(Need to catch up? Read part 1 here. Read part 2 here.)
Living room at front of house
While telling Sal more about Ursula’s story, I realize we are sitting in the Cheshire’s front parlor, the room in which the antique photo album’s picture of 715 Baker Street was taken. I look through the double doorway into Sal’s guest room, imagining little Ursula singing and playing the piano that used to sit where the bed is now.
Left: The living room/parlor with double doorway. Right: Looking into the Cheshire’s music room through the double doorway in the parlor
Sal’s guest room, the Cheshire’s music room
After chatting for a little while, Sal suggests a tour through the rest of the house. At last! We enter the long hallway, lined with rich, dark-wood paneling along the lower portion of the wall.
I love seeing how other people live and decorate their living spaces. As we move slowly through the rooms, chatting along the way, I take in Sal’s eclectic artwork, furniture and décor. I feel a curious blend of HGTV-like voyeurism and an almost sacred awe at walking on the very floors Ursula padded down as a young girl, and through the very chambers she and her parents inhabited.
Ursula spent her early childhood there, from age one to about five. The Cheshires then moved to Los Angeles, but held on to the Baker Street home. When Ursula was 16, a few years after her father’s death, she and Clara moved back to San Francisco, setting up home again at Baker Street for the teen’s last year of high school.
One-year-old Ursula
Walking through the house, I imagine the presence of Ursula and her parents— vague, ghost-like figures going about their daily lives. I silently observe a bygone time, a mirage of the past superimposed over the clear, colorful present.
We pass the bathroom, actually two separate rooms—one with a sink and bath, the other with a toilet. Down the hall, Sal opens the door to his spacious, walk-in closet. We surmise it must have been Ursula’s small bedroom. I thrill at standing in the very room where she slept and cried and laughed and played.
Kitchen
A little farther down the hall is a modern kitchen, and, at the back of the house, a dining room with bay window and ornate, white-painted woodwork surrounding the fireplace mantel. Then Sal’s bedroom—probably Alfred and Clara’s in the past—also with bay window.
Dining room
Master bedroom
Hallway and front door
Tour complete, we meander towards the front door to say our thanks and goodbyes. Before leaving, I ask Sal if it’s OK for me to share with “Mystery Dancer” readers some of the pictures I took inside the house.
Not only does he say yes, he also tells me I can post some professional photos he had taken for his home’s profile on…Airbnb! Whoa—what?! You mean I could actually stay in the Cheshire’s old family home, hanging out, staying overnight and breaking bread with the ghosts of Ursula, Clara and Alfred? Someday I will. And you could, too, dear reader!
Mama and 1-year-old Ursula
