"'I went to the donjon in search of my ladder, and in the lower part of the donjon which serves me and the gardener for a
lumber room, I found the door open and the ladder gone.
"I believe we have one or two left over," she said, "but they're upstairs in the
lumber room. I'll go and see." During her absence Matthew collected his scattered senses for another effort.
That loft up there is a sort of
lumber room without any lumber.
To find it was the task set him by an imperious and malignant universe, and he wandered through the endless corridors of his mind, opening all manner of
lumber rooms and chambers stored with odds and ends of memories and knowledge as he vainly sought the answer.
Of the many doors of various sizes, right and left, a good few had glazed lights above; some however must have led merely into
lumber rooms or such like, because when I brought myself to try one or two I was disconcerted to find that they were locked.
Arthur Conan Doyle, a physician and creator of Sherlock Holmes reminds us of how we should arrange our noodles: "A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the
lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it."
It is a real joy to revisit gems such as The Open Window and The
Lumber Room and to enjoy once again Saki's delicious siding with single-minded children and young people against hateful adults (he'd have got on well with Roald Dahl) in that uncompromising and witty language.
Across town, with a selection of works drawn entirely from Meigs's private collection, the
Lumber Room exhibition delved into the artist's back catalogue.
Within this vast
lumber room, where many of us have to live, it is not strange that disorder might be, still, the only order possible.
The more eclectic hoarder species segregate pantry from
lumber room from junk museum.
This book presents nine contributions on topics including the illustrated gift book of the 1860s, death and domesticity in Victorian illustration, vestiges of corpses in Pre-Raphaelite illustrations, and collectors of wood-engraved illustrations from 1860s periodicals ("spoils of the
lumber room"), among others.
lumber room - a storeroom in a house where odds and ends can be stored (especially furniture)