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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14715 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 14715-h.htm or 14715-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/1/14715/14715-h/14715-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/1/14715/14715-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
+
+by
+
+ELSIE DE WOLFE
+
+Illustrated with photographs in color and black and white
+
+New York
+The Century Co.
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+      I.  THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
+     II.  SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION
+    III.  THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
+     IV.  THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
+      V.  THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
+     VI.  THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
+    VII.  OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
+   VIII.  THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
+     IX.  HALLS AND STAIRCASES
+      X.  THE DRAWING-ROOM
+     XI.  THE LIVING-ROOM
+    XII.  SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
+   XIII.  A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
+    XIV.  THE BEDROOM
+     XV.  THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH
+    XVI.  THE SMALL APARTMENT
+   XVII.  REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART
+  XVIII.  THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
+    XIX.  VILLA TRIANON
+     XX.  NOTES ON MANY THINGS
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+   Elsie de Wolfe (Frontispiece)
+   In this hall, simplicity, suitability and proportion are observed
+   Mennoyer drawings and old mirrors set in panelings
+   A portrait by Nattier inset above a fine old mantel
+   The Washington Irving house was delightfully rambling
+   A Washington Irving House bedroom
+   Miss Marbury's bedroom
+   The fore-court and entrance of the Fifty-fifth Street house
+   A painted wall broken into panels by narrow moldings
+   A wall paper of Elizabethan design with oak furniture
+   The scheme of this room grew from the jars on the mantel
+   A Louis Seize bedroom in rose and blue and cream
+   The writing corner of a chintz bedroom
+   Black chintz used in a dressing-room
+   Printed linen curtains over rose colored silk
+   Straight hangings of rose and yellow shot silk
+   Muslin glass curtains in the Washington Irving house
+   Here are many lighting fixtures harmoniously assembled in a
+       drawing-room
+   Detail of a fine old French fixture of hand wrought metal
+   Lighting fixtures inspired by Adam mirrors
+   The staircase in the Bayard Thayer house
+   The drawing-room should be intimate in spirit
+   The fine formality of well-placed paneling
+   The living-room in the C.W. Harkness house at Morristown, New Jersey
+   Miss Anne Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir
+   Miss Morgan's Louis XVI _lit de repos_
+   A Georgian dining-room in the William Iselin house
+   Mrs. Ogden Armour's Chinese paper screen
+   Mrs. James Warren Lane's painted dining-table
+   The private dining-room in the Colony Club
+   An old painted bed of the Louis XVI period
+   Miss Crocker's Louis XVI bed
+   A Colony Club bedroom
+   Mauve chintz in a dull green room
+   Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer's Chinoiserie chintz bed
+   Mrs. Payne Whitney's green feather chintz bed
+   My own bedroom is built around a Breton bed
+   Furniture painted with chintz designs
+   Miss Morgan's Louis XVI dressing-room
+   Miss Marbury's chintz-hung dressing-table
+   A corner of my own boudoir
+   Built-in bookshelves in a small room
+   Mrs. C.W. Harkness's cabinet for _objets d'art_
+   A banquette of the Louis XV period covered with needlework
+   A Chinese Chippendale sofa covered with chintz
+   The trellis room in the Colony Club
+   Mrs. Ormond G. Smith's trellis room at Center Island, New York
+   Looking over the _tapis vert_ to the trellis
+   A fine old console in the Villa Trianon
+   The broad terrace connects house and garden
+   A proper writing-table in the drawing-room
+   A cream-colored porcelain stove in a New York house
+   Mr. James Deering's wall fountain
+   Fountain in the trellis room of Mrs. Ormond G. Smith
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
+
+
+I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women
+throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it
+what you will--awakening, development, American Renaissance--it is a
+most startling and promising condition of affairs.
+
+It is no longer possible, even to people of only faintly æsthetic
+tastes, to buy chairs merely to sit upon or a clock merely that it
+should tell the time. Home-makers are determined to have their houses,
+outside and in, correct according to the best standards. What do we mean
+by the best standards? Certainly not those of the useless, overcharged
+house of the average American millionaire, who builds and furnishes his
+home with a hopeless disregard of tradition. We must accept the
+standards that the artists and the architects accept, the standards that
+have come to us from those exceedingly rational people, our ancestors.
+
+Our ancestors built for stability and use, and so their simple houses
+were excellent examples of architecture. Their spacious, uncrowded
+interiors were usually beautiful. Houses and furniture fulfilled their
+uses, and if an object fulfils its mission the chances are that it is
+beautiful.
+
+It is all very well to plan our ideal house or apartment, our individual
+castle in Spain, but it isn't necessary to live among intolerable
+furnishings just because we cannot realize our castle. There never was a
+house so bad that it couldn't be made over into something worth while.
+We shall all be very much happier when we learn to transform the things
+we have into a semblance of our ideal.
+
+How, then, may we go about accomplishing our ideal?
+
+By letting it go!
+
+By forgetting this vaguely pleasing dream, this evidence of our smug
+vanity, and making ourselves ready for a new ideal.
+
+By considering the body of material from which it is good sense to
+choose when we have a house to decorate.
+
+By studying the development of the modern house, its romantic tradition
+and architectural history.
+
+By taking upon ourselves the duty of self-taught lessons of sincerity
+and common sense, and suitability.
+
+By learning what is meant by color and form and line, harmony and
+contrast and proportion.
+
+When we are on familiar terms with our tools, and feel our vague ideas
+clearing into definite inspiration, then we are ready to talk about
+ideals. We are fit to approach the full art of home-making.
+
+We take it for granted that every woman is interested in houses--that
+she either has a house in course of construction, or dreams of having
+one, or has had a house long enough wrong to wish it right. And we take
+it for granted that this American home is always the woman's home: a man
+may build and decorate a beautiful house, but it remains for a woman to
+make a home of it for him. It is the personality of the mistress that
+the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how
+much happiness they may find there.
+
+You will express yourself in your house, whether you want to or not, so
+you must make up your mind to a long preparatory discipline. You may
+have only one house to furnish in your life-time, possibly, so be
+careful and go warily. Therefore, you must select for your architect a
+man who isn't too determined to have _his_ way. It is a fearful mistake
+to leave the entire planning of your home to a man whose social
+experience may be limited, for instance, for he can impose on you his
+conception of your tastes with a damning permanency and emphasis. I once
+heard a certain Boston architect say that he taught his clients to be
+ladies and gentlemen. He couldn't, you know. All he could do is to set
+the front door so that it would reprove them if they weren't!
+
+Who does not know, for instance, those mistaken people whose houses
+represent their own or their architects' hasty visits to the fine old
+_châteaux_ of the Loire, or the palaces of Versailles, or the fine old
+houses of England, or the gracious villas of Italy? We must avoid such
+aspiring architects, and visualize our homes not as so many specially
+designated rooms and convenient closets, but as individual expressions
+of ourselves, of the future we plan, of our dreams for our children. The
+ideal house is the house that has been long planned for, long awaited.
+
+[Illustration: IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE
+OBSERVED]
+
+Fortunately for us, our best architects are so very good that we are
+better than safe if we take our problems to them. These men associate
+with themselves the hundred young architects who are eager to prove
+themselves on small houses. The idea that it is economical to be your
+own architect and trust your house to a building contractor is a
+mistaken, and most expensive, one. The surer you are of your architect's
+common sense and professional ability, the surer you may be that your
+house will be economically efficient. He will not only plan a house that
+will meet the needs of your family, but he will give you inspiration for
+its interior. He will concern himself with the moldings, the
+light-openings, the door-handles and hinges, the unconsidered things
+that make or mar your house. Select for your architect a man you'd like
+for a friend. Perhaps he will be, before the house comes true. If you
+are both sincere, if you both purpose to have the best thing you can
+afford, the house will express the genius and character of your
+architect and the personality and character of yourself, as a great
+painting suggests both painter and sitter. The hard won triumph of a
+well-built house means many compromises, but the ultimate satisfaction
+is worth everything.
+
+I do not purpose, in this book, to go into the historic traditions of
+architecture and decoration--there are so many excellent books it were
+absurd to review them--but I do wish to trace briefly the development of
+the modern house, the woman's house, to show you that all that is
+intimate and charming in the home as we know it has come through the
+unmeasured influence of women. Man conceived the great house with its
+parade rooms, its _grands appartements_ but woman found eternal parade
+tiresome, and planned for herself little retreats, rooms small enough
+for comfort and intimacy. In short, man made the house: woman went him
+one better and made of it a home.
+
+The virtues of simplicity and reticence in form first came into being,
+as nearly as we can tell, in the _Grotta_, the little studio-like
+apartment of Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, away back in
+1496. The Marchioness made of this little studio her personal retreat.
+Here she brought many of the treasures of the Italian Renaissance.
+Really, simplicity and reticence were the last things she considered,
+but the point is that they were considered at all in such a restless,
+passionate age. Later, in 1522, she established the _Paradiso_, a suite
+of apartments which she occupied after her husband's death. So you see
+the idea of a woman planning her own apartment is pretty old, after all.
+
+The next woman who took a stand that revealed genuine social
+consciousness was that half-French, half-Italian woman, Catherine de
+Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet. She seceded from court because the
+court was swaggering and hurly-burly, with florid Marie-de-Medicis at
+its head. And with this recession, she began to express in her conduct,
+her feeling, her conversation, and, finally, in her house, her awakened
+consciousness of beauty and reserve, of simplicity and suitability.
+
+This was the early Seventeenth Century, mind you, when the main salons
+of the French houses were filled with such institutions as rows of red
+chairs and boxed state beds. She undertook, first of all, to have a
+light and gracefully curving stairway leading to her salon instead of
+supplanting it. She grouped her rooms with a lovely diversity of size
+and purpose, whereas before they had been vast, stately halls with
+cubbies hardby for sleeping. She gave the bedroom its alcove, boudoir,
+ante-chamber, and even its bath, and then as decorator she supplanted
+the old feudal yellow and red with her famous silver-blue. She covered
+blue chairs with silver bullion. She fashioned long, tenderly colored
+curtains of novel shades. Reticence was always in evidence, but it was
+the reticence of elegance. It was through Madame de Rambouillet that the
+armchair received its final distribution of yielding parts, and began
+to express the comfort of soft padded backward slope, of width and
+warmth and color.
+
+It was all very heavy, very grave, very angular, this Hôtel Rambouillet,
+but it was devised for and consecrated to conversation, considered a new
+form of privilege! The _précieuses_ in their later jargon called chairs
+"the indispensables of conversation."
+
+I have been at some length to give a picture of Madame de Rambouillet's
+hôtel because it really is the earliest modern house. There, where the
+society that frequented it was analyzing its soul in dialogue and long
+platonic discussion that would seem stark enough to us, the word which
+it invented for itself was _urbanité_--the coinage of one of its own
+foremost figures.
+
+It is unprofitable to follow on into the grandeurs of Louis XIV, if one
+hopes to find an advance there in truth-telling architecture. At the end
+of that splendid official success the squalor of Versailles was
+unspeakable, its stenches unbearable. In spite of its size the Palace
+was known as the most comfortless house in Europe. After the death of
+its owner society, in a fit of madness, plunged into the _rocaille_.
+When the restlessness of Louis XV could no longer find moorings in this
+brilliancy, there came into being little houses called _folies_, garden
+hermitages for the privileged. Here we find Madame de Pompadour in
+calicoes, in a wild garden, bare-foot, playing as a milkmaid, or seated
+in a little gray-white interior with painted wooden furniture, having
+her supper on an earthen-ware service that has replaced old silver and
+gold. Amorous alcoves lost their painted Loves and took on gray and
+white decorations. The casinos of little _comédiennes_ did not glitter
+any more. English sentiment began to bedim Gallic eyes, and so what we
+know as the Louis XVI style was born.
+
+And so, at that moment, the idea of the modern house came into its own,
+and it could advance--as an idea--hardly any further. For with all the
+intrepidity and passion of the later Eighteenth Century in its search
+for beauty, for all the magic-making of convenience and ingenuity of the
+Nineteenth Century, the fundamentals have changed but little. And now we
+of the Twentieth Century can only add material comforts and an
+expression of our personality. We raise the house beyond the reach of
+squalor, we give it measured heat, we give it water in abundance and
+perfect sanitation and light everywhere, we give it ventilation less
+successfully than we might, and finally we give it the human quality
+that is so modern. There are no dungeons in the good modern house, no
+disgraceful lairs for servants, no horrors of humidity.
+
+[Illustration: MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS]
+
+And so we women have achieved a house, luminous with kind purpose
+throughout. It is finished--that is our difficulty! We inherit it, all
+rounded in its perfection, consummate in its charms, but it is finished,
+and what can we do about a thing that is finished I Doesn't it seem that
+we are back in the old position of Isabella d'Este--eager, predatory,
+and "thingy"? And isn't it time for us to pull up short lest we
+sidestep the goal? We are so sure of a thousand appetites we are in
+danger of passing by the amiable commonplaces. We find ourselves
+dismayed in old houses that look too simple. We must stop and ask
+ourselves questions, and, if necessary, plan for ourselves little
+retreats until we can find ourselves again.
+
+What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes on within it,
+a house that gives us beauty as we understand it--and beauty of a nobler
+kind that we may grow to understand, a house that _looks_ amenity.
+
+Suppose you have obtained this sort of wisdom--a sane viewpoint. I think
+it will give you as great a satisfaction to re-arrange your house with
+what you have as to re-build, re-decorate. The results may not be so
+charming, but you can learn by them. You can take your indiscriminate
+inheritance of Victorian rosewood of Eastlake walnut and cocobolo, your
+pickle-and-plum colored Morris furniture, and make a civilized interior
+by placing it right, and putting detail at the right points. Your sense
+of the pleasure and meaning of human intercourse will be clear in your
+disposition of your best things, in your elimination of your worst ones.
+
+When you have emptied the tables of _rubbish_ so that you can put
+_things_ down on them at need, placed them in a light where you can
+write on them in repose, or isolated real works of art in the middle of
+them; when you have set your dropsical sofas where you want them for
+talk, or warmth and reading; when you can see the fire from the bed in
+your sleeping-room, and dress near your bath; if this sort of sense of
+your rights is acknowledged in your rearrangement, your rooms will
+always have meaning, in the end. If you like only the things in a chair
+that have meaning, and grow to hate the rest you will, without any other
+instruction, prefer--the next time you are buying--a good Louis XVI
+_fauteuil_ to a stuffed velvet chair. You will never again be guilty of
+the errors of meaningless magnificence.
+
+To most of us in America who must perforce lead workaday lives, the
+absence of beauty is a very distinct lack. I think, indeed, that the
+present awakening has come to stay, and that before very long, we shall
+have simple houses with fireplaces that draw, electric lights in the
+proper places, comfortable and sensible furniture, and not a gilt-legged
+spindle-shanked table or chair anywhere. This may be a decorator's
+optimistic dream, but let us all hope that it may come true.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION
+
+
+When I am asked to decorate a new house, my first thought is
+suitability. My next thought is proportion. Always I keep in mind the
+importance of simplicity. First, I study the people who are to live in
+this house, and their needs, as thoroughly as I studied my parts in the
+days when I was an actress. For the time-being I really am the
+chatelaine of the house. When I have thoroughly familiarized myself with
+my "part," I let that go for the time, and consider the proportion of
+the house and its rooms. It is much more important that the wall
+openings, windows, doors, and fireplaces should be in the right place
+and should balance one another than that there should be expensive and
+extravagant hangings and carpets.
+
+My first thought in laying out a room is the placing of the electric
+light openings. How rarely does one find the lights in the right place
+in our over-magnificent hotels and residences! One arrives from a
+journey tired out and travel-stained, only to find oneself facing a
+mirror as far removed from the daylight as possible, with the artificial
+lights directly behind one, or high in the ceiling in the center of the
+room. In my houses I always see that each room shall have its lights
+placed for the comfort of its occupants. There must be lights in
+sheltered corners of the fireplace, by the writing-desk, on each side of
+the dressing-table, and so on.
+
+Then I consider the heating of the room. We Americans are slaves to
+steam heat. We ruin our furniture, our complexions, and our dispositions
+by this enervating atmosphere of too much heat. In my own houses I have
+a fireplace in each room, and I burn wood in it. There is a
+heating-system in the basement of my house, but it is under perfect
+control. I prefer the normal heat of sunshine and open fires. But,
+granted that open fires are impossible in all your rooms, do arrange in
+the beginning that the small rooms of your house may not be overheated.
+It is a distinct irritation to a person who loves clean air to go into a
+room where a flood of steam heat pours out of every corner. There is
+usually no way to control it unless you turn it off altogether. I once
+had the temerity to do this in a certain hotel room where there was a
+cold and cheerless empty fireplace. I summoned a reluctant chambermaid,
+only to be told that the chimney had never had a fire in it and the
+proprietor would rather not take such a risk!
+
+[Illustration: A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL]
+
+Perhaps the guest in your house would not be so troublesome, but don't
+tempt her! If you have a fireplace, see that it is in working order.
+We are sure to judge a woman in whose house we find ourselves for the
+first time, by her surroundings. We judge her temperament, her habits,
+her inclinations, by the interior of her home. We may talk of the
+weather, but we are looking at the furniture. We attribute vulgar
+qualities to those who are content to live in ugly surroundings. We
+endow with refinement and charm the person who welcomes us in a
+delightful room, where the colors blend and the proportions are as
+perfect as in a picture. After all, what surer guarantee can there be of
+a woman's character, natural and cultivated, inherent and inherited,
+than taste? It is a compass that never errs. If a woman has taste she
+may have faults, follies, fads, she may err, she may be as human and
+feminine as she pleases, but she will never cause a scandal!
+
+How can we develop taste? Some of us, alas, can never develop it,
+because we can never let go of shams. We must learn to recognize
+suitability, simplicity and proportion, and apply our knowledge to our
+needs. I grant you we may never fully appreciate the full balance of
+proportion, but we can exert our common sense and decide whether a thing
+is suitable; we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is
+simple, and we can train our eyes to recognize good and bad proportion.
+A technical knowledge of architecture is not necessary to know that a
+huge stuffed leather chair in a tiny gold and cream room is unsuitable,
+is hideously complicated, and is as much out of proportion as the
+proverbial bull in the china-shop.
+
+A woman's environment will speak for her life, whether she likes it or
+not. How can we believe that a woman of sincerity of purpose will hang
+fake "works of art" on her walls, or satisfy herself with imitation
+velvets or silks? How can we attribute taste to a woman who permits
+paper floors and iron ceilings in her house? We are too afraid of the
+restful commonplaces, and yet if we live simple lives, why shouldn't we
+be glad our houses are comfortably commonplace? How much better to have
+plain furniture that is comfortable, simple chintzes printed from old
+blocks, a few good prints, than all the sham things in the world? A
+house is a dead-give-away, anyhow, so you should arrange is so that the
+person who sees your personality in it will be reassured, not
+disconcerted.
+
+Too often, here in America, the most comfortable room in the house is
+given up to a sort of bastard collection of gilt chairs and tables,
+over-elaborate draperies shutting out both light and air, and huge and
+frightful paintings. This style of room, with its museum-like
+furnishings, has been dubbed "Marie Antoinette," _why_, no one but the
+American decorator can say. Heaven knows poor Marie Antoinette had
+enough follies to atone for, but certainly she has never been treated
+more shabbily than when they dub these mausoleums "Marie Antoinette
+rooms."
+
+I remember taking a clever Englishwoman of much taste to see a woman who
+was very proud of her new house. We had seen most of the house when the
+hostess, who had evidently reserved what she considered the best for
+the last, threw open the doors of a large and gorgeous apartment and
+said, "This is my Louis XVI ballroom." My friend, who had been very
+patient up to that moment, said very quietly, "What makes you think so?"
+
+Louis XVI thought a salon well furnished with a few fine chairs and a
+table. He wished to be of supreme importance. In the immense salons of
+the Italian palaces there were a few benches and chairs. People then
+wished spaces about them.
+
+Nowadays, people are swamped by their furniture. Too many centuries, too
+many races, crowd one another in a small room. The owner seems
+insignificant among his collections of historical furniture. Whether he
+collects all sorts of things of all periods in one heterogeneous mass,
+or whether he fills his house with the furniture of some one epoch, he
+is not at home in his surroundings.
+
+The furniture of every epoch records its history. Our ancestors of the
+Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries inherited the troublous times of
+their fathers in their heavy oaken chests. They owned more chests than
+anything else, because a chest could be carried away on the back of a
+sturdy pack mule, when the necessity arose for flight.
+
+People never had time to sit down in the Sixteenth Century. Their
+feverish unrest is recorded in their stiff, backed chairs. It was not
+until the Seventeenth Century that they had time to sit down and talk.
+We need no book of history to teach us this--we have only to observe the
+ample proportions of the arm-chairs of the period.
+
+Our ancestors of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries worked with a
+faith in the permanence of what they created. We have lost this happy
+confidence. We are occupied exclusively with preserving and reproducing.
+We have not succeeded in creating a style adapted to our modern life. It
+is just as well! Our life, with its haste, its nervousness and its
+preoccupations, does not inspire the furniture-makers. We cannot do
+better than to accept the standards of other times, and adapt them to
+our uses.
+
+Why should we American woman run after styles and periods of which we
+know nothing? Why should we not be content with the fundamental things?
+The formal French room is very delightful in the proper place but when
+it is unsuited to the people who must live in it it is as bad as a sham
+room. The woman who wears paste jewels is not so conspicuously wrong as
+the woman who plasters herself with too many real jewels at the wrong
+time!
+
+This is what I am always fighting in people's houses, the unsuitability
+of things. The foolish woman goes about from shop to shop and buys as
+her fancy directs. She sees something "pretty" and buys it, though it
+has no reference either in form or color to the scheme of her house.
+Haven't you been in rooms where there was a jumble of mission
+furniture, satinwood, fine old mahogany and gilt-legged chairs? And it
+is the same with color. A woman says, "Oh, I love blue, let's have
+blue!" regardless of the exposure of her room and the furnishings she
+has already collected. And then when she has treated each one of her
+rooms in a different color, and with a different floor covering, she
+wonders why she is always fretted in going from one room to another.
+
+Don't go about the furnishing of your house with the idea that you must
+select the furniture of some one period and stick to that. It isn't at
+all necessary. There are old English chairs and tables of the Sixteenth
+and Seventeenth Centuries that fit into our quiet, spacious Twentieth
+Century country homes. Lines and fabrics and woods are the things to be
+compared.
+
+There are so many beautiful things that have come to us from other times
+that it should be easy to make our homes beautiful, but I have seen what
+I can best describe as apoplectic chairs whose legs were fashioned like
+aquatic plants; tables upheld by tortured naked women; lighting fixtures
+in the form of tassels, and such horrors, in many houses of to-day under
+the guise of being "authentic period furniture." Only a connoisseur can
+ever hope to know about the furniture of every period, but all of us can
+easily learn the ear-marks of the furniture that is suited to our homes.
+I shan't talk about ear-marks here, however, because dozens of
+collectors have compiled excellent books that tell you all about curves
+and lines and grain-of-wood and worm-holes. My business is to persuade
+you to use your graceful French sofas and your simple rush bottom New
+England chairs in different rooms--in other words, to preach to you the
+beauty of suitability. Suitability! _Suitability!_ SUITABILITY!!
+
+It is such a relief to return to the tranquil, simple forms of
+furniture, and to decorate our rooms by a process of elimination. How
+many rooms have I not cleared of junk--this heterogeneous mass of
+ornamental "period" furniture and bric-a-brac bought to make a room
+"look cozy." Once cleared of these, the simplicity and dignity of the
+room comes back, the architectural spaces are freed and now stand in
+their proper relation to the furniture. In other words, the architecture
+of the room becomes its decoration.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
+
+
+I have always lived in enchanting houses. Probably when another woman
+would be dreaming of love affairs, I dream of the delightful houses I
+have lived in. And just as the woman who dreams of many lovers finds one
+dream a little dearer than all the rest, so one of my houses has been
+dearer to me than all the others.
+
+[Illustration: THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING]
+
+This favorite love of mine is the old Washington Irving house in New
+York, the quaint mansion that gave historic Irving Place its name. For
+twenty years my friend, Elizabeth Marbury, and I made this old house our
+home. Two years ago we reluctantly gave up the old house and moved into
+a more modern one--also transformed from old into new--on East
+Fifty-fifth Street. We have also a delightful old house in France, the
+Villa Trianon, at Versailles, where we spend our summers. So you see we
+have had the rare experience of transforming three mistreated old houses
+into very delightful homes.
+
+When we found this old house, so many years ago, we were very young, and
+it is amusing now to think of its evolution. We had so many dreams, so
+many theories, and we tried them all out on the old house. And like a
+patient, well-bred maiden aunt, the old house always accepted our
+changes most placidly. There never was such a house!
+
+You could do anything to it, because, fundamentally, it was good. Its
+wall spaces were inviting, its windows were made for framing pleasant
+things. When we moved there we had a broad sweep of view: I can remember
+seeing the river from our dining-room. Now the city has grown up around
+the old house and jostled it rudely, and shut out much of its sunshine.
+
+There is a joy in the opportunity of creating a beautiful interior for a
+new and up-to-date house, but best of all is the joy of furnishing an
+old house like this one. It is like reviving an old garden. It may not
+be just your idea of a garden to begin with, but as you study it and
+deck its barren spaces with masses of color, and fit a sundial into the
+spot that so needs it, and give the sunshine a fountain to play with,
+you love the old garden just a little more every time you touch it,
+until it becomes to you the most beautiful garden in all the world.
+
+Gardens and houses are such whimsical things! This old house of ours had
+been so long mistreated that it was fairly petulant and querulous when I
+began studying it. It asked questions on every turn, and seemed
+surprised when they were answered. The house was delightfully rambling,
+with a tiny entrance hall, and narrow stairs, and sudden up and down
+steps from one room to another like the old, old house one associates
+with far-away places and old times.
+
+The little entrance hall was worse than a question, it was a problem, but
+I finally solved it. The floor was paved with little hexagon-shaped tiles
+of a wonderful old red. A door made of little square panes of mirrors was
+placed where it would deceive the old hall into thinking itself a spacious
+thing. The walls were covered with a green-and-white-stripe wall-paper
+that looked as old as Rip Van Winkle. This is the same ribbon-grass paper
+that I afterward used in the Colony Club hallway. The woodwork was painted
+a soft gray-green. Finally, I had my collection of faded French costume
+prints set flat against the top of the wall as a frieze. The hall was so
+very narrow that as you went up stairs you could actually examine the old
+prints in detail. Another little thing: I covered the handrail of the
+stairs with a soft gray-green velvet of the same tone as the woodwork, and
+the effect was so very good and the touch of it so very nice that many of
+my friends straightway adopted the idea.
+
+But I am placing the cart before the horse! I should talk of the shell
+of the house before the contents, shouldn't I? It is hard to talk of
+this particular house as a thing apart from its furnishings, however,
+for every bit of paneling, every lighting-fixture, the placing of each
+mirror, was worked out so that the shell of the house and its
+furnishings might be in perfect harmony.
+
+The drawing-room and dining-room occupied the first floor of the house.
+The drawing-room was a long, narrow room with cream woodwork and walls.
+The walls were broken into panels by the use of a narrow molding. In the
+large panel above the mantel-shelf I had inset a painting by Nattier.
+You will see the same painting used in the Fifty-fifth Street house
+drawing-room, in another illustration.
+
+The color scheme of rose and cream and dull yellow was worked out from
+the rose and yellow Persian rug. Most of the furniture we found in
+France, but it fitted perfectly into this aristocratic and dignified
+room. Miss Marbury and I have a perfect right to French things in our
+drawing-room, you see, for we are French residents for half the year.
+And, besides, this gracious old house welcomed a fine old Louis XIV sofa
+as serenely as you please. I have no idea of swallowing my words about
+unsuitability!
+
+Light, air and comfort--these three things I must always have in a room,
+whether it be drawing-room or servant's room. This room had all three.
+The chairs were all comfortable, the lights well placed, and there was
+plenty of sunshine and air. The color of the room was so subdued that it
+was restful to the eye--one color faded into another so subtly that one
+did not realize there was a definite color-scheme. The hangings of the
+room were of a deep rose color. I used the same colors in the coverings
+of the chairs and sofas. The house was curtained throughout with fine
+white muslin curtains. No matter what the inner curtains of a room may
+be, I use this simple stuff against the window itself. There isn't any
+nicer material. To me there is something unsuitable in an array of lace
+against a window, like underclothes hung up to dry.
+
+[Illustration: A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM]
+
+The most delightful part of the drawing-room was the little
+conservatory, which was a plain, lamentable bay-window once upon a time.
+I determined to make a little flower-box of it, and had the floor of it
+paved with large tiles, and between the hardwood floor of the
+drawing-room and the marble of the window space was a narrow curb of
+marble, which made it possible to have a jolly little fountain in the
+window. The fountain splashed away to its heart's content, for there was
+a drain pipe under the curb. At the top of the windows there were
+shallow white boxes filled with trailing ivy that hung down and screened
+the glass, making the window as delightful to the passer-by without as
+to us within. There were several pots of rose-colored flowers standing
+in a prim row on the marble curb.
+
+You see how much simpler it is to make the best of an old bay window
+than to build on a new conservatory. There are thousands of houses with
+windows like this one of ours, an unfortunate space of which no use is
+made. Sometimes there is a gilt table bearing a lofty jar, sometimes a
+timid effort at comfort--a sofa--but usually the bay window is sacred to
+its own devices, whatever they may be! Why not spend a few dollars and
+make it the most interesting part of the room by giving it a lot of
+vines and flowers and a small fountain? It isn't at all an expensive
+thing to do.
+
+From the drawing-room you entered the dining-room. This was a long room
+with beautifully spaced walls, a high ceiling, and quaint cupboards. The
+arrangement of the mirrors around the cupboards and doors was unusual
+and most decorative. This room was so beautiful in itself that I used
+very little color--but _such_ color! We never tired of the gray and
+white and ivory color-scheme, the quiet atmosphere that made glorious
+the old Chinese carpet, with its rose-colored ground and blue-and-gold
+medallions and border. The large India-ink sketches set in the walls are
+originals by Mennoyer, the delightful Eighteenth Century artist who did
+the overdoors of the Petit Trianon.
+
+The mirror-framed lighting fixtures I brought over from France. The
+dining-table too, was French, of a creamy ivory-painted wood. The chairs
+had insets of cane of a deeper tone. The recessed window-seat was
+covered with a soft velvet of a deep yellow, and there were as many
+little footstools beside the window-seat as there were chairs in the
+room. Doesn't everyone long for a footstool at table?
+
+I believe that everything in one's house should be comfortable, but
+one's bedroom must be more than comfortable: it must be intimate,
+personal, one's secret garden, so to speak. It may be as simple as a
+convent cell and still have this quality of the personality of its
+occupant.
+
+There are two things that are as important to me as the bed in the
+bedrooms that I furnish, and they are the little tables at the head of
+the bed, and the lounging chairs. The little table must hold a good
+reading light, well shaded, for who doesn't like to read in bed? There
+must also be a clock, and there really should be a telephone. And the
+_chaise-longue_, or couch, as the case may be, should be both
+comfortable and beautiful. Who hasn't longed for a comfortable place to
+snatch forty winks at midday?
+
+My own bedroom in this house was very pleasant to me. The house was very
+small, you see, and my bedroom had to be my writing-and reading-room
+too, so that accounts for the bookshelves that fill the wall space above
+and around the mantel and the large writing-table. The room was built
+around a wonderful old French bed which came from Brittany. This old bed
+is of carved mahogany, with mirrored panels on the side against the
+wall, and with tall columns at the ends. It is always hung with
+embroidered silk in the rose color that I adore and has any number of
+pillows, big and little. The _chaise-longue_ was covered with this same
+silk, as were the various chair cushions. The other furnishings were in
+keeping. It was a delightfully comfortable room, and it grew a little at
+a time. I needed bookshelves, and I built them. A drop-light was
+necessary, and I found the old brass lantern which hung from the
+ceiling. And so it was furnished, bit by bit, need by need.
+
+Miss Marbury's bedroom in this house was entirely different in type, but
+exactly the same in comfort. The furniture was of white enamel, the
+walls ivory-white, and the rug a soft dull blue. The chintz used was the
+familiar Bird of Paradise, gorgeous in design, but so subdued in tone
+that one never tires of it. The bed had a flat, perfectly fitted cover
+of the chintz, which is tucked under the mattress. The box spring was
+also covered with the chintz, and the effect was always tidy and
+satisfactory. This is the neatest disposal of the bed-clothes I have
+seen. I always advise this arrangement.
+
+Besides the bed there was the necessary little table, holding a
+reading-light and so forth, and at the head of the bed a most adorable
+screen of white enamel, paneled with chintz below and glass above. There
+was a soft couch of generous width in this room, with covers and
+cushions of the chintz.
+
+Over near the windows was the dressing-table with the lighting-fixtures
+properly placed. This table, hung with chintz, had a sheet of plate
+glass exactly fitting its top. The writing-table, near the window is
+also part of my creed of comfort. There should be a writing-table in
+every bedroom. My friends laugh at the little fat pincushions on my
+writing-tables, but when they are covered with a bit of the chintz or
+tapestry or brocade of the room they are very pretty, and I am sure pins
+are as necessary on the writing-table as on the dressing-table.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MARBURY'S BEDROOM]
+
+Another thing I like on every writing-table is a clear glass bowl of
+dried rose petals, which gives the room the faintest spicy fragrance.
+There is also a little bowl of just the proper color to hold pens and
+clips and odds and ends. I get as much pleasure from planning these
+small details as from the planning of the larger furniture of the room.
+
+The house was very simple, you see, and very small, and so when the time
+came to leave it we had grown to love every inch of it. You can love a
+small house so completely! But we couldn't forgive the skyscrapers
+encroaching on our supply of sunshine, and we really needed more room,
+and so we said good-by to our beloved old house and moved into a new
+one. Now we find ourselves in danger of loving the new one as much as
+the old. But that is another story.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
+
+
+One walks the streets of New York and receives the fantastic impression
+that some giant architect has made for the city thousands of houses in
+replica. These dismal brownstone buildings are so like without, and
+alas! so like within, that one wonders how their owners know their homes
+from one another. I have had the pleasure of making over many of these
+gloomy barracks into homes for other people, and when we left the old
+Irving Place house we took one of these dreary houses for ourselves, and
+made it over into a semblance of what a city house should be.
+
+You know the kind of house--there are tens of thousands of them--a four
+story and basement house of pinkish brownstone, with a long flight of
+ugly stairs from the street to the first floor. The common belief that
+all city houses of this type must be dark and dreary just because they
+always _have_ been dark and dreary is an unnecessary superstition.
+
+My object in taking this house was twofold: I wanted to prove to my
+friends that it was possible to take one of the darkest and grimiest of
+city houses and make it an abode of sunshine and light, and I wanted to
+furnish the whole house exactly as I pleased--for once!
+
+The remaking of the house was very interesting. I tore away the ugly
+stone steps and centered the entrance door in a little stone-paved
+fore-court on the level of the old area-way. The fore-court is just a
+step below the street level, giving you a pleasant feeling of
+invitation. Everyone hates to climb into a house, but there is a subtle
+allure in a garden or a court yard or a room into which you must step
+down. The fore-court is enclosed with a high iron railing banked with
+formal box-trees. Above the huge green entrance door there is a graceful
+iron balcony, filled with green things, that pulls the great door and
+the central window of the floor above into an impressive composition.
+The façade of the house, instead of being a commonplace rectangle of
+stone broken by windows, has this long connected break of the door and
+balcony and window. By such simple devices are happy results
+accomplished!
+
+The door itself is noteworthy, with its great bronze knob set squarely
+in the center. On each side of it there are the low windows of the
+entrance hall, with window-boxes of evergreens. Compare this orderly
+arrangement of windows and entrance door with the badly balanced houses
+of the old type, and you will realize anew the value of balance and
+proportion.
+
+From the fore-court you enter the hall. Once within the hall, the, house
+widens magically. Surely this cool black and white apartment cannot be
+a part of restless New York! Have you ever come suddenly upon an old
+Southern house, and thrilled at the classic purity of white columns in a
+black-green forest? This entrance hall gives you the same thrill; the
+elements of formality, of tranquillity, of coolness, are so evident. The
+walls and ceiling are a deep, flat cream, and the floor is laid in large
+black and white marble tiles. Exactly opposite you as you enter, there
+is a wall fountain with a background of mirrors. The water spills over
+from the fountain into ferns and flowers banked within a marble curb.
+The two wall spaces on your right and left are broken by graceful niches
+which hold old statues. An oval Chinese rug and the white and orange
+flowers of the fountain furnish the necessary color. The windows
+flanking the entrance doorway are hung with flat curtains of coarse
+white linen, with inserts of old filet lace, and there are side curtains
+of dead black silk with borderings of silver and gold threads.
+
+In any house that I have anything to do with, there is some sort of desk
+or table for writing in the hall. How often I have been in other
+people's houses when it was necessary to send a message, or to record an
+address, when the whole household began scurrying around trying to find
+a pencil and paper! This, to my mind, is an outward and visible sign of
+an inward--and fundamental!--lack of order.
+
+[Illustration: THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET
+HOUSE]
+
+In this hall there is a charming desk particularly adapted to its
+place. It is a standing desk which can be lowered or heightened at will,
+so that one who wishes to scribble a line or so may use it without
+sitting down. This desk is called a _bureau d'architect_. I found it in
+Biarritz. It would be quite easy to have one made by a good
+cabinet-maker, for the lines and method of construction are simple. My
+hall desk is so placed that it is lighted by the window by day and the
+wall lights by night, but it might be lighted by two tall candlesticks
+if a wall light were not available. There is a shallow drawer which
+contains surplus writing materials, but the only things permitted on the
+writing surface of the desk are the tray for cards, the pad and pencils.
+
+The only other furniture in the hall is an old porter's chair near the
+door, a chair that suggests the sedan of old France, but serves its
+purpose admirably.
+
+A glass door leads to the inner hall and the stairway, which I consider
+the best thing in the house. Instead of the usual steep and gloomy
+stairs with which we are all familiar, here is a graceful spiral
+stairway which runs from this floor to the roof. The stair hall has two
+walls made up of mirrors in the French fashion, that is, cut in squares
+and held in place by small rosettes of gilt, and these mirrored walls
+seemingly double the spaciousness of what would be, under ordinary
+conditions, a gloomy inside hallway.
+
+The house is narrow in the extreme, and the secret of its
+successful renaissance is plenty of windows and light color and
+mirrors--mirrors--mirrors! It has been called the "Little House of Many
+Mirrors," for so much of its spaciousness and charm is the effect of
+skilfully managed reflections. The stair-landings are most ingeniously
+planned. There are landings that lead directly from the stairs into the
+rooms of each floor, and back of one of the mirrored stair walls there
+is a little balcony connecting the rooms on that floor, a private
+passageway.
+
+The drawing-room and dining-room occupy the first floor. The
+drawing-room is a pleasant, friendly place, full of quiet color. The
+walls are a deep cream color and the floor is covered with a beautiful
+Savonnerie rug. There are many beautiful old chairs covered with
+Aubusson tapestry, and other chairs and sofas covered with rose colored
+brocade. This drawing-room is seemingly a huge place, this effect being
+given by the careful placing of mirrors and lights, and the skilful
+arrangement of the furniture. I believe in plenty of optimism and white
+paint, comfortable chairs with lights beside them, open fires on the
+hearth and flowers wherever they "belong," mirrors and sunshine in all
+rooms.
+
+But I think we can carry the white paint idea too far: I have grown a
+little tired of over-careful decorations, of plain white walls and white
+woodwork, of carefully matched furniture and over-cautious
+color-schemes. Somehow the feeling of homey-ness is lost when the
+decorator is too careful. In this drawing-room there is furniture of
+many woods, there are stuffs of many weaves, there are candles and
+chandeliers and reading-lamps, but there is harmony of purpose and
+therefore harmony of effect. The room was made for conversation, for
+hospitality.
+
+A narrow landing connects the dining-room and the drawing-room. The
+color of the dining-room has grown of itself, from the superb Chinese
+rug on the floor and the rare old Mennoyer drawings inset in the walls.
+The woodwork and walls have been painted a soft dove-like gray. The
+walls are broken into panels by a narrow gray molding, and the Mennoyers
+are set in five of these panels. In one narrow panel a beautiful wall
+clock has been placed. Above the mantel there is a huge mirror with a
+panel in black and white relief above it. On the opposite wall there is
+another mirror, with a console table of carved wood painted gray beneath
+it. There is also a console table under one of the Mennoyers.
+
+The two windows in this room are obviously windows by day, but at night
+two sliding doors of mirrors are drawn, just as a curtain would be
+drawn, to fill the window spaces. This is a little bit tricky, I admit,
+but it is a very good trick. The dining-table is of carved wood painted
+gray and covered with yellow damask, which in turn is covered with a
+sheet of plate glass. The chairs are covered with a blue and gold
+striped velvet. The rug has a gold ground with medallions and border of
+blue, ivory and rose. Near the door that leads to the service rooms
+there is a huge screen made of one piece of wondrous tapestry. No other
+furniture is needed in the room.
+
+The third floor is given over to my sitting-room, bedroom,
+dressing-room, and so forth, and the fourth floor to Miss Marbury's
+apartments. These rooms will be discussed in other chapters.
+
+The servants' quarters in this house are very well planned. In the back
+yard that always goes with a house of this type I had built a new wing,
+five stories high, connected with the floors of the house proper by
+window-lined passages. On the dining-room floor the passage becomes a
+butler's pantry. On the bedroom floors the passages are large enough for
+dressing-rooms and baths, connecting with the bedrooms, and for outer
+halls and laundries connecting with the maids' rooms and the back
+stairs. In this way, you see, the maids can reach the dressing-rooms
+without invading the bedrooms. The kitchen and its dependencies occupy
+the first floor of the new wing, the servants' bedrooms the next three
+floors, and the top floor is made up of clothes closets, sewing-rooms,
+store rooms, etc.
+
+I firmly believe that the whole question of household comfort evolves
+from the careful planning of the service portion of the house. My
+servants' rooms are all attractive. The woodwork of these rooms is
+white, the walls are cream, the floors are waxed. They are all gay and
+sweet and cheerful, with white painted beds and chests of drawers and
+willow chairs, and chintz curtains and bed-coverings that are
+especially chosen, _not_ handed down when they have become too faded to
+be used elsewhere!
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
+
+
+Surely the first considerations of the house in good taste must be
+light, air and sanitation. Instead of ignoring the relation of sanitary
+conditions and decorative schemes, the architect and client of to-day
+work out these problems with excellent results. Practical needs are
+considered just as worthy of the architect as artistic achievements. He
+is a poor excuse for his profession if he cannot solve the problems of
+utility and beauty, and work out the ultimate harmony of the
+house-to-be.
+
+If one enters a room in which true proportion has been observed, where
+the openings, the doors, windows and fireplace, balance perfectly, where
+the wall spaces are well planned and the height of the ceiling is in
+keeping with the floor-space, one is immediately convinced that here is
+a beautiful and satisfactory room, before a stick of furniture has been
+placed in it. All questions pertaining to the practical equipment and
+the decorative amenities of the house should be approached
+architecturally. If this is done, the result cannot fail to be
+felicitous, and our dream of our house beautiful comes true!
+
+Before you begin the decoration of your walls, be sure that your floors
+have been finished to fulfil their purposes. Stain them or polish them
+to a soft glow, keep them low in tone so that they may be backgrounds.
+We will assume that the woodwork of each room has been finished with a
+view to the future use and decoration of the room. We will assume that
+the ceilings are proper ceilings; that they will stay in their place,
+i.e., the top of the room. This is a most daring assumption, because
+there are so many feeble and threatening ceilings overhanging most of us
+that good ones seem rare. But the ceiling is an architectural problem,
+and you must consider it in the beginning of things. It may be beamed
+and have every evidence of structural beauty and strength, or it may be
+beamed in a ridiculous fashion that advertises the beams as shams,
+leading from nowhere to nowhere. It may be a beautiful expanse of creamy
+modeled plaster resting on a distinguished cornice, or it may be one of
+those ghastly skim-milk ceilings with distorted cupids and roses in
+relief. It may be a rectangle of plain plaster tinted cream or pale
+yellow or gray, and keeping its place serenely, or it may be a
+villainous stretch of ox-blood, hanging over your head like the curse of
+Cain. There are hundreds of magnificent painted ceilings, and vaulted
+arches of marble and gold, but these are not of immediate importance to
+the woman who is furnishing a small house, and are not within the scope
+of this book. So let us exercise common sense and face our especial
+ceiling problem in an architectural spirit. If your house has
+structural beams, leave them exposed, if you like, but treat them as
+beams; stain them, and wax them, and color the spaces between them cream
+or tan or warm gray, and then make the room beneath the beams strong
+enough in color and furnishings to carry the impressive ceiling.
+
+If you have an architect who is also a decorator, and he has ideas for a
+modeled plaster ceiling, or a ceiling with plaster-covered beams and
+cornice and a fine application of ornament, let him do his best for you,
+but remember that a fine ceiling demands certain things of the room it
+covers. If you have a simple little house with simple furnishings, be
+content to have your ceilings tinted a warm cream, keep them always
+clean.
+
+When all these things are settled--floors and ceilings and woodwork--you
+may begin to plan your wall coverings. Begin, you understand. You will
+probably change your plans a dozen times before you make the final
+decisions. I hope you will! Because inevitably the last opinion is
+best--it grows out of so many considerations.
+
+The main thing to remember, when you begin to cover your walls, is that
+they are walls, that they are straight up and down, and have breadth and
+thickness, that they are supposedly strong, in other words, that they
+are a structural part of your house. A wall should always be treated as
+a flat surface and in a conventional way. Pictorial flowers and lifelike
+figures have no place upon it, but conventionalized designs may be used
+successfully--witness the delighted use of the fantastic landscape
+papers in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Walls should always be
+obviously _walls_, and not flimsy partitions hung with gauds and
+trophies. The wall is the background of the room, and so must be flat in
+treatment and reposeful in tone.
+
+Walls have always offered tempting spaces for decoration. Our ancestors
+hung their walls with trophies. Our pioneer of to-day may live in an
+adobe hut, but he hangs his walls with things that suggest beauty and
+color to him, calendars, and trophies and gaudy chromos. The rest of his
+hut he uses for the hard business of living, but his walls are his
+theater, his literature, his recreation. The wolf skin will one day give
+place to a painting of the chase, the gaudy calendars to better things,
+when prosperity comes. But now these crude things speak for the pioneer
+period of the man, and therefore they are the right things for the
+moment. How absurd would be the refined etching and the delicate
+water-color on these clay walls, even were they within his grasp!
+
+The first impulse of all of us is to hang the things we admire on our
+walls. Unfortunately, we do not always select papers and fabrics and
+pictures we will continue to admire. Who doesn't know the woman who goes
+to a shop and selects wall papers as she would select her gowns, because
+they are "new" and "different" and "pretty"? She selects a "rich" paper
+for her hall and an "elegant" paper for her drawing-room--the chances
+are it is a nile green moire paper! For her library she thinks a paper
+imitating an Oriental fabric is the proper thing, and as likely as not
+she buys gold paper for her dining-room. She finds so many charming
+bedroom papers that she has no trouble in selecting a dozen of them for
+insipid blue rooms and pink rooms and lilac rooms.
+
+She forgets that while she wears only one gown at a time she will live
+with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of
+large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the
+adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give
+them the fair test of living with them a few days.
+
+You can always buy, or borrow, a roll of the paper you like and take it
+home and live with it awhile. The dealer will credit the roll when you
+make the final decisions. You should assemble all the papers that are to
+be used in the house, and all the fabrics, and rugs, and see what the
+effect of the various compositions will be, one with another. You can't
+consider one room alone, unless it be a bedroom, for in our modern
+houses we believe too thoroughly in spaciousness to separate our living
+rooms by ante-chambers and formal approaches. We must preserve a certain
+amount of privacy, and have doors that may be closed when need be, but
+we must also consider the effect of things when those doors are open,
+when the color of one room melts into the color of another.
+
+[Illustration: A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS]
+
+To me, the most beautiful wall is the plain and dignified painted
+wall, broken into graceful panels by the use of narrow moldings, with
+lighting fixtures carefully placed, and every picture and mirror hung
+with classic precision. This wall is just as appropriate to the six-room
+cottage as to the twenty-room house. If I could always find perfect
+walls, I'd always paint them, and never use a yard of paper. Painted
+walls, when very well done, are dignified and restful, and most
+sanitary. The trouble is that too few plasterers know how to smooth the
+wall surface, and too few workmen know how to apply paint properly. In
+my new house on East Fifty-fifth Street I have had all the walls
+painted. The woodwork is ivory white throughout the house, except in the
+dining-room, where the walls and woodwork are soft gray. The walls of
+most of the rooms and halls are painted a very deep tone of cream and
+are broken into panels, the moldings being painted cream like the
+woodwork. With such walls you can carry out any color-plan you may
+desire.
+
+You would think that every woman would know that walls are influenced by
+the exposure of the room, but how often I have seen bleak north rooms
+with walls papered in cold gray, and sunshiny south rooms with red or
+yellow wall papers! Dull tones and cool colors are always good in south
+rooms, and live tones and warm colors in north rooms. For instance, if
+you wish to keep your rooms in one color-plan, you may have white
+woodwork in all of them, and walls of varying shades of cream and
+yellow. The north rooms may have walls painted or papered with a soft,
+warm yellow that suggests creamy chiffon over orange. The south rooms
+may have the walls of a cool creamy-gray tone.
+
+Whether you paint or paper your walls, you should consider the placing
+of the picture-molding most carefully. If the ceiling is very high, the
+walls will be more interesting if the picture-molding is placed three or
+four feet below the ceiling line. If the ceiling is low, the molding
+should be within two inches of the ceiling. These measurements are not
+arbitrary, of course. Every room is a law unto itself, and no cut and
+dried rule can be given. A fine frieze is a very beautiful decoration,
+but it must be _very_ fine to be worth while at all. Usually the dropped
+ceiling is better for the upper wall space. It goes without saying that
+those dreadful friezes perpetrated by certain wall paper designers are
+very bad form, and should never be used. Indeed, the very principle of
+the ordinary paper frieze is bad; it darkens the upper wall
+unpleasantly, and violates the good old rule that the floors should be
+darkest in tone, the side walls lighter, and the ceiling lightest. The
+recent vogue of stenciling walls may be objected to on this account,
+though a very narrow and conventional line of stenciling may sometimes
+be placed just under the picture rail with good effect.
+
+In a great room with a beamed ceiling and oak paneled walls a painted
+fresco or a frieze of tapestry or some fine fabric is a very fine thing,
+especially if it has a lot of primitive red and blue and gold in it, but
+in simple rooms--beware!
+
+Lately there has been a great revival of interest in wood paneling. We
+go abroad, and see the magnificent paneling of old English houses, and
+we come home and copy it. But we cannot get the workmen who will carve
+panels in the old patterns. We cannot wait a hundred years for the soft
+bloom that comes from the constant usage, and so our paneled rooms are
+apt to be too new and woody. But we have such a wonderful store of
+woods, here in America, it is worth while to panel our rooms, copying
+the simple rectangular English patterns, and it is quite permissible to
+"age" our walls by rubbing in black wax, and little shadows of
+water-color, and in fact by any method we can devise. Wood paneled
+walls, like beamed ceilings, are best in great rooms. They make boxes of
+little ones.
+
+Painted walls, and walls hung with tapestries and leather, are not
+possible to many of us, but they are the most magnificent of wall
+treatments. I know a wonderful library with walls hung in squares of
+Spanish leather, a cold northern room that merits such a brilliant wall
+treatment. The primitive colors of the Cordova leather workers, with
+gold and crimson dominant, glow from the deep shadows. Spanish and
+Italian furniture and fine old velvets and brocades furnish this room.
+The same sort of room invites wood paneling and tapestry, whereas the
+ideal room for painted walls in a lighter key is the ballroom, or some
+such large apartment. I once decorated a ballroom with Pillement panels,
+copied from a beautiful Eighteenth Century room, and so managed to bring
+a riot of color and decoration into a large apartment. The ground of the
+paneling was deep yellow, and all the little birds and flowers
+surrounding the central design were done in the very brightest,
+strongest colors imaginable. The various panels had quaint little scenes
+of the same Chinese flavor. Of course, in such an apartment as a
+ballroom there would be nothing to break into the decorative plan of the
+painted walls, and the unbroken polished floor serves only to throw the
+panels into their proper prominence. Painted walls, when done in some
+such broad and daring manner, are very wonderful, but they should not be
+attempted by the amateur, or, indeed, by an expert in a room that will
+be crowded with furniture, and curtains, and rugs.
+
+If your walls are faulty, you must resort to wall papers or fabrics.
+Properly selected wall papers are not to be despised. The woodwork of a
+room, of course, directly influences the treatment of its walls. So many
+people ask me for advice about wall papers, and forget absolutely to
+tell me of the finish of the framing of their wall spaces. A pale
+yellowish cream wall paper is very charming with woodwork of white, but
+it would not do with woodwork of heavy oak, for instance.
+
+[Illustration: A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE]
+
+A general rule to follow in a small house is: do not have a figured
+wall paper if you expect to use things of large design in your rooms. If
+you have gorgeous rugs and hangings, keep your walls absolutely plain.
+In furnishing the Colony Club I used a ribbon grass paper in the
+hallway. The fresh, spring-like green and white striped paper is very
+delightful with a carpet and runner of plain dark-green velvet, and
+white woodwork, and dark mahogany furniture, and many gold-framed
+mirrors. In another room in this building where many chintzes and
+fabrics were used, I painted the woodwork white and the walls a soft
+cream color. In the bedrooms I used a number of wall papers, the most
+fascinating of these, perhaps, is in the bird room. The walls are hung
+with a daringly gorgeous paper covered with birds--birds of paradise and
+paroquets perched on flowery tropical branches. The furniture in this
+room is of black and gold lacquer, and the rug and hangings are of jade
+green. It would not be so successful in a room one lived in all the year
+around, but it is a good example of what one can do with a tempting wall
+paper in an occasional room, a guest room, for instance.
+
+Some of the figured wall papers are so decorative that they are more
+than tempting, they are compelling. The Chinese ones are particularly
+fascinating. Recently I planned a small boudoir in a country house that
+depended on a gay Chinoiserie paper for its charm. The design of the
+paper was made up of quaint little figures and parasols and birds and
+twisty trees, all in soft tones of green and blue and mauve on a deep
+cream ground. The woodwork and ceiling repeated the deep cream, and the
+simple furniture (a day bed, a chest of drawers, and several chairs)
+were of wood, painted a flat blue green just the color of the twisty
+pine-trees of the paper.
+
+We had a delightful time decorating the furniture with blue and mauve
+lines, and we painted parasols and birds and flowers on chair backs and
+drawer-knobs and so forth. The large rug was of pinky-mauve-gray, and
+the coverings of the day bed and chairs were of a mauve and gray striped
+stuff, the stripes so small that they had the effect of being threads of
+color. There were no pictures, of course, but there was a long mirror
+above the chest of drawers, and another over the mantel. The
+lighting-fixtures, candlesticks and appliqués, were of carved and
+painted wood, blue-green with shades of thin mauve silk over rose.
+
+Among the most enchanting of the new papers are the black and white
+ones, fantastic Chinese designs and startling Austrian patterns. Black
+and white is always a tempting combination to the decorator, and now
+that Josef Hoffman, the great Austrian decorator, has been working in
+black and white for a number of years, the more venturesome decorators
+of France, and England and America have begun to follow his lead, and
+are using black and white, and black and color, with amazing effect. We
+have black papers patterned in color, and black velvet carpets, and
+white coated papers sprinkled with huge black polka dots, and all manner
+of unusual things. It goes without saying that much of this fad is
+freakish, but there is also much that is good enough and refreshing
+enough to last. One can imagine nothing fresher than a black and white
+scheme in a bedroom, with a saving neutrality of gray or some dull tone
+for rugs, and a brilliant bit of color in porcelain. There is no hint of
+the mournful in the decorator's combination of black and white: rather,
+there is a naïve quality suggestive of smartness in a gown, or chic in a
+woman. A white walled room with white woodwork and a black and white
+tiled floor; a black lacquer bed and chest of drawers and chair; glass
+curtains of white muslin and inside ones of black and white Hoffman
+chintz; a splash of warm orange-red in an oval rug at the bedside, if it
+be winter, or a cool green one in summer--doesn't this tempt you?
+
+I once saw a little serving-maid wearing a calico gown, black crosses on
+a white ground, and I was so enchanted with the cool crispness of it
+that I had a glazed wall paper made in the same design. I have used it
+in bedrooms, and in bathrooms, always with admirable effect. One can
+imagine a girl making a Pierrot and Pierrette room for herself, given
+whitewashed walls, white woodwork, and white painted furniture. An
+ordinary white cotton printed with large black polka dots would make
+delightful curtains, chair-cushions, and so forth. The rug might be
+woven of black and white rags, or might be one of those woven from the
+old homespun coverlet patterns.
+
+The landscape papers that were so popular in the New England and
+Southern houses three generations ago were very wonderful when they were
+used in hallways, with graceful stairs and white woodwork, but they were
+distressing when used in living-rooms. It is all very well to cover the
+walls of your hall with a hand-painted paper, or a landscape, or a
+foliage paper, because you get only an impressionistic idea of a
+hall--you don't loiter there. But papers of large design are out of
+place in rooms where pictures and books are used. If there is anything
+more dreadful than a busy "parlor" paper, with scrolls that tantalize or
+flowers that demand to be counted, I have yet to encounter it.
+
+Remember, above all things that your walls must be beautiful in
+themselves. They must be plain and quiet, ready to receive sincere
+things, but quite good enough to get along without pictures if
+necessary. A wall that is broken into beautiful spaces and covered with
+a soft creamy paint, or paper, or grasscloth, is good enough for any
+room. It may be broken with lighting fixtures, and it is finished.
+
+[Illustration: THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE
+MANTEL]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
+
+
+What a joyous thing is color! How influenced we all are by it, even if
+we are unconscious of how our sense of restfulness has been brought
+about. Certain colors are antagonistic to each of us, and I think we
+should try to learn just what colors are most sympathetic to our own
+individual emotions, and then make the best of them.
+
+If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live
+in a room in which the prevailing note is red. On the other hand, a
+timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in
+surroundings of rich red tones, the tones of the old Italian damasks in
+which the primitive colors of the Middle Ages have been handed down to
+us. No half shades, no blending of tender tones are needed in an age of
+iron nerves. People worked hard, and they got downright blues and reds
+and greens--primitive colors, all. Nowadays, we must consider the effect
+of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.
+
+Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music. The
+strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love
+of color. I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at
+twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.
+
+Color! The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of
+tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life. We
+say that one woman is "so full of color," when she is alert and happy
+and vividly alive. We say another woman is "colorless," because she is
+bleak and chilling and unfriendly. We demand that certain music shall be
+full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite
+books. One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard
+and--gray. We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation
+of color, although often we have not that appreciation.
+
+There is all the difference in the world between the person who
+appreciates color and the person who "likes colors." The child, playing
+with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American
+Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads--all these
+primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no
+more feeling for color than a blind man. The appreciation of color is a
+subtle and intellectual quality.
+
+Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on
+housefurnishing, says: "Colors are like musical notes and chords, while
+color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way. So
+colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself. The first are
+tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art composed of many
+lines and shades."
+
+We are aware that some people are "color-blind," but we do not take the
+trouble to ascertain whether the majority of people see colors crudely.
+I suppose there are as many color-blind people as there are people who
+have a deep feeling for color, and the great masses of people in
+between, while they know colors one from another, have no appreciation
+of hue. Just as surely, there are some people who cannot tell one tune
+from another and some people who have a deep and passionate feeling for
+music, while the rest--the great majority of people--can follow a tune
+and sing a hymn, but they can go no deeper into music than that.
+
+Surely, each of you must know your own color-sense. You know whether you
+get results, don't you? I have never believed that there is a woman so
+blind that she cannot tell good from bad effects, even though she may
+not be able to tell _why_ one room is good and another bad. It is as
+simple as the problem of the well-gowned woman and the dowdy one. The
+dowdy woman doesn't realize the degree of her own dowdiness, but she
+_knows_ that her neighbor is well-gowned, and she envies her with a
+vague and pathetic envy.
+
+If, then, you are not sure that you appreciate color, if you feel that
+you, like your children, like the green rug with the red roses because
+it is "so cheerful," you may be sure that you should let color-problems
+alone, and furnish your house in neutral tones, depending on
+book-bindings and flowers and open fires and the necessary small
+furnishings for your color. Then, with an excellent background of soft
+quiet tones, you can venture a little way at a time, trying a bit of
+color here for a few days, and asking yourself if you honestly like it,
+and then trying another color--a jar or a bowl or a length of
+fabric--somewhere else, and trying that out. You will soon find that
+your joy in your home is growing, and that you have a source of
+happiness within yourself that you had not suspected. I believe that
+good taste can be developed in any woman, just as surely as good manners
+are possible to anyone. And good taste is as necessary as good manners.
+
+We may take our first lessons in color from Nature, on whose storehouse
+we can draw limitlessly. Nature, when she plans a wondrous splash of
+color, prepares a proper background for it. She gives us color plans for
+all the needs we can conceive. White and gray clouds on a blue sky--what
+more could she use in such a composition? A bit of gray green moss upon
+a black rock, a field of yellow dandelions, a pink and white spike of
+hollyhocks, an orange-colored butterfly poised on a stalk of
+larkspur--what color-plans are these!
+
+[Illustration: A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM]
+
+I think that the first consideration after you have settled your
+building-site should be to place your house so that its windows may
+frame Nature's own pictures. With windows facing north and south, where
+all the fluctuating and wayward charm of the season unrolls before your
+eyes, your windows become the finest pictures that you can have. When
+this has been arranged, it is time to consider the color-scheme for the
+interior of the house, the colors that shall be in harmony with the
+window-framed vistas, the colors that shall be backgrounds for the
+intimate personal furnishings of your daily life. You must think of your
+walls as backgrounds for the colors you wish to bring into your rooms.
+And by colors I do not mean merely the primary colors, red and blue and
+yellow, or the secondary colors, green and orange and violet, I mean the
+white spaces, the black shadows, the gray halftones, the suave creams,
+that give you the _feeling_ of color.
+
+How often we get a more definite idea of brilliant color from a
+white-walled room, with dark and severe furniture and no ornaments, no
+actual color save the blue sky framed by the windows and the flood of
+sunshine that glorifies everything, than from a room that has a dozen
+fine colors, carefully brought together, in its furnishings!
+
+We must decide our wall colors by the aspect of our rooms. Rooms facing
+south may be very light gray, cream, or even white, but northern rooms
+should be rich in color, and should suggest warmth and just a little
+mystery. Some of you have seen the Sala di Cambio at Perugia. Do you
+remember how dark it seems when one enters, and how gradually the
+wonderful coloring glows out from the gloom and one is comforted and
+soothed into a sort of dreamland of pure joy, in the intimate
+satisfaction of it all? It is unsurpassable for sheer decorative charm,
+I think.
+
+For south rooms blues and grays and cool greens and all the dainty gay
+colors are charming. Do you remember the song Edna May used to sing in
+"The Belle of New York"? I am not sure of quoting correctly, but the
+refrain was: "Follow the Light!" I have so often had it in mind when
+I've been planning my color schemes--"Follow the Light!" But light
+colors for sunshine, remember, and dark ones for shadow.
+
+For north rooms I am strongly inclined to the use of paneling in our
+native American woods, that are so rich in effect, but alas, so little
+used. I hope our architects will soon realize what delightful and
+inexpensive rooms can be made of pine and cherry, chestnut and cypress,
+and the beautiful California redwood. I know of a library paneled with
+cypress. The beamed ceiling, the paneled walls, the built-in shelves,
+the ample chairs and long tables are all of the soft brown cypress.
+Here, if anywhere, you would think a monotony of brown wood would be
+obvious, but think of the thousands of books with brilliant bindings!
+Think of the green branches of trees seen through the casement windows!
+Think of the huge, red-brick fireplace, with its logs blazing in orange
+and yellow and vermillion flame! Think of the distinction of a copper
+bowl of yellow flowers on the long brown table! Can't you see that this
+cypress room is simply glowing with color?
+
+I wish that I might be able to show all you young married girls who are
+working out your home-schemes just how to work out the color of a room.
+Suppose you are given some rare and lovely jar, or a wee rug, or a rare
+old print, or even a quaint old chair from long ago, and build a room
+around it. I have some such point of interest in every room I build, and
+I think that is why some people like my rooms--they feel, without quite
+knowing why, that I have loved them while making them. Now there is a
+little sitting-room and bedroom combined in a certain New York house
+that I worked out from a pair of Chinese jars. They were the oddest
+things, of a sort of blue-green and mauve and mulberry, with flecks of
+black, on a cream porcelain ground.
+
+First I found a wee Oriental rug that repeated the colors of the jugs.
+This was to go before the hearth. Then I worked out the shell of the
+room: the woodwork white, the walls bluish green, the plain carpet a
+soft green. I designed the furniture and had it made by a skilful
+carpenter, for I could find none that would harmonize with the room.
+
+The day bed which is forty-two inches wide, is built like a wide roomy
+sofa. One would never suspect it of being a plain bed. Still it makes no
+pretensions to anything else, for it has the best of springs and the
+most comfortable of mattresses, and a dozen soft pillows. The bed is of
+wood and is painted a soft green, with a dark-green line running all
+around, and little painted festoons of flowers in decoration. The
+mattress and springs are covered with a most delightful mauve chintz, on
+which birds and flowers are patterned. There are several easy chairs
+cushioned with this chintz, and the window hangings are also of it. The
+chest of drawers is painted in the same manner. There are glass knobs on
+the drawers, and a sheet of plate glass covers the top of it. An old
+painting hangs above it.
+
+The open bookshelves are perfectly plain in construction. They are
+painted the same bluish-green, and the only decoration is the line of
+dark green about half an inch from the edge. Any woman who is skilful
+with her brush could decorate furniture of this kind, and I daresay many
+women could build it.
+
+There is another bedroom in this house, a room in red and blue. "Red and
+blue"--you shudder. I know it! But _such_ red and _such_ blue!
+
+Will you believe me when I assure you that this room is called cool and
+restful-looking by everyone who sees it? The walls are painted plain
+cream. The woodwork is white. The perfectly plain carpet rug is of a
+dull red that is the color of an old-fashioned rose--you know the roses
+that become lavender when they fade? The mantel is of Siena marble, and
+over it there is an old mirror with an upper panel painted in colors
+after the manner of some of those delightful old rooms found in France
+about the time of Louis XVI. If you have one very good picture and will
+use it in this way, inset over the mantel with a mirror below it, you
+will need no other pictures in your room.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM]
+
+The chintz used in this room is patterned in the rose red of the carpet
+and a dull cool blue, on a white ground. This chintz is used on the
+graceful sofa, the several chairs and the bed, which are ivory in tone.
+The hangings of the bed are lined with taffetas of rose red. The
+bedcover is of the same silk, and the inner curtains at the window are
+lined with it. The small table at the head of the bed, the kidney table
+beside the sofa, and the small cabinets near the mantel, are of
+mahogany. There is a mahogany writing-table placed at right angles to
+the windows.
+
+From this rose and blue bedroom you enter a little dressing-room that is
+also full of color. Here are the same cream walls, the dull red carpet,
+the old blue silk shades on lamps and candles, but the chintz is
+different: the ground is black, and gray parrots and paroquets swing in
+blue-green festoons of leaves and branches. The dressing-table is placed
+in front of the window, so that you can see yourself for better or for
+worse. There is a three-fold mirror of black and gold lacquer, and a
+Chinese cabinet of the same lacquer in the corner. The low seat before
+the dressing-table is covered with the chintz. A few costume prints hang
+on the wall. You can imagine how impossible it would be to be
+ill-tempered in such a cheerful place.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
+
+
+What a sense of intimacy, of security, encompasses one when ushered into
+a living room in which the door opens and _closes_! Who that has read
+Henry James's remarkable article on the vistas dear to the American
+hostess, our portiere-hung spaces, guiltless of doors and open to every
+draft, can fail to feel how much better our conversation might be were
+we not forever conscious that between our guests and the greedy ears of
+our servants there is nothing but a curtain! All that curtains ever were
+used for in the Eighteenth Century was as a means of shutting out drafts
+in large rooms inadequately heated by wood fires.
+
+How often do we see masses of draperies looped back and arranged with
+elaborate dust-catching tassels and fringes that mean nothing. These
+curtains do not even draw! I am sure that a good, well-designed door
+with a simple box-lock and hinges would be much less costly than velvet
+hangings. A door is not an ugly object, to be concealed for very shame,
+but a fine architectural detail of great value. Consider the French and
+Italian doors with their architraves. How fine they are, how imposing,
+how honest, and how well they compose!
+
+Of course, if your house has been built with open archways, you will
+need heavy curtains for them, but there are curtains _and_ curtains. If
+you need portieres at all, you need them to cut off one room from
+another, and so they should hang in straight folds. They should be just
+what they pretend to be--honest curtains with a duty to fulfil. For the
+simple house they may be made of velvet or velveteen in some neutral
+tone that is in harmony with the rugs and furnishings of the rooms that
+are to be divided. They should be double, usually, and a faded gilt gimp
+may be used as an outline or as a binding. There are also excellent
+fabrics reproducing old brocades and even old tapestries, but it is well
+to be careful about using these fabrics. There are machine-made
+"tapestries" of foliage designs in soft greens and tans and browns on a
+dark blue ground that are very pleasing. Many of these stuffs copy in
+color and design the verdure tapestries, and some of them have fine
+blues and greens suggestive of Gobelin. These stuffs are very wide and
+comparatively inexpensive. I thoroughly advise a stuff of this kind, but
+I heartily condemn the imitations of the old tapestries that are covered
+with large figures and intricate designs. These old tapestries are as
+distinguished for their colors, their textures, and their very crudities
+as for their supreme beauty of coloring. It would be foolish to imitate
+them.
+
+As for windows and their curtains--I could write a book about them! A
+window is such a gay, animate thing. By day it should be full of
+sunshine, and if it frames a view worth seeing, the view should be a
+part of it. By night the window should be hidden by soft curtains that
+have been drawn to the side during the sunshiny hours.
+
+In most houses there is somewhere a group of windows that calls for an
+especial kind of curtain. If these windows look out over a pleasant
+garden, or upon a vista of fields and trees, or even upon a striking
+sky-line of housetops, you will be wise to use a thin, sheer glass
+curtain through which you can look out, but which protects you from the
+gaze of passers-by. If your group of windows is so placed that there is
+no danger of people passing and looking in, then a short sash curtain of
+swiss muslin is all that you require, with inside curtains of some
+heavier fabric--chintz or linen or silk--that can be drawn at night.
+
+If you are building a new house I strongly advise you to have at least
+one room with a group of deep windows, made up of small panes of leaded
+glass, and a broad window-seat built beneath them. There is something so
+pleasant and mellow in leaded glass, particularly when the glass itself
+has an uneven, colorful quality. When windows are treated thus
+architecturally they need no glass curtains. They need only side
+curtains of some deep-toned fabric.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM]
+
+As for your single windows, when you are planning them you will be
+wise to have the sashes so placed that a broad sill will be possible.
+There is nothing pleasanter than a broad window sill at a convenient
+height from the floor. The tendency of American builders nowadays is to
+use two large glass sashes instead of the small or medium-sized panes of
+older times.
+
+This is very bad from the standpoint of the architect, because these
+huge squares of glass suggest holes in the wall, whereas the square or
+oblong panes with their straight frames and bars advertise their
+suitability. The housewife's objection to small panes is that they are
+harder to clean than the large ones, but this objection is not worthy of
+consideration. If we really wish to make our houses look as if they were
+built for permanency we should consider everything that makes for beauty
+and harmony and hominess. There is nothing more interesting than a
+cottage window sash of small square panes of glass unless it be the
+diamond-paned casement window of an old English house. Such windows are
+obviously windows. The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so
+proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small
+houses.
+
+I remember seeing one plate glass window that was well worth while. It
+was in the mountain studio of an artist and it was fully eight by ten
+feet--one unbroken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista of
+mountain and valley. It goes without saying that such a window requires
+no curtain other than one that is to be drawn at night.
+
+The ideal treatment for the ordinary single window is a soft curtain of
+some thin white stuff hung flat and full against the glass. This curtain
+should have an inch and a half hem at the bottom and a narrow hem at the
+sides. It should be strung on a small brass rod, and should be placed as
+close to the glass as possible, leaving just enough space for the window
+shade beneath it. The curtain should hang in straight folds to the
+window sill, escaping it by half an inch or so.
+
+I hope it is not necessary for me to go into the matter of lace curtains
+here. I feel sure that no woman of really good taste could prefer a
+cheap curtain of imitation lace to a simple one of white swiss-muslin. I
+have never seen a house room that was too fine for a swiss-muslin
+curtain, though of course there are many rooms that would welcome no
+curtains whatever wherein the windows are their own excuse for being.
+Lace curtains, even if they may have cost a king's ransom, are in
+questionable taste, to put it mildly. Use all the lace you wish on your
+bed linen and table linen, but do not hang it up at your windows for
+passers-by to criticize.
+
+[Illustration: PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK]
+
+Many women do not feel the need of inside curtains. Indeed, they are not
+necessary in all houses. They are very attractive when they are well
+hung, and they give the window a distinction and a decorative charm that
+is very valuable. I am using many photographs that show the use of
+inside curtains. You will observe that all of these windows have glass
+curtains of plain white muslin, no matter what the inside curtain may
+be.
+
+Chintz curtains are often hung with a valance about ten or twelve inches
+deep across the top of the window. These valances should be strung on a
+separate rod, so that the inside curtains may be pulled together if need
+be. The ruffled valance is more suitable for summer cottages and
+bedrooms than for more formal rooms. A fitted valance of chintz or
+brocade is quite dignified enough for a drawing-room or any other.
+
+In my bedroom I have used a printed linen with a flat valance. This
+printed linen is in soft tones of rose and green on a cream ground. The
+side curtains have a narrow fluted binding of rose-colored silk. Under
+these curtains are still other curtains of rose-colored shot silk, and
+beneath those are white muslin glass curtains. With such a window
+treatment the shot silk curtains are the ones that are drawn together at
+night, making a very soft, comforting sort of color arrangement. You
+will observe in this photograph that the panels between doors and
+windows are filled with mirrors that run the full length from the
+molding to the baseboard. This is a very beautiful setting for the
+windows, of course.
+
+It is well to remember that glass curtains should not be looped back.
+Inside curtains may be looped when there is no illogical break in the
+line. It is absurd to hang up curtains against the glass and then draw
+them away, for glass curtains are supposed to be a protection from the
+gaze of the passers-by. If you haven't passers-by you can pull your
+curtains to the side so that you may enjoy the out-of-doors. Do not lose
+sight of the fact that your windows are supposed to give you sunshine
+and air; if you drape them so that you get neither sunshine nor air you
+might as well block them up and do away with them entirely.
+
+To me the most amazing evidence of the advance of good taste is the
+revival of chintzes, printed linens, cottons and so forth, of the
+Eighteenth Century. Ten years ago it was almost impossible to find a
+well-designed cretonne; the beautiful chintzes as we know them were
+unknown. Now there are literally thousands of these excellent fabrics of
+old and new designs in the shops. The gay designs of the printed cottons
+that came to us from East India, a hundred years ago, and the fantastic
+chintzes known as Chinese Chippendale, that were in vogue when the Dutch
+East India Company supplied the world with its china and fabrics; the
+dainty French _toiles de Jouy_ that are reminiscent of Marie Antoinette
+and her bewitching apartments, and the printed linens of old England and
+later ones of the England of William Morris, all these are at our
+service. There are charming cottons to be had at as little as twenty
+cents a yard, printed from old patterns. There are linens hand-printed
+from old blocks that rival cut velvet in their lustrous color effect and
+cost almost as much. There are amazing fabrics that seem to have come
+from the land of the Arabian nights--they really come from Austria and
+are dubbed "Futurist" and "Cubist" and such. Some of them are inspiring,
+some of them are horrifying, but all of them are interesting. Old-time
+chintzes were usually very narrow, and light in ground, but the modern
+chintz is forty or fifty inches wide, with a ground of neutral tone that
+gives it distinction, and defies dust.
+
+When I began my work as a decorator of houses, my friends, astonished
+and just a little amused at my persistent use of chintz, called me the
+"Chintz decorator." The title pleased me, even though it was bestowed in
+fun, for my theory has always been that chintz, when properly used, is
+the most decorative and satisfactory of all fabrics. At first people
+objected to my bringing chintz into their houses because they had an
+idea it was poor and mean, and rather a doubtful expedient. On the
+contrary, I feel that it is infinitely, better to use good chintzes than
+inferior silks and damasks, just as simple engravings and prints are
+preferable to doubtful paintings. The effect is the thing!
+
+One of the chief objections to the charming fabric was that people felt
+it would become soiled easily, and would often have to be renewed, but
+in our vacuum-cleaned houses we no longer feel that it is necessary to
+have furniture and hangings that will "conceal dirt." We refuse to
+_have_ dirt! Of course, chintzes in rooms that will have hard wear
+should be carefully selected. They should be printed on linen, or some
+hard twilled fabric, and the ground color should be darker than when
+they are to be used in bedrooms. Many of the newer chintzes have dark
+grounds of blue, mauve, maroon or gray, and a still more recent chintz
+has a black ground with fantastic designs of the most delightful
+colorings. The black chintzes are reproductions of fabrics that were in
+vogue in 1830. They are very good in rooms that must be used a great
+deal, and they are very decorative. Some of them suggest old cut
+velvets--they are so soft and lustrous.
+
+My greatest difficulty in introducing chintzes here was to convert women
+who loved their plush and satin draperies to a simpler fabric. They were
+unwilling to give up the glories they knew for the charms they knew not.
+I convinced them by showing them results! My first large commission was
+the Colony Club, and I used chintzes throughout the Club: Chintzes of
+cool grapes and leaves in the roof garden, hand-blocked linens of many
+soft colors in the reading-room, rose-sprigged and English posy designs
+in the bedrooms, and so on throughout the building.
+
+Now I am using more chintz than anything else. It is as much at home in
+the New York drawing-room as in the country cottage. I can think of
+nothing more charming for a room in a country house than a sitting-room
+furnished with gray painted furniture and a lovely chintz.
+
+[Illustration: STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK]
+
+Not long ago I was asked to furnish a small sea-shore cottage. The
+whole thing had to be done in a month, and the only plan I had to work
+on was a batch of chintz samples that had been selected for the house. I
+extracted the colorings of walls, woodwork, furniture, etc., from these
+chintzes. Instead of buying new furniture I dragged down a lot of old
+things that had been relegated to the attic and painted them with a dull
+ground color and small designs adapted from the chintzes. The lighting
+fixtures, wall brackets, candle sticks, etc.--were of carved wood,
+painted in polychrome to match the general scheme. One chintz in
+particular I would like to have every woman see and enjoy. It had a
+ground of old blue, patterned regularly with little Persian "pears," the
+old rug design, you know. The effect of this simple chintz with white
+painted walls and furniture and woodwork and crisp white muslin glass
+curtains was delicious.
+
+The most satisfactory of all chintzes is the _Toile de Jouy_. The
+designs are interesting and well drawn, and very much more decorative
+than the designs one finds in ordinary silks and other materials. The
+chintzes must be appropriate to the uses of the room, well designed, in
+scale with the height of the ceilings, and so forth. It is well to
+remember that self-color rugs are most effective in chintz rooms. Wilton
+rugs woven in carpet sizes are to be had now at all first class
+furniture stores.
+
+Painted furniture is very popular nowadays and is especially delightful
+when used in chintz rooms. The furniture we see now is really a revival
+and reproduction of the old models made by Angelica Kaufman,
+Heppelwhite, and other furniture-makers of their period. The old
+furniture is rarely seen outside of museums nowadays, but it has been an
+inspiration to modern decorators who are seeking ideas for simple and
+charming furniture.
+
+A very attractive room can be made by taking unfinished pieces of
+furniture--that is, furniture that has not been stained or painted--and
+painting them a soft field color, and then adding decorations of
+bouquets or garlands, or birds, or baskets, reproducing parts of the
+design of the chintz used in the room. Of course, many of these patterns
+could be copied by a good draftsman only, but others are simple enough
+for anyone to attempt. For instance, I decorated a room in soft cream,
+gray, yellow and cornflower blue. The chintz had a cornflower design
+that repeated all these colors. I painted the furniture a very soft
+gray, and then painted little garlands of cornflowers in soft blues and
+gray-greens on each piece of furniture. The walls were painted a soft
+cream color. The carpet rug of tan was woven in one piece with a blue
+stripe in the border.
+
+The color illustrations of this book will give you a very good idea of
+how I use chintzes and painted furniture. One of the illustrations shows
+the use of a black chintz in the dressing-room of a city house. The
+chintz is covered with parrots which make gorgeous splashes of color on
+the black ground. The color of the foliage and leaves is greenish-blue,
+which shades into a dozen blues and greens. This greenish-blue tone has
+been used in the small things of the room. The chintz curtains are lined
+with silk of this tone, and the valance at the top of the group of
+windows is finished with a narrow silk fringe of this greenish-blue. The
+small candle shades, the shirred shade of the drop-light, and the
+cushion of the black lacquer chair are also of this blue.
+
+The walls of the room are a deep cream in tone, and there are a number
+of old French prints from some Eighteenth Century fashion journals hung
+on the cream ground. The dressing-table is placed against the windows,
+over the radiator, so that there is light and to spare for dressing.
+Half curtains of white muslin are shirred on the sashes back of the
+dressing-table. The quaint triplicate mirror is of black lacquer
+decorated with Chinese figures in gold, and the little, three-cornered
+cabinet in the corner is also of black and gold. The chintz is used as a
+covering for the dressing-seat.
+
+Another illustration shows the writing-corner of the bedroom which leads
+into this dressing-room. The walls and the rose-red carpet are the same
+in both rooms, as you see. This bedroom depends absolutely on the rose
+and blue chintz for its decoration. There is a quaint bed painted a pale
+gray, with rose-red taffeta coverlet. The bed curtains are of the chintz
+lined with the rose-red silk. There are several white-enamel chairs
+upholstered with the chintz, and there is a comfortable French couch
+with a kidney table of mahogany beside it. The corner of the room shown
+in the illustration is the most convenient writing-place. The desk is
+placed at right angles to the wall between the two windows. The small
+furnishings of the writing-desk repeat the queer blues and the rose-red
+of the chintz. A very comfortable stool with a cushion of old velvet is
+an added convenience.
+
+The chintz curtains at the windows hang in straight, full folds. A flat
+valance, cut the length of the design of the chintz, furnishes the top
+of the two windows. Some windows do not need these valances, but these
+windows are very high and need the connecting line of color. The long
+curtains are lined with the rose-red silk, which also shows in a narrow
+piping around the edges.
+
+[Illustration: MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE]
+
+The other two color illustrations are of the most popular room I have
+done, a bedroom and sitting room combined. Everyone likes the color plan
+of soft greens, mauve and lavender. There is a large day bed of painted
+wood, with mattress, springs and cushions covered with a chintz of mauve
+ground and gay birds. The rug is a self-toned rug of very soft green,
+and the walls are tinted with the palest of greens. The woodwork is
+white, and the furniture is painted a greenish-gray that is just a
+little deeper than pearl. A darker green line of paint outlines all
+the furniture, which is further decorated with prim little garlands
+of flowers painted in dull rose, blue, yellow and green.
