Marble Halls

Every proper knight-errant wants to see his true love lapped in luxury. Meek little Edmund Lusignea was not precisely the Galahad type, and London's grimy East Ham suburb, whose romantically named streets (Shelley Avenue, Browning Road, Shakespeare Crescent) are a standing rebuke to the rows of dingy houses that line them, gave him little opportunity to surround his 38-year-old bride Emily with splendor. But Edmund, a worker in a local stationery factory, did what he could. Every morning he got up two hours early to do the housework before leaving for his job, and he did all the shopping, so that Emily, who was frail and chronically ill, would not be overtaxed. They did not entertain, to spare her. Theirs was a contented life but not a luxurious one.

One day, back in 1907, as Emily and Edmund sat together in their drab little house, Emily gave words to an impulsive wish. "Let's make our house a real palace," she said. "Let's build it of marble." After that, Edmund began getting up at 4:30 each morning. He combed London's junk yards and secondhand shops. Every penny not needed in the household budget went to buy old marble. Every morning, untutored in architecture, but burning with a desire to please Emily, Edmund set the pieces in place on his walls. For 46 years he labored to build a palace around Emily. Even the neighbors never guessed at the transformation that was taking place behind the shabby exterior of the house next door.

Last week a London columnist got wind of Edmund's story and went over to Byron Avenue to have a look. Passing through the shabby door of No. 184, he found himself in a fairyland of marmoreal splendor. Intricately fashioned marble columns, cornices, pilasters and balustrades rose on every side, mixing the decorative styles of two centuries in rich profusion. In the midst of it all stood 83-year-old Emily, her eyes shining like a schoolgirl's. "I don't suppose," said her adoring Edmund, surveying his handiwork, "that anyone will ever buy the place when we're gone. I know it isn't everybody's taste, but it's been our fun--and Emily does love marble."

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