A Collier's Friday Night (About 1909--first published 1934)

Excerpt

The kitchen or living-room of a working-man's house. At the back the fireplace, with a large fire burning. On the left, on the oven side of the stove, a WOMAN of some fifty-five years sits in a wooden rocking-chair, reading. Behind her and above her, in the recess made by the fireplace, four shelves of books, the shelf-covers being of green serge, with woollen ball fringe, and the books being ill-assorted school books, with an edition of Lessing, florid in green and gilt, but tarnished. On the left, a window looking on a garden where the rain is dripping through the first twilight. Under the window, a sofa, the bed covered with red chintz. By the side of the window, on the wall near the ceiling, a quiver clothes-horse is outspread with the cotton articles which have been ironed, hanging to air. Under the outspread clothes is the door which communicates with the scullery and with the yard. On the right side of the fireplace, in the recess equivalent to that where the bookshelves stand, a long narrow window, and below it, a low, brown, fixed cupboard, whose top forms a little sideboard, on which stand a large black enamel box of oil-colours, and a similar japanned box of water-colours, with Reeve's silver trade-mark. There is also on the cupboard top a tall glass jar containing ragged pink chrysanthemums. On the right is a bookcase upon a chest of drawers. This piece of furniture is of stained polished wood in imitation of mahogany. The upper case is full of books, seen through the two flimsy glass doors: a large set of the World's Famous Literature in dark green at the top--then on the next shelf prize-books in calf and gold, and imitation soft leather poetry-books, and a Nuttall's dictionary and Cassell's French, German and Latin dictionaries. On each side of the bookcase are prints from water-colours, large, pleasing and well framed in oak. Between the little brown cupboard and the bookcase, an arm-chair, small, round, with many little staves; a comfortable chair such as is seen in many working-class kitchens; it has a red chintz cushion. There is another Windsor chair on the other side of the bookcase. Over the mantelpiece, which is high, with brass candlesticks and two "Coronation" tumblers in enamel, hangs a picture of Venice, from one of Stead's Christmas Numbers--nevertheless, satisfactory enough.