+
+The mauve chintz is used for the curtains, and for the huge armchair and
+one or two painted chairs. There is a little footstool covered with
+brocaded violet velvet, with just a thread of green showing on the
+background. The lighting fixtures are of carved wood, painted in soft
+colors to match the garlands on the furniture, with shirred shades of
+lavender silk. Two lamps made of quaint old green jars with lavender
+decorations have shirred shades of the same silk. One of these lamps is
+used on the writing-table and the other on the little chest of drawers.
+
+This little chest of drawers, by the way, is about the simplest piece of
+furniture I can think of, for any girl who can use her brushes at all.
+An ordinary chest of drawers should be given several coats of
+paint--pale yellow, green or blue, as may be preferred. Then a thin
+stripe of a darker tone should be painted on it. This should be outlined
+in pencil and then painted with a deeper tone of green color; for
+instance, an orange or brown stripe should be used on pale yellow, and
+dark green or blue on the pale green.
+
+A detail of the wall paper or the chintz design may be outlined on the
+panels of the drawers and on the top of the chest by means of a stencil,
+and then painted with rather soft colors. The top of the chest should be
+covered with a piece of plate glass which will have the advantage of
+showing the design of the cover and of being easily cleaned.
+Old-fashioned glass knobs add interest to this piece of furniture. A
+mirror with a gilt frame, or an unframed painting similar to the one
+shown in the illustration would be very nice above the chest of drawers.
+
+[Illustration: HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED
+IN A DRAWING-ROOM]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
+
+
+In all the equipment of the modern house, I think there is nothing more
+difficult than the problem of artificial light. To have the light
+properly distributed so that the rooms may be suffused with just the
+proper glow, but never a glare; so that the base outlets for
+reading-lamps shall be at convenient angles, so that the wall lights
+shall be beautifully balanced,--all this means prodigious thought and
+care before the actual placing of the lights is accomplished.
+
+In domestic architecture light is usually provided for some special
+function; to dress by, to read by, or to eat by. If properly considered,
+there is no reason why one's lighting fixtures should not be beautiful
+as well as utilitarian. However, it is seldom indeed that one finds
+lights that serve the purposes of utility and beauty.
+
+I have rarely, I might say never, gone into a builder's house (and
+indeed I might say the same of many architects' houses) but that the
+first things to require changing to make the house amenable to modern
+American needs were the openings for lighting fixtures. Usually, side
+openings are placed much too near the trim of a door or window, so that
+no self-respecting bracket can be placed in the space without
+encroaching on the molding. Another favorite mistake is to place the two
+wall openings in a long wall or large panel so close together that no
+large picture or mirror or piece of furniture can be placed against that
+wall. There is also the tendency to place the openings too high, which
+always spoils a good room.
+
+I strongly advise the woman who is having a house built or re-arranged
+to lay out her electric light plan as early in the game as possible,
+with due consideration to the uses of each room. If there is a high
+chest of drawers for a certain wall, the size of it is just as important
+in planning the lighting fixtures for that wall as is the width of the
+fireplace important in the placing of the lights on the chimney-breast.
+I advise putting a liberal number of base openings in a room, for it
+costs little when the room is in embryo. Later on, when you find you can
+change your favorite table and chair to a better position to meet the
+inspiration of the completed room and that your reading-lamp can be
+moved, too, because the outlet is there ready for it, will come the
+compensating moments when you congratulate yourself on forethought.
+
+There are now, fortunately, few communities in America that have not
+electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a
+thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for
+years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the
+smaller the town the cheaper is the cost of electricity. This is not a
+cut-and-dried statement, but an observation from personal experience.
+The little town's electricity is usually a byproduct of some
+manufacturing plant, and current is often sold at so much per light per
+month, instead of being measured by meter. It is pleasant to think that
+many homes have bridged the smelly gap between candles and electricity
+in this magic fashion.
+
+Gas light is more difficult to manage than electricity, for there is
+always the cumbersome tube and the necessity for adding mechanical
+accessories before a good clear light is secured. Gas lamps are hideous,
+for some obscure reason, whereas there are hundreds of simple and
+excellent wall fixtures, drop lights and reading lamps to be bought
+already equipped for electricity. The electric wire is such an
+unobtrusive thing that it can be carried through a small hole in any
+good vase, or jar, and with a suitable shade you have an attractive and
+serviceable reading light. Candlesticks are easily equipped for
+electricity and are the most graceful of all fixtures for
+dressing-tables, bedside tables, tea tables, and such.
+
+It is well to remember that if a room is decorated in dark colors the
+light will be more readily absorbed than in a light-colored room, and
+you should select and place your lighting-fixtures accordingly. Bead
+covers, fringes and silk shades all obscure the light and re-absorb it,
+and so require a great force of light to illuminate properly.
+
+The subject of the selection of lighting-fixtures is limitless. There
+are so many fixtures to be had nowadays--good, bad and indifferent--that
+it were impossible to point out the merits and demerits of them all.
+There are copies of all the best lamps and lanterns of old Europe and
+many new designs that grew out of modern American needs. There are Louis
+XVI lanterns simple enough to fit well into many an American hallway,
+that offer excellent lessons in the simplicity of the master decorators
+of old times. Contrast one of these fine old lanterns with the mass of
+colored glass and beads and crude lines and curves of many modern hall
+lanterns. I like a ceiling bowl of crystal or alabaster with lights
+inside, for halls, but the expense of such a bowl is great. However, I
+recently saw a reproduction of an old alabaster bowl made of soft,
+cloudy glass, not of alabaster, which sold at a fraction of the price of
+the original, and it seemed to meet all the requirements.
+
+Of course, one may easily spend as much money on lighting-fixtures as on
+the remainder of the house, but that is no reason why people who must
+practise economy should admit ugly fixtures into their homes. There are
+always good and bad fixtures offered at the lowest and highest prices.
+You have no defense if you build your own house. If you are making the
+best of a rented house or an apartment, that is different. But good
+taste is sufficient armor against the snare of gaudy beads and cheap
+glass.
+
+[Illustration: DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT
+METAL]
+
+There was recently an exhibition in New York of the craftsmanship of
+the students of a certain school of design. There were some really
+beautiful lanterns and wall brackets and reading lamps shown, designed
+and executed by young women who are self supporting by day and can give
+only a few evening hours, or an occasional day, to the pursuit of their
+avocation. One hanging lantern of terra cotta was very fine indeed, and
+there were many notable fixtures. There must be easily tens of thousands
+of young people who are students in the various schools of design,
+manual training high schools and normal art schools.
+
+Why doesn't some far-seeing manufacturer of lighting-fixtures give these
+young people a chance to adapt the fine old French and Italian designs
+to our modern needs? Why not have your daughter or son copy such an
+object that has use and beauty, instead of encouraging the daubing of
+china or the piercing of brass that leads to nothing? And if you haven't
+a daughter or son, encourage the young artisan, your neighbor, who is
+trying to "find himself." Let him copy a few good old fixtures for you.
+They will cost no more than the gaudy vulgar fixtures that are sold in
+so many shops.
+
+The photograph shown on page 108 illustrates the possibility of using a
+number of lighting-fixtures in one room. The room shown is my own
+drawing-room. You will observe that in this picture there are many
+different lights. The two old French fixtures of wrought gilt, which
+flank the mantel mirror, hold wax candles. The two easy chairs have
+little tables beside them holding three-pronged silver candlesticks.
+There is also a small table holding an electric reading-lamp, made of a
+Chinese jar, with a shade of shirred silk. The chandelier is a charming
+old French affair of gracefully strung crystal globules. For a formal
+occasion the chandelier is lighted, but when we are few, we love the
+fire glow and candlelight. If we require a stronger light for reading
+there is the lamp.
+
+The photograph here given may suggest a superfluous number of lights,
+but the room itself does not. The wall fixtures are of gilt, you see,
+the candlesticks of silver, the chandelier of crystal and the lamp of
+Chinese porcelain and soft colored silk; so one is not conscious of the
+many lights. If all the lights were screened in the same way the effect
+would be different. I use this picture for this very reason--to show how
+many lights may be assembled and used in one place. In considering the
+placing of these lights, the firelight was not forgotten, nor the effect
+of the room by day when the sunlight floods in and these many fixtures
+become objects of decorative interest.
+
+A lamp, or a wall fixture, or a chandelier, or a candlestick, must be
+beautiful in itself--beautiful by sunlight,--if it is really successful.
+The soft glow of night light may make commonplace things beautiful, but
+the final test of a fixture is its effect in relation to the other
+furnishings of the room in sunlight.
+
+[Illustration: LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS]
+
+The picture on page 118 shows the proper placing of wall fixtures when
+a large picture is the chief point of interest. These wall fixtures are
+particularly interesting because they are in the style of the Adam
+mirrors that hang on the recessed wall spaces flanking the chimney wall.
+This photograph is a lesson in the placing of objects of art. The large
+painting is beautifully spaced between the line of the mantel shelf and
+the lower line of the cornice. The wall fixtures are correctly placed,
+and anyone can see why they would be distressingly out of key if they
+were nearer the picture, or nearer the line of the chimney wall. The
+picture was considered as an important part of the chimney-piece before
+the openings for the fixtures were made.
+
+Another good lamp is shown on the small table in this picture. There is
+really a reading-lamp beside a comfortable couch, which cannot be seen
+in the picture. This lamp, like the one in the drawing-room, is made
+from a porcelain vase, with a shirred silk shade on a wire frame. An
+electric light cord is run through a hole bored for it. If electricity
+were not available, an oil receptacle of brass could be fitted into the
+vase and the beauty of the lamp would be the same.
+
+There are so many possibilities for making beautiful lamps of good jars
+and vases that it is surprising the shops still sell their frightful
+lamps covered with cabbage roses and dragons and monstrosities. A blue
+and white ginger jar, a copper loving-cup, or even a homely brown
+earthenware bean-pot, will make a good bowl for an oil or electric lamp,
+but of the dreadful bowls sold in the shops for the purpose the less
+said the better. How can one see beauty in a lurid bowl and shade of red
+glass! Better stick to wax candles the rest of your life than indulge in
+such a lamp!
+
+I know people plead that they have to buy what is offered; they cannot
+find simple lamps and hanging lanterns at small prices and so they
+_must_ buy bad ones. The manufacturer makes just the objects that people
+demand. So long as you accept these things, just so long will he make
+them. If all the women who complain about the hideous lighting-fixtures
+that are sold were to refuse absolutely to buy them, a few years would
+show a revolution in the designing of these things.
+
+There has been of late a vulgar fashion of having a huge mass of colored
+glass and beads suspended from near-brass chains in the dining-rooms of
+certain apartments and houses. These monstrous things are called
+"domes"--no one knows why. For the price of one of them you could buy a
+three pronged candlestick, equipped for electricity, for your
+dining-room table. It is the sight of hundreds of these dreadful "domes"
+in the lamp shops that gives one a feeling of discouragement. The
+humblest kitchen lamp of brass and tin would be beautiful by contrast.
+
+When all is said and done, we must come back to wax candles for the
+most beautiful light of all. Electricity is the most efficient, but
+candlelight is the most satisfying. For a drawing-room, or any formal
+room where a clear light is not required, wax candles are perfect. There
+are still a few houses left where candlesticks are things of use and are
+not banished to the shelves as curiosities. Certainly the clear, white
+light of electricity seems heaven-sent when one is dressing or working,
+but for between-hours, for the brief periods of rest, the only thing
+that rivals the comfort of candlelight is the glow of an open fire.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+HALLS AND STAIRCASES
+
+
+In early days the hall was the large formal room in which the main
+business of the house was transacted. It played the part of court-room,
+with the lord of the manor as judge. It was used for dining, living, and
+for whatever entertainment the house afforded. The stairs were not a
+part of it: they found a place as best they could. From the times of the
+primitive ladder of the adobe dwelling to the days of the spiral
+staircase carried up in the thickness of the wall, the stairway was
+always a primitive affair, born of necessity, with little claim to
+beauty.
+
+With the Renaissance in Italy came the forerunner of the modern entrance
+hall, with its accompanying stair. Considerations of comfort and beauty
+began to be observed. The Italian staircase grew into a magnificent
+affair, "L'escalier d'honneur," and often led only to the open galleries
+and _salons de parade_ of the next floor. I think the finest staircases
+in all the world are in the Genoese palaces. The grand staircase of the
+Renaissance may still be seen in many fine Italian palaces, notably in
+the Bargello in Florence. This staircase has been splendidly reproduced
+by Mrs. Gardner in Fenway Court, her Italian palace in Boston. This
+house is, by the way, the finest thing of its kind in America. Mrs.
+Gardner has the same far-seeing interest in the furtherance of an
+American appreciation of art as had the late Pierpont Morgan. She has
+assembled a magnificent collection of objects of art, and she opens her
+house to the public occasionally and to artists and designers
+frequently, that they may have the advantage of studying the treasures.
+
+To return to our staircases: In France the intermural, or spiral,
+staircase was considered quite splendid enough for all human needs, and
+in the finest châteaux of the French Renaissance one finds these
+practical staircases. Possibly in those troublous times the French
+architects planned for an aristocracy living under the influence of an
+inherited tradition of treachery and violence, they felt more secure in
+the isolation and ready command of a small, narrow staircase where one
+man well nigh single-handed could keep an army at bay. A large wide
+staircase of easy ascent might have meant many uneasy moments, with
+plots without and treachery within.
+
+Gradually, however, the old feudal entrance gave way to its
+sub-divisions of guardroom, vestibule, and salon. England was last to
+capitulate, and in the great Tudor houses still extant one finds the
+entrance door opening directly into the Hall. Often in these English
+houses there was a screen of very beautiful carved wood, behind which
+was the staircase. Inigo Jones introduced the Palladian style into
+England, and so brought in the many-storied central salon which served
+as means of access to all the house. The old English halls and
+staircases designed by Inigo Jones would be perfect for our more
+elaborate American country houses. The severe beauty of English paneling
+and the carving of newel-post and spindles are having a just revival.
+The pendulum swings--and there is nothing new under the sun!
+
+Wooden staircases with carved wooden balustrades were used oftenest in
+England, while in the French châteaux marble stairs with wrought-iron
+stair-rails are generally found. The perfection to which the art of iron
+work may be carried is familiar to everyone who knows the fairy-like
+iron work of Jean L'Amour in the Stanislas Palace at Nancy. This
+staircase in the Hôtel de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France
+you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects.
+Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work
+door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this
+work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century.
+The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath
+their dignity and talent to devote themselves to designing the knobs of
+doors, the handles of commodes, the bronzes for the decorations of
+fireplaces, the shaping of hinges and locks. They were careful of
+details, and that is the secret of their supremacy. Nowadays, we may
+find a house with a beautiful hall, but the chances are it is spoiled by
+crudely designed fittings.
+
+I have written somewhat at length of the magnificent staircases of older
+countries and older times than our own, because somehow the subject is
+one that cannot be considered apart from its beginnings. All our halls
+and stairs, pretentious or not, have come to us from these superb
+efforts of masterly workmen, and perhaps that is why we feel
+instinctively that they must suggest a certain formality, and restraint.
+This feeling is indirectly a tribute to the architects who gave us such
+notable examples.
+
+We do not, however, have to go abroad for historic examples of stately
+halls and stairs. There are fine old houses scattered all through the
+old thirteen states that cannot be surpassed for dignity and simplicity.
+
+One of the best halls in America is that of "Westover," probably the
+most famous house in Virginia. This old house was built in 1737 by
+Colonel Byrd on the James River, where so many of the Colonial
+aristocrats of Virginia made their homes. The plan of the hall is
+suggestive of an old English manor house. The walls are beautifully
+paneled from an old English plan. The turned balusters are
+representative of the late Seventeenth or early Eighteenth Century. The
+fine old Jacobean chairs and tables have weathered two centuries, and
+are friendly to their new neighbors, Oriental rugs older than
+themselves. The staircase has two landings, on the first of which
+stands an old Grandfather's-clock, marking the beginning of a custom
+that obtains to this day.
+
+This hall is characteristic of American houses of the Colonial period,
+and indeed of the average large country house of to-day, for the
+straightaway hall, cutting the house squarely in two, is so much a part
+of our architecture that we use it as a standard. It is to be found,
+somewhat narrower and lower of ceiling, in New England farmhouses and in
+Eastern city houses. The Southern house of ante-bellum days varied the
+stair occasionally by patterning the magnificent winding staircases of
+old England, but the long hall open at both ends, and the long stair,
+with one or two landings, is characteristic of all old American houses.
+
+The customary finish for these old halls was a landscape wall paper, a
+painted wall broken into panels by molding, a high white wainscoting
+with white plaster above, or possibly a gay figured paper of
+questionable beauty. Mahogany furniture was characteristic of all these
+halls--a grandfather's-clock, a turn-top table, a number of dignified
+chairs, and a quaint old mirror. Sometimes there was a fireplace, but
+oftener there were doors opening evenly into various rooms of the first
+floor. These things are irreproachable to-day. Why did we have to go
+through the period of the walnut hat-rack and shiny oak hall furniture,
+only to return to our simplicities?
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE]
+
+When I planned the main hall of the Colony Club I determined to make it
+very Colonial, very American, very inviting and comfortable, the sort
+of hall you like to remember having seen in an old Virginia house. One
+enters from the street into a narrow hall that soon broadens into a
+spacious and lofty living-hall. The walls are, of course, white, the
+paneled spaces being broken by quaint old Colonial mirrors and
+appropriate lighting-fixtures. There is a great fireplace at one end of
+the hall, with a deep, chintz-covered davenport before it. There are
+also roomy chairs covered with the same delightful chintz, a green and
+white glazed English chintz that is as serviceable as it is beautiful.
+Besides the chintz-covered chairs, there are two old English chairs
+covered with English needlework. These chairs are among the treasures of
+the Club. There are several long mahogany tables, and many small tea
+tables. The rugs are of a spring green--I can think of no better name
+for it.
+
+In modern English and American houses of the smaller class the staircase
+is a part of an elongated entrance hall, and there is often no
+vestibule. In many of the more important new houses the stairs are
+divided from the entrance hall, so that one staircase will do for the
+servants, family and all, and the privacy of the entrance hall will be
+secured. In my own house in New York, you enter the square hall
+directly, and the staircase is in a second hall. This entrance hall is a
+real breathing-space, affording the visitor a few moments of rest and
+calm after the crowded streets of the city. The hall is quite large,
+with a color-plan of black and white and dark green. You will find a
+description of this hall in another chapter. I have used this same plan
+in many other city houses, with individual variations, of course. The
+serene quality of such a hall is very valuable in the city. If you
+introduced a lot of furniture the whole thing would be spoiled.
+
+I used an old porcelain stove, creamy and iridescent in glaze, in such a
+hall in an uptown house very similar to my own. The stove is very
+beautiful in itself, but it was used for use as well as beauty. It
+really holds a fire and furnishes an even heat. The stove was flanked by
+two pedestals surmounted with baskets spilling over with fruits, carved
+from wood and gilded and painted in polychrome. Everything in this hall
+is arranged with precision of balance. The stove is flanked by two
+pedestals. The niche that holds the stove and the corresponding niche on
+the other wall, which holds a statue, are flanked by narrow panels
+holding lighting-fixtures. The street wall is broken by doors and its
+two flanking windows. The opposite wall has a large central panel
+flanked by two glass doors, one leading to the stairway and the other to
+a closet, beneath it. Everything is "paired," with resulting effect of
+great formality and restraint. Very little furniture is required: A
+table to hold cards and notes, two low benches, and a wrought iron stand
+for umbrellas. The windows have curtains of Italian linen, coarse
+homespun stuff that is very lovely with white walls and woodwork. There
+are no pictures on the wall, but there are specially designed
+lighting-fixtures in the small panels that frame the niches.
+
+In several of the finer houses that have been built recently, notably
+that of Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, the staircase is enclosed, and is in no way
+an architectural feature, merely a possible means of communication when
+needed. This solution of the staircase problem has no doubt brought
+about our modern luxury of elevators. In another fine private house
+recently built the grand staircase only goes so far as the formal rooms
+of the second floor, and a small iron staircase enclosed in the wall
+leads to the intimate family rooms of the bedroom floor. The advantage
+of this gain in space can easily be appreciated. All the room usually
+taken up by the large wall of the staircase halls, and so forth, can be
+thrown into the bedrooms upstairs.
+
+The illustrations of the Bayard Thayer hall and staircase speak for
+themselves. Here lighting-fixtures, locks, hinges, have been carefully
+planned, so that the smallest part is worthy of the whole. This hall is
+representative of the finer private houses that are being built in
+America to-day. I had the pleasure of working with the architect and the
+owners here, and so was able to fit the decorations and furnishings of
+the hall to the house and to the requirements of the people who live in
+it.
+
+The present tendency of people who build small houses is to make a
+living-room of the hall. I am not in favor of this. I think the hall
+should be much more formal than the rest of the house. It is, after all,
+of public access, not only to the living-rooms but to the street. The
+servant who answers the front door must of necessity constantly traverse
+it, so must anyone--the guest or tradesman--admitted to the house. The
+furniture should be severe and architectural in design. A column or
+pedestal surmounted with a statue, a fountain, an old chest to hold
+carriage-rugs, a carved bench, a good table, a standing desk, may be
+used in a large house. Nothing more is admissible. In a small house a
+well-shaped table, a bench or so, possibly a wall clock, will be all
+that is necessary. The wall should be plain in treatment. The stair
+carpet should be plain in color. The floor should be bare, if in good
+condition, with just a small rug for softness at the door. A tiled floor
+is especially beautiful in a hall, if you can afford it.
+
+If your house happens to have the hall and living-room combined, and no
+vestibule, you can place a large screen near the entrance door and
+obtain a little more privacy. A standing screen of wooden panels is
+better than a folding screen, for the folding screen is rarely
+well-built, and will be blown down by the draft of the open door. A
+standing screen may be made by any carpenter, and painted or stained to
+match the woodwork of the room. A straight bench or settle placed
+against it will make the screened space seem more like a vestibule.
+
+Another objection to the staircase leading from the living-room of a
+small house is that such an arrangement makes it almost impossible to
+heat the house properly in winter. I have seen so many bewildered people
+whose spacious doorless downstairs rooms were a joy in summer, shivering
+all winter long in a polar atmosphere. The stair well seems to suck all
+the warmth from the living-room, and coal bills soar.
+
+Above all, don't try to make your hall "pretty." Remember that a hall is
+not a living-room, but a thoroughfare open and used by all the dwellers
+in the house. Don't be afraid of your halls and stairs looking "cold."
+It is a good idea to have one small space in your house where you can go
+and sit down and be calm and cool! You can't keep the rest of the house
+severe and cool looking, but here it is eminently appropriate and
+sensible. The visitor who enters a white and green hall and gets an
+effect of real reserve and coolness is all the more appreciative of the
+warmth and intimacy of the living-rooms of the house.
+
+After all, for simple American houses there is nothing better than a
+straightaway staircase of broad and easy treads, with one or two
+landings. There may be a broad landing with a window and window-seat, if
+there is a real view, but the landing-seat that is built for no especial
+purpose is worse than useless. It is not at all necessary to have the
+stairs carpeted, if the treads are broad enough, and turned balusters
+painted white with a mahogany hand rail are in scheme. Such a staircase
+adds much to the home-quality of a house.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE DRAWING-ROOM
+
+
+A drawing-room is the logical place for the elegancies of family life.
+The ideal drawing-room, to my mind, contains many comfortable chairs and
+sofas, many softly shaded lights by night, and plenty of sunshine by
+day, well-balanced mirrors set in simple paneled walls, and any number
+of small tables that may be brought out into the room if need be, and an
+open fire.
+
+The old idea of the drawing-room was a horrible apartment of stiffness
+and formality and discomfort. No wonder it was used only for weddings
+and funerals! The modern drawing-room is intended, primarily, as a place
+where a hostess may entertain her friends, and it must not be chill and
+uninviting, whatever else it may be. It should not be littered up with
+personal things--magazines, books and work-baskets and objects that
+belong in the living-room--but it welcomes flowers and _objets d'art_,
+collections of fans, or miniatures, or graceful mirrors, or old French
+prints, or enamels, or porcelains. It should be a place where people may
+converse without interruption from the children.
+
+Most houses, even of the smaller sort, have three day rooms--the
+dining-room, the parlor and the sitting-room, as they are usually
+called. People who appreciate more and more the joy of living have
+pulled hall and sitting-room together into one great family meeting
+place, leaving a small vestibule, decreased the size of the dining-room
+and built in many windows, so that it becomes almost an outdoor room,
+and given the parlor a little more dignity and serenity and its right
+name--the drawing-room.
+
+We use the terms drawing-room and _salon_ interchangeably in
+America--though we are a bit more timid of the _salon_--but there is a
+subtle difference between the two that is worth noting. The withdrawing
+room of old England was the quiet room to which the ladies retired,
+leaving their lords to the freer pleasures of the great hall. Indeed,
+the room began as a part of my lady's bedroom, but gradually came into
+its proper importance and took on a magnificence all its own. The
+_salon_ of France also began as a part of the great hall, or _grande
+salle_. Then came the need for an apartment for receiving and so the
+great bed chamber was divided into two parts, one a real sleeping-room
+and the other a _chambre de parade,_ with a great state bed for the
+occasional visitors of great position. The great bed, or _lit de
+parade_, was representative of all the salons of the time of Louis XIII.
+Gradually the owners of the more magnificent houses saw the opportunity
+for a series of salons, and so the state apartment was divided into two
+parts: a _salon de famille_, which afforded the family a certain
+privacy, and the _salon de compagnie_, which was sacred to a
+magnificent hospitality. And so the salon expanded until nowadays we use
+the word with awe, and appreciate its implication of brilliant
+conversation and exquisite decoration, of a radiant hostess, an amusing
+and distinguished circle of people. The word has a graciousness, a
+challenge that we fear. If we have not just the right house we should
+not dare risk belittling our pleasant drawing-room by dubbing it
+"salon." In short, a drawing-room may be a part of any well regulated
+house. A salon is largely a matter of spirit and cleverness.
+
+A drawing-room has no place in the house where there is no other
+living-room. Indeed, if there are many children, and the house is of
+moderate size, I think a number of small day rooms are vastly better
+than the two usual rooms, living-room and drawing-room, because only in
+this way can the various members of the family have a chance at any
+privacy. The one large room so necessary for the gala occasions of a
+large family may be the dining-room, for here it will be easy to push
+back tables and chairs for the occasion. If the children have a nursery,
+and mother has a small sitting-room, and father has a little room for
+books and writing, a living-room may be eliminated in favor of a small
+formal room for visitors and talk.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT]
+
+No matter how large your drawing-room may be, keep it intimate in
+spirit. There should be a dozen conversation centers in a large room.
+There should be one or more sofas, with comfortable chairs pulled up
+beside them. No one chair should be isolated, for some bashful person
+who doesn't talk well anyway is sure to take the most remote chair and
+make herself miserable. I have seen a shy young woman completely changed
+because she happened to sit upon a certain deep cushioned sofa of
+rose-colored damask. Whether it was the rose color, or the enforced
+relaxation the sofa induced, or the proximity of some very charming
+people in comfortable chairs beside her, or all of these things--I don't
+know! But she found herself. She found herself gay and happy and
+unafraid. I am sure her personality flowered from that hour on. If she
+had been left to herself she would have taken a stiff chair in a far
+corner, and she would have been miserable and self-conscious. I believe
+most firmly in the magic power of inanimate objects!
+
+Don't litter your drawing-room with bric-a-brac. Who hasn't seen what I
+can best describe as a souvenir drawing-room, a room filled with
+curiosities from everywhere! I shall never forget doing a drawing-room
+for a woman of no taste. I persuaded her to put away her heavy velvets
+and gilt fringes and to have one light and spacious room in the house.
+She agreed. We worked out a chintz drawing-room that was delicious. I
+was very happy over it and you can imagine my amazement when she came to
+me and said, "But Miss de Wolfe, what am I to do with my blue satin
+tidies?"
+
+In my own drawing-room I have so many objects of art, and yet I think
+you will agree with me that the room has a great serenity. Over the
+little desk in one corner I have my collection of old miniatures and
+fans of the golden days of the French court. There are ever so many
+vases and bowls for flowers, _but they are used_. There are dozens of
+lighting-fixtures, brackets, and lamps, and a chandelier, and many
+candlesticks, and they are used, also. Somehow, when a beautiful object
+becomes a useful object, it takes its place in the general scheme of
+things and does not disturb the eye.
+
+The ideal drawing-room has a real fireplace, with a wood fire when there
+is excuse for it. An open fire is almost as great an attribute to a
+drawing-room as a tactful hostess; it puts you at ease, instantly, and
+gives you poise. And just as an open fire and sunshine make for ease, so
+do well placed mirrors make for elegance. Use your mirrors as decorative
+panels, not only for the purpose of looking at yourself in them, and you
+will multiply the pleasures of your room. I have the wall space between
+mantel and frieze-line filled with a large mirror, in my New York
+drawing-room, and the two narrow panels between the front windows are
+filled with long narrow mirrors that reflect the color and charm of the
+room. Whenever you can manage it, place your mirror so that it will
+reflect some particularly nice object.
+
+Given plenty of chairs and sofas, and a few small tables to hold lights
+and flowers, you will need very little other furniture in the
+drawing-room. You will need a writing-table, but a very small and
+orderly one. The drawing room desk may be very elegant in design and
+equipment, for it must be a part of the decoration of the room, and it
+must be always immaculate for the visitor who wants to write a note. The
+members of the family are supposed to use their own desks, leaving this
+one for social emergencies. A good desk is a godsend in a drawing-room,
+it makes a room that is usually cold and formal at once more livable and
+more intimate. In my own drawing-room I have a small French
+writing-table placed near a window, so that the light falls over one's
+left shoulder. The small black lacquer desks that are now being
+reproduced from old models would be excellent desks for drawing-rooms,
+because they not only offer service, as all furniture should, but are
+beautiful in themselves. Many of the small tables of walnut and mahogany
+that are sold as dressing-tables might be used as writing-tables in
+formal rooms, if the mirrors were eliminated.
+
+[Illustration: THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING]
+
+There is a great difference in opinion as to the placing of the piano in
+the drawing-room. I think it belongs in the living-room, if it is in
+constant use, though of course it is very convenient to have it near by
+the one big room, be it drawing-room or dining-room, when a small dance
+is planned. I am going to admit that in my opinion there is nothing more
+abused than the piano, I have no piano in my own house in New York. I
+love music--but I am not a musician, and so I do not expose myself to
+the merciless banging of chance callers. Besides, my house is quite
+small and a good piano would dwarf the other furnishings of my rooms. I
+think pianos are for musicians, not strummers, who spoil all chance for
+any real conversation. If you are fortunate enough to have a musician in
+your family, that is different. Go ahead and give him a music room.
+Musicians are not born every day, but lovers of music are everywhere,
+and I for one am heartily in favor of doing away with the old custom of
+teaching every child to bang a little, and instead, teaching him to
+_listen_ to music. Oh, the crimes that are committed against music in
+American parlors! I prefer the good mechanical cabinet that offers us
+"canned" music to the manual exercise of people who insist on playing
+wherever they see an open piano. Of course the mechanical instrument is
+new, and therefore, subject to much criticism from a decorative
+standpoint, but the music is much better than the amateur's. We are
+still turning up our noses a little at the mechanical piano players, but
+if we will use our common sense we must admit that a new order of things
+has come to pass, and the new "canned" music is not to be despised.
+Certainly if the instrument displeases you, you can say so, but if a
+misguided friend elects to strum on your piano you are helpless. So I
+have no piano in my New York house. I have a cabinet of "canned" music
+that can be turned on for small dances when need be, and that can be
+hidden in a closet between times. Why not?
+
+But suppose you have a piano, or need one: do give it a chance! Its very
+size makes it tremendously important, and if you load it with senseless
+fringed scarfs and bric-a-brac you make it the ugliest thing in your
+room. Give it the best place possible, against an inside wall,
+preferably. I saw a new house lately where the placing of the piano had
+been considered by the architect when the house was planned. There was a
+mezzanine floor overhanging the great living-room, and one end of this
+had been made into a piano alcove, a sort of modern minstrel gallery.
+The musician who used the piano was very happy, for your real musician
+loves a certain solitude, and those of us who listened to his music in
+the great room below were happy because the maker of the music was far
+enough away from us. We could appreciate the music and forget the
+mechanics of it. For a concert, or a small dance, this balcony
+music-room would be most convenient. Another good place for the piano is
+a sort of alcove, or small room opening from the large living or
+drawing-room, where the piano and a few chairs may be placed. Of course
+if you are to have a real music-room, then there are great
+possibilities.
+
+A piano may be a princely thing, properly built and decorated. The old
+spinets and harpsichords, with their charming inlaid cases, were
+beautiful, but they gave forth only tinkly sounds. Now we have a
+magnificent mechanism, but the case which encloses it is too often
+hideous.
+
+There is an old double-banked harpsichord of the early Eighteenth
+Century in the Morgan collection at the Metropolitan Museum that would
+be a fine form for a piano, if it would hold the "works." It is long and
+narrow, fitting against the wall so that it really takes up very little
+room. The case is painted a soft dark gray and outlined in darker gray,
+and the panels and the long top are in soft colors. The legs are carved
+and pointed in polychrome. This harpsichord was made when the beauty of
+an object was of as real importance as the mechanical perfection.
+
+Occasionally one sees a modern piano that has been decorated by an
+artist. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Alma Tadema, and many of the other
+English artists of our generation have made beautiful pianos. Sir Robert
+Lorimer recently designed a piano that was decorated, inside and out, by
+Mrs. Traquair. From time to time a great artist interests himself in
+designing and decorating a piano, but the rank and file, when they
+decide to build an extraordinary piano, achieve lumpy masses of wood
+covered with impossible nymphs and too-realistic flowers, pianos
+suggestive of thin and sentimental tunes, but never of _music_.
+
+When you are furnishing your music-room or drawing-room, be careful
+always of your colors. Remember that not only must the room be beautiful
+in its broad spaces and long lines and soft colors, but it must be a
+background for the gala gowns of women. I once saw a music-room that was
+deliberately planned as a background to the gay colors of women's gowns
+and the heavy black masses of men's evening clothes, a soft shimmering
+green and cream room that was incomplete and cold when empty of the
+color of costume. Such a room must have an architectural flavor. The
+keynote must be elegant simplicity and aristocratic reserve. Walls
+broken into panels, and panels in turn broken by lighting-fixtures, a
+polished floor, a well-considered ceiling, any number of chairs, and the
+room is furnished. This room, indeed, may evolve into a _salon_.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE LIVING-ROOM
+
+
+The living-room! Shut your eyes a minute and think what that means: A
+room to _live_ in, suited to all human needs; to be sick or sorry or
+glad in, as the day's happenings may be; where one may come back from
+far-reaching ways, for "East or West, Hame's best."
+
+Listen a minute while I tell you how I see such a room: Big and restful,
+making for comfort first and always; a little shabby here and there,
+perhaps, but all the more satisfactory for that--like an old shoe that
+goes on easily. Lots of light by night, and not too much drapery to shut
+out the sunlight by day. Big, welcoming chairs, rather sprawly, and long
+sofas. A big fire blazing on the open hearth. Perhaps, if we are very
+lucky we may have some old logs from long since foundered ships, that
+will flame blue and rose and green. He must indeed be of a poor spirit
+who cannot call all sorts of visions from such a flame!
+
+[Illustration: THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN,
+NEW JERSEY]
+
+There should be a certain amount of order, because you cannot really
+rest in a disorderly place, but there should be none of the formality of
+the drawing-room. Formality should be used as a sort of foundation on
+which the pleasant workaday business of the living-room is planned.
+The living-room should always have a flavor of the main hobby of the
+family, whether it be books, or music, or sport, or what not. If you
+live in the real country there should be nothing in the room too good
+for all moods and all weather--no need to think of muddy boots or wet
+riding-clothes or the dogs that have run through the dripping fields.
+
+I wonder if half the fathers and mothers in creation know just what it
+means later on to the boys and girls going out from their roof-tree to
+have the memory of such a living-room?
+
+A living-room may be a simple place used for all the purposes of living,
+or it may be merely an official clearing-house for family moods, one of
+a dozen other living apartments. The living-room in the modern bungalow,
+for instance, is often dining-room, library, hall, music-room, filling
+all the needs of the family, while in a large country or city house
+there may be the central family room, and ever so many little rooms that
+grow out of the overflow needs--the writing-room, the tea room that is
+also sun and breakfast room, the music-room and the library. In more
+elaborate houses there are also the great hall, the formal drawing-room
+and music-room, and the intimate boudoir. To all these should be given a
+goodly measure of comfort.
+
+Whether it be one or a dozen rooms, the spirit of it must be the
+same--it must offer comfort, order, and beauty to be worth living in.
+
+Just as when a large family is to be considered I believe in one big
+meeting-room and a number of smaller rooms for special purposes, so I
+believe that when a family is very small there should be one great
+living-room and no other day room. Two young people who purpose to live
+in a small cottage or a bungalow will be wise to have this one big room
+that will serve for dining-room, living-room, and all. The same house
+divided into a number of tiny rooms would suffocate them: there would be
+no breathing-space. In furnishing such a room it is well to beware of
+_sets_ of things: of six dining-room chairs, of the conventional
+dining-table, serving-table, and china closet. I advocate the use of a
+long table--four by seven feet is not too long--and a number of good
+chairs that are alike in style, but not _exactly_ alike.
+
+The chairs should not be the conventional dining-chairs. The idea that
+the only dining-room chair possible is a perfectly straight up and down
+stiff-backed chair is absurd. In a large house where there is a family
+dining-room the chairs should be alike, but in an informal living-room
+the chairs may be perfectly comfortable and useful between meals and
+serve the purposes of dining-room chairs when necessary. For instance,
+with a long oak table built on the lines of the old English refectory
+tables you might have a long bench of oak and cane; a large high back
+chair with arms of the Stuart order, that is, with graceful, turned
+legs, carved frame work, and cane insets; two Cromwellian chairs covered
+in some good stuff; and two or three straight oak-and-cane chairs of a
+simple type. These chairs may be used for various purposes between
+meals, and will not give the room the stiff and formal air that
+straight-backed chairs invariably produce. One could imagine this table
+drawn up to a window-seat, with bench and chairs beside it, and a dozen
+cheerful people around it. There will be little chance of stiffness at
+such a dining-table.
+
+It should be remembered that when a part of the living-room is used for
+meals, the things that suggest dining should be kept out of sight
+between meals. All the china and so forth should be kept in the pantry
+or in kitchen cupboards. The table may be left bare between meals.
+
+In a room of this kind the furniture should be kept close to the walls,
+leaving all the space possible for moving around in the center of the
+room. The book shelves should be flat against the wall; there should be
+a desk, not too clumsy in build near the book shelves or at right angles
+to some window; there should be a sofa of some kind near the fireplace
+with a small table at the head of it, which may be used for tea or books
+or what not. If there is a piano, it should be very carefully placed so
+that it will not dominate the room, and so that the people who will
+listen to the music may gather in the opposite corner of the room. Of
+course, a living-room of this kind is the jolliest place in the world
+when things go smoothly, but there are times when a little room is a
+very necessary place to retreat. This little room may be the study,
+library, or a tea room, but it is worth while sacrificing your smallest
+bedroom in order to have one small place of retreat.
+
+If you can have a number of living-rooms, you can follow more definite
+schemes of decoration. If you have a little enclosed piazza you can make
+a breakfast room or a trellis room of it, or by bringing in many shelves
+and filling them with flowers you can make the place a delightful little
+flower box of a room for tea and talk.
+
+Of course, if you live in the real country you will be able to use your
+garden and your verandas as additional living-rooms. With a big
+living-porch, the one indoor living-room may become a quiet library, for
+instance. But if you haven't a garden or a sun-room, you should do all
+in your power to bring the sunshine and gaiety into the living-room, and
+take your books and quiet elsewhere. A library eight by ten feet, with
+shelves all the way around and up and down, and two comfortable chairs,
+and one or two windows, will be a most satisfactory library. If the room
+is to be used for reading smallness doesn't matter, you see.
+
+We Americans love books--popular books!--and we have had sense enough to
+bring them into our living-rooms, and enjoy them. But when you begin
+calling a room a library it should mean something more than a small
+mahogany bookcase with a hundred volumes hidden behind glass doors. I
+think there is nothing more amusing than the unused library of the
+_nouveau riche_, the pretentious room with its monumental bookcases and
+its slick area of glass doors and its thousands of unread volumes, caged
+eternally in their indecent newness.
+
+Some day when you have nothing better to do visit the _de luxe_ book
+shops of some department store, and then visit a dusky old second hand
+shop, and you will see what books can do! In the _de luxe_ shop they are
+leathern covered things, gaudy and snobbish in their newness. In the old
+book shop they are books that have lived, books that invite you to
+browse. You'd rather have them with all their germs and dust than the
+soulless tomes of uncut pages. You can judge people pretty well by their
+books, and the wear and tear of them.
+
+Open shelves are good enough for any house in these days of vacuum
+cleaners. In the Bayard Thayer house I had the pleasure of furnishing a
+wonderful library of superb paneled walls of mahogany of a velvety
+softness, not the bright red wood of commerce. The open bookshelves were
+architecturally planned, they filled shallow recesses in the wall, and
+when the books were placed upon them they formed a glowing tapestry of
+bindings, flush with the main wall.
+
+I think the nicest living-room I know is the reading room of the Colony
+Club. I never enjoyed making a room more, and when the Club was first
+opened I was delighted to hear one woman remark to another: "Doesn't it
+make you feel that it has been loved and lived in for years?"
+
+The room is large and almost square. The walls are paneled in cream and
+white, with the classic mantel and mirror treatment of the Adam period.
+The large carpet rug is of one tone, a soft green blue. The bookcases
+which run around the walls are of mahogany, as are the small, occasional
+tables, and the large table in the center of the room. In this room I
+have successfully exploded the old theory that all furniture in a well
+planned room must be of the same kind! In this room there are several
+Marlborough chairs, a davenport and a semi-circular fireside seat
+upholstered in a soft green leather, several chairs covered in a chintz
+of bird and blossom design, and other chairs covered with old English
+needle-work. The effect is not discord, but harmony. Perhaps it is not
+wise to advise the use of many colors and fabrics unless one has had
+experience in the combining of many tones and hues, but if you are
+careful to keep your walls and floors in subdued tones, you may have
+great license in the selecting of hangings and chair coverings and
+ornament.
+
+I gave great attention to the details of this room. Under the simple
+mantel shelf there is inset a small panel of blue and white Wedgwood. On
+the mantel there are two jars of Chinese porcelain, and between them a
+bronze jardiniere of the Adam period; four figures holding a shallow,
+oblong tray, which is filled with flowers. The lamp on the center-table
+is made of a hawthorn jar, with a flaring shade. There are many low
+tables scattered through the room and beside every chair is a
+reading-lamp easily adjusted to any angle. The fireplace fittings are
+simple old brasses of the Colonial period. There is only one picture in
+this room, and that is the portrait of a long gone lady, framed in a
+carved gilt frame, and hung against the huge wall-mirror which is
+opposite the fireplace end of the room.
+
+I believe, given plenty of light and air, that comfortable chairs and
+good tables go further toward making a living-room comfortable than
+anything else. In the Harkness living-room you will see this theory
+proven. There are chairs and tables of all sizes, from the great sofas
+to the little footstools, from the huge Italian tables to the little
+table especially made to hold a few flower pots. Wherever there is a
+large table there is a long sofa or a few big chairs; wherever there is
+a lone chair there is a small table to hold a reading-light, or flowers,
+or what not. The great size of the room, the fine English ceiling of
+modeled plaster, the generous fireplace with its paneled over-mantel,
+the groups of windows, all these architectural details go far toward
+making the room a success. The comfortable chairs and sofas and the ever
+useful tables do the rest.
+
+So many people ask me: How shall I furnish my living-room? What paper
+shall I use on the walls? What woodwork and curtains--and rugs? One
+woman asked me what books she should buy!
+
+Your living-room should grow out of the needs of your daily life. There
+could be no two living-rooms exactly alike in scheme if they were lived
+in. You will have to decide on the wall colors and such things, it is
+true, but the rest of the room should grow of itself. You will not make
+the mistake of using a dark paper of heavy figures if you are going to
+use many pictures and books, for instance. You will not use a gay
+bed-roomy paper covered with flowers and birds. You will know without
+being told that your wall colors must be neutral: that your woodwork
+must be stained and waxed, or painted some soft tone of your wall color.
+Then, let the rugs and curtains and things go until you decide you have
+to have them. The room will gradually find itself, though it may take
+years and heartache and a certain self-confession of inadequacy. It will
+express your life, if you use it, so be careful of the life you live in
+it!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
+
+
+In some strange way the word _boudoir_ has lost its proper significance.
+People generally think of it as a highfalutin' name for the bedroom, or
+for a dressing-room, whereas really a proper _boudoir_ is the small
+personal sitting-room of a woman of many interests. It began in old
+France as the private sitting-room of the mistress of the house, a part
+of the bedroom suite, and it has evolved into a sort of office _de luxe_
+where the house mistress spends her precious mornings, plans the routine
+of her household for the day, writes her letters, interviews her
+servants, and so forth. The boudoir has a certain suggestion of intimacy
+because it is a personal and not a general room, but while it may be
+used as a lounging-place occasionally, it is also a thoroughly dignified
+room where a woman may receive her chosen friends when she pleases.
+Nothing more ridiculous has ever happened than the vogue of the
+so-called "boudoir cap," which is really suited only to one's bedroom or
+dressing-room. Such misnomers lead to a mistaken idea of the real
+meaning of the word.
+
+Some of the Eighteenth Century boudoirs were extremely small. I recall
+one charming little room in an old French house that was barely eight
+feet by eleven, but it contained a fireplace, two windows, a day bed,
+one of those graceful desks known as a _bonheur du jour_, and two
+arm-chairs. An extremely symmetrical arrangement of the room gave a
+sense of order, and order always suggests space. One wall was broken by
+the fireplace, the wall spaces on each side of it being paneled with
+narrow moldings. The space above the mantel was filled with a mirror. On
+the wall opposite the fireplace there was a broad paneling of the same
+width filled with a mirror from baseboard to ceiling. In front of this
+mirror was placed the charming desk. On each side of the long mirror
+were two windows exactly opposite the two long panels of the mantel
+wall. The two narrow end walls were treated as single panels, the day
+bed being placed flat against one of them, while the other was broken by
+a door which led to a little ante-chamber. Old gilt appliques holding
+candles flanked both mantel mirror and desk mirror. Two of those
+graceful chairs of the Louis Seize period and a small footstool
+completed the furnishing of this room.
+
+[Illustration: MISS ANNE MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR]
+
+The boudoir should always be a small room, because in no other way can
+you gain a sense of intimacy. Here you may have all the luxury and
+elegance you like, you may stick to white paint and simple chintzes, or
+you may indulge your passion for pale-colored silks and lace frills.
+Here, of all places, you have a right to express your sense of luxury
+and comfort. The boudoir furnishings are borrowed from both bedroom
+and drawing-room traditions. There are certain things that are used in
+the bedroom that would be ridiculous in the drawing-room, and yet are
+quite at home in the boudoir. For instance, the _chaise-longue_ is part
+of the bedroom furnishing in most modern houses, and it may also be used
+in the boudoir, but in the drawing-room it would be a violation of good
+taste, because the suggestion of intimacy is too evident.
+
+Nothing is more comfortable in a boudoir than a day bed. It serves so
+many purposes. In my own house my boudoir is also my sitting-room, and I
+have a large Louis XV day bed there which may be used by an overnight
+guest if necessary. In a small house the boudoir fitted with a day bed
+becomes a guest-room on occasion. I always put two or three of these day
+beds in any country house I am doing, because I have found them so
+admirable and useful in my own house.
+
+As you will see by the photographs, this bed in no way resembles an
+ordinary bed in the daytime, and it seems to me to be a much better
+solution of the extra-bed problem than the mechanical folding-bed, which
+is always hideous and usually dangerous. A good day bed may be designed
+to fit into any room. This one of mine is of carved walnut, a very
+graceful one that I found in France.
+
+In a small sitting-room in an uptown house, an illustration of which is
+shown, I had a day bed made of white wood that was painted to match the
+chintzes of the room. The mattress and springs were covered with a bird
+chintz on a mauve ground, and the pillows were all covered with the same
+stuff. The frame of the bed was painted cream and decorated with a dull
+green line and small garlands of flowers extracted from the design of
+the chintz. When the mattress and springs have been properly covered
+with damask, or chintz, or whatever you choose to use, there is no
+suggestion of the ordinary bed.
+
+I suppose there isn't a more charming room in New York than Miss Anne
+Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir. The everyday sitting-room of a woman of many
+interests, it is radiant with color and individuality, as rare rugs are
+radiant, as jewels are radiant. The cream walls, with their carved
+moldings and graceful panelings, are a pleasant background for all this
+shimmering color. The carvings and moldings are pointed in blue. The
+floor is covered with a Persian rug which glows with all the soft tones
+of the old Persian dye-pots. The day bed, a few of the chairs, and the
+chest of drawers, are of a soft brown walnut. There are other chairs
+covered with Louis XVI tapestries, brocade and needlework, quite in
+harmony with the modern chintz of the day bed and the hangings. Above
+the day bed there is a portrait of a lady, hung by wires covered with
+shirred blue ribbons, and this blue is again used in an old porcelain
+lamp jar on the bedside table. The whole room might have been inspired
+by the lady of the portrait, so essentially is it the room of a
+fastidious woman.
+
+But to go back to my own boudoir: it is really sitting-room, library,
+and rest-room combined, a home room very much like my down-town office
+in the conveniences it offers. In the early morning it is my office,
+where I plan the day's routine and consult my servants. In the rare
+evenings when I may give myself up to solid comfort and a new book it
+becomes a haven of refuge after the business of the day. When I choose
+to work at home with my secretary, it is as business-like a place as my
+down-town office. It is a sort of room of all trades, and good for each
+of them.
+
+The walls of the room are pretty well filled with built-in bookshelves,
+windows, chimney-piece, and doors, but there is one long wall space for
+the day bed and another for the old secretary that holds my porcelain
+figurines. The room is really quite small, but by making the furniture
+keep its place against the walls an effect of spaciousness has been
+obtained.
+
+The walls of the room are painted the palest of egg-shell blue-green.
+The woodwork is ivory white, with applied decorations of sculptured
+white marble. The floor is entirely covered with a carpet rug of jade
+green velvet, and there is a smaller Persian rug of the soft,
+indescribable colors of the Orient. The day bed, of which I spoke in an
+earlier paragraph, is covered with an old brocade, gray-green figures on
+a black ground. A large armchair is also covered with the brocade, and
+the window curtains, which cannot be seen in the picture, are of black
+chintz, printed with birds of pale greens and blues and grays, with
+beaks of rose-red.
+
+There is always a possibility for rose-red in my rooms, I love it so. I
+manage the other colors so that they will admit a chair or a stool or a
+bowl of rose color. In this room the two chairs beside the couch are
+covered with rose-colored damask, and this brings out the rose in the
+rug and in the chintz, and accents the deep red note of the leathern
+book-bindings. The rose red is subordinated to the importance of the
+book-bindings in this room, but there is still opportunity for its use
+in so many small things.
+
+In this room, you will notice, I have used open shelves for my books,
+and the old secretary which was once a combination desk and bookcase, is
+used for the display of my little treasures of porcelain and china, and
+its drawers are used for papers and prints. The built in shelves have
+cupboards beneath them for the flimsy papers and pamphlets that do not
+belong on open shelves. If the same room were pressed into service as a
+guest room I should use the drawers in the secretary instead of the
+usual chest of drawers, and the day bed for sleeping.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. _LIT DE REPOS_]
+
+The writing-table is placed at right angles to one of the book-filled
+panels between the front windows. I have used a writing-table in this
+room because I like tables better than heavy desks, and because in this
+small apartment a desk would seem heavy and ponderous. The fittings
+of the desk are of dark red leather, like that of many of the
+book-bindings, and the personal touch that makes the desk _mine_ is a
+bowl of roses. Between the two windows in the shallow recess, I have
+placed an aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The
+aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a
+tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most
+gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too,
+and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my
+little people happily--my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my
+little Chinese dog, has a little house all his own, an old Chinese
+lacquer box with a canopy top and little gold bells. It was once the
+shrine of some little Chinese god, I suppose, but Wee Toi is very happy
+in it, and you can see that it was meant for him in the beginning. It
+sits by the fireplace and gives the room an air of real hominess. I was
+so pleased with the aquarium and the Chinese lacquer bed for Wee Toi
+that I devised a birdcage to go with them, a square cage of gilt wires,
+with a black lacquer pointed canopy top, with little gilt bells at the
+pointed eaves. The cage is fixed to a shallow lacquer tray, and is the
+nicest place you can imagine for a whistling bullfinch to live in. I
+suppose I could have a Persian cat on a gorgeous cushion to complete the
+place, but I can't admit cats into the room. I plan gorgeous cushions
+for _other_ people's "little people," when they happen to be cats.
+
+Miss Marbury's sitting-room is on the next floor, exactly like mine,
+architecturally, but we have worked them out differently. I think there
+is nothing more interesting than the study of the different developments
+of a series of similar rooms, for instance, a dozen drawing-rooms,
+twelve stories deep, in a modern apartment house! Each room is left by
+the builder with the same arrangement of doors and windows, the same
+wall spaces and moldings, the same opportunity for good or bad
+development. It isn't often our luck to see all twelve of the rooms, but
+sometimes we see three or four of them, and how amazingly different they
+are! How amusing is the suggestion of personality, or lack of it!
+
+Now in these two sitting-rooms in our house the rooms are exactly the
+same in size, in exposure, in the placing of doors and windows and
+fireplaces, and we have further paralleled our arrangement by placing
+our day beds in the same wall space, but there the similarity ends. Miss
+Marbury's color plan is different: her walls are a soft gray, the floor
+is covered in a solid blue carpet rug, rather dark in tone, the chintz
+also has a black ground, but the pattern is entirely different in
+character from the room below. There is a day bed, similar to mine, but
+where my bed has been upholstered with brocade, Miss Marbury's has a
+loose slip cover of black chintz. The spaces between the windows in my
+room are filled with bookshelves, and in Miss Marbury's room the same
+spaces are filled with mirrors. The large wall-space that is background
+to my old secretary is in her room given up to long open bookshelves of
+mahogany. My over-mantel is mirrored, and hers is filled with an old
+painting. The recessed spaces on each side of the chimney breast hold
+small semi-circular tables of marquetry, with a pair of long Adam
+mirrors hanging above them. Another Adam mirror hangs above the
+bookshelves on the opposite wall. These mirrors are really the most
+important things in the room, because the moldings and lighting-fixtures
+and picture frames have been made to harmonize with them.
+
+The lighting-fixtures are of wood carved in the Adam manner and painted
+dark blue and gold. The writing-table has been placed squarely in front
+of the center window, in which are hung Miss Marbury's bird cages. There
+are a number of old French prints on the wall. The whole room is quieter
+in tone than my room, which may be because her chosen color is old-blue,
+and mine rose-red.
+
+In a small house where only one woman's tastes have to be considered, a
+small downstairs sitting-room may take the place of the more personal
+boudoir, but where there are a number of people in the household a room
+connecting with the bedroom of the house mistress is more fortunate.
+Here she can be as independent as she pleases of the family and the
+guests who come and go through the other living-rooms of the house.
+Here she can have her counsels with her children, or her tradespeople,
+or her employees, without the distractions of chance interruptions, for
+this one room should have doors that open _and_ close, doors that are
+not to be approached without invitation. The room may be as austere and
+business-like as a down-town office, or it may be a nest of comfort and
+luxury primarily planned for relaxation, but it must be so placed that
+it is a little apart from the noise and flurry of the rest of the house
+or it has no real reason-for-being.
+
+Whenever it is possible, I believe the man of the house should also have
+a small sitting-room that corresponds to his wife's boudoir. We
+Americans have made a violent attempt to incorporate a room of this kind
+in our houses by introducing a "den" or a "study," but somehow the man
+of the house is never keen about such a room. A "den" to him means an
+airless cubby-hole of a room hung with pseudo-Turkish draperies and
+papier-mâché shields and weapons, and he has a mighty aversion to it.
+Who could blame him? And as for the study, the average man doesn't want
+a study when he wants to work; he prefers to work in his office, and
+he'd like a room of his own big enough to hold all his junk, and he'd
+like it to have doors and windows and a fireplace. The so-called study
+is usually a heavy, cheerless little room that isn't any good for
+anything else. The ideal arrangement would be a room of average size
+opening from his bedroom, a room that would have little suggestion of
+business and a great flavor of his hobbies. His wife's boudoir must be
+her office also, but he doesn't need a house office, unless he be a
+writer, or a teacher, or some man who works at home. After all, I think
+the painters and illustrators are the happiest of all men, because they
+_have_ to have studios, and their wives generally recognize the fact,
+and give them a free hand. The man who has a studio or a workshop all
+his own is always a popular man. He has a fascination for his less
+fortunate friends, who buzz around him in wistful admiration.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
+
+
+First of all, I think a dining-room should be light, and gay. The first
+thing to be considered is plenty of sunshine. The next thing is the
+planning of a becoming background for the mistress of the house. The
+room should always be gay and charming in color, but the color should be
+selected with due consideration of its becomingness to the hostess.
+Every woman has a right to be pretty in her own dining-room.
+
+I do not favor the dark, heavy treatments and elaborate stuff hangings
+which seem to represent the taste of most of the men who go in for
+decorating nowadays. Nine times out of ten the dining-room seems to be
+the gloomiest room in the house. I think it should be a place where the
+family may meet in gaiety of spirit for a pause in the vexatious
+happenings of the day. I think light tones, gay wallpapers, flowers and
+sunshine are of more importance than storied tapestries and heavily
+carved furniture. These things are all very well for the house that has
+a small dining-room and a gala dining-room for formal occasions as well,
+but there are few such houses.
+
+We New Yorkers have been so accustomed to the gloomy basement
+dining-rooms of the conventional brown-stone houses of the late eighties
+we forgot how nice a dining-room can be. Even though the city
+dining-room is now more fortunately placed in the rear of the second
+floor it is usually overshadowed by other houses, and can be lightened
+only by skilful use of color in curtains, china, and so forth.
+Therefore, I think this is the one room in the city house where one can
+afford to use a boldly decorative paper. I like very much the Chinese
+rice-papers with their broad, sketchy decorations of birds and flowers.
+These papers are never tiresomely realistic and are always done in very
+soft colors or in soft shades of one color, and while if you analyze
+them they are very fantastic, the general effect is as restful as it is
+cheerful. You know you can be most cheerful when you are most rested!
+
+The quaint landscape papers which are seen in so many New England
+dining-rooms seem to belong with American Colonial furniture and white
+woodwork, prim silver and gold banded china. These landscape papers are
+usually gay in effect and make for cheer. There are many new designs
+less complicated than the old ones. Then, too, there are charming
+foliage papers, made up of leaves and branches and birds, which are very
+good.
+
+While we may find color and cheer in these gay papers for gloomy city
+dining-rooms, if we have plenty of light we may get more distinguished
+results with paneled walls. A large dining-room may be paneled with
+dark wood, with a painted fresco, or tapestry frieze, and a ceiling with
+carved or painted beams, or perhaps one of those interesting cream-white
+ceilings with plaster beams judiciously adorned with ornament in low
+relief. Given a large dining-room and a little money, you can do
+anything: you can make a room that will compare favorably with the
+traditional rooms on which we build. You have a right to make your
+dining-room as fine as you please, so long as you give it its measure of
+light and air. But one thing you must have: simplicity! It may be the
+simplicity of a marble floor and tapestried walls and a painted ceiling,
+it may be the simplicity of white paint and muslin and fine furniture,
+but simplicity it must have. The furniture that is required in a
+dining-room declares itself: a table and chairs. You can bring side
+tables and china closets into it, or you can build in cupboards and
+consoles to take their place, but there is little chance for other
+variation, and so the beginning is a declaration of order and
+simplicity.
+
+[Illustration: A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE]
+
+The easiest way to destroy this simplicity is to litter the room with
+displays of silver and glass, to dot the walls with indifferent
+pictures. If you are courageous enough to let your walls take care of
+themselves and to put away your silver and china and glass, the room
+will be as dignified as you could wish. Remember that simplicity depends
+on balance and space. If the walls balance one another in light and
+shadow, if the furniture is placed formally, if walls and furniture
+are free from mistaken ornament, the room will be serene and
+beautiful. In most other rooms we avoid the "pairing" of things, but
+here pairs and sets of things are most desirable. Two console tables are
+more impressive than one. There is great decorative value in a pair of
+mirrors, a pair of candlesticks, a pair of porcelain jars, two cupboards
+flanking a chimney-piece. You would not be guilty of a pair of wall
+fountains, or of two wall clocks, just as you would not have two copies
+of the same portrait in a room. But when things "pair" logically, pair
+them! They will furnish a backbone of precision to the room.
+
+The dining-room in the Iselin house is a fine example of stately
+simplicity. It is extremely formal, and yet there is about it none of
+the gloominess one associates with New York dining-rooms. The severely
+paneled walls, the fine chimney-piece with an old master inset and
+framed by a Grinling Gibbons carving, the absence of the usual mantel
+shelf, the plain dining-table and the fine old lion chairs all go to
+make up a Georgian room of great distinction.
+
+The woman who cannot afford such expensive simplicity might model a
+dining-room on this same plan and accomplish a beautiful room at
+reasonable expense. Paneled walls are always possible; if you can't
+afford wood paneling, paint the plastered wall white or cream and break
+it into panels by using a narrow molding of wood. You can get an effect
+of great dignity by the use of molding at a few cents a foot. A large
+panel would take the place of the Grinling Gibbons carving, and a
+mirror might be inset above the fireplace instead of the portrait. The
+dining-table and chairs might give place to good reproductions of
+Chippendale, and the marble console to a carpenter-made one painted to
+match the woodwork.
+
+The subject of proper furniture for a dining-room is usually settled by
+the house mistress before her wedding bouquet has faded, so I shall only
+touch on the out-of-ordinary things here. Everyone knows that a table
+and a certain number of chairs and a sideboard of some kind "go
+together." The trouble is that everyone knows these things _too_ well,
+and dining-room conventions are so binding that we miss many pleasant
+departures from the usual.
+
+My own dining-room in New York is anything but usual, and yet there is
+nothing undignified about it. The room was practically square, so that
+it had a certain orderly quality to begin with. The rooms of the house
+are all rather small, and so to gain the greatest possible space I have
+the door openings at the extreme end of the wall, leaving as large a
+wall space as possible. You enter this room, then, through a door at the
+extreme left of the south wall of the room. Another door at the extreme
+right of the same wall leads to a private passage. The space left
+between the doors is thereby conserved, and is broken into a large
+central panel flanked by two narrow panels. The space above the doors is
+also paneled. This wall is broken by a console placed under the central
+panel. Above it one of the Mennoyer originals, which you may remember in
+the Washington Irving dining-room, is set in the wall, framed with a
+narrow molding of gray. The walls and woodwork of the room are of
+exactly the same tone of gray--darker than a silver gray and lighter
+than pewter. Everything, color, balance, proportion, objects of art, has
+been uniformly considered.
+
+Continuing, the east wall is broken in the center by the fireplace, with
+a mantel of white and gray marble. A large mirror, surmounted with a
+bas-relief in black and white, fills the space between mantel shelf and
+cornice. This mirror and bas-relief are framed with the narrow carved
+molding painted gray. Here again there is the beauty of balance: two
+Italian candlesticks of carved and gilded wood flank a marble bust on
+the mantel shelf. There is nothing more. On the right of the mirror, in
+a narrow panel, there is a wall clock of carved and gilded wood which
+also takes its place as a part of the wall, and keeps it.
+
+The north wall is broken by two mirrors and a door leading to the
+service-pantry. A large, four-fold screen, made of an uncut tapestry,
+shuts off the door. We need all the light the windows give, so there are
+no curtains except the orange-colored taffeta valances at the top. I
+devised sliding doors of mirrors that are pulled out of the wall at
+night to fill the recessed space of the windows. Ventilation is afforded
+by the open fireplace, and by mechanical means. You see we do not
+occupy this house in summer, so the mirrored windows are quite feasible.
+
+The fourth wall has no openings, and it is broken into three large
+paneled spaces. A console has the place of honor opposite the fireplace,
+and above it there is a mirror like that over the mantel. In the two
+side panels are the two large Mennoyers. There are five of these in the
+room, the smaller ones flanking the chimney piece. You see that the
+salvation of this room depends on this careful repetition and variation
+of similar objects.
+
+Color is brought into the room in the blue and yellow of the Chinese
+rug, in the chairs, and in the painted table. The chairs are painted a
+creamy yellow, pointed with blue, and upholstered with blue and yellow
+striped velvet. I do not like high-backed chairs in a dining-room. Their
+one claim to use is that they make a becoming background, but this does
+not compensate for the difficulties of the service when they are used.
+An awkward servant pouring soup down one's back is not an aid to
+digestion, or to the peace of mind engendered by a good dinner.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR'S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN]
+
+[Illustration: MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE'S PAINTED DINING-TABLE]
+
+The painted table is very unusual. The legs and the carved under-frame
+are painted cream and pointed with blue, like the chairs, but the top is
+as gay as an old-fashioned garden, with stiff little medallions, and
+urns spilling over with flowers, and conventional blossoms picked out
+all over it. The colors used are very soft, blue and cream being
+predominant. The table is covered with a sheet of plate glass. This
+table is, of course, too elaborate for a simple dining-room, but the
+idea could be adapted and varied to suit many color and furniture
+schemes.
+
+Painted furniture is a delight in a small dining-room. In the Colony
+Club I planned a very small room for little dinners that is well worth
+reproducing in a small house. This little room was very hard to manage
+because there were no windows! There were two tiny little openings high
+on the wall at one end of the room, but it would take imagination to
+call them windows. The room was on the top floor, and the real light
+came from a skylight. You can imagine the difficulty of making such a
+little box interesting. However, there was one thing that warmed my
+heart to the little room: a tiny ante-room between the hall proper and
+the room proper. This little ante-room I paneled in yellowish tan and
+gray. I introduced a sofa covered with an old brocade just the color of
+dried rose leaves--ashes of roses, the French call it--and the little
+ante-room became a fitting introduction to the dining-room within.
+
+The walls of the rooms were paneled in a delicious color between yellow
+and tan, the wall proper and the moldings being this color, and the
+panels themselves filled with a gray paper painted in pinky yellows and
+browns. These panels were done by hand by a man who found his
+inspiration in the painted panels of an old French ballroom. As the
+walls were unbroken by windows there was ample space for such
+decoration. A carpet of rose color was chosen, and the skylight was
+curtained with shirred silk of the same rose. The table and chairs were
+of painted wood, the chairs having seats of the brocade used on the
+ante-room sofa. The table was covered with rose colored brocade, and
+over this, cobwebby lace, and over this, plate glass. There are two
+consoles in the room, with small cabinets above which hold certain
+_objets d'art_ in keeping with the room.
+
+Under the two tiny windows were those terrible snags we decorators
+always strike, the radiators. Wrongly placed, they are capable of
+spoiling any room. I concealed these radiators by building two small
+cabinets with panels of iron framework gilded to suggest a graceful
+metal lattice, and lined them with rose-colored silk. I borrowed this
+idea from a fascinating cabinet in an old French palace, and the result
+is worth the deception. The cabinets are nice in themselves, and they do
+not interfere with the radiation of the heat.
+
+I have seen many charming country houses and farm houses in France with
+dining-rooms furnished with painted furniture. Somehow they make the
+average American dining-room seem very commonplace and tiresome. For
+instance, I had the pleasure of furnishing a little country house in
+France and we planned the dining-room in blue and white. The furniture
+was of the simplest, painted white, with a dark blue line for
+decoration. The corner cupboard was a little more elaborate, with a
+gracefully curved top and a large glass door made up of little panes set
+in a quaint design. There were several drawers and a lower cupboard. The
+drawers and the lower doors invited decorations a little more elaborate
+than the blue lines of the furniture, so we painted on gay little
+medallions in soft tones of blue, from the palest gray-blue to a very
+dark blue. The chair cushions were blue, and the china was blue
+sprigged. Three little pitchers of dark-blue luster were on the wall
+cupboard shelf and a mirror in a faded gold frame gave the necessary
+variation of tone.
+
+A very charming treatment for either a country or small city dining-room
+is to have corner cupboards of this kind cutting off two corners. They
+are convenient and unusual and pretty as well. They can be painted in
+white with a colored line defining the panels and can be made highly
+decorative if the panels are painted with a classic or a Chinese design.
+The decoration, however, should be kept in variations of the same tone
+as the stripe on the panels. For instance, if the stripe is gray, then
+the design should be in dark and light gray and blue tones. The chairs
+can be white, in a room of this kind, with small gray and blue
+medallions and either blue and white, or plain blue, cushions.
+
+Another dining-room of the same sort was planned for a small country
+house on Long Island. Here the woodwork was a deep cream, the walls the
+same tone, and the ceiling a little lighter. We found six of those prim
+Duxbury chairs, with flaring spindle-backs, and painted them a soft
+yellow-green. The table was a plain pine one, with straight legs. We
+painted it cream and decorated the top with a conventional border of
+green adapted from the design of the china--a thick creamy Danish ware
+ornamented with queer little wavy lines and figures. I should have
+mentioned the china first, because the whole room grew from that. The
+rug was a square of velvet of a darker green. The curtains were soft
+cream-colored net. One wall was made up of windows, another of doors and
+a cupboard, and against the other two walls we built two long, narrow
+consoles that were so simple anyone could accomplish them: simply two
+wide shelves resting on good brackets, with mirrors above. The one
+splendid thing in the room was a curtain of soft green damask that was
+pulled at night to cover the group of windows. Everything else in the
+room was bought for a song.
+
+[Illustration: THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB]
+
+I have said much of cupboards and consoles because I think they are so
+much better than the awkward, heavy "china closets" and "buffets" and
+sideboards that dominate most dining-rooms. The time has come when we
+should begin to do fine things in the way of building fitment furniture,
+that is, furniture that is actually or apparently a part of the shell of
+the room. It would be so much better to build a house slowly, planning
+the furniture as a part of the architectural detail. With each
+succeeding year the house would become more and more a part of the
+owner, illustrating his life. Of course, this would mean that the
+person who planned the developing of the house must have a certain
+architectural training, must know about scale and proportion, and
+something of general construction. Certainly charming things are to be
+created in this way, things that will last, things immeasurably
+preferable to the cheap jerry-built furniture which so soon becomes
+shabby, which has to be so constantly renewed. People accept new ideas
+with great difficulty, and my only hope is that they may grow to accept
+the idea of fitment furniture through finding the idea a product of
+their own; a personal discovery that comes from their own needs.
+
+I have constantly recommended the use of our native American woods for
+panelings and wall furniture, because we have both the beautiful woods
+of our new world and tried and proven furniture of the old world, and
+what couldn't we achieve with such material available? Why do people
+think of a built-in cupboard as being less important than a detached
+piece of furniture? Isn't it a braggart pose, a desire to show the
+number of things you can buy? Of course it is a very foolish pose, but
+it is a popular one, this display of objects that are ear-marked
+"expensive."
+
+It is very easy to build cupboards on each side of a fireplace, for
+instance, making the wall flush with the chimney-breast. This is always
+good architectural form. One side could have a desk which opens beneath
+the glass doors, and the other could have cupboards, both presenting
+exactly the same appearance when closed. Fitted corner cupboards,
+triangular or rounded, are also excellent in certain dining rooms.
+
+Wall tables, or consoles, may be of the same wood as the woodwork or of
+marble, or of some dark polished wood. There are no more useful pieces
+of furniture than consoles, and yet we only see them in great houses.
+Why? Because they are simple, and we haven't yet learned to demand the
+simple. I have had many interesting old console-tables of wrought iron
+support and marble tops copied, and I have designed others that were
+mere semi-circles of white painted wood supported by four slender legs,
+but whether they be marble or pine the effect is always simple. There
+are charming consoles that have come to us from the Eighteenth Century,
+consoles made in pairs, so that they may stand against the wall as
+serving-tables, or be placed together to form one round table. This is a
+very good arrangement where people have one large living room or hall in
+which they dine and which also serves all the purpose of daily
+intercourse. This entirely removes any suggestion of a dining-room, as
+the consoles may be separated and stand against the wall during the day.
+
+Many modern houses are being built without the conventional dining-room
+we have known so long, there being instead an open-air breakfast room
+which may be glazed in winter and screened in summer. People have come
+to their senses at last, and realize that there is nothing so pleasant
+as eating outdoors. The annual migration of Americans to Europe is
+responsible for the introduction of this excellent custom. French houses
+are always equipped with some outdoor place for eating. Some of them
+have, in addition to the inclosed porch, a fascinating pavilion built in
+the garden, where breakfast and tea may be served. Modern mechanical
+conveniences and the inexpensive electric apparatus make it possible to
+serve meals at this distance from the house and keep them hot in the
+meantime. One may prepare one's own coffee and toast at table, with the
+green trees and flowers and birds all around.
+
+Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper,
+everyone knows that. The simplest meal seems a gala affair when everyone
+is radiant and cheerful, whereas a long and elaborate meal served
+indoors is usually depressing.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE BEDROOM
+
+
+In olden times people rarely slept in their bedrooms, which were mostly
+_chambres de parade_, where everyone was received and much business was
+transacted. The real bedroom was usually a smallish closet nearby. These
+_chambres de parade_ were very splendid, the beds raised on a dais, and
+hung with fine damasks and tapestries--tapestries thick with bullion
+fringes. The horror of fresh air felt by our ancestors was well
+illustrated here. No draughts from ill-constructed windows or badly hung
+doors could reach the sleeper in such a bed.
+
+[Illustration: AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD]
+
+This was certainly different from our modern ideas of hygiene: In those
+days furniture that could not be hastily moved was of little importance.
+The bed was usually a mere frame of wood, made to be covered with
+valuable hangings which could easily be packed and carried away on
+occasions that too often arose in the troublous days of the early Middle
+Ages. The benches and tables one sees in many foreign palaces to-day are
+covered with gorgeous lengths of velvet and brocade. This is a survival
+of the custom when furniture was merely so much baggage. With the early
+Eighteenth Century, however, there came into being _les petits
+appartements_, in which the larger space formerly accorded the bedroom
+was divided into ante-chamber, salon or sitting-room, and the bedroom.
+Very often the bed was placed in an alcove, and the heavy brocades and
+bullion embroideries were replaced by linen or cotton hangings.
+
+When Oberkampf established himself at Jouy in 1760 France took first
+place in the production of these printed linens and cottons. This was
+the beginning of the age of chintz and of the delightful decorative
+fabrics that are so suited to our modern ideas of hygiene. It seems to
+me there are no more charming stuffs for bedroom hangings than these
+simple fabrics, with their enchantingly fanciful designs. Think of the
+changes one could have with several sets of curtains to be changed at
+will, as Marie Antoinette used to do at the Petit Trianon. How amusing
+it would be in our own modern houses to change the bed coverings, window
+curtains, and so forth, twice or three times a year! I like these loose
+slip covers and curtains better than the usual hard upholstery, because
+if properly planned the slips can be washed without losing their color
+or their lines.
+
+Charming Eighteenth Century prints that are full of valuable hints as to
+furniture and decorations for bedrooms can be found in most French
+shops. The series known as "_Moreau le Jeun_" is full of suggestion.
+Some of the interiors shown are very grand, it is true, but many are
+simple enough to serve as models for modern apartments. A set of these
+pictures will do much to give one an insight into the decoration of the
+Eighteenth Century, a vivid insight that can be obtained in no other
+way, perhaps.
+
+I do not like the very large bedrooms, dear to the plans of the American
+architect. I much prefer the space divided. I remember once arriving at
+the Ritz Hotel in London and being given temporarily a very grand royal
+suite, overlooking the park, until the smaller quarters I had reserved
+should be ready for me. How delighted I was at first with all the huge
+vastness of my bedroom! My appreciation waned, however, after a
+despairing morning toilet spent in taking many steps back and forth from
+dressing-table to bathroom, and from bathroom to hang-closets, and I was
+glad indeed, when, at the end of several hours, I was comfortably housed
+in my smaller and humbler quarters.
+
+I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber
+should separate it from the large outside corridor. The ideal
+arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room,
+then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back. This outer
+chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be. It may
+serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and
+concealing them with mirrored doors. The ante-chamber need not be a
+luxury, if you plan your house carefully. It is simply a little well of
+silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.
+
+[Illustration: MISS CROCKER'S LOUIS XVI. BED]
+
+To go on with my ideal bedroom: the walls, I think, should be simply
+paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be
+afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is
+the best solution. You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings
+very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and
+plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of
+times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design
+in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you
+will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the
+figures.
+
+One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper
+that does not belong to the "busy" class, for while the design is
+decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat. This
+is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens
+and grays on a cream ground. I have seen bedrooms papered with huge
+scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and
+methodical thumping of a drum. I cannot imagine anyone sleeping calmly
+in such a room!
+
+This bedroom is eminently suited to the needs of a man. The hangings are
+of a plain, soft stuff, accenting one of the deep tones of the wall
+covering, and the sash curtains are of white muslin. The furniture is of
+oak, of the Jacobean period. The bed is true to its inspiration, with
+turned legs and runners, and slatted head and foot boards. The legs and
+runners of the bed were really inspired by the chairs and tables of the
+period. This is an excellent illustration of the modern furniture that
+may be adapted from old models. It goes without saying that the beds of
+that period were huge, cumbersome affairs, and this adapted bed is
+really more suitable to modern needs in size and weight and line than an
+original one.
+
+There are so many inspirations for bedrooms nowadays that one finds it
+most difficult to decide on any one scheme. One of my greatest joys in
+planning the Colony Club was that I had opportunity to furnish so many
+bedrooms. And they were small, pleasant rooms, too, not the usual
+impersonal boxes that are usually planned for club houses and hotels. I
+worked out the plan of each bedroom as if I were to live in it myself,
+and while they all differed in decorative schemes the essentials were
+the same in each room: a comfortable bed, with a small table beside it
+to hold a reading light, a clock, and a telephone; a _chaise-longue_ for
+resting; a long mirror somewhere; a dressing table with proper lights
+and a glass covered top; a writing table, carefully equipped, and the
+necessary chairs and stools. Some of the bedrooms had no connecting
+baths, and these were given wash stands with bowls and pitchers of clear
+glass. Most of these bedrooms were fitted with mahogany four post beds,
+pie crust tables, colonial highboys, gay chintzes, and such, but there
+were several rooms of entirely different scheme.
+
+[Illustration: A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM]
+
+Perhaps the most fascinating of them all is the bird room. The walls
+are covered with an Oriental paper patterned with marvelous blue and
+green birds, birds of paradise and paroquets perched on flowering
+branches. The black lacquer furniture was especially designed for the
+room. The rug and the hangings are of jade green. I wonder how this
+seems to read of--I can only say it is a very gay and happy room to live
+in!
+
+There is another bedroom in pink and white, which would be an adorable
+room for a young girl. The bed is of my own design, a simple white
+painted metal bed. There is a _chaise-longue_, upholstered in the pink
+and white striped chintz of the room. The same chintz is used for window
+hangings, bed spread, and so forth. There is a little spindle legged
+table of mahogany, and another table at the head of the bed which
+contains the reading light. There is also a little white stool, with a
+cushion of the chintz, beside the bed. The dressing-table is so simple
+that any girl might copy it--it is a chintz-hung box with a sheet of
+plate glass on top, and a white framed mirror hung above it. The
+electric lights in this room are cleverly made into candlesticks which
+are painted to match the chintz. The writing-table is white, with a
+mahogany chair in front of it.
+
+Another bedroom has a narrow four post bed of mahogany, with hangings of
+China blue sprigged with small pink roses. There was another in green
+and white. In every case these bedrooms were equipped with rugs of
+neutral and harmonious tone. The dressing-tables were always painted to
+harmonize with the chintzes or the furniture. Wherever possible there
+was an open fireplace. Roomy clothes closets added much to the comfort
+of each room, and there was always a couch of delicious softness, or a
+_chaise-longue,_ and lounging chairs which invited repose.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM]
+
+Nothing so nice has happened in a long time as the revival of painted
+furniture, and the application of quaint designs to modern beds and
+chairs and chests. You may find inspiration in a length of chintz, in an
+old fan, in a faded print--anywhere! The main thing is to work out a
+color plan for the background--the walls, the furniture, and the
+rugs--and then you can draw or stencil the chosen designs wherever they
+seem to belong, and paint them in with dull tones and soft colors, rose
+and buff and blue and green and a little bit of gray and cream and
+black. Or, if you aren't even as clever as that (and you probably
+_are!_) you can decorate your painted furniture with narrow lines of
+color: dark green on a light green ground; dark blue on yellow; _any_
+color on gray or cream--there are infinite possibilities of color
+combinations. In one of the rooms shown in the illustrations the posy
+garlands on the chest of drawers were inspired by a lamp jar. This
+furniture was carefully planned, as may be seen by the little urns on
+the bedposts, quite in the manner of the Brothers Adam, but delightful
+results may be obtained by using any simple modern cottage furniture
+and applying fanciful decorations.
+
+Be wary of hanging many pictures in your bedroom. I give this advice
+cheerfully, because I know you will hang them anyway (I do) but I warn
+you you will spoil your room if you aren't very stern with yourself.
+Somehow the pictures we most love, small prints and photographs and
+things, look spotty on our walls. We must group them to get a pleasant
+effect. Keep the framed photographs on the writing table, the dressing
+table, the mantel, etc., but do not hang them on your walls. If you have
+small prints that you feel you must have, hang them flat on the wall,
+well within the line of vision. They should be low enough to be
+_examined_, because usually such pictures are not decorative in effect,
+but exquisite in detail. The fewer pictures the better, and in the
+guest-room fewer still!
+
+I planned a guest-room for the top floor of a New York house that is
+very successful. The room was built around a pair of appliques made from
+two old Chinese sprays of metal flowers. I had small electric light
+bulbs fitted among the flowers, mounted them on carved wood brackets on
+each side of a good mantel mirror and worked out the rest of the room
+from them. The walls were painted bluish green, the woodwork white. Just
+below the molding at the top of the room there was a narrow border (four
+inches wide) of a mosaic-like pattern in blue and green. The carpet rug
+is of a blue-green tone. The hangings are of an alluring _Chinoiserie_
+chintz, and there are several Chinese color prints framed and hanging in
+the narrow panels between the front windows. The furniture is painted a
+deep cream pointed with blue and green, and the bed covering is of a
+pale turquoise taffeta.
+
+Another guest room was done in gentian blue and white, with a little
+buff and rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the
+guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and
+adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with
+a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a
+young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and
+white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and
+tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an
+enchanting affair! And simple--why, she could hinge the mirrors
+together, and make the chintz ruffle, and enamel the shelves white, and
+do every bit of it except cut the plate glass. Of course the glass is
+very clean and nice, but an enameled surface with a white linen cover
+would be very pleasant.
