Maid:
h, the dining room. With only the very best of everything in this house. Just look at the setting, there's a hundred and forty pieces in all. You can't get china like this in the colonies. Oh dear no. Only from England.
On the sideboard ahead is a silver tea caddy. It's from Walker and Hall, of Sheffield, England no less.
To stay most fashionable, every few years the O'Reillys take a trip to England. A buying trip. They tell me that much of this furniture was purchased in 1883. Ah, lets see, the reading table near the window,
and
the candelabra, and all of the mahogany chairs. Even the Chenille
Axminster Persian carpet under the table came from that single trip. Just
look around; it's magnificent, n'est-ce pas?
Houseboy: Fine enough for royalty.
Maid: To be invited to dine here means you are somebody in Victoria. Of course we see the regulars. Sir Matthew Begby, the Trutches. Oh and let me think now yes the Pembertons and um, the Drakes. Oh! And royal navy officers often visit. Yes it's the visitors to Victoria which make dinners most interesting.
The seamstress told me that one time Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald himself dined right here at Point Ellice House. And the famous Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Scott too. You know he once had an eye for our young Kitty, I mean Miss Kathleen O'Reilly. Oh and not just him, I remember that dashing Royal Navy officer lieutenant commander Henry Stanhope. Oh, he was so very taken with young Kathleen, he proposed. Well I thought sure they'd wed immediately. What lady could turn down an officer?
Houseboy: Enough of this gossip. There's much, much work to do. Continue down the hall.
View room artifacts.
To Maid's Room
