The Retrospect by Ada Cambridge — Read

Being in Devonshire I sat down on one of the most notoriously beautiful of all the beauty spots of the county. It was traditional that the old gentleman of the island who had had several homes, and the means to make them what he would, never had one in a place that was not beautiful. The island, as I knew, was beautiful, in its wild solitude of sea and sand and ti-tree scrub. Otherwise his family home in England was as great a contrast to the home in which he had chosen to spend his last years as could possibly be found. As I moved about the large rooms and up and down the stairs, every wall set thick with the valuable paintings he had gathered from abroad and from Christie's and from Royal Academy Exhibitions, it was odd indeed to think of the weather-board cottage and the few prints from illustrated papers tin-tacked to its pine lining, which he had deliberately preferred to them.

The whole establishment, with all the dignities of fine family furniture, family crested silver, full staff of trained servants, and so on and so on -- without one irregularity or eccentricity in its administration -- represented the normal English gentleman's life, that of his kin and class, and by general use and wont his own. Yet, of his free choice, he left it all to go and live like Robinson Crusoe in an island hut, with a rough, wood-chopping Friday, and a domestic equipment of Britannia metal and stone china that could not stir the envy of a tramp.