+
+The same blue and white chintz was used for the hangings and bed
+coverings. Everything else in the room was white except the thick cream
+rug with its border of blue and rose and buff, and the candlesticks and
+appliques which repeated those colors.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER'S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED]
+
+[Illustration: MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY'S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED]
+
+There is a chintz I love to use called the Green Feather chintz. It is
+most decorative in design and color, and such an aristocratic sort of
+chintz you can use it on handsome old sofas and your post beds that
+would scorn a more commonplace chintz. Mrs. Payne Whitney has a most
+enchanting bed covered with the Green Feather chintz, one of those great
+beds that depend entirely on their hangings for effect, for not a bit of
+the wooden frame shows. Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer has a similar bed
+covered with a _Chinoiserie_ chintz. These great beds are very beautiful
+in large rooms, but they would be out of place in small ones. There are
+draped beds, however, that may be used in smaller rooms. I am showing a
+photograph of a bedroom in the Crocker house in Burlingame, California,
+where I used a small draped bed with charming effect. This bed is placed
+flat against the wall, like a sofa, and the drapery is adapted from that
+of a Louis XVI room. The bed is of gray painted wood, and the hangings
+are of blue and cream chintz lined with blue taffetas. I used the same
+idea in a rose and blue bedroom in a New York house. In this case,
+however, the bed was painted cream white and the large panels of the
+head and foot boards were filled with a rose and blue chintz. The
+bedspread was of deep rose colored taffetas, and from a small canopy
+above the bed four curtains of the rose and blue chintz, lined with the
+taffetas, are pulled to the four corners of the bed. This novel
+arrangement of draperies is very satisfactory in a small room.
+
+In my own house the bedrooms open into dressing-rooms, so much of the
+usual furniture is not necessary. My own bedroom, for instance, is built
+around the same old Breton bed I had in the Washington Irving house. The
+bed dominates the room, but there are also a _chaise-longue_, several
+small tables, many comfortable chairs, and a real fireplace. The
+business of dressing takes place in the dressing-room, so there is no
+dressing-table here, but there are long mirrors filling the wall spaces
+between windows and doors. Miss Marbury's bedroom is just over mine, and
+is a sunshiny place of much rose and blue and cream. Her rooms are
+always full of blue, just as my rooms are always full of rose color.
+This bedroom has cream woodwork and walls of a bluish-gray, cream
+painted furniture covered with a mellow sort of rose-and-cream chintz,
+and a Persian rug made up of blue and cream. The curtains at the windows
+are of plain blue linen bordered with a narrow blue and white fringe.
+The lighting-fixtures are of carved wood, pointed in polychrome. The
+most beautiful thing in the room is a Fifteenth Century painting, the
+Madonna of Bartolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor over the
+mantel.
+
+I haven't said a word about our nice American Colonial bedrooms, because
+all of you know their beauties and requirements as well as I. The great
+drawback to the stately old furniture of our ancestors is the space it
+occupies. Haven't you seen a fine old four post bed simply overflowing a
+poor little room? Fortunately, the furniture-makers are designing
+simple beds of similar lines, but lighter build, and these beds are very
+lovely. The owner of a massive old four-post bed is justly proud of it,
+but our new beds are built for a new service and a new conception of
+hygiene, and so must find new lines and curves that will be friendly to
+the old dressing tables and highboys and chests of drawers.
+
+When we are fortunate enough to inherit great old houses, of course we
+will give them proper furniture--if we can find it.
+
+I remember a house in New Orleans that had a full dozen spacious
+bedrooms, square, closetless chambers that opened into small
+dressing-rooms. One of them, I remember, was absolutely bare of wall and
+floor, with a great Napoleon bed set squarely in the center of it. There
+was the inevitable mosquito net canopy, here somehow endowed with an
+unexpected dignity. One felt the room had been made for sleeping, and
+nothing _but_ sleeping, and while the bed was placed in the middle of
+the floor to get all the air possible, its placing was a master stroke
+of decoration in that great white walled room. It was as impressive as a
+royal bed on a dais.
+
+We are getting more sensible about our bedrooms. There is no doubt about
+it. For the last ten years there has been a dreadful epidemic of brass
+beds, a mistaken vogue that came as a reaction from the heavy walnut
+beds of the last generation. White painted metal beds came first, and
+will last always, but they weren't good enough for people of
+ostentatious tastes, and so the vulgar brass bed came to pass. Why we
+should suffer brass beds in our rooms, I don't know! The plea is that
+they are more sanitary than wooden ones. Hospitals must consider
+sanitation first, last, and always, and they use white iron beds. And
+why shouldn't white iron beds, which are modest and unassuming in
+appearance, serve for homes as well? The truth is that the glitter of
+brass appeals to the untrained eye. But that is passing. Go into the
+better shops and you will see! Recently there was a spasmodic outbreak
+of silver-plated beds, but I think there won't be a vogue for this
+newest object of bad taste. It is a little too much!
+
+If your house is clean and you intend to keep it so, a wooden bed that
+has some relation to the rest of your furniture is the best bed
+possible. Otherwise, a white painted metal one. There is never an excuse
+for a brass one. Indeed, I think the three most glaring errors we
+Americans make are rocking-chairs, lace curtains, and brass beds.
+
+[Illustration: MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED]
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH
+
+
+Dressing-rooms and closets should be necessities, not luxuries, but
+alas! our architects' ideas of the importance of large bedrooms have
+made it almost impossible to incorporate the proper closets and
+dressing-places a woman really requires.
+
+In the foregoing chapter on bedrooms I advised the division of a large
+bedroom into several smaller rooms: ante-chamber, sitting-room,
+sleeping-room, dressing-room and bath. The necessary closets may be
+built along the walls of all these little rooms, or, if there is
+sufficient space, one long, airy closet may serve for all one's personal
+belongings. Of course, such a suite of rooms is possible only in large
+houses. But even in simple houses a small dressing-room can be built
+into the corner of an average-sized bedroom.
+
+In France every woman dresses in her _cabinet de toilette_; it is one of
+the most important rooms in the house. No self-respecting French woman
+would dream of dressing in her sleeping-room. The little _cabinet de
+toilette_ need not be much larger than a closet, if the closets are
+built ceiling high, and the doors are utilized for mirrors. Such an
+arrangement makes for great comfort and privacy. Here I find that most
+of my countrywomen dress in their bedrooms. I infinitely prefer the
+separate dressing-room, which means a change of air, and which can be
+thoroughly ventilated. If one sleeps with the bedroom windows wide open,
+it is a pleasure to have a warm dressing-room to step into.
+
+I think the first thing to be considered about a dressing-room is its
+utility. Here no particular scheme of decoration or over-elaboration of
+color is in place. Everything should be very simple, very clean and very
+hygienic. The floors should not be of wood, but may be of marble or
+mosaic cement or clean white tiles, with a possible touch of color. If
+the dressing-room is bathroom also, there should be as large a bath as
+is compatible with the size of the room. The combination of
+dressing-room and bathroom is successful only in those large houses
+where each bedroom has its bath. I have seen such rooms in modern
+American houses that were quite as large as bedrooms, with the supreme
+luxury of open fireplaces. Think of the comfort of having one's bath and
+of making one's toilet before an open fire! This is an outgrowth of our
+passion for bedrooms that are so be-windowed they become
+sleeping-porches, and we may leave their chill air for the comfortable
+warmth of luxurious dressing-rooms.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS]
+
+If I were giving advice as to the furnishing of a dressing-room, in as
+few words as possible, I should say: "Put in lots of mirrors, and then
+more mirrors, and then more!" Indeed, I do not think one can have too
+many mirrors in a dressing-room. Long mirrors can be set in doors and
+wall panels, so that one may see one's self from hat to boots. Hinged
+mirrors are lovely for sunny wall spaces, and for the tops of
+dressing-tables. I have made so many of them. One of green and gold
+lacquer was made to be used on a plain green enameled dressing-table
+placed squarely in the recess of a great window. I also use small
+mirrors of graceful contour to light up the dark corners of
+dressing-rooms.
+
+Have your mirrors so arranged that you get a good strong light by day,
+and have plenty of electric lights all around the dressing-mirrors for
+night use. In other words, know the worst before you go out! In my own
+dressing-room the lights are arranged just as I used to have them long
+ago in my theater dressing-room when I was on the stage. I can see
+myself back, front and sides before I go out. Really, it is a comfort to
+be on friendly terms with your own back hair! I lay great stress on the
+mirrors and plenty of lights, and yet more lights. Oh, the joy, the
+blessing of electric light! I think every woman would like to dress
+always by a blaze of electric light, and be seen only in the soft
+luminosity of candle light--how lovely we would all look, to be sure! It
+is a great thing to know the worst before one goes out, so that even the
+terrors of the arc lights before our theaters will be powerless to
+dismay us.
+
+If there is room in the dressing-room, there should be a sofa with a
+slip cover of some washable fabric that can be taken off when necessary.
+This sofa may be the simplest wooden frame, with a soft pad, or it may
+be a _chaise-longue_ of elegant lines. The _chaise-longue_ is suitable
+for bedroom or dressing-room, but it is an especially luxurious
+lounging-place when you are having your hair done.
+
+A man came to me just before Christmas, and said, "Do tell me something
+to give my wife. I cannot think of a thing in the world she hasn't
+already." I asked, "Is she a lady of habits?" "What!" he said,
+astonished. "Does she enjoy being comfortable?" I asked. "Well, rather!"
+he smiled. And so I suggested a _couvre-pieds_ for her _chaise-longue._
+Now I am telling you of the _couvre pieds_ because I know all women love
+exquisite things, and surely nothing could be more delicious than my
+_couvre-pieds._ Literally, it is a "cover for the feet," a sort of
+glorified and diminutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk,
+lined with the soft long-haired white fur known as mountain tibet, and
+interlined with down. The coverlet is bordered with a puffing of French
+lace, and the top of it is encrusted with little flowers made of tiny
+French picot ribbons, and quillings of the narrowest of lace. It is
+supposed to be thrown over your feet, fur side down, when you are
+resting or having your hair done.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM]
+
+You may devise a little coverlet for your own sofa, whether it be in
+your bedroom, your boudoir, or your dressing-room, that will be quite
+as useful as this delectable _couvre-pieds_. I saw some amusing ones
+recently, made of gay Austrian silks, lined with astonishing colors and
+bound with puffings and flutings of ribbon of still other colors. A
+coverlet of this kind would be as good as a trip away from home for the
+woman who is bored and wearied. No matter how drab and commonplace her
+house might be, she could devise a gay quilt of one of the enchanting
+new stuffs and wrap herself in it for a holiday hour. One of the most
+amusing ones was of turquoise blue silk, with stiff flowers of violet
+and sulphur yellow scattered over it. The flowers were quite large and
+far apart, so that there was a square expanse of the turquoise blue with
+a stiff flower at each corner. The lining was of sulphur yellow silk,
+and the binding was a puffing of violet ribbons. The color fairly made
+me gasp, at first, but then it became fascinating, and finally
+irresistible. I sighed as I thought of the dreary patchwork quilts of
+our great-grandmothers. How they would have marveled at our audacious
+use of color, our frank joy in it!
+
+Of course the most important thing in the dressing-room is the
+dressing-table. I place my dressing-tables _against_ a group of windows,
+not near them, whenever it is possible. I have used plate glass tops on
+many of them, and mirrors for tops on others, for you can't have too
+many mirrors or too strong a light for dressing. We must see ourselves
+as others will see us.
+
+My own dressing-table contains many drawers, one of which is fitted
+with an ink-well, a tray for pens and pencils, and a sliding shelf on
+which I write. This obviates going into another room to answer hurried
+notes when one is dressing. Beside the dressing-table stands the tall
+hat-stand for the hat I may be wearing that day.
+
+When the maid prepares the dress that is to be worn, she puts the hat
+that goes with the toilette on the tall single stand. Another idea is
+the little hollow table on casters that can easily be slipped under the
+dressing-table, where it is out of the way. All the little ugly things
+that make one lovely can be kept in this table, which can have a lid if
+desired, and even a lock and key. I frequently make them with a glass
+bottom, as they do not get stained or soiled, and can be washed.
+
+There are lots of little dodges that spell comfort for the dressing-room
+of the woman who wants comfort and can have luxury. There is the
+hot-water towel-rack, which is connected with the hot-water system of
+the house and which heats the towels, and incidentally the
+dressing-room. This a boon if you like a hot bath sheet after a cold
+plunge on a winter's morning. Another modern luxury is a wall cabinet
+fitted with glass shelves for one's bottles and sponges and powders.
+There seems to be no end to the little luxuries that are devised for the
+woman who makes a proper toilet. Who can blame her for loving the
+business of making herself attractive, when every one offers her
+encouragement?
+
+A closet is absolutely necessary in the dressing-room, and if space is
+precious every inch of its interior may be fitted with shelves and
+drawers and hooks, so that no space is wasted. The outside of the closet
+door may be fitted with a mirror, and narrow shelves just deep enough to
+hold one's bottles, may be fitted on the inside of the door. If the
+closet is very shallow, the inner shelves should be hollowed out to
+admit the bottle shelves when the door is closed. Otherwise the bottles
+will be smashed the first time a careless maid slams the door. This
+bottle closet has been one of my great successes in small apartments,
+where bathroom and dressing-room are one, and where much must be
+accomplished in a small space.
+
+In the more modern apartments the tub is placed in a recess in the wall
+of the bathroom, leaving more space for dressing purposes. This sort of
+combination dressing-room should have waterproof floor and wall, and no
+fripperies. There should be a screen large enough to conceal the tub,
+and a folding chair that may be placed in the small closet when it is
+not in use.
+
+When the bathroom is too small to admit a dressing-table and chair and
+the bedroom is quite large, a good plan is the building of a tiny room
+in one corner of the bedroom. Of course this little dressing-box must
+have a window. I have used this plan many times with excellent results.
+Another scheme, when the problem was entirely different, and the
+dressing-room was too large for comfort, was to line three walls of it
+with closets, the fourth wall being filled with windows. These closets
+were narrow, each having a mirrored panel in its door. This is the ideal
+arrangement, for there is ample room for all one's gowns, shoes, hats,
+veils, gloves, etc., each article having its own specially planned shelf
+or receptacle. The closets are painted in gay colors inside, and the
+shelves are fitted with thin perfumed pads. They are often further
+decorated with bright lines of color, which is always amusing to the
+woman who opens a door. Hat stands and bags are covered with the same
+chintzes employed in the dressing-room proper. Certain of the closets
+are fitted with the English tray shelves, and each tray has its sachet.
+The hangers for gowns are covered in the chintz or brocade used on the
+hat stands. This makes an effective ensemble whether brocades or printed
+cottons are used, if the arrangement is orderly and full of gay color.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MARBURY'S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE]
+
+One of the most successful gown closets I have done is a long narrow
+closet with a door at each end, really a passageway between a bedroom
+and a boudoir. Long poles run the length of the closet, with curtains
+that enclose a passage from door to door. Back of these curtains are
+long poles that may be raised or lowered by pulleys. Each gown is placed
+on its padded hanger, covered with its muslin bag, and hung on the pole.
+The pole is then drawn up so that the tails of the gowns will not
+touch the dust of the floor. This is a most orderly arrangement for the
+woman of many gowns.
+
+The straightaway bathroom that one finds in apartments and small houses
+is difficult to make beautiful, but may be made airy and clean-looking,
+which is more important. I had to make such a bathroom a little more
+attractive recently, and it was a very pleasant job. I covered the walls
+with a waterproof stuff of white, figured with a small black polkadot.
+The woodwork and the ceiling were painted white. All around the door and
+window frames I used a two-inch border of ivy leaves, also of waterproof
+paper, and although I usually abominate borders I loved this one. A
+plain white framed mirror was also painted with green ivy leaves, and a
+glass shelf above the wash bowl was fitted with glass bottles and dishes
+with labels and lines of clear green. White muslin curtains were hung at
+the window, and a small white stool was given a cushion covered with
+green and white ivy patterned chintz. The floor was painted white, and a
+solid green rug was used. The towels were cross-stitched with the name
+of the owner in the same bright green. The room, when finished, was cool
+and refreshing, and had cost very little in money, and not so very much
+in time and labor.
+
+I think that in country houses where there is not a bathroom with each
+bedroom there should be a very good washstand provided for each guest.
+When a house party is in progress, for instance, and every one comes in
+from tennis or golf or what not, eager for a bath and fresh clothes,
+washstands are most convenient. Why shouldn't a washstand be just as
+attractively furnished as a dressing-table? Just because they have been
+so ugly we condemn them to eternal ugliness, but it is quite possible to
+make the washstand interesting to look upon as well as serviceable. It
+isn't necessary to buy a "set" of dreadful crockery. You can assemble
+the necessary things as carefully as you would assemble the outfit for
+your writing-table. Go to the pottery shops, the glass shops, the
+silversmiths, and you will find dozens of bowls and pitchers and small
+things. A clear glass bowl and pitcher and the necessary glasses and
+bottles can be purchased at any department store. The French peasants
+make an apple-green pottery that is delightful for a washstand set. So
+many of the china shops have large shallow bowls that were made for
+salad and punch, and pitchers that were made for the dining-table, but
+there is no reason why they shouldn't be used on the washstand. I know
+one wash basin that began as a Russian brass pan of flaring rim. With it
+is used an old water can of hammered brass, and brass dishes glass
+lined, to hold soaps and sponges. It is only necessary to desire the
+unusual thing, and you'll get it, though much searching may intervene
+between the idea and its achievement.
+
+The washstand itself is not such a problem. A pair of dressing-tables
+may be bought, and one fitted up as a washstand, and the other left to
+its usual use.
+
+In the Colony Club there are a number of bathrooms, but there are also
+washstands in those rooms that have no private bath. Each bathroom has
+its fittings planned to harmonize with the connecting bedroom, and the
+clear glass bottles are all marked in the color prevailing in the
+bedroom. Each bathroom has a full-length mirror, and all the
+conveniences of a bathroom in a private house. In addition to these
+rooms there is a long hall filled with small _cabinets de toilette_
+which some clever woman dubbed "prinkeries." These are small rooms
+fitted with dressing-tables, where out-of-town members may freshen their
+toilets for an occasion. These little prinkeries would be excellent in
+large country houses, where there are so many motoring guests who come
+for a few hours only, dust-laden and travel-stained, only to find that
+all the bedrooms and dressing-rooms in the house are being used by the
+family and the house guests.
+
+A description of the pool of the Colony Club is hardly within the
+province of this chapter, but so many amazing Americans are building
+themselves great houses incorporating theaters and Roman baths, so many
+women are building club houses, so many others are building palatial
+houses that are known as girls' schools, perhaps the swimming-pool will
+soon be a part of all large houses. This pool occupies the greater part
+of the basement floor of the Club house, the rest of the floor being
+given over to little rooms where one may have a shampoo or massage or a
+dancing lesson or what not before or after one's swim. The pool is
+twenty-two by sixty feet, sunken below the level of the marble floor.
+The depth is graded from four feet to deep water, so that good and bad
+swimmers may enjoy it. The marble margin of floor surrounding the pool
+is bordered with marble benches, placed between the white columns. The
+walls of the great room are paneled with mirrors, so that there are
+endless reflections of columned corridors and pools and shimmering
+lights. The ceiling is covered with a light trellis hung with vines,
+from which hang great greenish-white bunches of grapes holding electric
+lights. One gets the impression of myriads of white columns, and of
+lights and shadows infinitely far-reaching. Surely the old Romans knew
+no pleasanter place than this city-enclosed pool.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE SMALL APARTMENT
+
+
+This is the age of the apartment. Not only in the great cities, but in
+the smaller centers of civilization the apartment has come to stay.
+Modern women demand simplified living, and the apartment reduces the
+mechanical business of living to its lowest terms. A decade ago the
+apartment was considered a sorry makeshift in America, though it has
+been successful abroad for more years than you would believe. We
+Americans have been accustomed to so much space about us that it seemed
+a curtailment of family dignity to give up our gardens, our piazzas and
+halls, our cellars and attics, our front and rear entrances. Now we are
+wiser. We have just so much time, so much money and so much strength,
+and it behooves us to make the best of it. Why should we give our time
+and strength and enthusiasm to drudgery, when our housework were better
+and more economically done by machinery and co-operation? Why should we
+stultify our minds with doing the same things thousands of times over,
+when we might help ourselves and our friends to happiness by intelligent
+occupations and amusements? The apartment is the solution of the living
+problems of the city, and it has been a direct influence on the houses
+of the towns, so simplifying the small-town business of living as well.
+
+Of course, many of us who live in apartments either have a little house
+or a big one in the country for the summer months, or we plan for one
+some day! So hard does habit die--we cannot entirely divorce our ideas
+of Home from gardens and trees and green grass. But I honestly think
+there is a reward for living in a slice of a house: women who have lived
+long in the country sometimes take the beauty of it for granted, but the
+woman who has been hedged in by city walls gets the fine joy of
+out-of-doors when she _is_ out of doors, and a pot of geraniums means
+more to her than a whole garden means to a woman who has been denied the
+privilege of watching things grow.
+
+The modern apartment is an amazing illustration of the rapid development
+of an idea. The larger ones are quite as magnificent as any houses could
+be. I have recently furnished a Chicago apartment that included large
+and small salons, a huge conservatory, and a great group of superb rooms
+that are worthy of a palace. There are apartment houses in New York that
+offer suites of fifteen to twenty rooms, with from five to ten baths, at
+yearly rentals that approximate wealth to the average man, but these
+apartments are for the few, and there are hundreds of thousands of
+apartments for the many that have the same essential conveniences.
+
+One of the most notable achievements of the apartment house architects
+is the duplex apartment, the little house within a house, with its
+two-story high living room, its mezzanine gallery with service rooms
+ranged below and sleeping rooms above, its fine height and spaciousness.
+Most of the duplex apartments are still rather expensive, but some of
+them are to be had at rents that are comparatively low--rents are always
+comparative, you know.
+
+Fortunately, although it is a far cry financially from the duplex
+apartment to the tidy three-room flat of the model tenements, the
+"modern improvements" are very much the same. The model tenement offers
+compact domestic machinery, and cleanliness, and sanitary comforts at a
+few dollars a week that are not to be had at any price in many of the
+fine old houses of Europe. The peasant who has lived on the plane of the
+animals with no thought of cleanliness, or indeed of anything but food
+and drink and shelter, comes over here and enjoys improvements that our
+stately ancestors of a few generations ago would have believed magical.
+Enjoys them--they do say he puts his coal in the bath tub, but his
+grandchildren will be different, perhaps!
+
+But enough of apartments in general. This chapter is concerned with the
+small apartment sought by you young people who are beginning
+housekeeping. You want to find just the proper apartment, of course, and
+then you want to decorate and furnish it. Let me beg of you to demand
+only the actual essentials: a decent neighborhood, good light and air,
+and at least one reasonably large room. Don't demand perfection, for
+you won't find it. Make up your mind just what will make for your
+happiness and comfort, and demand that. You can make any place livable
+by furnishing it wisely. And, oh, let me beg of you, don't buy your
+furniture until you have found and engaged your apartment! It is bad
+enough to buy furniture for a house you haven't seen, but an apartment
+is a place of limitations, and you can so easily mar the place by buying
+things that will not fit in. An apartment is so dependent upon proper
+fittings, skilfully placed, that you may ruin your chances of a real
+home if you go ahead blindly.
+
+Before you sign your lease, be sure that the neighborhood is not too
+noisy. Be sure that you will have plenty of light and air and heat. You
+can interview the other tenants, and find out about many things you
+haven't time or the experience to anticipate. Be sure that your landlord
+is a reasonable human being who will consent to certain changes, if
+necessary, who will be willing for you to build in certain things, who
+will co-operate with you in improving his property, if you go about it
+tactfully.
+
+Be sure that the woodwork is plain and unpretentious, that the
+lighting-fixtures are logically placed, and of simple construction. (Is
+there anything more dreadful than those colored glass domes, with
+fringes of beads, that landlords so proudly hang over the imaginary
+dining-table?) Be sure that the plumbing is in good condition, and
+beware the bedroom on an air shaft--better pay a little more rent and
+save the doctor's bills. Beware of false mantels, and grotesque
+grille-work, and imitation stained glass, and grained woodwork. You
+couldn't be happy in a place that was false to begin with.
+
+Having found just the combination of rooms that suggests a real home to
+you, go slowly about your decorating.
+
+It is almost imperative that the woodwork and walls should have the same
+finish throughout the apartment, unless you wish to find yourself living
+in a crazy-quilt of unfriendly colors. I have seen four room apartments
+in which every room had a different wall paper and different woodwork.
+The "parlor" was papered with poisonous-looking green paper, with
+imitation mahogany woodwork; the dining-room had walls covered with red
+burlap and near-oak woodwork; the bedroom was done in pink satin
+finished paper and bird's-eye maple woodwork, and the kitchen was
+bilious as to woodwork, with bleak gray walls. Could anything be more
+mistaken?
+
+You can make the most commonplace rooms livable if you will paint all
+your woodwork cream, or gray, or sage green, and cover your walls with a
+paper of very much the same tone. Real hard wood trim isn't used in
+ordinary apartments, so why not do away with the badly-grained imitation
+and paint it? You can look through thousands of samples of wall papers,
+and you will finally have to admit that there is nothing better for
+every day living than a deep cream, a misty gray, a tan or a buff paper.
+
+You may have a certain license in the papering of your bedrooms, of
+course, but the living-rooms--hall, dining-room, living-room,
+drawing-room, and so forth--should be pulled together with walls of one
+color. In no other way can you achieve an effect of spaciousness--and
+spaciousness is the thing of all other things most desirable in the
+crowded city. You must have a place where you can breathe and fling your
+arms about!
+
+When you have it really ready for furnishing, get the essentials first;
+do with a bed and a chest of drawers and a table and a few chairs, and
+add things gradually, as the rooms call for them.
+
+Make the best of the opportunities offered for built-in furniture before
+you buy another thing. If you have a built-in china closet in your
+dining-room, you can plan a graceful built-in console-table to serve as
+a buffet or serving-table, and you will require only a good table--not
+too heavily built--and a few chairs for this room. There is rarely a
+room that would not be improved by built-in shelves and inset mirrors.
+
+Of course, I do not advise you to spend a lot of money on someone else's
+property, but why not look the matter squarely in the face? This is to
+be your home. You will find a number of things that annoy you--life in
+any city furnishes annoyances. But if you have one or two reasonably
+large rooms, plenty of light and air, and respectable surroundings, make
+up your mind that you will not move every year. That you will make a
+home of this place, and then go ahead and _treat_ it as a home! If a
+certain recess in the wall suggests bookshelves, don't grudge the few
+dollars necessary to have the bookshelves built in! You can probably
+have them built so that they can be removed, on that far day when this
+apartment is no longer your home, and if you have a dreadful wall paper
+don't hide behind the silly plea that the landlord will not change it.
+Go without a new gown, if necessary, and pay for the paper yourself.
+
+Few apartments have fireplaces, and if you are fortunate enough to find
+one with a real fireplace and a simple mantel shelf you will be far on
+the way toward making a home of your group of rooms. Of course your
+apartment is heated by steam, or hot air, or something, but an open fire
+of coal or wood will be very pleasant on chilly days, and more important
+still your home will have a point of departure--the Hearth.
+
+If the mantel shelf is surmounted by one of those dreadful monstrosities
+made up of gingerbread woodwork and distressing bits of mirrors,
+convince your landlord that it will not be injured in the removing, and
+store it during your residence here. Have the space above the mantel
+papered like the rest of the walls, and hang one good picture, or a good
+mirror, or some such thing above your mantel shelf, and you will have
+offered up your homage to the Spirit of the Hearth.
+
+When you do begin to buy furniture, buy compactly, buy carefully.
+Remember that you will not require the furniture your mother had in a
+sixteen-room house. You will have no hall or piazza furnishings to buy,
+for instance, and therefore you many put a little more into your
+living-room things. The living-room is the nucleus of the modern
+apartment. Sometimes it is studio, living-room and dining-room in one.
+Sometimes living-room, library and guest-room, by the grace of a
+comfortable sleeping-couch and a certain amount of drawer or closet
+space. At any rate, it will be more surely a living-room than a similar
+room in a large house, and therefore everything in it should count for
+something. Do not admit an unnecessary rug, or chair, or picture, lest
+you lose the spaciousness, the dignity of the room. An over-stuffed
+chair will fill a room more obviously than a grand piano--if the piano
+is properly, and the chair improperly placed.
+
+In one of the illustrations of this chapter you will observe a small
+sitting-room in which there are dozens of things, and yet the effect is
+quiet and uncrowded. The secretary against the plain wall serves as a
+cabinet for the display of a small collection of fine old china, and the
+drawers serve the chance guest--for while this is library and
+sitting-room, it has a most comfortable couch bed, and may be used as a
+guest-room as well.
+
+[Illustration: A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR]
+
+The bookshelves are built high on each side of the mantel and between
+the windows, thus giving shelf room to a goodly collection of books,
+with no appearance of heaviness. The writing-table is placed at right
+angles to the windows, so that the light may fall on the writer's left
+shoulder. There is a couch bed--over three feet wide, in this room, with
+frame and mattress and pillows covered in a dark brocaded stuff, and a
+fireside chair, a small chair at the head of the couch and a low stool
+all covered with the same fabric. It really isn't a large room, and yet
+it abundantly fills a dozen needs.
+
+I think it unwise to try to work out a cut-and-dried color plan in a
+small apartment. If your floors and walls are neutral in tone you can
+introduce dozens of soft colors into your rooms.
+
+Don't buy massive furniture for your apartment! Remember that a few good
+chairs of willow will be less expensive and more decorative than the
+heavy, stuffy chairs usually chosen by inexperienced people. Indeed, I
+think one big arm chair, preferably of the wing variety, is the only big
+chair you will require in the living-room. A fireside chair is like a
+grandfather's clock; it gives so much dignity to a room that it is worth
+a dozen inferior things. Suppose you have a wing chair covered with
+dull-toned corduroy, or linen, or chintz; a large willow chair with a
+basket pocket for magazines or your sewing things; a stool or so of
+wood, with rush or cane seats; and a straight chair or so--perhaps a
+painted Windsor chair, or a rush-bottomed mahogany chair, or a low-back
+chair of brown oak--depending on the main furniture of the room, of
+course. You won't need anything more, unless you have space for a
+comfortable couch.
+
+If you have mahogany things, you will require a little mahogany table at
+the head of the couch to hold a reading-lamp--a sewing-table would be
+excellent. A pie-crust or turn top table for tea, or possibly a "nest"
+of three small mahogany tables. A writing table or book table built on
+very simple lines will be needed also. If you happen to have a
+conventional writing-desk, a gate-leg table would be charming for books
+and things.
+
+The wing chair and willow chairs, and the hour-glass Chinese chairs,
+will go beautifully with mahogany things or with oak things. If most of
+your furniture is to be oak, be sure and select well-made pieces stained
+a soft brown and waxed. Oak furniture is delightful when it isn't too
+heavy. A large gate-leg table of dark brown oak is one of the most
+beautiful tables in the world. With it you would need a bench of oak,
+with cane or rush seat; a small octagonal, or butterfly oak table for
+your couch end, and one or two Windsor chairs. Oak demands simple,
+wholesome surroundings, just as mahogany permits a certain feminine
+elegance. Oak furniture invites printed linens and books and brass and
+copper and pewter and gay china. While mahogany may be successfully used
+with such things, it may also be used with brocade and fragile china and
+carved chairs.
+
+Use chintzes in your apartment, if you wish, but do not risk the light
+ones in living-rooms. A chintz or printed linen of some good design on a
+ground of mauve, blue, gray or black will decorate your apartment
+adequately, if you make straight side curtains of it, and cover one
+chair and possibly a stool with it. Don't carry it too far. If your
+rooms are small, have your side curtains of coarse linen or raw silk in
+dull blue, orange, brown, or whatever color you choose as the key color
+of your room, and then select a dark chintz with your chosen color
+dominant in its design, and cover your one big chair with that.
+
+The apartment hall is most difficult, usually long and narrow and
+uninteresting. Don't try to have furniture in a hall of this kind. A
+small table near the front door, a good tile for umbrellas, etc., a good
+mirror--that is all. Perhaps a place for coats and hats, but some halls
+are too narrow for a card table.
+
+The apartment with a dining-room entirely separated from the living-room
+is very unusual, therefore I am hoping that you will apply all that I
+have said about the treatment of your living-room to your dining-room as
+well. People who live in apartments are very foolish if they cut off a
+room so little used as a dining-room and furnish it as if it belonged to
+a huge house. Why not make it a dining-and book-room, using the big
+table for reading, between meals, and having your bookshelves so built
+that they will be in harmony with your china shelves? Keep all your
+glass and silver and china in the kitchen, or butler's pantry, and
+display only the excellent things--the old china, the pewter tankard,
+the brass caddy, and so forth,--in the dining-room.
+
+However, if you have a real dining-room in your apartment, do try to
+have chairs that will be comfortable, for you can't afford to have
+uncomfortable things in so small a space! Windsor chairs and rush bottom
+chairs are best of all for a simple dining-room, I think, though the
+revival of painted furniture has brought about a new interest in the old
+flare-back chairs, painted with dull, soft colored posies on a ground of
+dull green or gray or black. These chairs would be charming in a small
+cottage dining-room, but they might not "wear well" in a city apartment.
+
+[Illustration: BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM]
+
+If your apartment has two small bedrooms, why not use one of them for
+two single beds, with a night stand between, and the other for a
+dressing-room? Apartment bedrooms are usually small, but charming
+furniture may be bought for small rooms. Single beds of mahogany with
+slender posts; beds of painted wood with inset panels of cane; white
+iron beds, wooden beds painted with quaint designs on a ground of some
+soft color--all these are excellent for small rooms. It goes without
+saying that a small bedroom should have plain walls, papered or painted
+in some soft color. Flowered papers, no matter how delightful they may
+be, make a small room seem smaller. Self-toned striped papers and the
+"gingham" papers are sometimes very good. The nicest thing about such
+modest walls is that you can use gay chintz with them successfully.
+
+Use your bedrooms as sleeping-and dressing-rooms, and nothing more. Do
+not keep your sewing things there--a big sewing-basket will add to the
+homelike quality of your living-room. Keep the bedroom floor bare,
+except for a bedside rug, and possibly one or two other rugs. This, of
+course, does not apply to the large bedroom--I am prescribing for the
+usual small one. Place your bed against the side wall, so that the
+morning light will not be directly in your eyes. A folding screen
+covered with chintz or linen will prove a God-send.
+
+Perhaps you will have a guest-room, but I doubt it. Most women find it
+more satisfactory and less expensive to send their guests to a nearby
+hotel than to keep an extra room for a guest. The guest room is
+impractical in a small apartment, but you can arrange to take care of an
+over-night guest by planning your living-room wisely.
+
+As for the kitchen--that is another story. It is impossible to go into
+that subject. And anyway, you will find the essentials supplied for you
+by the landlord. You won't need my advice when you need a broom or a
+coffee pot or a saucepan--you'll go buy it!
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART
+
+
+One must have preserved many naïve illusions if one may believe in all
+the "antiques" that are offered in the marketplaces of the world to-day.
+Even the greatest connoisseurs are caught napping sometimes, as in the
+case of the famous crown supposedly dating to the Fifth Century, B.C.,
+which was for a brief period one of the treasures of the Louvre. Its
+origin was finally discovered, and great was the outcry! It had been
+traced to a Viennese artisan, a worker in the arts and crafts.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. C.W. HARKNESS'S CABINET FOR _OBJETS D'ART_]
+
+Surely, if the great men of the Louvre could be so deceived it is
+obvious that the amateur collector has little chance at the hands of the
+dealers in old furniture and other objects of art. Fortunately, the
+greatest dealers are quite honest. They tell you frankly if the old
+chair you covet is really old, if it has been partially restored, or if
+it is a copy, and they charge you accordingly. At these dealers a small
+table of the Louis XVI period, or a single chair covered in the original
+tapestry, may cost as much as a man in modest circumstances would spend
+on his whole house. Almost everything outside these princely shops
+(salons is a better word) is false, or atrociously restored. Please
+remember I am not referring to reputable dealers, but to the smaller
+fry, whose name is legion, in whose shops the unwary seeker after
+bargains is sure to be taken in.
+
+Italy is, I think, the greatest workshop of fraudulent reproductions. It
+has an output that all Europe and America can never exhaust. Little
+children on the streets of Naples still find simpletons of ardent faith
+who will buy scraps of old plaster and bits of paving stones that are
+alleged to have been excavated in Pompeii.
+
+In writing about antiques it is not easy to be consistent, and any
+general conclusion is impossible. Certain reproductions are
+objectionable, and yet they are certainly better than poor originals,
+after all. The simplest advice is the best and easiest to follow: The
+less a copy suggests an attempt at "artistic reproduction," the more
+literal and mechanical it is in its copy of the original, the better it
+is. A good photograph of a fine old painting is superior to the average
+copy in oils or watercolors. A chair honestly copied from a worm eaten
+original is better for domestic purpose than the original. The original,
+the moment its usefulness is past, belongs in a museum. A plaster cast
+of a great bust is better than the same object copied in marble or
+bronze by an average sculptor. And so it goes. Think it out for
+yourself.
+
+It may be argued that the budding collector is as happy with a false
+object and a fake bauble as if he possessed the real thing, and
+therefore it were better to leave him to his illusions; that it is his
+own fault; that it is so much the worse for him if he is deceived.
+But--you can't leave the innocent lamb to the slaughter, if you can give
+him a helping hand. If he must be a collector, let him be first a
+collector of the many excellent books now published on old furniture,
+china, rugs, pewter, silver, prints, the things that will come his way.
+You can't begin collecting one thing without developing an enthusiasm
+for the contemporary things. Let him study the museum collections, visit
+the private collections, consult recognized experts. If he is serious,
+he will gradually acquire the intuition of knowing the genuine from the
+false, the worth-while from the worthless, and once he has that
+knowledge, instinct, call it what you will, he can never be satisfied
+with imitations.
+
+The collection and association of antiques and reproductions should be
+determined by the collector's sense of fitness, it seems to me. Every
+man should depend on whatever instinct for rightness, for suitability,
+he may possess. If he finds that he dare not risk his individual
+opinion, then let him be content with the things he _knows_ to be both
+beautiful and useful, and leave the subtler decisions for someone else.
+For instance, there are certain objects that are obviously the better
+for age, the objects that are softened and refined by a bloom that comes
+from usage.
+
+An old rug has a softness that a new one cannot imitate. An old copper
+kettle has an uneven quality that has come from years of use. A new
+kettle may be quite as useful, but age has given the old one a certain
+quality that hanging and pounding cannot reproduce. A pewter platter
+that has been used for generations is dulled and softened to a glow that
+a new platter cannot rival.
+
+What charm is to a woman, the vague thing called quality is to an object
+of art. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it. An old
+Etruscan jar may be reproduced in form, but it would be silly to attempt
+the reproduction of the crudenesses that gave the old jar its real
+beauty. In short, objects that depend on form and fine workmanship for
+their beauty may be successfully reproduced, but objects that depend on
+imperfections of workmanship, on the crudeness of primitive fabrics, on
+the fading of vegetable dyes, on the bloom that age alone can give,
+should not be imitated. We may introduce a reproduction of a fine bust
+into our rooms, but an imitation of a Persian tile or a Venetian vase is
+absurd on the face of it.
+
+The antiques the average American householder is interested in are the
+old mahogany, oak and walnut things that stand for the oldest period of
+our own particular history. It is only the wealthy collector who goes
+abroad and buys masses of old European furniture, real or sham, who is
+concerned with the merits and demerits of French and Italian furniture.
+The native problem is the so-called Colonial mahogany that is always
+alleged to be Chippendale or Heppelwhite, or Sheraton, regardless! There
+must be thousands of these alleged antiques in New York shops alone!
+
+It goes without saying that only a very small part of it can be really
+old. As for it having been made by the men whose names it bears, that is
+something no reputable dealer would affirm. The Chippendales, father,
+son and grandson, published books of designs which were used by all the
+furniture-makers of their day.
+
+No one can swear to a piece of furniture having been made in the
+workshops of the Chippendales. Even the pieces in the Metropolitan
+Museum are marked "Chippendale Style" or "In the Sheraton manner," or
+some such way. If the furniture is in the style of these makers, and if
+it is really old, you will pay a small fortune for it. But even then you
+cannot hope to get more than you pay for, and you would be very silly to
+pay for a name! After all, Chippendale is a sort of god among amateur
+collectors of American furniture, but among more seasoned collectors he
+is not by any means placed first. He adapted and borrowed and produced
+some wonderful things, but he also produced some monstrosities, as you
+will see if you visit the English museums.
+
+Why then lend yourself to possible deception? Why pay for names when
+museums are unable to buy them? If your object is to furnish your home
+suitably, what need have you of antiques?
+
+The serious amateur will fight shy of miracles. If he admires the beauty
+of line of a fine old Heppelwhite bed or Sheraton sideboard, he will
+have reproductions made by an expert cabinet-maker. The new piece will
+not have the soft darkness of the old, but the owner will be planning
+that soft darkness for his grandchildren, and in the meantime he will
+have a beautiful thing to live with. The age of a piece of furniture is
+of great value to a museum, but for domestic purposes, use and beauty
+will do. How fine your home will be if all the things within it have
+those qualities!
+
+Look through the photographs shown on these pages: there are many old
+chairs and tables, but there are more new ones. I am not one of these
+decorators who insist on originals. I believe good reproductions are
+more valuable than feeble originals, unless you are buying your
+furniture as a speculation. You can buy a reproduction of a Chippendale
+ladder back chair for about twenty-five dollars, but an original chair
+would cost at least a hundred and fifty, and then it would be "in the
+style and period of Chippendale." It might amuse you to ask the curator
+of one of the British museums the price of one of the Chippendales _by_
+Chippendale. It would buy you a tidy little acreage. Stuart and
+Cromwellian chairs are being more and more reproduced. These chairs are
+made of oak, the Stuart ones with seats and backs of cane, the
+Cromwellian ones with seats and backs of tapestry, needlework, corded
+velvet, or some such handsome fabric. These reproductions may be had at
+from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars each. Of course, the cost of
+the Cromwellian chairs might be greatly increased by expensive
+coverings.
+
+There is a graceful Louis XV sofa in the Petit Trianon that I have
+copied many times. The copy is as beautiful as the original, because
+this sort of furniture depends upon exquisite design and perfect
+workmanship for its beauty. It is possible that a modern craftsman might
+not have achieved so graceful a design, but the perfection of his
+workmanship cannot be gainsaid. The frame of the sofa must be carved and
+then painted and guilded many times before it is ready for the brocade
+covering, and the cost of three hundred dollars for the finished sofa is
+not too much. The original could not be purchased at any price.
+
+Then there is the Chinese lacquer furniture of the Chippendale period
+that we are using so much now. The process of lacquering is as tedious
+to-day as it ever was, and the reproductions sell for goodly sums. A
+tall secretary of black and gold lacquer may cost six hundred dollars.
+You can imagine what an Eighteenth Century piece would cost!
+
+The person who said that a taste for old furniture and bibelots was
+"worse than a passion, it was a vice," was certainly near the truth! It
+is an absorbing pursuit, an obsession, and it grows with what it feeds
+on. As in objects of art, so in old furniture, the supply will always
+equal the demand of the unwary. The serious amateur will fight shy of
+all miracles and content himself with excellent reproductions. Nothing
+later than the furniture of the Eighteenth Century is included in the
+term, "old furniture." There are many fine cabinet makers in the early
+Nineteenth Century, but from them until the last decade the horrors that
+were perpetrated have never been equaled in the history of household
+decorations.
+
+I fancy the furniture of the mid-Victorian era will never be coveted by
+collectors, unless someone should build a museum for the freakish
+objects of house furnishing. America could contribute much to such a
+collection, for surely the black walnut era of the Nineteenth Century
+will never be surpassed in ugliness and bad taste, unless--rare
+fortune--there should be a sudden epidemic of appreciation among
+cabinet-makers, which would result in their taking the beautiful wood in
+the black walnut beds and wardrobes and such and make it over into
+worth-while things. It would be a fine thing to release the mistreated,
+velvety wood from its grotesqueries, and give it a renaissance in
+graceful cabinets, small tables, footstools, and the many small things
+that could be so easily made from huge unwieldy wardrobes and beds and
+bureaux.
+
+The workmen of to-day have their eyes opened. They have no excuse for
+producing unworthy things, when the greatest private collections are
+loaned or given outright to the museums. The new wing of the
+Metropolitan Museum in New York houses several fine old collections of
+furniture, the Hoentschel collection, for which the wing was really
+planned, having been given to the people of New York by Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan. This collection is an education in the French decorative arts.
+Then, too, there is the Bolles collection of American furniture
+presented to the museum by Mrs. Russell Sage.
+
+I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and
+sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies. There is
+no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers
+of the Eighteenth Century: we give them respect for their masterly
+workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity
+to the masterpieces they reproduce.
+
+Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a
+gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture
+shop. He paid for it--you may be sure of that!--and he could hardly wait
+for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors. Within a few
+months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered
+on the inside of the frame the maker's name and address. Imagine his
+chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture
+factory in his own country. You can't be sorry for him, you feel that it
+served him right.
+
+[Illustration: A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH
+NEEDLEWORK]
+
+[Illustration: A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ]
+
+This is an excellent example of the vain collector who cannot judge
+for himself, but will not admit it. He has not developed his sense of
+beauty, his instinct for excellence of workmanship. He thinks that
+because he has the money to pay for the treasure, the treasure must be
+genuine--hasn't _he_ chosen it?
+
+I can quite understand the pleasure that goes with furnishing a really
+old house with objects of the period in which the house was built. A New
+England farmhouse, for instance, may be an inspiration to the owner, and
+you can understand her quest of old fashioned rush bottomed chairs and
+painted settles and quaint mirrors and blue homespun coverlets. You can
+understand the man who falls heir to a good, square old Colonial house
+who wishes to keep his furnishings true to the period, but you cannot
+understand the crying need for Eighteenth Century furniture in a modern
+shingle house, or the desire for old spinning wheels and battered
+kitchen utensils in a Spanish stucco house, or Chippendale furniture in
+a forest bungalow.
+
+I wish people generally would study the oak and walnut furniture of old
+England, and use more reproductions of these honest, solid pieces of
+furniture in their houses. Its beauty is that it is "at home" in simple
+American houses, and yet by virtue of its very usefulness and sturdiness
+it is not out of place in a room where beautiful objects of other
+periods are used. The long oak table that is so comfortably ample for
+books and magazines and flowers in your living-room may be copied from
+an old refectory table--but what of it? It fulfils its new mission just
+as frankly as the original table served the monks who used it.
+
+The soft brown of oak is a pleasure after the over-polished mahogany of
+a thousand rooms. I do not wish to condemn Colonial mahogany furniture,
+you understand. I simply wish to remind you that there are other woods
+and models available. French furniture of the best type represents the
+supreme art of the cabinet-maker, and is incomparable for formal rooms,
+but I am afraid the time will never come when French furniture will be
+interchangeable with the oak and mahogany of England and America.
+
+In short, the whole thing should be a matter of taste and suitability.
+If you have a few fine old things that have come to you from your
+ancestors--a grandfather's clock, an old portrait or two--you are quite
+justified in bringing good reproductions of similar things into your
+home. The effect is the thing you are after, isn't it? Then, too, you
+will escape the awful fever that makes any antique seem desirable, and
+in buying reproductions you can select really comfortable furniture. You
+will be independent of the dreadful vases and candelabra and steel
+engravings "of the period," and will feel free to use modern prints and
+Chinese porcelains and willow chairs and anything that fits into your
+home. I can think of no slavery more deadly to one's sense of humor than
+collecting antiques indiscriminately!
+
+[Illustration: THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB]
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
+
+
+When I planned the trellis room of the Colony Club in New York I had
+hard work finding workmen who could appreciate the importance of
+crossing and recrossing little strips of green wood, of arranging them
+to form a mural decoration architectural in treatment. This trellis room
+was, I believe, the first in America to be so considered, though the use
+of trellis is as old as architecture in Japan, China, Arabia, Egypt,
+Italy, France and Spain.
+
+The earliest examples of trellis work shown are in certain Roman
+frescoes. In Pompeii the mural paintings give us a very good idea of
+what some of the Roman gardens were like. In the entrance hall of the
+house of Sallust is represented a garden with trellised niches and
+bubbling fountains. Representations that have come down to us in
+documents show that China and Japan both employed the trellis in their
+decorative schemes. You will find a most daring example on your old blue
+willow plate, if you will look closely enough. The bridge over which the
+flying princess goes to her lover is a good model, and could be built in
+many gardens. Even a tiny modern garden, yours or mine, might hold this
+fairy bridge.
+
+Almost all Arabian decorations have their basis in trellis design or
+arabesques filled in with the intricate tracery that covers all their
+buildings. If we examine the details of the most famous of the old
+Moorish buildings that remain to us, the mosque at Cordova and the
+Alhambra at Granada, we shall find them full of endless trellis
+suggestions. Indeed, there are many documents still extant showing how
+admirably trellis decoration lends itself to the decoration of gardens
+and interiors. There are dozens of examples of niches built to hold fine
+busts. Pavilions and summer houses, the quaint gazebos of old England,
+the graceful screens of trellis that terminate a long garden path, the
+arching gateways crowned with vines--all these may be reproduced quite
+easily in American gardens.
+
+The first trellis work in France was inspired by Italy, but the French
+gave it a perfection of architectural character not found in other
+countries. The manuscript of the "Romance of the Rose," dating back to
+the Fifteenth Century, contains the finest possible example of trellis
+in a medieval garden. Most of the old French gardens that remain to us
+have important trellis construction. At Blois one still sees the remains
+of a fine trellis covering the walls of the kitchen gardens. Wonderful
+and elaborate trellis _pavillons_, each containing a statue, often
+formed the centers of very old gardens. These garden houses were called
+gazebos in England, and _Temples d'Amour_ (Temples of Love) in France,
+and the statue most often seen was the god of Love. In the Trianon
+gardens at Versailles there is a charming _Temple d'Amour_ standing on a
+tiny island, with four small canals leading to it.
+
+A knowledge of the history of trelliage and an appreciation of its
+practical application to modern needs is a conjurer's wand--you can wave
+it and create all sorts of ephemeral constructions that will last your
+time and pleasure. You may give your trellis any poetic shape your
+vision may take. You may dream and realize enchanting gardens, with
+clipped hedges and trellis walls. You may transform a commonplace porch
+into a gay garden room, with a few screens of trellis and many flower
+boxes of shrubs and vines. Here indeed is a delightful medium for your
+fancy!
+
+Trelliage and lattice work are often used as interchangeable terms, but
+mistakenly, for any carpenter who has the gift of precision can build a
+good lattice, but a trellis must have architectural character. Trellis
+work is not necessarily flimsy construction; the light chestnut laths
+that were used by the old Frenchmen and still remain to us prove that.
+
+Always in a garden I think one must feel one has not come to the end,
+one must go on and on in search of new beauties and the hidden delights
+we feel sure must be behind the clipped hedges or the trellis walls.
+Even when we come to the end we are not quite sure it is the end, and we
+steep ourselves in seclusion and quiet, knowing full well that to-morrow
+or to-night perhaps when the moon is up and we come back as we promise
+ourselves to do, surely we shall see that ideal corner that is the last
+word of the perfection of our dream garden--that delectable spot for
+which we forever seek!
+
+We can bring back much of the charm of the old-time gardens by a
+judicious use of trellis. It is suitable for every form of outdoor
+construction. A new garden can be subdivided and made livable in a few
+months with trellis screens, where hedges, even of the quick growing
+privet, would take years to grow. The entrance to the famous maze at
+Versailles, now, alas, utterly destroyed, was in trellis, and I have
+reproduced in our own garden at Villa Trianon, in Versailles, the
+entrance arch and doors, all in trellis. Our high garden fence with its
+curving gate is also in trellis, and you can imagine the joy with which
+we watched the vines grow, climbing over the gatetop as gracefully as if
+they too felt the charm of the curving tracery of green strips, and
+cheerfully added the decoration of their leaves and tendrils.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH'S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW
+YORK]
+
+Our outdoor trellis is at the end of the Villa Trianon garden, in line
+with the terrace where we take our meals. This trellis was rebuilt many
+times before it satisfied me, but now it is my greatest joy. The niches
+are planned to hold two old statues and several prim box trees. I used
+very much the same constructive design on one of the walls of the Colony
+Club trellis room, but there a fountain has the place of honor.
+Formal pedestals surmounted by gracefully curved urns, box trees,
+statues, marble benches, fountains--all these belong to the formal
+outdoor trellis.
+
+The trellis is primarily suitable for garden architecture, but it may be
+fitted to interior uses most skilfully. Pictures of the trellis room in
+the Colony Club have been shown so often it is not necessary to repeat
+more than one of them. The room is long and high, with a floor of large
+red tiles. The walls and ceiling are covered with rough gray plaster, on
+which the green strips of wood are laid. The wall space is entirely
+covered with the trellis design broken into ovals which hold
+lighting-fixtures--grapes and leaves in cloudy glass and green enamel.
+The long room leads up to the ivy-covered trellis of the fountain wall,
+a perfect background for the fountain, a bowl on the brim of which is
+poised a youthful figure, upheld by two dolphins. The water spills over
+into a little pool, banked with evergreens. Ivy has been planted in long
+boxes along the wall, and climbs to the ceiling, where the plaster is
+left bare, save for the trellised cornice and the central trellis
+medallion, from which is suspended an enchanting lantern made up of
+green wires and ivy leaves and little white flames of electric light.
+
+The roof garden of the Colony Club is latticed in a simple design we all
+know. This is lattice, not trellis, and in no way should be confounded
+with the trellis room on the entrance floor. This white-painted lattice
+covers the wall space. Growing vines are placed along the walls and
+clamber to the beams. The glass ceiling is supported by white beams.
+There are always blossoming flowers and singing birds in this room. The
+effect is springlike and joyous on the bleakest winter day. The room is
+heated by two huge stoves of green Majolica brought over from Germany
+when other heating systems failed. Much of the furniture is covered with
+a grape-patterned chintz and a green and white striped linen. The
+ceiling lights are hidden in huge bunches of pale green grapes.
+
+I recently planned a most beautiful trellis room for a New York City
+house. The room is long and narrow, with walls divided into panels by
+upright classic columns. The lower wall space between the columns is
+covered with a simple green lattice, and the upper part is filled with
+little mirrors framed in narrow green moldings, arranged in a
+conventional design which follows the line of the trellis. One end of
+the room is made up of two narrow panels of the trellis with a fireplace
+between. On the opposite wall the middle panel is a background for a
+delightful wall fountain. The fretwork of mirrors which takes the place
+of frieze in the room is continued all around the four walls. One of the
+walls is filled entirely with French doors of plate glass, beneath the
+mirrored frieze; the other long wall has the broad, central panel cut
+into two doors of plate glass, and stone benches placed against the two
+trellised panels flanking the doors. The ceiling is divided into three
+great panels of trellis, and from each of the three panels a lantern is
+suspended.
+
+In the Guinness house in New York there is a little hallway wainscoted
+in white with a green trellis covering the wall space above. Against
+this simple trellis--it is really a lattice--a number of plaster casts
+are hung. In one corner an old marble bowl holds a grapevine, which has
+been trained over the walls. The floor is of white tiles, with a narrow
+Greek border of black and white. This decoration of a little hall might
+be copied very easily.
+
+The architects are building nowadays many houses that have a sun-room,
+or conservatory, or breakfast room. The smallest cottage may have a
+little breakfast room done in green and white lattice, with green
+painted furniture and simple flower boxes. I have had furniture of the
+most satisfactory designs made for my trellis rooms. Green painted wood
+with cane insets seems most suitable for the small rooms, and the
+marbles of the old trellised _Temples d'Amour_ may be replaced by cement
+benches in our modern trellis pavillions.
+
+There is so much of modern furniture that is refreshing in line and
+color, and adapted to these sun-rooms. There is a desk made by Aitchen,
+a notable furniture designer in London, which I have used in a sun-room.
+The desk is painted white, and is decorated with heavy lines of dark
+green. The drawer front and the doors of the little cupboard are filled
+with cane. The knobs are of green. This desk would be nice in a white
+writing-room in a summer cottage, though it was planned for a trellis
+room. It could be used as a dressing table, with a bench or chair of
+white, outlined in green, and a good mirror in white and green frame.
+Another desk I have made is called a jardiniere table, and was designed
+for Mrs. Ogden Armour's garden room at Lake Forest. The desk, or table,
+is painted gray, with faint green decorations. At each end of the long
+top there is a sunken zinc-lined box to hold growing plants. Between the
+flower boxes there is the usual arrangement of the desk outfit, blotter
+pad, paper rack, ink pots, and so forth. The spaces beneath the flower
+boxes are filled with shelves for books and magazines. This idea is
+thoroughly practicable for any garden room, and is so simple that it
+could be constructed by any man who knows how to use tools.
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING OVER THE _TAPIS VERT_ TO THE TRELLIS]
+
+I had the pleasure recently of planning a trellis room for Mrs.
+Ormond-Smith's house at Center Island, New York. Here indeed is a garden
+room with a proper environment. It is as beautiful as a room very well
+can be within, and its great arched windows frame vistas of trees and
+water which take their place as a part of the room, ever changing
+landscapes that are always captivating. This trellis room is beautifully
+proportioned, and large enough to hold four long sofas and many chairs
+and tables of wicker and painted wood. The grouping of the sofas and the
+long tables made to fit between them is most interesting. These
+tables are extremely narrow and just the length of the sofas, and are
+built after the idea of Mrs. Armour's garden room desk, with flower
+boxes sunk in the ends. The backs of two sofas are placed against the
+long sides of the table, which holds a reading lamp and books in
+addition to its masses of flowers at the ends. Two such groups divide
+the room into three smaller rooms, as you can see by the illustration.
+Small tables and chairs are pulled up to the sofas, making conversation
+centers, or comfortable places for reading.
+
+The trellis work covers the spaces between windows and doors, and
+follows the contour of the arches. The ceiling is bordered with the
+trellis, and from a great square of it in the center a lamp is
+suspended. The wall panels are broken by appliques that suggest the
+bounty of summer, flowers and leaves and vines in wrought and painted
+iron. There are pedestals surmounted by marbles against some of the
+panels, and a carved bracket supporting a magnificent bust high on one
+of the wider panels. The room is classic in its fine balance and its
+architectural formality, and modern in its luxurious comfort and its
+refreshing color. Surely there could be no pleasanter room for whiling
+away a summer day.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+VILLA TRIANON
+
+
+The story of the Villa Trianon is a fairy-tale come true. It came true
+because we believed in it--many fairy stories are ready and waiting to
+come true if only people will believe in them long enough.
+
+For many years Elizabeth Marbury and I had spent our summers in that
+charming French town, Versailles, before we had any hope of realizing a
+home of our own there. We loved the place, with its glamour of romance
+and history, and we prowled around the old gardens and explored the old
+houses, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.
+
+One old house that particularly interested us was the villa that had
+once been the home of the Duc de Nemours, son of Louis Philippe. It was
+situated directly on the famous Park of Versailles which is, as everyone
+knows, one of the most beautiful parks in all the world. The villa had
+not been lived in since the occupancy of de Nemours. Before the villa
+came to de Nemours it had been a part of the royal property that was
+portioned out to Mesdames de France, the disagreeable daughters of Louis
+XV. You will remember how disagreeable they were to Marie Antoinette,
+and what a burden they made her life. I wish our house had belonged to
+more romantic people; Madame du Barry or Madame de Pompadour would have
+suited me better!
+
+How many, many times we peeped through the high iron railing at this
+enchanted domain, sleeping like the castle in the fairy tale. The garden
+was overgrown with weeds and shrubbery, the house was shabby and sadly
+in need of paint. We sighed and thought how happy would be our fortune
+if we might some day penetrate the mysteries of the tangled garden and
+the abandoned villa. Little did we dream that this would one day be our
+home.
+
+We first went to Versailles as casual summer visitors and our stay was
+brief. We loved it so much that the next summer we went again, this time
+for the season, and found ourselves members of a happy pension family.
+Then we decided to rent an apartment of our own, for the next year, and
+soon we were considering the leases of houses, and finally we arrived at
+the supreme audacity of negotiating for the purchase of one. We had a
+great friend in Versailles, Victorien Sardou, the novelist and
+playwright so honored by the people of France. His wonderful house at
+Marly le Roi was a constant joy to us, and made us always more eager for
+a permanent home of our own in the neighborhood. Sardou was as eager for
+the finding of our house as we were, and it was he who finally made it
+possible for us to buy our historic villa. He did everything for us,
+introduced us to his friends, wonderful and brilliant people, gave us
+liberally of his charm and knowledge, and finally gave us the chance to
+buy this old house and its two acres of gardens.
+
+The negotiations for the house were long and tedious. Our offer was an
+insult, a joke, a ridiculous affair to the man who had the selling of
+it! He laughed at us, and demanded twice the amount of our offer. We
+were firm, outwardly, and refused to meet him halfway, but secretly we
+spent hours and hours in the old house, sitting patiently on folding
+camp-stools, and planning the remaking of the house as happily as
+children playing make-believe.
+
+I remember vividly the three of us, Miss Marbury, Sardou, and I,
+standing in the garden on a very rainy day. Sardou was bounding up and
+down, saying: "Buy it, buy it! If you don't buy it before twelve o'clock
+to-morrow I will buy it myself!" We were standing there soaking wet,
+perfectly oblivious to the downpour, wondering if we dared do such an
+audacious thing as to purchase property so far from our American
+anchorage.
+
+[Illustration: A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON]
+
+Well, we bought it, and at our own price, practically, and for eight
+years we have been restoring the house and gardens to their Seventeenth
+Century beauty. Sardou was our neighbor, and his wonderful château at
+Marly, overlooking the valley and terraces of St. Germain, was a
+never-failing surprise to us, so full was it of beauty and charm, so
+flavored with the personality of its owner. Sardou was of great help
+to us when we finally purchased our house. His fund of information never
+failed us, there seemed to be no question he could not answer. He was
+quite the most erudite man I have ever known. He had as much to say
+about the restoration of our house as we. He introduced us to Monsieur
+de Nolhac, the conservator of the Château de Versailles, who gave us the
+details of our villa as it had been a century and a half ago, and helped
+us remake the garden on the lines of the original one. He loaned us
+pictures and documents, and we felt we were living in a modern version
+of the Sleeping Beauty, with the sleeping villa for heroine.
+
+Our house had always been called "Villa Trianon," and so we kept the
+name, but it should not be confused with the Grand Trianon or the Petit
+Trianon. Of course everyone knows about the Park at Versailles, but
+everyone forgets, so I shall review the history of the Park briefly,
+that you may appreciate our thrills when we really owned a bit of it.
+
+Louis XIV selected Versailles as the site for the royal palace when it
+was a swampy, uninteresting little farm. Louis XIII had built a château
+there in 1627, but had done little to beautify the flat acres
+surrounding it. Louis the Magnificent lavished fortunes on the laying
+out of his new park. The Grand Trianon was built for Madame de Main
+tenon in 1685, and from this time on, for a full century, the Park of
+Versailles was the most famous royal residence in the world.
+
+The Petit Trianon was built by Louis XV for Madame du Barry. Later,
+during the reign of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, who was then Queen,
+tiring of court etiquette and scorning the stately rooms of Versailles,
+persuaded her husband to make over to her the Petit Trianon. Here she
+built a number of little rustic cottages, where she and the ladies of
+her court, dressed in calicoes, played at being milkmaids. They had a
+little cottage called the "Laiterie," where the white cows with their
+gilded horns were brought in to be milked. Here, too, little plays were
+presented in a tiny theater where only the members of the court were
+admitted. The Queen and her brother, Comte de Provence, were always the
+chief actors.
+
+Our villa adjoins the Park proper. In our deeds to the two acres there
+is a clause which reserves a right-of-way for the King! The deed is
+worded like the old lease that dates back to 1750, and so one day we may
+have to give a King a right-of-way through our garden, if France becomes
+a monarchy again. Anyone who knows French people at all knows how dearly
+they cherish the dream of a monarchy.
+
+[Illustration: THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN]
+
+One of the small houses we found on our small estate had once been a
+part of the _hameau_ of Marie Antoinette. We have had this little house
+rebuilt and connected with the villa, and now use it as a guest
+house. It is very charming, with its walls covered with lattices and
+ivy.
+
+Villa Trianon, like most French houses, is built directly on the street,
+leaving all the space possible for the garden. The façade of the villa
+is very simple, it reminds you of the square houses of the American
+Colonial period, except that there is no "front porch," as is inevitable
+with us in America. The entrance gate and the stone wall that surround
+the place give an interest that our detached and hastily built American
+houses lack. The wall is really a continuation of the façade of the
+villa, and is surmounted by a black iron railing. Vines and flowers that
+have flourished and died and flourished again for over a century climb
+over the wall and through the graceful railing, and give our home an air
+of permanence that is very satisfying. After all, that is the secret of
+Europe's fascination for us Americans--the ever-present suggestion of
+permanence. We feel that houses and gardens were planned and built for
+centuries, not for the passing pleasure of one brief lifetime. We people
+them with ghosts that please us, and make histories for them that are
+always romantic and full of happiness. The survival of an old house and
+its garden through centuries of use and misuse is always an impressive
+and dramatic discovery to us: it gives us courage to add our little bit
+to the ultimate beauty and history, it gives us excuse to dream of the
+fortunate people who will follow us in other centuries, and who will, in
+turn, bless us for our part in the remaking of one old house and
+garden.
+
+There was much to do! We hardly knew where to begin, the house was in
+such wretched condition. The roof was falling in, and the debris of
+years was piled high inside, but the walls and the floors were still
+very beautiful and as sound as ever, structurally. We had the roof
+restored, the debris removed, and the underbrush weeded out of the
+garden, and then we were ready to begin the real business of
+restoration.
+
+The house is very simply planned. There is a broad hall that runs
+straight through it, with dining-room and servants' hall on the right,
+and four connecting salons on the left. These salons are charming rooms,
+with beautiful panelings and over-doors, and great arches framed in
+delicate carvings. First comes the writing-room, then the library, then
+the large and small salons. The rooms opening on the back of the house
+have long French windows that open directly upon the terrace, where we
+have most of our meals. The note of the interior of the house is blue,
+and there are masses of blue flowers in the garden. The interior
+woodwork is cream, pointed with blue, and there are blues innumerable in
+the rugs and curtains and _objets d'art_. There must be a hundred
+different shades of blue on this living-floor, I think. We have tried to
+restore the rooms to a Louis XV scheme of decoration. The tables and
+cabinets are of the fine polished woods of the period. Some of the
+chairs are roomy affairs of carved and painted wooden frames and
+brocade coverings, but others are modern easychairs covered in new
+linens of old designs, linens that were designed for just such interiors
+when Oberkampf first began his designing at Jouy. The mirrors and
+lighting-fixtures are, of course, designed to harmonize with the
+carvings of the woodwork. Monsieur de Nolhac and Sardou were most
+helpful to us when such architectural problems had to be solved.
+
+We have not used the extravagant lace curtains that seem to go with
+brocades and carvings, because we are modern enough not to believe in
+lace curtains. And we find that the thin white muslin ones give our
+brocades and tapestries a chance to assert their decorative importance.
+Somehow, lace curtains give a room such a dressed-up-for-company air
+that they quite spoil the effect of beautiful fabrics. We have a few
+fine old Savonnerie carpets that are very much at home in this house,
+and so many interesting Eighteenth Century prints we hardly know how to
+use them.
+
+Our bedrooms are very simple, with their white panelings and chintz
+hangings. We have furnished them with graceful and feminine things,
+delicately carved mirror frames and inlaid tables, painted beds, and
+chests of drawers of rosewood or satinwood. We feel that the ghosts of
+the fair ladies who live in the Park would adore the bedrooms and
+rejoice in the strange magic of electric lights. If the ghosts should be
+confronted with the electric lights their surprise would not be greater
+than was the consternation of our builders when we demanded five
+bathrooms. They were astounded, and assured us it was not necessary, it
+was not possible. Indeed, it seemed that it was hardly legal to give one
+small French house five American bathrooms. We fought the matter out,
+and got them, however.
+
+We determined to make the house seem a part of the garden, and so we
+built a broad terrace across the rear of the villa. You step directly
+from the long windows of the salon and dining-room upon the terrace, and
+before you is spread out our little garden, and back of that, through an
+opening in the trees, a view of the Château, our never-failing source of
+inspiration.
+
+The terrace is built of tiles on a cement foundation. Vines are trained
+over square column-like frames of wire, erected at regular intervals.
+Between the edge of the terrace and the smooth green lawn there is a
+mass of blue flowers. We have a number of willow chairs and old stone
+tables here, and you can appreciate the joy of having breakfast and tea
+on the terrace with the birds singing in the boughs of the trees.
+
+I have written at length in the other chapters of my ideas of
+house-furnishing, and in this one I want to give you my ideas of garden
+guilding. True, we had the old garden plan to work from, and trees two
+hundred years old, and old vine-covered walls. Who couldn't accomplish a
+perfect garden with such essentials, people said! Well, it wasn't so
+easy as it seems. You can select furnishings for a room with fair
+success, because you can see and feel textures, and colors, and the
+lines of the furniture and curtains. But gardens are different--you
+cannot make grass and flowers grow just so on short notice! You plant
+and dig and plant again, before things grow as you have visualized them.
+
+There was a double ring of trees in one corner of our domain, enclosing
+the _salle de verdure_, or outdoor drawing-room. In the center of this
+enchanted circle there was a statue by Clodion, a joyous nymph, holding
+a baby faun in her arms. There were several old stone benches under the
+trees that must have known the secrets of the famous ladies of the
+Eighteenth Century courts. The _salle de verdure_ looked just as it did
+when the little daughters of Louis XV came here to have their afternoon
+cakes and tea, so we did not try to change this bit of our garden.
+
+My idea of making over the place was to leave the part of the garden
+against the stone walls in the rear in its tangled, woodsy state, and to
+build against it a trellis that would be in line with the terrace.
+Between the trellis and the terrace there was to be a smooth expanse of
+greensward, bordered with flowers. It seemed very simple, but I hereby
+confess that I built and tore down the trellis three times before it
+pleased me! I had to make it worthy of the statue by Pradier that was
+given us by Sardou, and finally it was done to please me. Painted a
+soft green, with ivy growing over it, and a fountain flanked by white
+marbles outlined against it, this trellis represents (to me, at least)
+my best work.
+
+The _tapis vert_ occupies the greater part of the garden, and it is
+bordered by gravel walks bordered in turn with white flowerbeds. Between
+the walks and the walls there are the groups of trees, the statues with
+green spaces about them, the masses of evergreen trees, and finally the
+great trees that follow the lines of the wall. Indeed, the _tapis vert_
+is like the arena of an ample theater, with the ascending flowers and
+shrubs and trees representing the ascending tiers of seats. One feels
+that all the trees and flowers look down upon the central stretch of
+greensward, and perhaps there is a fairy ring here where plays take
+place by night. Nothing is impossible in this garden. Certainly the
+fairies play in the enchanted ring of the trees of the _salle de
+verdure_. We are convinced of that.
+
+So formal is the _tapis vert_, with its blossoming borders of larkspur
+and daisies and its tall standard roses, you are surprised to find that
+that part of the garden outside this prim rectangle has mysteries. There
+are winding paths that terminate in marble seats. There is the
+_pavilion_, a little house built for outdoor musicales, with electric
+connections that make breakfast and tea possible here. There is the
+guest house, and the motor house--quite as interesting as any other part
+of the garden. And everywhere there are blue and white and rose-colored
+flowers, planted in great masses against the black-green evergreens.
+
+We leave America early in June, tired out with the breathless business
+of living, and find ourselves in our old-world house and garden. We fall
+asleep to the accompaniment of the tiny piping of the little people in
+bur garden. We awake to the matins of the birds. We breakfast on the
+stone terrace, with boughs of trees and clouds for our roof, and as we
+look out over the masses of blue flowers and the smooth green _tapis
+vert_, over the arched trelliage with its fountains and its marbles, the
+great trees back of our domain frame the supremely beautiful towers of
+the Château le Magnificent, and we are far happier than anyone deserves
+to be in this wicked world!
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+NOTES ON MANY THINGS
+
+A LITTLE TALK ON CLOCKS.
+
+
+The selection of proper clocks for one's house is always long-drawn-out,
+a pursuit of real pleasure. Clocks are such necessary things the
+thoughtless woman is apt to compromise, when she doesn't find exactly
+the right one. How much wiser and happier she would be if she decided to
+depend upon an ordinary alarm clock until the proper clock was
+discovered! If she made a hobby of her quest for clocks she would find
+much amusement, many other valuable objects by-the-way, and finally
+exactly the right clocks for her rooms.
+
+Everyone knows the merits and demerits of the hundreds of clocks of
+commerce, and it isn't for me to go into the subject of
+grandfather-clocks, bracket clocks, and banjo clocks, when there are so
+many excellent books on the subject. I plead for the graceful clocks of
+old France, the _objets d'art_ so lovingly designed by the master
+sculptors of the Eighteenth Century. I plead particularly for the wall
+clocks that are so conspicuous in all good French houses, and so unusual
+in our own country.
+
+[Illustration: A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+Just as surely as our fine old English and American clocks have their
+proper niches, so the French clocks belong inevitably in certain rooms.
+You may never find just the proper clock for this room, but that is your
+fault. There are hundreds of lovely old models available. Why shouldn't
+some manufacturer have them reproduced?
+
+I feel that if women generally knew how very decorative and
+distinguished a good wall clock may be, the demand would soon create a
+supply of these beautiful objects. It would be quite simple for the
+manufacturers to make them from the old models. The late Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan gave to the Metropolitan Museum the magnificent Hoentschel
+collection of _objets d'art_, hoping to stimulate the interest of
+American designers and artisans in the fine models of the Seventeenth
+and Eighteenth Centuries. There are some very fine examples of wall
+clocks in this collection which might be copied in carved wood by the
+students of manual training schools, if the manufacturers refuse to be
+interested.
+
+Wall clocks first came into France in the early part of the Seventeenth
+Century, and are a part of the furnishing of all the fine old French
+houses. A number of the most interesting clocks I have picked up were
+the wooden models which served for the fine bronze clocks of the
+Eighteenth Century. The master designer first worked out his idea in
+wood before making the clock in bronze, and the wooden models were sold
+for a song. I have one of these clocks in my dining-room. It is as much
+a part of the wall decoration as the lights or the mirrors.
+
+The wall clocks I like best are fixed directly on the wall, the dial
+glass opening so that the clock may be wound with a key. You will notice
+such a clock in the photograph of one of my dining-rooms. This fine old
+clock is given the place of honor in the main panel of the wall, above
+the console table. I often use such a clock in a dining-room, just as I
+use the fine old French mantel clocks in my drawing-rooms. You will
+observe a very quaint example of the Empire period in the illustration
+of my drawing-room mantel. This clock is happily placed, for the marble
+of the mantel, the lighting-fixtures near by and the fine little bronze
+busts are all in key with the exquisite workmanship of the clock. In
+another room in my house, a bedroom, there is a beautiful little French
+clock that is the only object allowed on the mantel shelf. The beautiful
+carving of the mirror frame back of it seems a part of the clock, a
+deliberate background for it. This is one of the many wall clocks which
+were known as bracket clocks, the bracket being as carefully designed
+and carved as the clock itself. Most of the clocks we see nowadays grew
+out of the old bracket models.
+
+The American clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those
+jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be
+still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are very
+much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland,
+and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long,
+exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall
+clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine _bas reliefs_, and
+of even greater decorative importance.
+
+Every room in my house has its clock, and to me these magic little
+instruments have an almost human interest. They seem always friendly to
+me, whether they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem
+never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks
+so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where
+there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive,
+exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled "French" and sold at
+a great price in the shops. Somehow, one never expects a clock of this
+kind to keep time--it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it
+wheezes, or gasps, or makes a dreadful noise, and invariably stops at
+half-past three.
+
+I am such a crank about good clocks that I take my own with me, even on
+a railway train. I think I have the smallest clock in the world which
+strikes the hours. There are many tiny clocks made which strike if one
+touches a spring, but my clock always strikes of itself. Cartier, who
+designed and made this extraordinary timepiece, assures me that he has
+never seen so small a clock which strikes. It is very pleasant to have
+this little clock with its friendly chime with me when I am in some
+desolate hotel or some strange house.
+
+There are traveling clocks in small leather cases which can be bought
+very cheaply indeed now, and one of these clocks should be a part of
+everyone's traveling equipment. The humble nickeled watch with a leather
+case is infinitely better than the pretentious clocks, monstrosities of
+marble and brass and bad taste.
+
+
+A CORNER FOR WRITING.
+
+One of my greatest pleasures, when I am planning the furnishing of a
+house, is the selection and equipment of the necessary writing-tables.
+Every room in every house has its own suggestion for an original
+treatment, and I enjoy working out a plan for a writing-corner that will
+offer maximum of convenience, and beauty and charm, for in these busy
+days we need all these qualities for the inspiration of a pleasant note.
+You see, I believe in proper writing-tables, just as I believe in proper
+chairs. I have so many desks in my own house that are in constant use,
+perhaps I can give you my theory best by recording my actual practice of
+it.
+
+I have spoken of the necessity of a desk in the hallway, and indeed, I
+have said much of desks in other rooms, but I have still to emphasize my
+belief in the importance of the equipment of desks.
+
+Of course, one needs a desk in one's own room. Here there is infinite
+latitude, for there are dozens of delightful possibilities. I always
+place my desks near the windows. If the wall space is filled, I place an
+oblong table at right angles to a window, and there you are. In my own
+private sitting-room I have a long desk so placed, in my own house. In a
+guest-room I furnished recently, I used a common oblong table of no
+value, painting the legs a soft green and covering it with a piece of
+sage-green damask. This is one of the nicest writing-tables I know, and
+it could be copied for a song. The equipment of it is what counts. I
+used two lamps, dull green jars with mauve silk shades, a dark green
+leather rack for paper and envelopes, and a great blotter pad that will
+save the damask from ink-spots. The small things are of green pottery
+and crystal. In a young girl's bedroom I used a sweet little desk of
+painted wood, a desk that has the naïve charm of innocence. I do hope it
+inspires the proper love-letters.
+
+I always make provision for writing in dressing-rooms--a sliding shelf
+in the dressing-table, and a shallow drawer for pencils and paper--and I
+have adequate writing facilities in the servants' quarters, so that
+there may be no excuse for forgetting orders or messages. This seems to
+me absolutely necessary in our modern domestic routine: it is part of
+the business principle we borrow from the efficient office routine of
+our men folk. The dining-room and the bathrooms are the only places
+where the writing-table, in one form or another, isn't required.
+
+I like the long flat tables or small desks much better than the huge
+roll-top affairs or the heavy desks built after the fashion of the old
+_armoire_. If the room is large enough, a secretary after an Eighteenth
+Century model will be a beautiful and distinguished piece of furniture.
+I have such a secretary in my own sitting-room, a chest of drawers
+surmounted by a cabinet of shelves with glass doors, but I do not use it
+as a desk. I use the shelves for my old china and porcelains, and the
+drawers for pamphlets and the thousand and one things that are too
+flimsily bound for bookshelves. Of course, if one has a large
+correspondence and uses one's home as an office, it is better to have a
+large desk with a top which closes. I prefer tables, and I have them
+made big enough to hold all my papers, big enough to spread out on.
+
+There are dozens of enchanting small desks that are exactly right for
+guest-rooms, the extremely feminine desks that come from old France. One
+of the most fascinating ones is copied from a _bureau de toilette_ that
+belonged to Marie Antoinette. In those days the writing of letters and
+the making of a toilet went together. This old desk has a drawer filled
+with compartments for toilet things, powders and perfumes and patches,
+and above this vanity-drawer there is the usual shelf for writing, and
+compartments for paper and letters. The desk itself suggests brocade
+flounces and powdered hair, so exquisitely is it constructed of
+tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many colors.
+
+Then there are the small desks made by modern furniture-makers, just
+large enough to hold a blotting-pad, a paper rack, and a pair of
+candlesticks. There is always a shallow drawer for writing materials.
+Such a desk may be decorated to match the chintzes of any small bedroom.
+
+If it isn't possible for you to have a desk in each guest-room, there
+should be a little writing-room somewhere apart from the family
+living-room. If you live in one of those old-fashioned houses
+intersected by great halls with much wasted space on the upper floors,
+you may make a little writing-room of one of the hall-ends, and screen
+it from the rest of the hall with a high standing screen. If you have a
+house of the other extreme type, a city house with little hall bedrooms,
+use one of these little rooms for a writing-room. You will require a
+desk well stocked with stationery, and all the things the writer will
+need; a shelf of address books and reference books--with a dictionary,
+of course; many pens and pencils and fresh blotters, and so forth. Of
+course, you may have ever so many more things, but it isn't necessary.
+Better a quiet corner with one chair and a desk, than the elaborate
+library with its superb fittings where people come and go.
+
+Given the proper desk, the furnishing of it is most important. The
+blotting-pad should be heavy enough to keep its place, and the
+blotting-paper should be constantly renewed. I know of nothing more
+offensive than dusty, ink-splotched blotting-paper. There are very good
+sets to be had, now, made of brass, bronze, carved wood, porcelain,
+silver or crystal, and there are leather boxes for holding stationery
+and leather portfolios to be had in all colors. I always add to these
+furnishings a good pair of scissors, stationery marked with the house
+address or the monogram of the person to whom the desk especially
+belongs, an almanac, and a _pincushion!_ My pincushions are as much a
+part of the equipment of a desk as the writing things, and they aren't
+frilly, ugly things. They are covered with brocade or damask or some
+stuff used elsewhere in the room and I assure you they are most useful.
+I find that pins are almost as necessary as pens in my correspondence;
+they are much more expedient than pigeon-holes.
+
+In country houses I think it shows forethought and adds greatly to the
+comfort of the guests to have a small framed card showing the arrival
+and departure of trains and of mails, especially if the house is a great
+distance from the railway-station. This saves much inquiry and time. In
+the paper rack there should be not only stamped paper bearing the
+address of the house, telephone number, and so forth, but also telegraph
+blanks, post cards, stamps, and so forth. Very often people who have
+beautiful places have post cards made showing various views of the
+house and garden.
+
+Test the efficiency of your writing-tables occasionally by using them
+yourself. This is the only way to be sure of the success of anything in
+your house--try it yourself.
+
+
+STOOLS AND BENCHES.
+
+I often wonder, when I grope my way through drawing-rooms crowded and
+jammed with chairs and sofas, why more women do not realize the
+advantages of stools and benches. A well-made stool is doubly useful: it
+may be used to sit upon or it may be used to hold a tray, or whatever
+you please. It is really preferable to a small table because it is not
+always full of a nondescript collection of ornaments, which seems to be
+the fate of all small tables. It has also the advantage of being low
+enough to push under a large table, when need be, and it occupies much
+less space than a chair apparently (not actually) because it has no
+back. I have stools, or benches, or both in all my rooms, because I find
+them convenient and easily moved about, but I have noticed an amusing
+thing: Whenever a fat man comes to see me, he always sits on the
+smallest stool in the room. I have many fat friends, and many stools,
+but invariably the fattest man gravitates to the smallest stool.
+
+The stools I like best for the drawing-room are the fine old ones,
+covered with needlework or brocade, but there are many simpler ones of
+plain wood with cane insets that are very good for other rooms. Then
+there are the long _banquettes_, or benches, which are so nice in
+drawing-rooms and hallways and nicest of all in a ballroom. Indeed, a
+ballroom needs no other movable furniture; given plenty of these long
+benches. They may be of the very simplest description, but when used in
+a fine room should be covered with a good damask or velvet or some rich
+fabric.
