it is all going to be sold, along

with the house that holds it, for Miss Grigsby is restless, and is quitting America for good. Miss Grigsby was born in Kentucky—old Kentucky, as the .'songs have it. She was taught modest dignity in a convent somewhere.

'lt has also been rumored, since she. put the convent days behind her, that she was engaged to marry Prince Windiscbgratz, of Hungary. This, however, was denied by her maternal grandfather. The house was opened a few days ago for those fortunate enough to receive an invitation to roam through the rooms crowded with treasures.

It is a great pile of grey stone (says the New York Tribune), and has an imposing approach of two flights of steps that lead to a glass and iron covered vestibule. On entering the first impression is that the house is a great church. For instance, the entrance hall gets its light solely through jewelled altar lamps from an Italian cathedral. Here and there is a dull glimmer of old gold and blue from rich tapestries and Persian rugs. The atmosphere is deliciously solemn. By turning to the left you glimpse at the drawing-room, but merely a glance will not satisfy. It is furnished after the fashion of the Regency, and you begin to appreciate more fully than perhaps you have done before how wealthy Miss Grigsby really is.

This time the light filters through globes of various colors that rest on the top of Venetian columns. You revel in the soft luxury of purplish maroon and orange. You marvel at the exquisite fitness of things that should present to your charmed vision, just at this time in your life, the first view of a great golden harp. There are golden boxes, too, evolved by some deceased mechanician. He belonged to the Court of Louis XVL The boxes contain little singing birds. You set the birds to sing at a certain time. Tliey will not disappoint you. You touch the button; they do the rest. The cover of the box flies open and the golden bird flutters its wings, swings its head and produces song. The dining-room—ah! it is the heart of any home, you murmur softly to yourself. You cross the hall.. You get that feeling again as of being in a cathedral.' '"From the Monastery, Nuremburg," someone whispers. You do not know whether the monastery furnished the chairs or the silverware. Perhaps it was the tapestries. It is all good, so no matter.

Old English silver, the® Gladstone tea caddy, old blue china, with a lovely little flower in the middle of each plate; twenty-four jewelled plates—count them, twenty-four—from the collection of the Countess d'Fernandina of Paris.

The color scheme is crushed grape, the draperies are maroon, the carpets, in a way, are of a purplish hue. There are so many instruments arranged on each side of the plate at table that one involuntary thinks of a dentist's surgery.

And then one moves on. But not until one learns that the oak in the room is Flemish, the great draperies from Flanders, the cabinets filled with Dresden, Royal Vienna- and Salon plates. And there 'is an old leathern tankard on winch one reads on the silver rim about the top: "The Protector Oliver Cromwell, lfioO."

The library! Will you linger a little in the library?

The room is lighted by catHedral lamps of silvered bronze from the palace of Cardinal Serafino Vanatelli. There are a great many pieces of ecclesiastical silver from church treasuries in this room, including an ostensorium, the vessel in which the priest elevates the Host during mass. Numerous church embroideries are used "by Miss Grigsby as panels for table covers. On the library table you see an old velvet cloak worn by a knight of the Golden Fleece. There is a motto over the mantel: "God is in Heaven and all is well." The chairs are from old Spanish originals in the collection. There are nine servants in the ■house to try to keep everything dusted. We had almost forgotten to look at the books in the library. There are complete sets of first editions, fine collections of standard authors and modern poets in fine bindings—six thousand volumes in all.

This house of marvels was given to Miss Grigsby by Charles T. Yerkes on March 18, 1808, when she was nineteen years old. Mr. Yerkes died at the Waldorf on December 31, 1005. Me met her when she was young, became greatly attached to her, and finally she became his ward.

But now Miss Grigsby is going to leave America for good, as .she says she is treated better in London. Moreover, the bulk of the fortune which Mr. Yerkes left her is invested in the London underground railways.