32 
House & Garden 
This is a piece of 19 th Century English needlework. One may consider it commemorative of 
the embarkation of Noah in the ark, or the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in America, as one pleases 
THE CHILD IN THE 
ATTIC 
A Fantastic Needlework World Created by a Little Girl of Long 
Ago Who Set an Example for Future Generations of Children 
WEYMER MILLS 
T HE house—a dreaming, 
ancient crone of a house 
—is near the Kings High¬ 
way behind a high red brick 
wall. About the worn door step 
and blurred windows that have 
the look of watching eyes—old 
eyes, understanding and mus¬ 
ingly wistful—gaunt lilac 
bushes stretch forth branches 
as if longing to touch the 
passerby. The homely place 
so mellowed and worn by the 
sun and rain of a century, so 
drowsy with bees and winds 
tamed by great boxwood 
hedges, seems always half 
asleep, and yet questioning of 
sleep. The house like all old 
dwellings that have lived on un¬ 
changed has a ghostly quality 
—a soft fragrance. One knows 
that gentle shades come back 
to it. Some had loved it so 
much in life that they are a 
part of its being, its very heart. 
Eliza Fernie is one of these. 
Up in the attic, its jumbled 
cobwebby head confused with 
the dust of a procession of gen¬ 
erations, w r e found her. In a 
cowskin box with the label 
‘Twyfoot’ was tangible proof of 
her one-time sublunary exist¬ 
ence. There under the must of 
lavender and decimated cam¬ 
phor lay a bundle of her quaint 
child dreams. 
Oh, Eliza, in all the wide 
realm of child stitchery no 
other girl of eight can match 
the fairy wisdom of the little 
brain that drove your creative 
scissors and needle! Other 
quaint beings may have been 
more industrious with their 
thousands of minute eye-blind¬ 
ing stitches, but none of them 
In the attic of the house that seems always half asleep we find such wonderful 
things as this 1825 doll with her watchful eyes; eyes that have seen many 
generations come and go. The little house beside her is as demure as she, 
and the sampler gives the best advice 
can reach frail hands to your 
thought. I see you over the 
years in your trim brown na¬ 
bob of East Indian mull, sit¬ 
ting in your grandma’s big 
stuffed chair, and munching 
one of the stern old lady’s pep¬ 
permint drops, 1 hope, as you 
fashioned a world of your own 
—a delightful world where no¬ 
body could find you! They 
might say, “La, look at what 
the chit has done!” But they 
did not really guess or know. 
. . . How few of us ever know 
those secret places where the 
fresh thought takes root and 
flowers. Eliza’s was a fair 
country where there were no 
sorrows — a panacea for the 
hours of forced industry, the 
standings in corners, the Fools’ 
Caps, the wearinesses that ma¬ 
turity once thought seemly for 
the budding female, the old- 
fashioned method of bending 
the twig. 
The story of child needle- 
craft in the 18th Century and 
the beginning of the 19th 
would fill many volumes. Girls 
and often boys began their first 
sampler at the age of six. 
Bible precepts enshrouded each 
small cradle. A needle and 
thread was the very emblem of 
girlhood. Industry was the 
first golden rule, and the off¬ 
spring of the virtuous knew it 
perhaps over well. I never 
touch an old sampler that 
shows weeks and months of 
patient toil by sun and candle¬ 
light without feeling the pathos 
of it. Each one has been wet 
by hot blinding tears at some 
moment of its fashioning. Sky¬ 
lark chases, waiting hoops, 