+
+I have a fine Eighteenth Century _banquette_ in my drawing-room, the
+frame being carved and gilded and the seat covered with Venetian red
+velvet. You will find these gilded stools all over England. There are a
+number at Hampton Court Palace. At Hardwick there are both long and
+short stools, carved with the dolphin's scroll and covered with
+elaborate stuffs. The older the English house, the more stools are in
+evidence. In the early Sixteenth Century joint stools were used in every
+room. In the bedrooms they served the purposes of small tables and
+chairs as well. There are ever so many fine old walnut stools and the
+lower stools used for bed-steps to be bought in London shops that make a
+specialty of old English furniture, and reproductions of them may be
+bought in the better American shops. I often wonder why we do not see
+more bedside stools. They are so convenient, even though the bed be only
+moderately high from the floor. Many of mine are only six inches high,
+about the height of a fat floor cushion.
+
+[Illustration: A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE]
+
+Which reminds me: the floor cushion, made of the same velvet made for
+carpeting, is a modern luxury we can't afford to ignore. Lately I have
+seen such beautiful ones, about three feet long and one foot wide,
+covered with tapestry, with great gold tassels at the corners. The
+possibilities of the floor cushion idea are limitless. They take the
+place of the usual footstool in front of the boudoir easy chair, or
+beside the day bed or _chaise-longue_, or beside the large bed, for that
+matter. They are no longer unsanitary, because with vacuum cleaners they
+may be kept as clean as chair cushions. They may be made to fit into
+almost any room. I saw a half dozen of them in a dining-room, recently,
+small square hard ones, covered with the gold colored velvet of the
+carpet. They were not more than four or five inches thick, but that is
+the ideal height for an under-the-table cushion. Try it.
+
+
+PORCELAIN STOVES.
+
+When the Colony Club was at last finished we discovered that the furnace
+heat did not go up to the roof-garden, and immediately we had to find
+some way of heating this very attractive and very necessary space. Even
+from the beginning we were sadly crowded for room, so popular was the
+club-house, and the roof-garden was much needed for the overflow. We
+conferred with architects, builders and plumbers, and found it would be
+necessary to spend about seven thousand dollars and to close the club
+for about two months in order to carry the heating arrangements up to
+the roof. This was disastrous for a new club, already heavily in arrears
+and running under heavy expenses. I worried and worried over the
+situation, and suddenly one night an idea came to me: I remembered some
+great porcelain stoves I had seen in Germany. I felt that these stoves
+were exactly what we needed, and that we should be rescued from an
+embarrassing situation without much trouble or expense. I was just
+leaving for Europe, so I hurried on to the manufacturers of these
+wonderful stoves and found, after much difficulty, a model that seemed
+practicable, and not too huge in proportion. The model, unfortunately,
+was white with gilded garlands, far too French and magnificent for our
+sun-room. I persuaded them to make two of the stoves for me in green
+Majolica, with garlands of soft-toned flowers, and finally we achieved
+just the stoves for the room.
+
+But my troubles were not over: When the stoves reached New York, we
+tried to take them up to the roof, and found them too large for the
+stairs. We couldn't have them lifted up by pulleys, because the glass
+walls of the roof garden and the fretwork at the top of the roof made it
+impossible for the men to get "purchase" for their pulleys. Finally we
+persuaded a gentleman who lived next door to let us take them over the
+roof of his house, and the deed was accomplished. The stoves were equal
+to the occasion. They heated the roof garden perfectly, and were of
+great decorative value.
+
+Encouraged by this success I purchased another porcelain stove, this
+time a cream-colored porcelain one, and used it in a hallway in an
+uptown house. It was the one thing needed to give the hall great
+distinction. Since then I have used a number of these stoves, and I
+wonder why our American manufacturers do not make them. They are
+admirable for heating difficult rooms--outdoor porches, and draughty
+halls, and rooms not heated by furnaces. The stoves are becoming harder
+and harder to find, though I was fortunate enough to purchase one last
+year from the Marchioness of Anglesey, who was giving up her home at
+Versailles. This stove was of white Majolica with little Loves in terra
+cotta adorning it. The new ones are less attractive, but it would be
+perfectly simple to have any tile manufacturer copy an old one, given
+the design.
+
+
+THE CHARM OF INDOOR FOUNTAINS.
+
+Wall fountains as we know them are introduced into our modern houses for
+their decorative interest and for the joy they give us, the joyous sound
+and color of falling water. We use them because they are beautiful and
+cheerful, but originally they had a most definite purpose. They were
+built into the walls of the dining-halls in medieval times, and used for
+washing the precious plate.
+
+If you look into the history of any _objet d'art_ you will find that it
+was first used for a purpose. All the superb masterly things that have
+come to us had logical beginnings. It has remained for the thoughtless
+designer of our times to produce things of no use and no meaning. The
+old designers decorated the small objects of daily use as faithfully as
+they decorated the greater things, the wall spaces and ceilings and
+great pieces of furniture, and so this little wall basin which began in
+such a homely way soon became a beautiful thing.
+
+Europe has countless small fountains built for interior walls and for
+small alcoves and indoor conservatories, but we are just beginning to
+use them in America. American sculptors are doing such notable work,
+however, that we shall soon plan our indoor fountains as carefully as we
+plan our fireplaces. The fact that our houses are heated mechanically
+has not lessened our appreciation of an open fire, and running water
+brought indoors has the same animate charm.
+
+[Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH]
+
+[Illustration: MR. JAMES DEERING'S WALL FOUNTAIN]
+
+I am showing a picture of the wall fountain in the entrance hall of my
+own New York house in East Fifty-fifth Street. I have had this wall
+fountain built as part of the architectural detail of the room, with a
+background of paneled mirrors. It spills over into a marble curbed pool
+where fat orange-colored goldfish live. I keep the fountain banked with
+flowers. You can imagine the pleasure of leaving the dusty city
+streets and entering this cool, pleasant entrance hall.
+
+Our modern use of indoor fountains is perfectly legitimate: we use them
+to bring the atmosphere of outdoors in. In country houses we use
+fountains in our gardens, but in the city we have no gardens, and so we
+are very wise to bring in the outdoor things that make our lives a
+little more gay and informal. The more suggestive of out-of-doors the
+happier is the effect of the sun room. Occasionally one sees a rare
+house where a glass enclosed garden opens from one of the living-rooms.
+There is a house in Nineteenth Street that has such an enclosed garden,
+built around a wall fountain. The garden opens out of the great
+two-storied music-room. Lofty windows flank a great door, and fill the
+end of the room with a luminous composition of leaded glass. Through the
+door you enter the garden, with its tiled floor, its glass ceiling, and
+its low brick retaining walls. The wall fountain is placed exactly in
+front of the great door, and beneath it there is a little semi-circular
+pool bordered with plants and glittering with goldfish. Evergreens are
+banked against the brick walls, and flat reliefs are hung just under the
+glass ceiling. The garden is quite small, but takes its place as an
+important part of the room. It rivals in interest the massive Gothic
+fireplace, with its huge logs and feudal fire irons.
+
+The better silversmiths are doing much to encourage the development of
+indoor fountains. They display the delightful fountains of our young
+American sculptors, fountains that would make any garden room notable.
+There are so many of these small bronze fountains, with Pan piping his
+irresistible tune of outdoors; children playing with frogs or geese or
+lizards or turtles; gay little figures prancing in enchanted rings of
+friendly beasties. Why don't we make use of them?
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14715 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14715 ***</div>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House in Good Taste, by Elsie de Wolfe</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>The House in Good Taste</h1>
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>Elsie de Wolfe</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<h3>Illustrated with photographs
+in color and black and white</h3>
+
+<div class="center">
+<img src="images/001.jpg"
+alt="decoration" title="decoration" />
+</div>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<h6>New York<br />
+The Century Co.</h6>
+
+<h4>1913</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS" />CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><a href="#I"><b>I</b></a></td>
+  <td align='left'>THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#II"><b>II</b></a></td><td align='left'>SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#III"><b>III</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IV"><b>IV</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#V"><b>V</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE TREATMENT OF WALLS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VI"><b>VI</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VII"><b>VII</b></a></td><td align='left'>OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VIII"><b>VIII</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IX"><b>IX</b></a></td><td align='left'>HALLS AND STAIRCASES</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#X"><b>X</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE DRAWING-ROOM</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XI"><b>XI</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE LIVING-ROOM</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XII"><b>XII</b></a></td><td align='left'>SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XIII"><b>XIII</b></a></td><td align='left'>A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XIV"><b>XIV</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE BEDROOM</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XV"><b>XV</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XVI"><b>XVI</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE SMALL APARTMENT</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XVII"><b>XVII</b></a></td><td align='left'>REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XVIII"><b>XVIII</b></a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>THE ART OF TRELLIAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XIX"><b>XIX</b></a></td><td align='left'>VILLA TRIANON</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XX"><b>XX</b></a></td><td align='left'>NOTES ON MANY THINGS</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
+<br />
+<br />
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0329">Elsie de Wolfe</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0330">In this hall, simplicity, suitability and proportion are observed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0331">Mennoyer drawings and old mirrors set in panelings</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0332">A portrait by Nattier inset above a fine old mantel</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0333">The Washington Irving house was delightfully rambling</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0334">A Washington Irving House bedroom</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0335">Miss Marbury's bedroom</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0336">The fore-court and entrance of the Fifty-fifth Street house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0337">A painted wall broken into panels by narrow moldings</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0338">A wall paper of Elizabethan design with oak furniture</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0339">The scheme of this room grew from the jars on the mantel</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0340">A Louis Seize bedroom in rose and blue and cream</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0341">The writing corner of a chintz bedroom</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0342">Black chintz used in a dressing-room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0343">Printed linen curtains over rose colored silk</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0344">Straight hangings of rose and yellow shot silk</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0345">Muslin glass curtains in the Washington Irving house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0346">Here are many lighting fixtures harmoniously assembled in a drawing-room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0347">Detail of a fine old French fixture of hand wrought metal</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0348">Lighting fixtures inspired by Adam mirrors</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0349">The staircase in the Bayard Thayer house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0350">The drawing-room should be intimate in spirit</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0351">The fine formality of well-placed paneling</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0352">The living-room in the C.W. Harkness house at Morristown, New Jersey</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0353">Miss Anne Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0354">Miss Morgan's Louis XVI <i>lit de repos</i></a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0355">A Georgian dining-room in the William Iselin house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0356-a">Mrs. Ogden Armour's Chinese paper screen</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0356-b">Mrs. James Warren Lane's painted dining-table</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0357">The private dining-room in the Colony Club</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0358">An old painted bed of the Louis XVI period</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0359">Miss Crocker's Louis XVI bed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0360">A Colony Club bedroom</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0361">Mauve chintz in a dull green room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0362-a">Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer's Chinoiserie chintz bed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0362-b">Mrs. Payne Whitney's green feather chintz bed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0363">My own bedroom is built around a Breton bed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0364">Furniture painted with chintz designs</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0365">Miss Morgan's Louis XVI dressing-room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0366">Miss Marbury's chintz-hung dressing-table</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0367">A corner of my own boudoir</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0368">Built-in bookshelves in a small room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0369">Mrs. C.W. Harkness's cabinet for <i>objets d'art</i></a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0370-a">A banquette of the Louis XV period covered with needlework</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0370-b">A Chinese Chippendale sofa covered with chintz</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0371">The trellis room in the Colony Club</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0372">Mrs. Ormond G. Smith's trellis room at Center Island, New York</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0373">Looking over the <i>tapis vert</i> to the trellis</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0374">A fine old console in the Villa Trianon</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0375">The broad terrace connects house and garden</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0376">A proper writing-table in the drawing-room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0377">A cream-colored porcelain stove in a New York house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0378-a">Mr. James Deering's wall fountain</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0378-b">Fountain in the trellis room of Mrs. Ormond G. Smith</a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0329" id="h0329"></a>
+<img src="images/h0329.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="Elsie de Wolfe"
+title="Elsie de Wolfe" />
+<p class="center"><b>Elsie de Wolfe</b></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I" />I</h2>
+<p><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" /></p>
+
+<h2>THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women
+throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it
+what you will&mdash;awakening, development, American Renaissance&mdash;it is a
+most startling and promising condition of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>It is no longer possible, even to people of only faintly &aelig;sthetic
+tastes, to buy chairs merely to sit upon or a clock merely that it
+should tell the time. Home-makers are determined to have their houses,
+outside and in, correct according to the best standards. What do we mean
+by the best standards? Certainly not those of the useless, overcharged
+house of the average American millionaire, who builds and furnishes his
+home with a hopeless disregard of tradition. We must accept the
+standards that the artists and the architects accept, the standards that
+have come to us from those exceedingly rational people, our ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>Our ancestors built for stability and use, and so their simple houses
+were excellent examples of architecture.<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" /> Their spacious, uncrowded
+interiors were usually beautiful. Houses and furniture fulfilled their
+uses, and if an object fulfils its mission the chances are that it is
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>It is all very well to plan our ideal house or apartment, our individual
+castle in Spain, but it isn't necessary to live among intolerable
+furnishings just because we cannot realize our castle. There never was a
+house so bad that it couldn't be made over into something worth while.
+We shall all be very much happier when we learn to transform the things
+we have into a semblance of our ideal.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, may we go about accomplishing our ideal?</p>
+
+<p>By letting it go!</p>
+
+<p>By forgetting this vaguely pleasing dream, this evidence of our smug
+vanity, and making ourselves ready for a new ideal.</p>
+
+<p>By considering the body of material from which it is good sense to
+choose when we have a house to decorate.</p>
+
+<p>By studying the development of the modern house, its romantic tradition
+and architectural history.</p>
+
+<p>By taking upon ourselves the duty of self-taught lessons of sincerity
+and common sense, and suitability.</p>
+
+<p>By learning what is meant by color and form and line, harmony and
+contrast and proportion.</p>
+
+<p>When we are on familiar terms with our tools, and feel our vague ideas
+clearing into definite inspiration, <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />then we are ready to talk about
+ideals. We are fit to approach the full art of home-making.</p>
+
+<p>We take it for granted that every woman is interested in houses&mdash;that
+she either has a house in course of construction, or dreams of having
+one, or has had a house long enough wrong to wish it right. And we take
+it for granted that this American home is always the woman's home: a man
+may build and decorate a beautiful house, but it remains for a woman to
+make a home of it for him. It is the personality of the mistress that
+the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how
+much happiness they may find there.</p>
+
+<p>You will express yourself in your house, whether you want to or not, so
+you must make up your mind to a long preparatory discipline. You may
+have only one house to furnish in your life-time, possibly, so be
+careful and go warily. Therefore, you must select for your architect a
+man who isn't too determined to have <i>his</i> way. It is a fearful mistake
+to leave the entire planning of your home to a man whose social
+experience may be limited, for instance, for he can impose on you his
+conception of your tastes with a damning permanency and emphasis. I once
+heard a certain Boston architect say that he taught his clients to be
+ladies and gentlemen. He couldn't, you know. All he could do is to set
+the front door so that it would reprove them if they weren't!</p>
+
+<p>Who does not know, for instance, those mistaken <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />people whose houses
+represent their own or their architects' hasty visits to the fine old
+<i>ch&acirc;teaux</i> of the Loire, or the palaces of Versailles, or the fine old
+houses of England, or the gracious villas of Italy? We must avoid such
+aspiring architects, and visualize our homes not as so many specially
+designated rooms and convenient closets, but as individual expressions
+of ourselves, of the future we plan, of our dreams for our children. The
+ideal house is the house that has been long planned for, long awaited.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0330" id="h0330"></a>
+<img src="images/h0330.jpg" width="70%"
+alt="IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE OBSERVED"
+title="IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE OBSERVED" />
+<p class="center"><b>IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE OBSERVED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Fortunately for us, our best architects are so very good that we are
+better than safe if we take our problems to them. These men associate
+with themselves the hundred young architects who are eager to prove
+themselves on small houses. The idea that it is economical to be your
+own architect and trust your house to a building contractor is a
+mistaken, and most expensive, one. The surer you are of your architect's
+common sense and professional ability, the surer you may be that your
+house will be economically efficient. He will not only plan a house that
+will meet the needs of your family, but he will give you inspiration for
+its interior. He will concern himself with the moldings, the
+light-openings, the door-handles and hinges, the unconsidered things
+that make or mar your house. Select for your architect a man you'd like
+for a friend. Perhaps he will be, before the house comes true. If you
+are both sincere, if you both purpose to have the best thing you can
+afford, the house will express the<a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />
+<a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" /><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" />genius and character of your
+architect and the personality and character of yourself, as a great
+painting suggests both painter and sitter. The hard won triumph of a
+well-built house means many compromises, but the ultimate satisfaction
+is worth everything.</p>
+
+<p>I do not purpose, in this book, to go into the historic traditions of
+architecture and decoration&mdash;there are so many excellent books it were
+absurd to review them&mdash;but I do wish to trace briefly the development of
+the modern house, the woman's house, to show you that all that is
+intimate and charming in the home as we know it has come through the
+unmeasured influence of women. Man conceived the great house with its
+parade rooms, its <i>grands appartements</i> but woman found eternal parade
+tiresome, and planned for herself little retreats, rooms small enough
+for comfort and intimacy. In short, man made the house: woman went him
+one better and made of it a home.</p>
+
+<p>The virtues of simplicity and reticence in form first came into being,
+as nearly as we can tell, in the <i>Grotta</i>, the little studio-like
+apartment of Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, away back in
+1496. The Marchioness made of this little studio her personal retreat.
+Here she brought many of the treasures of the Italian Renaissance.
+Really, simplicity and reticence were the last things she considered,
+but the point is that they were considered at all in such a restless,
+passionate age. Later, in 1522, she established the <i>Paradiso</i>, a suite
+of apartments which she occupied after her hus<a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />band's death. So you see
+the idea of a woman planning her own apartment is pretty old, after all.</p>
+
+<p>The next woman who took a stand that revealed genuine social
+consciousness was that half-French, half-Italian woman, Catherine de
+Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet. She seceded from court because the
+court was swaggering and hurly-burly, with florid Marie-de-Medicis at
+its head. And with this recession, she began to express in her conduct,
+her feeling, her conversation, and, finally, in her house, her awakened
+consciousness of beauty and reserve, of simplicity and suitability.</p>
+
+<p>This was the early Seventeenth Century, mind you, when the main salons
+of the French houses were filled with such institutions as rows of red
+chairs and boxed state beds. She undertook, first of all, to have a
+light and gracefully curving stairway leading to her salon instead of
+supplanting it. She grouped her rooms with a lovely diversity of size
+and purpose, whereas before they had been vast, stately halls with
+cubbies hardby for sleeping. She gave the bedroom its alcove, boudoir,
+ante-chamber, and even its bath, and then as decorator she supplanted
+the old feudal yellow and red with her famous silver-blue. She covered
+blue chairs with silver bullion. She fashioned long, tenderly colored
+curtains of novel shades. Reticence was always in evidence, but it was
+the reticence of elegance. It was through Madame de Rambouillet that the
+armchair received its final distribution of yielding parts, <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />and began
+to express the comfort of soft padded backward slope, of width and
+warmth and color.</p>
+
+<p>It was all very heavy, very grave, very angular, this H&ocirc;tel Rambouillet,
+but it was devised for and consecrated to conversation, considered a new
+form of privilege! The <i>pr&eacute;cieuses</i> in their later jargon called chairs
+&quot;the indispensables of conversation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I have been at some length to give a picture of Madame de Rambouillet's
+h&ocirc;tel because it really is the earliest modern house. There, where the
+society that frequented it was analyzing its soul in dialogue and long
+platonic discussion that would seem stark enough to us, the word which
+it invented for itself was <i>urbanit&eacute;</i>&mdash;the coinage of one of its own
+foremost figures.</p>
+
+<p>It is unprofitable to follow on into the grandeurs of Louis XIV, if one
+hopes to find an advance there in truth-telling architecture. At the end
+of that splendid official success the squalor of Versailles was
+unspeakable, its stenches unbearable. In spite of its size the Palace
+was known as the most comfortless house in Europe. After the death of
+its owner society, in a fit of madness, plunged into the <i>rocaille</i>.
+When the restlessness of Louis XV could no longer find moorings in this
+brilliancy, there came into being little houses called <i>folies</i>, garden
+hermitages for the privileged. Here we find Madame de Pompadour in
+calicoes, in a wild garden, bare-foot, playing as a milkmaid, or seated
+in a little gray-white interior with painted wooden furniture, having
+her supper on an <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />earthen-ware service that has replaced old silver and
+gold. Amorous alcoves lost their painted Loves and took on gray and
+white decorations. The casinos of little <i>com&eacute;diennes</i> did not glitter
+any more. English sentiment began to bedim Gallic eyes, and so what we
+know as the Louis XVI style was born.</p>
+
+<p>And so, at that moment, the idea of the modern house came into its own,
+and it could advance&mdash;as an idea&mdash;hardly any further. For with all the
+intrepidity and passion of the later Eighteenth Century in its search
+for beauty, for all the magic-making of convenience and ingenuity of the
+Nineteenth Century, the fundamentals have changed but little. And now we
+of the Twentieth Century can only add material comforts and an
+expression of our personality. We raise the house beyond the reach of
+squalor, we give it measured heat, we give it water in abundance and
+perfect sanitation and light everywhere, we give it ventilation less
+successfully than we might, and finally we give it the human quality
+that is so modern. There are no dungeons in the good modern house, no
+disgraceful lairs for servants, no horrors of humidity.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0331" id="h0331"></a>
+<img src="images/h0331.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS"
+title="MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS" />
+<p class="center"><b>MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And so we women have achieved a house, luminous with kind purpose
+throughout. It is finished&mdash;that is our difficulty! We inherit it, all
+rounded in its perfection, consummate in its charms, but it is finished,
+and what can we do about a thing that is finished I Doesn't it seem that
+we are back in the old position of Isabella d'Este&mdash;eager, predatory,
+and &quot;thingy&quot;?<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" /><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" /> <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />And isn't it time for us to pull up short lest we
+sidestep the goal? We are so sure of a thousand appetites we are in
+danger of passing by the amiable commonplaces. We find ourselves
+dismayed in old houses that look too simple. We must stop and ask
+ourselves questions, and, if necessary, plan for ourselves little
+retreats until we can find ourselves again.</p>
+
+<p>What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes on within it,
+a house that gives us beauty as we understand it&mdash;and beauty of a nobler
+kind that we may grow to understand, a house that <i>looks</i> amenity.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose you have obtained this sort of wisdom&mdash;a sane viewpoint. I think
+it will give you as great a satisfaction to re-arrange your house with
+what you have as to re-build, re-decorate. The results may not be so
+charming, but you can learn by them. You can take your indiscriminate
+inheritance of Victorian rosewood of Eastlake walnut and cocobolo, your
+pickle-and-plum colored Morris furniture, and make a civilized interior
+by placing it right, and putting detail at the right points. Your sense
+of the pleasure and meaning of human intercourse will be clear in your
+disposition of your best things, in your elimination of your worst ones.</p>
+
+<p>When you have emptied the tables of <i>rubbish</i> so that you can put
+<i>things</i> down on them at need, placed them in a light where you can
+write on them in repose, or isolated real works of art in the middle of
+them; when you have set your dropsical sofas where you want them <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />for
+talk, or warmth and reading; when you can see the fire from the bed in
+your sleeping-room, and dress near your bath; if this sort of sense of
+your rights is acknowledged in your rearrangement, your rooms will
+always have meaning, in the end. If you like only the things in a chair
+that have meaning, and grow to hate the rest you will, without any other
+instruction, prefer&mdash;the next time you are buying&mdash;a good Louis XVI
+<i>fauteuil</i> to a stuffed velvet chair. You will never again be guilty of
+the errors of meaningless magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>To most of us in America who must perforce lead workaday lives, the
+absence of beauty is a very distinct lack. I think, indeed, that the
+present awakening has come to stay, and that before very long, we shall
+have simple houses with fireplaces that draw, electric lights in the
+proper places, comfortable and sensible furniture, and not a gilt-legged
+spindle-shanked table or chair anywhere. This may be a decorator's
+optimistic dream, but let us all hope that it may come true.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II" /><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />II</h2>
+
+<h2>SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>When I am asked to decorate a new house, my first thought is
+suitability. My next thought is proportion. Always I keep in mind the
+importance of simplicity. First, I study the people who are to live in
+this house, and their needs, as thoroughly as I studied my parts in the
+days when I was an actress. For the time-being I really am the
+chatelaine of the house. When I have thoroughly familiarized myself with
+my &quot;part,&quot; I let that go for the time, and consider the proportion of
+the house and its rooms. It is much more important that the wall
+openings, windows, doors, and fireplaces should be in the right place
+and should balance one another than that there should be expensive and
+extravagant hangings and carpets.</p>
+
+<p>My first thought in laying out a room is the placing of the electric
+light openings. How rarely does one find the lights in the right place
+in our over-magnificent hotels and residences! One arrives from a
+journey tired out and travel-stained, only to find oneself facing a
+mirror as far removed from the daylight as possible, with the artificial
+lights directly behind one, or high in the ceiling in the center of the
+room. In <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />my houses I always see that each room shall have its lights
+placed for the comfort of its occupants. There must be lights in
+sheltered corners of the fireplace, by the writing-desk, on each side of
+the dressing-table, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>Then I consider the heating of the room. We Americans are slaves to
+steam heat. We ruin our furniture, our complexions, and our dispositions
+by this enervating atmosphere of too much heat. In my own houses I have
+a fireplace in each room, and I burn wood in it. There is a
+heating-system in the basement of my house, but it is under perfect
+control. I prefer the normal heat of sunshine and open fires. But,
+granted that open fires are impossible in all your rooms, do arrange in
+the beginning that the small rooms of your house may not be overheated.
+It is a distinct irritation to a person who loves clean air to go into a
+room where a flood of steam heat pours out of every corner. There is
+usually no way to control it unless you turn it off altogether. I once
+had the temerity to do this in a certain hotel room where there was a
+cold and cheerless empty fireplace. I summoned a reluctant chambermaid,
+only to be told that the chimney had never had a fire in it and the
+proprietor would rather not take such a risk!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0332" id="h0332"></a>
+<img src="images/h0332.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL"
+title="A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL" />
+<p class="center"><b>A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Perhaps the guest in your house would not be so troublesome, but don't
+tempt her! If you have a fireplace, see that it is in working order.<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />
+<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" /><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />We are sure to judge a woman in whose house we find ourselves for the
+first time, by her surroundings. We judge her temperament, her habits,
+her inclinations, by the interior of her home. We may talk of the
+weather, but we are looking at the furniture. We attribute vulgar
+qualities to those who are content to live in ugly surroundings. We
+endow with refinement and charm the person who welcomes us in a
+delightful room, where the colors blend and the proportions are as
+perfect as in a picture. After all, what surer guarantee can there be of
+a woman's character, natural and cultivated, inherent and inherited,
+than taste? It is a compass that never errs. If a woman has taste she
+may have faults, follies, fads, she may err, she may be as human and
+feminine as she pleases, but she will never cause a scandal!</p>
+
+<p>How can we develop taste? Some of us, alas, can never develop it,
+because we can never let go of shams. We must learn to recognize
+suitability, simplicity and proportion, and apply our knowledge to our
+needs. I grant you we may never fully appreciate the full balance of
+proportion, but we can exert our common sense and decide whether a thing
+is suitable; we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is
+simple, and we can train our eyes to recognize good and bad proportion.
+A technical knowledge of architecture is not necessary to know that a
+huge stuffed leather chair in a tiny gold and cream room is unsuitable,
+is hideously complicated, and is as much out of proportion as the
+proverbial bull in the china-shop.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />A woman's environment will speak for her life, whether she likes it or
+not. How can we believe that a woman of sincerity of purpose will hang
+fake &quot;works of art&quot; on her walls, or satisfy herself with imitation
+velvets or silks? How can we attribute taste to a woman who permits
+paper floors and iron ceilings in her house? We are too afraid of the
+restful commonplaces, and yet if we live simple lives, why shouldn't we
+be glad our houses are comfortably commonplace? How much better to have
+plain furniture that is comfortable, simple chintzes printed from old
+blocks, a few good prints, than all the sham things in the world? A
+house is a dead-give-away, anyhow, so you should arrange is so that the
+person who sees your personality in it will be reassured, not
+disconcerted.</p>
+
+<p>Too often, here in America, the most comfortable room in the house is
+given up to a sort of bastard collection of gilt chairs and tables,
+over-elaborate draperies shutting out both light and air, and huge and
+frightful paintings. This style of room, with its museum-like
+furnishings, has been dubbed &quot;Marie Antoinette,&quot; <i>why</i>, no one but the
+American decorator can say. Heaven knows poor Marie Antoinette had
+enough follies to atone for, but certainly she has never been treated
+more shabbily than when they dub these mausoleums &quot;Marie Antoinette
+rooms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remember taking a clever Englishwoman of much taste to see a woman who
+was very proud of her new house. We had seen most of the house when the
+host<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />ess, who had evidently reserved what she considered the best for
+the last, threw open the doors of a large and gorgeous apartment and
+said, &quot;This is my Louis XVI ballroom.&quot; My friend, who had been very
+patient up to that moment, said very quietly, &quot;What makes you think so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Louis XVI thought a salon well furnished with a few fine chairs and a
+table. He wished to be of supreme importance. In the immense salons of
+the Italian palaces there were a few benches and chairs. People then
+wished spaces about them.</p>
+
+<p>Nowadays, people are swamped by their furniture. Too many centuries, too
+many races, crowd one another in a small room. The owner seems
+insignificant among his collections of historical furniture. Whether he
+collects all sorts of things of all periods in one heterogeneous mass,
+or whether he fills his house with the furniture of some one epoch, he
+is not at home in his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The furniture of every epoch records its history. Our ancestors of the
+Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries inherited the troublous times of
+their fathers in their heavy oaken chests. They owned more chests than
+anything else, because a chest could be carried away on the back of a
+sturdy pack mule, when the necessity arose for flight.</p>
+
+<p>People never had time to sit down in the Sixteenth Century. Their
+feverish unrest is recorded in their stiff, backed chairs. It was not
+until the Seventeenth<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" /> Century that they had time to sit down and talk.
+We need no book of history to teach us this&mdash;we have only to observe the
+ample proportions of the arm-chairs of the period.</p>
+
+<p>Our ancestors of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries worked with a
+faith in the permanence of what they created. We have lost this happy
+confidence. We are occupied exclusively with preserving and reproducing.
+We have not succeeded in creating a style adapted to our modern life. It
+is just as well! Our life, with its haste, its nervousness and its
+preoccupations, does not inspire the furniture-makers. We cannot do
+better than to accept the standards of other times, and adapt them to
+our uses.</p>
+
+<p>Why should we American woman run after styles and periods of which we
+know nothing? Why should we not be content with the fundamental things?
+The formal French room is very delightful in the proper place but when
+it is unsuited to the people who must live in it it is as bad as a sham
+room. The woman who wears paste jewels is not so conspicuously wrong as
+the woman who plasters herself with too many real jewels at the wrong
+time!</p>
+
+<p>This is what I am always fighting in people's houses, the unsuitability
+of things. The foolish woman goes about from shop to shop and buys as
+her fancy directs. She sees something &quot;pretty&quot; and buys it, though it
+has no reference either in form or color to the scheme of her house.
+Haven't you been in rooms where there <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />was a jumble of mission
+furniture, satinwood, fine old mahogany and gilt-legged chairs? And it
+is the same with color. A woman says, &quot;Oh, I love blue, let's have
+blue!&quot; regardless of the exposure of her room and the furnishings she
+has already collected. And then when she has treated each one of her
+rooms in a different color, and with a different floor covering, she
+wonders why she is always fretted in going from one room to another.</p>
+
+<p>Don't go about the furnishing of your house with the idea that you must
+select the furniture of some one period and stick to that. It isn't at
+all necessary. There are old English chairs and tables of the Sixteenth
+and Seventeenth Centuries that fit into our quiet, spacious Twentieth
+Century country homes. Lines and fabrics and woods are the things to be
+compared.</p>
+
+<p>There are so many beautiful things that have come to us from other times
+that it should be easy to make our homes beautiful, but I have seen what
+I can best describe as apoplectic chairs whose legs were fashioned like
+aquatic plants; tables upheld by tortured naked women; lighting fixtures
+in the form of tassels, and such horrors, in many houses of to-day under
+the guise of being &quot;authentic period furniture.&quot; Only a connoisseur can
+ever hope to know about the furniture of every period, but all of us can
+easily learn the ear-marks of the furniture that is suited to our homes.
+I shan't talk about ear-marks here, however, because dozens of
+collectors have compiled excellent books that <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />tell you all about curves
+and lines and grain-of-wood and worm-holes. My business is to persuade
+you to use your graceful French sofas and your simple rush bottom New
+England chairs in different rooms&mdash;in other words, to preach to you the
+beauty of suitability. Suitability! <i>Suitability!</i> SUITABILITY!!</p>
+
+<p>It is such a relief to return to the tranquil, simple forms of
+furniture, and to decorate our rooms by a process of elimination. How
+many rooms have I not cleared of junk&mdash;this heterogeneous mass of
+ornamental &quot;period&quot; furniture and bric-a-brac bought to make a room
+&quot;look cozy.&quot; Once cleared of these, the simplicity and dignity of the
+room comes back, the architectural spaces are freed and now stand in
+their proper relation to the furniture. In other words, the architecture
+of the room becomes its decoration.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III" /><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />III</h2>
+
+<h2>THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>I have always lived in enchanting houses. Probably when another woman
+would be dreaming of love affairs, I dream of the delightful houses I
+have lived in. And just as the woman who dreams of many lovers finds one
+dream a little dearer than all the rest, so one of my houses has been
+dearer to me than all the others.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0333" id="h0333"></a>
+<img src="images/h0333.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING"
+title="THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This favorite love of mine is the old Washington Irving house in New
+York, the quaint mansion that gave historic Irving Place its name. For
+twenty years my friend, Elizabeth Marbury, and I made this old house our
+home. Two years ago we reluctantly gave up the old house and moved into
+a more modern one&mdash;also transformed from old into new&mdash;on East
+Fifty-fifth Street. We have also a delightful old house in France, the
+Villa Trianon, at Versailles, where we spend our summers. So you see we
+have had the rare experience of transforming three mistreated old houses
+into very delightful homes.</p>
+
+<p>When we found this old house, so many years ago, we were very young, and
+it is amusing now to think of its evolution. We had so many dreams, so
+many theories, and we tried them all out on the old house.<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" /> And like a
+patient, well-bred maiden aunt, the old house always accepted our
+changes most placidly. There never was such a house!</p>
+
+<p>You could do anything to it, because, fundamentally, it was good. Its
+wall spaces were inviting, its windows were made for framing pleasant
+things. When we moved there we had a broad sweep of view: I can remember
+seeing the river from our dining-room. Now the city has grown up around
+the old house and jostled it rudely, and shut out much of its sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>There is a joy in the opportunity of creating a beautiful interior for a
+new and up-to-date house, but best of all is the joy of furnishing an
+old house like this one. It is like reviving an old garden. It may not
+be just your idea of a garden to begin with, but as you study it and
+deck its barren spaces with masses of color, and fit a sundial into the
+spot that so needs it, and give the sunshine a fountain to play with,
+you love the old garden just a little more every time you touch it,
+until it becomes to you the most beautiful garden in all the world.</p>
+
+<p>Gardens and houses are such whimsical things! This old house of ours had
+been so long mistreated that it was fairly petulant and querulous when I
+began studying it. It asked questions on every turn, and seemed
+surprised when they were answered. The house was delightfully rambling,
+with a tiny entrance hall, and narrow stairs, and sudden up and down
+steps from one room to another like the old, old house one associates
+with far-away places and old times.<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" /></p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" /><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />The little entrance hall was worse than a question, it was a problem,
+but I finally solved it. The floor was paved with little hexagon-shaped
+tiles of a wonderful old red. A door made of little square panes of
+mirrors was placed where it would deceive the old hall into thinking
+itself a spacious thing. The walls were covered with a
+green-and-white-stripe wall-paper that looked as old as Rip Van Winkle.
+This is the same ribbon-grass paper that I afterward used in the Colony
+Club hallway. The woodwork was painted a soft gray-green. Finally, I had
+my collection of faded French costume prints set flat against the top of
+the wall as a frieze. The hall was so very narrow that as you went up
+stairs you could actually examine the old prints in detail. Another
+little thing: I covered the handrail of the stairs with a soft
+gray-green velvet of the same tone as the woodwork, and the effect was
+so very good and the touch of it so very nice that many of my friends
+straightway adopted the idea.</p>
+
+<p>But I am placing the cart before the horse! I should talk of the shell
+of the house before the contents, shouldn't I? It is hard to talk of
+this particular house as a thing apart from its furnishings, however,
+for every bit of paneling, every lighting-fixture, the placing of each
+mirror, was worked out so that the shell of the house and its
+furnishings might be in perfect harmony.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />The drawing-room and dining-room occupied the first floor of the house.
+The drawing-room was a long, narrow room with cream woodwork and walls.
+The walls were broken into panels by the use of a narrow molding. In the
+large panel above the mantel-shelf I had inset a painting by Nattier.
+You will see the same painting used in the Fifty-fifth Street house
+drawing-room, in another illustration.</p>
+
+<p>The color scheme of rose and cream and dull yellow was worked out from
+the rose and yellow Persian rug. Most of the furniture we found in
+France, but it fitted perfectly into this aristocratic and dignified
+room. Miss Marbury and I have a perfect right to French things in our
+drawing-room, you see, for we are French residents for half the year.
+And, besides, this gracious old house welcomed a fine old Louis XIV sofa
+as serenely as you please. I have no idea of swallowing my words about
+unsuitability!</p>
+
+<p>Light, air and comfort&mdash;these three things I must always have in a room,
+whether it be drawing-room or servant's room. This room had all three.
+The chairs were all comfortable, the lights well placed, and there was
+plenty of sunshine and air. The color of the room was so subdued that it
+was restful to the eye&mdash;one color faded into another so subtly that one
+did not realize there was a definite color-scheme. The hangings of the
+room were of a deep rose color. I used the same colors in the coverings
+of the chairs and sofas. The house was curtained throughout with fine
+white muslin curtains. No matter what the inner curtains of a room may
+be, I use this simple stuff against the window itself. There isn't any
+nicer material. To me there is something unsuitable in an array of lace
+against a window, like underclothes hung up to dry.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" /><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0334" id="h0334"></a>
+<img src="images/h0334.jpg" width="70%"
+alt="A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM"
+title="A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />The most delightful part of the drawing-room was the little
+conservatory, which was a plain, lamentable bay-window once upon a time.
+I determined to make a little flower-box of it, and had the floor of it
+paved with large tiles, and between the hardwood floor of the
+drawing-room and the marble of the window space was a narrow curb of
+marble, which made it possible to have a jolly little fountain in the
+window. The fountain splashed away to its heart's content, for there was
+a drain pipe under the curb. At the top of the windows there were
+shallow white boxes filled with trailing ivy that hung down and screened
+the glass, making the window as delightful to the passer-by without as
+to us within. There were several pots of rose-colored flowers standing
+in a prim row on the marble curb.</p>
+
+<p>You see how much simpler it is to make the best of an old bay window
+than to build on a new conservatory. There are thousands of houses with
+windows like this one of ours, an unfortunate space of which no use is
+made. Sometimes there is a gilt table bearing a lofty jar, sometimes a
+timid effort at comfort&mdash;a sofa&mdash;but usually the bay window is sacred to
+its own <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />devices, whatever they may be! Why not spend a few dollars and
+make it the most interesting part of the room by giving it a lot of
+vines and flowers and a small fountain? It isn't at all an expensive
+thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>From the drawing-room you entered the dining-room. This was a long room
+with beautifully spaced walls, a high ceiling, and quaint cupboards. The
+arrangement of the mirrors around the cupboards and doors was unusual
+and most decorative. This room was so beautiful in itself that I used
+very little color&mdash;but <i>such</i> color! We never tired of the gray and
+white and ivory color-scheme, the quiet atmosphere that made glorious
+the old Chinese carpet, with its rose-colored ground and blue-and-gold
+medallions and border. The large India-ink sketches set in the walls are
+originals by Mennoyer, the delightful Eighteenth Century artist who did
+the overdoors of the Petit Trianon.</p>
+
+<p>The mirror-framed lighting fixtures I brought over from France. The
+dining-table too, was French, of a creamy ivory-painted wood. The chairs
+had insets of cane of a deeper tone. The recessed window-seat was
+covered with a soft velvet of a deep yellow, and there were as many
+little footstools beside the window-seat as there were chairs in the
+room. Doesn't everyone long for a footstool at table?</p>
+
+<p>I believe that everything in one's house should be comfortable, but
+one's bedroom must be more than <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />comfortable: it must be intimate,
+personal, one's secret garden, so to speak. It may be as simple as a
+convent cell and still have this quality of the personality of its
+occupant.</p>
+
+<p>There are two things that are as important to me as the bed in the
+bedrooms that I furnish, and they are the little tables at the head of
+the bed, and the lounging chairs. The little table must hold a good
+reading light, well shaded, for who doesn't like to read in bed? There
+must also be a clock, and there really should be a telephone. And the
+<i>chaise-longue</i>, or couch, as the case may be, should be both
+comfortable and beautiful. Who hasn't longed for a comfortable place to
+snatch forty winks at midday?</p>
+
+<p>My own bedroom in this house was very pleasant to me. The house was very
+small, you see, and my bedroom had to be my writing-and reading-room
+too, so that accounts for the bookshelves that fill the wall space above
+and around the mantel and the large writing-table. The room was built
+around a wonderful old French bed which came from Brittany. This old bed
+is of carved mahogany, with mirrored panels on the side against the
+wall, and with tall columns at the ends. It is always hung with
+embroidered silk in the rose color that I adore and has any number of
+pillows, big and little. The <i>chaise-longue</i> was covered with this same
+silk, as were the various chair cushions. The other furnishings were in
+keeping. It was a delightfully comfortable room, and it grew a little at
+<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />a time. I needed bookshelves, and I built them. A drop-light was
+necessary, and I found the old brass lantern which hung from the
+ceiling. And so it was furnished, bit by bit, need by need.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marbury's bedroom in this house was entirely different in type, but
+exactly the same in comfort. The furniture was of white enamel, the
+walls ivory-white, and the rug a soft dull blue. The chintz used was the
+familiar Bird of Paradise, gorgeous in design, but so subdued in tone
+that one never tires of it. The bed had a flat, perfectly fitted cover
+of the chintz, which is tucked under the mattress. The box spring was
+also covered with the chintz, and the effect was always tidy and
+satisfactory. This is the neatest disposal of the bed-clothes I have
+seen. I always advise this arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the bed there was the necessary little table, holding a
+reading-light and so forth, and at the head of the bed a most adorable
+screen of white enamel, paneled with chintz below and glass above. There
+was a soft couch of generous width in this room, with covers and
+cushions of the chintz.</p>
+
+<p>Over near the windows was the dressing-table with the lighting-fixtures
+properly placed. This table, hung with chintz, had a sheet of plate
+glass exactly fitting its top. The writing-table, near the window is
+also part of my creed of comfort. There should be a writing-table in
+every bedroom. My friends laugh at the little fat pincushions on my
+writing-tables, but when they are covered with a bit of the chintz or
+tapestry or brocade of the room they are very pretty, and I am sure pins
+are as necessary on the writing-table as on the dressing-table.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0335" id="h0335"></a>
+<img src="images/h0335.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MISS MARBURY&#39;S BEDROOM"
+title="MISS MARBURY&#39;S BEDROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS MARBURY&#39;S BEDROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" /><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" /></p>
+<p>Another thing I like on every writing-table is a clear glass bowl of
+dried rose petals, which gives the room the faintest spicy fragrance.
+There is also a little bowl of just the proper color to hold pens and
+clips and odds and ends. I get as much pleasure from planning these
+small details as from the planning of the larger furniture of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The house was very simple, you see, and very small, and so when the time
+came to leave it we had grown to love every inch of it. You can love a
+small house so completely! But we couldn't forgive the skyscrapers
+encroaching on our supply of sunshine, and we really needed more room,
+and so we said good-by to our beloved old house and moved into a new
+one. Now we find ourselves in danger of loving the new one as much as
+the old. But that is another story.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV" /><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />IV</h2>
+
+<h2>THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>One walks the streets of New York and receives the fantastic impression
+that some giant architect has made for the city thousands of houses in
+replica. These dismal brownstone buildings are so like without, and
+alas! so like within, that one wonders how their owners know their homes
+from one another. I have had the pleasure of making over many of these
+gloomy barracks into homes for other people, and when we left the old
+Irving Place house we took one of these dreary houses for ourselves, and
+made it over into a semblance of what a city house should be.</p>
+
+<p>You know the kind of house&mdash;there are tens of thousands of them&mdash;a four
+story and basement house of pinkish brownstone, with a long flight of
+ugly stairs from the street to the first floor. The common belief that
+all city houses of this type must be dark and dreary just because they
+always <i>have</i> been dark and dreary is an unnecessary superstition.</p>
+
+<p>My object in taking this house was twofold: I wanted to prove to my
+friends that it was possible to take one of the darkest and grimiest of
+city houses and make it an abode of sunshine and light, and I wanted <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />to
+furnish the whole house exactly as I pleased&mdash;for once!</p>
+
+<p>The remaking of the house was very interesting. I tore away the ugly
+stone steps and centered the entrance door in a little stone-paved
+fore-court on the level of the old area-way. The fore-court is just a
+step below the street level, giving you a pleasant feeling of
+invitation. Everyone hates to climb into a house, but there is a subtle
+allure in a garden or a court yard or a room into which you must step
+down. The fore-court is enclosed with a high iron railing banked with
+formal box-trees. Above the huge green entrance door there is a graceful
+iron balcony, filled with green things, that pulls the great door and
+the central window of the floor above into an impressive composition.
+The fa&ccedil;ade of the house, instead of being a commonplace rectangle of
+stone broken by windows, has this long connected break of the door and
+balcony and window. By such simple devices are happy results
+accomplished!</p>
+
+<p>The door itself is noteworthy, with its great bronze knob set squarely
+in the center. On each side of it there are the low windows of the
+entrance hall, with window-boxes of evergreens. Compare this orderly
+arrangement of windows and entrance door with the badly balanced houses
+of the old type, and you will realize anew the value of balance and
+proportion.</p>
+
+<p>From the fore-court you enter the hall. Once within the hall, the, house
+widens magically. Surely this cool <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />black and white apartment cannot be
+a part of restless New York! Have you ever come suddenly upon an old
+Southern house, and thrilled at the classic purity of white columns in a
+black-green forest? This entrance hall gives you the same thrill; the
+elements of formality, of tranquillity, of coolness, are so evident. The
+walls and ceiling are a deep, flat cream, and the floor is laid in large
+black and white marble tiles. Exactly opposite you as you enter, there
+is a wall fountain with a background of mirrors. The water spills over
+from the fountain into ferns and flowers banked within a marble curb.
+The two wall spaces on your right and left are broken by graceful niches
+which hold old statues. An oval Chinese rug and the white and orange
+flowers of the fountain furnish the necessary color. The windows
+flanking the entrance doorway are hung with flat curtains of coarse
+white linen, with inserts of old filet lace, and there are side curtains
+of dead black silk with borderings of silver and gold threads.</p>
+
+<p>In any house that I have anything to do with, there is some sort of desk
+or table for writing in the hall. How often I have been in other
+people's houses when it was necessary to send a message, or to record an
+address, when the whole household began scurrying around trying to find
+a pencil and paper! This, to my mind, is an outward and visible sign of
+an inward&mdash;and fundamental!&mdash;lack of order.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0336" id="h0336"></a>
+<img src="images/h0336.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET HOUSE"
+title="THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" /><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" /></p>
+<p>In this hall there is a charming desk particularly adapted to its
+place. It is a standing desk which can be lowered or heightened at will,
+so that one who wishes to scribble a line or so may use it without
+sitting down. This desk is called a <i>bureau d'architect</i>. I found it in
+Biarritz. It would be quite easy to have one made by a good
+cabinet-maker, for the lines and method of construction are simple. My
+hall desk is so placed that it is lighted by the window by day and the
+wall lights by night, but it might be lighted by two tall candlesticks
+if a wall light were not available. There is a shallow drawer which
+contains surplus writing materials, but the only things permitted on the
+writing surface of the desk are the tray for cards, the pad and pencils.</p>
+
+<p>The only other furniture in the hall is an old porter's chair near the
+door, a chair that suggests the sedan of old France, but serves its
+purpose admirably.</p>
+
+<p>A glass door leads to the inner hall and the stairway, which I consider
+the best thing in the house. Instead of the usual steep and gloomy
+stairs with which we are all familiar, here is a graceful spiral
+stairway which runs from this floor to the roof. The stair hall has two
+walls made up of mirrors in the French fashion, that is, cut in squares
+and held in place by small rosettes of gilt, and these mirrored walls
+seemingly double the spaciousness of what would be, under ordinary
+conditions, a gloomy inside hallway.</p>
+
+<p>The house is narrow in the extreme, and the secret of its successful
+renaissance is plenty of windows and <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />light color and
+mirrors&mdash;mirrors&mdash;mirrors! It has been called the &quot;Little House of Many
+Mirrors,&quot; for so much of its spaciousness and charm is the effect of
+skilfully managed reflections. The stair-landings are most ingeniously
+planned. There are landings that lead directly from the stairs into the
+rooms of each floor, and back of one of the mirrored stair walls there
+is a little balcony connecting the rooms on that floor, a private
+passageway.</p>
+
+<p>The drawing-room and dining-room occupy the first floor. The
+drawing-room is a pleasant, friendly place, full of quiet color. The
+walls are a deep cream color and the floor is covered with a beautiful
+Savonnerie rug. There are many beautiful old chairs covered with
+Aubusson tapestry, and other chairs and sofas covered with rose colored
+brocade. This drawing-room is seemingly a huge place, this effect being
+given by the careful placing of mirrors and lights, and the skilful
+arrangement of the furniture. I believe in plenty of optimism and white
+paint, comfortable chairs with lights beside them, open fires on the
+hearth and flowers wherever they &quot;belong,&quot; mirrors and sunshine in all
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>But I think we can carry the white paint idea too far: I have grown a
+little tired of over-careful decorations, of plain white walls and white
+woodwork, of carefully matched furniture and over-cautious
+color-schemes. Somehow the feeling of homey-ness is lost when the
+decorator is too careful. In this drawing-<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />room there is furniture of
+many woods, there are stuffs of many weaves, there are candles and
+chandeliers and reading-lamps, but there is harmony of purpose and
+therefore harmony of effect. The room was made for conversation, for
+hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>A narrow landing connects the dining-room and the drawing-room. The
+color of the dining-room has grown of itself, from the superb Chinese
+rug on the floor and the rare old Mennoyer drawings inset in the walls.
+The woodwork and walls have been painted a soft dove-like gray. The
+walls are broken into panels by a narrow gray molding, and the Mennoyers
+are set in five of these panels. In one narrow panel a beautiful wall
+clock has been placed. Above the mantel there is a huge mirror with a
+panel in black and white relief above it. On the opposite wall there is
+another mirror, with a console table of carved wood painted gray beneath
+it. There is also a console table under one of the Mennoyers.</p>
+
+<p>The two windows in this room are obviously windows by day, but at night
+two sliding doors of mirrors are drawn, just as a curtain would be
+drawn, to fill the window spaces. This is a little bit tricky, I admit,
+but it is a very good trick. The dining-table is of carved wood painted
+gray and covered with yellow damask, which in turn is covered with a
+sheet of plate glass. The chairs are covered with a blue and gold
+striped velvet. The rug has a gold ground with medallions and border of
+blue, ivory and rose. Near the <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />door that leads to the service rooms
+there is a huge screen made of one piece of wondrous tapestry. No other
+furniture is needed in the room.</p>
+
+<p>The third floor is given over to my sitting-room, bedroom,
+dressing-room, and so forth, and the fourth floor to Miss Marbury's
+apartments. These rooms will be discussed in other chapters.</p>
+
+<p>The servants' quarters in this house are very well planned. In the back
+yard that always goes with a house of this type I had built a new wing,
+five stories high, connected with the floors of the house proper by
+window-lined passages. On the dining-room floor the passage becomes a
+butler's pantry. On the bedroom floors the passages are large enough for
+dressing-rooms and baths, connecting with the bedrooms, and for outer
+halls and laundries connecting with the maids' rooms and the back
+stairs. In this way, you see, the maids can reach the dressing-rooms
+without invading the bedrooms. The kitchen and its dependencies occupy
+the first floor of the new wing, the servants' bedrooms the next three
+floors, and the top floor is made up of clothes closets, sewing-rooms,
+store rooms, etc.</p>
+
+<p>I firmly believe that the whole question of household comfort evolves
+from the careful planning of the service portion of the house. My
+servants' rooms are all attractive. The woodwork of these rooms is
+white, the walls are cream, the floors are waxed. They are all gay and
+sweet and cheerful, with white painted beds and chests of drawers and
+willow chairs, and <a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />chintz curtains and bed-coverings that are
+especially chosen, <i>not</i> handed down when they have become too faded to
+be used elsewhere!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V" /><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />V</h2>
+
+<h2>THE TREATMENT OF WALLS</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>Surely the first considerations of the house in good taste must be
+light, air and sanitation. Instead of ignoring the relation of sanitary
+conditions and decorative schemes, the architect and client of to-day
+work out these problems with excellent results. Practical needs are
+considered just as worthy of the architect as artistic achievements. He
+is a poor excuse for his profession if he cannot solve the problems of
+utility and beauty, and work out the ultimate harmony of the
+house-to-be.</p>
+
+<p>If one enters a room in which true proportion has been observed, where
+the openings, the doors, windows and fireplace, balance perfectly, where
+the wall spaces are well planned and the height of the ceiling is in
+keeping with the floor-space, one is immediately convinced that here is
+a beautiful and satisfactory room, before a stick of furniture has been
+placed in it. All questions pertaining to the practical equipment and
+the decorative amenities of the house should be approached
+architecturally. If this is done, the result cannot fail to be
+felicitous, and our dream of our house beautiful comes true!</p>
+
+<p>Before you begin the decoration of your walls, be <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />sure that your floors
+have been finished to fulfil their purposes. Stain them or polish them
+to a soft glow, keep them low in tone so that they may be backgrounds.
+We will assume that the woodwork of each room has been finished with a
+view to the future use and decoration of the room. We will assume that
+the ceilings are proper ceilings; that they will stay in their place,
+i.e., the top of the room. This is a most daring assumption, because
+there are so many feeble and threatening ceilings overhanging most of us
+that good ones seem rare. But the ceiling is an architectural problem,
+and you must consider it in the beginning of things. It may be beamed
+and have every evidence of structural beauty and strength, or it may be
+beamed in a ridiculous fashion that advertises the beams as shams,
+leading from nowhere to nowhere. It may be a beautiful expanse of creamy
+modeled plaster resting on a distinguished cornice, or it may be one of
+those ghastly skim-milk ceilings with distorted cupids and roses in
+relief. It may be a rectangle of plain plaster tinted cream or pale
+yellow or gray, and keeping its place serenely, or it may be a
+villainous stretch of ox-blood, hanging over your head like the curse of
+Cain. There are hundreds of magnificent painted ceilings, and vaulted
+arches of marble and gold, but these are not of immediate importance to
+the woman who is furnishing a small house, and are not within the scope
+of this book. So let us exercise common sense and face our especial
+ceiling problem in an architectural <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />spirit. If your house has
+structural beams, leave them exposed, if you like, but treat them as
+beams; stain them, and wax them, and color the spaces between them cream
+or tan or warm gray, and then make the room beneath the beams strong
+enough in color and furnishings to carry the impressive ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>If you have an architect who is also a decorator, and he has ideas for a
+modeled plaster ceiling, or a ceiling with plaster-covered beams and
+cornice and a fine application of ornament, let him do his best for you,
+but remember that a fine ceiling demands certain things of the room it
+covers. If you have a simple little house with simple furnishings, be
+content to have your ceilings tinted a warm cream, keep them always
+clean.</p>
+
+<p>When all these things are settled&mdash;floors and ceilings and woodwork&mdash;you
+may begin to plan your wall coverings. Begin, you understand. You will
+probably change your plans a dozen times before you make the final
+decisions. I hope you will! Because inevitably the last opinion is
+best&mdash;it grows out of so many considerations.</p>
+
+<p>The main thing to remember, when you begin to cover your walls, is that
+they are walls, that they are straight up and down, and have breadth and
+thickness, that they are supposedly strong, in other words, that they
+are a structural part of your house. A wall should always be treated as
+a flat surface and in a conventional way. Pictorial flowers and lifelike
+figures have no place upon it, but conventionalized de<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />signs may be used
+successfully&mdash;witness the delighted use of the fantastic landscape
+papers in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Walls should always be
+obviously <i>walls</i>, and not flimsy partitions hung with gauds and
+trophies. The wall is the background of the room, and so must be flat in
+treatment and reposeful in tone.</p>
+
+<p>Walls have always offered tempting spaces for decoration. Our ancestors
+hung their walls with trophies. Our pioneer of to-day may live in an
+adobe hut, but he hangs his walls with things that suggest beauty and
+color to him, calendars, and trophies and gaudy chromos. The rest of his
+hut he uses for the hard business of living, but his walls are his
+theater, his literature, his recreation. The wolf skin will one day give
+place to a painting of the chase, the gaudy calendars to better things,
+when prosperity comes. But now these crude things speak for the pioneer
+period of the man, and therefore they are the right things for the
+moment. How absurd would be the refined etching and the delicate
+water-color on these clay walls, even were they within his grasp!</p>
+
+<p>The first impulse of all of us is to hang the things we admire on our
+walls. Unfortunately, we do not always select papers and fabrics and
+pictures we will continue to admire. Who doesn't know the woman who goes
+to a shop and selects wall papers as she would select her gowns, because
+they are &quot;new&quot; and &quot;different&quot; and &quot;pretty&quot;? She selects a &quot;rich&quot; paper
+for her hall and an &quot;elegant&quot; paper for her drawing-room&mdash;the <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />chances
+are it is a nile green moire paper! For her library she thinks a paper
+imitating an Oriental fabric is the proper thing, and as likely as not
+she buys gold paper for her dining-room. She finds so many charming
+bedroom papers that she has no trouble in selecting a dozen of them for
+insipid blue rooms and pink rooms and lilac rooms.</p>
+
+<p>She forgets that while she wears only one gown at a time she will live
+with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of
+large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the
+adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give
+them the fair test of living with them a few days.</p>
+
+<p>You can always buy, or borrow, a roll of the paper you like and take it
+home and live with it awhile. The dealer will credit the roll when you
+make the final decisions. You should assemble all the papers that are to
+be used in the house, and all the fabrics, and rugs, and see what the
+effect of the various compositions will be, one with another. You can't
+consider one room alone, unless it be a bedroom, for in our modern
+houses we believe too thoroughly in spaciousness to separate our living
+rooms by ante-chambers and formal approaches. We must preserve a certain
+amount of privacy, and have doors that may be closed when need be, but
+we must also consider the effect of things when those doors are open,
+when the color of one room melts into the color of another.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" /></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0337" id="h0337"></a>
+<img src="images/h0337.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS"
+title="A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS" />
+<p class="center"><b>A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" /><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />To me, the most beautiful wall is the plain and dignified painted
+wall, broken into graceful panels by the use of narrow moldings, with
+lighting fixtures carefully placed, and every picture and mirror hung
+with classic precision. This wall is just as appropriate to the six-room
+cottage as to the twenty-room house. If I could always find perfect
+walls, I'd always paint them, and never use a yard of paper. Painted
+walls, when very well done, are dignified and restful, and most
+sanitary. The trouble is that too few plasterers know how to smooth the
+wall surface, and too few workmen know how to apply paint properly. In
+my new house on East Fifty-fifth Street I have had all the walls
+painted. The woodwork is ivory white throughout the house, except in the
+dining-room, where the walls and woodwork are soft gray. The walls of
+most of the rooms and halls are painted a very deep tone of cream and
+are broken into panels, the moldings being painted cream like the
+woodwork. With such walls you can carry out any color-plan you may
+desire.</p>
+
+<p>You would think that every woman would know that walls are influenced by
+the exposure of the room, but how often I have seen bleak north rooms
+with walls papered in cold gray, and sunshiny south rooms with red or
+yellow wall papers! Dull tones and cool colors are always good in south
+rooms, and live tones and warm colors in north rooms. For instance, if
+you wish to keep your rooms in one color-plan, you may have <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />white
+woodwork in all of them, and walls of varying shades of cream and
+yellow. The north rooms may have walls painted or papered with a soft,
+warm yellow that suggests creamy chiffon over orange. The south rooms
+may have the walls of a cool creamy-gray tone.</p>
+
+<p>Whether you paint or paper your walls, you should consider the placing
+of the picture-molding most carefully. If the ceiling is very high, the
+walls will be more interesting if the picture-molding is placed three or
+four feet below the ceiling line. If the ceiling is low, the molding
+should be within two inches of the ceiling. These measurements are not
+arbitrary, of course. Every room is a law unto itself, and no cut and
+dried rule can be given. A fine frieze is a very beautiful decoration,
+but it must be <i>very</i> fine to be worth while at all. Usually the dropped
+ceiling is better for the upper wall space. It goes without saying that
+those dreadful friezes perpetrated by certain wall paper designers are
+very bad form, and should never be used. Indeed, the very principle of
+the ordinary paper frieze is bad; it darkens the upper wall
+unpleasantly, and violates the good old rule that the floors should be
+darkest in tone, the side walls lighter, and the ceiling lightest. The
+recent vogue of stenciling walls may be objected to on this account,
+though a very narrow and conventional line of stenciling may sometimes
+be placed just under the picture rail with good effect.</p>
+
+<p>In a great room with a beamed ceiling and oak <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />paneled walls a painted
+fresco or a frieze of tapestry or some fine fabric is a very fine thing,
+especially if it has a lot of primitive red and blue and gold in it, but
+in simple rooms&mdash;beware!</p>
+
+<p>Lately there has been a great revival of interest in wood paneling. We
+go abroad, and see the magnificent paneling of old English houses, and
+we come home and copy it. But we cannot get the workmen who will carve
+panels in the old patterns. We cannot wait a hundred years for the soft
+bloom that comes from the constant usage, and so our paneled rooms are
+apt to be too new and woody. But we have such a wonderful store of
+woods, here in America, it is worth while to panel our rooms, copying
+the simple rectangular English patterns, and it is quite permissible to
+&quot;age&quot; our walls by rubbing in black wax, and little shadows of
+water-color, and in fact by any method we can devise. Wood paneled
+walls, like beamed ceilings, are best in great rooms. They make boxes of
+little ones.</p>
+
+<p>Painted walls, and walls hung with tapestries and leather, are not
+possible to many of us, but they are the most magnificent of wall
+treatments. I know a wonderful library with walls hung in squares of
+Spanish leather, a cold northern room that merits such a brilliant wall
+treatment. The primitive colors of the Cordova leather workers, with
+gold and crimson dominant, glow from the deep shadows. Spanish and
+Italian furniture and fine old velvets and brocades furnish this room.
+The same sort of room invites wood <a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />paneling and tapestry, whereas the
+ideal room for painted walls in a lighter key is the ballroom, or some
+such large apartment. I once decorated a ballroom with Pillement panels,
+copied from a beautiful Eighteenth Century room, and so managed to bring
+a riot of color and decoration into a large apartment. The ground of the
+paneling was deep yellow, and all the little birds and flowers
+surrounding the central design were done in the very brightest,
+strongest colors imaginable. The various panels had quaint little scenes
+of the same Chinese flavor. Of course, in such an apartment as a
+ballroom there would be nothing to break into the decorative plan of the
+painted walls, and the unbroken polished floor serves only to throw the
+panels into their proper prominence. Painted walls, when done in some
+such broad and daring manner, are very wonderful, but they should not be
+attempted by the amateur, or, indeed, by an expert in a room that will
+be crowded with furniture, and curtains, and rugs.</p>
+
+<p>If your walls are faulty, you must resort to wall papers or fabrics.
+Properly selected wall papers are not to be despised. The woodwork of a
+room, of course, directly influences the treatment of its walls. So many
+people ask me for advice about wall papers, and forget absolutely to
+tell me of the finish of the framing of their wall spaces. A pale
+yellowish cream wall paper is very charming with woodwork of white, but
+it would not do with woodwork of heavy oak, for instance.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" /><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0338" id="h0338"></a>
+<img src="images/h0338.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE"
+title="A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE" />
+<p class="center"><b>A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" /></p>
+
+<p>A general rule to follow in a small house is: do not have a figured
+wall paper if you expect to use things of large design in your rooms. If
+you have gorgeous rugs and hangings, keep your walls absolutely plain.
+In furnishing the Colony Club I used a ribbon grass paper in the
+hallway. The fresh, spring-like green and white striped paper is very
+delightful with a carpet and runner of plain dark-green velvet, and
+white woodwork, and dark mahogany furniture, and many gold-framed
+mirrors. In another room in this building where many chintzes and
+fabrics were used, I painted the woodwork white and the walls a soft
+cream color. In the bedrooms I used a number of wall papers, the most
+fascinating of these, perhaps, is in the bird room. The walls are hung
+with a daringly gorgeous paper covered with birds&mdash;birds of paradise and
+paroquets perched on flowery tropical branches. The furniture in this
+room is of black and gold lacquer, and the rug and hangings are of jade
+green. It would not be so successful in a room one lived in all the year
+around, but it is a good example of what one can do with a tempting wall
+paper in an occasional room, a guest room, for instance.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the figured wall papers are so decorative that they are more
+than tempting, they are compelling. The Chinese ones are particularly
+fascinating. Recently I planned a small boudoir in a country house that
+depended on a gay Chinoiserie paper for its charm. The design of the
+paper was made up of quaint little <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />figures and parasols and birds and
+twisty trees, all in soft tones of green and blue and mauve on a deep
+cream ground. The woodwork and ceiling repeated the deep cream, and the
+simple furniture (a day bed, a chest of drawers, and several chairs)
+were of wood, painted a flat blue green just the color of the twisty
+pine-trees of the paper.</p>
+
+<p>We had a delightful time decorating the furniture with blue and mauve
+lines, and we painted parasols and birds and flowers on chair backs and
+drawer-knobs and so forth. The large rug was of pinky-mauve-gray, and
+the coverings of the day bed and chairs were of a mauve and gray striped
+stuff, the stripes so small that they had the effect of being threads of
+color. There were no pictures, of course, but there was a long mirror
+above the chest of drawers, and another over the mantel. The
+lighting-fixtures, candlesticks and appliqu&eacute;s, were of carved and
+painted wood, blue-green with shades of thin mauve silk over rose.</p>
+
+<p>Among the most enchanting of the new papers are the black and white
+ones, fantastic Chinese designs and startling Austrian patterns. Black
+and white is always a tempting combination to the decorator, and now
+that Josef Hoffman, the great Austrian decorator, has been working in
+black and white for a number of years, the more venturesome decorators
+of France, and England and America have begun to follow his lead, and
+are using black and white, and black and color, with amazing effect. We
+have black papers patterned in <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />color, and black velvet carpets, and
+white coated papers sprinkled with huge black polka dots, and all manner
+of unusual things. It goes without saying that much of this fad is
+freakish, but there is also much that is good enough and refreshing
+enough to last. One can imagine nothing fresher than a black and white
+scheme in a bedroom, with a saving neutrality of gray or some dull tone
+for rugs, and a brilliant bit of color in porcelain. There is no hint of
+the mournful in the decorator's combination of black and white: rather,
+there is a na&iuml;ve quality suggestive of smartness in a gown, or chic in a
+woman. A white walled room with white woodwork and a black and white
+tiled floor; a black lacquer bed and chest of drawers and chair; glass
+curtains of white muslin and inside ones of black and white Hoffman
+chintz; a splash of warm orange-red in an oval rug at the bedside, if it
+be winter, or a cool green one in summer&mdash;doesn't this tempt you?</p>
+
+<p>I once saw a little serving-maid wearing a calico gown, black crosses on
+a white ground, and I was so enchanted with the cool crispness of it
+that I had a glazed wall paper made in the same design. I have used it
+in bedrooms, and in bathrooms, always with admirable effect. One can
+imagine a girl making a Pierrot and Pierrette room for herself, given
+whitewashed walls, white woodwork, and white painted furniture. An
+ordinary white cotton printed with large black polka dots would make
+delightful curtains, chair-cushions, and so forth. The rug might be
+woven of black and <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />white rags, or might be one of those woven from the
+old homespun coverlet patterns.</p>
+
+<p>The landscape papers that were so popular in the New England and
+Southern houses three generations ago were very wonderful when they were
+used in hallways, with graceful stairs and white woodwork, but they were
+distressing when used in living-rooms. It is all very well to cover the
+walls of your hall with a hand-painted paper, or a landscape, or a
+foliage paper, because you get only an impressionistic idea of a
+hall&mdash;you don't loiter there. But papers of large design are out of
+place in rooms where pictures and books are used. If there is anything
+more dreadful than a busy &quot;parlor&quot; paper, with scrolls that tantalize or
+flowers that demand to be counted, I have yet to encounter it.</p>
+
+<p>Remember, above all things that your walls must be beautiful in
+themselves. They must be plain and quiet, ready to receive sincere
+things, but quite good enough to get along without pictures if
+necessary. A wall that is broken into beautiful spaces and covered with
+a soft creamy paint, or paper, or grasscloth, is good enough for any
+room. It may be broken with lighting fixtures, and it is finished.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" /><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0339" id="h0339"></a>
+<img src="images/h0339.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE MANTEL"
+title="THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE MANTEL" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE MANTEL</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI" /><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />VI</h2>
+
+<h2>THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>What a joyous thing is color! How influenced we all are by it, even if
+we are unconscious of how our sense of restfulness has been brought
+about. Certain colors are antagonistic to each of us, and I think we
+should try to learn just what colors are most sympathetic to our own
+individual emotions, and then make the best of them.</p>
+
+<p>If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live
+in a room in which the prevailing note is red. On the other hand, a
+timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in
+surroundings of rich red tones, the tones of the old Italian damasks in
+which the primitive colors of the Middle Ages have been handed down to
+us. No half shades, no blending of tender tones are needed in an age of
+iron nerves. People worked hard, and they got downright blues and reds
+and greens&mdash;primitive colors, all. Nowadays, we must consider the effect
+of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.</p>
+
+<p>Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music. The
+strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love
+of color. I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at
+twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" /></p>
+
+<p>Color! The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of
+tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life. We
+say that one woman is &quot;so full of color,&quot; when she is alert and happy
+and vividly alive. We say another woman is &quot;colorless,&quot; because she is
+bleak and chilling and unfriendly. We demand that certain music shall be
+full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite
+books. One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard
+and&mdash;gray. We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation
+of color, although often we have not that appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>There is all the difference in the world between the person who
+appreciates color and the person who &quot;likes colors.&quot; The child, playing
+with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American
+Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads&mdash;all these
+primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no
+more feeling for color than a blind man. The appreciation of color is a
+subtle and intellectual quality.</p>
+
+<p>Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on
+housefurnishing, says: &quot;Colors are like musical notes and chords, while
+color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way. So
+colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself. The first are
+tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art composed of many
+lines and shades.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We are aware that some people are &quot;color-blind,&quot;<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" /> but we do not take the
+trouble to ascertain whether the majority of people see colors crudely.
+I suppose there are as many color-blind people as there are people who
+have a deep feeling for color, and the great masses of people in
+between, while they know colors one from another, have no appreciation
+of hue. Just as surely, there are some people who cannot tell one tune
+from another and some people who have a deep and passionate feeling for
+music, while the rest&mdash;the great majority of people&mdash;can follow a tune
+and sing a hymn, but they can go no deeper into music than that.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, each of you must know your own color-sense. You know whether you
+get results, don't you? I have never believed that there is a woman so
+blind that she cannot tell good from bad effects, even though she may
+not be able to tell <i>why</i> one room is good and another bad. It is as
+simple as the problem of the well-gowned woman and the dowdy one. The
+dowdy woman doesn't realize the degree of her own dowdiness, but she
+<i>knows</i> that her neighbor is well-gowned, and she envies her with a
+vague and pathetic envy.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, you are not sure that you appreciate color, if you feel that
+you, like your children, like the green rug with the red roses because
+it is &quot;so cheerful,&quot; you may be sure that you should let color-problems
+alone, and furnish your house in neutral tones, depending on
+book-bindings and flowers and open fires and the necessary small
+furnishings for your color. Then, with an excellent background of soft
+quiet tones, you can ven<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" />ture a little way at a time, trying a bit of
+color here for a few days, and asking yourself if you honestly like it,
+and then trying another color&mdash;a jar or a bowl or a length of
+fabric&mdash;somewhere else, and trying that out. You will soon find that
+your joy in your home is growing, and that you have a source of
+happiness within yourself that you had not suspected. I believe that
+good taste can be developed in any woman, just as surely as good manners
+are possible to anyone. And good taste is as necessary as good manners.</p>
+
+<p>We may take our first lessons in color from Nature, on whose storehouse
+we can draw limitlessly. Nature, when she plans a wondrous splash of
+color, prepares a proper background for it. She gives us color plans for
+all the needs we can conceive. White and gray clouds on a blue sky&mdash;what
+more could she use in such a composition? A bit of gray green moss upon
+a black rock, a field of yellow dandelions, a pink and white spike of
+hollyhocks, an orange-colored butterfly poised on a stalk of
+larkspur&mdash;what color-plans are these!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0340" id="h0340"></a>
+<img src="images/h0340.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM"
+title="A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM" />
+<p class="center"><b>A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I think that the first consideration after you have settled your
+building-site should be to place your house so that its windows may
+frame Nature's own pictures. With windows facing north and south, where
+all the fluctuating and wayward charm of the season unrolls before your
+eyes, your windows become the finest pictures that you can have. When
+this has been arranged, it is time to consider the color-scheme for the
+interior of the house, the colors that shall be in har<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" /><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" /><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />mony with the
+window-framed vistas, the colors that shall be backgrounds for the
+intimate personal furnishings of your daily life. You must think of your
+walls as backgrounds for the colors you wish to bring into your rooms.
+And by colors I do not mean merely the primary colors, red and blue and
+yellow, or the secondary colors, green and orange and violet, I mean the
+white spaces, the black shadows, the gray halftones, the suave creams,
+that give you the <i>feeling</i> of color.</p>
+
+<p>How often we get a more definite idea of brilliant color from a
+white-walled room, with dark and severe furniture and no ornaments, no
+actual color save the blue sky framed by the windows and the flood of
+sunshine that glorifies everything, than from a room that has a dozen
+fine colors, carefully brought together, in its furnishings!</p>
+
+<p>We must decide our wall colors by the aspect of our rooms. Rooms facing
+south may be very light gray, cream, or even white, but northern rooms
+should be rich in color, and should suggest warmth and just a little
+mystery. Some of you have seen the Sala di Cambio at Perugia. Do you
+remember how dark it seems when one enters, and how gradually the
+wonderful coloring glows out from the gloom and one is comforted and
+soothed into a sort of dreamland of pure joy, in the intimate
+satisfaction of it all? It is unsurpassable for sheer decorative charm,
+I think.</p>
+
+<p>For south rooms blues and grays and cool greens and all the dainty gay
+colors are charming. Do you re<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />member the song Edna May used to sing in
+&quot;The Belle of New York&quot;? I am not sure of quoting correctly, but the
+refrain was: &quot;Follow the Light!&quot; I have so often had it in mind when
+I've been planning my color schemes&mdash;&quot;Follow the Light!&quot; But light
+colors for sunshine, remember, and dark ones for shadow.</p>
+
+<p>For north rooms I am strongly inclined to the use of paneling in our
+native American woods, that are so rich in effect, but alas, so little
+used. I hope our architects will soon realize what delightful and
+inexpensive rooms can be made of pine and cherry, chestnut and cypress,
+and the beautiful California redwood. I know of a library paneled with
+cypress. The beamed ceiling, the paneled walls, the built-in shelves,
+the ample chairs and long tables are all of the soft brown cypress.
+Here, if anywhere, you would think a monotony of brown wood would be
+obvious, but think of the thousands of books with brilliant bindings!
+Think of the green branches of trees seen through the casement windows!
+Think of the huge, red-brick fireplace, with its logs blazing in orange
+and yellow and vermillion flame! Think of the distinction of a copper
+bowl of yellow flowers on the long brown table! Can't you see that this
+cypress room is simply glowing with color?</p>
+
+<p>I wish that I might be able to show all you young married girls who are
+working out your home-schemes just how to work out the color of a room.
+Suppose you are given some rare and lovely jar, or a wee rug, or a rare
+old print, or even a quaint old chair from long <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" />ago, and build a room
+around it. I have some such point of interest in every room I build, and
+I think that is why some people like my rooms&mdash;they feel, without quite
+knowing why, that I have loved them while making them. Now there is a
+little sitting-room and bedroom combined in a certain New York house
+that I worked out from a pair of Chinese jars. They were the oddest
+things, of a sort of blue-green and mauve and mulberry, with flecks of
+black, on a cream porcelain ground.</p>
+
+<p>First I found a wee Oriental rug that repeated the colors of the jugs.
+This was to go before the hearth. Then I worked out the shell of the
+room: the woodwork white, the walls bluish green, the plain carpet a
+soft green. I designed the furniture and had it made by a skilful
+carpenter, for I could find none that would harmonize with the room.</p>
+
+<p>The day bed which is forty-two inches wide, is built like a wide roomy
+sofa. One would never suspect it of being a plain bed. Still it makes no
+pretensions to anything else, for it has the best of springs and the
+most comfortable of mattresses, and a dozen soft pillows. The bed is of
+wood and is painted a soft green, with a dark-green line running all
+around, and little painted festoons of flowers in decoration. The
+mattress and springs are covered with a most delightful mauve chintz, on
+which birds and flowers are patterned. There are several easy chairs
+cushioned with this chintz, and the window hangings are also of it.<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" /> The
+chest of drawers is painted in the same manner. There are glass knobs on
+the drawers, and a sheet of plate glass covers the top of it. An old
+painting hangs above it.</p>
+
+<p>The open bookshelves are perfectly plain in construction. They are
+painted the same bluish-green, and the only decoration is the line of
+dark green about half an inch from the edge. Any woman who is skilful
+with her brush could decorate furniture of this kind, and I daresay many
+women could build it.</p>
+
+<p>There is another bedroom in this house, a room in red and blue. &quot;Red and
+blue&quot;&mdash;you shudder. I know it! But <i>such</i> red and <i>such</i> blue!</p>
+
+<p>Will you believe me when I assure you that this room is called cool and
+restful-looking by everyone who sees it? The walls are painted plain
+cream. The woodwork is white. The perfectly plain carpet rug is of a
+dull red that is the color of an old-fashioned rose&mdash;you know the roses
+that become lavender when they fade? The mantel is of Siena marble, and
+over it there is an old mirror with an upper panel painted in colors
+after the manner of some of those delightful old rooms found in France
+about the time of Louis XVI. If you have one very good picture and will
+use it in this way, inset over the mantel with a mirror below it, you
+will need no other pictures in your room.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0341" id="h0341"></a>
+<img src="images/h0341.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM"
+title="THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The chintz used in this room is patterned in the rose red of the carpet
+and a dull cool blue, on a white <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" /><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" /><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />ground. This chintz is used on the
+graceful sofa, the several chairs and the bed, which are ivory in tone.
+The hangings of the bed are lined with taffetas of rose red. The
+bedcover is of the same silk, and the inner curtains at the window are
+lined with it. The small table at the head of the bed, the kidney table
+beside the sofa, and the small cabinets near the mantel, are of
+mahogany. There is a mahogany writing-table placed at right angles to
+the windows.</p>
+
+<p>From this rose and blue bedroom you enter a little dressing-room that is
+also full of color. Here are the same cream walls, the dull red carpet,
+the old blue silk shades on lamps and candles, but the chintz is
+different: the ground is black, and gray parrots and paroquets swing in
+blue-green festoons of leaves and branches. The dressing-table is placed
+in front of the window, so that you can see yourself for better or for
+worse. There is a three-fold mirror of black and gold lacquer, and a
+Chinese cabinet of the same lacquer in the corner. The low seat before
+the dressing-table is covered with the chintz. A few costume prints hang
+on the wall. You can imagine how impossible it would be to be
+ill-tempered in such a cheerful place.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII" /><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />VII</h2>
+
+<h2>OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>What a sense of intimacy, of security, encompasses one when ushered into
+a living room in which the door opens and <i>closes</i>! Who that has read
+Henry James's remarkable article on the vistas dear to the American
+hostess, our portiere-hung spaces, guiltless of doors and open to every
+draft, can fail to feel how much better our conversation might be were
+we not forever conscious that between our guests and the greedy ears of
+our servants there is nothing but a curtain! All that curtains ever were
+used for in the Eighteenth Century was as a means of shutting out drafts
+in large rooms inadequately heated by wood fires.</p>
+
+<p>How often do we see masses of draperies looped back and arranged with
+elaborate dust-catching tassels and fringes that mean nothing. These
+curtains do not even draw! I am sure that a good, well-designed door
+with a simple box-lock and hinges would be much less costly than velvet
+hangings. A door is not an ugly object, to be concealed for very shame,
+but a fine architectural detail of great value. Consider the French and
+Italian doors with their architraves.<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" /> How fine they are, how imposing,
+how honest, and how well they compose!</p>
+
+<p>Of course, if your house has been built with open archways, you will
+need heavy curtains for them, but there are curtains <i>and</i> curtains. If
+you need portieres at all, you need them to cut off one room from
+another, and so they should hang in straight folds. They should be just
+what they pretend to be&mdash;honest curtains with a duty to fulfil. For the
+simple house they may be made of velvet or velveteen in some neutral
+tone that is in harmony with the rugs and furnishings of the rooms that
+are to be divided. They should be double, usually, and a faded gilt gimp
+may be used as an outline or as a binding. There are also excellent
+fabrics reproducing old brocades and even old tapestries, but it is well
+to be careful about using these fabrics. There are machine-made
+&quot;tapestries&quot; of foliage designs in soft greens and tans and browns on a
+dark blue ground that are very pleasing. Many of these stuffs copy in
+color and design the verdure tapestries, and some of them have fine
+blues and greens suggestive of Gobelin. These stuffs are very wide and
+comparatively inexpensive. I thoroughly advise a stuff of this kind, but
+I heartily condemn the imitations of the old tapestries that are covered
+with large figures and intricate designs. These old tapestries are as
+distinguished for their colors, their textures, and their very crudities
+as for their supreme beauty of coloring. It would be foolish to imitate
+them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" /></p>
+
+<p>As for windows and their curtains&mdash;I could write a book about them! A
+window is such a gay, animate thing. By day it should be full of
+sunshine, and if it frames a view worth seeing, the view should be a
+part of it. By night the window should be hidden by soft curtains that
+have been drawn to the side during the sunshiny hours.</p>
+
+<p>In most houses there is somewhere a group of windows that calls for an
+especial kind of curtain. If these windows look out over a pleasant
+garden, or upon a vista of fields and trees, or even upon a striking
+sky-line of housetops, you will be wise to use a thin, sheer glass
+curtain through which you can look out, but which protects you from the
+gaze of passers-by. If your group of windows is so placed that there is
+no danger of people passing and looking in, then a short sash curtain of
+swiss muslin is all that you require, with inside curtains of some
+heavier fabric&mdash;chintz or linen or silk&mdash;that can be drawn at night.</p>
+
+<p>If you are building a new house I strongly advise you to have at least
+one room with a group of deep windows, made up of small panes of leaded
+glass, and a broad window-seat built beneath them. There is something so
+pleasant and mellow in leaded glass, particularly when the glass itself
+has an uneven, colorful quality. When windows are treated thus
+architecturally they need no glass curtains. They need only side
+curtains of some deep-toned fabric.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0342" id="h0342"></a>
+<img src="images/h0342.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM"
+title="BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>As for your single windows, when you are planning <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" /><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" /><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />them you will be
+wise to have the sashes so placed that a broad sill will be possible.
