Mrs Macready and the Wardrobe

[Narnian78]

There were miniature replicas of the Narnia wardrobe, but of course it’s the movie version and I think there was another one made of resin which may have been a bit closer to the one in the book. If you can find these items they may be a bit expensive. I kind of wish there was one made of ceramic (like my Dr Who TARDIS) since that is a nice material but not too costly.

[coracle]

Is a closet different from a cupboard? Does it have to be larger than say, a kitchen cupboard? Is it defined by what it is used to store, as well as its being built in?

[Col Klink]

An American closet is supposed to be as tall as a room but it's usually a lot thinner. Wish I could come up with a better description than that. Basically they're like the wardrobe in LWW but they're built into the walls of a house.

[SirVincentofNarnia]

I believe that Mrs. McCready showed the wardrobe to people because if something is that big and intricate, you may as well show it off Anyway, I feel like the Professor probably didn't mention its true origin but probably told some other story to cover for it, as many of you have mentioned. Telling someone about a place like Narnia and its fantasticalness (not a word, but its ok ) would be quite an unbelieveable story.

[waggawerewolf27]

Is a closet different from a cupboard? Does it have to be larger than say, a kitchen cupboard? Is it defined by what it is used to store, as well as its being built in?

Usage does define whether a cupboard is a cupboard, a closet or a Wardrobe. In your laundry you may have a broom cupboard, that is, if your dwelling place has its own laundry at all, & if that laundry, itself, hasn't been fitted into its own laundry closet, or cupboard, with barely space for a small washing machine & a wall-mounted dryer, let alone a sink. Sometimes builders of houses, & especially apartments etc, don't seem to like the idea that people might actually have to live in the places they build & tenants of flats may have to share laundry facilities.

My grandmother used to have a sideboard which, when mated up with an enormous dining room table & a pianola, with a couch with storage space in the seat, took up the main living room or parlour. In the sideboard was all my grandmother's prized possessions, including what was left of a dining service for considerably more than the settings for six or four that may be still available now in department stores. You know, cutlery, crockery, the prized wear we had for when visitors arrived. Not the everyday cracked & chipped plates & daggy cutlery we normally used. A cupboard is, literally, a place to store cups in, whether in the kitchen or the dining room, though our current sideboard has a hutch, where all the nice glasses, crystal, trophies & souvenirs might be displayed. As we graduated from old stand alone record players, & stand alone radios, our sideboards became more like display cabinets with space to accommodate radios, record players, tape decks etc., plus those chunky speakers. My husband built ours, himself, as an after work activity, back in the 1970's.

Closets are for storage generally, built in or not. The closet may contain linen, that is to say a linen closet & most houses these days have one as a matter of course, for sheets, blankets, pillows, towels, etc. But it wasn't always so. There is a joke in VDT about Eustace, having been made a slave, was classed by Pug as WC. Which, try as I might, not to do so, does make me think of Water Closets, sometimes labelled as such in some buildings.

A wardrobe is mainly for clothes, & unlike a kitchen cabinet or pantry, may be mostly hanging space, though it may contain a section for drawers or just shelving. The one found by the Pevensies, was full of fur coats, but fur coats would be a very rare find today, & definitely not be for displaying to tourists, except in a museum.

In Melbourne's botanic gardens, you will find Captain Cook's Cottage. It seems terrible that the large family he & his wife, Elizabeth had were all crammed into this little space, with hardly enough room to move around, let alone cook, clean etc. His wife had a terrible life, and only one or two of their children even survived into adulthood, let alone outlive Captain Cook, himself. In those days, it would be something to own a sailor's sea chest, let alone the fancy wardrobes of a century ago, & suggested by the Narnian wardrobe, or even Uncle Andrew's own bedroom wardrobe, where he kept his bottle of brandy & best suit of clothes.

We were watching on TV, Neil Oliver's Coast New Zealand last Friday night. In the Bay of Islands segment, the alleged Mr Big of New Zealand, one Terry Clarke, had built for himself a very opulent & wonderful house with his ill-gotten gains. Eventually the police came knocking, but this Mr Big of crime had his own method of escape at hand. There was a built-in wardrobe, with a plain door, & containing coat hangers on a cross bar when the door was opened. The floor could be removed, to allow his escape, also the ceiling of the built in wardrobe to go upwards. The houses on either side of my own both have built in laundry chutes, a modern version of the old priest holes & other secret passages in old British houses & elsewhere, concealed by wardrobes, book cases & the like.

No wonder we had not only the Lion & the Witch, but also the marvellous Wardrobe which not only hid Lucy but also allowed her to go through the fur coats into a fir wood.