I’m reading the relatively new translation of Jules Verne’s not-well-known novel The Begum’s Millions and I find this passage on p. 94:
We’re all familiar with such secret stairs from Morbius’ study in Forbidden Planet, from Young Frankenstein (“put ze candle…beck!”), from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Thunderball, etc. etc. ad nauseum. It’s very impractical but very cool.
This is the earliest account of one I can recall (1879). There are certainly other references to hidden spaces and hidden passages, but this is the earliest I can recall where the passage isn’t hidden by some random door or panel, but by a bookcase or fireplace. Does anyone know an earlier example?
Certainly such things appear in real life. My sister, when house-hunting a few years ago, found one with a library in which the door was “hidden” by shelves of imaginary books, and i’ve heard of other library doors made the same way*. Perhaps this is the inspiration for such Secret Doors.
*Such doors aren’t meant to be secret, but to blend in. The book covers had to be false, because, as anyone who’s opened a real door with books attached knows, they tend to fall out if you don’t open or close the door slowly. Sometimes the fake books cover architectural details. Charles Dickens’ home Gads Hill Place had a library with such false volumes covering up such details, with names like Hansard’s Guide to Refreshing Sleep.
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They were built into houses during the British Civil War (17th century), as “priests holes” to hide Catholic clergy from rampaging Roundheads. Dunno if that has any significance to your question.
I think you’ve found the earliest mention in the Verne novel. Surely, though, these things did exist before Verne mentioned them.
After my mother died, I had my cousin’s husband doing some work on her house to get it into a saleable condition. On the second floor landing, we had put back the original doorway to the attic, which had been taken out when two rooms were turned into one big room. Not knowing where to find a door for this restored doorway (there hadn’t been one previously), he hit upon the idea of filling the space with a bookcase that was hinged on one side and sat on casters. It was a somewhat brilliant idea, I thought, but not very practical for the reason you mention, and I was forced to replace it with a solid wooden door I picked up from an old house that was due to be demolished.
As cool as secret passage behind a bookcase is, I’d love to find plans for that hidden bar that Dean Martin had on his TV show back in the 60s. It was hidden behind a bookcase, and it seems to me that the whole thing must have been on a turntable.
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My house is a nice, but certainly not special, two-story home from the 1950s. When w bought it we discovered that one side of the upstairs had a master bedroom suite, with a walk-in closet that led to the bathroom. The other side of the hall had two regular bedrooms. Pretty standard, except that for some reason the twin bedrooms weren’t twins. One was twice the size of the other. Larger than the master bedroom, in fact.
All that space and lots of flat walls. Obviously it was meant to be a library. We had a carpenter build bookshelves to exactly cover three of the walls. The fourth was also odd. It had two closets that jutted out, and an alcove in the middle. The alcove fitted a desk. We took the doors off the closet and the carpenter built bookshelves on casters that filled the doorway but had handles cut in so that they could be easily rolled away. (Yes, I have to be careful about the books, but they are balanced well.)
Nobody thinks to look at the base of a bookcase, so it appears that those two are as fixed in place as all the others. Yet when I move them I have the entire volume of the former closets to store magazines and other items that don’t fit neatly onto bookshelves.
Not a staircase, and I don’t have an answer for Cal. Just wanted to point out that bookcases are useful to hide all kinds of backdrops.
I’m not convinced Verne’s is the earliest. This seems like an idea that would appeal to a Poe (though I can’t think of any examples) or an E.T. A. Hoffman. Surelky there must be a prior case.
If you look closely at the film Remains of the Day, you will see that the old manor house has a lot of doors concealed behind wallpaper and molding. They were for the servants to use. As I understand it, in the Days of Yore, servants were supposed to be invisible. Before the employer (or one of his guests) entered a room, the servants would hide, and not return until the aristocrats had all left. All those hidden doors were for the convenience of the servants. The hidden passages would lead to storerooms and supply closets.
Not nearly as glamorous as a Secret Passageway to the mad scientist’s laboratory, but not uncommon, either.
As for literary references, Jules Verne is as early as anything I have seen. I have read a fair amount of Poe’s work, and offhand I don’t recall anything.
Perhaps the Arabian Nights? The lair of the Forty Thieves was not quite the same thing, but it was sorta kinda related.
At Monticello Jefferson upped this one a notch. The food was cooked by slaves and freed black chefs in the detached kitchen (a standard feature of southern houses of the era due to heat and fire hazards). It was then taken by a slave down a long underground passageway) and raised to a pantry above on a dumbwaiter, from which a slave would place the food on a rack that was on a revolving door that s/he turned into the dining room. A second dumbwaiter concealed in the fireplace was for wine bottles.
If he had guests then another slave might bring the food from the door to the table and serve; part of the traditional history of Sally Hemings is the account of a French guest who did a double take when he looked up at the male “servant” pouring his wine and saw a much younger and slightly darker replica of Thomas Jefferson (presumably one of his sons by Hemings). If Jefferson was dining alone he’d get it himself and return the tray when done, never having seen any of the slaves involved in the meal, which has caused some to attempt to psychoanalyze him (“he didn’t like to be reminded he was a slaveowner”) but I think it was more likely his known love of solitude.
Many early American houses had trap doors in the floor than served a variety of purposes. In the very early era they were useful in the event of Indian attack or fire- a way to get out of the house if the door or (if you were lucky enough to have) windows were blocked. Many slave and poor farmer cabins had burrows underneath which were probably not related at all to escape but for storage; to begin with the cabins were tiny so there wasn’t much place for storage, and perhaps more importantly there was no refrigeration so keeping it underground as far as conveniently possible helped preserve anything perishable a little longer. In the 19th century south when even the homes of the non-wealthy and the nicer slave cabins were built off the ground for several reasons (cooling being the big one but also snakes/flooding/storage/etc.) trap doors were kept partly as a means of escape in the event of fire (always a major fear when open flames were used daily year round for light and cooking) but also for sweeping and access to things kept stored under the house (which in the case of my great-aunts’ house included dogs, cats, big pans, and the like) and also for extra ventilation in really hot weather. In winter they were kept covered with a rug less for concealing purposes than to block the draft.
One of my favorite lines from The Lion in Winter is when Geoffrey and John, who are plotting with King Philip of France against their father Henry II of England, are surprised when there’s a knock on his door.
GEOFFREY: Can we hide behind the tapestry?
PHILIP: I think it’s what they’re made for.
IIRC, the Secret Passageways episode of “If Walls Could Talk” had a segment on a similar house in Chicago. The main kitchen was across the street and a tunnel, now closed off, connected the two.