+There is nothing pleasanter than a broad window sill at a convenient
+height from the floor. The tendency of American builders nowadays is to
+use two large glass sashes instead of the small or medium-sized panes of
+older times.</p>
+
+<p>This is very bad from the standpoint of the architect, because these
+huge squares of glass suggest holes in the wall, whereas the square or
+oblong panes with their straight frames and bars advertise their
+suitability. The housewife's objection to small panes is that they are
+harder to clean than the large ones, but this objection is not worthy of
+consideration. If we really wish to make our houses look as if they were
+built for permanency we should consider everything that makes for beauty
+and harmony and hominess. There is nothing more interesting than a
+cottage window sash of small square panes of glass unless it be the
+diamond-paned casement window of an old English house. Such windows are
+obviously windows. The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so
+proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small
+houses.</p>
+
+<p>I remember seeing one plate glass window that was well worth while. It
+was in the mountain studio of an artist and it was fully eight by ten
+feet&mdash;one unbroken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista of
+mountain and valley. It goes without saying that <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />such a window requires
+no curtain other than one that is to be drawn at night.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal treatment for the ordinary single window is a soft curtain of
+some thin white stuff hung flat and full against the glass. This curtain
+should have an inch and a half hem at the bottom and a narrow hem at the
+sides. It should be strung on a small brass rod, and should be placed as
+close to the glass as possible, leaving just enough space for the window
+shade beneath it. The curtain should hang in straight folds to the
+window sill, escaping it by half an inch or so.</p>
+
+<p>I hope it is not necessary for me to go into the matter of lace curtains
+here. I feel sure that no woman of really good taste could prefer a
+cheap curtain of imitation lace to a simple one of white swiss-muslin. I
+have never seen a house room that was too fine for a swiss-muslin
+curtain, though of course there are many rooms that would welcome no
+curtains whatever wherein the windows are their own excuse for being.
+Lace curtains, even if they may have cost a king's ransom, are in
+questionable taste, to put it mildly. Use all the lace you wish on your
+bed linen and table linen, but do not hang it up at your windows for
+passers-by to criticize.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0343" id="h0343"></a>
+<img src="images/h0343.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK"
+title="PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK" />
+<p class="center"><b>PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Many women do not feel the need of inside curtains. Indeed, they are not
+necessary in all houses. They are very attractive when they are well
+hung, and they give the window a distinction and a decorative charm that
+is very valuable. I am using many photographs that <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" /><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" /><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />show the use of
+inside curtains. You will observe that all of these windows have glass
+curtains of plain white muslin, no matter what the inside curtain may
+be.</p>
+
+<p>Chintz curtains are often hung with a valance about ten or twelve inches
+deep across the top of the window. These valances should be strung on a
+separate rod, so that the inside curtains may be pulled together if need
+be. The ruffled valance is more suitable for summer cottages and
+bedrooms than for more formal rooms. A fitted valance of chintz or
+brocade is quite dignified enough for a drawing-room or any other.</p>
+
+<p>In my bedroom I have used a printed linen with a flat valance. This
+printed linen is in soft tones of rose and green on a cream ground. The
+side curtains have a narrow fluted binding of rose-colored silk. Under
+these curtains are still other curtains of rose-colored shot silk, and
+beneath those are white muslin glass curtains. With such a window
+treatment the shot silk curtains are the ones that are drawn together at
+night, making a very soft, comforting sort of color arrangement. You
+will observe in this photograph that the panels between doors and
+windows are filled with mirrors that run the full length from the
+molding to the baseboard. This is a very beautiful setting for the
+windows, of course.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to remember that glass curtains should not be looped back.
+Inside curtains may be looped when there is no illogical break in the
+line. It is absurd to hang up curtains against the glass and then <a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />draw
+them away, for glass curtains are supposed to be a protection from the
+gaze of the passers-by. If you haven't passers-by you can pull your
+curtains to the side so that you may enjoy the out-of-doors. Do not lose
+sight of the fact that your windows are supposed to give you sunshine
+and air; if you drape them so that you get neither sunshine nor air you
+might as well block them up and do away with them entirely.</p>
+
+<p>To me the most amazing evidence of the advance of good taste is the
+revival of chintzes, printed linens, cottons and so forth, of the
+Eighteenth Century. Ten years ago it was almost impossible to find a
+well-designed cretonne; the beautiful chintzes as we know them were
+unknown. Now there are literally thousands of these excellent fabrics of
+old and new designs in the shops. The gay designs of the printed cottons
+that came to us from East India, a hundred years ago, and the fantastic
+chintzes known as Chinese Chippendale, that were in vogue when the Dutch
+East India Company supplied the world with its china and fabrics; the
+dainty French <i>toiles de Jouy</i> that are reminiscent of Marie Antoinette
+and her bewitching apartments, and the printed linens of old England and
+later ones of the England of William Morris, all these are at our
+service. There are charming cottons to be had at as little as twenty
+cents a yard, printed from old patterns. There are linens hand-printed
+from old blocks that rival cut velvet in their lustrous color effect and
+cost almost as much. There are amazing fabrics <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />that seem to have come
+from the land of the Arabian nights&mdash;they really come from Austria and
+are dubbed &quot;Futurist&quot; and &quot;Cubist&quot; and such. Some of them are inspiring,
+some of them are horrifying, but all of them are interesting. Old-time
+chintzes were usually very narrow, and light in ground, but the modern
+chintz is forty or fifty inches wide, with a ground of neutral tone that
+gives it distinction, and defies dust.</p>
+
+<p>When I began my work as a decorator of houses, my friends, astonished
+and just a little amused at my persistent use of chintz, called me the
+&quot;Chintz decorator.&quot; The title pleased me, even though it was bestowed in
+fun, for my theory has always been that chintz, when properly used, is
+the most decorative and satisfactory of all fabrics. At first people
+objected to my bringing chintz into their houses because they had an
+idea it was poor and mean, and rather a doubtful expedient. On the
+contrary, I feel that it is infinitely, better to use good chintzes than
+inferior silks and damasks, just as simple engravings and prints are
+preferable to doubtful paintings. The effect is the thing!</p>
+
+<p>One of the chief objections to the charming fabric was that people felt
+it would become soiled easily, and would often have to be renewed, but
+in our vacuum-cleaned houses we no longer feel that it is necessary to
+have furniture and hangings that will &quot;conceal dirt.&quot; We refuse to
+<i>have</i> dirt! Of course, chintzes in rooms that will have hard wear
+should be carefully <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />selected. They should be printed on linen, or some
+hard twilled fabric, and the ground color should be darker than when
+they are to be used in bedrooms. Many of the newer chintzes have dark
+grounds of blue, mauve, maroon or gray, and a still more recent chintz
+has a black ground with fantastic designs of the most delightful
+colorings. The black chintzes are reproductions of fabrics that were in
+vogue in 1830. They are very good in rooms that must be used a great
+deal, and they are very decorative. Some of them suggest old cut
+velvets&mdash;they are so soft and lustrous.</p>
+
+<p>My greatest difficulty in introducing chintzes here was to convert women
+who loved their plush and satin draperies to a simpler fabric. They were
+unwilling to give up the glories they knew for the charms they knew not.
+I convinced them by showing them results! My first large commission was
+the Colony Club, and I used chintzes throughout the Club: Chintzes of
+cool grapes and leaves in the roof garden, hand-blocked linens of many
+soft colors in the reading-room, rose-sprigged and English posy designs
+in the bedrooms, and so on throughout the building.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am using more chintz than anything else. It is as much at home in
+the New York drawing-room as in the country cottage. I can think of
+nothing more charming for a room in a country house than a sitting-room
+furnished with gray painted furniture and a lovely chintz.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0344" id="h0344"></a>
+<img src="images/h0344.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK"
+title="STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK" />
+<p class="center"><b>STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Not long ago I was asked to furnish a small sea-<a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" /><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" /><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />shore cottage. The
+whole thing had to be done in a month, and the only plan I had to work
+on was a batch of chintz samples that had been selected for the house. I
+extracted the colorings of walls, woodwork, furniture, etc., from these
+chintzes. Instead of buying new furniture I dragged down a lot of old
+things that had been relegated to the attic and painted them with a dull
+ground color and small designs adapted from the chintzes. The lighting
+fixtures, wall brackets, candle sticks, etc.&mdash;were of carved wood,
+painted in polychrome to match the general scheme. One chintz in
+particular I would like to have every woman see and enjoy. It had a
+ground of old blue, patterned regularly with little Persian &quot;pears,&quot; the
+old rug design, you know. The effect of this simple chintz with white
+painted walls and furniture and woodwork and crisp white muslin glass
+curtains was delicious.</p>
+
+<p>The most satisfactory of all chintzes is the <i>Toile de Jouy</i>. The
+designs are interesting and well drawn, and very much more decorative
+than the designs one finds in ordinary silks and other materials. The
+chintzes must be appropriate to the uses of the room, well designed, in
+scale with the height of the ceilings, and so forth. It is well to
+remember that self-color rugs are most effective in chintz rooms. Wilton
+rugs woven in carpet sizes are to be had now at all first class
+furniture stores.</p>
+
+<p>Painted furniture is very popular nowadays and is especially delightful
+when used in chintz rooms. The <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />furniture we see now is really a revival
+and reproduction of the old models made by Angelica Kaufman,
+Heppelwhite, and other furniture-makers of their period. The old
+furniture is rarely seen outside of museums nowadays, but it has been an
+inspiration to modern decorators who are seeking ideas for simple and
+charming furniture.</p>
+
+<p>A very attractive room can be made by taking unfinished pieces of
+furniture&mdash;that is, furniture that has not been stained or painted&mdash;and
+painting them a soft field color, and then adding decorations of
+bouquets or garlands, or birds, or baskets, reproducing parts of the
+design of the chintz used in the room. Of course, many of these patterns
+could be copied by a good draftsman only, but others are simple enough
+for anyone to attempt. For instance, I decorated a room in soft cream,
+gray, yellow and cornflower blue. The chintz had a cornflower design
+that repeated all these colors. I painted the furniture a very soft
+gray, and then painted little garlands of cornflowers in soft blues and
+gray-greens on each piece of furniture. The walls were painted a soft
+cream color. The carpet rug of tan was woven in one piece with a blue
+stripe in the border.</p>
+
+<p>The color illustrations of this book will give you a very good idea of
+how I use chintzes and painted furniture. One of the illustrations shows
+the use of a black chintz in the dressing-room of a city house. The
+chintz is covered with parrots which make gorgeous <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />splashes of color on
+the black ground. The color of the foliage and leaves is greenish-blue,
+which shades into a dozen blues and greens. This greenish-blue tone has
+been used in the small things of the room. The chintz curtains are lined
+with silk of this tone, and the valance at the top of the group of
+windows is finished with a narrow silk fringe of this greenish-blue. The
+small candle shades, the shirred shade of the drop-light, and the
+cushion of the black lacquer chair are also of this blue.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the room are a deep cream in tone, and there are a number
+of old French prints from some Eighteenth Century fashion journals hung
+on the cream ground. The dressing-table is placed against the windows,
+over the radiator, so that there is light and to spare for dressing.
+Half curtains of white muslin are shirred on the sashes back of the
+dressing-table. The quaint triplicate mirror is of black lacquer
+decorated with Chinese figures in gold, and the little, three-cornered
+cabinet in the corner is also of black and gold. The chintz is used as a
+covering for the dressing-seat.</p>
+
+<p>Another illustration shows the writing-corner of the bedroom which leads
+into this dressing-room. The walls and the rose-red carpet are the same
+in both rooms, as you see. This bedroom depends absolutely on the rose
+and blue chintz for its decoration. There is a quaint bed painted a pale
+gray, with rose-red taffeta coverlet. The bed curtains are of the chintz
+<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />lined with the rose-red silk. There are several white-enamel chairs
+upholstered with the chintz, and there is a comfortable French couch
+with a kidney table of mahogany beside it. The corner of the room shown
+in the illustration is the most convenient writing-place. The desk is
+placed at right angles to the wall between the two windows. The small
+furnishings of the writing-desk repeat the queer blues and the rose-red
+of the chintz. A very comfortable stool with a cushion of old velvet is
+an added convenience.</p>
+
+<p>The chintz curtains at the windows hang in straight, full folds. A flat
+valance, cut the length of the design of the chintz, furnishes the top
+of the two windows. Some windows do not need these valances, but these
+windows are very high and need the connecting line of color. The long
+curtains are lined with the rose-red silk, which also shows in a narrow
+piping around the edges.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0345" id="h0345"></a>
+<img src="images/h0345.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE"
+title="MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The other two color illustrations are of the most popular room I have
+done, a bedroom and sitting room combined. Everyone likes the color plan
+of soft greens, mauve and lavender. There is a large day bed of painted
+wood, with mattress, springs and cushions covered with a chintz of mauve
+ground and gay birds. The rug is a self-toned rug of very soft green,
+and the walls are tinted with the palest of greens. The woodwork is
+white, and the furniture is painted a greenish-gray that is just a
+little deeper than pearl. A darker green line of paint outlines all
+<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" /><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" /><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" />the furniture, which is further decorated with prim little garlands
+of flowers painted in dull rose, blue, yellow and green.</p>
+
+<p>The mauve chintz is used for the curtains, and for the huge armchair and
+one or two painted chairs. There is a little footstool covered with
+brocaded violet velvet, with just a thread of green showing on the
+background. The lighting fixtures are of carved wood, painted in soft
+colors to match the garlands on the furniture, with shirred shades of
+lavender silk. Two lamps made of quaint old green jars with lavender
+decorations have shirred shades of the same silk. One of these lamps is
+used on the writing-table and the other on the little chest of drawers.</p>
+
+<p>This little chest of drawers, by the way, is about the simplest piece of
+furniture I can think of, for any girl who can use her brushes at all.
+An ordinary chest of drawers should be given several coats of
+paint&mdash;pale yellow, green or blue, as may be preferred. Then a thin
+stripe of a darker tone should be painted on it. This should be outlined
+in pencil and then painted with a deeper tone of green color; for
+instance, an orange or brown stripe should be used on pale yellow, and
+dark green or blue on the pale green.</p>
+
+<p>A detail of the wall paper or the chintz design may be outlined on the
+panels of the drawers and on the top of the chest by means of a stencil,
+and then painted with rather soft colors. The top of the chest should be
+covered with a piece of plate glass which will have <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />the advantage of
+showing the design of the cover and of being easily cleaned.
+Old-fashioned glass knobs add interest to this piece of furniture. A
+mirror with a gilt frame, or an unframed painting similar to the one
+shown in the illustration would be very nice above the chest of drawers.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" /><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0346" id="h0346"></a>
+<img src="images/h0346.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED IN A DRAWING-ROOM"
+title="HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED IN A DRAWING-ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED IN A DRAWING-ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII" /><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />VIII</h2>
+
+<h2>THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>In all the equipment of the modern house, I think there is nothing more
+difficult than the problem of artificial light. To have the light
+properly distributed so that the rooms may be suffused with just the
+proper glow, but never a glare; so that the base outlets for
+reading-lamps shall be at convenient angles, so that the wall lights
+shall be beautifully balanced,&mdash;all this means prodigious thought and
+care before the actual placing of the lights is accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>In domestic architecture light is usually provided for some special
+function; to dress by, to read by, or to eat by. If properly considered,
+there is no reason why one's lighting fixtures should not be beautiful
+as well as utilitarian. However, it is seldom indeed that one finds
+lights that serve the purposes of utility and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>I have rarely, I might say never, gone into a builder's house (and
+indeed I might say the same of many architects' houses) but that the
+first things to require changing to make the house amenable to modern
+American needs were the openings for lighting fixtures. Usually, side
+openings are placed much too near the trim of a door or window, so that
+no self-<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />respecting bracket can be placed in the space without
+encroaching on the molding. Another favorite mistake is to place the two
+wall openings in a long wall or large panel so close together that no
+large picture or mirror or piece of furniture can be placed against that
+wall. There is also the tendency to place the openings too high, which
+always spoils a good room.</p>
+
+<p>I strongly advise the woman who is having a house built or re-arranged
+to lay out her electric light plan as early in the game as possible,
+with due consideration to the uses of each room. If there is a high
+chest of drawers for a certain wall, the size of it is just as important
+in planning the lighting fixtures for that wall as is the width of the
+fireplace important in the placing of the lights on the chimney-breast.
+I advise putting a liberal number of base openings in a room, for it
+costs little when the room is in embryo. Later on, when you find you can
+change your favorite table and chair to a better position to meet the
+inspiration of the completed room and that your reading-lamp can be
+moved, too, because the outlet is there ready for it, will come the
+compensating moments when you congratulate yourself on forethought.</p>
+
+<p>There are now, fortunately, few communities in America that have not
+electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a
+thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for
+years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the
+smaller the town the cheaper <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />is the cost of electricity. This is not a
+cut-and-dried statement, but an observation from personal experience.
+The little town's electricity is usually a byproduct of some
+manufacturing plant, and current is often sold at so much per light per
+month, instead of being measured by meter. It is pleasant to think that
+many homes have bridged the smelly gap between candles and electricity
+in this magic fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Gas light is more difficult to manage than electricity, for there is
+always the cumbersome tube and the necessity for adding mechanical
+accessories before a good clear light is secured. Gas lamps are hideous,
+for some obscure reason, whereas there are hundreds of simple and
+excellent wall fixtures, drop lights and reading lamps to be bought
+already equipped for electricity. The electric wire is such an
+unobtrusive thing that it can be carried through a small hole in any
+good vase, or jar, and with a suitable shade you have an attractive and
+serviceable reading light. Candlesticks are easily equipped for
+electricity and are the most graceful of all fixtures for
+dressing-tables, bedside tables, tea tables, and such.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to remember that if a room is decorated in dark colors the
+light will be more readily absorbed than in a light-colored room, and
+you should select and place your lighting-fixtures accordingly. Bead
+covers, fringes and silk shades all obscure the light and re-absorb it,
+and so require a great force of light to illuminate properly.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" /></p>
+
+<p>The subject of the selection of lighting-fixtures is limitless. There
+are so many fixtures to be had nowadays&mdash;good, bad and indifferent&mdash;that
+it were impossible to point out the merits and demerits of them all.
+There are copies of all the best lamps and lanterns of old Europe and
+many new designs that grew out of modern American needs. There are Louis
+XVI lanterns simple enough to fit well into many an American hallway,
+that offer excellent lessons in the simplicity of the master decorators
+of old times. Contrast one of these fine old lanterns with the mass of
+colored glass and beads and crude lines and curves of many modern hall
+lanterns. I like a ceiling bowl of crystal or alabaster with lights
+inside, for halls, but the expense of such a bowl is great. However, I
+recently saw a reproduction of an old alabaster bowl made of soft,
+cloudy glass, not of alabaster, which sold at a fraction of the price of
+the original, and it seemed to meet all the requirements.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, one may easily spend as much money on lighting-fixtures as on
+the remainder of the house, but that is no reason why people who must
+practise economy should admit ugly fixtures into their homes. There are
+always good and bad fixtures offered at the lowest and highest prices.
+You have no defense if you build your own house. If you are making the
+best of a rented house or an apartment, that is different. But good
+taste is sufficient armor against the snare of gaudy beads and cheap
+glass.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0347" id="h0347"></a>
+<img src="images/h0347.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT METAL"
+title="DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT METAL" />
+<p class="center"><b>DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT METAL</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" /><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" /></p>
+
+<p>There was recently an exhibition in New York of the craftsmanship of
+the students of a certain school of design. There were some really
+beautiful lanterns and wall brackets and reading lamps shown, designed
+and executed by young women who are self supporting by day and can give
+only a few evening hours, or an occasional day, to the pursuit of their
+avocation. One hanging lantern of terra cotta was very fine indeed, and
+there were many notable fixtures. There must be easily tens of thousands
+of young people who are students in the various schools of design,
+manual training high schools and normal art schools.</p>
+
+<p>Why doesn't some far-seeing manufacturer of lighting-fixtures give these
+young people a chance to adapt the fine old French and Italian designs
+to our modern needs? Why not have your daughter or son copy such an
+object that has use and beauty, instead of encouraging the daubing of
+china or the piercing of brass that leads to nothing? And if you haven't
+a daughter or son, encourage the young artisan, your neighbor, who is
+trying to &quot;find himself.&quot; Let him copy a few good old fixtures for you.
+They will cost no more than the gaudy vulgar fixtures that are sold in
+so many shops.</p>
+
+<p>The photograph shown on page 108 illustrates the possibility of using a
+number of lighting-fixtures in one room. The room shown is my own
+drawing-room. You will observe that in this picture there are many
+different lights. The two old French fixtures <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />of wrought gilt, which
+flank the mantel mirror, hold wax candles. The two easy chairs have
+little tables beside them holding three-pronged silver candlesticks.
+There is also a small table holding an electric reading-lamp, made of a
+Chinese jar, with a shade of shirred silk. The chandelier is a charming
+old French affair of gracefully strung crystal globules. For a formal
+occasion the chandelier is lighted, but when we are few, we love the
+fire glow and candlelight. If we require a stronger light for reading
+there is the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>The photograph here given may suggest a superfluous number of lights,
+but the room itself does not. The wall fixtures are of gilt, you see,
+the candlesticks of silver, the chandelier of crystal and the lamp of
+Chinese porcelain and soft colored silk; so one is not conscious of the
+many lights. If all the lights were screened in the same way the effect
+would be different. I use this picture for this very reason&mdash;to show how
+many lights may be assembled and used in one place. In considering the
+placing of these lights, the firelight was not forgotten, nor the effect
+of the room by day when the sunlight floods in and these many fixtures
+become objects of decorative interest.</p>
+
+<p>A lamp, or a wall fixture, or a chandelier, or a candlestick, must be
+beautiful in itself&mdash;beautiful by sunlight,&mdash;if it is really successful.
+The soft glow of night light may make commonplace things beautiful, but
+the final test of a fixture is its effect in relation to the other
+furnishings of the room in sunlight.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" /><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0348" id="h0348"></a>
+<img src="images/h0348.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS"
+title="LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS" />
+<p class="center"><b>LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" /></p>
+
+<p>The picture on page 118 shows the proper placing of wall fixtures when
+a large picture is the chief point of interest. These wall fixtures are
+particularly interesting because they are in the style of the Adam
+mirrors that hang on the recessed wall spaces flanking the chimney wall.
+This photograph is a lesson in the placing of objects of art. The large
+painting is beautifully spaced between the line of the mantel shelf and
+the lower line of the cornice. The wall fixtures are correctly placed,
+and anyone can see why they would be distressingly out of key if they
+were nearer the picture, or nearer the line of the chimney wall. The
+picture was considered as an important part of the chimney-piece before
+the openings for the fixtures were made.</p>
+
+<p>Another good lamp is shown on the small table in this picture. There is
+really a reading-lamp beside a comfortable couch, which cannot be seen
+in the picture. This lamp, like the one in the drawing-room, is made
+from a porcelain vase, with a shirred silk shade on a wire frame. An
+electric light cord is run through a hole bored for it. If electricity
+were not available, an oil receptacle of brass could be fitted into the
+vase and the beauty of the lamp would be the same.</p>
+
+<p>There are so many possibilities for making beautiful lamps of good jars
+and vases that it is surprising the shops still sell their frightful
+lamps covered with cabbage roses and dragons and monstrosities. A <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />blue
+and white ginger jar, a copper loving-cup, or even a homely brown
+earthenware bean-pot, will make a good bowl for an oil or electric lamp,
+but of the dreadful bowls sold in the shops for the purpose the less
+said the better. How can one see beauty in a lurid bowl and shade of red
+glass! Better stick to wax candles the rest of your life than indulge in
+such a lamp!</p>
+
+<p>I know people plead that they have to buy what is offered; they cannot
+find simple lamps and hanging lanterns at small prices and so they
+<i>must</i> buy bad ones. The manufacturer makes just the objects that people
+demand. So long as you accept these things, just so long will he make
+them. If all the women who complain about the hideous lighting-fixtures
+that are sold were to refuse absolutely to buy them, a few years would
+show a revolution in the designing of these things.</p>
+
+<p>There has been of late a vulgar fashion of having a huge mass of colored
+glass and beads suspended from near-brass chains in the dining-rooms of
+certain apartments and houses. These monstrous things are called
+&quot;domes&quot;&mdash;no one knows why. For the price of one of them you could buy a
+three pronged candlestick, equipped for electricity, for your
+dining-room table. It is the sight of hundreds of these dreadful &quot;domes&quot;
+in the lamp shops that gives one a feeling of discouragement. The
+humblest kitchen lamp of brass and tin would be beautiful by contrast.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" /></p>
+
+<p>When all is said and done, we must come back to wax candles for the
+most beautiful light of all. Electricity is the most efficient, but
+candlelight is the most satisfying. For a drawing-room, or any formal
+room where a clear light is not required, wax candles are perfect. There
+are still a few houses left where candlesticks are things of use and are
+not banished to the shelves as curiosities. Certainly the clear, white
+light of electricity seems heaven-sent when one is dressing or working,
+but for between-hours, for the brief periods of rest, the only thing
+that rivals the comfort of candlelight is the glow of an open fire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX" /><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />IX</h2>
+
+<h2>HALLS AND STAIRCASES</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>In early days the hall was the large formal room in which the main
+business of the house was transacted. It played the part of court-room,
+with the lord of the manor as judge. It was used for dining, living, and
+for whatever entertainment the house afforded. The stairs were not a
+part of it: they found a place as best they could. From the times of the
+primitive ladder of the adobe dwelling to the days of the spiral
+staircase carried up in the thickness of the wall, the stairway was
+always a primitive affair, born of necessity, with little claim to
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>With the Renaissance in Italy came the forerunner of the modern entrance
+hall, with its accompanying stair. Considerations of comfort and beauty
+began to be observed. The Italian staircase grew into a magnificent
+affair, &quot;L'escalier d'honneur,&quot; and often led only to the open galleries
+and <i>salons de parade</i> of the next floor. I think the finest staircases
+in all the world are in the Genoese palaces. The grand staircase of the
+Renaissance may still be seen in many fine Italian palaces, notably in
+the Bargello in Florence. This staircase has been splendidly reproduced
+by Mrs.<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" /> Gardner in Fenway Court, her Italian palace in Boston. This
+house is, by the way, the finest thing of its kind in America. Mrs.
+Gardner has the same far-seeing interest in the furtherance of an
+American appreciation of art as had the late Pierpont Morgan. She has
+assembled a magnificent collection of objects of art, and she opens her
+house to the public occasionally and to artists and designers
+frequently, that they may have the advantage of studying the treasures.</p>
+
+<p>To return to our staircases: In France the intermural, or spiral,
+staircase was considered quite splendid enough for all human needs, and
+in the finest ch&acirc;teaux of the French Renaissance one finds these
+practical staircases. Possibly in those troublous times the French
+architects planned for an aristocracy living under the influence of an
+inherited tradition of treachery and violence, they felt more secure in
+the isolation and ready command of a small, narrow staircase where one
+man well nigh single-handed could keep an army at bay. A large wide
+staircase of easy ascent might have meant many uneasy moments, with
+plots without and treachery within.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, however, the old feudal entrance gave way to its
+sub-divisions of guardroom, vestibule, and salon. England was last to
+capitulate, and in the great Tudor houses still extant one finds the
+entrance door opening directly into the Hall. Often in these English
+houses there was a screen of very beautiful carved wood, behind which
+was the staircase. Inigo<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" /> Jones introduced the Palladian style into
+England, and so brought in the many-storied central salon which served
+as means of access to all the house. The old English halls and
+staircases designed by Inigo Jones would be perfect for our more
+elaborate American country houses. The severe beauty of English paneling
+and the carving of newel-post and spindles are having a just revival.
+The pendulum swings&mdash;and there is nothing new under the sun!</p>
+
+<p>Wooden staircases with carved wooden balustrades were used oftenest in
+England, while in the French ch&acirc;teaux marble stairs with wrought-iron
+stair-rails are generally found. The perfection to which the art of iron
+work may be carried is familiar to everyone who knows the fairy-like
+iron work of Jean L'Amour in the Stanislas Palace at Nancy. This
+staircase in the H&ocirc;tel de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France
+you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects.
+Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work
+door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this
+work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century.
+The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath
+their dignity and talent to devote themselves to designing the knobs of
+doors, the handles of commodes, the bronzes for the decorations of
+fireplaces, the shaping of hinges and locks. They were careful of
+details, and that is the secret of their supremacy. Nowadays, <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />we may
+find a house with a beautiful hall, but the chances are it is spoiled by
+crudely designed fittings.</p>
+
+<p>I have written somewhat at length of the magnificent staircases of older
+countries and older times than our own, because somehow the subject is
+one that cannot be considered apart from its beginnings. All our halls
+and stairs, pretentious or not, have come to us from these superb
+efforts of masterly workmen, and perhaps that is why we feel
+instinctively that they must suggest a certain formality, and restraint.
+This feeling is indirectly a tribute to the architects who gave us such
+notable examples.</p>
+
+<p>We do not, however, have to go abroad for historic examples of stately
+halls and stairs. There are fine old houses scattered all through the
+old thirteen states that cannot be surpassed for dignity and simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>One of the best halls in America is that of &quot;Westover,&quot; probably the
+most famous house in Virginia. This old house was built in 1737 by
+Colonel Byrd on the James River, where so many of the Colonial
+aristocrats of Virginia made their homes. The plan of the hall is
+suggestive of an old English manor house. The walls are beautifully
+paneled from an old English plan. The turned balusters are
+representative of the late Seventeenth or early Eighteenth Century. The
+fine old Jacobean chairs and tables have weathered two centuries, and
+are friendly to their new neighbors, Oriental rugs older than
+themselves. The staircase has two landings, on the first <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />of which
+stands an old Grandfather's-clock, marking the beginning of a custom
+that obtains to this day.</p>
+
+<p>This hall is characteristic of American houses of the Colonial period,
+and indeed of the average large country house of to-day, for the
+straightaway hall, cutting the house squarely in two, is so much a part
+of our architecture that we use it as a standard. It is to be found,
+somewhat narrower and lower of ceiling, in New England farmhouses and in
+Eastern city houses. The Southern house of ante-bellum days varied the
+stair occasionally by patterning the magnificent winding staircases of
+old England, but the long hall open at both ends, and the long stair,
+with one or two landings, is characteristic of all old American houses.</p>
+
+<p>The customary finish for these old halls was a landscape wall paper, a
+painted wall broken into panels by molding, a high white wainscoting
+with white plaster above, or possibly a gay figured paper of
+questionable beauty. Mahogany furniture was characteristic of all these
+halls&mdash;a grandfather's-clock, a turn-top table, a number of dignified
+chairs, and a quaint old mirror. Sometimes there was a fireplace, but
+oftener there were doors opening evenly into various rooms of the first
+floor. These things are irreproachable to-day. Why did we have to go
+through the period of the walnut hat-rack and shiny oak hall furniture,
+only to return to our simplicities?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0349" id="h0349"></a>
+<img src="images/h0349.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE"
+title="THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>When I planned the main hall of the Colony Club I determined to make it
+very Colonial, very American, <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" /><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" /><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />very inviting and comfortable, the sort
+of hall you like to remember having seen in an old Virginia house. One
+enters from the street into a narrow hall that soon broadens into a
+spacious and lofty living-hall. The walls are, of course, white, the
+paneled spaces being broken by quaint old Colonial mirrors and
+appropriate lighting-fixtures. There is a great fireplace at one end of
+the hall, with a deep, chintz-covered davenport before it. There are
+also roomy chairs covered with the same delightful chintz, a green and
+white glazed English chintz that is as serviceable as it is beautiful.
+Besides the chintz-covered chairs, there are two old English chairs
+covered with English needlework. These chairs are among the treasures of
+the Club. There are several long mahogany tables, and many small tea
+tables. The rugs are of a spring green&mdash;I can think of no better name
+for it.</p>
+
+<p>In modern English and American houses of the smaller class the staircase
+is a part of an elongated entrance hall, and there is often no
+vestibule. In many of the more important new houses the stairs are
+divided from the entrance hall, so that one staircase will do for the
+servants, family and all, and the privacy of the entrance hall will be
+secured. In my own house in New York, you enter the square hall
+directly, and the staircase is in a second hall. This entrance hall is a
+real breathing-space, affording the visitor a few moments of rest and
+calm after the crowded streets of the city. The hall is quite large,
+<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />with a color-plan of black and white and dark green. You will find a
+description of this hall in another chapter. I have used this same plan
+in many other city houses, with individual variations, of course. The
+serene quality of such a hall is very valuable in the city. If you
+introduced a lot of furniture the whole thing would be spoiled.</p>
+
+<p>I used an old porcelain stove, creamy and iridescent in glaze, in such a
+hall in an uptown house very similar to my own. The stove is very
+beautiful in itself, but it was used for use as well as beauty. It
+really holds a fire and furnishes an even heat. The stove was flanked by
+two pedestals surmounted with baskets spilling over with fruits, carved
+from wood and gilded and painted in polychrome. Everything in this hall
+is arranged with precision of balance. The stove is flanked by two
+pedestals. The niche that holds the stove and the corresponding niche on
+the other wall, which holds a statue, are flanked by narrow panels
+holding lighting-fixtures. The street wall is broken by doors and its
+two flanking windows. The opposite wall has a large central panel
+flanked by two glass doors, one leading to the stairway and the other to
+a closet, beneath it. Everything is &quot;paired,&quot; with resulting effect of
+great formality and restraint. Very little furniture is required: A
+table to hold cards and notes, two low benches, and a wrought iron stand
+for umbrellas. The windows have curtains of Italian linen, coarse
+homespun stuff that is very lovely with <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />white walls and woodwork. There
+are no pictures on the wall, but there are specially designed
+lighting-fixtures in the small panels that frame the niches.</p>
+
+<p>In several of the finer houses that have been built recently, notably
+that of Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, the staircase is enclosed, and is in no way
+an architectural feature, merely a possible means of communication when
+needed. This solution of the staircase problem has no doubt brought
+about our modern luxury of elevators. In another fine private house
+recently built the grand staircase only goes so far as the formal rooms
+of the second floor, and a small iron staircase enclosed in the wall
+leads to the intimate family rooms of the bedroom floor. The advantage
+of this gain in space can easily be appreciated. All the room usually
+taken up by the large wall of the staircase halls, and so forth, can be
+thrown into the bedrooms upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>The illustrations of the Bayard Thayer hall and staircase speak for
+themselves. Here lighting-fixtures, locks, hinges, have been carefully
+planned, so that the smallest part is worthy of the whole. This hall is
+representative of the finer private houses that are being built in
+America to-day. I had the pleasure of working with the architect and the
+owners here, and so was able to fit the decorations and furnishings of
+the hall to the house and to the requirements of the people who live in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The present tendency of people who build small houses is to make a
+living-room of the hall. I am not <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />in favor of this. I think the hall
+should be much more formal than the rest of the house. It is, after all,
+of public access, not only to the living-rooms but to the street. The
+servant who answers the front door must of necessity constantly traverse
+it, so must anyone&mdash;the guest or tradesman&mdash;admitted to the house. The
+furniture should be severe and architectural in design. A column or
+pedestal surmounted with a statue, a fountain, an old chest to hold
+carriage-rugs, a carved bench, a good table, a standing desk, may be
+used in a large house. Nothing more is admissible. In a small house a
+well-shaped table, a bench or so, possibly a wall clock, will be all
+that is necessary. The wall should be plain in treatment. The stair
+carpet should be plain in color. The floor should be bare, if in good
+condition, with just a small rug for softness at the door. A tiled floor
+is especially beautiful in a hall, if you can afford it.</p>
+
+<p>If your house happens to have the hall and living-room combined, and no
+vestibule, you can place a large screen near the entrance door and
+obtain a little more privacy. A standing screen of wooden panels is
+better than a folding screen, for the folding screen is rarely
+well-built, and will be blown down by the draft of the open door. A
+standing screen may be made by any carpenter, and painted or stained to
+match the woodwork of the room. A straight bench or settle placed
+against it will make the screened space seem more like a vestibule.</p>
+
+<p>Another objection to the staircase leading from the <a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />living-room of a
+small house is that such an arrangement makes it almost impossible to
+heat the house properly in winter. I have seen so many bewildered people
+whose spacious doorless downstairs rooms were a joy in summer, shivering
+all winter long in a polar atmosphere. The stair well seems to suck all
+the warmth from the living-room, and coal bills soar.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, don't try to make your hall &quot;pretty.&quot; Remember that a hall is
+not a living-room, but a thoroughfare open and used by all the dwellers
+in the house. Don't be afraid of your halls and stairs looking &quot;cold.&quot;
+It is a good idea to have one small space in your house where you can go
+and sit down and be calm and cool! You can't keep the rest of the house
+severe and cool looking, but here it is eminently appropriate and
+sensible. The visitor who enters a white and green hall and gets an
+effect of real reserve and coolness is all the more appreciative of the
+warmth and intimacy of the living-rooms of the house.</p>
+
+<p>After all, for simple American houses there is nothing better than a
+straightaway staircase of broad and easy treads, with one or two
+landings. There may be a broad landing with a window and window-seat, if
+there is a real view, but the landing-seat that is built for no especial
+purpose is worse than useless. It is not at all necessary to have the
+stairs carpeted, if the treads are broad enough, and turned balusters
+painted white with a mahogany hand rail are in scheme. Such a staircase
+adds much to the home-quality of a house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X" /><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />X</h2>
+
+<h2>THE DRAWING-ROOM</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>A drawing-room is the logical place for the elegancies of family life.
+The ideal drawing-room, to my mind, contains many comfortable chairs and
+sofas, many softly shaded lights by night, and plenty of sunshine by
+day, well-balanced mirrors set in simple paneled walls, and any number
+of small tables that may be brought out into the room if need be, and an
+open fire.</p>
+
+<p>The old idea of the drawing-room was a horrible apartment of stiffness
+and formality and discomfort. No wonder it was used only for weddings
+and funerals! The modern drawing-room is intended, primarily, as a place
+where a hostess may entertain her friends, and it must not be chill and
+uninviting, whatever else it may be. It should not be littered up with
+personal things&mdash;magazines, books and work-baskets and objects that
+belong in the living-room&mdash;but it welcomes flowers and <i>objets d'art</i>,
+collections of fans, or miniatures, or graceful mirrors, or old French
+prints, or enamels, or porcelains. It should be a place where people may
+converse without interruption from the children.</p>
+
+<p>Most houses, even of the smaller sort, have three day rooms&mdash;the
+dining-room, the parlor and the sit<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />ting-room, as they are usually
+called. People who appreciate more and more the joy of living have
+pulled hall and sitting-room together into one great family meeting
+place, leaving a small vestibule, decreased the size of the dining-room
+and built in many windows, so that it becomes almost an outdoor room,
+and given the parlor a little more dignity and serenity and its right
+name&mdash;the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>We use the terms drawing-room and <i>salon</i> interchangeably in
+America&mdash;though we are a bit more timid of the <i>salon</i>&mdash;but there is a
+subtle difference between the two that is worth noting. The withdrawing
+room of old England was the quiet room to which the ladies retired,
+leaving their lords to the freer pleasures of the great hall. Indeed,
+the room began as a part of my lady's bedroom, but gradually came into
+its proper importance and took on a magnificence all its own. The
+<i>salon</i> of France also began as a part of the great hall, or <i>grande
+salle</i>. Then came the need for an apartment for receiving and so the
+great bed chamber was divided into two parts, one a real sleeping-room
+and the other a <i>chambre de parade,</i> with a great state bed for the
+occasional visitors of great position. The great bed, or <i>lit de
+parade</i>, was representative of all the salons of the time of Louis XIII.
+Gradually the owners of the more magnificent houses saw the opportunity
+for a series of salons, and so the state apartment was divided into two
+parts: a <i>salon de famille</i>, which afforded the family a certain
+privacy, and the<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" /> <i>salon de compagnie</i>, which was sacred to a
+magnificent hospitality. And so the salon expanded until nowadays we use
+the word with awe, and appreciate its implication of brilliant
+conversation and exquisite decoration, of a radiant hostess, an amusing
+and distinguished circle of people. The word has a graciousness, a
+challenge that we fear. If we have not just the right house we should
+not dare risk belittling our pleasant drawing-room by dubbing it
+&quot;salon.&quot; In short, a drawing-room may be a part of any well regulated
+house. A salon is largely a matter of spirit and cleverness.</p>
+
+<p>A drawing-room has no place in the house where there is no other
+living-room. Indeed, if there are many children, and the house is of
+moderate size, I think a number of small day rooms are vastly better
+than the two usual rooms, living-room and drawing-room, because only in
+this way can the various members of the family have a chance at any
+privacy. The one large room so necessary for the gala occasions of a
+large family may be the dining-room, for here it will be easy to push
+back tables and chairs for the occasion. If the children have a nursery,
+and mother has a small sitting-room, and father has a little room for
+books and writing, a living-room may be eliminated in favor of a small
+formal room for visitors and talk.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0350" id="h0350"></a>
+<img src="images/h0350.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT"
+title="THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>No matter how large your drawing-room may be, keep it intimate in
+spirit. There should be a dozen conversation centers in a large room.
+There should <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" /><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" /><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />be one or more sofas, with comfortable chairs pulled up
+beside them. No one chair should be isolated, for some bashful person
+who doesn't talk well anyway is sure to take the most remote chair and
+make herself miserable. I have seen a shy young woman completely changed
+because she happened to sit upon a certain deep cushioned sofa of
+rose-colored damask. Whether it was the rose color, or the enforced
+relaxation the sofa induced, or the proximity of some very charming
+people in comfortable chairs beside her, or all of these things&mdash;I don't
+know! But she found herself. She found herself gay and happy and
+unafraid. I am sure her personality flowered from that hour on. If she
+had been left to herself she would have taken a stiff chair in a far
+corner, and she would have been miserable and self-conscious. I believe
+most firmly in the magic power of inanimate objects!</p>
+
+<p>Don't litter your drawing-room with bric-a-brac. Who hasn't seen what I
+can best describe as a souvenir drawing-room, a room filled with
+curiosities from everywhere! I shall never forget doing a drawing-room
+for a woman of no taste. I persuaded her to put away her heavy velvets
+and gilt fringes and to have one light and spacious room in the house.
+She agreed. We worked out a chintz drawing-room that was delicious. I
+was very happy over it and you can imagine my amazement when she came to
+me and said, &quot;But Miss de Wolfe, what am I to do with my blue satin
+tidies?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" /></p>
+
+<p>In my own drawing-room I have so many objects of art, and yet I think
+you will agree with me that the room has a great serenity. Over the
+little desk in one corner I have my collection of old miniatures and
+fans of the golden days of the French court. There are ever so many
+vases and bowls for flowers, <i>but they are used</i>. There are dozens of
+lighting-fixtures, brackets, and lamps, and a chandelier, and many
+candlesticks, and they are used, also. Somehow, when a beautiful object
+becomes a useful object, it takes its place in the general scheme of
+things and does not disturb the eye.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal drawing-room has a real fireplace, with a wood fire when there
+is excuse for it. An open fire is almost as great an attribute to a
+drawing-room as a tactful hostess; it puts you at ease, instantly, and
+gives you poise. And just as an open fire and sunshine make for ease, so
+do well placed mirrors make for elegance. Use your mirrors as decorative
+panels, not only for the purpose of looking at yourself in them, and you
+will multiply the pleasures of your room. I have the wall space between
+mantel and frieze-line filled with a large mirror, in my New York
+drawing-room, and the two narrow panels between the front windows are
+filled with long narrow mirrors that reflect the color and charm of the
+room. Whenever you can manage it, place your mirror so that it will
+reflect some particularly nice object.</p>
+
+<p>Given plenty of chairs and sofas, and a few small <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />tables to hold lights
+and flowers, you will need very little other furniture in the
+drawing-room. You will need a writing-table, but a very small and
+orderly one. The drawing room desk may be very elegant in design and
+equipment, for it must be a part of the decoration of the room, and it
+must be always immaculate for the visitor who wants to write a note. The
+members of the family are supposed to use their own desks, leaving this
+one for social emergencies. A good desk is a godsend in a drawing-room,
+it makes a room that is usually cold and formal at once more livable and
+more intimate. In my own drawing-room I have a small French
+writing-table placed near a window, so that the light falls over one's
+left shoulder. The small black lacquer desks that are now being
+reproduced from old models would be excellent desks for drawing-rooms,
+because they not only offer service, as all furniture should, but are
+beautiful in themselves. Many of the small tables of walnut and mahogany
+that are sold as dressing-tables might be used as writing-tables in
+formal rooms, if the mirrors were eliminated.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<br />
+<a name="h0351" id="h0351"></a>
+<img src="images/h0351.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING"
+title="THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a great difference in opinion as to the placing of the piano in
+the drawing-room. I think it belongs in the living-room, if it is in
+constant use, though of course it is very convenient to have it near by
+the one big room, be it drawing-room or dining-room, when a small dance
+is planned. I am going to admit that in my opinion there is nothing more
+abused than the piano, I have no piano in my own house in New York.<a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" /> I
+love music&mdash;but I am not a musician, and so I do not expose myself to
+the merciless banging of chance callers. Besides, my house is quite
+small and a good piano would dwarf the other furnishings of my rooms. I
+think pianos are for musicians, not strummers, who spoil all chance for
+any real conversation. If you are fortunate enough to have a musician in
+your family, that is different. Go ahead and give him a music room.
+Musicians are not born every day, but lovers of music are everywhere,
+and I for one am heartily in favor of doing away with the old custom of
+teaching every child to bang a little, and instead, teaching him to
+<i>listen</i> to music. Oh, the crimes that are committed against music in
+American parlors! I prefer the good mechanical cabinet that offers us
+&quot;canned&quot; music to the manual exercise of people who insist on playing
+wherever they see an open piano. Of course the mechanical instrument is
+new, and therefore, subject to much criticism from a decorative
+standpoint, but the music is much better than the amateur's. We are
+still turning up our noses a little at the mechanical piano players, but
+if we will use our common sense we must admit that a new order of things
+has come to pass, and the new &quot;canned&quot; music is not to be despised.
+Certainly if the instrument displeases you, you can say so, but if a
+misguided friend elects to strum on your piano you are helpless. So I
+have no piano in my New York house. I have a cabinet of &quot;canned&quot; music
+that can be turned on for small dances when need be, <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" /><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" /><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />and that can be
+hidden in a closet between times. Why not?</p>
+
+<p>But suppose you have a piano, or need one: do give it a chance! Its very
+size makes it tremendously important, and if you load it with senseless
+fringed scarfs and bric-a-brac you make it the ugliest thing in your
+room. Give it the best place possible, against an inside wall,
+preferably. I saw a new house lately where the placing of the piano had
+been considered by the architect when the house was planned. There was a
+mezzanine floor overhanging the great living-room, and one end of this
+had been made into a piano alcove, a sort of modern minstrel gallery.
+The musician who used the piano was very happy, for your real musician
+loves a certain solitude, and those of us who listened to his music in
+the great room below were happy because the maker of the music was far
+enough away from us. We could appreciate the music and forget the
+mechanics of it. For a concert, or a small dance, this balcony
+music-room would be most convenient. Another good place for the piano is
+a sort of alcove, or small room opening from the large living or
+drawing-room, where the piano and a few chairs may be placed. Of course
+if you are to have a real music-room, then there are great
+possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>A piano may be a princely thing, properly built and decorated. The old
+spinets and harpsichords, with their charming inlaid cases, were
+beautiful, but they gave forth only tinkly sounds. Now we have a
+mag<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />nificent mechanism, but the case which encloses it is too often
+hideous.</p>
+
+<p>There is an old double-banked harpsichord of the early Eighteenth
+Century in the Morgan collection at the Metropolitan Museum that would
+be a fine form for a piano, if it would hold the &quot;works.&quot; It is long and
+narrow, fitting against the wall so that it really takes up very little
+room. The case is painted a soft dark gray and outlined in darker gray,
+and the panels and the long top are in soft colors. The legs are carved
+and pointed in polychrome. This harpsichord was made when the beauty of
+an object was of as real importance as the mechanical perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally one sees a modern piano that has been decorated by an
+artist. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Alma Tadema, and many of the other
+English artists of our generation have made beautiful pianos. Sir Robert
+Lorimer recently designed a piano that was decorated, inside and out, by
+Mrs. Traquair. From time to time a great artist interests himself in
+designing and decorating a piano, but the rank and file, when they
+decide to build an extraordinary piano, achieve lumpy masses of wood
+covered with impossible nymphs and too-realistic flowers, pianos
+suggestive of thin and sentimental tunes, but never of <i>music</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When you are furnishing your music-room or drawing-room, be careful
+always of your colors. Remember that not only must the room be beautiful
+in its broad spaces and long lines and soft colors, but it must <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />be a
+background for the gala gowns of women. I once saw a music-room that was
+deliberately planned as a background to the gay colors of women's gowns
+and the heavy black masses of men's evening clothes, a soft shimmering
+green and cream room that was incomplete and cold when empty of the
+color of costume. Such a room must have an architectural flavor. The
+keynote must be elegant simplicity and aristocratic reserve. Walls
+broken into panels, and panels in turn broken by lighting-fixtures, a
+polished floor, a well-considered ceiling, any number of chairs, and the
+room is furnished. This room, indeed, may evolve into a <i>salon</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI" /><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />XI</h2>
+
+<h2>THE LIVING-ROOM</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>The living-room! Shut your eyes a minute and think what that means: A
+room to <i>live</i> in, suited to all human needs; to be sick or sorry or
+glad in, as the day's happenings may be; where one may come back from
+far-reaching ways, for &quot;East or West, Hame's best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Listen a minute while I tell you how I see such a room: Big and restful,
+making for comfort first and always; a little shabby here and there,
+perhaps, but all the more satisfactory for that&mdash;like an old shoe that
+goes on easily. Lots of light by night, and not too much drapery to shut
+out the sunlight by day. Big, welcoming chairs, rather sprawly, and long
+sofas. A big fire blazing on the open hearth. Perhaps, if we are very
+lucky we may have some old logs from long since foundered ships, that
+will flame blue and rose and green. He must indeed be of a poor spirit
+who cannot call all sorts of visions from such a flame!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0352" id="h0352"></a>
+<img src="images/h0352.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY"
+title="THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There should be a certain amount of order, because you cannot really
+rest in a disorderly place, but there should be none of the formality of
+the drawing-room. Formality should be used as a sort of foundation on
+which the pleasant workaday business of the living-<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" /><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" /><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />room is planned.
+The living-room should always have a flavor of the main hobby of the
+family, whether it be books, or music, or sport, or what not. If you
+live in the real country there should be nothing in the room too good
+for all moods and all weather&mdash;no need to think of muddy boots or wet
+riding-clothes or the dogs that have run through the dripping fields.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder if half the fathers and mothers in creation know just what it
+means later on to the boys and girls going out from their roof-tree to
+have the memory of such a living-room?</p>
+
+<p>A living-room may be a simple place used for all the purposes of living,
+or it may be merely an official clearing-house for family moods, one of
+a dozen other living apartments. The living-room in the modern bungalow,
+for instance, is often dining-room, library, hall, music-room, filling
+all the needs of the family, while in a large country or city house
+there may be the central family room, and ever so many little rooms that
+grow out of the overflow needs&mdash;the writing-room, the tea room that is
+also sun and breakfast room, the music-room and the library. In more
+elaborate houses there are also the great hall, the formal drawing-room
+and music-room, and the intimate boudoir. To all these should be given a
+goodly measure of comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it be one or a dozen rooms, the spirit of it must be the
+same&mdash;it must offer comfort, order, and beauty to be worth living in.</p>
+
+<p>Just as when a large family is to be considered I be<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />lieve in one big
+meeting-room and a number of smaller rooms for special purposes, so I
+believe that when a family is very small there should be one great
+living-room and no other day room. Two young people who purpose to live
+in a small cottage or a bungalow will be wise to have this one big room
+that will serve for dining-room, living-room, and all. The same house
+divided into a number of tiny rooms would suffocate them: there would be
+no breathing-space. In furnishing such a room it is well to beware of
+<i>sets</i> of things: of six dining-room chairs, of the conventional
+dining-table, serving-table, and china closet. I advocate the use of a
+long table&mdash;four by seven feet is not too long&mdash;and a number of good
+chairs that are alike in style, but not <i>exactly</i> alike.</p>
+
+<p>The chairs should not be the conventional dining-chairs. The idea that
+the only dining-room chair possible is a perfectly straight up and down
+stiff-backed chair is absurd. In a large house where there is a family
+dining-room the chairs should be alike, but in an informal living-room
+the chairs may be perfectly comfortable and useful between meals and
+serve the purposes of dining-room chairs when necessary. For instance,
+with a long oak table built on the lines of the old English refectory
+tables you might have a long bench of oak and cane; a large high back
+chair with arms of the Stuart order, that is, with graceful, turned
+legs, carved frame work, and cane insets; two Cromwellian chairs covered
+in some good stuff; and two or three <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />straight oak-and-cane chairs of a
+simple type. These chairs may be used for various purposes between
+meals, and will not give the room the stiff and formal air that
+straight-backed chairs invariably produce. One could imagine this table
+drawn up to a window-seat, with bench and chairs beside it, and a dozen
+cheerful people around it. There will be little chance of stiffness at
+such a dining-table.</p>
+
+<p>It should be remembered that when a part of the living-room is used for
+meals, the things that suggest dining should be kept out of sight
+between meals. All the china and so forth should be kept in the pantry
+or in kitchen cupboards. The table may be left bare between meals.</p>
+
+<p>In a room of this kind the furniture should be kept close to the walls,
+leaving all the space possible for moving around in the center of the
+room. The book shelves should be flat against the wall; there should be
+a desk, not too clumsy in build near the book shelves or at right angles
+to some window; there should be a sofa of some kind near the fireplace
+with a small table at the head of it, which may be used for tea or books
+or what not. If there is a piano, it should be very carefully placed so
+that it will not dominate the room, and so that the people who will
+listen to the music may gather in the opposite corner of the room. Of
+course, a living-room of this kind is the jolliest place in the world
+when things go smoothly, but there are times when a little room is a
+very necessary place to <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />retreat. This little room may be the study,
+library, or a tea room, but it is worth while sacrificing your smallest
+bedroom in order to have one small place of retreat.</p>
+
+<p>If you can have a number of living-rooms, you can follow more definite
+schemes of decoration. If you have a little enclosed piazza you can make
+a breakfast room or a trellis room of it, or by bringing in many shelves
+and filling them with flowers you can make the place a delightful little
+flower box of a room for tea and talk.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, if you live in the real country you will be able to use your
+garden and your verandas as additional living-rooms. With a big
+living-porch, the one indoor living-room may become a quiet library, for
+instance. But if you haven't a garden or a sun-room, you should do all
+in your power to bring the sunshine and gaiety into the living-room, and
+take your books and quiet elsewhere. A library eight by ten feet, with
+shelves all the way around and up and down, and two comfortable chairs,
+and one or two windows, will be a most satisfactory library. If the room
+is to be used for reading smallness doesn't matter, you see.</p>
+
+<p>We Americans love books&mdash;popular books!&mdash;and we have had sense enough to
+bring them into our living-rooms, and enjoy them. But when you begin
+calling a room a library it should mean something more than a small
+mahogany bookcase with a hundred volumes hidden behind glass doors. I
+think there is nothing <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />more amusing than the unused library of the
+<i>nouveau riche</i>, the pretentious room with its monumental bookcases and
+its slick area of glass doors and its thousands of unread volumes, caged
+eternally in their indecent newness.</p>
+
+<p>Some day when you have nothing better to do visit the <i>de luxe</i> book
+shops of some department store, and then visit a dusky old second hand
+shop, and you will see what books can do! In the <i>de luxe</i> shop they are
+leathern covered things, gaudy and snobbish in their newness. In the old
+book shop they are books that have lived, books that invite you to
+browse. You'd rather have them with all their germs and dust than the
+soulless tomes of uncut pages. You can judge people pretty well by their
+books, and the wear and tear of them.</p>
+
+<p>Open shelves are good enough for any house in these days of vacuum
+cleaners. In the Bayard Thayer house I had the pleasure of furnishing a
+wonderful library of superb paneled walls of mahogany of a velvety
+softness, not the bright red wood of commerce. The open bookshelves were
+architecturally planned, they filled shallow recesses in the wall, and
+when the books were placed upon them they formed a glowing tapestry of
+bindings, flush with the main wall.</p>
+
+<p>I think the nicest living-room I know is the reading room of the Colony
+Club. I never enjoyed making a room more, and when the Club was first
+opened I was delighted to hear one woman remark to another:<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" /> &quot;Doesn't it
+make you feel that it has been loved and lived in for years?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The room is large and almost square. The walls are paneled in cream and
+white, with the classic mantel and mirror treatment of the Adam period.
+The large carpet rug is of one tone, a soft green blue. The bookcases
+which run around the walls are of mahogany, as are the small, occasional
+tables, and the large table in the center of the room. In this room I
+have successfully exploded the old theory that all furniture in a well
+planned room must be of the same kind! In this room there are several
+Marlborough chairs, a davenport and a semi-circular fireside seat
+upholstered in a soft green leather, several chairs covered in a chintz
+of bird and blossom design, and other chairs covered with old English
+needle-work. The effect is not discord, but harmony. Perhaps it is not
+wise to advise the use of many colors and fabrics unless one has had
+experience in the combining of many tones and hues, but if you are
+careful to keep your walls and floors in subdued tones, you may have
+great license in the selecting of hangings and chair coverings and
+ornament.</p>
+
+<p>I gave great attention to the details of this room. Under the simple
+mantel shelf there is inset a small panel of blue and white Wedgwood. On
+the mantel there are two jars of Chinese porcelain, and between them a
+bronze jardiniere of the Adam period; four figures holding a shallow,
+oblong tray, which is filled with flowers. The lamp on the center-table
+is made of <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />a hawthorn jar, with a flaring shade. There are many low
+tables scattered through the room and beside every chair is a
+reading-lamp easily adjusted to any angle. The fireplace fittings are
+simple old brasses of the Colonial period. There is only one picture in
+this room, and that is the portrait of a long gone lady, framed in a
+carved gilt frame, and hung against the huge wall-mirror which is
+opposite the fireplace end of the room.</p>
+
+<p>I believe, given plenty of light and air, that comfortable chairs and
+good tables go further toward making a living-room comfortable than
+anything else. In the Harkness living-room you will see this theory
+proven. There are chairs and tables of all sizes, from the great sofas
+to the little footstools, from the huge Italian tables to the little
+table especially made to hold a few flower pots. Wherever there is a
+large table there is a long sofa or a few big chairs; wherever there is
+a lone chair there is a small table to hold a reading-light, or flowers,
+or what not. The great size of the room, the fine English ceiling of
+modeled plaster, the generous fireplace with its paneled over-mantel,
+the groups of windows, all these architectural details go far toward
+making the room a success. The comfortable chairs and sofas and the ever
+useful tables do the rest.</p>
+
+<p>So many people ask me: How shall I furnish my living-room? What paper
+shall I use on the walls? What woodwork and curtains&mdash;and rugs? One
+woman asked me what books she should buy!</p>
+
+<p>Your living-room should grow out of the needs of <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />your daily life. There
+could be no two living-rooms exactly alike in scheme if they were lived
+in. You will have to decide on the wall colors and such things, it is
+true, but the rest of the room should grow of itself. You will not make
+the mistake of using a dark paper of heavy figures if you are going to
+use many pictures and books, for instance. You will not use a gay
+bed-roomy paper covered with flowers and birds. You will know without
+being told that your wall colors must be neutral: that your woodwork
+must be stained and waxed, or painted some soft tone of your wall color.
+Then, let the rugs and curtains and things go until you decide you have
+to have them. The room will gradually find itself, though it may take
+years and heartache and a certain self-confession of inadequacy. It will
+express your life, if you use it, so be careful of the life you live in
+it!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII" /><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />XII</h2>
+
+<h2>SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>In some strange way the word <i>boudoir</i> has lost its proper significance.
+People generally think of it as a highfalutin' name for the bedroom, or
+for a dressing-room, whereas really a proper <i>boudoir</i> is the small
+personal sitting-room of a woman of many interests. It began in old
+France as the private sitting-room of the mistress of the house, a part
+of the bedroom suite, and it has evolved into a sort of office <i>de luxe</i>
+where the house mistress spends her precious mornings, plans the routine
+of her household for the day, writes her letters, interviews her
+servants, and so forth. The boudoir has a certain suggestion of intimacy
+because it is a personal and not a general room, but while it may be
+used as a lounging-place occasionally, it is also a thoroughly dignified
+room where a woman may receive her chosen friends when she pleases.
+Nothing more ridiculous has ever happened than the vogue of the
+so-called &quot;boudoir cap,&quot; which is really suited only to one's bedroom or
+dressing-room. Such misnomers lead to a mistaken idea of the real
+meaning of the word.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Eighteenth Century boudoirs were extremely small. I recall
+one charming little room in <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />an old French house that was barely eight
+feet by eleven, but it contained a fireplace, two windows, a day bed,
+one of those graceful desks known as a <i>bonheur du jour</i>, and two
+arm-chairs. An extremely symmetrical arrangement of the room gave a
+sense of order, and order always suggests space. One wall was broken by
+the fireplace, the wall spaces on each side of it being paneled with
+narrow moldings. The space above the mantel was filled with a mirror. On
+the wall opposite the fireplace there was a broad paneling of the same
+width filled with a mirror from baseboard to ceiling. In front of this
+mirror was placed the charming desk. On each side of the long mirror
+were two windows exactly opposite the two long panels of the mantel
+wall. The two narrow end walls were treated as single panels, the day
+bed being placed flat against one of them, while the other was broken by
+a door which led to a little ante-chamber. Old gilt appliques holding
+candles flanked both mantel mirror and desk mirror. Two of those
+graceful chairs of the Louis Seize period and a small footstool
+completed the furnishing of this room.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0353" id="h0353"></a>
+<img src="images/h0353.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MISS ANNE MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR"
+title="MISS ANNE MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS ANNE MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The boudoir should always be a small room, because in no other way can
+you gain a sense of intimacy. Here you may have all the luxury and
+elegance you like, you may stick to white paint and simple chintzes, or
+you may indulge your passion for pale-colored silks and lace frills.
+Here, of all places, you have a right to express your sense of luxury
+and comfort. The <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" /><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" /><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />boudoir furnishings are borrowed from both bedroom
+and drawing-room traditions. There are certain things that are used in
+the bedroom that would be ridiculous in the drawing-room, and yet are
+quite at home in the boudoir. For instance, the <i>chaise-longue</i> is part
+of the bedroom furnishing in most modern houses, and it may also be used
+in the boudoir, but in the drawing-room it would be a violation of good
+taste, because the suggestion of intimacy is too evident.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more comfortable in a boudoir than a day bed. It serves so
+many purposes. In my own house my boudoir is also my sitting-room, and I
+have a large Louis XV day bed there which may be used by an overnight
+guest if necessary. In a small house the boudoir fitted with a day bed
+becomes a guest-room on occasion. I always put two or three of these day
+beds in any country house I am doing, because I have found them so
+admirable and useful in my own house.</p>
+
+<p>As you will see by the photographs, this bed in no way resembles an
+ordinary bed in the daytime, and it seems to me to be a much better
+solution of the extra-bed problem than the mechanical folding-bed, which
+is always hideous and usually dangerous. A good day bed may be designed
+to fit into any room. This one of mine is of carved walnut, a very
+graceful one that I found in France.</p>
+
+<p>In a small sitting-room in an uptown house, an illustration of which is
+shown, I had a day bed made of <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />white wood that was painted to match the
+chintzes of the room. The mattress and springs were covered with a bird
+chintz on a mauve ground, and the pillows were all covered with the same
+stuff. The frame of the bed was painted cream and decorated with a dull
+green line and small garlands of flowers extracted from the design of
+the chintz. When the mattress and springs have been properly covered
+with damask, or chintz, or whatever you choose to use, there is no
+suggestion of the ordinary bed.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose there isn't a more charming room in New York than Miss Anne
+Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir. The everyday sitting-room of a woman of many
+interests, it is radiant with color and individuality, as rare rugs are
+radiant, as jewels are radiant. The cream walls, with their carved
+moldings and graceful panelings, are a pleasant background for all this
+shimmering color. The carvings and moldings are pointed in blue. The
+floor is covered with a Persian rug which glows with all the soft tones
+of the old Persian dye-pots. The day bed, a few of the chairs, and the
+chest of drawers, are of a soft brown walnut. There are other chairs
+covered with Louis XVI tapestries, brocade and needlework, quite in
+harmony with the modern chintz of the day bed and the hangings. Above
+the day bed there is a portrait of a lady, hung by wires covered with
+shirred blue ribbons, and this blue is again used in an old porcelain
+lamp jar on the bedside table. The whole room might have been inspired
+<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />by the lady of the portrait, so essentially is it the room of a
+fastidious woman.</p>
+
+<p>But to go back to my own boudoir: it is really sitting-room, library,
+and rest-room combined, a home room very much like my down-town office
+in the conveniences it offers. In the early morning it is my office,
+where I plan the day's routine and consult my servants. In the rare
+evenings when I may give myself up to solid comfort and a new book it
+becomes a haven of refuge after the business of the day. When I choose
+to work at home with my secretary, it is as business-like a place as my
+down-town office. It is a sort of room of all trades, and good for each
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the room are pretty well filled with built-in bookshelves,
+windows, chimney-piece, and doors, but there is one long wall space for
+the day bed and another for the old secretary that holds my porcelain
+figurines. The room is really quite small, but by making the furniture
+keep its place against the walls an effect of spaciousness has been
+obtained.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the room are painted the palest of egg-shell blue-green.
+The woodwork is ivory white, with applied decorations of sculptured
+white marble. The floor is entirely covered with a carpet rug of jade
+green velvet, and there is a smaller Persian rug of the soft,
+indescribable colors of the Orient. The day bed, of which I spoke in an
+earlier paragraph, is covered with an old brocade, gray-green figures on
+a black ground. A large armchair is also covered with the <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />brocade, and
+the window curtains, which cannot be seen in the picture, are of black
+chintz, printed with birds of pale greens and blues and grays, with
+beaks of rose-red.</p>
+
+<p>There is always a possibility for rose-red in my rooms, I love it so. I
+manage the other colors so that they will admit a chair or a stool or a
+bowl of rose color. In this room the two chairs beside the couch are
+covered with rose-colored damask, and this brings out the rose in the
+rug and in the chintz, and accents the deep red note of the leathern
+book-bindings. The rose red is subordinated to the importance of the
+book-bindings in this room, but there is still opportunity for its use
+in so many small things.</p>
+
+<p>In this room, you will notice, I have used open shelves for my books,
+and the old secretary which was once a combination desk and bookcase, is
+used for the display of my little treasures of porcelain and china, and
+its drawers are used for papers and prints. The built in shelves have
+cupboards beneath them for the flimsy papers and pamphlets that do not
+belong on open shelves. If the same room were pressed into service as a
+guest room I should use the drawers in the secretary instead of the
+usual chest of drawers, and the day bed for sleeping.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0354" id="h0354"></a>
+<img src="images/h0354.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. LIT DE REPOS"
+title="MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. LIT DE REPOS" />
+<p class="figcenter"><b>MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. LIT DE REPOS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The writing-table is placed at right angles to one of the book-filled
+panels between the front windows. I have used a writing-table in this
+room because I like tables better than heavy desks, and because in this
+<a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" /><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" /><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />small apartment a desk would seem heavy and ponderous. The fittings
+of the desk are of dark red leather, like that of many of the
+book-bindings, and the personal touch that makes the desk <i>mine</i> is a
+bowl of roses. Between the two windows in the shallow recess, I have
+placed an aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The
+aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a
+tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most
+gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too,
+and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my
+little people happily&mdash;my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my
+little Chinese dog, has a little house all his own, an old Chinese
+lacquer box with a canopy top and little gold bells. It was once the
+shrine of some little Chinese god, I suppose, but Wee Toi is very happy
+in it, and you can see that it was meant for him in the beginning. It
+sits by the fireplace and gives the room an air of real hominess. I was
+so pleased with the aquarium and the Chinese lacquer bed for Wee Toi
+that I devised a birdcage to go with them, a square cage of gilt wires,
+with a black lacquer pointed canopy top, with little gilt bells at the
+pointed eaves. The cage is fixed to a shallow lacquer tray, and is the
+nicest place you can imagine for a whistling bullfinch to live in. I
+suppose I could have a Persian cat on a gorgeous cushion to complete the
+place, but I can't admit cats into the room. I <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />plan gorgeous cushions
+for <i>other</i> people's &quot;little people,&quot; when they happen to be cats.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marbury's sitting-room is on the next floor, exactly like mine,
+architecturally, but we have worked them out differently. I think there
+is nothing more interesting than the study of the different developments
+of a series of similar rooms, for instance, a dozen drawing-rooms,
+twelve stories deep, in a modern apartment house! Each room is left by
+the builder with the same arrangement of doors and windows, the same
+wall spaces and moldings, the same opportunity for good or bad
+development. It isn't often our luck to see all twelve of the rooms, but
+sometimes we see three or four of them, and how amazingly different they
+are! How amusing is the suggestion of personality, or lack of it!</p>
+
+<p>Now in these two sitting-rooms in our house the rooms are exactly the
+same in size, in exposure, in the placing of doors and windows and
+fireplaces, and we have further paralleled our arrangement by placing
+our day beds in the same wall space, but there the similarity ends. Miss
+Marbury's color plan is different: her walls are a soft gray, the floor
+is covered in a solid blue carpet rug, rather dark in tone, the chintz
+also has a black ground, but the pattern is entirely different in
+character from the room below. There is a day bed, similar to mine, but
+where my bed has been upholstered with brocade, Miss Marbury's has a
+loose slip cover of black chintz. The spaces between the <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />windows in my
+room are filled with bookshelves, and in Miss Marbury's room the same
+spaces are filled with mirrors. The large wall-space that is background
+to my old secretary is in her room given up to long open bookshelves of
+mahogany. My over-mantel is mirrored, and hers is filled with an old
+painting. The recessed spaces on each side of the chimney breast hold
+small semi-circular tables of marquetry, with a pair of long Adam
+mirrors hanging above them. Another Adam mirror hangs above the
+bookshelves on the opposite wall. These mirrors are really the most
+important things in the room, because the moldings and lighting-fixtures
+and picture frames have been made to harmonize with them.</p>
+
+<p>The lighting-fixtures are of wood carved in the Adam manner and painted
+dark blue and gold. The writing-table has been placed squarely in front
+of the center window, in which are hung Miss Marbury's bird cages. There
+are a number of old French prints on the wall. The whole room is quieter
+in tone than my room, which may be because her chosen color is old-blue,
+and mine rose-red.</p>
+
+<p>In a small house where only one woman's tastes have to be considered, a
+small downstairs sitting-room may take the place of the more personal
+boudoir, but where there are a number of people in the household a room
+connecting with the bedroom of the house mistress is more fortunate.
+Here she can be as independent as she pleases of the family and the
+guests <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />who come and go through the other living-rooms of the house.
+Here she can have her counsels with her children, or her tradespeople,
+or her employees, without the distractions of chance interruptions, for
+this one room should have doors that open <i>and</i> close, doors that are
+not to be approached without invitation. The room may be as austere and
+business-like as a down-town office, or it may be a nest of comfort and
+luxury primarily planned for relaxation, but it must be so placed that
+it is a little apart from the noise and flurry of the rest of the house
+or it has no real reason-for-being.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever it is possible, I believe the man of the house should also have
+a small sitting-room that corresponds to his wife's boudoir. We
+Americans have made a violent attempt to incorporate a room of this kind
+in our houses by introducing a &quot;den&quot; or a &quot;study,&quot; but somehow the man
+of the house is never keen about such a room. A &quot;den&quot; to him means an
+airless cubby-hole of a room hung with pseudo-Turkish draperies and
+papier-m&acirc;ch&eacute; shields and weapons, and he has a mighty aversion to it.
+Who could blame him? And as for the study, the average man doesn't want
+a study when he wants to work; he prefers to work in his office, and
+he'd like a room of his own big enough to hold all his junk, and he'd
+like it to have doors and windows and a fireplace. The so-called study
+is usually a heavy, cheerless little room that isn't any good for
+anything else. The ideal arrange<a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" />ment would be a room of average size
+opening from his bedroom, a room that would have little suggestion of
+business and a great flavor of his hobbies. His wife's boudoir must be
+her office also, but he doesn't need a house office, unless he be a
+writer, or a teacher, or some man who works at home. After all, I think
+the painters and illustrators are the happiest of all men, because they
+<i>have</i> to have studios, and their wives generally recognize the fact,
+and give them a free hand. The man who has a studio or a workshop all
+his own is always a popular man. He has a fascination for his less
+fortunate friends, who buzz around him in wistful admiration.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII" /><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />XIII</h2>
+
+<h2>A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>First of all, I think a dining-room should be light, and gay. The first
+thing to be considered is plenty of sunshine. The next thing is the
+planning of a becoming background for the mistress of the house. The
+room should always be gay and charming in color, but the color should be
+selected with due consideration of its becomingness to the hostess.
+Every woman has a right to be pretty in her own dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>I do not favor the dark, heavy treatments and elaborate stuff hangings
+which seem to represent the taste of most of the men who go in for
+decorating nowadays. Nine times out of ten the dining-room seems to be
+the gloomiest room in the house. I think it should be a place where the
+family may meet in gaiety of spirit for a pause in the vexatious
+happenings of the day. I think light tones, gay wallpapers, flowers and
+sunshine are of more importance than storied tapestries and heavily
+carved furniture. These things are all very well for the house that has
+a small dining-room and a gala dining-room for formal occasions as well,
+but there are few such houses.</p>
+
+<p>We New Yorkers have been so accustomed to the <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />gloomy basement
+dining-rooms of the conventional brown-stone houses of the late eighties
+we forgot how nice a dining-room can be. Even though the city
+dining-room is now more fortunately placed in the rear of the second
+floor it is usually overshadowed by other houses, and can be lightened
+only by skilful use of color in curtains, china, and so forth.
+Therefore, I think this is the one room in the city house where one can
+afford to use a boldly decorative paper. I like very much the Chinese
+rice-papers with their broad, sketchy decorations of birds and flowers.
+These papers are never tiresomely realistic and are always done in very
+soft colors or in soft shades of one color, and while if you analyze
+them they are very fantastic, the general effect is as restful as it is
+cheerful. You know you can be most cheerful when you are most rested!</p>
+
+<p>The quaint landscape papers which are seen in so many New England
+dining-rooms seem to belong with American Colonial furniture and white
+woodwork, prim silver and gold banded china. These landscape papers are
+usually gay in effect and make for cheer. There are many new designs
+less complicated than the old ones. Then, too, there are charming
+foliage papers, made up of leaves and branches and birds, which are very
+good.</p>
+
+<p>While we may find color and cheer in these gay papers for gloomy city
+dining-rooms, if we have plenty of light we may get more distinguished
+results with paneled walls. A large dining-room may be paneled <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />with
+dark wood, with a painted fresco, or tapestry frieze, and a ceiling with
+carved or painted beams, or perhaps one of those interesting cream-white
+ceilings with plaster beams judiciously adorned with ornament in low
+relief. Given a large dining-room and a little money, you can do
+anything: you can make a room that will compare favorably with the
+traditional rooms on which we build. You have a right to make your
+dining-room as fine as you please, so long as you give it its measure of
+light and air. But one thing you must have: simplicity! It may be the
+simplicity of a marble floor and tapestried walls and a painted ceiling,
+it may be the simplicity of white paint and muslin and fine furniture,
+but simplicity it must have. The furniture that is required in a
+dining-room declares itself: a table and chairs. You can bring side
+tables and china closets into it, or you can build in cupboards and
+consoles to take their place, but there is little chance for other
+variation, and so the beginning is a declaration of order and
+simplicity.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0355" id="h0355"></a>
+<img src="images/h0355.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE"
+title="A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The easiest way to destroy this simplicity is to litter the room with
+displays of silver and glass, to dot the walls with indifferent
+pictures. If you are courageous enough to let your walls take care of
+themselves and to put away your silver and china and glass, the room
+will be as dignified as you could wish. Remember that simplicity depends
+on balance and space. If the walls balance one another in light and
+shadow, if the furniture is placed formally, if walls and furniture
+<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" /><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" /><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />are free from mistaken ornament, the room will be serene and
+beautiful. In most other rooms we avoid the &quot;pairing&quot; of things, but
+here pairs and sets of things are most desirable. Two console tables are
+more impressive than one. There is great decorative value in a pair of
+mirrors, a pair of candlesticks, a pair of porcelain jars, two cupboards
+flanking a chimney-piece. You would not be guilty of a pair of wall
+fountains, or of two wall clocks, just as you would not have two copies
+of the same portrait in a room. But when things &quot;pair&quot; logically, pair
+them! They will furnish a backbone of precision to the room.</p>
+
+<p>The dining-room in the Iselin house is a fine example of stately
+simplicity. It is extremely formal, and yet there is about it none of
+the gloominess one associates with New York dining-rooms. The severely
+paneled walls, the fine chimney-piece with an old master inset and
+framed by a Grinling Gibbons carving, the absence of the usual mantel
+shelf, the plain dining-table and the fine old lion chairs all go to
+make up a Georgian room of great distinction.</p>
+
+<p>The woman who cannot afford such expensive simplicity might model a
+dining-room on this same plan and accomplish a beautiful room at
+reasonable expense. Paneled walls are always possible; if you can't
+afford wood paneling, paint the plastered wall white or cream and break
+it into panels by using a narrow molding of wood. You can get an effect
+of great dignity by the use of molding at a few cents a foot. A large
+panel <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />would take the place of the Grinling Gibbons carving, and a
+mirror might be inset above the fireplace instead of the portrait. The
+dining-table and chairs might give place to good reproductions of
+Chippendale, and the marble console to a carpenter-made one painted to
+match the woodwork.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of proper furniture for a dining-room is usually settled by
+the house mistress before her wedding bouquet has faded, so I shall only
+touch on the out-of-ordinary things here. Everyone knows that a table
+and a certain number of chairs and a sideboard of some kind &quot;go
+together.&quot; The trouble is that everyone knows these things <i>too</i> well,
+and dining-room conventions are so binding that we miss many pleasant
+departures from the usual.</p>
+
+<p>My own dining-room in New York is anything but usual, and yet there is
+nothing undignified about it. The room was practically square, so that
+it had a certain orderly quality to begin with. The rooms of the house
+are all rather small, and so to gain the greatest possible space I have
+the door openings at the extreme end of the wall, leaving as large a
+wall space as possible. You enter this room, then, through a door at the
+extreme left of the south wall of the room. Another door at the extreme
+right of the same wall leads to a private passage. The space left
+between the doors is thereby conserved, and is broken into a large
+central panel flanked by two narrow panels. The space above the doors is
+also paneled. This wall is <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />broken by a console placed under the central
+panel. Above it one of the Mennoyer originals, which you may remember in
+the Washington Irving dining-room, is set in the wall, framed with a
+narrow molding of gray. The walls and woodwork of the room are of
+exactly the same tone of gray&mdash;darker than a silver gray and lighter
+than pewter. Everything, color, balance, proportion, objects of art, has
+been uniformly considered.</p>
+
+<p>Continuing, the east wall is broken in the center by the fireplace, with
+a mantel of white and gray marble. A large mirror, surmounted with a
+bas-relief in black and white, fills the space between mantel shelf and
+cornice. This mirror and bas-relief are framed with the narrow carved
+molding painted gray. Here again there is the beauty of balance: two
+Italian candlesticks of carved and gilded wood flank a marble bust on
+the mantel shelf. There is nothing more. On the right of the mirror, in
+a narrow panel, there is a wall clock of carved and gilded wood which
+also takes its place as a part of the wall, and keeps it.</p>
+
+<p>The north wall is broken by two mirrors and a door leading to the
+service-pantry. A large, four-fold screen, made of an uncut tapestry,
+shuts off the door. We need all the light the windows give, so there are
+no curtains except the orange-colored taffeta valances at the top. I
+devised sliding doors of mirrors that are pulled out of the wall at
+night to fill the recessed space of the windows. Ventilation is afforded
+by the open <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />fireplace, and by mechanical means. You see we do not
+occupy this house in summer, so the mirrored windows are quite feasible.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth wall has no openings, and it is broken into three large
+paneled spaces. A console has the place of honor opposite the fireplace,
+and above it there is a mirror like that over the mantel. In the two
+side panels are the two large Mennoyers. There are five of these in the
+room, the smaller ones flanking the chimney piece. You see that the
+salvation of this room depends on this careful repetition and variation
+of similar objects.</p>
+
+<p>Color is brought into the room in the blue and yellow of the Chinese
+rug, in the chairs, and in the painted table. The chairs are painted a
+creamy yellow, pointed with blue, and upholstered with blue and yellow
+striped velvet. I do not like high-backed chairs in a dining-room. Their
+one claim to use is that they make a becoming background, but this does
+not compensate for the difficulties of the service when they are used.
+An awkward servant pouring soup down one's back is not an aid to
+digestion, or to the peace of mind engendered by a good dinner.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0356-a" id="h0356-a"></a>
+<img src="images/h0356-a.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR&#39;S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN"
+title="MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR&#39;S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR&#39;S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0356-b" id="h0356-b"></a>
+<img src="images/h0356-b.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE&#39;S PAINTED DINING-TABLE"
+title="MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE&#39;S PAINTED DINING-TABLE" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE&#39;S PAINTED DINING-TABLE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The painted table is very unusual. The legs and the carved under-frame
+are painted cream and pointed with blue, like the chairs, but the top is
+as gay as an old-fashioned garden, with stiff little medallions, and
+urns spilling over with flowers, and conventional blossoms picked out
+all over it. The colors used are very <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" /><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" /><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />soft, blue and cream being
+predominant. The table is covered with a sheet of plate glass. This
+table is, of course, too elaborate for a simple dining-room, but the
+idea could be adapted and varied to suit many color and furniture
+schemes.</p>
+
+<p>Painted furniture is a delight in a small dining-room. In the Colony
+Club I planned a very small room for little dinners that is well worth
+reproducing in a small house. This little room was very hard to manage
+because there were no windows! There were two tiny little openings high
+on the wall at one end of the room, but it would take imagination to
+call them windows. The room was on the top floor, and the real light
+came from a skylight. You can imagine the difficulty of making such a
+little box interesting. However, there was one thing that warmed my
+heart to the little room: a tiny ante-room between the hall proper and
+the room proper. This little ante-room I paneled in yellowish tan and
+gray. I introduced a sofa covered with an old brocade just the color of
+dried rose leaves&mdash;ashes of roses, the French call it&mdash;and the little
+ante-room became a fitting introduction to the dining-room within.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the rooms were paneled in a delicious color between yellow
+and tan, the wall proper and the moldings being this color, and the
+panels themselves filled with a gray paper painted in pinky yellows and
+browns. These panels were done by hand by a man who found his
+inspiration in the painted panels of an <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />old French ballroom. As the
+walls were unbroken by windows there was ample space for such
+decoration. A carpet of rose color was chosen, and the skylight was
+curtained with shirred silk of the same rose. The table and chairs were
+of painted wood, the chairs having seats of the brocade used on the
+ante-room sofa. The table was covered with rose colored brocade, and
+over this, cobwebby lace, and over this, plate glass. There are two
+consoles in the room, with small cabinets above which hold certain
+<i>objets d'art</i> in keeping with the room.</p>
+
+<p>Under the two tiny windows were those terrible snags we decorators
+always strike, the radiators. Wrongly placed, they are capable of
+spoiling any room. I concealed these radiators by building two small
+cabinets with panels of iron framework gilded to suggest a graceful
+metal lattice, and lined them with rose-colored silk. I borrowed this
+idea from a fascinating cabinet in an old French palace, and the result
+is worth the deception. The cabinets are nice in themselves, and they do
+not interfere with the radiation of the heat.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen many charming country houses and farm houses in France with
+dining-rooms furnished with painted furniture. Somehow they make the
+average American dining-room seem very commonplace and tiresome. For
+instance, I had the pleasure of furnishing a little country house in
+France and we planned the dining-room in blue and white. The furniture
+was of the simplest, painted white, with a dark blue line for
+<a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />decoration. The corner cupboard was a little more elaborate, with a
+gracefully curved top and a large glass door made up of little panes set
+in a quaint design. There were several drawers and a lower cupboard. The
+drawers and the lower doors invited decorations a little more elaborate
+than the blue lines of the furniture, so we painted on gay little
+medallions in soft tones of blue, from the palest gray-blue to a very
+dark blue. The chair cushions were blue, and the china was blue
+sprigged. Three little pitchers of dark-blue luster were on the wall
+cupboard shelf and a mirror in a faded gold frame gave the necessary
+variation of tone.</p>
+
+<p>A very charming treatment for either a country or small city dining-room
+is to have corner cupboards of this kind cutting off two corners. They
+are convenient and unusual and pretty as well. They can be painted in
+white with a colored line defining the panels and can be made highly
+decorative if the panels are painted with a classic or a Chinese design.
