Quotes Houses

Behind the blue-green of the twin trees rose a dark-bluish brick Georgian pile, with a shell-shaped fan-light over its pillared door. The hound had gone off on his own foolish quests. Except for some stir it the branches and the flight of four startled magpies; there was neither life nor sound about the square house, but it looked out of its long windows most friendlily.

This is from “An Habitation Enforced” in Actions and Reactions. A young American businessman is convalescing with his wife after a breakdown. Deep in the English countryside they happen on an elegant deserted old house. It will be the beginning of a new life for them.

Then we came to silence more profound—the utter quiet of an old, low-roofed, deep-verandahed house, sitting with its hands folded among its lawns, terraces, bathing-ponds, statues and flaming-flowered trees. Yes, this was the heart of things … Children’s voices, startlingly distinct, lifted themselves from behind hedges and tinted walls … its deep breathing spirit, through all the low-lighted rooms, opening one out of another, drew from unaltering generations.

his is from “São Paulo and a Coffee Estate”, the fifth of Kipling’s Brazilian Sketches, published in December 1927.

Across the lawn—the marshalled woods besieged it on three sides—stood an ancient house of lichened and weather–worn stone, with mullioned windows and roofs of rose–red tile. It was flanked by semi-circular walls, also rose-red, that closed the lawn on the fourth side, and at their feet a box hedge grew man-high. There were doves on the roof about the slim brick chimneys, and I caught a glimpse of an octagonal dove–house behind the screening wall.

This is from “They“,  in Traffics and Discoveries.

The story-teller, driving across the country has found himself in the garden of a beautiful old house. He later finds it is full of ghosts.