Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

easy-chair, worn smooth by constant use), was a huge oaken cabinet, decorated at each corner with Dutch cherubs…
the top of this cabinet was covered with busts, and Roman lamps and paterae, intermingled with one or two bronze
figures. The walls of the apartment were partly clothed with grim old tapestry, representing the memorable story of
Sir Gawaine’s wedding, in which full justice was done to the ugliness of the Lothely Lady; although, to judge from
his own looks, the gentle knight had less reason to be disgusted with the match on account of disparity of outward
favour, than the romancer has given us to understand. The rest of the room was panelled, or wainscoted, with black
oak, against which hung two or three portraits in armour, being characters in Scottish history, favourites of Mr
Oldbuck, and as many in tie-wigs and laced coats, staring representatives of his own ancestors. A large oldfashioned
oaken table was covered with a profusion of papers, parchments, books, and nondescript trinkets and gewgaws,
which seemed to have little to recommend them, besides rust and the antiquity which it indicates. In the midst
of this wreck of ancient books and utensils, with a gravity equal to Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat a large
black cat, which, to a superstitious eye, might have represented the genius loci… the floor, as well as the table and
chairs, was overflowed by the same mare magnum of miscellaneous trumpery, where it would have been as
impossible to find any individual article wanted, as to put it to any use when discovered. 9
As in Cooke’s picture gloom and the profusion of objects in apparent chaos are the main
impression, although Scott, typically, creates a little ironic distance by making the particularly
dim atmosphere attributable to the commonplace in the form of dust. There, as in Cooke, are the
armour and the dark carved wood. Scott also makes explicit two elements Cooke only implies;
the suggestion of the occult in the shape of the cat and the dubious quality of some of the objects.
Beyond that Scott also describes what cannot easily be conveyed in painting but is of the essence
for the romantic interior, the conflation of old and new. The paintings on Oldbuck’s wall are
divided equally between the ‘characters’ from Scottish history (in what may be old pictures or
modern pictures of old subjects) and the family portraits of Oldbuck’s own forbears. Here the
mingling of old and new within historic objects, as Lenoir practised it in his museum, is
developed further to the point where the individual is himself inserted into history. Such claims
of direct personal kinship with some chosen aspect of the past were typical of the antiquarian
interior, a space where time was not so much suspended as in a manner rearranged to suit the
occupant.
In Oldbuck’s room the panelling is probably entirely old but in many such interiors old
and new panelling imported from different sources was patched together and washed over with a
9 Scott, The Antiquary, pp. 31-32.
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