+The decoration, however, should be kept in variations of the same tone
+as the stripe on the panels. For instance, if the stripe is gray, then
+the design should be in dark and light gray and blue tones. The chairs
+can be white, in a room of this kind, with small gray and blue
+medallions and either blue and white, or plain blue, cushions.</p>
+
+<p>Another dining-room of the same sort was planned for a small country
+house on Long Island. Here the woodwork was a deep cream, the walls the
+same tone, and the ceiling a little lighter. We found six of those <a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />prim
+Duxbury chairs, with flaring spindle-backs, and painted them a soft
+yellow-green. The table was a plain pine one, with straight legs. We
+painted it cream and decorated the top with a conventional border of
+green adapted from the design of the china&mdash;a thick creamy Danish ware
+ornamented with queer little wavy lines and figures. I should have
+mentioned the china first, because the whole room grew from that. The
+rug was a square of velvet of a darker green. The curtains were soft
+cream-colored net. One wall was made up of windows, another of doors and
+a cupboard, and against the other two walls we built two long, narrow
+consoles that were so simple anyone could accomplish them: simply two
+wide shelves resting on good brackets, with mirrors above. The one
+splendid thing in the room was a curtain of soft green damask that was
+pulled at night to cover the group of windows. Everything else in the
+room was bought for a song.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0357" id="h0357"></a>
+<img src="images/h0357.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB"
+title="THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I have said much of cupboards and consoles because I think they are so
+much better than the awkward, heavy &quot;china closets&quot; and &quot;buffets&quot; and
+sideboards that dominate most dining-rooms. The time has come when we
+should begin to do fine things in the way of building fitment furniture,
+that is, furniture that is actually or apparently a part of the shell of
+the room. It would be so much better to build a house slowly, planning
+the furniture as a part of the architectural detail. With each
+succeeding year the house would become more and more a part of the
+owner, illustrating <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" /><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" /><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />his life. Of course, this would mean that the
+person who planned the developing of the house must have a certain
+architectural training, must know about scale and proportion, and
+something of general construction. Certainly charming things are to be
+created in this way, things that will last, things immeasurably
+preferable to the cheap jerry-built furniture which so soon becomes
+shabby, which has to be so constantly renewed. People accept new ideas
+with great difficulty, and my only hope is that they may grow to accept
+the idea of fitment furniture through finding the idea a product of
+their own; a personal discovery that comes from their own needs.</p>
+
+<p>I have constantly recommended the use of our native American woods for
+panelings and wall furniture, because we have both the beautiful woods
+of our new world and tried and proven furniture of the old world, and
+what couldn't we achieve with such material available? Why do people
+think of a built-in cupboard as being less important than a detached
+piece of furniture? Isn't it a braggart pose, a desire to show the
+number of things you can buy? Of course it is a very foolish pose, but
+it is a popular one, this display of objects that are ear-marked
+&quot;expensive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is very easy to build cupboards on each side of a fireplace, for
+instance, making the wall flush with the chimney-breast. This is always
+good architectural form. One side could have a desk which opens beneath
+the glass doors, and the other could have cup<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />boards, both presenting
+exactly the same appearance when closed. Fitted corner cupboards,
+triangular or rounded, are also excellent in certain dining rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Wall tables, or consoles, may be of the same wood as the woodwork or of
+marble, or of some dark polished wood. There are no more useful pieces
+of furniture than consoles, and yet we only see them in great houses.
+Why? Because they are simple, and we haven't yet learned to demand the
+simple. I have had many interesting old console-tables of wrought iron
+support and marble tops copied, and I have designed others that were
+mere semi-circles of white painted wood supported by four slender legs,
+but whether they be marble or pine the effect is always simple. There
+are charming consoles that have come to us from the Eighteenth Century,
+consoles made in pairs, so that they may stand against the wall as
+serving-tables, or be placed together to form one round table. This is a
+very good arrangement where people have one large living room or hall in
+which they dine and which also serves all the purpose of daily
+intercourse. This entirely removes any suggestion of a dining-room, as
+the consoles may be separated and stand against the wall during the day.</p>
+
+<p>Many modern houses are being built without the conventional dining-room
+we have known so long, there being instead an open-air breakfast room
+which may be glazed in winter and screened in summer. People have come
+to their senses at last, and realize that there is nothing so pleasant
+as eating outdoors. The annual <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />migration of Americans to Europe is
+responsible for the introduction of this excellent custom. French houses
+are always equipped with some outdoor place for eating. Some of them
+have, in addition to the inclosed porch, a fascinating pavilion built in
+the garden, where breakfast and tea may be served. Modern mechanical
+conveniences and the inexpensive electric apparatus make it possible to
+serve meals at this distance from the house and keep them hot in the
+meantime. One may prepare one's own coffee and toast at table, with the
+green trees and flowers and birds all around.</p>
+
+<p>Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper,
+everyone knows that. The simplest meal seems a gala affair when everyone
+is radiant and cheerful, whereas a long and elaborate meal served
+indoors is usually depressing.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV" /><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />XIV</h2>
+
+<h2>THE BEDROOM</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>In olden times people rarely slept in their bedrooms, which were mostly
+<i>chambres de parade</i>, where everyone was received and much business was
+transacted. The real bedroom was usually a smallish closet nearby. These
+<i>chambres de parade</i> were very splendid, the beds raised on a dais, and
+hung with fine damasks and tapestries&mdash;tapestries thick with bullion
+fringes. The horror of fresh air felt by our ancestors was well
+illustrated here. No draughts from ill-constructed windows or badly hung
+doors could reach the sleeper in such a bed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0358" id="h0358"></a>
+<img src="images/h0358.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD"
+title="AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD" />
+<p class="center"><b>AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This was certainly different from our modern ideas of hygiene: In those
+days furniture that could not be hastily moved was of little importance.
+The bed was usually a mere frame of wood, made to be covered with
+valuable hangings which could easily be packed and carried away on
+occasions that too often arose in the troublous days of the early Middle
+Ages. The benches and tables one sees in many foreign palaces to-day are
+covered with gorgeous lengths of velvet and brocade. This is a survival
+of the custom when furniture was merely so much baggage. With the early
+Eighteenth Century, however, there came into being<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" /><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" /><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" /> <i>les petits
+appartements</i>, in which the larger space formerly accorded the bedroom
+was divided into ante-chamber, salon or sitting-room, and the bedroom.
+Very often the bed was placed in an alcove, and the heavy brocades and
+bullion embroideries were replaced by linen or cotton hangings.</p>
+
+<p>When Oberkampf established himself at Jouy in 1760 France took first
+place in the production of these printed linens and cottons. This was
+the beginning of the age of chintz and of the delightful decorative
+fabrics that are so suited to our modern ideas of hygiene. It seems to
+me there are no more charming stuffs for bedroom hangings than these
+simple fabrics, with their enchantingly fanciful designs. Think of the
+changes one could have with several sets of curtains to be changed at
+will, as Marie Antoinette used to do at the Petit Trianon. How amusing
+it would be in our own modern houses to change the bed coverings, window
+curtains, and so forth, twice or three times a year! I like these loose
+slip covers and curtains better than the usual hard upholstery, because
+if properly planned the slips can be washed without losing their color
+or their lines.</p>
+
+<p>Charming Eighteenth Century prints that are full of valuable hints as to
+furniture and decorations for bedrooms can be found in most French
+shops. The series known as &quot;<i>Moreau le Jeun</i>&quot; is full of suggestion.
+Some of the interiors shown are very grand, it is true, but many are
+simple enough to serve as models for <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />modern apartments. A set of these
+pictures will do much to give one an insight into the decoration of the
+Eighteenth Century, a vivid insight that can be obtained in no other
+way, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>I do not like the very large bedrooms, dear to the plans of the American
+architect. I much prefer the space divided. I remember once arriving at
+the Ritz Hotel in London and being given temporarily a very grand royal
+suite, overlooking the park, until the smaller quarters I had reserved
+should be ready for me. How delighted I was at first with all the huge
+vastness of my bedroom! My appreciation waned, however, after a
+despairing morning toilet spent in taking many steps back and forth from
+dressing-table to bathroom, and from bathroom to hang-closets, and I was
+glad indeed, when, at the end of several hours, I was comfortably housed
+in my smaller and humbler quarters.</p>
+
+<p>I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber
+should separate it from the large outside corridor. The ideal
+arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room,
+then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back. This outer
+chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be. It may
+serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and
+concealing them with mirrored doors. The ante-chamber need not be a
+luxury, if you plan your house carefully. It is simply a little well of
+silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0359" id="h0359"></a>
+<img src="images/h0359.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MISS CROCKER&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BED"
+title="MISS CROCKER&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BED" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS CROCKER&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" /><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" /></p>
+
+<p>To go on with my ideal bedroom: the walls, I think, should be simply
+paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be
+afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is
+the best solution. You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings
+very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and
+plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of
+times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design
+in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you
+will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the
+figures.</p>
+
+<p>One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper
+that does not belong to the &quot;busy&quot; class, for while the design is
+decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat. This
+is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens
+and grays on a cream ground. I have seen bedrooms papered with huge
+scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and
+methodical thumping of a drum. I cannot imagine anyone sleeping calmly
+in such a room!</p>
+
+<p>This bedroom is eminently suited to the needs of a man. The hangings are
+of a plain, soft stuff, accenting one of the deep tones of the wall
+covering, and the sash curtains are of white muslin. The furniture is of
+oak, of the Jacobean period. The bed is true to its inspiration, with
+turned legs and runners, and slatted head and foot boards. The legs and
+runners of the <a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />bed were really inspired by the chairs and tables of the
+period. This is an excellent illustration of the modern furniture that
+may be adapted from old models. It goes without saying that the beds of
+that period were huge, cumbersome affairs, and this adapted bed is
+really more suitable to modern needs in size and weight and line than an
+original one.</p>
+
+<p>There are so many inspirations for bedrooms nowadays that one finds it
+most difficult to decide on any one scheme. One of my greatest joys in
+planning the Colony Club was that I had opportunity to furnish so many
+bedrooms. And they were small, pleasant rooms, too, not the usual
+impersonal boxes that are usually planned for club houses and hotels. I
+worked out the plan of each bedroom as if I were to live in it myself,
+and while they all differed in decorative schemes the essentials were
+the same in each room: a comfortable bed, with a small table beside it
+to hold a reading light, a clock, and a telephone; a <i>chaise-longue</i> for
+resting; a long mirror somewhere; a dressing table with proper lights
+and a glass covered top; a writing table, carefully equipped, and the
+necessary chairs and stools. Some of the bedrooms had no connecting
+baths, and these were given wash stands with bowls and pitchers of clear
+glass. Most of these bedrooms were fitted with mahogany four post beds,
+pie crust tables, colonial highboys, gay chintzes, and such, but there
+were several rooms of entirely different scheme.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0360" id="h0360"></a>
+<img src="images/h0360.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM"
+title="A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" /><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" /></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most fascinating of them all is the bird room. The walls
+are covered with an Oriental paper patterned with marvelous blue and
+green birds, birds of paradise and paroquets perched on flowering
+branches. The black lacquer furniture was especially designed for the
+room. The rug and the hangings are of jade green. I wonder how this
+seems to read of&mdash;I can only say it is a very gay and happy room to live
+in!</p>
+
+<p>There is another bedroom in pink and white, which would be an adorable
+room for a young girl. The bed is of my own design, a simple white
+painted metal bed. There is a <i>chaise-longue</i>, upholstered in the pink
+and white striped chintz of the room. The same chintz is used for window
+hangings, bed spread, and so forth. There is a little spindle legged
+table of mahogany, and another table at the head of the bed which
+contains the reading light. There is also a little white stool, with a
+cushion of the chintz, beside the bed. The dressing-table is so simple
+that any girl might copy it&mdash;it is a chintz-hung box with a sheet of
+plate glass on top, and a white framed mirror hung above it. The
+electric lights in this room are cleverly made into candlesticks which
+are painted to match the chintz. The writing-table is white, with a
+mahogany chair in front of it.</p>
+
+<p>Another bedroom has a narrow four post bed of mahogany, with hangings of
+China blue sprigged with small pink roses. There was another in green
+and <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />white. In every case these bedrooms were equipped with rugs of
+neutral and harmonious tone. The dressing-tables were always painted to
+harmonize with the chintzes or the furniture. Wherever possible there
+was an open fireplace. Roomy clothes closets added much to the comfort
+of each room, and there was always a couch of delicious softness, or a
+<i>chaise-longue,</i> and lounging chairs which invited repose.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0361" id="h0361"></a>
+<img src="images/h0361.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM"
+title="MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing so nice has happened in a long time as the revival of painted
+furniture, and the application of quaint designs to modern beds and
+chairs and chests. You may find inspiration in a length of chintz, in an
+old fan, in a faded print&mdash;anywhere! The main thing is to work out a
+color plan for the background&mdash;the walls, the furniture, and the
+rugs&mdash;and then you can draw or stencil the chosen designs wherever they
+seem to belong, and paint them in with dull tones and soft colors, rose
+and buff and blue and green and a little bit of gray and cream and
+black. Or, if you aren't even as clever as that (and you probably
+<i>are!</i>) you can decorate your painted furniture with narrow lines of
+color: dark green on a light green ground; dark blue on yellow; <i>any</i>
+color on gray or cream&mdash;there are infinite possibilities of color
+combinations. In one of the rooms shown in the illustrations the posy
+garlands on the chest of drawers were inspired by a lamp jar. This
+furniture was carefully planned, as may be seen by the little urns on
+the bedposts, quite in the manner of the Brothers Adam, but delightful
+<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" /><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" /><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />results may be obtained by using any simple modern cottage furniture
+and applying fanciful decorations.</p>
+
+<p>Be wary of hanging many pictures in your bedroom. I give this advice
+cheerfully, because I know you will hang them anyway (I do) but I warn
+you you will spoil your room if you aren't very stern with yourself.
+Somehow the pictures we most love, small prints and photographs and
+things, look spotty on our walls. We must group them to get a pleasant
+effect. Keep the framed photographs on the writing table, the dressing
+table, the mantel, etc., but do not hang them on your walls. If you have
+small prints that you feel you must have, hang them flat on the wall,
+well within the line of vision. They should be low enough to be
+<i>examined</i>, because usually such pictures are not decorative in effect,
+but exquisite in detail. The fewer pictures the better, and in the
+guest-room fewer still!</p>
+
+<p>I planned a guest-room for the top floor of a New York house that is
+very successful. The room was built around a pair of appliques made from
+two old Chinese sprays of metal flowers. I had small electric light
+bulbs fitted among the flowers, mounted them on carved wood brackets on
+each side of a good mantel mirror and worked out the rest of the room
+from them. The walls were painted bluish green, the woodwork white. Just
+below the molding at the top of the room there was a narrow border (four
+inches wide) of a mosaic-like pattern in blue and green. The carpet rug
+is of a blue-green tone. The hangings are of an <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />alluring <i>Chinoiserie</i>
+chintz, and there are several Chinese color prints framed and hanging in
+the narrow panels between the front windows. The furniture is painted a
+deep cream pointed with blue and green, and the bed covering is of a
+pale turquoise taffeta.</p>
+
+<p>Another guest room was done in gentian blue and white, with a little
+buff and rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the
+guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and
+adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with
+a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a
+young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and
+white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and
+tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an
+enchanting affair! And simple&mdash;why, she could hinge the mirrors
+together, and make the chintz ruffle, and enamel the shelves white, and
+do every bit of it except cut the plate glass. Of course the glass is
+very clean and nice, but an enameled surface with a white linen cover
+would be very pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>The same blue and white chintz was used for the hangings and bed
+coverings. Everything else in the room was white except the thick cream
+rug with its border of blue and rose and buff, and the candlesticks and
+appliques which repeated those colors.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0362-a" id="h0362-a"></a>
+<img src="images/h0362-a.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER&#39;S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED"
+title="MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER&#39;S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER&#39;S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0362-b" id="h0362-b"></a>
+<img src="images/h0362-b.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY&#39;S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED"
+title="MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY&#39;S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY&#39;S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a chintz I love to use called the Green Feather chintz. It is
+most decorative in design and <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />
+<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" /><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" />
+color, and such an aristocratic sort of
+chintz you can use it on handsome old sofas and your post beds that
+would scorn a more commonplace chintz. Mrs. Payne Whitney has a most
+enchanting bed covered with the Green Feather chintz, one of those great
+beds that depend entirely on their hangings for effect, for not a bit of
+the wooden frame shows. Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer has a similar bed
+covered with a <i>Chinoiserie</i> chintz. These great beds are very beautiful
+in large rooms, but they would be out of place in small ones. There are
+draped beds, however, that may be used in smaller rooms. I am showing a
+photograph of a bedroom in the Crocker house in Burlingame, California,
+where I used a small draped bed with charming effect. This bed is placed
+flat against the wall, like a sofa, and the drapery is adapted from that
+of a Louis XVI room. The bed is of gray painted wood, and the hangings
+are of blue and cream chintz lined with blue taffetas. I used the same
+idea in a rose and blue bedroom in a New York house. In this case,
+however, the bed was painted cream white and the large panels of the
+head and foot boards were filled with a rose and blue chintz. The
+bedspread was of deep rose colored taffetas, and from a small canopy
+above the bed four curtains of the rose and blue chintz, lined with the
+taffetas, are pulled to the four corners of the bed. This novel
+arrangement of draperies is very satisfactory in a small room.</p>
+
+<p>In my own house the bedrooms open into dressing-<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />rooms, so much of the
+usual furniture is not necessary. My own bedroom, for instance, is built
+around the same old Breton bed I had in the Washington Irving house. The
+bed dominates the room, but there are also a <i>chaise-longue</i>, several
+small tables, many comfortable chairs, and a real fireplace. The
+business of dressing takes place in the dressing-room, so there is no
+dressing-table here, but there are long mirrors filling the wall spaces
+between windows and doors. Miss Marbury's bedroom is just over mine, and
+is a sunshiny place of much rose and blue and cream. Her rooms are
+always full of blue, just as my rooms are always full of rose color.
+This bedroom has cream woodwork and walls of a bluish-gray, cream
+painted furniture covered with a mellow sort of rose-and-cream chintz,
+and a Persian rug made up of blue and cream. The curtains at the windows
+are of plain blue linen bordered with a narrow blue and white fringe.
+The lighting-fixtures are of carved wood, pointed in polychrome. The
+most beautiful thing in the room is a Fifteenth Century painting, the
+Madonna of Bartolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor over the
+mantel.</p>
+
+<p>I haven't said a word about our nice American Colonial bedrooms, because
+all of you know their beauties and requirements as well as I. The great
+drawback to the stately old furniture of our ancestors is the space it
+occupies. Haven't you seen a fine old four post bed simply overflowing a
+poor little room? Fortu<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />nately, the furniture-makers are designing
+simple beds of similar lines, but lighter build, and these beds are very
+lovely. The owner of a massive old four-post bed is justly proud of it,
+but our new beds are built for a new service and a new conception of
+hygiene, and so must find new lines and curves that will be friendly to
+the old dressing tables and highboys and chests of drawers.</p>
+
+<p>When we are fortunate enough to inherit great old houses, of course we
+will give them proper furniture&mdash;if we can find it.</p>
+
+<p>I remember a house in New Orleans that had a full dozen spacious
+bedrooms, square, closetless chambers that opened into small
+dressing-rooms. One of them, I remember, was absolutely bare of wall and
+floor, with a great Napoleon bed set squarely in the center of it. There
+was the inevitable mosquito net canopy, here somehow endowed with an
+unexpected dignity. One felt the room had been made for sleeping, and
+nothing <i>but</i> sleeping, and while the bed was placed in the middle of
+the floor to get all the air possible, its placing was a master stroke
+of decoration in that great white walled room. It was as impressive as a
+royal bed on a dais.</p>
+
+<p>We are getting more sensible about our bedrooms. There is no doubt about
+it. For the last ten years there has been a dreadful epidemic of brass
+beds, a mistaken vogue that came as a reaction from the heavy walnut
+beds of the last generation. White painted <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />metal beds came first, and
+will last always, but they weren't good enough for people of
+ostentatious tastes, and so the vulgar brass bed came to pass. Why we
+should suffer brass beds in our rooms, I don't know! The plea is that
+they are more sanitary than wooden ones. Hospitals must consider
+sanitation first, last, and always, and they use white iron beds. And
+why shouldn't white iron beds, which are modest and unassuming in
+appearance, serve for homes as well? The truth is that the glitter of
+brass appeals to the untrained eye. But that is passing. Go into the
+better shops and you will see! Recently there was a spasmodic outbreak
+of silver-plated beds, but I think there won't be a vogue for this
+newest object of bad taste. It is a little too much!</p>
+
+<p>If your house is clean and you intend to keep it so, a wooden bed that
+has some relation to the rest of your furniture is the best bed
+possible. Otherwise, a white painted metal one. There is never an excuse
+for a brass one. Indeed, I think the three most glaring errors we
+Americans make are rocking-chairs, lace curtains, and brass beds.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0363" id="h0363"></a>
+<img src="images/h0363.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED"
+title="MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED" />
+<p class="center"><b>MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV" /><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" /><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />XV</h2>
+
+<h2>THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>Dressing-rooms and closets should be necessities, not luxuries, but
+alas! our architects' ideas of the importance of large bedrooms have
+made it almost impossible to incorporate the proper closets and
+dressing-places a woman really requires.</p>
+
+<p>In the foregoing chapter on bedrooms I advised the division of a large
+bedroom into several smaller rooms: ante-chamber, sitting-room,
+sleeping-room, dressing-room and bath. The necessary closets may be
+built along the walls of all these little rooms, or, if there is
+sufficient space, one long, airy closet may serve for all one's personal
+belongings. Of course, such a suite of rooms is possible only in large
+houses. But even in simple houses a small dressing-room can be built
+into the corner of an average-sized bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>In France every woman dresses in her <i>cabinet de toilette</i>; it is one of
+the most important rooms in the house. No self-respecting French woman
+would dream of dressing in her sleeping-room. The little <i>cabinet de
+toilette</i> need not be much larger than a closet, if the closets are
+built ceiling high, and the doors are utilized for mirrors. Such an
+arrangement <a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />makes for great comfort and privacy. Here I find that most
+of my countrywomen dress in their bedrooms. I infinitely prefer the
+separate dressing-room, which means a change of air, and which can be
+thoroughly ventilated. If one sleeps with the bedroom windows wide open,
+it is a pleasure to have a warm dressing-room to step into.</p>
+
+<p>I think the first thing to be considered about a dressing-room is its
+utility. Here no particular scheme of decoration or over-elaboration of
+color is in place. Everything should be very simple, very clean and very
+hygienic. The floors should not be of wood, but may be of marble or
+mosaic cement or clean white tiles, with a possible touch of color. If
+the dressing-room is bathroom also, there should be as large a bath as
+is compatible with the size of the room. The combination of
+dressing-room and bathroom is successful only in those large houses
+where each bedroom has its bath. I have seen such rooms in modern
+American houses that were quite as large as bedrooms, with the supreme
+luxury of open fireplaces. Think of the comfort of having one's bath and
+of making one's toilet before an open fire! This is an outgrowth of our
+passion for bedrooms that are so be-windowed they become
+sleeping-porches, and we may leave their chill air for the comfortable
+warmth of luxurious dressing-rooms.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0364" id="h0364"></a>
+<img src="images/h0364.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS"
+title="FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS" />
+<p class="center"><b>FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>If I were giving advice as to the furnishing of a dressing-room, in as
+few words as possible, I should say: &quot;Put in lots of mirrors, and then
+more mirrors, <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" /><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" /><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />and then more!&quot; Indeed, I do not think one can have too
+many mirrors in a dressing-room. Long mirrors can be set in doors and
+wall panels, so that one may see one's self from hat to boots. Hinged
+mirrors are lovely for sunny wall spaces, and for the tops of
+dressing-tables. I have made so many of them. One of green and gold
+lacquer was made to be used on a plain green enameled dressing-table
+placed squarely in the recess of a great window. I also use small
+mirrors of graceful contour to light up the dark corners of
+dressing-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Have your mirrors so arranged that you get a good strong light by day,
+and have plenty of electric lights all around the dressing-mirrors for
+night use. In other words, know the worst before you go out! In my own
+dressing-room the lights are arranged just as I used to have them long
+ago in my theater dressing-room when I was on the stage. I can see
+myself back, front and sides before I go out. Really, it is a comfort to
+be on friendly terms with your own back hair! I lay great stress on the
+mirrors and plenty of lights, and yet more lights. Oh, the joy, the
+blessing of electric light! I think every woman would like to dress
+always by a blaze of electric light, and be seen only in the soft
+luminosity of candle light&mdash;how lovely we would all look, to be sure! It
+is a great thing to know the worst before one goes out, so that even the
+terrors of the arc lights before our theaters will be powerless to
+dismay us.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" /></p>
+
+<p>If there is room in the dressing-room, there should be a sofa with a
+slip cover of some washable fabric that can be taken off when necessary.
+This sofa may be the simplest wooden frame, with a soft pad, or it may
+be a <i>chaise-longue</i> of elegant lines. The <i>chaise-longue</i> is suitable
+for bedroom or dressing-room, but it is an especially luxurious
+lounging-place when you are having your hair done.</p>
+
+<p>A man came to me just before Christmas, and said, &quot;Do tell me something
+to give my wife. I cannot think of a thing in the world she hasn't
+already.&quot; I asked, &quot;Is she a lady of habits?&quot; &quot;What!&quot; he said,
+astonished. &quot;Does she enjoy being comfortable?&quot; I asked. &quot;Well, rather!&quot;
+he smiled. And so I suggested a <i>couvre-pieds</i> for her <i>chaise-longue.</i>
+Now I am telling you of the <i>couvre pieds</i> because I know all women love
+exquisite things, and surely nothing could be more delicious than my
+<i>couvre-pieds.</i> Literally, it is a &quot;cover for the feet,&quot; a sort of
+glorified and diminutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk,
+lined with the soft long-haired white fur known as mountain tibet, and
+interlined with down. The coverlet is bordered with a puffing of French
+lace, and the top of it is encrusted with little flowers made of tiny
+French picot ribbons, and quillings of the narrowest of lace. It is
+supposed to be thrown over your feet, fur side down, when you are
+resting or having your hair done.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0365" id="h0365"></a>
+<img src="images/h0365.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM"
+title="MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>You may devise a little coverlet for your own sofa, whether it be in
+your bedroom, your boudoir, or your <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" /><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" /><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />dressing-room, that will be quite
+as useful as this delectable <i>couvre-pieds</i>. I saw some amusing ones
+recently, made of gay Austrian silks, lined with astonishing colors and
+bound with puffings and flutings of ribbon of still other colors. A
+coverlet of this kind would be as good as a trip away from home for the
+woman who is bored and wearied. No matter how drab and commonplace her
+house might be, she could devise a gay quilt of one of the enchanting
+new stuffs and wrap herself in it for a holiday hour. One of the most
+amusing ones was of turquoise blue silk, with stiff flowers of violet
+and sulphur yellow scattered over it. The flowers were quite large and
+far apart, so that there was a square expanse of the turquoise blue with
+a stiff flower at each corner. The lining was of sulphur yellow silk,
+and the binding was a puffing of violet ribbons. The color fairly made
+me gasp, at first, but then it became fascinating, and finally
+irresistible. I sighed as I thought of the dreary patchwork quilts of
+our great-grandmothers. How they would have marveled at our audacious
+use of color, our frank joy in it!</p>
+
+<p>Of course the most important thing in the dressing-room is the
+dressing-table. I place my dressing-tables <i>against</i> a group of windows,
+not near them, whenever it is possible. I have used plate glass tops on
+many of them, and mirrors for tops on others, for you can't have too
+many mirrors or too strong a light for dressing. We must see ourselves
+as others will see us.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" /></p>
+
+<p>My own dressing-table contains many drawers, one of which is fitted
+with an ink-well, a tray for pens and pencils, and a sliding shelf on
+which I write. This obviates going into another room to answer hurried
+notes when one is dressing. Beside the dressing-table stands the tall
+hat-stand for the hat I may be wearing that day.</p>
+
+<p>When the maid prepares the dress that is to be worn, she puts the hat
+that goes with the toilette on the tall single stand. Another idea is
+the little hollow table on casters that can easily be slipped under the
+dressing-table, where it is out of the way. All the little ugly things
+that make one lovely can be kept in this table, which can have a lid if
+desired, and even a lock and key. I frequently make them with a glass
+bottom, as they do not get stained or soiled, and can be washed.</p>
+
+<p>There are lots of little dodges that spell comfort for the dressing-room
+of the woman who wants comfort and can have luxury. There is the
+hot-water towel-rack, which is connected with the hot-water system of
+the house and which heats the towels, and incidentally the
+dressing-room. This a boon if you like a hot bath sheet after a cold
+plunge on a winter's morning. Another modern luxury is a wall cabinet
+fitted with glass shelves for one's bottles and sponges and powders.
+There seems to be no end to the little luxuries that are devised for the
+woman who makes a proper toilet. Who can blame her for loving the
+business of making <a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />herself attractive, when every one offers her
+encouragement?</p>
+
+<p>A closet is absolutely necessary in the dressing-room, and if space is
+precious every inch of its interior may be fitted with shelves and
+drawers and hooks, so that no space is wasted. The outside of the closet
+door may be fitted with a mirror, and narrow shelves just deep enough to
+hold one's bottles, may be fitted on the inside of the door. If the
+closet is very shallow, the inner shelves should be hollowed out to
+admit the bottle shelves when the door is closed. Otherwise the bottles
+will be smashed the first time a careless maid slams the door. This
+bottle closet has been one of my great successes in small apartments,
+where bathroom and dressing-room are one, and where much must be
+accomplished in a small space.</p>
+
+<p>In the more modern apartments the tub is placed in a recess in the wall
+of the bathroom, leaving more space for dressing purposes. This sort of
+combination dressing-room should have waterproof floor and wall, and no
+fripperies. There should be a screen large enough to conceal the tub,
+and a folding chair that may be placed in the small closet when it is
+not in use.</p>
+
+<p>When the bathroom is too small to admit a dressing-table and chair and
+the bedroom is quite large, a good plan is the building of a tiny room
+in one corner of the bedroom. Of course this little dressing-box must
+have a window. I have used this plan many times with excellent results.
+Another scheme, when the problem <a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />was entirely different, and the
+dressing-room was too large for comfort, was to line three walls of it
+with closets, the fourth wall being filled with windows. These closets
+were narrow, each having a mirrored panel in its door. This is the ideal
+arrangement, for there is ample room for all one's gowns, shoes, hats,
+veils, gloves, etc., each article having its own specially planned shelf
+or receptacle. The closets are painted in gay colors inside, and the
+shelves are fitted with thin perfumed pads. They are often further
+decorated with bright lines of color, which is always amusing to the
+woman who opens a door. Hat stands and bags are covered with the same
+chintzes employed in the dressing-room proper. Certain of the closets
+are fitted with the English tray shelves, and each tray has its sachet.
+The hangers for gowns are covered in the chintz or brocade used on the
+hat stands. This makes an effective ensemble whether brocades or printed
+cottons are used, if the arrangement is orderly and full of gay color.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<br />
+<a name="h0366" id="h0366"></a>
+<img src="images/h0366.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MISS MARBURY&#39;S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE"
+title="MISS MARBURY&#39;S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS MARBURY&#39;S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the most successful gown closets I have done is a long narrow
+closet with a door at each end, really a passageway between a bedroom
+and a boudoir. Long poles run the length of the closet, with curtains
+that enclose a passage from door to door. Back of these curtains are
+long poles that may be raised or lowered by pulleys. Each gown is placed
+on its padded hanger, covered with its muslin bag, and hung on the pole.
+The pole is then drawn up so that the tails of the gowns <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" /><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" /><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />will not
+touch the dust of the floor. This is a most orderly arrangement for the
+woman of many gowns.</p>
+
+<p>The straightaway bathroom that one finds in apartments and small houses
+is difficult to make beautiful, but may be made airy and clean-looking,
+which is more important. I had to make such a bathroom a little more
+attractive recently, and it was a very pleasant job. I covered the walls
+with a waterproof stuff of white, figured with a small black polkadot.
+The woodwork and the ceiling were painted white. All around the door and
+window frames I used a two-inch border of ivy leaves, also of waterproof
+paper, and although I usually abominate borders I loved this one. A
+plain white framed mirror was also painted with green ivy leaves, and a
+glass shelf above the wash bowl was fitted with glass bottles and dishes
+with labels and lines of clear green. White muslin curtains were hung at
+the window, and a small white stool was given a cushion covered with
+green and white ivy patterned chintz. The floor was painted white, and a
+solid green rug was used. The towels were cross-stitched with the name
+of the owner in the same bright green. The room, when finished, was cool
+and refreshing, and had cost very little in money, and not so very much
+in time and labor.</p>
+
+<p>I think that in country houses where there is not a bathroom with each
+bedroom there should be a very good washstand provided for each guest.
+When a house party is in progress, for instance, and every one <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />comes in
+from tennis or golf or what not, eager for a bath and fresh clothes,
+washstands are most convenient. Why shouldn't a washstand be just as
+attractively furnished as a dressing-table? Just because they have been
+so ugly we condemn them to eternal ugliness, but it is quite possible to
+make the washstand interesting to look upon as well as serviceable. It
+isn't necessary to buy a &quot;set&quot; of dreadful crockery. You can assemble
+the necessary things as carefully as you would assemble the outfit for
+your writing-table. Go to the pottery shops, the glass shops, the
+silversmiths, and you will find dozens of bowls and pitchers and small
+things. A clear glass bowl and pitcher and the necessary glasses and
+bottles can be purchased at any department store. The French peasants
+make an apple-green pottery that is delightful for a washstand set. So
+many of the china shops have large shallow bowls that were made for
+salad and punch, and pitchers that were made for the dining-table, but
+there is no reason why they shouldn't be used on the washstand. I know
+one wash basin that began as a Russian brass pan of flaring rim. With it
+is used an old water can of hammered brass, and brass dishes glass
+lined, to hold soaps and sponges. It is only necessary to desire the
+unusual thing, and you'll get it, though much searching may intervene
+between the idea and its achievement.</p>
+
+<p>The washstand itself is not such a problem. A pair of dressing-tables
+may be bought, and one fitted up as a washstand, and the other left to
+its usual use.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" /></p>
+
+<p>In the Colony Club there are a number of bathrooms, but there are also
+washstands in those rooms that have no private bath. Each bathroom has
+its fittings planned to harmonize with the connecting bedroom, and the
+clear glass bottles are all marked in the color prevailing in the
+bedroom. Each bathroom has a full-length mirror, and all the
+conveniences of a bathroom in a private house. In addition to these
+rooms there is a long hall filled with small <i>cabinets de toilette</i>
+which some clever woman dubbed &quot;prinkeries.&quot; These are small rooms
+fitted with dressing-tables, where out-of-town members may freshen their
+toilets for an occasion. These little prinkeries would be excellent in
+large country houses, where there are so many motoring guests who come
+for a few hours only, dust-laden and travel-stained, only to find that
+all the bedrooms and dressing-rooms in the house are being used by the
+family and the house guests.</p>
+
+<p>A description of the pool of the Colony Club is hardly within the
+province of this chapter, but so many amazing Americans are building
+themselves great houses incorporating theaters and Roman baths, so many
+women are building club houses, so many others are building palatial
+houses that are known as girls' schools, perhaps the swimming-pool will
+soon be a part of all large houses. This pool occupies the greater part
+of the basement floor of the Club house, the rest of the floor being
+given over to little rooms where one may have a shampoo or massage or a
+dancing <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />lesson or what not before or after one's swim. The pool is
+twenty-two by sixty feet, sunken below the level of the marble floor.
+The depth is graded from four feet to deep water, so that good and bad
+swimmers may enjoy it. The marble margin of floor surrounding the pool
+is bordered with marble benches, placed between the white columns. The
+walls of the great room are paneled with mirrors, so that there are
+endless reflections of columned corridors and pools and shimmering
+lights. The ceiling is covered with a light trellis hung with vines,
+from which hang great greenish-white bunches of grapes holding electric
+lights. One gets the impression of myriads of white columns, and of
+lights and shadows infinitely far-reaching. Surely the old Romans knew
+no pleasanter place than this city-enclosed pool.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI" /><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />XVI</h2>
+
+<h2>THE SMALL APARTMENT</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>This is the age of the apartment. Not only in the great cities, but in
+the smaller centers of civilization the apartment has come to stay.
+Modern women demand simplified living, and the apartment reduces the
+mechanical business of living to its lowest terms. A decade ago the
+apartment was considered a sorry makeshift in America, though it has
+been successful abroad for more years than you would believe. We
+Americans have been accustomed to so much space about us that it seemed
+a curtailment of family dignity to give up our gardens, our piazzas and
+halls, our cellars and attics, our front and rear entrances. Now we are
+wiser. We have just so much time, so much money and so much strength,
+and it behooves us to make the best of it. Why should we give our time
+and strength and enthusiasm to drudgery, when our housework were better
+and more economically done by machinery and co-operation? Why should we
+stultify our minds with doing the same things thousands of times over,
+when we might help ourselves and our friends to happiness by intelligent
+occupations and amusements? The apartment is the solution of the living
+problems of the city, and it has been <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />a direct influence on the houses
+of the towns, so simplifying the small-town business of living as well.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, many of us who live in apartments either have a little house
+or a big one in the country for the summer months, or we plan for one
+some day! So hard does habit die&mdash;we cannot entirely divorce our ideas
+of Home from gardens and trees and green grass. But I honestly think
+there is a reward for living in a slice of a house: women who have lived
+long in the country sometimes take the beauty of it for granted, but the
+woman who has been hedged in by city walls gets the fine joy of
+out-of-doors when she <i>is</i> out of doors, and a pot of geraniums means
+more to her than a whole garden means to a woman who has been denied the
+privilege of watching things grow.</p>
+
+<p>The modern apartment is an amazing illustration of the rapid development
+of an idea. The larger ones are quite as magnificent as any houses could
+be. I have recently furnished a Chicago apartment that included large
+and small salons, a huge conservatory, and a great group of superb rooms
+that are worthy of a palace. There are apartment houses in New York that
+offer suites of fifteen to twenty rooms, with from five to ten baths, at
+yearly rentals that approximate wealth to the average man, but these
+apartments are for the few, and there are hundreds of thousands of
+apartments for the many that have the same essential conveniences.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most notable achievements of the apartment house architects
+is the duplex apartment, the little <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />house within a house, with its
+two-story high living room, its mezzanine gallery with service rooms
+ranged below and sleeping rooms above, its fine height and spaciousness.
+Most of the duplex apartments are still rather expensive, but some of
+them are to be had at rents that are comparatively low&mdash;rents are always
+comparative, you know.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, although it is a far cry financially from the duplex
+apartment to the tidy three-room flat of the model tenements, the
+&quot;modern improvements&quot; are very much the same. The model tenement offers
+compact domestic machinery, and cleanliness, and sanitary comforts at a
+few dollars a week that are not to be had at any price in many of the
+fine old houses of Europe. The peasant who has lived on the plane of the
+animals with no thought of cleanliness, or indeed of anything but food
+and drink and shelter, comes over here and enjoys improvements that our
+stately ancestors of a few generations ago would have believed magical.
+Enjoys them&mdash;they do say he puts his coal in the bath tub, but his
+grandchildren will be different, perhaps!</p>
+
+<p>But enough of apartments in general. This chapter is concerned with the
+small apartment sought by you young people who are beginning
+housekeeping. You want to find just the proper apartment, of course, and
+then you want to decorate and furnish it. Let me beg of you to demand
+only the actual essentials: a decent neighborhood, good light and air,
+and at least one reasonably large room. Don't demand perfection, for
+<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />you won't find it. Make up your mind just what will make for your
+happiness and comfort, and demand that. You can make any place livable
+by furnishing it wisely. And, oh, let me beg of you, don't buy your
+furniture until you have found and engaged your apartment! It is bad
+enough to buy furniture for a house you haven't seen, but an apartment
+is a place of limitations, and you can so easily mar the place by buying
+things that will not fit in. An apartment is so dependent upon proper
+fittings, skilfully placed, that you may ruin your chances of a real
+home if you go ahead blindly.</p>
+
+<p>Before you sign your lease, be sure that the neighborhood is not too
+noisy. Be sure that you will have plenty of light and air and heat. You
+can interview the other tenants, and find out about many things you
+haven't time or the experience to anticipate. Be sure that your landlord
+is a reasonable human being who will consent to certain changes, if
+necessary, who will be willing for you to build in certain things, who
+will co-operate with you in improving his property, if you go about it
+tactfully.</p>
+
+<p>Be sure that the woodwork is plain and unpretentious, that the
+lighting-fixtures are logically placed, and of simple construction. (Is
+there anything more dreadful than those colored glass domes, with
+fringes of beads, that landlords so proudly hang over the imaginary
+dining-table?) Be sure that the plumbing is in good condition, and
+beware the bedroom on an air shaft&mdash;better<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" /> pay a little more rent and
+save the doctor's bills. Beware of false mantels, and grotesque
+grille-work, and imitation stained glass, and grained woodwork. You
+couldn't be happy in a place that was false to begin with.</p>
+
+<p>Having found just the combination of rooms that suggests a real home to
+you, go slowly about your decorating.</p>
+
+<p>It is almost imperative that the woodwork and walls should have the same
+finish throughout the apartment, unless you wish to find yourself living
+in a crazy-quilt of unfriendly colors. I have seen four room apartments
+in which every room had a different wall paper and different woodwork.
+The &quot;parlor&quot; was papered with poisonous-looking green paper, with
+imitation mahogany woodwork; the dining-room had walls covered with red
+burlap and near-oak woodwork; the bedroom was done in pink satin
+finished paper and bird's-eye maple woodwork, and the kitchen was
+bilious as to woodwork, with bleak gray walls. Could anything be more
+mistaken?</p>
+
+<p>You can make the most commonplace rooms livable if you will paint all
+your woodwork cream, or gray, or sage green, and cover your walls with a
+paper of very much the same tone. Real hard wood trim isn't used in
+ordinary apartments, so why not do away with the badly-grained imitation
+and paint it? You can look through thousands of samples of wall papers,
+and you will finally have to admit that there is nothing better <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />for
+every day living than a deep cream, a misty gray, a tan or a buff paper.</p>
+
+<p>You may have a certain license in the papering of your bedrooms, of
+course, but the living-rooms&mdash;hall, dining-room, living-room,
+drawing-room, and so forth&mdash;should be pulled together with walls of one
+color. In no other way can you achieve an effect of spaciousness&mdash;and
+spaciousness is the thing of all other things most desirable in the
+crowded city. You must have a place where you can breathe and fling your
+arms about!</p>
+
+<p>When you have it really ready for furnishing, get the essentials first;
+do with a bed and a chest of drawers and a table and a few chairs, and
+add things gradually, as the rooms call for them.</p>
+
+<p>Make the best of the opportunities offered for built-in furniture before
+you buy another thing. If you have a built-in china closet in your
+dining-room, you can plan a graceful built-in console-table to serve as
+a buffet or serving-table, and you will require only a good table&mdash;not
+too heavily built&mdash;and a few chairs for this room. There is rarely a
+room that would not be improved by built-in shelves and inset mirrors.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I do not advise you to spend a lot of money on someone else's
+property, but why not look the matter squarely in the face? This is to
+be your home. You will find a number of things that annoy you&mdash;life in
+any city furnishes annoyances. But if you have one or two reasonably
+large rooms, plenty of light and air, and respectable surroundings, make
+up <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />your mind that you will not move every year. That you will make a
+home of this place, and then go ahead and <i>treat</i> it as a home! If a
+certain recess in the wall suggests bookshelves, don't grudge the few
+dollars necessary to have the bookshelves built in! You can probably
+have them built so that they can be removed, on that far day when this
+apartment is no longer your home, and if you have a dreadful wall paper
+don't hide behind the silly plea that the landlord will not change it.
+Go without a new gown, if necessary, and pay for the paper yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Few apartments have fireplaces, and if you are fortunate enough to find
+one with a real fireplace and a simple mantel shelf you will be far on
+the way toward making a home of your group of rooms. Of course your
+apartment is heated by steam, or hot air, or something, but an open fire
+of coal or wood will be very pleasant on chilly days, and more important
+still your home will have a point of departure&mdash;the Hearth.</p>
+
+<p>If the mantel shelf is surmounted by one of those dreadful monstrosities
+made up of gingerbread woodwork and distressing bits of mirrors,
+convince your landlord that it will not be injured in the removing, and
+store it during your residence here. Have the space above the mantel
+papered like the rest of the walls, and hang one good picture, or a good
+mirror, or some such thing above your mantel shelf, and you will have
+offered up your homage to the Spirit of the Hearth.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" /></p>
+
+<p>When you do begin to buy furniture, buy compactly, buy carefully.
+Remember that you will not require the furniture your mother had in a
+sixteen-room house. You will have no hall or piazza furnishings to buy,
+for instance, and therefore you many put a little more into your
+living-room things. The living-room is the nucleus of the modern
+apartment. Sometimes it is studio, living-room and dining-room in one.
+Sometimes living-room, library and guest-room, by the grace of a
+comfortable sleeping-couch and a certain amount of drawer or closet
+space. At any rate, it will be more surely a living-room than a similar
+room in a large house, and therefore everything in it should count for
+something. Do not admit an unnecessary rug, or chair, or picture, lest
+you lose the spaciousness, the dignity of the room. An over-stuffed
+chair will fill a room more obviously than a grand piano&mdash;if the piano
+is properly, and the chair improperly placed.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the illustrations of this chapter you will observe a small
+sitting-room in which there are dozens of things, and yet the effect is
+quiet and uncrowded. The secretary against the plain wall serves as a
+cabinet for the display of a small collection of fine old china, and the
+drawers serve the chance guest&mdash;for while this is library and
+sitting-room, it has a most comfortable couch bed, and may be used as a
+guest-room as well.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0367" id="h0367"></a>
+<img src="images/h0367.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR"
+title="A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR" />
+<p class="center"><b>A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The bookshelves are built high on each side of the mantel and between
+the windows, thus giving shelf room to a goodly collection of books,
+with no appear<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" /><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" /><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />ance of heaviness. The writing-table is placed at right
+angles to the windows, so that the light may fall on the writer's left
+shoulder. There is a couch bed&mdash;over three feet wide, in this room, with
+frame and mattress and pillows covered in a dark brocaded stuff, and a
+fireside chair, a small chair at the head of the couch and a low stool
+all covered with the same fabric. It really isn't a large room, and yet
+it abundantly fills a dozen needs.</p>
+
+<p>I think it unwise to try to work out a cut-and-dried color plan in a
+small apartment. If your floors and walls are neutral in tone you can
+introduce dozens of soft colors into your rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Don't buy massive furniture for your apartment! Remember that a few good
+chairs of willow will be less expensive and more decorative than the
+heavy, stuffy chairs usually chosen by inexperienced people. Indeed, I
+think one big arm chair, preferably of the wing variety, is the only big
+chair you will require in the living-room. A fireside chair is like a
+grandfather's clock; it gives so much dignity to a room that it is worth
+a dozen inferior things. Suppose you have a wing chair covered with
+dull-toned corduroy, or linen, or chintz; a large willow chair with a
+basket pocket for magazines or your sewing things; a stool or so of
+wood, with rush or cane seats; and a straight chair or so&mdash;perhaps a
+painted Windsor chair, or a rush-bottomed mahogany chair, or a low-back
+chair of brown oak&mdash;depending on the main furniture of the room, of
+course.<a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" /> You won't need anything more, unless you have space for a
+comfortable couch.</p>
+
+<p>If you have mahogany things, you will require a little mahogany table at
+the head of the couch to hold a reading-lamp&mdash;a sewing-table would be
+excellent. A pie-crust or turn top table for tea, or possibly a &quot;nest&quot;
+of three small mahogany tables. A writing table or book table built on
+very simple lines will be needed also. If you happen to have a
+conventional writing-desk, a gate-leg table would be charming for books
+and things.</p>
+
+<p>The wing chair and willow chairs, and the hour-glass Chinese chairs,
+will go beautifully with mahogany things or with oak things. If most of
+your furniture is to be oak, be sure and select well-made pieces stained
+a soft brown and waxed. Oak furniture is delightful when it isn't too
+heavy. A large gate-leg table of dark brown oak is one of the most
+beautiful tables in the world. With it you would need a bench of oak,
+with cane or rush seat; a small octagonal, or butterfly oak table for
+your couch end, and one or two Windsor chairs. Oak demands simple,
+wholesome surroundings, just as mahogany permits a certain feminine
+elegance. Oak furniture invites printed linens and books and brass and
+copper and pewter and gay china. While mahogany may be successfully used
+with such things, it may also be used with brocade and fragile china and
+carved chairs.</p>
+
+<p>Use chintzes in your apartment, if you wish, but <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" />do not risk the light
+ones in living-rooms. A chintz or printed linen of some good design on a
+ground of mauve, blue, gray or black will decorate your apartment
+adequately, if you make straight side curtains of it, and cover one
+chair and possibly a stool with it. Don't carry it too far. If your
+rooms are small, have your side curtains of coarse linen or raw silk in
+dull blue, orange, brown, or whatever color you choose as the key color
+of your room, and then select a dark chintz with your chosen color
+dominant in its design, and cover your one big chair with that.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment hall is most difficult, usually long and narrow and
+uninteresting. Don't try to have furniture in a hall of this kind. A
+small table near the front door, a good tile for umbrellas, etc., a good
+mirror&mdash;that is all. Perhaps a place for coats and hats, but some halls
+are too narrow for a card table.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment with a dining-room entirely separated from the living-room
+is very unusual, therefore I am hoping that you will apply all that I
+have said about the treatment of your living-room to your dining-room as
+well. People who live in apartments are very foolish if they cut off a
+room so little used as a dining-room and furnish it as if it belonged to
+a huge house. Why not make it a dining-and book-room, using the big
+table for reading, between meals, and having your bookshelves so built
+that they will be in harmony with your china shelves? Keep all your
+glass and silver and china in the kitchen, or butler's pantry, and
+dis<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />play only the excellent things&mdash;the old china, the pewter tankard,
+the brass caddy, and so forth,&mdash;in the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>However, if you have a real dining-room in your apartment, do try to
+have chairs that will be comfortable, for you can't afford to have
+uncomfortable things in so small a space! Windsor chairs and rush bottom
+chairs are best of all for a simple dining-room, I think, though the
+revival of painted furniture has brought about a new interest in the old
+flare-back chairs, painted with dull, soft colored posies on a ground of
+dull green or gray or black. These chairs would be charming in a small
+cottage dining-room, but they might not &quot;wear well&quot; in a city apartment.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0368" id="h0368"></a>
+<img src="images/h0368.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM"
+title="BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>If your apartment has two small bedrooms, why not use one of them for
+two single beds, with a night stand between, and the other for a
+dressing-room? Apartment bedrooms are usually small, but charming
+furniture may be bought for small rooms. Single beds of mahogany with
+slender posts; beds of painted wood with inset panels of cane; white
+iron beds, wooden beds painted with quaint designs on a ground of some
+soft color&mdash;all these are excellent for small rooms. It goes without
+saying that a small bedroom should have plain walls, papered or painted
+in some soft color. Flowered papers, no matter how delightful they may
+be, make a small room seem smaller. Self-toned striped papers and the
+&quot;gingham&quot; papers are sometimes very good.<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" /><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" /><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" /> The nicest thing about such
+modest walls is that you can use gay chintz with them successfully.</p>
+
+<p>Use your bedrooms as sleeping-and dressing-rooms, and nothing more. Do
+not keep your sewing things there&mdash;a big sewing-basket will add to the
+homelike quality of your living-room. Keep the bedroom floor bare,
+except for a bedside rug, and possibly one or two other rugs. This, of
+course, does not apply to the large bedroom&mdash;I am prescribing for the
+usual small one. Place your bed against the side wall, so that the
+morning light will not be directly in your eyes. A folding screen
+covered with chintz or linen will prove a God-send.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you will have a guest-room, but I doubt it. Most women find it
+more satisfactory and less expensive to send their guests to a nearby
+hotel than to keep an extra room for a guest. The guest room is
+impractical in a small apartment, but you can arrange to take care of an
+over-night guest by planning your living-room wisely.</p>
+
+<p>As for the kitchen&mdash;that is another story. It is impossible to go into
+that subject. And anyway, you will find the essentials supplied for you
+by the landlord. You won't need my advice when you need a broom or a
+coffee pot or a saucepan&mdash;you'll go buy it!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII" /><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />XVII</h2>
+
+<h2>REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>One must have preserved many na&iuml;ve illusions if one may believe in all
+the &quot;antiques&quot; that are offered in the marketplaces of the world to-day.
+Even the greatest connoisseurs are caught napping sometimes, as in the
+case of the famous crown supposedly dating to the Fifth Century, B.C.,
+which was for a brief period one of the treasures of the Louvre. Its
+origin was finally discovered, and great was the outcry! It had been
+traced to a Viennese artisan, a worker in the arts and crafts.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0369" id="h0369"></a>
+<img src="images/h0369.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MRS. C.W. HARKNESS&#39;S CABINET FOR OBJETS D&#39;ART"
+title="MRS. C.W. HARKNESS&#39;S CABINET FOR OBJETS D&#39;ART" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. C.W. HARKNESS&#39;S CABINET FOR OBJETS D&#39;ART</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Surely, if the great men of the Louvre could be so deceived it is
+obvious that the amateur collector has little chance at the hands of the
+dealers in old furniture and other objects of art. Fortunately, the
+greatest dealers are quite honest. They tell you frankly if the old
+chair you covet is really old, if it has been partially restored, or if
+it is a copy, and they charge you accordingly. At these dealers a small
+table of the Louis XVI period, or a single chair covered in the original
+tapestry, may cost as much as a man in modest circumstances would spend
+on his whole house. Almost everything outside these princely shops
+(salons is a<a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" /><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" /><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" /> better word) is false, or atrociously restored. Please
+remember I am not referring to reputable dealers, but to the smaller
+fry, whose name is legion, in whose shops the unwary seeker after
+bargains is sure to be taken in.</p>
+
+<p>Italy is, I think, the greatest workshop of fraudulent reproductions. It
+has an output that all Europe and America can never exhaust. Little
+children on the streets of Naples still find simpletons of ardent faith
+who will buy scraps of old plaster and bits of paving stones that are
+alleged to have been excavated in Pompeii.</p>
+
+<p>In writing about antiques it is not easy to be consistent, and any
+general conclusion is impossible. Certain reproductions are
+objectionable, and yet they are certainly better than poor originals,
+after all. The simplest advice is the best and easiest to follow: The
+less a copy suggests an attempt at &quot;artistic reproduction,&quot; the more
+literal and mechanical it is in its copy of the original, the better it
+is. A good photograph of a fine old painting is superior to the average
+copy in oils or watercolors. A chair honestly copied from a worm eaten
+original is better for domestic purpose than the original. The original,
+the moment its usefulness is past, belongs in a museum. A plaster cast
+of a great bust is better than the same object copied in marble or
+bronze by an average sculptor. And so it goes. Think it out for
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>It may be argued that the budding collector is as<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" /> happy with a false
+object and a fake bauble as if he possessed the real thing, and
+therefore it were better to leave him to his illusions; that it is his
+own fault; that it is so much the worse for him if he is deceived.
+But&mdash;you can't leave the innocent lamb to the slaughter, if you can give
+him a helping hand. If he must be a collector, let him be first a
+collector of the many excellent books now published on old furniture,
+china, rugs, pewter, silver, prints, the things that will come his way.
+You can't begin collecting one thing without developing an enthusiasm
+for the contemporary things. Let him study the museum collections, visit
+the private collections, consult recognized experts. If he is serious,
+he will gradually acquire the intuition of knowing the genuine from the
+false, the worth-while from the worthless, and once he has that
+knowledge, instinct, call it what you will, he can never be satisfied
+with imitations.</p>
+
+<p>The collection and association of antiques and reproductions should be
+determined by the collector's sense of fitness, it seems to me. Every
+man should depend on whatever instinct for rightness, for suitability,
+he may possess. If he finds that he dare not risk his individual
+opinion, then let him be content with the things he <i>knows</i> to be both
+beautiful and useful, and leave the subtler decisions for someone else.
+For instance, there are certain objects that are obviously the better
+for age, the objects that are softened and refined by a bloom that comes
+from usage.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" /></p>
+
+<p>An old rug has a softness that a new one cannot imitate. An old copper
+kettle has an uneven quality that has come from years of use. A new
+kettle may be quite as useful, but age has given the old one a certain
+quality that hanging and pounding cannot reproduce. A pewter platter
+that has been used for generations is dulled and softened to a glow that
+a new platter cannot rival.</p>
+
+<p>What charm is to a woman, the vague thing called quality is to an object
+of art. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it. An old
+Etruscan jar may be reproduced in form, but it would be silly to attempt
+the reproduction of the crudenesses that gave the old jar its real
+beauty. In short, objects that depend on form and fine workmanship for
+their beauty may be successfully reproduced, but objects that depend on
+imperfections of workmanship, on the crudeness of primitive fabrics, on
+the fading of vegetable dyes, on the bloom that age alone can give,
+should not be imitated. We may introduce a reproduction of a fine bust
+into our rooms, but an imitation of a Persian tile or a Venetian vase is
+absurd on the face of it.</p>
+
+<p>The antiques the average American householder is interested in are the
+old mahogany, oak and walnut things that stand for the oldest period of
+our own particular history. It is only the wealthy collector who goes
+abroad and buys masses of old European furniture, real or sham, who is
+concerned with the merits and demerits of French and Italian furniture.<a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />
+The native problem is the so-called Colonial mahogany that is always
+alleged to be Chippendale or Heppelwhite, or Sheraton, regardless! There
+must be thousands of these alleged antiques in New York shops alone!</p>
+
+<p>It goes without saying that only a very small part of it can be really
+old. As for it having been made by the men whose names it bears, that is
+something no reputable dealer would affirm. The Chippendales, father,
+son and grandson, published books of designs which were used by all the
+furniture-makers of their day.</p>
+
+<p>No one can swear to a piece of furniture having been made in the
+workshops of the Chippendales. Even the pieces in the Metropolitan
+Museum are marked &quot;Chippendale Style&quot; or &quot;In the Sheraton manner,&quot; or
+some such way. If the furniture is in the style of these makers, and if
+it is really old, you will pay a small fortune for it. But even then you
+cannot hope to get more than you pay for, and you would be very silly to
+pay for a name! After all, Chippendale is a sort of god among amateur
+collectors of American furniture, but among more seasoned collectors he
+is not by any means placed first. He adapted and borrowed and produced
+some wonderful things, but he also produced some monstrosities, as you
+will see if you visit the English museums.</p>
+
+<p>Why then lend yourself to possible deception? Why pay for names when
+museums are unable to buy<a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" /> them? If your object is to furnish your home
+suitably, what need have you of antiques?</p>
+
+<p>The serious amateur will fight shy of miracles. If he admires the beauty
+of line of a fine old Heppelwhite bed or Sheraton sideboard, he will
+have reproductions made by an expert cabinet-maker. The new piece will
+not have the soft darkness of the old, but the owner will be planning
+that soft darkness for his grandchildren, and in the meantime he will
+have a beautiful thing to live with. The age of a piece of furniture is
+of great value to a museum, but for domestic purposes, use and beauty
+will do. How fine your home will be if all the things within it have
+those qualities!</p>
+
+<p>Look through the photographs shown on these pages: there are many old
+chairs and tables, but there are more new ones. I am not one of these
+decorators who insist on originals. I believe good reproductions are
+more valuable than feeble originals, unless you are buying your
+furniture as a speculation. You can buy a reproduction of a Chippendale
+ladder back chair for about twenty-five dollars, but an original chair
+would cost at least a hundred and fifty, and then it would be &quot;in the
+style and period of Chippendale.&quot; It might amuse you to ask the curator
+of one of the British museums the price of one of the Chippendales <i>by</i>
+Chippendale. It would buy you a tidy little acreage. Stuart and
+Cromwellian chairs are being more and more reproduced. These chairs are
+made of oak, the Stuart ones<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" /> with seats and backs of cane, the
+Cromwellian ones with seats and backs of tapestry, needlework, corded
+velvet, or some such handsome fabric. These reproductions may be had at
+from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars each. Of course, the cost of
+the Cromwellian chairs might be greatly increased by expensive
+coverings.</p>
+
+<p>There is a graceful Louis XV sofa in the Petit Trianon that I have
+copied many times. The copy is as beautiful as the original, because
+this sort of furniture depends upon exquisite design and perfect
+workmanship for its beauty. It is possible that a modern craftsman might
+not have achieved so graceful a design, but the perfection of his
+workmanship cannot be gainsaid. The frame of the sofa must be carved and
+then painted and guilded many times before it is ready for the brocade
+covering, and the cost of three hundred dollars for the finished sofa is
+not too much. The original could not be purchased at any price.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the Chinese lacquer furniture of the Chippendale period
+that we are using so much now. The process of lacquering is as tedious
+to-day as it ever was, and the reproductions sell for goodly sums. A
+tall secretary of black and gold lacquer may cost six hundred dollars.
+You can imagine what an Eighteenth Century piece would cost!</p>
+
+<p>The person who said that a taste for old furniture and bibelots was
+&quot;worse than a passion, it was a vice,&quot; was certainly near the truth! It
+is an absorbing<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" /> pursuit, an obsession, and it grows with what it feeds
+on. As in objects of art, so in old furniture, the supply will always
+equal the demand of the unwary. The serious amateur will fight shy of
+all miracles and content himself with excellent reproductions. Nothing
+later than the furniture of the Eighteenth Century is included in the
+term, &quot;old furniture.&quot; There are many fine cabinet makers in the early
+Nineteenth Century, but from them until the last decade the horrors that
+were perpetrated have never been equaled in the history of household
+decorations.</p>
+
+<p>I fancy the furniture of the mid-Victorian era will never be coveted by
+collectors, unless someone should build a museum for the freakish
+objects of house furnishing. America could contribute much to such a
+collection, for surely the black walnut era of the Nineteenth Century
+will never be surpassed in ugliness and bad taste, unless&mdash;rare
+fortune&mdash;there should be a sudden epidemic of appreciation among
+cabinet-makers, which would result in their taking the beautiful wood in
+the black walnut beds and wardrobes and such and make it over into
+worth-while things. It would be a fine thing to release the mistreated,
+velvety wood from its grotesqueries, and give it a renaissance in
+graceful cabinets, small tables, footstools, and the many small things
+that could be so easily made from huge unwieldy wardrobes and beds and
+bureaux.</p>
+
+<p>The workmen of to-day have their eyes opened. They have no excuse for
+producing unworthy things,<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" /> when the greatest private collections are
+loaned or given outright to the museums. The new wing of the
+Metropolitan Museum in New York houses several fine old collections of
+furniture, the Hoentschel collection, for which the wing was really
+planned, having been given to the people of New York by Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan. This collection is an education in the French decorative arts.
+Then, too, there is the Bolles collection of American furniture
+presented to the museum by Mrs. Russell Sage.</p>
+
+<p>I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and
+sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies. There is
+no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers
+of the Eighteenth Century: we give them respect for their masterly
+workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity
+to the masterpieces they reproduce.</p>
+
+<p>Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a
+gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture
+shop. He paid for it&mdash;you may be sure of that!&mdash;and he could hardly wait
+for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors. Within a few
+months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered
+on the inside of the frame the maker's name and address. Imagine his
+chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture
+factory in his own country. You can't be sorry for him, you feel that it
+served him right.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0370-a" id="h0370-a"></a>
+<img src="images/h0370-a.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH NEEDLEWORK"
+title="A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH NEEDLEWORK" />
+<p class="center"><b>A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH NEEDLEWORK</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0370-b" id="h0370-b"></a>
+<img src="images/h0370-b.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ"
+title="A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ" />
+<p class="center"><b>A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" /><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" /></p>
+
+<p>This is an excellent example of the vain collector who cannot judge
+for himself, but will not admit it. He has not developed his sense of
+beauty, his instinct for excellence of workmanship. He thinks that
+because he has the money to pay for the treasure, the treasure must be
+genuine&mdash;hasn't <i>he</i> chosen it?</p>
+
+<p>I can quite understand the pleasure that goes with furnishing a really
+old house with objects of the period in which the house was built. A New
+England farmhouse, for instance, may be an inspiration to the owner, and
+you can understand her quest of old fashioned rush bottomed chairs and
+painted settles and quaint mirrors and blue homespun coverlets. You can
+understand the man who falls heir to a good, square old Colonial house
+who wishes to keep his furnishings true to the period, but you cannot
+understand the crying need for Eighteenth Century furniture in a modern
+shingle house, or the desire for old spinning wheels and battered
+kitchen utensils in a Spanish stucco house, or Chippendale furniture in
+a forest bungalow.</p>
+
+<p>I wish people generally would study the oak and walnut furniture of old
+England, and use more reproductions of these honest, solid pieces of
+furniture in their houses. Its beauty is that it is &quot;at home&quot; in simple
+American houses, and yet by virtue of its very usefulness and sturdiness
+it is not out of place in a room where beautiful objects of other
+periods are used. The long oak table that is so comfortably ample for
+books and magazines and flowers in your living-room<a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" /> may be copied from
+an old refectory table&mdash;but what of it? It fulfils its new mission just
+as frankly as the original table served the monks who used it.</p>
+
+<p>The soft brown of oak is a pleasure after the over-polished mahogany of
+a thousand rooms. I do not wish to condemn Colonial mahogany furniture,
+you understand. I simply wish to remind you that there are other woods
+and models available. French furniture of the best type represents the
+supreme art of the cabinet-maker, and is incomparable for formal rooms,
+but I am afraid the time will never come when French furniture will be
+interchangeable with the oak and mahogany of England and America.</p>
+
+<p>In short, the whole thing should be a matter of taste and suitability.
+If you have a few fine old things that have come to you from your
+ancestors&mdash;a grandfather's clock, an old portrait or two&mdash;you are quite
+justified in bringing good reproductions of similar things into your
+home. The effect is the thing you are after, isn't it? Then, too, you
+will escape the awful fever that makes any antique seem desirable, and
+in buying reproductions you can select really comfortable furniture. You
+will be independent of the dreadful vases and candelabra and steel
+engravings &quot;of the period,&quot; and will feel free to use modern prints and
+Chinese porcelains and willow chairs and anything that fits into your
+home. I can think of no slavery more deadly to one's sense of humor than
+collecting antiques indiscriminately!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" /><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0371" id="h0371"></a>
+<img src="images/h0371.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB"
+title="THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII" /><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />XVIII</h2>
+
+<h2>THE ART OF TRELLIAGE</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>When I planned the trellis room of the Colony Club in New York I had
+hard work finding workmen who could appreciate the importance of
+crossing and recrossing little strips of green wood, of arranging them
+to form a mural decoration architectural in treatment. This trellis room
+was, I believe, the first in America to be so considered, though the use
+of trellis is as old as architecture in Japan, China, Arabia, Egypt,
+Italy, France and Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest examples of trellis work shown are in certain Roman
+frescoes. In Pompeii the mural paintings give us a very good idea of
+what some of the Roman gardens were like. In the entrance hall of the
+house of Sallust is represented a garden with trellised niches and
+bubbling fountains. Representations that have come down to us in
+documents show that China and Japan both employed the trellis in their
+decorative schemes. You will find a most daring example on your old blue
+willow plate, if you will look closely enough. The bridge over which the
+flying princess goes to her lover is a good model, and could be built in
+many gardens. Even a tiny modern garden, yours or mine, might hold this
+fairy bridge.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" /></p>
+
+<p>Almost all Arabian decorations have their basis in trellis design or
+arabesques filled in with the intricate tracery that covers all their
+buildings. If we examine the details of the most famous of the old
+Moorish buildings that remain to us, the mosque at Cordova and the
+Alhambra at Granada, we shall find them full of endless trellis
+suggestions. Indeed, there are many documents still extant showing how
+admirably trellis decoration lends itself to the decoration of gardens
+and interiors. There are dozens of examples of niches built to hold fine
+busts. Pavilions and summer houses, the quaint gazebos of old England,
+the graceful screens of trellis that terminate a long garden path, the
+arching gateways crowned with vines&mdash;all these may be reproduced quite
+easily in American gardens.</p>
+
+<p>The first trellis work in France was inspired by Italy, but the French
+gave it a perfection of architectural character not found in other
+countries. The manuscript of the &quot;Romance of the Rose,&quot; dating back to
+the Fifteenth Century, contains the finest possible example of trellis
+in a medieval garden. Most of the old French gardens that remain to us
+have important trellis construction. At Blois one still sees the remains
+of a fine trellis covering the walls of the kitchen gardens. Wonderful
+and elaborate trellis <i>pavillons</i>, each containing a statue, often
+formed the centers of very old gardens. These garden houses were called
+gazebos in England, and <i>Temples d'Amour</i> (Temples of Love) in France,
+and the statue most<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" /> often seen was the god of Love. In the Trianon
+gardens at Versailles there is a charming <i>Temple d'Amour</i> standing on a
+tiny island, with four small canals leading to it.</p>
+
+<p>A knowledge of the history of trelliage and an appreciation of its
+practical application to modern needs is a conjurer's wand&mdash;you can wave
+it and create all sorts of ephemeral constructions that will last your
+time and pleasure. You may give your trellis any poetic shape your
+vision may take. You may dream and realize enchanting gardens, with
+clipped hedges and trellis walls. You may transform a commonplace porch
+into a gay garden room, with a few screens of trellis and many flower
+boxes of shrubs and vines. Here indeed is a delightful medium for your
+fancy!</p>
+
+<p>Trelliage and lattice work are often used as interchangeable terms, but
+mistakenly, for any carpenter who has the gift of precision can build a
+good lattice, but a trellis must have architectural character. Trellis
+work is not necessarily flimsy construction; the light chestnut laths
+that were used by the old Frenchmen and still remain to us prove that.</p>
+
+<p>Always in a garden I think one must feel one has not come to the end,
+one must go on and on in search of new beauties and the hidden delights
+we feel sure must be behind the clipped hedges or the trellis walls.
+Even when we come to the end we are not quite sure it is the end, and we
+steep ourselves in seclusion and quiet, knowing full well that to-morrow
+or to-night perhaps<a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" /> when the moon is up and we come back as we promise
+ourselves to do, surely we shall see that ideal corner that is the last
+word of the perfection of our dream garden&mdash;that delectable spot for
+which we forever seek!</p>
+
+<p>We can bring back much of the charm of the old-time gardens by a
+judicious use of trellis. It is suitable for every form of outdoor
+construction. A new garden can be subdivided and made livable in a few
+months with trellis screens, where hedges, even of the quick growing
+privet, would take years to grow. The entrance to the famous maze at
+Versailles, now, alas, utterly destroyed, was in trellis, and I have
+reproduced in our own garden at Villa Trianon, in Versailles, the
+entrance arch and doors, all in trellis. Our high garden fence with its
+curving gate is also in trellis, and you can imagine the joy with which
+we watched the vines grow, climbing over the gatetop as gracefully as if
+they too felt the charm of the curving tracery of green strips, and
+cheerfully added the decoration of their leaves and tendrils.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0372" id="h0372"></a>
+<img src="images/h0372.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH&#39;S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW YORK"
+title="MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH&#39;S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW YORK" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH&#39;S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW YORK</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Our outdoor trellis is at the end of the Villa Trianon garden, in line
+with the terrace where we take our meals. This trellis was rebuilt many
+times before it satisfied me, but now it is my greatest joy. The niches
+are planned to hold two old statues and several prim box trees. I used
+very much the same constructive design on one of the walls of the Colony
+Club trellis room, but there a fountain has the place of<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" /><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" /><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" /> honor.
+Formal pedestals surmounted by gracefully curved urns, box trees,
+statues, marble benches, fountains&mdash;all these belong to the formal
+outdoor trellis.</p>
+
+<p>The trellis is primarily suitable for garden architecture, but it may be
+fitted to interior uses most skilfully. Pictures of the trellis room in
+the Colony Club have been shown so often it is not necessary to repeat
+more than one of them. The room is long and high, with a floor of large
+red tiles. The walls and ceiling are covered with rough gray plaster, on
+which the green strips of wood are laid. The wall space is entirely
+covered with the trellis design broken into ovals which hold
+lighting-fixtures&mdash;grapes and leaves in cloudy glass and green enamel.
+The long room leads up to the ivy-covered trellis of the fountain wall,
+a perfect background for the fountain, a bowl on the brim of which is
+poised a youthful figure, upheld by two dolphins. The water spills over
+into a little pool, banked with evergreens. Ivy has been planted in long
+boxes along the wall, and climbs to the ceiling, where the plaster is
+left bare, save for the trellised cornice and the central trellis
+medallion, from which is suspended an enchanting lantern made up of
+green wires and ivy leaves and little white flames of electric light.</p>
+
+<p>The roof garden of the Colony Club is latticed in a simple design we all
+know. This is lattice, not trellis, and in no way should be confounded
+with the trellis room on the entrance floor. This white-painted lattice
+covers the wall space. Growing vines are placed<a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" /> along the walls and
+clamber to the beams. The glass ceiling is supported by white beams.
+There are always blossoming flowers and singing birds in this room. The
+effect is springlike and joyous on the bleakest winter day. The room is
+heated by two huge stoves of green Majolica brought over from Germany
+when other heating systems failed. Much of the furniture is covered with
+a grape-patterned chintz and a green and white striped linen. The
+ceiling lights are hidden in huge bunches of pale green grapes.</p>
+
+<p>I recently planned a most beautiful trellis room for a New York City
+house. The room is long and narrow, with walls divided into panels by
+upright classic columns. The lower wall space between the columns is
+covered with a simple green lattice, and the upper part is filled with
+little mirrors framed in narrow green moldings, arranged in a
+conventional design which follows the line of the trellis. One end of
+the room is made up of two narrow panels of the trellis with a fireplace
+between. On the opposite wall the middle panel is a background for a
+delightful wall fountain. The fretwork of mirrors which takes the place
+of frieze in the room is continued all around the four walls. One of the
+walls is filled entirely with French doors of plate glass, beneath the
+mirrored frieze; the other long wall has the broad, central panel cut
+into two doors of plate glass, and stone benches placed against the two
+trellised panels flanking the doors. The ceiling is divided into three
+great panels<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" /> of trellis, and from each of the three panels a lantern is
+suspended.</p>
+
+<p>In the Guinness house in New York there is a little hallway wainscoted
+in white with a green trellis covering the wall space above. Against
+this simple trellis&mdash;it is really a lattice&mdash;a number of plaster casts
+are hung. In one corner an old marble bowl holds a grapevine, which has
+been trained over the walls. The floor is of white tiles, with a narrow
+Greek border of black and white. This decoration of a little hall might
+be copied very easily.</p>
+
+<p>The architects are building nowadays many houses that have a sun-room,
+or conservatory, or breakfast room. The smallest cottage may have a
+little breakfast room done in green and white lattice, with green
+painted furniture and simple flower boxes. I have had furniture of the
+most satisfactory designs made for my trellis rooms. Green painted wood
+with cane insets seems most suitable for the small rooms, and the
+marbles of the old trellised <i>Temples d'Amour</i> may be replaced by cement
+benches in our modern trellis pavillions.</p>
+
+<p>There is so much of modern furniture that is refreshing in line and
+color, and adapted to these sun-rooms. There is a desk made by Aitchen,
+a notable furniture designer in London, which I have used in a sun-room.
+The desk is painted white, and is decorated with heavy lines of dark
+green. The drawer front and the doors of the little cupboard are filled<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />
+with cane. The knobs are of green. This desk would be nice in a white
+writing-room in a summer cottage, though it was planned for a trellis
+room. It could be used as a dressing table, with a bench or chair of
+white, outlined in green, and a good mirror in white and green frame.
+Another desk I have made is called a jardiniere table, and was designed
+for Mrs. Ogden Armour's garden room at Lake Forest. The desk, or table,
+is painted gray, with faint green decorations. At each end of the long
+top there is a sunken zinc-lined box to hold growing plants. Between the
+flower boxes there is the usual arrangement of the desk outfit, blotter
+pad, paper rack, ink pots, and so forth. The spaces beneath the flower
+boxes are filled with shelves for books and magazines. This idea is
+thoroughly practicable for any garden room, and is so simple that it
+could be constructed by any man who knows how to use tools.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0373" id="h0373"></a>
+<img src="images/h0373.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="LOOKING OVER THE TAPIS VERT TO THE TRELLIS"
+title="LOOKING OVER THE TAPIS VERT TO THE TRELLIS" />
+<p class="center"><b>LOOKING OVER THE TAPIS VERT TO THE TRELLIS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I had the pleasure recently of planning a trellis room for Mrs.
+Ormond-Smith's house at Center Island, New York. Here indeed is a garden
+room with a proper environment. It is as beautiful as a room very well
+can be within, and its great arched windows frame vistas of trees and
+water which take their place as a part of the room, ever changing
+landscapes that are always captivating. This trellis room is beautifully
+proportioned, and large enough to hold four long sofas and many chairs
+and tables of wicker and painted wood. The grouping of the sofas and the
+long tables <a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" /><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" /><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" />made to fit between them is most interesting. These
+tables are extremely narrow and just the length of the sofas, and are
+built after the idea of Mrs. Armour's garden room desk, with flower
+boxes sunk in the ends. The backs of two sofas are placed against the
+long sides of the table, which holds a reading lamp and books in
+addition to its masses of flowers at the ends. Two such groups divide
+the room into three smaller rooms, as you can see by the illustration.
+Small tables and chairs are pulled up to the sofas, making conversation
+centers, or comfortable places for reading.</p>
+
+<p>The trellis work covers the spaces between windows and doors, and
+follows the contour of the arches. The ceiling is bordered with the
+trellis, and from a great square of it in the center a lamp is
+suspended. The wall panels are broken by appliques that suggest the
+bounty of summer, flowers and leaves and vines in wrought and painted
+iron. There are pedestals surmounted by marbles against some of the
+panels, and a carved bracket supporting a magnificent bust high on one
+of the wider panels. The room is classic in its fine balance and its
+architectural formality, and modern in its luxurious comfort and its
+refreshing color. Surely there could be no pleasanter room for whiling
+away a summer day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX" /><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" />XIX</h2>
+
+<h2>VILLA TRIANON</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>The story of the Villa Trianon is a fairy-tale come true. It came true
+because we believed in it&mdash;many fairy stories are ready and waiting to
+come true if only people will believe in them long enough.</p>
+
+<p>For many years Elizabeth Marbury and I had spent our summers in that
+charming French town, Versailles, before we had any hope of realizing a
+home of our own there. We loved the place, with its glamour of romance
+and history, and we prowled around the old gardens and explored the old
+houses, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.</p>
+
+<p>One old house that particularly interested us was the villa that had
+once been the home of the Duc de Nemours, son of Louis Philippe. It was
+situated directly on the famous Park of Versailles which is, as everyone
+knows, one of the most beautiful parks in all the world. The villa had
+not been lived in since the occupancy of de Nemours. Before the villa
+came to de Nemours it had been a part of the royal property that was
+portioned out to Mesdames de France, the disagreeable daughters of Louis
+XV. You will remember how disagreeable they were to Marie An<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" />toinette,
+and what a burden they made her life. I wish our house had belonged to
+more romantic people; Madame du Barry or Madame de Pompadour would have
+suited me better!</p>
+
+<p>How many, many times we peeped through the high iron railing at this
+enchanted domain, sleeping like the castle in the fairy tale. The garden
+was overgrown with weeds and shrubbery, the house was shabby and sadly
+in need of paint. We sighed and thought how happy would be our fortune
+if we might some day penetrate the mysteries of the tangled garden and
+the abandoned villa. Little did we dream that this would one day be our
+home.</p>
+
+<p>We first went to Versailles as casual summer visitors and our stay was
+brief. We loved it so much that the next summer we went again, this time
+for the season, and found ourselves members of a happy pension family.
