One Long Staircase

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Golden Stair, 1880
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833 - 1898)

There would be one long staircase just going up
And one even longer coming down
And one more leading nowhere, just for show . . .

~ from Fiddler on the Roof ~
Believe it or not, we have actually lived in a couple of houses over the years that seemed to have staircases going nowhere, just for show. In our recent Indiana Victorian, for example, the front stairs and the back stairs met at exactly the same spot on the second floor landing, so it was not entirely clear what the extra stairs were for or how they had ever been useful. Yet, as it turned out, we went up and down the back stairs ten times a day, and rarely used the main stairs at all. Turns out the back stairs were incredibly useful and the front were just for show!

We decorated the wall over the front bannister with the above picture of a beautiful, showy staircase. The original hangs in the Tate, but I'm sure we purchased the poster from the museum shop at the Lady Lever Gallery, our favorite haven of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, in Port Sunlight, England. I never glanced at this ethereal painting without thinking of these otherworldly lyrics of the 1970s:

There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for

And she's buying a stairway to heaven
There's a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
'Cause you know, sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook
There's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven . . .

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock and not to roll
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

from Stairway to Heaven (1971)
by Led Zeppelin

Symphony in White, No. 1, 1861 - 62
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903)

"a lady . . . who shines white light . . . "

Symphony in White, No. 2, 1864-65
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903)

See also
Symphony in White, No. 3

And
paintings at the Frick

And previous posts:
To See A Fine Picture
Going Barefoot
Kitchen Art
Complication and Plenitude
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, October 28th

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