Tapestry Chamber

The Tapestry Chamber is a room in Canterville Chase whose everyday use as a passage and hiding place gives way to a more mysterious purpose: it becomes the threshold through which Virginia accompanies the ghost into a concealed cavern. Its tapestry and carved figures first seem to belong to the room’s decoration; when Virginia enters with Sir Simon, they take on the force of warnings she must choose whether to heed.

Setting and Domestic Use

The chamber lies beside the back staircase, and its door is open when Virginia passes it after returning from a ride on Brockley meadows. Having torn her riding habit while getting through a hedge, she is taking the back stairs to avoid being seen and mistakes the figure inside for her mother’s maid, who sometimes brings work to the room. Instead she finds Sir Simon seated by the window, watching autumn leaves fall along the avenue. The accidental encounter turns a room she knows as part of the household’s ordinary routine into the setting for an unexpected meeting.

The room also appears in the twins’ practical jokes against the ghost. They stretch a butter-slide from the entrance of the Tapestry Chamber to the top of the oak staircase, causing Sir Simon to fall while dressed as “Black Isaac, or the Huntsman of Hogley Woods.” The chamber’s entrance thus marks one end of a trap laid by the children, making it a site where the old haunting is repeatedly undercut by domestic mischief.

The Threshold in the Tapestry

When Virginia finds Sir Simon, his dejected appearance moves her to pity. She offers comfort, and the encounter develops into a decision to help him. As they cross the chamber, its faded green tapestry seems to animate: embroidered huntsmen blow their horns and urge her to go back. Carved animals with lizard tails and goggle eyes add a second warning, telling her she may never see them again. These images turn the room’s old-fashioned decoration into a chorus of danger, while Virginia’s refusal to turn back makes her passage an act of resolve rather than accidental entry.

Sir Simon holds her hand more tightly and leads her onward. At the end of the chamber he mutters words Virginia cannot understand; the wall slowly fades like mist, revealing a great black cavern. A bitterly cold wind sweeps around them, and something tugs at Virginia’s dress. At the ghost’s urgent warning that they must hurry, the wainscoting closes behind them, leaving the Tapestry Chamber empty.

Narrative Significance

The chamber’s role changes with the scene: it is first a familiar domestic interior, then the meeting place where Virginia responds to the ghost’s distress, and finally the boundary between the visible house and a hidden passage. The shift is made through architectural details—the disappearing wall and closing wainscoting—rather than through an explanation of the cavern’s workings. That transformation gives the room a pivotal narrative function: the path from ordinary household space to concealed supernatural realm begins where Virginia chooses to follow Sir Simon despite the warnings surrounding her.