+Then we decided to rent an apartment of our own, for the next year, and
+soon we were considering the leases of houses, and finally we arrived at
+the supreme audacity of negotiating for the purchase of one. We had a
+great friend in Versailles, Victorien Sardou, the novelist and
+playwright so honored by the people of France. His wonderful house at
+Marly le Roi was a constant joy to us, and made us always more eager for
+a permanent home of our own in the neighborhood. Sardou was as eager for
+the finding of our house as we were, and it was he who finally made it
+possible for us to buy our historic villa. He<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" /> did everything for us,
+introduced us to his friends, wonderful and brilliant people, gave us
+liberally of his charm and knowledge, and finally gave us the chance to
+buy this old house and its two acres of gardens.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiations for the house were long and tedious. Our offer was an
+insult, a joke, a ridiculous affair to the man who had the selling of
+it! He laughed at us, and demanded twice the amount of our offer. We
+were firm, outwardly, and refused to meet him halfway, but secretly we
+spent hours and hours in the old house, sitting patiently on folding
+camp-stools, and planning the remaking of the house as happily as
+children playing make-believe.</p>
+
+<p>I remember vividly the three of us, Miss Marbury, Sardou, and I,
+standing in the garden on a very rainy day. Sardou was bounding up and
+down, saying: &quot;Buy it, buy it! If you don't buy it before twelve o'clock
+to-morrow I will buy it myself!&quot; We were standing there soaking wet,
+perfectly oblivious to the downpour, wondering if we dared do such an
+audacious thing as to purchase property so far from our American
+anchorage.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0374" id="h0374"></a>
+<img src="images/h0374.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON"
+title="A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON" />
+<p class="center"><b>A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Well, we bought it, and at our own price, practically, and for eight
+years we have been restoring the house and gardens to their Seventeenth
+Century beauty. Sardou was our neighbor, and his wonderful ch&acirc;teau at
+Marly, overlooking the valley and terraces of St. Germain, was a
+never-failing surprise to us, so full was it of beauty and charm, so
+flavored with<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" /><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" /><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" /> the personality of its owner. Sardou was of great help
+to us when we finally purchased our house. His fund of information never
+failed us, there seemed to be no question he could not answer. He was
+quite the most erudite man I have ever known. He had as much to say
+about the restoration of our house as we. He introduced us to Monsieur
+de Nolhac, the conservator of the Ch&acirc;teau de Versailles, who gave us the
+details of our villa as it had been a century and a half ago, and helped
+us remake the garden on the lines of the original one. He loaned us
+pictures and documents, and we felt we were living in a modern version
+of the Sleeping Beauty, with the sleeping villa for heroine.</p>
+
+<p>Our house had always been called &quot;Villa Trianon,&quot; and so we kept the
+name, but it should not be confused with the Grand Trianon or the Petit
+Trianon. Of course everyone knows about the Park at Versailles, but
+everyone forgets, so I shall review the history of the Park briefly,
+that you may appreciate our thrills when we really owned a bit of it.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV selected Versailles as the site for the royal palace when it
+was a swampy, uninteresting little farm. Louis XIII had built a ch&acirc;teau
+there in 1627, but had done little to beautify the flat acres
+surrounding it. Louis the Magnificent lavished fortunes on the laying
+out of his new park. The Grand Trianon was built for Madame de Main
+tenon in 1685, and from this<a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" /> time on, for a full century, the Park of
+Versailles was the most famous royal residence in the world.</p>
+
+<p>The Petit Trianon was built by Louis XV for Madame du Barry. Later,
+during the reign of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, who was then Queen,
+tiring of court etiquette and scorning the stately rooms of Versailles,
+persuaded her husband to make over to her the Petit Trianon. Here she
+built a number of little rustic cottages, where she and the ladies of
+her court, dressed in calicoes, played at being milkmaids. They had a
+little cottage called the &quot;Laiterie,&quot; where the white cows with their
+gilded horns were brought in to be milked. Here, too, little plays were
+presented in a tiny theater where only the members of the court were
+admitted. The Queen and her brother, Comte de Provence, were always the
+chief actors.</p>
+
+<p>Our villa adjoins the Park proper. In our deeds to the two acres there
+is a clause which reserves a right-of-way for the King! The deed is
+worded like the old lease that dates back to 1750, and so one day we may
+have to give a King a right-of-way through our garden, if France becomes
+a monarchy again. Anyone who knows French people at all knows how dearly
+they cherish the dream of a monarchy.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0375" id="h0375"></a>
+<img src="images/h0375.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN"
+title="THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the small houses we found on our small estate had once been a
+part of the <i>hameau</i> of Marie Antoinette. We have had this little house
+rebuilt and connected with the villa, and now use it as a guest<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" /><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" /><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" />
+house. It is very charming, with its walls covered with lattices and
+ivy.</p>
+
+<p>Villa Trianon, like most French houses, is built directly on the street,
+leaving all the space possible for the garden. The fa&ccedil;ade of the villa
+is very simple, it reminds you of the square houses of the American
+Colonial period, except that there is no &quot;front porch,&quot; as is inevitable
+with us in America. The entrance gate and the stone wall that surround
+the place give an interest that our detached and hastily built American
+houses lack. The wall is really a continuation of the fa&ccedil;ade of the
+villa, and is surmounted by a black iron railing. Vines and flowers that
+have flourished and died and flourished again for over a century climb
+over the wall and through the graceful railing, and give our home an air
+of permanence that is very satisfying. After all, that is the secret of
+Europe's fascination for us Americans&mdash;the ever-present suggestion of
+permanence. We feel that houses and gardens were planned and built for
+centuries, not for the passing pleasure of one brief lifetime. We people
+them with ghosts that please us, and make histories for them that are
+always romantic and full of happiness. The survival of an old house and
+its garden through centuries of use and misuse is always an impressive
+and dramatic discovery to us: it gives us courage to add our little bit
+to the ultimate beauty and history, it gives us excuse to dream of the
+fortunate people who will follow us in other centuries, and who will, in
+turn,<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" /> bless us for our part in the remaking of one old house and
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>There was much to do! We hardly knew where to begin, the house was in
+such wretched condition. The roof was falling in, and the debris of
+years was piled high inside, but the walls and the floors were still
+very beautiful and as sound as ever, structurally. We had the roof
+restored, the debris removed, and the underbrush weeded out of the
+garden, and then we were ready to begin the real business of
+restoration.</p>
+
+<p>The house is very simply planned. There is a broad hall that runs
+straight through it, with dining-room and servants' hall on the right,
+and four connecting salons on the left. These salons are charming rooms,
+with beautiful panelings and over-doors, and great arches framed in
+delicate carvings. First comes the writing-room, then the library, then
+the large and small salons. The rooms opening on the back of the house
+have long French windows that open directly upon the terrace, where we
+have most of our meals. The note of the interior of the house is blue,
+and there are masses of blue flowers in the garden. The interior
+woodwork is cream, pointed with blue, and there are blues innumerable in
+the rugs and curtains and <i>objets d'art</i>. There must be a hundred
+different shades of blue on this living-floor, I think. We have tried to
+restore the rooms to a Louis XV scheme of decoration. The tables and
+cabinets are of the fine polished woods of the period. Some of the
+chairs are roomy<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" /> affairs of carved and painted wooden frames and
+brocade coverings, but others are modern easychairs covered in new
+linens of old designs, linens that were designed for just such interiors
+when Oberkampf first began his designing at Jouy. The mirrors and
+lighting-fixtures are, of course, designed to harmonize with the
+carvings of the woodwork. Monsieur de Nolhac and Sardou were most
+helpful to us when such architectural problems had to be solved.</p>
+
+<p>We have not used the extravagant lace curtains that seem to go with
+brocades and carvings, because we are modern enough not to believe in
+lace curtains. And we find that the thin white muslin ones give our
+brocades and tapestries a chance to assert their decorative importance.
+Somehow, lace curtains give a room such a dressed-up-for-company air
+that they quite spoil the effect of beautiful fabrics. We have a few
+fine old Savonnerie carpets that are very much at home in this house,
+and so many interesting Eighteenth Century prints we hardly know how to
+use them.</p>
+
+<p>Our bedrooms are very simple, with their white panelings and chintz
+hangings. We have furnished them with graceful and feminine things,
+delicately carved mirror frames and inlaid tables, painted beds, and
+chests of drawers of rosewood or satinwood. We feel that the ghosts of
+the fair ladies who live in the Park would adore the bedrooms and
+rejoice in the strange magic of electric lights. If the ghosts should be
+confronted with the electric lights their surprise<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" /> would not be greater
+than was the consternation of our builders when we demanded five
+bathrooms. They were astounded, and assured us it was not necessary, it
+was not possible. Indeed, it seemed that it was hardly legal to give one
+small French house five American bathrooms. We fought the matter out,
+and got them, however.</p>
+
+<p>We determined to make the house seem a part of the garden, and so we
+built a broad terrace across the rear of the villa. You step directly
+from the long windows of the salon and dining-room upon the terrace, and
+before you is spread out our little garden, and back of that, through an
+opening in the trees, a view of the Ch&acirc;teau, our never-failing source of
+inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>The terrace is built of tiles on a cement foundation. Vines are trained
+over square column-like frames of wire, erected at regular intervals.
+Between the edge of the terrace and the smooth green lawn there is a
+mass of blue flowers. We have a number of willow chairs and old stone
+tables here, and you can appreciate the joy of having breakfast and tea
+on the terrace with the birds singing in the boughs of the trees.</p>
+
+<p>I have written at length in the other chapters of my ideas of
+house-furnishing, and in this one I want to give you my ideas of garden
+guilding. True, we had the old garden plan to work from, and trees two
+hundred years old, and old vine-covered walls. Who couldn't accomplish a
+perfect garden with such es<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" />sentials, people said! Well, it wasn't so
+easy as it seems. You can select furnishings for a room with fair
+success, because you can see and feel textures, and colors, and the
+lines of the furniture and curtains. But gardens are different&mdash;you
+cannot make grass and flowers grow just so on short notice! You plant
+and dig and plant again, before things grow as you have visualized them.</p>
+
+<p>There was a double ring of trees in one corner of our domain, enclosing
+the <i>salle de verdure</i>, or outdoor drawing-room. In the center of this
+enchanted circle there was a statue by Clodion, a joyous nymph, holding
+a baby faun in her arms. There were several old stone benches under the
+trees that must have known the secrets of the famous ladies of the
+Eighteenth Century courts. The <i>salle de verdure</i> looked just as it did
+when the little daughters of Louis XV came here to have their afternoon
+cakes and tea, so we did not try to change this bit of our garden.</p>
+
+<p>My idea of making over the place was to leave the part of the garden
+against the stone walls in the rear in its tangled, woodsy state, and to
+build against it a trellis that would be in line with the terrace.
+Between the trellis and the terrace there was to be a smooth expanse of
+greensward, bordered with flowers. It seemed very simple, but I hereby
+confess that I built and tore down the trellis three times before it
+pleased me! I had to make it worthy of the statue by Pradier that was
+given us by Sardou, and finally<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" /> it was done to please me. Painted a
+soft green, with ivy growing over it, and a fountain flanked by white
+marbles outlined against it, this trellis represents (to me, at least)
+my best work.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>tapis vert</i> occupies the greater part of the garden, and it is
+bordered by gravel walks bordered in turn with white flowerbeds. Between
+the walks and the walls there are the groups of trees, the statues with
+green spaces about them, the masses of evergreen trees, and finally the
+great trees that follow the lines of the wall. Indeed, the <i>tapis vert</i>
+is like the arena of an ample theater, with the ascending flowers and
+shrubs and trees representing the ascending tiers of seats. One feels
+that all the trees and flowers look down upon the central stretch of
+greensward, and perhaps there is a fairy ring here where plays take
+place by night. Nothing is impossible in this garden. Certainly the
+fairies play in the enchanted ring of the trees of the <i>salle de
+verdure</i>. We are convinced of that.</p>
+
+<p>So formal is the <i>tapis vert</i>, with its blossoming borders of larkspur
+and daisies and its tall standard roses, you are surprised to find that
+that part of the garden outside this prim rectangle has mysteries. There
+are winding paths that terminate in marble seats. There is the
+<i>pavilion</i>, a little house built for outdoor musicales, with electric
+connections that make breakfast and tea possible here. There is the
+guest house, and the motor house&mdash;quite as interesting as any other part
+<a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" />of the garden. And everywhere there are blue and white and rose-colored
+flowers, planted in great masses against the black-green evergreens.</p>
+
+<p>We leave America early in June, tired out with the breathless business
+of living, and find ourselves in our old-world house and garden. We fall
+asleep to the accompaniment of the tiny piping of the little people in
+bur garden. We awake to the matins of the birds. We breakfast on the
+stone terrace, with boughs of trees and clouds for our roof, and as we
+look out over the masses of blue flowers and the smooth green <i>tapis
+vert</i>, over the arched trelliage with its fountains and its marbles, the
+great trees back of our domain frame the supremely beautiful towers of
+the Ch&acirc;teau le Magnificent, and we are far happier than anyone deserves
+to be in this wicked world!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX" /><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" />XX</h2>
+
+<h2>NOTES ON MANY THINGS</h2>
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>A LITTLE TALK ON CLOCKS.</h3>
+
+<p>The selection of proper clocks for one's house is always long-drawn-out,
+a pursuit of real pleasure. Clocks are such necessary things the
+thoughtless woman is apt to compromise, when she doesn't find exactly
+the right one. How much wiser and happier she would be if she decided to
+depend upon an ordinary alarm clock until the proper clock was
+discovered! If she made a hobby of her quest for clocks she would find
+much amusement, many other valuable objects by-the-way, and finally
+exactly the right clocks for her rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone knows the merits and demerits of the hundreds of clocks of
+commerce, and it isn't for me to go into the subject of
+grandfather-clocks, bracket clocks, and banjo clocks, when there are so
+many excellent books on the subject. I plead for the graceful clocks of
+old France, the <i>objets d'art</i> so lovingly designed by the master
+sculptors of the Eighteenth Century. I plead particularly for the wall
+clocks that are so conspicuous in all good French houses, and so unusual
+in our own country.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0376" id="h0376"></a>
+<img src="images/h0376.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM."
+title="A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM." />
+<p class="center"><b>A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Just as surely as our fine old English and American <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" /><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" /><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303" />clocks have their
+proper niches, so the French clocks belong inevitably in certain rooms.
+You may never find just the proper clock for this room, but that is your
+fault. There are hundreds of lovely old models available. Why shouldn't
+some manufacturer have them reproduced?</p>
+
+<p>I feel that if women generally knew how very decorative and
+distinguished a good wall clock may be, the demand would soon create a
+supply of these beautiful objects. It would be quite simple for the
+manufacturers to make them from the old models. The late Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan gave to the Metropolitan Museum the magnificent Hoentschel
+collection of <i>objets d'art</i>, hoping to stimulate the interest of
+American designers and artisans in the fine models of the Seventeenth
+and Eighteenth Centuries. There are some very fine examples of wall
+clocks in this collection which might be copied in carved wood by the
+students of manual training schools, if the manufacturers refuse to be
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>Wall clocks first came into France in the early part of the Seventeenth
+Century, and are a part of the furnishing of all the fine old French
+houses. A number of the most interesting clocks I have picked up were
+the wooden models which served for the fine bronze clocks of the
+Eighteenth Century. The master designer first worked out his idea in
+wood before making the clock in bronze, and the wooden models were sold
+for a song. I have one of these clocks in my dining-<a name="Page_304" id="Page_304" />room. It is as much
+a part of the wall decoration as the lights or the mirrors.</p>
+
+<p>The wall clocks I like best are fixed directly on the wall, the dial
+glass opening so that the clock may be wound with a key. You will notice
+such a clock in the photograph of one of my dining-rooms. This fine old
+clock is given the place of honor in the main panel of the wall, above
+the console table. I often use such a clock in a dining-room, just as I
+use the fine old French mantel clocks in my drawing-rooms. You will
+observe a very quaint example of the Empire period in the illustration
+of my drawing-room mantel. This clock is happily placed, for the marble
+of the mantel, the lighting-fixtures near by and the fine little bronze
+busts are all in key with the exquisite workmanship of the clock. In
+another room in my house, a bedroom, there is a beautiful little French
+clock that is the only object allowed on the mantel shelf. The beautiful
+carving of the mirror frame back of it seems a part of the clock, a
+deliberate background for it. This is one of the many wall clocks which
+were known as bracket clocks, the bracket being as carefully designed
+and carved as the clock itself. Most of the clocks we see nowadays grew
+out of the old bracket models.</p>
+
+<p>The American clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those
+jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be
+still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are <a name="Page_305" id="Page_305" />very
+much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland,
+and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long,
+exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall
+clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine <i>bas reliefs</i>, and
+of even greater decorative importance.</p>
+
+<p>Every room in my house has its clock, and to me these magic little
+instruments have an almost human interest. They seem always friendly to
+me, whether they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem
+never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks
+so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where
+there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive,
+exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled &quot;French&quot; and sold at
+a great price in the shops. Somehow, one never expects a clock of this
+kind to keep time&mdash;it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it
+wheezes, or gasps, or makes a dreadful noise, and invariably stops at
+half-past three.</p>
+
+<p>I am such a crank about good clocks that I take my own with me, even on
+a railway train. I think I have the smallest clock in the world which
+strikes the hours. There are many tiny clocks made which strike if one
+touches a spring, but my clock always strikes of itself. Cartier, who
+designed and made this extraordinary timepiece, assures me that he has
+never seen so small a clock which strikes. It is very pleasant to <a name="Page_306" id="Page_306" />have
+this little clock with its friendly chime with me when I am in some
+desolate hotel or some strange house.</p>
+
+<p>There are traveling clocks in small leather cases which can be bought
+very cheaply indeed now, and one of these clocks should be a part of
+everyone's traveling equipment. The humble nickeled watch with a leather
+case is infinitely better than the pretentious clocks, monstrosities of
+marble and brass and bad taste.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>A CORNER FOR WRITING.</h3>
+
+<p>One of my greatest pleasures, when I am planning the furnishing of a
+house, is the selection and equipment of the necessary writing-tables.
+Every room in every house has its own suggestion for an original
+treatment, and I enjoy working out a plan for a writing-corner that will
+offer maximum of convenience, and beauty and charm, for in these busy
+days we need all these qualities for the inspiration of a pleasant note.
+You see, I believe in proper writing-tables, just as I believe in proper
+chairs. I have so many desks in my own house that are in constant use,
+perhaps I can give you my theory best by recording my actual practice of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the necessity of a desk in the hallway, and indeed, I
+have said much of desks in other rooms, but I have still to emphasize my
+belief in the importance of the equipment of desks.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307" /></p>
+
+<p>Of course, one needs a desk in one's own room. Here there is infinite
+latitude, for there are dozens of delightful possibilities. I always
+place my desks near the windows. If the wall space is filled, I place an
+oblong table at right angles to a window, and there you are. In my own
+private sitting-room I have a long desk so placed, in my own house. In a
+guest-room I furnished recently, I used a common oblong table of no
+value, painting the legs a soft green and covering it with a piece of
+sage-green damask. This is one of the nicest writing-tables I know, and
+it could be copied for a song. The equipment of it is what counts. I
+used two lamps, dull green jars with mauve silk shades, a dark green
+leather rack for paper and envelopes, and a great blotter pad that will
+save the damask from ink-spots. The small things are of green pottery
+and crystal. In a young girl's bedroom I used a sweet little desk of
+painted wood, a desk that has the na&iuml;ve charm of innocence. I do hope it
+inspires the proper love-letters.</p>
+
+<p>I always make provision for writing in dressing-rooms&mdash;a sliding shelf
+in the dressing-table, and a shallow drawer for pencils and paper&mdash;and I
+have adequate writing facilities in the servants' quarters, so that
+there may be no excuse for forgetting orders or messages. This seems to
+me absolutely necessary in our modern domestic routine: it is part of
+the business principle we borrow from the efficient office routine of
+our men folk. The dining-room and the bathrooms <a name="Page_308" id="Page_308" />are the only places
+where the writing-table, in one form or another, isn't required.</p>
+
+<p>I like the long flat tables or small desks much better than the huge
+roll-top affairs or the heavy desks built after the fashion of the old
+<i>armoire</i>. If the room is large enough, a secretary after an Eighteenth
+Century model will be a beautiful and distinguished piece of furniture.
+I have such a secretary in my own sitting-room, a chest of drawers
+surmounted by a cabinet of shelves with glass doors, but I do not use it
+as a desk. I use the shelves for my old china and porcelains, and the
+drawers for pamphlets and the thousand and one things that are too
+flimsily bound for bookshelves. Of course, if one has a large
+correspondence and uses one's home as an office, it is better to have a
+large desk with a top which closes. I prefer tables, and I have them
+made big enough to hold all my papers, big enough to spread out on.</p>
+
+<p>There are dozens of enchanting small desks that are exactly right for
+guest-rooms, the extremely feminine desks that come from old France. One
+of the most fascinating ones is copied from a <i>bureau de toilette</i> that
+belonged to Marie Antoinette. In those days the writing of letters and
+the making of a toilet went together. This old desk has a drawer filled
+with compartments for toilet things, powders and perfumes and patches,
+and above this vanity-drawer there is the usual shelf for writing, and
+compartments for paper and letters. The desk itself suggests brocade
+flounces <a name="Page_309" id="Page_309" />and powdered hair, so exquisitely is it constructed of
+tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many colors.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are the small desks made by modern furniture-makers, just
+large enough to hold a blotting-pad, a paper rack, and a pair of
+candlesticks. There is always a shallow drawer for writing materials.
+Such a desk may be decorated to match the chintzes of any small bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>If it isn't possible for you to have a desk in each guest-room, there
+should be a little writing-room somewhere apart from the family
+living-room. If you live in one of those old-fashioned houses
+intersected by great halls with much wasted space on the upper floors,
+you may make a little writing-room of one of the hall-ends, and screen
+it from the rest of the hall with a high standing screen. If you have a
+house of the other extreme type, a city house with little hall bedrooms,
+use one of these little rooms for a writing-room. You will require a
+desk well stocked with stationery, and all the things the writer will
+need; a shelf of address books and reference books&mdash;with a dictionary,
+of course; many pens and pencils and fresh blotters, and so forth. Of
+course, you may have ever so many more things, but it isn't necessary.
+Better a quiet corner with one chair and a desk, than the elaborate
+library with its superb fittings where people come and go.</p>
+
+<p>Given the proper desk, the furnishing of it is most <a name="Page_310" id="Page_310" />important. The
+blotting-pad should be heavy enough to keep its place, and the
+blotting-paper should be constantly renewed. I know of nothing more
+offensive than dusty, ink-splotched blotting-paper. There are very good
+sets to be had, now, made of brass, bronze, carved wood, porcelain,
+silver or crystal, and there are leather boxes for holding stationery
+and leather portfolios to be had in all colors. I always add to these
+furnishings a good pair of scissors, stationery marked with the house
+address or the monogram of the person to whom the desk especially
+belongs, an almanac, and a <i>pincushion!</i> My pincushions are as much a
+part of the equipment of a desk as the writing things, and they aren't
+frilly, ugly things. They are covered with brocade or damask or some
+stuff used elsewhere in the room and I assure you they are most useful.
+I find that pins are almost as necessary as pens in my correspondence;
+they are much more expedient than pigeon-holes.</p>
+
+<p>In country houses I think it shows forethought and adds greatly to the
+comfort of the guests to have a small framed card showing the arrival
+and departure of trains and of mails, especially if the house is a great
+distance from the railway-station. This saves much inquiry and time. In
+the paper rack there should be not only stamped paper bearing the
+address of the house, telephone number, and so forth, but also telegraph
+blanks, post cards, stamps, and so forth. Very often people who have
+beautiful places have <a name="Page_311" id="Page_311" />post cards made showing various views of the
+house and garden.</p>
+
+<p>Test the efficiency of your writing-tables occasionally by using them
+yourself. This is the only way to be sure of the success of anything in
+your house&mdash;try it yourself.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>STOOLS AND BENCHES.</h3>
+
+<p>I often wonder, when I grope my way through drawing-rooms crowded and
+jammed with chairs and sofas, why more women do not realize the
+advantages of stools and benches. A well-made stool is doubly useful: it
+may be used to sit upon or it may be used to hold a tray, or whatever
+you please. It is really preferable to a small table because it is not
+always full of a nondescript collection of ornaments, which seems to be
+the fate of all small tables. It has also the advantage of being low
+enough to push under a large table, when need be, and it occupies much
+less space than a chair apparently (not actually) because it has no
+back. I have stools, or benches, or both in all my rooms, because I find
+them convenient and easily moved about, but I have noticed an amusing
+thing: Whenever a fat man comes to see me, he always sits on the
+smallest stool in the room. I have many fat friends, and many stools,
+but invariably the fattest man gravitates to the smallest stool.</p>
+
+<p>The stools I like best for the drawing-room are the fine old ones,
+covered with needlework or brocade, but <a name="Page_312" id="Page_312" />there are many simpler ones of
+plain wood with cane insets that are very good for other rooms. Then
+there are the long <i>banquettes</i>, or benches, which are so nice in
+drawing-rooms and hallways and nicest of all in a ballroom. Indeed, a
+ballroom needs no other movable furniture; given plenty of these long
+benches. They may be of the very simplest description, but when used in
+a fine room should be covered with a good damask or velvet or some rich
+fabric.</p>
+
+<p>I have a fine Eighteenth Century <i>banquette</i> in my drawing-room, the
+frame being carved and gilded and the seat covered with Venetian red
+velvet. You will find these gilded stools all over England. There are a
+number at Hampton Court Palace. At Hardwick there are both long and
+short stools, carved with the dolphin's scroll and covered with
+elaborate stuffs. The older the English house, the more stools are in
+evidence. In the early Sixteenth Century joint stools were used in every
+room. In the bedrooms they served the purposes of small tables and
+chairs as well. There are ever so many fine old walnut stools and the
+lower stools used for bed-steps to be bought in London shops that make a
+specialty of old English furniture, and reproductions of them may be
+bought in the better American shops. I often wonder why we do not see
+more bedside stools. They are so convenient, even though the bed be only
+moderately high from the floor. Many of mine are only six inches high,
+about the height of a fat floor cushion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313" /><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0377" id="h0377"></a>
+<img src="images/h0377.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE"
+title="A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315" /></p>
+
+<p>Which reminds me: the floor cushion, made of the same velvet made for
+carpeting, is a modern luxury we can't afford to ignore. Lately I have
+seen such beautiful ones, about three feet long and one foot wide,
+covered with tapestry, with great gold tassels at the corners. The
+possibilities of the floor cushion idea are limitless. They take the
+place of the usual footstool in front of the boudoir easy chair, or
+beside the day bed or <i>chaise-longue</i>, or beside the large bed, for that
+matter. They are no longer unsanitary, because with vacuum cleaners they
+may be kept as clean as chair cushions. They may be made to fit into
+almost any room. I saw a half dozen of them in a dining-room, recently,
+small square hard ones, covered with the gold colored velvet of the
+carpet. They were not more than four or five inches thick, but that is
+the ideal height for an under-the-table cushion. Try it.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>PORCELAIN STOVES.</h3>
+
+<p>When the Colony Club was at last finished we discovered that the furnace
+heat did not go up to the roof-garden, and immediately we had to find
+some way of heating this very attractive and very necessary space. Even
+from the beginning we were sadly crowded for room, so popular was the
+club-house, and the roof-garden was much needed for the overflow. We
+conferred with architects, builders and plumbers, and found it would be
+necessary to spend about seven <a name="Page_316" id="Page_316" />thousand dollars and to close the club
+for about two months in order to carry the heating arrangements up to
+the roof. This was disastrous for a new club, already heavily in arrears
+and running under heavy expenses. I worried and worried over the
+situation, and suddenly one night an idea came to me: I remembered some
+great porcelain stoves I had seen in Germany. I felt that these stoves
+were exactly what we needed, and that we should be rescued from an
+embarrassing situation without much trouble or expense. I was just
+leaving for Europe, so I hurried on to the manufacturers of these
+wonderful stoves and found, after much difficulty, a model that seemed
+practicable, and not too huge in proportion. The model, unfortunately,
+was white with gilded garlands, far too French and magnificent for our
+sun-room. I persuaded them to make two of the stoves for me in green
+Majolica, with garlands of soft-toned flowers, and finally we achieved
+just the stoves for the room.</p>
+
+<p>But my troubles were not over: When the stoves reached New York, we
+tried to take them up to the roof, and found them too large for the
+stairs. We couldn't have them lifted up by pulleys, because the glass
+walls of the roof garden and the fretwork at the top of the roof made it
+impossible for the men to get &quot;purchase&quot; for their pulleys. Finally we
+persuaded a gentleman who lived next door to let us take them over the
+roof of his house, and the deed was accomplished. The stoves were equal
+to the occasion.<a name="Page_317" id="Page_317" /> They heated the roof garden perfectly, and were of
+great decorative value.</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by this success I purchased another porcelain stove, this
+time a cream-colored porcelain one, and used it in a hallway in an
+uptown house. It was the one thing needed to give the hall great
+distinction. Since then I have used a number of these stoves, and I
+wonder why our American manufacturers do not make them. They are
+admirable for heating difficult rooms&mdash;outdoor porches, and draughty
+halls, and rooms not heated by furnaces. The stoves are becoming harder
+and harder to find, though I was fortunate enough to purchase one last
+year from the Marchioness of Anglesey, who was giving up her home at
+Versailles. This stove was of white Majolica with little Loves in terra
+cotta adorning it. The new ones are less attractive, but it would be
+perfectly simple to have any tile manufacturer copy an old one, given
+the design.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>THE CHARM OF INDOOR FOUNTAINS.</h3>
+
+<p>Wall fountains as we know them are introduced into our modern houses for
+their decorative interest and for the joy they give us, the joyous sound
+and color of falling water. We use them because they are beautiful and
+cheerful, but originally they had a most definite purpose. They were
+built into the walls of the dining-halls in medieval times, and used for
+washing the precious plate.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318" /></p>
+
+<p>If you look into the history of any <i>objet d'art</i> you will find that it
+was first used for a purpose. All the superb masterly things that have
+come to us had logical beginnings. It has remained for the thoughtless
+designer of our times to produce things of no use and no meaning. The
+old designers decorated the small objects of daily use as faithfully as
+they decorated the greater things, the wall spaces and ceilings and
+great pieces of furniture, and so this little wall basin which began in
+such a homely way soon became a beautiful thing.</p>
+
+<p>Europe has countless small fountains built for interior walls and for
+small alcoves and indoor conservatories, but we are just beginning to
+use them in America. American sculptors are doing such notable work,
+however, that we shall soon plan our indoor fountains as carefully as we
+plan our fireplaces. The fact that our houses are heated mechanically
+has not lessened our appreciation of an open fire, and running water
+brought indoors has the same animate charm.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0378-a" id="h0378-a"></a>
+<img src="images/h0378-a.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH"
+title="FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH" />
+<p class="center"><b>FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0378-b" id="h0378-b"></a>
+<img src="images/h0378-b.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MR. JAMES DEERING&#39;S WALL FOUNTAIN"
+title="MR. JAMES DEERING&#39;S WALL FOUNTAIN" />
+<p class="center"><b>MR. JAMES DEERING&#39;S WALL FOUNTAIN</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I am showing a picture of the wall fountain in the entrance hall of my
+own New York house in East Fifty-fifth Street. I have had this wall
+fountain built as part of the architectural detail of the room, with a
+background of paneled mirrors. It spills over into a marble curbed pool
+where fat orange-colored goldfish live. I keep the fountain banked with
+flowers. You can imagine the pleasure of leaving the <a name="Page_319" id="Page_319" /><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320" /><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321" />dusty city
+streets and entering this cool, pleasant entrance hall.</p>
+
+<p>Our modern use of indoor fountains is perfectly legitimate: we use them
+to bring the atmosphere of outdoors in. In country houses we use
+fountains in our gardens, but in the city we have no gardens, and so we
+are very wise to bring in the outdoor things that make our lives a
+little more gay and informal. The more suggestive of out-of-doors the
+happier is the effect of the sun room. Occasionally one sees a rare
+house where a glass enclosed garden opens from one of the living-rooms.
+There is a house in Nineteenth Street that has such an enclosed garden,
+built around a wall fountain. The garden opens out of the great
+two-storied music-room. Lofty windows flank a great door, and fill the
+end of the room with a luminous composition of leaded glass. Through the
+door you enter the garden, with its tiled floor, its glass ceiling, and
+its low brick retaining walls. The wall fountain is placed exactly in
+front of the great door, and beneath it there is a little semi-circular
+pool bordered with plants and glittering with goldfish. Evergreens are
+banked against the brick walls, and flat reliefs are hung just under the
+glass ceiling. The garden is quite small, but takes its place as an
+important part of the room. It rivals in interest the massive Gothic
+fireplace, with its huge logs and feudal fire irons.</p>
+
+<p>The better silversmiths are doing much to encour<a name="Page_322" id="Page_322" />age the development of
+indoor fountains. They display the delightful fountains of our young
+American sculptors, fountains that would make any garden room notable.
+There are so many of these small bronze fountains, with Pan piping his
+irresistible tune of outdoors; children playing with frogs or geese or
+lizards or turtles; gay little figures prancing in enchanted rings of
+friendly beasties. Why don't we make use of them?</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14715 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14715 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14715)
diff --git a/old/14715-8.txt b/old/14715-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House in Good Taste, by Elsie de Wolfe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The House in Good Taste
+
+Author: Elsie de Wolfe
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2005  [eBook #14715]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 14715-h.htm or 14715-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/1/14715/14715-h/14715-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/1/14715/14715-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
+
+by
+
+ELSIE DE WOLFE
+
+Illustrated with photographs in color and black and white
+
+New York
+The Century Co.
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+      I.  THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
+     II.  SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION
+    III.  THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
+     IV.  THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
+      V.  THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
+     VI.  THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
+    VII.  OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
+   VIII.  THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
+     IX.  HALLS AND STAIRCASES
+      X.  THE DRAWING-ROOM
+     XI.  THE LIVING-ROOM
+    XII.  SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
+   XIII.  A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
+    XIV.  THE BEDROOM
+     XV.  THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH
+    XVI.  THE SMALL APARTMENT
+   XVII.  REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART
+  XVIII.  THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
+    XIX.  VILLA TRIANON
+     XX.  NOTES ON MANY THINGS
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+   Elsie de Wolfe (Frontispiece)
+   In this hall, simplicity, suitability and proportion are observed
+   Mennoyer drawings and old mirrors set in panelings
+   A portrait by Nattier inset above a fine old mantel
+   The Washington Irving house was delightfully rambling
+   A Washington Irving House bedroom
+   Miss Marbury's bedroom
+   The fore-court and entrance of the Fifty-fifth Street house
+   A painted wall broken into panels by narrow moldings
+   A wall paper of Elizabethan design with oak furniture
+   The scheme of this room grew from the jars on the mantel
+   A Louis Seize bedroom in rose and blue and cream
+   The writing corner of a chintz bedroom
+   Black chintz used in a dressing-room
+   Printed linen curtains over rose colored silk
+   Straight hangings of rose and yellow shot silk
+   Muslin glass curtains in the Washington Irving house
+   Here are many lighting fixtures harmoniously assembled in a
+       drawing-room
+   Detail of a fine old French fixture of hand wrought metal
+   Lighting fixtures inspired by Adam mirrors
+   The staircase in the Bayard Thayer house
+   The drawing-room should be intimate in spirit
+   The fine formality of well-placed paneling
+   The living-room in the C.W. Harkness house at Morristown, New Jersey
+   Miss Anne Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir
+   Miss Morgan's Louis XVI _lit de repos_
+   A Georgian dining-room in the William Iselin house
+   Mrs. Ogden Armour's Chinese paper screen
+   Mrs. James Warren Lane's painted dining-table
+   The private dining-room in the Colony Club
+   An old painted bed of the Louis XVI period
+   Miss Crocker's Louis XVI bed
+   A Colony Club bedroom
+   Mauve chintz in a dull green room
+   Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer's Chinoiserie chintz bed
+   Mrs. Payne Whitney's green feather chintz bed
+   My own bedroom is built around a Breton bed
+   Furniture painted with chintz designs
+   Miss Morgan's Louis XVI dressing-room
+   Miss Marbury's chintz-hung dressing-table
+   A corner of my own boudoir
+   Built-in bookshelves in a small room
+   Mrs. C.W. Harkness's cabinet for _objets d'art_
+   A banquette of the Louis XV period covered with needlework
+   A Chinese Chippendale sofa covered with chintz
+   The trellis room in the Colony Club
+   Mrs. Ormond G. Smith's trellis room at Center Island, New York
+   Looking over the _tapis vert_ to the trellis
+   A fine old console in the Villa Trianon
+   The broad terrace connects house and garden
+   A proper writing-table in the drawing-room
+   A cream-colored porcelain stove in a New York house
+   Mr. James Deering's wall fountain
+   Fountain in the trellis room of Mrs. Ormond G. Smith
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
+
+
+I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women
+throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it
+what you will--awakening, development, American Renaissance--it is a
+most startling and promising condition of affairs.
+
+It is no longer possible, even to people of only faintly �sthetic
+tastes, to buy chairs merely to sit upon or a clock merely that it
+should tell the time. Home-makers are determined to have their houses,
+outside and in, correct according to the best standards. What do we mean
+by the best standards? Certainly not those of the useless, overcharged
+house of the average American millionaire, who builds and furnishes his
+home with a hopeless disregard of tradition. We must accept the
+standards that the artists and the architects accept, the standards that
+have come to us from those exceedingly rational people, our ancestors.
+
+Our ancestors built for stability and use, and so their simple houses
+were excellent examples of architecture. Their spacious, uncrowded
+interiors were usually beautiful. Houses and furniture fulfilled their
+uses, and if an object fulfils its mission the chances are that it is
+beautiful.
+
+It is all very well to plan our ideal house or apartment, our individual
+castle in Spain, but it isn't necessary to live among intolerable
+furnishings just because we cannot realize our castle. There never was a
+house so bad that it couldn't be made over into something worth while.
+We shall all be very much happier when we learn to transform the things
+we have into a semblance of our ideal.
+
+How, then, may we go about accomplishing our ideal?
+
+By letting it go!
+
+By forgetting this vaguely pleasing dream, this evidence of our smug
+vanity, and making ourselves ready for a new ideal.
+
+By considering the body of material from which it is good sense to
+choose when we have a house to decorate.
+
+By studying the development of the modern house, its romantic tradition
+and architectural history.
+
+By taking upon ourselves the duty of self-taught lessons of sincerity
+and common sense, and suitability.
+
+By learning what is meant by color and form and line, harmony and
+contrast and proportion.
+
+When we are on familiar terms with our tools, and feel our vague ideas
+clearing into definite inspiration, then we are ready to talk about
+ideals. We are fit to approach the full art of home-making.
+
+We take it for granted that every woman is interested in houses--that
+she either has a house in course of construction, or dreams of having
+one, or has had a house long enough wrong to wish it right. And we take
+it for granted that this American home is always the woman's home: a man
+may build and decorate a beautiful house, but it remains for a woman to
+make a home of it for him. It is the personality of the mistress that
+the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how
+much happiness they may find there.
+
+You will express yourself in your house, whether you want to or not, so
+you must make up your mind to a long preparatory discipline. You may
+have only one house to furnish in your life-time, possibly, so be
+careful and go warily. Therefore, you must select for your architect a
+man who isn't too determined to have _his_ way. It is a fearful mistake
+to leave the entire planning of your home to a man whose social
+experience may be limited, for instance, for he can impose on you his
+conception of your tastes with a damning permanency and emphasis. I once
+heard a certain Boston architect say that he taught his clients to be
+ladies and gentlemen. He couldn't, you know. All he could do is to set
+the front door so that it would reprove them if they weren't!
+
+Who does not know, for instance, those mistaken people whose houses
+represent their own or their architects' hasty visits to the fine old
+_ch�teaux_ of the Loire, or the palaces of Versailles, or the fine old
+houses of England, or the gracious villas of Italy? We must avoid such
+aspiring architects, and visualize our homes not as so many specially
+designated rooms and convenient closets, but as individual expressions
+of ourselves, of the future we plan, of our dreams for our children. The
+ideal house is the house that has been long planned for, long awaited.
+
+[Illustration: IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE
+OBSERVED]
+
+Fortunately for us, our best architects are so very good that we are
+better than safe if we take our problems to them. These men associate
+with themselves the hundred young architects who are eager to prove
+themselves on small houses. The idea that it is economical to be your
+own architect and trust your house to a building contractor is a
+mistaken, and most expensive, one. The surer you are of your architect's
+common sense and professional ability, the surer you may be that your
+house will be economically efficient. He will not only plan a house that
+will meet the needs of your family, but he will give you inspiration for
+its interior. He will concern himself with the moldings, the
+light-openings, the door-handles and hinges, the unconsidered things
+that make or mar your house. Select for your architect a man you'd like
+for a friend. Perhaps he will be, before the house comes true. If you
+are both sincere, if you both purpose to have the best thing you can
+afford, the house will express the genius and character of your
+architect and the personality and character of yourself, as a great
+painting suggests both painter and sitter. The hard won triumph of a
+well-built house means many compromises, but the ultimate satisfaction
+is worth everything.
+
+I do not purpose, in this book, to go into the historic traditions of
+architecture and decoration--there are so many excellent books it were
+absurd to review them--but I do wish to trace briefly the development of
+the modern house, the woman's house, to show you that all that is
+intimate and charming in the home as we know it has come through the
+unmeasured influence of women. Man conceived the great house with its
+parade rooms, its _grands appartements_ but woman found eternal parade
+tiresome, and planned for herself little retreats, rooms small enough
+for comfort and intimacy. In short, man made the house: woman went him
+one better and made of it a home.
+
+The virtues of simplicity and reticence in form first came into being,
+as nearly as we can tell, in the _Grotta_, the little studio-like
+apartment of Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, away back in
+1496. The Marchioness made of this little studio her personal retreat.
+Here she brought many of the treasures of the Italian Renaissance.
+Really, simplicity and reticence were the last things she considered,
+but the point is that they were considered at all in such a restless,
+passionate age. Later, in 1522, she established the _Paradiso_, a suite
+of apartments which she occupied after her husband's death. So you see
+the idea of a woman planning her own apartment is pretty old, after all.
+
+The next woman who took a stand that revealed genuine social
+consciousness was that half-French, half-Italian woman, Catherine de
+Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet. She seceded from court because the
+court was swaggering and hurly-burly, with florid Marie-de-Medicis at
+its head. And with this recession, she began to express in her conduct,
+her feeling, her conversation, and, finally, in her house, her awakened
+consciousness of beauty and reserve, of simplicity and suitability.
+
+This was the early Seventeenth Century, mind you, when the main salons
+of the French houses were filled with such institutions as rows of red
+chairs and boxed state beds. She undertook, first of all, to have a
+light and gracefully curving stairway leading to her salon instead of
+supplanting it. She grouped her rooms with a lovely diversity of size
+and purpose, whereas before they had been vast, stately halls with
+cubbies hardby for sleeping. She gave the bedroom its alcove, boudoir,
+ante-chamber, and even its bath, and then as decorator she supplanted
+the old feudal yellow and red with her famous silver-blue. She covered
+blue chairs with silver bullion. She fashioned long, tenderly colored
+curtains of novel shades. Reticence was always in evidence, but it was
+the reticence of elegance. It was through Madame de Rambouillet that the
+armchair received its final distribution of yielding parts, and began
+to express the comfort of soft padded backward slope, of width and
+warmth and color.
+
+It was all very heavy, very grave, very angular, this H�tel Rambouillet,
+but it was devised for and consecrated to conversation, considered a new
+form of privilege! The _pr�cieuses_ in their later jargon called chairs
+"the indispensables of conversation."
+
+I have been at some length to give a picture of Madame de Rambouillet's
+h�tel because it really is the earliest modern house. There, where the
+society that frequented it was analyzing its soul in dialogue and long
+platonic discussion that would seem stark enough to us, the word which
+it invented for itself was _urbanit�_--the coinage of one of its own
+foremost figures.
+
+It is unprofitable to follow on into the grandeurs of Louis XIV, if one
+hopes to find an advance there in truth-telling architecture. At the end
+of that splendid official success the squalor of Versailles was
+unspeakable, its stenches unbearable. In spite of its size the Palace
+was known as the most comfortless house in Europe. After the death of
+its owner society, in a fit of madness, plunged into the _rocaille_.
+When the restlessness of Louis XV could no longer find moorings in this
+brilliancy, there came into being little houses called _folies_, garden
+hermitages for the privileged. Here we find Madame de Pompadour in
+calicoes, in a wild garden, bare-foot, playing as a milkmaid, or seated
+in a little gray-white interior with painted wooden furniture, having
+her supper on an earthen-ware service that has replaced old silver and
+gold. Amorous alcoves lost their painted Loves and took on gray and
+white decorations. The casinos of little _com�diennes_ did not glitter
+any more. English sentiment began to bedim Gallic eyes, and so what we
+know as the Louis XVI style was born.
+
+And so, at that moment, the idea of the modern house came into its own,
+and it could advance--as an idea--hardly any further. For with all the
+intrepidity and passion of the later Eighteenth Century in its search
+for beauty, for all the magic-making of convenience and ingenuity of the
+Nineteenth Century, the fundamentals have changed but little. And now we
+of the Twentieth Century can only add material comforts and an
+expression of our personality. We raise the house beyond the reach of
+squalor, we give it measured heat, we give it water in abundance and
+perfect sanitation and light everywhere, we give it ventilation less
+successfully than we might, and finally we give it the human quality
+that is so modern. There are no dungeons in the good modern house, no
+disgraceful lairs for servants, no horrors of humidity.
+
+[Illustration: MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS]
+
+And so we women have achieved a house, luminous with kind purpose
+throughout. It is finished--that is our difficulty! We inherit it, all
+rounded in its perfection, consummate in its charms, but it is finished,
+and what can we do about a thing that is finished I Doesn't it seem that
+we are back in the old position of Isabella d'Este--eager, predatory,
+and "thingy"? And isn't it time for us to pull up short lest we
+sidestep the goal? We are so sure of a thousand appetites we are in
+danger of passing by the amiable commonplaces. We find ourselves
+dismayed in old houses that look too simple. We must stop and ask
+ourselves questions, and, if necessary, plan for ourselves little
+retreats until we can find ourselves again.
+
+What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes on within it,
+a house that gives us beauty as we understand it--and beauty of a nobler
+kind that we may grow to understand, a house that _looks_ amenity.
+
+Suppose you have obtained this sort of wisdom--a sane viewpoint. I think
+it will give you as great a satisfaction to re-arrange your house with
+what you have as to re-build, re-decorate. The results may not be so
+charming, but you can learn by them. You can take your indiscriminate
+inheritance of Victorian rosewood of Eastlake walnut and cocobolo, your
+pickle-and-plum colored Morris furniture, and make a civilized interior
+by placing it right, and putting detail at the right points. Your sense
+of the pleasure and meaning of human intercourse will be clear in your
+disposition of your best things, in your elimination of your worst ones.
+
+When you have emptied the tables of _rubbish_ so that you can put
+_things_ down on them at need, placed them in a light where you can
+write on them in repose, or isolated real works of art in the middle of
+them; when you have set your dropsical sofas where you want them for
+talk, or warmth and reading; when you can see the fire from the bed in
+your sleeping-room, and dress near your bath; if this sort of sense of
+your rights is acknowledged in your rearrangement, your rooms will
+always have meaning, in the end. If you like only the things in a chair
+that have meaning, and grow to hate the rest you will, without any other
+instruction, prefer--the next time you are buying--a good Louis XVI
+_fauteuil_ to a stuffed velvet chair. You will never again be guilty of
+the errors of meaningless magnificence.
+
+To most of us in America who must perforce lead workaday lives, the
+absence of beauty is a very distinct lack. I think, indeed, that the
+present awakening has come to stay, and that before very long, we shall
+have simple houses with fireplaces that draw, electric lights in the
+proper places, comfortable and sensible furniture, and not a gilt-legged
+spindle-shanked table or chair anywhere. This may be a decorator's
+optimistic dream, but let us all hope that it may come true.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION
+
+
+When I am asked to decorate a new house, my first thought is
+suitability. My next thought is proportion. Always I keep in mind the
+importance of simplicity. First, I study the people who are to live in
+this house, and their needs, as thoroughly as I studied my parts in the
+days when I was an actress. For the time-being I really am the
+chatelaine of the house. When I have thoroughly familiarized myself with
+my "part," I let that go for the time, and consider the proportion of
+the house and its rooms. It is much more important that the wall
+openings, windows, doors, and fireplaces should be in the right place
+and should balance one another than that there should be expensive and
+extravagant hangings and carpets.
+
+My first thought in laying out a room is the placing of the electric
+light openings. How rarely does one find the lights in the right place
+in our over-magnificent hotels and residences! One arrives from a
+journey tired out and travel-stained, only to find oneself facing a
+mirror as far removed from the daylight as possible, with the artificial
+lights directly behind one, or high in the ceiling in the center of the
+room. In my houses I always see that each room shall have its lights
+placed for the comfort of its occupants. There must be lights in
+sheltered corners of the fireplace, by the writing-desk, on each side of
+the dressing-table, and so on.
+
+Then I consider the heating of the room. We Americans are slaves to
+steam heat. We ruin our furniture, our complexions, and our dispositions
+by this enervating atmosphere of too much heat. In my own houses I have
+a fireplace in each room, and I burn wood in it. There is a
+heating-system in the basement of my house, but it is under perfect
+control. I prefer the normal heat of sunshine and open fires. But,
+granted that open fires are impossible in all your rooms, do arrange in
+the beginning that the small rooms of your house may not be overheated.
+It is a distinct irritation to a person who loves clean air to go into a
+room where a flood of steam heat pours out of every corner. There is
+usually no way to control it unless you turn it off altogether. I once
+had the temerity to do this in a certain hotel room where there was a
+cold and cheerless empty fireplace. I summoned a reluctant chambermaid,
+only to be told that the chimney had never had a fire in it and the
+proprietor would rather not take such a risk!
+
+[Illustration: A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL]
+
+Perhaps the guest in your house would not be so troublesome, but don't
+tempt her! If you have a fireplace, see that it is in working order.
+We are sure to judge a woman in whose house we find ourselves for the
+first time, by her surroundings. We judge her temperament, her habits,
+her inclinations, by the interior of her home. We may talk of the
+weather, but we are looking at the furniture. We attribute vulgar
+qualities to those who are content to live in ugly surroundings. We
+endow with refinement and charm the person who welcomes us in a
+delightful room, where the colors blend and the proportions are as
+perfect as in a picture. After all, what surer guarantee can there be of
+a woman's character, natural and cultivated, inherent and inherited,
+than taste? It is a compass that never errs. If a woman has taste she
+may have faults, follies, fads, she may err, she may be as human and
+feminine as she pleases, but she will never cause a scandal!
+
+How can we develop taste? Some of us, alas, can never develop it,
+because we can never let go of shams. We must learn to recognize
+suitability, simplicity and proportion, and apply our knowledge to our
+needs. I grant you we may never fully appreciate the full balance of
+proportion, but we can exert our common sense and decide whether a thing
+is suitable; we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is
+simple, and we can train our eyes to recognize good and bad proportion.
+A technical knowledge of architecture is not necessary to know that a
+huge stuffed leather chair in a tiny gold and cream room is unsuitable,
+is hideously complicated, and is as much out of proportion as the
+proverbial bull in the china-shop.
+
+A woman's environment will speak for her life, whether she likes it or
+not. How can we believe that a woman of sincerity of purpose will hang
+fake "works of art" on her walls, or satisfy herself with imitation
+velvets or silks? How can we attribute taste to a woman who permits
+paper floors and iron ceilings in her house? We are too afraid of the
+restful commonplaces, and yet if we live simple lives, why shouldn't we
+be glad our houses are comfortably commonplace? How much better to have
+plain furniture that is comfortable, simple chintzes printed from old
+blocks, a few good prints, than all the sham things in the world? A
+house is a dead-give-away, anyhow, so you should arrange is so that the
+person who sees your personality in it will be reassured, not
+disconcerted.
+
+Too often, here in America, the most comfortable room in the house is
+given up to a sort of bastard collection of gilt chairs and tables,
+over-elaborate draperies shutting out both light and air, and huge and
+frightful paintings. This style of room, with its museum-like
+furnishings, has been dubbed "Marie Antoinette," _why_, no one but the
+American decorator can say. Heaven knows poor Marie Antoinette had
+enough follies to atone for, but certainly she has never been treated
+more shabbily than when they dub these mausoleums "Marie Antoinette
+rooms."
+
+I remember taking a clever Englishwoman of much taste to see a woman who
+was very proud of her new house. We had seen most of the house when the
+hostess, who had evidently reserved what she considered the best for
+the last, threw open the doors of a large and gorgeous apartment and
+said, "This is my Louis XVI ballroom." My friend, who had been very
+patient up to that moment, said very quietly, "What makes you think so?"
+
+Louis XVI thought a salon well furnished with a few fine chairs and a
+table. He wished to be of supreme importance. In the immense salons of
+the Italian palaces there were a few benches and chairs. People then
+wished spaces about them.
+
+Nowadays, people are swamped by their furniture. Too many centuries, too
+many races, crowd one another in a small room. The owner seems
+insignificant among his collections of historical furniture. Whether he
+collects all sorts of things of all periods in one heterogeneous mass,
+or whether he fills his house with the furniture of some one epoch, he
+is not at home in his surroundings.
+
+The furniture of every epoch records its history. Our ancestors of the
+Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries inherited the troublous times of
+their fathers in their heavy oaken chests. They owned more chests than
+anything else, because a chest could be carried away on the back of a
+sturdy pack mule, when the necessity arose for flight.
+
+People never had time to sit down in the Sixteenth Century. Their
+feverish unrest is recorded in their stiff, backed chairs. It was not
+until the Seventeenth Century that they had time to sit down and talk.
+We need no book of history to teach us this--we have only to observe the
+ample proportions of the arm-chairs of the period.
+
+Our ancestors of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries worked with a
+faith in the permanence of what they created. We have lost this happy
+confidence. We are occupied exclusively with preserving and reproducing.
+We have not succeeded in creating a style adapted to our modern life. It
+is just as well! Our life, with its haste, its nervousness and its
+preoccupations, does not inspire the furniture-makers. We cannot do
+better than to accept the standards of other times, and adapt them to
+our uses.
+
+Why should we American woman run after styles and periods of which we
+know nothing? Why should we not be content with the fundamental things?
+The formal French room is very delightful in the proper place but when
+it is unsuited to the people who must live in it it is as bad as a sham
+room. The woman who wears paste jewels is not so conspicuously wrong as
+the woman who plasters herself with too many real jewels at the wrong
+time!
+
+This is what I am always fighting in people's houses, the unsuitability
+of things. The foolish woman goes about from shop to shop and buys as
+her fancy directs. She sees something "pretty" and buys it, though it
+has no reference either in form or color to the scheme of her house.
+Haven't you been in rooms where there was a jumble of mission
+furniture, satinwood, fine old mahogany and gilt-legged chairs? And it
+is the same with color. A woman says, "Oh, I love blue, let's have
+blue!" regardless of the exposure of her room and the furnishings she
+has already collected. And then when she has treated each one of her
+rooms in a different color, and with a different floor covering, she
+wonders why she is always fretted in going from one room to another.
+
+Don't go about the furnishing of your house with the idea that you must
+select the furniture of some one period and stick to that. It isn't at
+all necessary. There are old English chairs and tables of the Sixteenth
+and Seventeenth Centuries that fit into our quiet, spacious Twentieth
+Century country homes. Lines and fabrics and woods are the things to be
+compared.
+
+There are so many beautiful things that have come to us from other times
+that it should be easy to make our homes beautiful, but I have seen what
+I can best describe as apoplectic chairs whose legs were fashioned like
+aquatic plants; tables upheld by tortured naked women; lighting fixtures
+in the form of tassels, and such horrors, in many houses of to-day under
+the guise of being "authentic period furniture." Only a connoisseur can
+ever hope to know about the furniture of every period, but all of us can
+easily learn the ear-marks of the furniture that is suited to our homes.
+I shan't talk about ear-marks here, however, because dozens of
+collectors have compiled excellent books that tell you all about curves
+and lines and grain-of-wood and worm-holes. My business is to persuade
+you to use your graceful French sofas and your simple rush bottom New
+England chairs in different rooms--in other words, to preach to you the
+beauty of suitability. Suitability! _Suitability!_ SUITABILITY!!
+
+It is such a relief to return to the tranquil, simple forms of
+furniture, and to decorate our rooms by a process of elimination. How
+many rooms have I not cleared of junk--this heterogeneous mass of
+ornamental "period" furniture and bric-a-brac bought to make a room
+"look cozy." Once cleared of these, the simplicity and dignity of the
+room comes back, the architectural spaces are freed and now stand in
+their proper relation to the furniture. In other words, the architecture
+of the room becomes its decoration.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
+
+
+I have always lived in enchanting houses. Probably when another woman
+would be dreaming of love affairs, I dream of the delightful houses I
+have lived in. And just as the woman who dreams of many lovers finds one
+dream a little dearer than all the rest, so one of my houses has been
+dearer to me than all the others.
+
+[Illustration: THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING]
+
+This favorite love of mine is the old Washington Irving house in New
+York, the quaint mansion that gave historic Irving Place its name. For
+twenty years my friend, Elizabeth Marbury, and I made this old house our
+home. Two years ago we reluctantly gave up the old house and moved into
+a more modern one--also transformed from old into new--on East
+Fifty-fifth Street. We have also a delightful old house in France, the
+Villa Trianon, at Versailles, where we spend our summers. So you see we
+have had the rare experience of transforming three mistreated old houses
+into very delightful homes.
+
+When we found this old house, so many years ago, we were very young, and
+it is amusing now to think of its evolution. We had so many dreams, so
+many theories, and we tried them all out on the old house. And like a
+patient, well-bred maiden aunt, the old house always accepted our
+changes most placidly. There never was such a house!
+
+You could do anything to it, because, fundamentally, it was good. Its
+wall spaces were inviting, its windows were made for framing pleasant
+things. When we moved there we had a broad sweep of view: I can remember
+seeing the river from our dining-room. Now the city has grown up around
+the old house and jostled it rudely, and shut out much of its sunshine.
+
+There is a joy in the opportunity of creating a beautiful interior for a
+new and up-to-date house, but best of all is the joy of furnishing an
+old house like this one. It is like reviving an old garden. It may not
+be just your idea of a garden to begin with, but as you study it and
+deck its barren spaces with masses of color, and fit a sundial into the
+spot that so needs it, and give the sunshine a fountain to play with,
+you love the old garden just a little more every time you touch it,
+until it becomes to you the most beautiful garden in all the world.
+
+Gardens and houses are such whimsical things! This old house of ours had
+been so long mistreated that it was fairly petulant and querulous when I
+began studying it. It asked questions on every turn, and seemed
+surprised when they were answered. The house was delightfully rambling,
+with a tiny entrance hall, and narrow stairs, and sudden up and down
+steps from one room to another like the old, old house one associates
+with far-away places and old times.
+
+The little entrance hall was worse than a question, it was a problem, but
+I finally solved it. The floor was paved with little hexagon-shaped tiles
+of a wonderful old red. A door made of little square panes of mirrors was
+placed where it would deceive the old hall into thinking itself a spacious
+thing. The walls were covered with a green-and-white-stripe wall-paper
+that looked as old as Rip Van Winkle. This is the same ribbon-grass paper
+that I afterward used in the Colony Club hallway. The woodwork was painted
+a soft gray-green. Finally, I had my collection of faded French costume
+prints set flat against the top of the wall as a frieze. The hall was so
+very narrow that as you went up stairs you could actually examine the old
+prints in detail. Another little thing: I covered the handrail of the
+stairs with a soft gray-green velvet of the same tone as the woodwork, and
+the effect was so very good and the touch of it so very nice that many of
+my friends straightway adopted the idea.
+
+But I am placing the cart before the horse! I should talk of the shell
+of the house before the contents, shouldn't I? It is hard to talk of
+this particular house as a thing apart from its furnishings, however,
+for every bit of paneling, every lighting-fixture, the placing of each
+mirror, was worked out so that the shell of the house and its
+furnishings might be in perfect harmony.
+
+The drawing-room and dining-room occupied the first floor of the house.
+The drawing-room was a long, narrow room with cream woodwork and walls.
+The walls were broken into panels by the use of a narrow molding. In the
+large panel above the mantel-shelf I had inset a painting by Nattier.
+You will see the same painting used in the Fifty-fifth Street house
+drawing-room, in another illustration.
+
+The color scheme of rose and cream and dull yellow was worked out from
+the rose and yellow Persian rug. Most of the furniture we found in
+France, but it fitted perfectly into this aristocratic and dignified
+room. Miss Marbury and I have a perfect right to French things in our
+drawing-room, you see, for we are French residents for half the year.
+And, besides, this gracious old house welcomed a fine old Louis XIV sofa
+as serenely as you please. I have no idea of swallowing my words about
+unsuitability!
+
+Light, air and comfort--these three things I must always have in a room,
+whether it be drawing-room or servant's room. This room had all three.
+The chairs were all comfortable, the lights well placed, and there was
+plenty of sunshine and air. The color of the room was so subdued that it
+was restful to the eye--one color faded into another so subtly that one
+did not realize there was a definite color-scheme. The hangings of the
+room were of a deep rose color. I used the same colors in the coverings
+of the chairs and sofas. The house was curtained throughout with fine
+white muslin curtains. No matter what the inner curtains of a room may
+be, I use this simple stuff against the window itself. There isn't any
+nicer material. To me there is something unsuitable in an array of lace
+against a window, like underclothes hung up to dry.
+
+[Illustration: A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM]
+
+The most delightful part of the drawing-room was the little
+conservatory, which was a plain, lamentable bay-window once upon a time.
+I determined to make a little flower-box of it, and had the floor of it
+paved with large tiles, and between the hardwood floor of the
+drawing-room and the marble of the window space was a narrow curb of
+marble, which made it possible to have a jolly little fountain in the
+window. The fountain splashed away to its heart's content, for there was
+a drain pipe under the curb. At the top of the windows there were
+shallow white boxes filled with trailing ivy that hung down and screened
+the glass, making the window as delightful to the passer-by without as
+to us within. There were several pots of rose-colored flowers standing
+in a prim row on the marble curb.
+
+You see how much simpler it is to make the best of an old bay window
+than to build on a new conservatory. There are thousands of houses with
+windows like this one of ours, an unfortunate space of which no use is
+made. Sometimes there is a gilt table bearing a lofty jar, sometimes a
+timid effort at comfort--a sofa--but usually the bay window is sacred to
+its own devices, whatever they may be! Why not spend a few dollars and
+make it the most interesting part of the room by giving it a lot of
+vines and flowers and a small fountain? It isn't at all an expensive
+thing to do.
+
+From the drawing-room you entered the dining-room. This was a long room
+with beautifully spaced walls, a high ceiling, and quaint cupboards. The
+arrangement of the mirrors around the cupboards and doors was unusual
+and most decorative. This room was so beautiful in itself that I used
+very little color--but _such_ color! We never tired of the gray and
+white and ivory color-scheme, the quiet atmosphere that made glorious
+the old Chinese carpet, with its rose-colored ground and blue-and-gold
+medallions and border. The large India-ink sketches set in the walls are
+originals by Mennoyer, the delightful Eighteenth Century artist who did
+the overdoors of the Petit Trianon.
+
+The mirror-framed lighting fixtures I brought over from France. The
+dining-table too, was French, of a creamy ivory-painted wood. The chairs
+had insets of cane of a deeper tone. The recessed window-seat was
+covered with a soft velvet of a deep yellow, and there were as many
+little footstools beside the window-seat as there were chairs in the
+room. Doesn't everyone long for a footstool at table?
+
+I believe that everything in one's house should be comfortable, but
+one's bedroom must be more than comfortable: it must be intimate,
+personal, one's secret garden, so to speak. It may be as simple as a
+convent cell and still have this quality of the personality of its
+occupant.
+
+There are two things that are as important to me as the bed in the
+bedrooms that I furnish, and they are the little tables at the head of
+the bed, and the lounging chairs. The little table must hold a good
+reading light, well shaded, for who doesn't like to read in bed? There
+must also be a clock, and there really should be a telephone. And the
+_chaise-longue_, or couch, as the case may be, should be both
+comfortable and beautiful. Who hasn't longed for a comfortable place to
+snatch forty winks at midday?
+
+My own bedroom in this house was very pleasant to me. The house was very
+small, you see, and my bedroom had to be my writing-and reading-room
+too, so that accounts for the bookshelves that fill the wall space above
+and around the mantel and the large writing-table. The room was built
+around a wonderful old French bed which came from Brittany. This old bed
+is of carved mahogany, with mirrored panels on the side against the
+wall, and with tall columns at the ends. It is always hung with
+embroidered silk in the rose color that I adore and has any number of
+pillows, big and little. The _chaise-longue_ was covered with this same
+silk, as were the various chair cushions. The other furnishings were in
+keeping. It was a delightfully comfortable room, and it grew a little at
+a time. I needed bookshelves, and I built them. A drop-light was
+necessary, and I found the old brass lantern which hung from the
+ceiling. And so it was furnished, bit by bit, need by need.
+
+Miss Marbury's bedroom in this house was entirely different in type, but
+exactly the same in comfort. The furniture was of white enamel, the
+walls ivory-white, and the rug a soft dull blue. The chintz used was the
+familiar Bird of Paradise, gorgeous in design, but so subdued in tone
+that one never tires of it. The bed had a flat, perfectly fitted cover
+of the chintz, which is tucked under the mattress. The box spring was
+also covered with the chintz, and the effect was always tidy and
+satisfactory. This is the neatest disposal of the bed-clothes I have
+seen. I always advise this arrangement.
+
+Besides the bed there was the necessary little table, holding a
+reading-light and so forth, and at the head of the bed a most adorable
+screen of white enamel, paneled with chintz below and glass above. There
+was a soft couch of generous width in this room, with covers and
+cushions of the chintz.
+
+Over near the windows was the dressing-table with the lighting-fixtures
+properly placed. This table, hung with chintz, had a sheet of plate
+glass exactly fitting its top. The writing-table, near the window is
+also part of my creed of comfort. There should be a writing-table in
+every bedroom. My friends laugh at the little fat pincushions on my
+writing-tables, but when they are covered with a bit of the chintz or
+tapestry or brocade of the room they are very pretty, and I am sure pins
+are as necessary on the writing-table as on the dressing-table.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MARBURY'S BEDROOM]
+
+Another thing I like on every writing-table is a clear glass bowl of
+dried rose petals, which gives the room the faintest spicy fragrance.
+There is also a little bowl of just the proper color to hold pens and
+clips and odds and ends. I get as much pleasure from planning these
+small details as from the planning of the larger furniture of the room.
+
+The house was very simple, you see, and very small, and so when the time
+came to leave it we had grown to love every inch of it. You can love a
+small house so completely! But we couldn't forgive the skyscrapers
+encroaching on our supply of sunshine, and we really needed more room,
+and so we said good-by to our beloved old house and moved into a new
+one. Now we find ourselves in danger of loving the new one as much as
+the old. But that is another story.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
+
+
+One walks the streets of New York and receives the fantastic impression
+that some giant architect has made for the city thousands of houses in
+replica. These dismal brownstone buildings are so like without, and
+alas! so like within, that one wonders how their owners know their homes
+from one another. I have had the pleasure of making over many of these
+gloomy barracks into homes for other people, and when we left the old
+Irving Place house we took one of these dreary houses for ourselves, and
+made it over into a semblance of what a city house should be.
+
+You know the kind of house--there are tens of thousands of them--a four
+story and basement house of pinkish brownstone, with a long flight of
+ugly stairs from the street to the first floor. The common belief that
+all city houses of this type must be dark and dreary just because they
+always _have_ been dark and dreary is an unnecessary superstition.
+
+My object in taking this house was twofold: I wanted to prove to my
+friends that it was possible to take one of the darkest and grimiest of
+city houses and make it an abode of sunshine and light, and I wanted to
+furnish the whole house exactly as I pleased--for once!
+
+The remaking of the house was very interesting. I tore away the ugly
+stone steps and centered the entrance door in a little stone-paved
+fore-court on the level of the old area-way. The fore-court is just a
+step below the street level, giving you a pleasant feeling of
+invitation. Everyone hates to climb into a house, but there is a subtle
+allure in a garden or a court yard or a room into which you must step
+down. The fore-court is enclosed with a high iron railing banked with
+formal box-trees. Above the huge green entrance door there is a graceful
+iron balcony, filled with green things, that pulls the great door and
+the central window of the floor above into an impressive composition.
+The fa�ade of the house, instead of being a commonplace rectangle of
+stone broken by windows, has this long connected break of the door and
+balcony and window. By such simple devices are happy results
+accomplished!
+
+The door itself is noteworthy, with its great bronze knob set squarely
+in the center. On each side of it there are the low windows of the
+entrance hall, with window-boxes of evergreens. Compare this orderly
+arrangement of windows and entrance door with the badly balanced houses
+of the old type, and you will realize anew the value of balance and
+proportion.
+
+From the fore-court you enter the hall. Once within the hall, the, house
+widens magically. Surely this cool black and white apartment cannot be
+a part of restless New York! Have you ever come suddenly upon an old
+Southern house, and thrilled at the classic purity of white columns in a
+black-green forest? This entrance hall gives you the same thrill; the
+elements of formality, of tranquillity, of coolness, are so evident. The
+walls and ceiling are a deep, flat cream, and the floor is laid in large
+black and white marble tiles. Exactly opposite you as you enter, there
+is a wall fountain with a background of mirrors. The water spills over
+from the fountain into ferns and flowers banked within a marble curb.
+The two wall spaces on your right and left are broken by graceful niches
+which hold old statues. An oval Chinese rug and the white and orange
+flowers of the fountain furnish the necessary color. The windows
+flanking the entrance doorway are hung with flat curtains of coarse
+white linen, with inserts of old filet lace, and there are side curtains
+of dead black silk with borderings of silver and gold threads.
+
+In any house that I have anything to do with, there is some sort of desk
+or table for writing in the hall. How often I have been in other
+people's houses when it was necessary to send a message, or to record an
+address, when the whole household began scurrying around trying to find
+a pencil and paper! This, to my mind, is an outward and visible sign of
+an inward--and fundamental!--lack of order.
+
+[Illustration: THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET
+HOUSE]
+
+In this hall there is a charming desk particularly adapted to its
+place. It is a standing desk which can be lowered or heightened at will,
+so that one who wishes to scribble a line or so may use it without
+sitting down. This desk is called a _bureau d'architect_. I found it in
+Biarritz. It would be quite easy to have one made by a good
+cabinet-maker, for the lines and method of construction are simple. My
+hall desk is so placed that it is lighted by the window by day and the
+wall lights by night, but it might be lighted by two tall candlesticks
+if a wall light were not available. There is a shallow drawer which
+contains surplus writing materials, but the only things permitted on the
+writing surface of the desk are the tray for cards, the pad and pencils.
+
+The only other furniture in the hall is an old porter's chair near the
+door, a chair that suggests the sedan of old France, but serves its
+purpose admirably.
+
+A glass door leads to the inner hall and the stairway, which I consider
+the best thing in the house. Instead of the usual steep and gloomy
+stairs with which we are all familiar, here is a graceful spiral
+stairway which runs from this floor to the roof. The stair hall has two
+walls made up of mirrors in the French fashion, that is, cut in squares
+and held in place by small rosettes of gilt, and these mirrored walls
+seemingly double the spaciousness of what would be, under ordinary
+conditions, a gloomy inside hallway.
+
+The house is narrow in the extreme, and the secret of its
+successful renaissance is plenty of windows and light color and
+mirrors--mirrors--mirrors! It has been called the "Little House of Many
+Mirrors," for so much of its spaciousness and charm is the effect of
+skilfully managed reflections. The stair-landings are most ingeniously
+planned. There are landings that lead directly from the stairs into the
+rooms of each floor, and back of one of the mirrored stair walls there
+is a little balcony connecting the rooms on that floor, a private
+passageway.
+
+The drawing-room and dining-room occupy the first floor. The
+drawing-room is a pleasant, friendly place, full of quiet color. The
+walls are a deep cream color and the floor is covered with a beautiful
+Savonnerie rug. There are many beautiful old chairs covered with
+Aubusson tapestry, and other chairs and sofas covered with rose colored
+brocade. This drawing-room is seemingly a huge place, this effect being
+given by the careful placing of mirrors and lights, and the skilful
+arrangement of the furniture. I believe in plenty of optimism and white
+paint, comfortable chairs with lights beside them, open fires on the
+hearth and flowers wherever they "belong," mirrors and sunshine in all
+rooms.
+
+But I think we can carry the white paint idea too far: I have grown a
+little tired of over-careful decorations, of plain white walls and white
+woodwork, of carefully matched furniture and over-cautious
+color-schemes. Somehow the feeling of homey-ness is lost when the
+decorator is too careful. In this drawing-room there is furniture of
+many woods, there are stuffs of many weaves, there are candles and
+chandeliers and reading-lamps, but there is harmony of purpose and
+therefore harmony of effect. The room was made for conversation, for
+hospitality.
+
+A narrow landing connects the dining-room and the drawing-room. The
+color of the dining-room has grown of itself, from the superb Chinese
+rug on the floor and the rare old Mennoyer drawings inset in the walls.
+The woodwork and walls have been painted a soft dove-like gray. The
+walls are broken into panels by a narrow gray molding, and the Mennoyers
+are set in five of these panels. In one narrow panel a beautiful wall
+clock has been placed. Above the mantel there is a huge mirror with a
+panel in black and white relief above it. On the opposite wall there is
+another mirror, with a console table of carved wood painted gray beneath
+it. There is also a console table under one of the Mennoyers.
+
+The two windows in this room are obviously windows by day, but at night
+two sliding doors of mirrors are drawn, just as a curtain would be
+drawn, to fill the window spaces. This is a little bit tricky, I admit,
+but it is a very good trick. The dining-table is of carved wood painted
+gray and covered with yellow damask, which in turn is covered with a
+sheet of plate glass. The chairs are covered with a blue and gold
+striped velvet. The rug has a gold ground with medallions and border of
+blue, ivory and rose. Near the door that leads to the service rooms
+there is a huge screen made of one piece of wondrous tapestry. No other
+furniture is needed in the room.
+
+The third floor is given over to my sitting-room, bedroom,
+dressing-room, and so forth, and the fourth floor to Miss Marbury's
+apartments. These rooms will be discussed in other chapters.
+
+The servants' quarters in this house are very well planned. In the back
+yard that always goes with a house of this type I had built a new wing,
+five stories high, connected with the floors of the house proper by
+window-lined passages. On the dining-room floor the passage becomes a
+butler's pantry. On the bedroom floors the passages are large enough for
+dressing-rooms and baths, connecting with the bedrooms, and for outer
+halls and laundries connecting with the maids' rooms and the back
+stairs. In this way, you see, the maids can reach the dressing-rooms
+without invading the bedrooms. The kitchen and its dependencies occupy
+the first floor of the new wing, the servants' bedrooms the next three
+floors, and the top floor is made up of clothes closets, sewing-rooms,
+store rooms, etc.
+
+I firmly believe that the whole question of household comfort evolves
+from the careful planning of the service portion of the house. My
+servants' rooms are all attractive. The woodwork of these rooms is
+white, the walls are cream, the floors are waxed. They are all gay and
+sweet and cheerful, with white painted beds and chests of drawers and
+willow chairs, and chintz curtains and bed-coverings that are
+especially chosen, _not_ handed down when they have become too faded to
+be used elsewhere!
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
+
+
+Surely the first considerations of the house in good taste must be
+light, air and sanitation. Instead of ignoring the relation of sanitary
+conditions and decorative schemes, the architect and client of to-day
+work out these problems with excellent results. Practical needs are
+considered just as worthy of the architect as artistic achievements. He
+is a poor excuse for his profession if he cannot solve the problems of
+utility and beauty, and work out the ultimate harmony of the
+house-to-be.
+
+If one enters a room in which true proportion has been observed, where
+the openings, the doors, windows and fireplace, balance perfectly, where
+the wall spaces are well planned and the height of the ceiling is in
+keeping with the floor-space, one is immediately convinced that here is
+a beautiful and satisfactory room, before a stick of furniture has been
+placed in it. All questions pertaining to the practical equipment and
+the decorative amenities of the house should be approached
+architecturally. If this is done, the result cannot fail to be
+felicitous, and our dream of our house beautiful comes true!
+
+Before you begin the decoration of your walls, be sure that your floors
+have been finished to fulfil their purposes. Stain them or polish them
+to a soft glow, keep them low in tone so that they may be backgrounds.
+We will assume that the woodwork of each room has been finished with a
+view to the future use and decoration of the room. We will assume that
+the ceilings are proper ceilings; that they will stay in their place,
+i.e., the top of the room. This is a most daring assumption, because
+there are so many feeble and threatening ceilings overhanging most of us
+that good ones seem rare. But the ceiling is an architectural problem,
+and you must consider it in the beginning of things. It may be beamed
+and have every evidence of structural beauty and strength, or it may be
+beamed in a ridiculous fashion that advertises the beams as shams,
+leading from nowhere to nowhere. It may be a beautiful expanse of creamy
+modeled plaster resting on a distinguished cornice, or it may be one of
+those ghastly skim-milk ceilings with distorted cupids and roses in
+relief. It may be a rectangle of plain plaster tinted cream or pale
+yellow or gray, and keeping its place serenely, or it may be a
+villainous stretch of ox-blood, hanging over your head like the curse of
+Cain. There are hundreds of magnificent painted ceilings, and vaulted
+arches of marble and gold, but these are not of immediate importance to
+the woman who is furnishing a small house, and are not within the scope
+of this book. So let us exercise common sense and face our especial
+ceiling problem in an architectural spirit. If your house has
+structural beams, leave them exposed, if you like, but treat them as
+beams; stain them, and wax them, and color the spaces between them cream
+or tan or warm gray, and then make the room beneath the beams strong
+enough in color and furnishings to carry the impressive ceiling.
+
+If you have an architect who is also a decorator, and he has ideas for a
+modeled plaster ceiling, or a ceiling with plaster-covered beams and
+cornice and a fine application of ornament, let him do his best for you,
+but remember that a fine ceiling demands certain things of the room it
+covers. If you have a simple little house with simple furnishings, be
+content to have your ceilings tinted a warm cream, keep them always
+clean.
+
+When all these things are settled--floors and ceilings and woodwork--you
+may begin to plan your wall coverings. Begin, you understand. You will
+probably change your plans a dozen times before you make the final
+decisions. I hope you will! Because inevitably the last opinion is
+best--it grows out of so many considerations.
+
+The main thing to remember, when you begin to cover your walls, is that
+they are walls, that they are straight up and down, and have breadth and
+thickness, that they are supposedly strong, in other words, that they
+are a structural part of your house. A wall should always be treated as
+a flat surface and in a conventional way. Pictorial flowers and lifelike
+figures have no place upon it, but conventionalized designs may be used
+successfully--witness the delighted use of the fantastic landscape
+papers in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Walls should always be
+obviously _walls_, and not flimsy partitions hung with gauds and
+trophies. The wall is the background of the room, and so must be flat in
+treatment and reposeful in tone.
+
+Walls have always offered tempting spaces for decoration. Our ancestors
+hung their walls with trophies. Our pioneer of to-day may live in an
+adobe hut, but he hangs his walls with things that suggest beauty and
+color to him, calendars, and trophies and gaudy chromos. The rest of his
+hut he uses for the hard business of living, but his walls are his
+theater, his literature, his recreation. The wolf skin will one day give
+place to a painting of the chase, the gaudy calendars to better things,
+when prosperity comes. But now these crude things speak for the pioneer
+period of the man, and therefore they are the right things for the
+moment. How absurd would be the refined etching and the delicate
+water-color on these clay walls, even were they within his grasp!
+
+The first impulse of all of us is to hang the things we admire on our
+walls. Unfortunately, we do not always select papers and fabrics and
+pictures we will continue to admire. Who doesn't know the woman who goes
+to a shop and selects wall papers as she would select her gowns, because
+they are "new" and "different" and "pretty"? She selects a "rich" paper
+for her hall and an "elegant" paper for her drawing-room--the chances
+are it is a nile green moire paper! For her library she thinks a paper
+imitating an Oriental fabric is the proper thing, and as likely as not
+she buys gold paper for her dining-room. She finds so many charming
+bedroom papers that she has no trouble in selecting a dozen of them for
+insipid blue rooms and pink rooms and lilac rooms.
+
+She forgets that while she wears only one gown at a time she will live
+with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of
+large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the
+adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give
+them the fair test of living with them a few days.
+
+You can always buy, or borrow, a roll of the paper you like and take it
+home and live with it awhile. The dealer will credit the roll when you
+make the final decisions. You should assemble all the papers that are to
+be used in the house, and all the fabrics, and rugs, and see what the
+effect of the various compositions will be, one with another. You can't
+consider one room alone, unless it be a bedroom, for in our modern
+houses we believe too thoroughly in spaciousness to separate our living
+rooms by ante-chambers and formal approaches. We must preserve a certain
+amount of privacy, and have doors that may be closed when need be, but
+we must also consider the effect of things when those doors are open,
+when the color of one room melts into the color of another.
+
+[Illustration: A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS]
+
+To me, the most beautiful wall is the plain and dignified painted
+wall, broken into graceful panels by the use of narrow moldings, with
+lighting fixtures carefully placed, and every picture and mirror hung
+with classic precision. This wall is just as appropriate to the six-room
+cottage as to the twenty-room house. If I could always find perfect
+walls, I'd always paint them, and never use a yard of paper. Painted
+walls, when very well done, are dignified and restful, and most
+sanitary. The trouble is that too few plasterers know how to smooth the
+wall surface, and too few workmen know how to apply paint properly. In
+my new house on East Fifty-fifth Street I have had all the walls
+painted. The woodwork is ivory white throughout the house, except in the
+dining-room, where the walls and woodwork are soft gray. The walls of
+most of the rooms and halls are painted a very deep tone of cream and
+are broken into panels, the moldings being painted cream like the
+woodwork. With such walls you can carry out any color-plan you may
+desire.
+
+You would think that every woman would know that walls are influenced by
+the exposure of the room, but how often I have seen bleak north rooms
+with walls papered in cold gray, and sunshiny south rooms with red or
+yellow wall papers! Dull tones and cool colors are always good in south
+rooms, and live tones and warm colors in north rooms. For instance, if
+you wish to keep your rooms in one color-plan, you may have white
+woodwork in all of them, and walls of varying shades of cream and
+yellow. The north rooms may have walls painted or papered with a soft,
+warm yellow that suggests creamy chiffon over orange. The south rooms
+may have the walls of a cool creamy-gray tone.
+
+Whether you paint or paper your walls, you should consider the placing
+of the picture-molding most carefully. If the ceiling is very high, the
+walls will be more interesting if the picture-molding is placed three or
+four feet below the ceiling line. If the ceiling is low, the molding
+should be within two inches of the ceiling. These measurements are not
+arbitrary, of course. Every room is a law unto itself, and no cut and
+dried rule can be given. A fine frieze is a very beautiful decoration,
+but it must be _very_ fine to be worth while at all. Usually the dropped
+ceiling is better for the upper wall space. It goes without saying that
+those dreadful friezes perpetrated by certain wall paper designers are
+very bad form, and should never be used. Indeed, the very principle of
+the ordinary paper frieze is bad; it darkens the upper wall
+unpleasantly, and violates the good old rule that the floors should be
+darkest in tone, the side walls lighter, and the ceiling lightest. The
+recent vogue of stenciling walls may be objected to on this account,
+though a very narrow and conventional line of stenciling may sometimes
+be placed just under the picture rail with good effect.
+
+In a great room with a beamed ceiling and oak paneled walls a painted
+fresco or a frieze of tapestry or some fine fabric is a very fine thing,
+especially if it has a lot of primitive red and blue and gold in it, but
+in simple rooms--beware!
+
+Lately there has been a great revival of interest in wood paneling. We
+go abroad, and see the magnificent paneling of old English houses, and
+we come home and copy it. But we cannot get the workmen who will carve
+panels in the old patterns. We cannot wait a hundred years for the soft
+bloom that comes from the constant usage, and so our paneled rooms are
+apt to be too new and woody. But we have such a wonderful store of
+woods, here in America, it is worth while to panel our rooms, copying
+the simple rectangular English patterns, and it is quite permissible to
+"age" our walls by rubbing in black wax, and little shadows of
+water-color, and in fact by any method we can devise. Wood paneled
+walls, like beamed ceilings, are best in great rooms. They make boxes of
+little ones.
+
+Painted walls, and walls hung with tapestries and leather, are not
+possible to many of us, but they are the most magnificent of wall
+treatments. I know a wonderful library with walls hung in squares of
+Spanish leather, a cold northern room that merits such a brilliant wall
+treatment. The primitive colors of the Cordova leather workers, with
+gold and crimson dominant, glow from the deep shadows. Spanish and
+Italian furniture and fine old velvets and brocades furnish this room.
