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                       Time Warp in a South African House

   Ancient oak trees line the streets of Johannesburg's Auckland Park.
   Below the behemoth of the grey building that is the headquarters of the
   South African Broadcasting Corporation is a home that's stuck in a time
   warp.

   To visit Lindfield House is to experience a day in the life of a
   well-to-do, Victorian South African family. It was the period of
   [1]Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 until her death in 1901. South
   Africa was a British colony.

   The drawing room, where the original Victorian-era owners would
   entertain guests, overflows with elaborately patterned wooden chairs,
   thick carpets, massive mirrors rimmed with gold, sparkling silver
   cutlery and polished ebony tables.

   "(It's) very full and cluttered," says Katharine Love, the elderly,
   kindly woman who owns Lindfield House. She speaks clipped and perfect
   English and is slight and pale, refined and reserved. "They thought it
   was in very bad taste to see an empty space anywhere!" Love explains.

   Darkness and Victorian wastage

   The house is dark inside. Love says this was typical of Victorian
   homes.

   "They not only liked dark-colored wallpaper and paint, they
   purposefully tried to shut out as much sunlight as possible so that it
   wouldn't fade their carpets and curtains and upholstery. So Victorian
   homes could be gloomy," she says.

   Inside the 22-room mansion, Love tries her best to live just like a
   Victorian woman, eating Victorian recipes, sleeping in an old teak
   four-poster bed, and not using computers and microwaves.

   She exclaims, "I don't have a modern flat in the back. I use every room
   in the house. It's a great privilege to be able to live in a museum."

   Love and her mother moved into Lindfield House in 1967, following the
   death of Love's grandmother. The two women immediately began filling it
   with Victorian artefacts.

   "We both loved all things Victorian; we thought it was a fascinating
   time in history with so many beautiful objects," says Love.

   Carefully, she shows off incredibly dainty floral-patterned cups,
   stamped with gold. She desccribes how upper-class Victorians used
   silver forks, bone-handled knives and china plates to eat fantastically
   well: platters of meat, pastries and puddings.

   "If it was just a family meal, there might only be four or five courses
   for dinner. If you had guests coming there might be ten or 12!" Love
   enthuses.

   In true Victorian style, there were different rules for women at meal
   time. "Ladies were supposed to eat like birds. A well-bred lady had a
   very small appetite, so they would just pick at their food and send
   back the plates practically untouched."

   Chamber pots under the dinner table

   Love says one of the Victorians' many rules was to keep conversation at
   the dinner table light and frivolous.

   "You never spoke about anything controversial that might start an
   argument. No talking about religion or politics or anything like that.
   A lady should never bore a gentleman by talking about her embroidery or
   her children or the problems she was having with her servants! And
   gentlemen should not bore ladies by talking about their business!"

   Love laughs that certain acts committed during a visit to a Victorian
   home were guaranteed to get a person shunned from high society.

   "Looking around the room as if you were assessing the peoples' wealth,
   or making any comments about their furnishings, or even saying that the
   food was delicious - because that implies that you are surprised. You
   should take it for granted that these people would have nothing but the
   best, so it's very bad manners to remark on it!"

   The Victorians have a reputation for demonstrating impeccable manners.
   But Love says this wasn't always the case... She points to a big,
   ivory-colored pot under the dinner table, and explains, "Most toilets
   were outside in those days or far away from the dining room. So the men
   didn't see why they should have to go out into the cold or miss any of
   the conversation in the dining room. So they thought nothing of using
   it right here."

   Bell summons servants

   Next, Love ascends a steep wooden staircase. It's such a narrow passage
   that it's difficult even for a small person to fit comfortably into
   Lindfield House's tiny servants' quarters... Obviously, the Victorians
   were not very large, overweight people generally, for them to have
   managed to fit up such a stairway.

   Again, Love laughs loudly and comments, "Well, there might have been a
   fat cook who had to squeeze her way up the stairs, but being a servant
   - who cares?"

   In complete contrast to the rest of the home, the kitchen is
   undecorated - just a tangle of rough wooden tables and black cast-iron
   wood burning stoves.

   Love says this is because wealthy Victorians would "never be seen dead"
   in a kitchen, which they considered to be "only fit for servants."

   If a Victorian family member needed something from the kitchen, he or
   she simply rang a bell to summon a servant and ordered its immediate
   delivery.

   Importance of playing music

   Love smirks and says the Victorian gentry also had other sources of
   entertainment. "They would have played records." She points to a large
   gramophone player of dull gold. "In the library where we are, there's
   this big collection of gramophone records."

   Victorian ladies were expected to excel at needlework, and everybody
   read a lot.

   The library's shelves are packed with hundreds of leather-bound
   Victorian-period books.

   The music room contains a variety of musical instruments, including an
   antique piano and a mandolin guitar made in 1894 that looks and sounds
   more like a harp.

   "It was everybody's duty to be able to play a musical instrument. You
   weren't considered good and proper if you could not achieve this," says
   Love.

   Thief in a top hat

   Lindfield House hasn't escaped Johannesburg's crime wave. Love says
   armed robbers have targeted it twice.

   "On one occasion they tied me up and locked me in the wardrobe but they
   kept asking me, `Where's the cellphone, where's the microwave; where's
   the TV?' They couldn't find anything worth stealing! Eventually they
   took a top hat and a few Victorian coins and left!"  The last she saw
   of one of the criminals was his backside as he jumped over a gate...
   wearing the top hat.

   As Love leads the way into yet another relic of a room, her heels clack
   on the burnished floorboards. She believes Lindfield House has great
   historical significance for South Africa and for the world.

   But it's a legacy under threat. Love knows she can't run the museum for
   long ... And so far she hasn't been able to find a heritage
   organization that's willing to do so when she's gone.

   "I'm hoping, I'm praying for this to happen; it's my greatest wish,"
   she says softly.




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   [2]http://www.voanews.com/content/ol-joburg-victorian-house/2833987.htm
   l

References

   1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria
   2. http://www.voanews.com/content/ol-joburg-victorian-house/2833987.html