I remember the austerity of our little one-bedroom apartment in Medford. There was so much stuff we needed and didn’t yet have. And now here I am, looking for a place to set down my latest Amazon purchase and can’t find one. Two full floors, a basement I can barely stand to step through, and a congested attic weigh on me.
I used to love Proverb 24:3-4 where Solomon said, “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.” (NIV) And that is what I strove for, but my perspective is changing. To quote the wise man again, the Message Version of Proverbs 21:20 says, “Valuables are safe in a wise person’s home; fools put it all out for yard sales.” What does that make me for wanting to strip down all my carefully collected objects and live in stark simplicity?
Dan and I are meeting Emelyn and her boyfriend Todd at the Grundy Museum for a tour. I love walking through old houses and trying to imagine the lives of those who inhabited the walls long ago. I am especially interested in seeing this mansion since I learned Dan’s great-grandmother was the housekeeper during the last years of the grand Victorian’s occupancy.
I remember the last time I toured a historic house. The docent explained Smithville Mansion was empty and in disrepair before restoration. The current furnishing are a whole new collection since the former was sold in hard times. When we went through one of the bedrooms, she told us the stately bed was once President Polk’s own sleeping station. I was bubbling with questions. First off, how and why did the President’s own bed wind up donated to a collection? The impressive dark wood of the four thick posters and tall headboard looked perfectly good to sleep in and not unlike my own treasured cherry bed. I can’t imagine a president’s descendant giving up something so cool. It started me down the road thinking about where my own bed would wind up someday. Will my children be anxious to have a big yard sale and get rid of it?
Dan and I drive across the Delaware to Bristol, PA and continue slowly through the quaint river town. We park on the street near the museum and adjacent library. I admire the new outdoor entertainment area we pass on the way to the public library where we will meet our guide, Em, and Todd. I find the room where our tour is to begin long before time, and read educational signage early so I won’t be annoying later by dawdling. It turns out, Mr. Grundy’s sister was a book lover, and her portion of the family fortune went to establishing the Margaret R. Grundy Memorial Library. Now that is a legacy, I think, as I admire the modern building next to her brother’s former Victorian riverside museum.
Once our group of six is assembled in the library basement, the docent explains neither of the Grundy children married or left heirs, hence the intact treasures. She tells us how the family fortune was made, when manufacturing boomed in this industrial revolution zone. I look at displays about child labor and the conditions in many factories of those years. I remember Dan’s father telling us his grandmother worked in those factories as a child long before Mr. Grundy hired her to his household staff. What hutzpah she must have had to raise two daughters with advanced degrees during such times as those.
We walk the yards from the library to the mansion and begin our tour in earnest. Unlike most homes converted to museums, this house needed no new collection. Once Mr. Grundy died, its grandeur was preserved as is and each object in the house is original. And let me tell you, there are plenty of objects. I feel like I’m stepping into history. Recently restored with great care, every detail is perfect. Dark colors, intimate cubbies, arched doorways, carved woodwork and furniture, stained glass, a table set with china, crystal, and silver as if Grandmother White herself carefully placed it there for the next dinner party: we ooh and ahh over every beautiful detail.
We climb the center stairwell to the next floor, where bedchambers and one bath show the height of technology for the time. I recall Aunt Susie telling me she was allowed to sleep upstairs and fell out of the bed when she visited Grandmother White. When I wonder aloud which bed it might have been, our docent assures me she must have slept downstairs. The offspring of “help” would not have been invited to sleep in these chambers. I swallow my argument, but give her the best version of stink-eye I can muster without sinning.
After our tour, we stroll along the river. I snap pictures of the house from riverside and send them on to relatives. “Look where we went today!” I look at the many levels of balconies and imagine the inhabitants pondering what to do with the “rare and beautiful treasures,” in the rooms behind them as they admire the Delaware meandering by. “Let’s dedicate every penny of our fortune to preserving it as is forever!” they must have concluded. (This includes basements and warehoused treasures that aren’t even on display.) I don’t suppose President Polk had that option at the White House, so his bed wound up in sight of the Rancocas River in someone else’s mansion.
This little peek into family history stays with me in weeks to come as I dust my collection of “early attic” vintage finds and Dan’s handmade furniture that compose my rare and beautiful treasures. Will my children and possible Grandchildren regard them as such?
Is that the Amazon truck again? Oh goodness, I have got to get rid of this stuff before my offspring need a yard sale!
Your Turn: If I had to flee my house for a fire, I know which treasure I would grab on the way out the door. Do you have something you treasure like that?
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.comThe “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
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