+The same sort of room invites wood paneling and tapestry, whereas the
+ideal room for painted walls in a lighter key is the ballroom, or some
+such large apartment. I once decorated a ballroom with Pillement panels,
+copied from a beautiful Eighteenth Century room, and so managed to bring
+a riot of color and decoration into a large apartment. The ground of the
+paneling was deep yellow, and all the little birds and flowers
+surrounding the central design were done in the very brightest,
+strongest colors imaginable. The various panels had quaint little scenes
+of the same Chinese flavor. Of course, in such an apartment as a
+ballroom there would be nothing to break into the decorative plan of the
+painted walls, and the unbroken polished floor serves only to throw the
+panels into their proper prominence. Painted walls, when done in some
+such broad and daring manner, are very wonderful, but they should not be
+attempted by the amateur, or, indeed, by an expert in a room that will
+be crowded with furniture, and curtains, and rugs.
+
+If your walls are faulty, you must resort to wall papers or fabrics.
+Properly selected wall papers are not to be despised. The woodwork of a
+room, of course, directly influences the treatment of its walls. So many
+people ask me for advice about wall papers, and forget absolutely to
+tell me of the finish of the framing of their wall spaces. A pale
+yellowish cream wall paper is very charming with woodwork of white, but
+it would not do with woodwork of heavy oak, for instance.
+
+[Illustration: A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE]
+
+A general rule to follow in a small house is: do not have a figured
+wall paper if you expect to use things of large design in your rooms. If
+you have gorgeous rugs and hangings, keep your walls absolutely plain.
+In furnishing the Colony Club I used a ribbon grass paper in the
+hallway. The fresh, spring-like green and white striped paper is very
+delightful with a carpet and runner of plain dark-green velvet, and
+white woodwork, and dark mahogany furniture, and many gold-framed
+mirrors. In another room in this building where many chintzes and
+fabrics were used, I painted the woodwork white and the walls a soft
+cream color. In the bedrooms I used a number of wall papers, the most
+fascinating of these, perhaps, is in the bird room. The walls are hung
+with a daringly gorgeous paper covered with birds--birds of paradise and
+paroquets perched on flowery tropical branches. The furniture in this
+room is of black and gold lacquer, and the rug and hangings are of jade
+green. It would not be so successful in a room one lived in all the year
+around, but it is a good example of what one can do with a tempting wall
+paper in an occasional room, a guest room, for instance.
+
+Some of the figured wall papers are so decorative that they are more
+than tempting, they are compelling. The Chinese ones are particularly
+fascinating. Recently I planned a small boudoir in a country house that
+depended on a gay Chinoiserie paper for its charm. The design of the
+paper was made up of quaint little figures and parasols and birds and
+twisty trees, all in soft tones of green and blue and mauve on a deep
+cream ground. The woodwork and ceiling repeated the deep cream, and the
+simple furniture (a day bed, a chest of drawers, and several chairs)
+were of wood, painted a flat blue green just the color of the twisty
+pine-trees of the paper.
+
+We had a delightful time decorating the furniture with blue and mauve
+lines, and we painted parasols and birds and flowers on chair backs and
+drawer-knobs and so forth. The large rug was of pinky-mauve-gray, and
+the coverings of the day bed and chairs were of a mauve and gray striped
+stuff, the stripes so small that they had the effect of being threads of
+color. There were no pictures, of course, but there was a long mirror
+above the chest of drawers, and another over the mantel. The
+lighting-fixtures, candlesticks and appliqu�s, were of carved and
+painted wood, blue-green with shades of thin mauve silk over rose.
+
+Among the most enchanting of the new papers are the black and white
+ones, fantastic Chinese designs and startling Austrian patterns. Black
+and white is always a tempting combination to the decorator, and now
+that Josef Hoffman, the great Austrian decorator, has been working in
+black and white for a number of years, the more venturesome decorators
+of France, and England and America have begun to follow his lead, and
+are using black and white, and black and color, with amazing effect. We
+have black papers patterned in color, and black velvet carpets, and
+white coated papers sprinkled with huge black polka dots, and all manner
+of unusual things. It goes without saying that much of this fad is
+freakish, but there is also much that is good enough and refreshing
+enough to last. One can imagine nothing fresher than a black and white
+scheme in a bedroom, with a saving neutrality of gray or some dull tone
+for rugs, and a brilliant bit of color in porcelain. There is no hint of
+the mournful in the decorator's combination of black and white: rather,
+there is a na�ve quality suggestive of smartness in a gown, or chic in a
+woman. A white walled room with white woodwork and a black and white
+tiled floor; a black lacquer bed and chest of drawers and chair; glass
+curtains of white muslin and inside ones of black and white Hoffman
+chintz; a splash of warm orange-red in an oval rug at the bedside, if it
+be winter, or a cool green one in summer--doesn't this tempt you?
+
+I once saw a little serving-maid wearing a calico gown, black crosses on
+a white ground, and I was so enchanted with the cool crispness of it
+that I had a glazed wall paper made in the same design. I have used it
+in bedrooms, and in bathrooms, always with admirable effect. One can
+imagine a girl making a Pierrot and Pierrette room for herself, given
+whitewashed walls, white woodwork, and white painted furniture. An
+ordinary white cotton printed with large black polka dots would make
+delightful curtains, chair-cushions, and so forth. The rug might be
+woven of black and white rags, or might be one of those woven from the
+old homespun coverlet patterns.
+
+The landscape papers that were so popular in the New England and
+Southern houses three generations ago were very wonderful when they were
+used in hallways, with graceful stairs and white woodwork, but they were
+distressing when used in living-rooms. It is all very well to cover the
+walls of your hall with a hand-painted paper, or a landscape, or a
+foliage paper, because you get only an impressionistic idea of a
+hall--you don't loiter there. But papers of large design are out of
+place in rooms where pictures and books are used. If there is anything
+more dreadful than a busy "parlor" paper, with scrolls that tantalize or
+flowers that demand to be counted, I have yet to encounter it.
+
+Remember, above all things that your walls must be beautiful in
+themselves. They must be plain and quiet, ready to receive sincere
+things, but quite good enough to get along without pictures if
+necessary. A wall that is broken into beautiful spaces and covered with
+a soft creamy paint, or paper, or grasscloth, is good enough for any
+room. It may be broken with lighting fixtures, and it is finished.
+
+[Illustration: THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE
+MANTEL]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
+
+
+What a joyous thing is color! How influenced we all are by it, even if
+we are unconscious of how our sense of restfulness has been brought
+about. Certain colors are antagonistic to each of us, and I think we
+should try to learn just what colors are most sympathetic to our own
+individual emotions, and then make the best of them.
+
+If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live
+in a room in which the prevailing note is red. On the other hand, a
+timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in
+surroundings of rich red tones, the tones of the old Italian damasks in
+which the primitive colors of the Middle Ages have been handed down to
+us. No half shades, no blending of tender tones are needed in an age of
+iron nerves. People worked hard, and they got downright blues and reds
+and greens--primitive colors, all. Nowadays, we must consider the effect
+of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.
+
+Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music. The
+strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love
+of color. I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at
+twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.
+
+Color! The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of
+tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life. We
+say that one woman is "so full of color," when she is alert and happy
+and vividly alive. We say another woman is "colorless," because she is
+bleak and chilling and unfriendly. We demand that certain music shall be
+full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite
+books. One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard
+and--gray. We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation
+of color, although often we have not that appreciation.
+
+There is all the difference in the world between the person who
+appreciates color and the person who "likes colors." The child, playing
+with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American
+Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads--all these
+primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no
+more feeling for color than a blind man. The appreciation of color is a
+subtle and intellectual quality.
+
+Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on
+housefurnishing, says: "Colors are like musical notes and chords, while
+color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way. So
+colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself. The first are
+tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art composed of many
+lines and shades."
+
+We are aware that some people are "color-blind," but we do not take the
+trouble to ascertain whether the majority of people see colors crudely.
+I suppose there are as many color-blind people as there are people who
+have a deep feeling for color, and the great masses of people in
+between, while they know colors one from another, have no appreciation
+of hue. Just as surely, there are some people who cannot tell one tune
+from another and some people who have a deep and passionate feeling for
+music, while the rest--the great majority of people--can follow a tune
+and sing a hymn, but they can go no deeper into music than that.
+
+Surely, each of you must know your own color-sense. You know whether you
+get results, don't you? I have never believed that there is a woman so
+blind that she cannot tell good from bad effects, even though she may
+not be able to tell _why_ one room is good and another bad. It is as
+simple as the problem of the well-gowned woman and the dowdy one. The
+dowdy woman doesn't realize the degree of her own dowdiness, but she
+_knows_ that her neighbor is well-gowned, and she envies her with a
+vague and pathetic envy.
+
+If, then, you are not sure that you appreciate color, if you feel that
+you, like your children, like the green rug with the red roses because
+it is "so cheerful," you may be sure that you should let color-problems
+alone, and furnish your house in neutral tones, depending on
+book-bindings and flowers and open fires and the necessary small
+furnishings for your color. Then, with an excellent background of soft
+quiet tones, you can venture a little way at a time, trying a bit of
+color here for a few days, and asking yourself if you honestly like it,
+and then trying another color--a jar or a bowl or a length of
+fabric--somewhere else, and trying that out. You will soon find that
+your joy in your home is growing, and that you have a source of
+happiness within yourself that you had not suspected. I believe that
+good taste can be developed in any woman, just as surely as good manners
+are possible to anyone. And good taste is as necessary as good manners.
+
+We may take our first lessons in color from Nature, on whose storehouse
+we can draw limitlessly. Nature, when she plans a wondrous splash of
+color, prepares a proper background for it. She gives us color plans for
+all the needs we can conceive. White and gray clouds on a blue sky--what
+more could she use in such a composition? A bit of gray green moss upon
+a black rock, a field of yellow dandelions, a pink and white spike of
+hollyhocks, an orange-colored butterfly poised on a stalk of
+larkspur--what color-plans are these!
+
+[Illustration: A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM]
+
+I think that the first consideration after you have settled your
+building-site should be to place your house so that its windows may
+frame Nature's own pictures. With windows facing north and south, where
+all the fluctuating and wayward charm of the season unrolls before your
+eyes, your windows become the finest pictures that you can have. When
+this has been arranged, it is time to consider the color-scheme for the
+interior of the house, the colors that shall be in harmony with the
+window-framed vistas, the colors that shall be backgrounds for the
+intimate personal furnishings of your daily life. You must think of your
+walls as backgrounds for the colors you wish to bring into your rooms.
+And by colors I do not mean merely the primary colors, red and blue and
+yellow, or the secondary colors, green and orange and violet, I mean the
+white spaces, the black shadows, the gray halftones, the suave creams,
+that give you the _feeling_ of color.
+
+How often we get a more definite idea of brilliant color from a
+white-walled room, with dark and severe furniture and no ornaments, no
+actual color save the blue sky framed by the windows and the flood of
+sunshine that glorifies everything, than from a room that has a dozen
+fine colors, carefully brought together, in its furnishings!
+
+We must decide our wall colors by the aspect of our rooms. Rooms facing
+south may be very light gray, cream, or even white, but northern rooms
+should be rich in color, and should suggest warmth and just a little
+mystery. Some of you have seen the Sala di Cambio at Perugia. Do you
+remember how dark it seems when one enters, and how gradually the
+wonderful coloring glows out from the gloom and one is comforted and
+soothed into a sort of dreamland of pure joy, in the intimate
+satisfaction of it all? It is unsurpassable for sheer decorative charm,
+I think.
+
+For south rooms blues and grays and cool greens and all the dainty gay
+colors are charming. Do you remember the song Edna May used to sing in
+"The Belle of New York"? I am not sure of quoting correctly, but the
+refrain was: "Follow the Light!" I have so often had it in mind when
+I've been planning my color schemes--"Follow the Light!" But light
+colors for sunshine, remember, and dark ones for shadow.
+
+For north rooms I am strongly inclined to the use of paneling in our
+native American woods, that are so rich in effect, but alas, so little
+used. I hope our architects will soon realize what delightful and
+inexpensive rooms can be made of pine and cherry, chestnut and cypress,
+and the beautiful California redwood. I know of a library paneled with
+cypress. The beamed ceiling, the paneled walls, the built-in shelves,
+the ample chairs and long tables are all of the soft brown cypress.
+Here, if anywhere, you would think a monotony of brown wood would be
+obvious, but think of the thousands of books with brilliant bindings!
+Think of the green branches of trees seen through the casement windows!
+Think of the huge, red-brick fireplace, with its logs blazing in orange
+and yellow and vermillion flame! Think of the distinction of a copper
+bowl of yellow flowers on the long brown table! Can't you see that this
+cypress room is simply glowing with color?
+
+I wish that I might be able to show all you young married girls who are
+working out your home-schemes just how to work out the color of a room.
+Suppose you are given some rare and lovely jar, or a wee rug, or a rare
+old print, or even a quaint old chair from long ago, and build a room
+around it. I have some such point of interest in every room I build, and
+I think that is why some people like my rooms--they feel, without quite
+knowing why, that I have loved them while making them. Now there is a
+little sitting-room and bedroom combined in a certain New York house
+that I worked out from a pair of Chinese jars. They were the oddest
+things, of a sort of blue-green and mauve and mulberry, with flecks of
+black, on a cream porcelain ground.
+
+First I found a wee Oriental rug that repeated the colors of the jugs.
+This was to go before the hearth. Then I worked out the shell of the
+room: the woodwork white, the walls bluish green, the plain carpet a
+soft green. I designed the furniture and had it made by a skilful
+carpenter, for I could find none that would harmonize with the room.
+
+The day bed which is forty-two inches wide, is built like a wide roomy
+sofa. One would never suspect it of being a plain bed. Still it makes no
+pretensions to anything else, for it has the best of springs and the
+most comfortable of mattresses, and a dozen soft pillows. The bed is of
+wood and is painted a soft green, with a dark-green line running all
+around, and little painted festoons of flowers in decoration. The
+mattress and springs are covered with a most delightful mauve chintz, on
+which birds and flowers are patterned. There are several easy chairs
+cushioned with this chintz, and the window hangings are also of it. The
+chest of drawers is painted in the same manner. There are glass knobs on
+the drawers, and a sheet of plate glass covers the top of it. An old
+painting hangs above it.
+
+The open bookshelves are perfectly plain in construction. They are
+painted the same bluish-green, and the only decoration is the line of
+dark green about half an inch from the edge. Any woman who is skilful
+with her brush could decorate furniture of this kind, and I daresay many
+women could build it.
+
+There is another bedroom in this house, a room in red and blue. "Red and
+blue"--you shudder. I know it! But _such_ red and _such_ blue!
+
+Will you believe me when I assure you that this room is called cool and
+restful-looking by everyone who sees it? The walls are painted plain
+cream. The woodwork is white. The perfectly plain carpet rug is of a
+dull red that is the color of an old-fashioned rose--you know the roses
+that become lavender when they fade? The mantel is of Siena marble, and
+over it there is an old mirror with an upper panel painted in colors
+after the manner of some of those delightful old rooms found in France
+about the time of Louis XVI. If you have one very good picture and will
+use it in this way, inset over the mantel with a mirror below it, you
+will need no other pictures in your room.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM]
+
+The chintz used in this room is patterned in the rose red of the carpet
+and a dull cool blue, on a white ground. This chintz is used on the
+graceful sofa, the several chairs and the bed, which are ivory in tone.
+The hangings of the bed are lined with taffetas of rose red. The
+bedcover is of the same silk, and the inner curtains at the window are
+lined with it. The small table at the head of the bed, the kidney table
+beside the sofa, and the small cabinets near the mantel, are of
+mahogany. There is a mahogany writing-table placed at right angles to
+the windows.
+
+From this rose and blue bedroom you enter a little dressing-room that is
+also full of color. Here are the same cream walls, the dull red carpet,
+the old blue silk shades on lamps and candles, but the chintz is
+different: the ground is black, and gray parrots and paroquets swing in
+blue-green festoons of leaves and branches. The dressing-table is placed
+in front of the window, so that you can see yourself for better or for
+worse. There is a three-fold mirror of black and gold lacquer, and a
+Chinese cabinet of the same lacquer in the corner. The low seat before
+the dressing-table is covered with the chintz. A few costume prints hang
+on the wall. You can imagine how impossible it would be to be
+ill-tempered in such a cheerful place.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
+
+
+What a sense of intimacy, of security, encompasses one when ushered into
+a living room in which the door opens and _closes_! Who that has read
+Henry James's remarkable article on the vistas dear to the American
+hostess, our portiere-hung spaces, guiltless of doors and open to every
+draft, can fail to feel how much better our conversation might be were
+we not forever conscious that between our guests and the greedy ears of
+our servants there is nothing but a curtain! All that curtains ever were
+used for in the Eighteenth Century was as a means of shutting out drafts
+in large rooms inadequately heated by wood fires.
+
+How often do we see masses of draperies looped back and arranged with
+elaborate dust-catching tassels and fringes that mean nothing. These
+curtains do not even draw! I am sure that a good, well-designed door
+with a simple box-lock and hinges would be much less costly than velvet
+hangings. A door is not an ugly object, to be concealed for very shame,
+but a fine architectural detail of great value. Consider the French and
+Italian doors with their architraves. How fine they are, how imposing,
+how honest, and how well they compose!
+
+Of course, if your house has been built with open archways, you will
+need heavy curtains for them, but there are curtains _and_ curtains. If
+you need portieres at all, you need them to cut off one room from
+another, and so they should hang in straight folds. They should be just
+what they pretend to be--honest curtains with a duty to fulfil. For the
+simple house they may be made of velvet or velveteen in some neutral
+tone that is in harmony with the rugs and furnishings of the rooms that
+are to be divided. They should be double, usually, and a faded gilt gimp
+may be used as an outline or as a binding. There are also excellent
+fabrics reproducing old brocades and even old tapestries, but it is well
+to be careful about using these fabrics. There are machine-made
+"tapestries" of foliage designs in soft greens and tans and browns on a
+dark blue ground that are very pleasing. Many of these stuffs copy in
+color and design the verdure tapestries, and some of them have fine
+blues and greens suggestive of Gobelin. These stuffs are very wide and
+comparatively inexpensive. I thoroughly advise a stuff of this kind, but
+I heartily condemn the imitations of the old tapestries that are covered
+with large figures and intricate designs. These old tapestries are as
+distinguished for their colors, their textures, and their very crudities
+as for their supreme beauty of coloring. It would be foolish to imitate
+them.
+
+As for windows and their curtains--I could write a book about them! A
+window is such a gay, animate thing. By day it should be full of
+sunshine, and if it frames a view worth seeing, the view should be a
+part of it. By night the window should be hidden by soft curtains that
+have been drawn to the side during the sunshiny hours.
+
+In most houses there is somewhere a group of windows that calls for an
+especial kind of curtain. If these windows look out over a pleasant
+garden, or upon a vista of fields and trees, or even upon a striking
+sky-line of housetops, you will be wise to use a thin, sheer glass
+curtain through which you can look out, but which protects you from the
+gaze of passers-by. If your group of windows is so placed that there is
+no danger of people passing and looking in, then a short sash curtain of
+swiss muslin is all that you require, with inside curtains of some
+heavier fabric--chintz or linen or silk--that can be drawn at night.
+
+If you are building a new house I strongly advise you to have at least
+one room with a group of deep windows, made up of small panes of leaded
+glass, and a broad window-seat built beneath them. There is something so
+pleasant and mellow in leaded glass, particularly when the glass itself
+has an uneven, colorful quality. When windows are treated thus
+architecturally they need no glass curtains. They need only side
+curtains of some deep-toned fabric.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM]
+
+As for your single windows, when you are planning them you will be
+wise to have the sashes so placed that a broad sill will be possible.
+There is nothing pleasanter than a broad window sill at a convenient
+height from the floor. The tendency of American builders nowadays is to
+use two large glass sashes instead of the small or medium-sized panes of
+older times.
+
+This is very bad from the standpoint of the architect, because these
+huge squares of glass suggest holes in the wall, whereas the square or
+oblong panes with their straight frames and bars advertise their
+suitability. The housewife's objection to small panes is that they are
+harder to clean than the large ones, but this objection is not worthy of
+consideration. If we really wish to make our houses look as if they were
+built for permanency we should consider everything that makes for beauty
+and harmony and hominess. There is nothing more interesting than a
+cottage window sash of small square panes of glass unless it be the
+diamond-paned casement window of an old English house. Such windows are
+obviously windows. The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so
+proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small
+houses.
+
+I remember seeing one plate glass window that was well worth while. It
+was in the mountain studio of an artist and it was fully eight by ten
+feet--one unbroken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista of
+mountain and valley. It goes without saying that such a window requires
+no curtain other than one that is to be drawn at night.
+
+The ideal treatment for the ordinary single window is a soft curtain of
+some thin white stuff hung flat and full against the glass. This curtain
+should have an inch and a half hem at the bottom and a narrow hem at the
+sides. It should be strung on a small brass rod, and should be placed as
+close to the glass as possible, leaving just enough space for the window
+shade beneath it. The curtain should hang in straight folds to the
+window sill, escaping it by half an inch or so.
+
+I hope it is not necessary for me to go into the matter of lace curtains
+here. I feel sure that no woman of really good taste could prefer a
+cheap curtain of imitation lace to a simple one of white swiss-muslin. I
+have never seen a house room that was too fine for a swiss-muslin
+curtain, though of course there are many rooms that would welcome no
+curtains whatever wherein the windows are their own excuse for being.
+Lace curtains, even if they may have cost a king's ransom, are in
+questionable taste, to put it mildly. Use all the lace you wish on your
+bed linen and table linen, but do not hang it up at your windows for
+passers-by to criticize.
+
+[Illustration: PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK]
+
+Many women do not feel the need of inside curtains. Indeed, they are not
+necessary in all houses. They are very attractive when they are well
+hung, and they give the window a distinction and a decorative charm that
+is very valuable. I am using many photographs that show the use of
+inside curtains. You will observe that all of these windows have glass
+curtains of plain white muslin, no matter what the inside curtain may
+be.
+
+Chintz curtains are often hung with a valance about ten or twelve inches
+deep across the top of the window. These valances should be strung on a
+separate rod, so that the inside curtains may be pulled together if need
+be. The ruffled valance is more suitable for summer cottages and
+bedrooms than for more formal rooms. A fitted valance of chintz or
+brocade is quite dignified enough for a drawing-room or any other.
+
+In my bedroom I have used a printed linen with a flat valance. This
+printed linen is in soft tones of rose and green on a cream ground. The
+side curtains have a narrow fluted binding of rose-colored silk. Under
+these curtains are still other curtains of rose-colored shot silk, and
+beneath those are white muslin glass curtains. With such a window
+treatment the shot silk curtains are the ones that are drawn together at
+night, making a very soft, comforting sort of color arrangement. You
+will observe in this photograph that the panels between doors and
+windows are filled with mirrors that run the full length from the
+molding to the baseboard. This is a very beautiful setting for the
+windows, of course.
+
+It is well to remember that glass curtains should not be looped back.
+Inside curtains may be looped when there is no illogical break in the
+line. It is absurd to hang up curtains against the glass and then draw
+them away, for glass curtains are supposed to be a protection from the
+gaze of the passers-by. If you haven't passers-by you can pull your
+curtains to the side so that you may enjoy the out-of-doors. Do not lose
+sight of the fact that your windows are supposed to give you sunshine
+and air; if you drape them so that you get neither sunshine nor air you
+might as well block them up and do away with them entirely.
+
+To me the most amazing evidence of the advance of good taste is the
+revival of chintzes, printed linens, cottons and so forth, of the
+Eighteenth Century. Ten years ago it was almost impossible to find a
+well-designed cretonne; the beautiful chintzes as we know them were
+unknown. Now there are literally thousands of these excellent fabrics of
+old and new designs in the shops. The gay designs of the printed cottons
+that came to us from East India, a hundred years ago, and the fantastic
+chintzes known as Chinese Chippendale, that were in vogue when the Dutch
+East India Company supplied the world with its china and fabrics; the
+dainty French _toiles de Jouy_ that are reminiscent of Marie Antoinette
+and her bewitching apartments, and the printed linens of old England and
+later ones of the England of William Morris, all these are at our
+service. There are charming cottons to be had at as little as twenty
+cents a yard, printed from old patterns. There are linens hand-printed
+from old blocks that rival cut velvet in their lustrous color effect and
+cost almost as much. There are amazing fabrics that seem to have come
+from the land of the Arabian nights--they really come from Austria and
+are dubbed "Futurist" and "Cubist" and such. Some of them are inspiring,
+some of them are horrifying, but all of them are interesting. Old-time
+chintzes were usually very narrow, and light in ground, but the modern
+chintz is forty or fifty inches wide, with a ground of neutral tone that
+gives it distinction, and defies dust.
+
+When I began my work as a decorator of houses, my friends, astonished
+and just a little amused at my persistent use of chintz, called me the
+"Chintz decorator." The title pleased me, even though it was bestowed in
+fun, for my theory has always been that chintz, when properly used, is
+the most decorative and satisfactory of all fabrics. At first people
+objected to my bringing chintz into their houses because they had an
+idea it was poor and mean, and rather a doubtful expedient. On the
+contrary, I feel that it is infinitely, better to use good chintzes than
+inferior silks and damasks, just as simple engravings and prints are
+preferable to doubtful paintings. The effect is the thing!
+
+One of the chief objections to the charming fabric was that people felt
+it would become soiled easily, and would often have to be renewed, but
+in our vacuum-cleaned houses we no longer feel that it is necessary to
+have furniture and hangings that will "conceal dirt." We refuse to
+_have_ dirt! Of course, chintzes in rooms that will have hard wear
+should be carefully selected. They should be printed on linen, or some
+hard twilled fabric, and the ground color should be darker than when
+they are to be used in bedrooms. Many of the newer chintzes have dark
+grounds of blue, mauve, maroon or gray, and a still more recent chintz
+has a black ground with fantastic designs of the most delightful
+colorings. The black chintzes are reproductions of fabrics that were in
+vogue in 1830. They are very good in rooms that must be used a great
+deal, and they are very decorative. Some of them suggest old cut
+velvets--they are so soft and lustrous.
+
+My greatest difficulty in introducing chintzes here was to convert women
+who loved their plush and satin draperies to a simpler fabric. They were
+unwilling to give up the glories they knew for the charms they knew not.
+I convinced them by showing them results! My first large commission was
+the Colony Club, and I used chintzes throughout the Club: Chintzes of
+cool grapes and leaves in the roof garden, hand-blocked linens of many
+soft colors in the reading-room, rose-sprigged and English posy designs
+in the bedrooms, and so on throughout the building.
+
+Now I am using more chintz than anything else. It is as much at home in
+the New York drawing-room as in the country cottage. I can think of
+nothing more charming for a room in a country house than a sitting-room
+furnished with gray painted furniture and a lovely chintz.
+
+[Illustration: STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK]
+
+Not long ago I was asked to furnish a small sea-shore cottage. The
+whole thing had to be done in a month, and the only plan I had to work
+on was a batch of chintz samples that had been selected for the house. I
+extracted the colorings of walls, woodwork, furniture, etc., from these
+chintzes. Instead of buying new furniture I dragged down a lot of old
+things that had been relegated to the attic and painted them with a dull
+ground color and small designs adapted from the chintzes. The lighting
+fixtures, wall brackets, candle sticks, etc.--were of carved wood,
+painted in polychrome to match the general scheme. One chintz in
+particular I would like to have every woman see and enjoy. It had a
+ground of old blue, patterned regularly with little Persian "pears," the
+old rug design, you know. The effect of this simple chintz with white
+painted walls and furniture and woodwork and crisp white muslin glass
+curtains was delicious.
+
+The most satisfactory of all chintzes is the _Toile de Jouy_. The
+designs are interesting and well drawn, and very much more decorative
+than the designs one finds in ordinary silks and other materials. The
+chintzes must be appropriate to the uses of the room, well designed, in
+scale with the height of the ceilings, and so forth. It is well to
+remember that self-color rugs are most effective in chintz rooms. Wilton
+rugs woven in carpet sizes are to be had now at all first class
+furniture stores.
+
+Painted furniture is very popular nowadays and is especially delightful
+when used in chintz rooms. The furniture we see now is really a revival
+and reproduction of the old models made by Angelica Kaufman,
+Heppelwhite, and other furniture-makers of their period. The old
+furniture is rarely seen outside of museums nowadays, but it has been an
+inspiration to modern decorators who are seeking ideas for simple and
+charming furniture.
+
+A very attractive room can be made by taking unfinished pieces of
+furniture--that is, furniture that has not been stained or painted--and
+painting them a soft field color, and then adding decorations of
+bouquets or garlands, or birds, or baskets, reproducing parts of the
+design of the chintz used in the room. Of course, many of these patterns
+could be copied by a good draftsman only, but others are simple enough
+for anyone to attempt. For instance, I decorated a room in soft cream,
+gray, yellow and cornflower blue. The chintz had a cornflower design
+that repeated all these colors. I painted the furniture a very soft
+gray, and then painted little garlands of cornflowers in soft blues and
+gray-greens on each piece of furniture. The walls were painted a soft
+cream color. The carpet rug of tan was woven in one piece with a blue
+stripe in the border.
+
+The color illustrations of this book will give you a very good idea of
+how I use chintzes and painted furniture. One of the illustrations shows
+the use of a black chintz in the dressing-room of a city house. The
+chintz is covered with parrots which make gorgeous splashes of color on
+the black ground. The color of the foliage and leaves is greenish-blue,
+which shades into a dozen blues and greens. This greenish-blue tone has
+been used in the small things of the room. The chintz curtains are lined
+with silk of this tone, and the valance at the top of the group of
+windows is finished with a narrow silk fringe of this greenish-blue. The
+small candle shades, the shirred shade of the drop-light, and the
+cushion of the black lacquer chair are also of this blue.
+
+The walls of the room are a deep cream in tone, and there are a number
+of old French prints from some Eighteenth Century fashion journals hung
+on the cream ground. The dressing-table is placed against the windows,
+over the radiator, so that there is light and to spare for dressing.
+Half curtains of white muslin are shirred on the sashes back of the
+dressing-table. The quaint triplicate mirror is of black lacquer
+decorated with Chinese figures in gold, and the little, three-cornered
+cabinet in the corner is also of black and gold. The chintz is used as a
+covering for the dressing-seat.
+
+Another illustration shows the writing-corner of the bedroom which leads
+into this dressing-room. The walls and the rose-red carpet are the same
+in both rooms, as you see. This bedroom depends absolutely on the rose
+and blue chintz for its decoration. There is a quaint bed painted a pale
+gray, with rose-red taffeta coverlet. The bed curtains are of the chintz
+lined with the rose-red silk. There are several white-enamel chairs
+upholstered with the chintz, and there is a comfortable French couch
+with a kidney table of mahogany beside it. The corner of the room shown
+in the illustration is the most convenient writing-place. The desk is
+placed at right angles to the wall between the two windows. The small
+furnishings of the writing-desk repeat the queer blues and the rose-red
+of the chintz. A very comfortable stool with a cushion of old velvet is
+an added convenience.
+
+The chintz curtains at the windows hang in straight, full folds. A flat
+valance, cut the length of the design of the chintz, furnishes the top
+of the two windows. Some windows do not need these valances, but these
+windows are very high and need the connecting line of color. The long
+curtains are lined with the rose-red silk, which also shows in a narrow
+piping around the edges.
+
+[Illustration: MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE]
+
+The other two color illustrations are of the most popular room I have
+done, a bedroom and sitting room combined. Everyone likes the color plan
+of soft greens, mauve and lavender. There is a large day bed of painted
+wood, with mattress, springs and cushions covered with a chintz of mauve
+ground and gay birds. The rug is a self-toned rug of very soft green,
+and the walls are tinted with the palest of greens. The woodwork is
+white, and the furniture is painted a greenish-gray that is just a
+little deeper than pearl. A darker green line of paint outlines all
+the furniture, which is further decorated with prim little garlands
+of flowers painted in dull rose, blue, yellow and green.
+
+The mauve chintz is used for the curtains, and for the huge armchair and
+one or two painted chairs. There is a little footstool covered with
+brocaded violet velvet, with just a thread of green showing on the
+background. The lighting fixtures are of carved wood, painted in soft
+colors to match the garlands on the furniture, with shirred shades of
+lavender silk. Two lamps made of quaint old green jars with lavender
+decorations have shirred shades of the same silk. One of these lamps is
+used on the writing-table and the other on the little chest of drawers.
+
+This little chest of drawers, by the way, is about the simplest piece of
+furniture I can think of, for any girl who can use her brushes at all.
+An ordinary chest of drawers should be given several coats of
+paint--pale yellow, green or blue, as may be preferred. Then a thin
+stripe of a darker tone should be painted on it. This should be outlined
+in pencil and then painted with a deeper tone of green color; for
+instance, an orange or brown stripe should be used on pale yellow, and
+dark green or blue on the pale green.
+
+A detail of the wall paper or the chintz design may be outlined on the
+panels of the drawers and on the top of the chest by means of a stencil,
+and then painted with rather soft colors. The top of the chest should be
+covered with a piece of plate glass which will have the advantage of
+showing the design of the cover and of being easily cleaned.
+Old-fashioned glass knobs add interest to this piece of furniture. A
+mirror with a gilt frame, or an unframed painting similar to the one
+shown in the illustration would be very nice above the chest of drawers.
+
+[Illustration: HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED
+IN A DRAWING-ROOM]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
+
+
+In all the equipment of the modern house, I think there is nothing more
+difficult than the problem of artificial light. To have the light
+properly distributed so that the rooms may be suffused with just the
+proper glow, but never a glare; so that the base outlets for
+reading-lamps shall be at convenient angles, so that the wall lights
+shall be beautifully balanced,--all this means prodigious thought and
+care before the actual placing of the lights is accomplished.
+
+In domestic architecture light is usually provided for some special
+function; to dress by, to read by, or to eat by. If properly considered,
+there is no reason why one's lighting fixtures should not be beautiful
+as well as utilitarian. However, it is seldom indeed that one finds
+lights that serve the purposes of utility and beauty.
+
+I have rarely, I might say never, gone into a builder's house (and
+indeed I might say the same of many architects' houses) but that the
+first things to require changing to make the house amenable to modern
+American needs were the openings for lighting fixtures. Usually, side
+openings are placed much too near the trim of a door or window, so that
+no self-respecting bracket can be placed in the space without
+encroaching on the molding. Another favorite mistake is to place the two
+wall openings in a long wall or large panel so close together that no
+large picture or mirror or piece of furniture can be placed against that
+wall. There is also the tendency to place the openings too high, which
+always spoils a good room.
+
+I strongly advise the woman who is having a house built or re-arranged
+to lay out her electric light plan as early in the game as possible,
+with due consideration to the uses of each room. If there is a high
+chest of drawers for a certain wall, the size of it is just as important
+in planning the lighting fixtures for that wall as is the width of the
+fireplace important in the placing of the lights on the chimney-breast.
+I advise putting a liberal number of base openings in a room, for it
+costs little when the room is in embryo. Later on, when you find you can
+change your favorite table and chair to a better position to meet the
+inspiration of the completed room and that your reading-lamp can be
+moved, too, because the outlet is there ready for it, will come the
+compensating moments when you congratulate yourself on forethought.
+
+There are now, fortunately, few communities in America that have not
+electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a
+thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for
+years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the
+smaller the town the cheaper is the cost of electricity. This is not a
+cut-and-dried statement, but an observation from personal experience.
+The little town's electricity is usually a byproduct of some
+manufacturing plant, and current is often sold at so much per light per
+month, instead of being measured by meter. It is pleasant to think that
+many homes have bridged the smelly gap between candles and electricity
+in this magic fashion.
+
+Gas light is more difficult to manage than electricity, for there is
+always the cumbersome tube and the necessity for adding mechanical
+accessories before a good clear light is secured. Gas lamps are hideous,
+for some obscure reason, whereas there are hundreds of simple and
+excellent wall fixtures, drop lights and reading lamps to be bought
+already equipped for electricity. The electric wire is such an
+unobtrusive thing that it can be carried through a small hole in any
+good vase, or jar, and with a suitable shade you have an attractive and
+serviceable reading light. Candlesticks are easily equipped for
+electricity and are the most graceful of all fixtures for
+dressing-tables, bedside tables, tea tables, and such.
+
+It is well to remember that if a room is decorated in dark colors the
+light will be more readily absorbed than in a light-colored room, and
+you should select and place your lighting-fixtures accordingly. Bead
+covers, fringes and silk shades all obscure the light and re-absorb it,
+and so require a great force of light to illuminate properly.
+
+The subject of the selection of lighting-fixtures is limitless. There
+are so many fixtures to be had nowadays--good, bad and indifferent--that
+it were impossible to point out the merits and demerits of them all.
+There are copies of all the best lamps and lanterns of old Europe and
+many new designs that grew out of modern American needs. There are Louis
+XVI lanterns simple enough to fit well into many an American hallway,
+that offer excellent lessons in the simplicity of the master decorators
+of old times. Contrast one of these fine old lanterns with the mass of
+colored glass and beads and crude lines and curves of many modern hall
+lanterns. I like a ceiling bowl of crystal or alabaster with lights
+inside, for halls, but the expense of such a bowl is great. However, I
+recently saw a reproduction of an old alabaster bowl made of soft,
+cloudy glass, not of alabaster, which sold at a fraction of the price of
+the original, and it seemed to meet all the requirements.
+
+Of course, one may easily spend as much money on lighting-fixtures as on
+the remainder of the house, but that is no reason why people who must
+practise economy should admit ugly fixtures into their homes. There are
+always good and bad fixtures offered at the lowest and highest prices.
+You have no defense if you build your own house. If you are making the
+best of a rented house or an apartment, that is different. But good
+taste is sufficient armor against the snare of gaudy beads and cheap
+glass.
+
+[Illustration: DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT
+METAL]
+
+There was recently an exhibition in New York of the craftsmanship of
+the students of a certain school of design. There were some really
+beautiful lanterns and wall brackets and reading lamps shown, designed
+and executed by young women who are self supporting by day and can give
+only a few evening hours, or an occasional day, to the pursuit of their
+avocation. One hanging lantern of terra cotta was very fine indeed, and
+there were many notable fixtures. There must be easily tens of thousands
+of young people who are students in the various schools of design,
+manual training high schools and normal art schools.
+
+Why doesn't some far-seeing manufacturer of lighting-fixtures give these
+young people a chance to adapt the fine old French and Italian designs
+to our modern needs? Why not have your daughter or son copy such an
+object that has use and beauty, instead of encouraging the daubing of
+china or the piercing of brass that leads to nothing? And if you haven't
+a daughter or son, encourage the young artisan, your neighbor, who is
+trying to "find himself." Let him copy a few good old fixtures for you.
+They will cost no more than the gaudy vulgar fixtures that are sold in
+so many shops.
+
+The photograph shown on page 108 illustrates the possibility of using a
+number of lighting-fixtures in one room. The room shown is my own
+drawing-room. You will observe that in this picture there are many
+different lights. The two old French fixtures of wrought gilt, which
+flank the mantel mirror, hold wax candles. The two easy chairs have
+little tables beside them holding three-pronged silver candlesticks.
+There is also a small table holding an electric reading-lamp, made of a
+Chinese jar, with a shade of shirred silk. The chandelier is a charming
+old French affair of gracefully strung crystal globules. For a formal
+occasion the chandelier is lighted, but when we are few, we love the
+fire glow and candlelight. If we require a stronger light for reading
+there is the lamp.
+
+The photograph here given may suggest a superfluous number of lights,
+but the room itself does not. The wall fixtures are of gilt, you see,
+the candlesticks of silver, the chandelier of crystal and the lamp of
+Chinese porcelain and soft colored silk; so one is not conscious of the
+many lights. If all the lights were screened in the same way the effect
+would be different. I use this picture for this very reason--to show how
+many lights may be assembled and used in one place. In considering the
+placing of these lights, the firelight was not forgotten, nor the effect
+of the room by day when the sunlight floods in and these many fixtures
+become objects of decorative interest.
+
+A lamp, or a wall fixture, or a chandelier, or a candlestick, must be
+beautiful in itself--beautiful by sunlight,--if it is really successful.
+The soft glow of night light may make commonplace things beautiful, but
+the final test of a fixture is its effect in relation to the other
+furnishings of the room in sunlight.
+
+[Illustration: LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS]
+
+The picture on page 118 shows the proper placing of wall fixtures when
+a large picture is the chief point of interest. These wall fixtures are
+particularly interesting because they are in the style of the Adam
+mirrors that hang on the recessed wall spaces flanking the chimney wall.
+This photograph is a lesson in the placing of objects of art. The large
+painting is beautifully spaced between the line of the mantel shelf and
+the lower line of the cornice. The wall fixtures are correctly placed,
+and anyone can see why they would be distressingly out of key if they
+were nearer the picture, or nearer the line of the chimney wall. The
+picture was considered as an important part of the chimney-piece before
+the openings for the fixtures were made.
+
+Another good lamp is shown on the small table in this picture. There is
+really a reading-lamp beside a comfortable couch, which cannot be seen
+in the picture. This lamp, like the one in the drawing-room, is made
+from a porcelain vase, with a shirred silk shade on a wire frame. An
+electric light cord is run through a hole bored for it. If electricity
+were not available, an oil receptacle of brass could be fitted into the
+vase and the beauty of the lamp would be the same.
+
+There are so many possibilities for making beautiful lamps of good jars
+and vases that it is surprising the shops still sell their frightful
+lamps covered with cabbage roses and dragons and monstrosities. A blue
+and white ginger jar, a copper loving-cup, or even a homely brown
+earthenware bean-pot, will make a good bowl for an oil or electric lamp,
+but of the dreadful bowls sold in the shops for the purpose the less
+said the better. How can one see beauty in a lurid bowl and shade of red
+glass! Better stick to wax candles the rest of your life than indulge in
+such a lamp!
+
+I know people plead that they have to buy what is offered; they cannot
+find simple lamps and hanging lanterns at small prices and so they
+_must_ buy bad ones. The manufacturer makes just the objects that people
+demand. So long as you accept these things, just so long will he make
+them. If all the women who complain about the hideous lighting-fixtures
+that are sold were to refuse absolutely to buy them, a few years would
+show a revolution in the designing of these things.
+
+There has been of late a vulgar fashion of having a huge mass of colored
+glass and beads suspended from near-brass chains in the dining-rooms of
+certain apartments and houses. These monstrous things are called
+"domes"--no one knows why. For the price of one of them you could buy a
+three pronged candlestick, equipped for electricity, for your
+dining-room table. It is the sight of hundreds of these dreadful "domes"
+in the lamp shops that gives one a feeling of discouragement. The
+humblest kitchen lamp of brass and tin would be beautiful by contrast.
+
+When all is said and done, we must come back to wax candles for the
+most beautiful light of all. Electricity is the most efficient, but
+candlelight is the most satisfying. For a drawing-room, or any formal
+room where a clear light is not required, wax candles are perfect. There
+are still a few houses left where candlesticks are things of use and are
+not banished to the shelves as curiosities. Certainly the clear, white
+light of electricity seems heaven-sent when one is dressing or working,
+but for between-hours, for the brief periods of rest, the only thing
+that rivals the comfort of candlelight is the glow of an open fire.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+HALLS AND STAIRCASES
+
+
+In early days the hall was the large formal room in which the main
+business of the house was transacted. It played the part of court-room,
+with the lord of the manor as judge. It was used for dining, living, and
+for whatever entertainment the house afforded. The stairs were not a
+part of it: they found a place as best they could. From the times of the
+primitive ladder of the adobe dwelling to the days of the spiral
+staircase carried up in the thickness of the wall, the stairway was
+always a primitive affair, born of necessity, with little claim to
+beauty.
+
+With the Renaissance in Italy came the forerunner of the modern entrance
+hall, with its accompanying stair. Considerations of comfort and beauty
+began to be observed. The Italian staircase grew into a magnificent
+affair, "L'escalier d'honneur," and often led only to the open galleries
+and _salons de parade_ of the next floor. I think the finest staircases
+in all the world are in the Genoese palaces. The grand staircase of the
+Renaissance may still be seen in many fine Italian palaces, notably in
+the Bargello in Florence. This staircase has been splendidly reproduced
+by Mrs. Gardner in Fenway Court, her Italian palace in Boston. This
+house is, by the way, the finest thing of its kind in America. Mrs.
+Gardner has the same far-seeing interest in the furtherance of an
+American appreciation of art as had the late Pierpont Morgan. She has
+assembled a magnificent collection of objects of art, and she opens her
+house to the public occasionally and to artists and designers
+frequently, that they may have the advantage of studying the treasures.
+
+To return to our staircases: In France the intermural, or spiral,
+staircase was considered quite splendid enough for all human needs, and
+in the finest ch�teaux of the French Renaissance one finds these
+practical staircases. Possibly in those troublous times the French
+architects planned for an aristocracy living under the influence of an
+inherited tradition of treachery and violence, they felt more secure in
+the isolation and ready command of a small, narrow staircase where one
+man well nigh single-handed could keep an army at bay. A large wide
+staircase of easy ascent might have meant many uneasy moments, with
+plots without and treachery within.
+
+Gradually, however, the old feudal entrance gave way to its
+sub-divisions of guardroom, vestibule, and salon. England was last to
+capitulate, and in the great Tudor houses still extant one finds the
+entrance door opening directly into the Hall. Often in these English
+houses there was a screen of very beautiful carved wood, behind which
+was the staircase. Inigo Jones introduced the Palladian style into
+England, and so brought in the many-storied central salon which served
+as means of access to all the house. The old English halls and
+staircases designed by Inigo Jones would be perfect for our more
+elaborate American country houses. The severe beauty of English paneling
+and the carving of newel-post and spindles are having a just revival.
+The pendulum swings--and there is nothing new under the sun!
+
+Wooden staircases with carved wooden balustrades were used oftenest in
+England, while in the French ch�teaux marble stairs with wrought-iron
+stair-rails are generally found. The perfection to which the art of iron
+work may be carried is familiar to everyone who knows the fairy-like
+iron work of Jean L'Amour in the Stanislas Palace at Nancy. This
+staircase in the H�tel de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France
+you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects.
+Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work
+door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this
+work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century.
+The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath
+their dignity and talent to devote themselves to designing the knobs of
+doors, the handles of commodes, the bronzes for the decorations of
+fireplaces, the shaping of hinges and locks. They were careful of
+details, and that is the secret of their supremacy. Nowadays, we may
+find a house with a beautiful hall, but the chances are it is spoiled by
+crudely designed fittings.
+
+I have written somewhat at length of the magnificent staircases of older
+countries and older times than our own, because somehow the subject is
+one that cannot be considered apart from its beginnings. All our halls
+and stairs, pretentious or not, have come to us from these superb
+efforts of masterly workmen, and perhaps that is why we feel
+instinctively that they must suggest a certain formality, and restraint.
+This feeling is indirectly a tribute to the architects who gave us such
+notable examples.
+
+We do not, however, have to go abroad for historic examples of stately
+halls and stairs. There are fine old houses scattered all through the
+old thirteen states that cannot be surpassed for dignity and simplicity.
+
+One of the best halls in America is that of "Westover," probably the
+most famous house in Virginia. This old house was built in 1737 by
+Colonel Byrd on the James River, where so many of the Colonial
+aristocrats of Virginia made their homes. The plan of the hall is
+suggestive of an old English manor house. The walls are beautifully
+paneled from an old English plan. The turned balusters are
+representative of the late Seventeenth or early Eighteenth Century. The
+fine old Jacobean chairs and tables have weathered two centuries, and
+are friendly to their new neighbors, Oriental rugs older than
+themselves. The staircase has two landings, on the first of which
+stands an old Grandfather's-clock, marking the beginning of a custom
+that obtains to this day.
+
+This hall is characteristic of American houses of the Colonial period,
+and indeed of the average large country house of to-day, for the
+straightaway hall, cutting the house squarely in two, is so much a part
+of our architecture that we use it as a standard. It is to be found,
+somewhat narrower and lower of ceiling, in New England farmhouses and in
+Eastern city houses. The Southern house of ante-bellum days varied the
+stair occasionally by patterning the magnificent winding staircases of
+old England, but the long hall open at both ends, and the long stair,
+with one or two landings, is characteristic of all old American houses.
+
+The customary finish for these old halls was a landscape wall paper, a
+painted wall broken into panels by molding, a high white wainscoting
+with white plaster above, or possibly a gay figured paper of
+questionable beauty. Mahogany furniture was characteristic of all these
+halls--a grandfather's-clock, a turn-top table, a number of dignified
+chairs, and a quaint old mirror. Sometimes there was a fireplace, but
+oftener there were doors opening evenly into various rooms of the first
+floor. These things are irreproachable to-day. Why did we have to go
+through the period of the walnut hat-rack and shiny oak hall furniture,
+only to return to our simplicities?
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE]
+
+When I planned the main hall of the Colony Club I determined to make it
+very Colonial, very American, very inviting and comfortable, the sort
+of hall you like to remember having seen in an old Virginia house. One
+enters from the street into a narrow hall that soon broadens into a
+spacious and lofty living-hall. The walls are, of course, white, the
+paneled spaces being broken by quaint old Colonial mirrors and
+appropriate lighting-fixtures. There is a great fireplace at one end of
+the hall, with a deep, chintz-covered davenport before it. There are
+also roomy chairs covered with the same delightful chintz, a green and
+white glazed English chintz that is as serviceable as it is beautiful.
+Besides the chintz-covered chairs, there are two old English chairs
+covered with English needlework. These chairs are among the treasures of
+the Club. There are several long mahogany tables, and many small tea
+tables. The rugs are of a spring green--I can think of no better name
+for it.
+
+In modern English and American houses of the smaller class the staircase
+is a part of an elongated entrance hall, and there is often no
+vestibule. In many of the more important new houses the stairs are
+divided from the entrance hall, so that one staircase will do for the
+servants, family and all, and the privacy of the entrance hall will be
+secured. In my own house in New York, you enter the square hall
+directly, and the staircase is in a second hall. This entrance hall is a
+real breathing-space, affording the visitor a few moments of rest and
+calm after the crowded streets of the city. The hall is quite large,
+with a color-plan of black and white and dark green. You will find a
+description of this hall in another chapter. I have used this same plan
+in many other city houses, with individual variations, of course. The
+serene quality of such a hall is very valuable in the city. If you
+introduced a lot of furniture the whole thing would be spoiled.
+
+I used an old porcelain stove, creamy and iridescent in glaze, in such a
+hall in an uptown house very similar to my own. The stove is very
+beautiful in itself, but it was used for use as well as beauty. It
+really holds a fire and furnishes an even heat. The stove was flanked by
+two pedestals surmounted with baskets spilling over with fruits, carved
+from wood and gilded and painted in polychrome. Everything in this hall
+is arranged with precision of balance. The stove is flanked by two
+pedestals. The niche that holds the stove and the corresponding niche on
+the other wall, which holds a statue, are flanked by narrow panels
+holding lighting-fixtures. The street wall is broken by doors and its
+two flanking windows. The opposite wall has a large central panel
+flanked by two glass doors, one leading to the stairway and the other to
+a closet, beneath it. Everything is "paired," with resulting effect of
+great formality and restraint. Very little furniture is required: A
+table to hold cards and notes, two low benches, and a wrought iron stand
+for umbrellas. The windows have curtains of Italian linen, coarse
+homespun stuff that is very lovely with white walls and woodwork. There
+are no pictures on the wall, but there are specially designed
+lighting-fixtures in the small panels that frame the niches.
+
+In several of the finer houses that have been built recently, notably
+that of Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, the staircase is enclosed, and is in no way
+an architectural feature, merely a possible means of communication when
+needed. This solution of the staircase problem has no doubt brought
+about our modern luxury of elevators. In another fine private house
+recently built the grand staircase only goes so far as the formal rooms
+of the second floor, and a small iron staircase enclosed in the wall
+leads to the intimate family rooms of the bedroom floor. The advantage
+of this gain in space can easily be appreciated. All the room usually
+taken up by the large wall of the staircase halls, and so forth, can be
+thrown into the bedrooms upstairs.
+
+The illustrations of the Bayard Thayer hall and staircase speak for
+themselves. Here lighting-fixtures, locks, hinges, have been carefully
+planned, so that the smallest part is worthy of the whole. This hall is
+representative of the finer private houses that are being built in
+America to-day. I had the pleasure of working with the architect and the
+owners here, and so was able to fit the decorations and furnishings of
+the hall to the house and to the requirements of the people who live in
+it.
+
+The present tendency of people who build small houses is to make a
+living-room of the hall. I am not in favor of this. I think the hall
+should be much more formal than the rest of the house. It is, after all,
+of public access, not only to the living-rooms but to the street. The
+servant who answers the front door must of necessity constantly traverse
+it, so must anyone--the guest or tradesman--admitted to the house. The
+furniture should be severe and architectural in design. A column or
+pedestal surmounted with a statue, a fountain, an old chest to hold
+carriage-rugs, a carved bench, a good table, a standing desk, may be
+used in a large house. Nothing more is admissible. In a small house a
+well-shaped table, a bench or so, possibly a wall clock, will be all
+that is necessary. The wall should be plain in treatment. The stair
+carpet should be plain in color. The floor should be bare, if in good
+condition, with just a small rug for softness at the door. A tiled floor
+is especially beautiful in a hall, if you can afford it.
+
+If your house happens to have the hall and living-room combined, and no
+vestibule, you can place a large screen near the entrance door and
+obtain a little more privacy. A standing screen of wooden panels is
+better than a folding screen, for the folding screen is rarely
+well-built, and will be blown down by the draft of the open door. A
+standing screen may be made by any carpenter, and painted or stained to
+match the woodwork of the room. A straight bench or settle placed
+against it will make the screened space seem more like a vestibule.
+
+Another objection to the staircase leading from the living-room of a
+small house is that such an arrangement makes it almost impossible to
+heat the house properly in winter. I have seen so many bewildered people
+whose spacious doorless downstairs rooms were a joy in summer, shivering
+all winter long in a polar atmosphere. The stair well seems to suck all
+the warmth from the living-room, and coal bills soar.
+
+Above all, don't try to make your hall "pretty." Remember that a hall is
+not a living-room, but a thoroughfare open and used by all the dwellers
+in the house. Don't be afraid of your halls and stairs looking "cold."
+It is a good idea to have one small space in your house where you can go
+and sit down and be calm and cool! You can't keep the rest of the house
+severe and cool looking, but here it is eminently appropriate and
+sensible. The visitor who enters a white and green hall and gets an
+effect of real reserve and coolness is all the more appreciative of the
+warmth and intimacy of the living-rooms of the house.
+
+After all, for simple American houses there is nothing better than a
+straightaway staircase of broad and easy treads, with one or two
+landings. There may be a broad landing with a window and window-seat, if
+there is a real view, but the landing-seat that is built for no especial
+purpose is worse than useless. It is not at all necessary to have the
+stairs carpeted, if the treads are broad enough, and turned balusters
+painted white with a mahogany hand rail are in scheme. Such a staircase
+adds much to the home-quality of a house.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE DRAWING-ROOM
+
+
+A drawing-room is the logical place for the elegancies of family life.
+The ideal drawing-room, to my mind, contains many comfortable chairs and
+sofas, many softly shaded lights by night, and plenty of sunshine by
+day, well-balanced mirrors set in simple paneled walls, and any number
+of small tables that may be brought out into the room if need be, and an
+open fire.
+
+The old idea of the drawing-room was a horrible apartment of stiffness
+and formality and discomfort. No wonder it was used only for weddings
+and funerals! The modern drawing-room is intended, primarily, as a place
+where a hostess may entertain her friends, and it must not be chill and
+uninviting, whatever else it may be. It should not be littered up with
+personal things--magazines, books and work-baskets and objects that
+belong in the living-room--but it welcomes flowers and _objets d'art_,
+collections of fans, or miniatures, or graceful mirrors, or old French
+prints, or enamels, or porcelains. It should be a place where people may
+converse without interruption from the children.
+
+Most houses, even of the smaller sort, have three day rooms--the
+dining-room, the parlor and the sitting-room, as they are usually
+called. People who appreciate more and more the joy of living have
+pulled hall and sitting-room together into one great family meeting
+place, leaving a small vestibule, decreased the size of the dining-room
+and built in many windows, so that it becomes almost an outdoor room,
+and given the parlor a little more dignity and serenity and its right
+name--the drawing-room.
+
+We use the terms drawing-room and _salon_ interchangeably in
+America--though we are a bit more timid of the _salon_--but there is a
+subtle difference between the two that is worth noting. The withdrawing
+room of old England was the quiet room to which the ladies retired,
+leaving their lords to the freer pleasures of the great hall. Indeed,
+the room began as a part of my lady's bedroom, but gradually came into
+its proper importance and took on a magnificence all its own. The
+_salon_ of France also began as a part of the great hall, or _grande
+salle_. Then came the need for an apartment for receiving and so the
+great bed chamber was divided into two parts, one a real sleeping-room
+and the other a _chambre de parade,_ with a great state bed for the
+occasional visitors of great position. The great bed, or _lit de
+parade_, was representative of all the salons of the time of Louis XIII.
+Gradually the owners of the more magnificent houses saw the opportunity
+for a series of salons, and so the state apartment was divided into two
+parts: a _salon de famille_, which afforded the family a certain
+privacy, and the _salon de compagnie_, which was sacred to a
+magnificent hospitality. And so the salon expanded until nowadays we use
+the word with awe, and appreciate its implication of brilliant
+conversation and exquisite decoration, of a radiant hostess, an amusing
+and distinguished circle of people. The word has a graciousness, a
+challenge that we fear. If we have not just the right house we should
+not dare risk belittling our pleasant drawing-room by dubbing it
+"salon." In short, a drawing-room may be a part of any well regulated
+house. A salon is largely a matter of spirit and cleverness.
+
+A drawing-room has no place in the house where there is no other
+living-room. Indeed, if there are many children, and the house is of
+moderate size, I think a number of small day rooms are vastly better
+than the two usual rooms, living-room and drawing-room, because only in
+this way can the various members of the family have a chance at any
+privacy. The one large room so necessary for the gala occasions of a
+large family may be the dining-room, for here it will be easy to push
+back tables and chairs for the occasion. If the children have a nursery,
+and mother has a small sitting-room, and father has a little room for
+books and writing, a living-room may be eliminated in favor of a small
+formal room for visitors and talk.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT]
+
+No matter how large your drawing-room may be, keep it intimate in
+spirit. There should be a dozen conversation centers in a large room.
+There should be one or more sofas, with comfortable chairs pulled up
+beside them. No one chair should be isolated, for some bashful person
+who doesn't talk well anyway is sure to take the most remote chair and
+make herself miserable. I have seen a shy young woman completely changed
+because she happened to sit upon a certain deep cushioned sofa of
+rose-colored damask. Whether it was the rose color, or the enforced
+relaxation the sofa induced, or the proximity of some very charming
+people in comfortable chairs beside her, or all of these things--I don't
+know! But she found herself. She found herself gay and happy and
+unafraid. I am sure her personality flowered from that hour on. If she
+had been left to herself she would have taken a stiff chair in a far
+corner, and she would have been miserable and self-conscious. I believe
+most firmly in the magic power of inanimate objects!
+
+Don't litter your drawing-room with bric-a-brac. Who hasn't seen what I
+can best describe as a souvenir drawing-room, a room filled with
+curiosities from everywhere! I shall never forget doing a drawing-room
+for a woman of no taste. I persuaded her to put away her heavy velvets
+and gilt fringes and to have one light and spacious room in the house.
+She agreed. We worked out a chintz drawing-room that was delicious. I
+was very happy over it and you can imagine my amazement when she came to
+me and said, "But Miss de Wolfe, what am I to do with my blue satin
+tidies?"
+
+In my own drawing-room I have so many objects of art, and yet I think
+you will agree with me that the room has a great serenity. Over the
+little desk in one corner I have my collection of old miniatures and
+fans of the golden days of the French court. There are ever so many
+vases and bowls for flowers, _but they are used_. There are dozens of
+lighting-fixtures, brackets, and lamps, and a chandelier, and many
+candlesticks, and they are used, also. Somehow, when a beautiful object
+becomes a useful object, it takes its place in the general scheme of
+things and does not disturb the eye.
+
+The ideal drawing-room has a real fireplace, with a wood fire when there
+is excuse for it. An open fire is almost as great an attribute to a
+drawing-room as a tactful hostess; it puts you at ease, instantly, and
+gives you poise. And just as an open fire and sunshine make for ease, so
+do well placed mirrors make for elegance. Use your mirrors as decorative
+panels, not only for the purpose of looking at yourself in them, and you
+will multiply the pleasures of your room. I have the wall space between
+mantel and frieze-line filled with a large mirror, in my New York
+drawing-room, and the two narrow panels between the front windows are
+filled with long narrow mirrors that reflect the color and charm of the
+room. Whenever you can manage it, place your mirror so that it will
+reflect some particularly nice object.
+
+Given plenty of chairs and sofas, and a few small tables to hold lights
+and flowers, you will need very little other furniture in the
+drawing-room. You will need a writing-table, but a very small and
+orderly one. The drawing room desk may be very elegant in design and
+equipment, for it must be a part of the decoration of the room, and it
+must be always immaculate for the visitor who wants to write a note. The
+members of the family are supposed to use their own desks, leaving this
+one for social emergencies. A good desk is a godsend in a drawing-room,
+it makes a room that is usually cold and formal at once more livable and
+more intimate. In my own drawing-room I have a small French
+writing-table placed near a window, so that the light falls over one's
+left shoulder. The small black lacquer desks that are now being
+reproduced from old models would be excellent desks for drawing-rooms,
+because they not only offer service, as all furniture should, but are
+beautiful in themselves. Many of the small tables of walnut and mahogany
+that are sold as dressing-tables might be used as writing-tables in
+formal rooms, if the mirrors were eliminated.
+
+[Illustration: THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING]
+
+There is a great difference in opinion as to the placing of the piano in
+the drawing-room. I think it belongs in the living-room, if it is in
+constant use, though of course it is very convenient to have it near by
+the one big room, be it drawing-room or dining-room, when a small dance
+is planned. I am going to admit that in my opinion there is nothing more
+abused than the piano, I have no piano in my own house in New York. I
+love music--but I am not a musician, and so I do not expose myself to
+the merciless banging of chance callers. Besides, my house is quite
+small and a good piano would dwarf the other furnishings of my rooms. I
+think pianos are for musicians, not strummers, who spoil all chance for
+any real conversation. If you are fortunate enough to have a musician in
+your family, that is different. Go ahead and give him a music room.
+Musicians are not born every day, but lovers of music are everywhere,
+and I for one am heartily in favor of doing away with the old custom of
+teaching every child to bang a little, and instead, teaching him to
+_listen_ to music. Oh, the crimes that are committed against music in
+American parlors! I prefer the good mechanical cabinet that offers us
+"canned" music to the manual exercise of people who insist on playing
+wherever they see an open piano. Of course the mechanical instrument is
+new, and therefore, subject to much criticism from a decorative
+standpoint, but the music is much better than the amateur's. We are
+still turning up our noses a little at the mechanical piano players, but
+if we will use our common sense we must admit that a new order of things
+has come to pass, and the new "canned" music is not to be despised.
+Certainly if the instrument displeases you, you can say so, but if a
+misguided friend elects to strum on your piano you are helpless. So I
+have no piano in my New York house. I have a cabinet of "canned" music
+that can be turned on for small dances when need be, and that can be
+hidden in a closet between times. Why not?
+
+But suppose you have a piano, or need one: do give it a chance! Its very
+size makes it tremendously important, and if you load it with senseless
+fringed scarfs and bric-a-brac you make it the ugliest thing in your
+room. Give it the best place possible, against an inside wall,
+preferably. I saw a new house lately where the placing of the piano had
+been considered by the architect when the house was planned. There was a
+mezzanine floor overhanging the great living-room, and one end of this
+had been made into a piano alcove, a sort of modern minstrel gallery.
+The musician who used the piano was very happy, for your real musician
+loves a certain solitude, and those of us who listened to his music in
+the great room below were happy because the maker of the music was far
+enough away from us. We could appreciate the music and forget the
+mechanics of it. For a concert, or a small dance, this balcony
+music-room would be most convenient. Another good place for the piano is
+a sort of alcove, or small room opening from the large living or
+drawing-room, where the piano and a few chairs may be placed. Of course
+if you are to have a real music-room, then there are great
+possibilities.
+
+A piano may be a princely thing, properly built and decorated. The old
+spinets and harpsichords, with their charming inlaid cases, were
+beautiful, but they gave forth only tinkly sounds. Now we have a
+magnificent mechanism, but the case which encloses it is too often
+hideous.
+
+There is an old double-banked harpsichord of the early Eighteenth
+Century in the Morgan collection at the Metropolitan Museum that would
+be a fine form for a piano, if it would hold the "works." It is long and
+narrow, fitting against the wall so that it really takes up very little
+room. The case is painted a soft dark gray and outlined in darker gray,
+and the panels and the long top are in soft colors. The legs are carved
+and pointed in polychrome. This harpsichord was made when the beauty of
+an object was of as real importance as the mechanical perfection.
+
+Occasionally one sees a modern piano that has been decorated by an
+artist. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Alma Tadema, and many of the other
+English artists of our generation have made beautiful pianos. Sir Robert
+Lorimer recently designed a piano that was decorated, inside and out, by
+Mrs. Traquair. From time to time a great artist interests himself in
+designing and decorating a piano, but the rank and file, when they
+decide to build an extraordinary piano, achieve lumpy masses of wood
+covered with impossible nymphs and too-realistic flowers, pianos
+suggestive of thin and sentimental tunes, but never of _music_.
+
+When you are furnishing your music-room or drawing-room, be careful
+always of your colors. Remember that not only must the room be beautiful
+in its broad spaces and long lines and soft colors, but it must be a
+background for the gala gowns of women. I once saw a music-room that was
+deliberately planned as a background to the gay colors of women's gowns
+and the heavy black masses of men's evening clothes, a soft shimmering
+green and cream room that was incomplete and cold when empty of the
+color of costume. Such a room must have an architectural flavor. The
+keynote must be elegant simplicity and aristocratic reserve. Walls
+broken into panels, and panels in turn broken by lighting-fixtures, a
+polished floor, a well-considered ceiling, any number of chairs, and the
+room is furnished. This room, indeed, may evolve into a _salon_.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE LIVING-ROOM
+
+
+The living-room! Shut your eyes a minute and think what that means: A
+room to _live_ in, suited to all human needs; to be sick or sorry or
+glad in, as the day's happenings may be; where one may come back from
+far-reaching ways, for "East or West, Hame's best."
+
+Listen a minute while I tell you how I see such a room: Big and restful,
+making for comfort first and always; a little shabby here and there,
+perhaps, but all the more satisfactory for that--like an old shoe that
+goes on easily. Lots of light by night, and not too much drapery to shut
+out the sunlight by day. Big, welcoming chairs, rather sprawly, and long
+sofas. A big fire blazing on the open hearth. Perhaps, if we are very
+lucky we may have some old logs from long since foundered ships, that
+will flame blue and rose and green. He must indeed be of a poor spirit
+who cannot call all sorts of visions from such a flame!
+
+[Illustration: THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN,
+NEW JERSEY]
+
+There should be a certain amount of order, because you cannot really
+rest in a disorderly place, but there should be none of the formality of
+the drawing-room. Formality should be used as a sort of foundation on
+which the pleasant workaday business of the living-room is planned.
+The living-room should always have a flavor of the main hobby of the
+family, whether it be books, or music, or sport, or what not. If you
+live in the real country there should be nothing in the room too good
+for all moods and all weather--no need to think of muddy boots or wet
+riding-clothes or the dogs that have run through the dripping fields.
+
+I wonder if half the fathers and mothers in creation know just what it
+means later on to the boys and girls going out from their roof-tree to
+have the memory of such a living-room?
+
+A living-room may be a simple place used for all the purposes of living,
+or it may be merely an official clearing-house for family moods, one of
+a dozen other living apartments. The living-room in the modern bungalow,
+for instance, is often dining-room, library, hall, music-room, filling
+all the needs of the family, while in a large country or city house
+there may be the central family room, and ever so many little rooms that
+grow out of the overflow needs--the writing-room, the tea room that is
+also sun and breakfast room, the music-room and the library. In more
+elaborate houses there are also the great hall, the formal drawing-room
+and music-room, and the intimate boudoir. To all these should be given a
+goodly measure of comfort.
+
+Whether it be one or a dozen rooms, the spirit of it must be the
+same--it must offer comfort, order, and beauty to be worth living in.
+
+Just as when a large family is to be considered I believe in one big
+meeting-room and a number of smaller rooms for special purposes, so I
+believe that when a family is very small there should be one great
+living-room and no other day room. Two young people who purpose to live
+in a small cottage or a bungalow will be wise to have this one big room
+that will serve for dining-room, living-room, and all. The same house
+divided into a number of tiny rooms would suffocate them: there would be
+no breathing-space. In furnishing such a room it is well to beware of
+_sets_ of things: of six dining-room chairs, of the conventional
+dining-table, serving-table, and china closet. I advocate the use of a
+long table--four by seven feet is not too long--and a number of good
+chairs that are alike in style, but not _exactly_ alike.
+
+The chairs should not be the conventional dining-chairs. The idea that
+the only dining-room chair possible is a perfectly straight up and down
+stiff-backed chair is absurd. In a large house where there is a family
+dining-room the chairs should be alike, but in an informal living-room
+the chairs may be perfectly comfortable and useful between meals and
+serve the purposes of dining-room chairs when necessary. For instance,
+with a long oak table built on the lines of the old English refectory
+tables you might have a long bench of oak and cane; a large high back
+chair with arms of the Stuart order, that is, with graceful, turned
+legs, carved frame work, and cane insets; two Cromwellian chairs covered
+in some good stuff; and two or three straight oak-and-cane chairs of a
+simple type. These chairs may be used for various purposes between
+meals, and will not give the room the stiff and formal air that
+straight-backed chairs invariably produce. One could imagine this table
+drawn up to a window-seat, with bench and chairs beside it, and a dozen
+cheerful people around it. There will be little chance of stiffness at
+such a dining-table.
+
+It should be remembered that when a part of the living-room is used for
+meals, the things that suggest dining should be kept out of sight
+between meals. All the china and so forth should be kept in the pantry
+or in kitchen cupboards. The table may be left bare between meals.
+
+In a room of this kind the furniture should be kept close to the walls,
+leaving all the space possible for moving around in the center of the
+room. The book shelves should be flat against the wall; there should be
+a desk, not too clumsy in build near the book shelves or at right angles
+to some window; there should be a sofa of some kind near the fireplace
+with a small table at the head of it, which may be used for tea or books
+or what not. If there is a piano, it should be very carefully placed so
+that it will not dominate the room, and so that the people who will
+listen to the music may gather in the opposite corner of the room. Of
+course, a living-room of this kind is the jolliest place in the world
+when things go smoothly, but there are times when a little room is a
+very necessary place to retreat. This little room may be the study,
+library, or a tea room, but it is worth while sacrificing your smallest
+bedroom in order to have one small place of retreat.
+
+If you can have a number of living-rooms, you can follow more definite
+schemes of decoration. If you have a little enclosed piazza you can make
+a breakfast room or a trellis room of it, or by bringing in many shelves
+and filling them with flowers you can make the place a delightful little
+flower box of a room for tea and talk.
+
+Of course, if you live in the real country you will be able to use your
+garden and your verandas as additional living-rooms. With a big
+living-porch, the one indoor living-room may become a quiet library, for
+instance. But if you haven't a garden or a sun-room, you should do all
+in your power to bring the sunshine and gaiety into the living-room, and
+take your books and quiet elsewhere. A library eight by ten feet, with
+shelves all the way around and up and down, and two comfortable chairs,
+and one or two windows, will be a most satisfactory library. If the room
+is to be used for reading smallness doesn't matter, you see.
+
+We Americans love books--popular books!--and we have had sense enough to
+bring them into our living-rooms, and enjoy them. But when you begin
+calling a room a library it should mean something more than a small
+mahogany bookcase with a hundred volumes hidden behind glass doors. I
+think there is nothing more amusing than the unused library of the
+_nouveau riche_, the pretentious room with its monumental bookcases and
+its slick area of glass doors and its thousands of unread volumes, caged
+eternally in their indecent newness.
+
+Some day when you have nothing better to do visit the _de luxe_ book
+shops of some department store, and then visit a dusky old second hand
+shop, and you will see what books can do! In the _de luxe_ shop they are
+leathern covered things, gaudy and snobbish in their newness. In the old
+book shop they are books that have lived, books that invite you to
+browse. You'd rather have them with all their germs and dust than the
+soulless tomes of uncut pages. You can judge people pretty well by their
+books, and the wear and tear of them.
+
+Open shelves are good enough for any house in these days of vacuum
+cleaners. In the Bayard Thayer house I had the pleasure of furnishing a
+wonderful library of superb paneled walls of mahogany of a velvety
+softness, not the bright red wood of commerce. The open bookshelves were
+architecturally planned, they filled shallow recesses in the wall, and
+when the books were placed upon them they formed a glowing tapestry of
+bindings, flush with the main wall.
+
+I think the nicest living-room I know is the reading room of the Colony
+Club. I never enjoyed making a room more, and when the Club was first
+opened I was delighted to hear one woman remark to another: "Doesn't it
+make you feel that it has been loved and lived in for years?"
+
+The room is large and almost square. The walls are paneled in cream and
+white, with the classic mantel and mirror treatment of the Adam period.
+The large carpet rug is of one tone, a soft green blue. The bookcases
+which run around the walls are of mahogany, as are the small, occasional
+tables, and the large table in the center of the room. In this room I
+have successfully exploded the old theory that all furniture in a well
+planned room must be of the same kind! In this room there are several
+Marlborough chairs, a davenport and a semi-circular fireside seat
+upholstered in a soft green leather, several chairs covered in a chintz
+of bird and blossom design, and other chairs covered with old English
+needle-work. The effect is not discord, but harmony. Perhaps it is not
+wise to advise the use of many colors and fabrics unless one has had
+experience in the combining of many tones and hues, but if you are
+careful to keep your walls and floors in subdued tones, you may have
+great license in the selecting of hangings and chair coverings and
+ornament.
+
+I gave great attention to the details of this room. Under the simple
+mantel shelf there is inset a small panel of blue and white Wedgwood. On
+the mantel there are two jars of Chinese porcelain, and between them a
+bronze jardiniere of the Adam period; four figures holding a shallow,
+oblong tray, which is filled with flowers. The lamp on the center-table
+is made of a hawthorn jar, with a flaring shade. There are many low
+tables scattered through the room and beside every chair is a
+reading-lamp easily adjusted to any angle. The fireplace fittings are
+simple old brasses of the Colonial period. There is only one picture in
+this room, and that is the portrait of a long gone lady, framed in a
+carved gilt frame, and hung against the huge wall-mirror which is
+opposite the fireplace end of the room.
+
+I believe, given plenty of light and air, that comfortable chairs and
+good tables go further toward making a living-room comfortable than
+anything else. In the Harkness living-room you will see this theory
+proven. There are chairs and tables of all sizes, from the great sofas
+to the little footstools, from the huge Italian tables to the little
+table especially made to hold a few flower pots. Wherever there is a
+large table there is a long sofa or a few big chairs; wherever there is
+a lone chair there is a small table to hold a reading-light, or flowers,
+or what not. The great size of the room, the fine English ceiling of
+modeled plaster, the generous fireplace with its paneled over-mantel,
+the groups of windows, all these architectural details go far toward
+making the room a success. The comfortable chairs and sofas and the ever
+useful tables do the rest.
+
+So many people ask me: How shall I furnish my living-room? What paper
+shall I use on the walls? What woodwork and curtains--and rugs? One
+woman asked me what books she should buy!
+
+Your living-room should grow out of the needs of your daily life. There
+could be no two living-rooms exactly alike in scheme if they were lived
+in. You will have to decide on the wall colors and such things, it is
+true, but the rest of the room should grow of itself. You will not make
+the mistake of using a dark paper of heavy figures if you are going to
+use many pictures and books, for instance. You will not use a gay
+bed-roomy paper covered with flowers and birds. You will know without
+being told that your wall colors must be neutral: that your woodwork
+must be stained and waxed, or painted some soft tone of your wall color.
+Then, let the rugs and curtains and things go until you decide you have
+to have them. The room will gradually find itself, though it may take
+years and heartache and a certain self-confession of inadequacy. It will
+express your life, if you use it, so be careful of the life you live in
+it!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
+
+
+In some strange way the word _boudoir_ has lost its proper significance.
+People generally think of it as a highfalutin' name for the bedroom, or
+for a dressing-room, whereas really a proper _boudoir_ is the small
+personal sitting-room of a woman of many interests. It began in old
+France as the private sitting-room of the mistress of the house, a part
+of the bedroom suite, and it has evolved into a sort of office _de luxe_
+where the house mistress spends her precious mornings, plans the routine
+of her household for the day, writes her letters, interviews her
+servants, and so forth. The boudoir has a certain suggestion of intimacy
+because it is a personal and not a general room, but while it may be
+used as a lounging-place occasionally, it is also a thoroughly dignified
+room where a woman may receive her chosen friends when she pleases.
+Nothing more ridiculous has ever happened than the vogue of the
+so-called "boudoir cap," which is really suited only to one's bedroom or
+dressing-room. Such misnomers lead to a mistaken idea of the real
+meaning of the word.
+
+Some of the Eighteenth Century boudoirs were extremely small. I recall
+one charming little room in an old French house that was barely eight
+feet by eleven, but it contained a fireplace, two windows, a day bed,
+one of those graceful desks known as a _bonheur du jour_, and two
+arm-chairs. An extremely symmetrical arrangement of the room gave a
+sense of order, and order always suggests space. One wall was broken by
+the fireplace, the wall spaces on each side of it being paneled with
+narrow moldings. The space above the mantel was filled with a mirror. On
+the wall opposite the fireplace there was a broad paneling of the same
+width filled with a mirror from baseboard to ceiling. In front of this
+mirror was placed the charming desk. On each side of the long mirror
+were two windows exactly opposite the two long panels of the mantel
+wall. The two narrow end walls were treated as single panels, the day
+bed being placed flat against one of them, while the other was broken by
+a door which led to a little ante-chamber. Old gilt appliques holding
+candles flanked both mantel mirror and desk mirror. Two of those
+graceful chairs of the Louis Seize period and a small footstool
+completed the furnishing of this room.
+
+[Illustration: MISS ANNE MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR]
+
+The boudoir should always be a small room, because in no other way can
+you gain a sense of intimacy. Here you may have all the luxury and
+elegance you like, you may stick to white paint and simple chintzes, or
+you may indulge your passion for pale-colored silks and lace frills.
+Here, of all places, you have a right to express your sense of luxury
+and comfort. The boudoir furnishings are borrowed from both bedroom
+and drawing-room traditions. There are certain things that are used in
+the bedroom that would be ridiculous in the drawing-room, and yet are
+quite at home in the boudoir. For instance, the _chaise-longue_ is part
+of the bedroom furnishing in most modern houses, and it may also be used
+in the boudoir, but in the drawing-room it would be a violation of good
+taste, because the suggestion of intimacy is too evident.
+
+Nothing is more comfortable in a boudoir than a day bed. It serves so
+many purposes. In my own house my boudoir is also my sitting-room, and I
+have a large Louis XV day bed there which may be used by an overnight
+guest if necessary. In a small house the boudoir fitted with a day bed
+becomes a guest-room on occasion. I always put two or three of these day
+beds in any country house I am doing, because I have found them so
+admirable and useful in my own house.
+
+As you will see by the photographs, this bed in no way resembles an
+ordinary bed in the daytime, and it seems to me to be a much better
+solution of the extra-bed problem than the mechanical folding-bed, which
+is always hideous and usually dangerous. A good day bed may be designed
+to fit into any room. This one of mine is of carved walnut, a very
+graceful one that I found in France.
+
+In a small sitting-room in an uptown house, an illustration of which is
+shown, I had a day bed made of white wood that was painted to match the
+chintzes of the room. The mattress and springs were covered with a bird
+chintz on a mauve ground, and the pillows were all covered with the same
+stuff. The frame of the bed was painted cream and decorated with a dull
+green line and small garlands of flowers extracted from the design of
+the chintz. When the mattress and springs have been properly covered
+with damask, or chintz, or whatever you choose to use, there is no
+suggestion of the ordinary bed.
+
+I suppose there isn't a more charming room in New York than Miss Anne
+Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir. The everyday sitting-room of a woman of many
+interests, it is radiant with color and individuality, as rare rugs are
+radiant, as jewels are radiant. The cream walls, with their carved
+moldings and graceful panelings, are a pleasant background for all this
+shimmering color. The carvings and moldings are pointed in blue. The
+floor is covered with a Persian rug which glows with all the soft tones
+of the old Persian dye-pots. The day bed, a few of the chairs, and the
+chest of drawers, are of a soft brown walnut. There are other chairs
+covered with Louis XVI tapestries, brocade and needlework, quite in
+harmony with the modern chintz of the day bed and the hangings. Above
+the day bed there is a portrait of a lady, hung by wires covered with
+shirred blue ribbons, and this blue is again used in an old porcelain
+lamp jar on the bedside table. The whole room might have been inspired
+by the lady of the portrait, so essentially is it the room of a
+fastidious woman.
+
+But to go back to my own boudoir: it is really sitting-room, library,
+and rest-room combined, a home room very much like my down-town office
+in the conveniences it offers. In the early morning it is my office,
+where I plan the day's routine and consult my servants. In the rare
+evenings when I may give myself up to solid comfort and a new book it
+becomes a haven of refuge after the business of the day. When I choose
+to work at home with my secretary, it is as business-like a place as my
+down-town office. It is a sort of room of all trades, and good for each
+of them.
+
+The walls of the room are pretty well filled with built-in bookshelves,
+windows, chimney-piece, and doors, but there is one long wall space for
+the day bed and another for the old secretary that holds my porcelain
+figurines. The room is really quite small, but by making the furniture
+keep its place against the walls an effect of spaciousness has been
+obtained.
+
+The walls of the room are painted the palest of egg-shell blue-green.
+The woodwork is ivory white, with applied decorations of sculptured
+white marble. The floor is entirely covered with a carpet rug of jade
+green velvet, and there is a smaller Persian rug of the soft,
+indescribable colors of the Orient. The day bed, of which I spoke in an
+earlier paragraph, is covered with an old brocade, gray-green figures on
+a black ground. A large armchair is also covered with the brocade, and
+the window curtains, which cannot be seen in the picture, are of black
+chintz, printed with birds of pale greens and blues and grays, with
+beaks of rose-red.
+
+There is always a possibility for rose-red in my rooms, I love it so. I
+manage the other colors so that they will admit a chair or a stool or a
+bowl of rose color. In this room the two chairs beside the couch are
+covered with rose-colored damask, and this brings out the rose in the
+rug and in the chintz, and accents the deep red note of the leathern
+book-bindings. The rose red is subordinated to the importance of the
+book-bindings in this room, but there is still opportunity for its use
+in so many small things.
+
+In this room, you will notice, I have used open shelves for my books,
+and the old secretary which was once a combination desk and bookcase, is
+used for the display of my little treasures of porcelain and china, and
+its drawers are used for papers and prints. The built in shelves have
+cupboards beneath them for the flimsy papers and pamphlets that do not
+belong on open shelves. If the same room were pressed into service as a
+guest room I should use the drawers in the secretary instead of the
+usual chest of drawers, and the day bed for sleeping.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. _LIT DE REPOS_]
+
+The writing-table is placed at right angles to one of the book-filled
+panels between the front windows. I have used a writing-table in this
+room because I like tables better than heavy desks, and because in this
+small apartment a desk would seem heavy and ponderous. The fittings
+of the desk are of dark red leather, like that of many of the
+book-bindings, and the personal touch that makes the desk _mine_ is a
+bowl of roses. Between the two windows in the shallow recess, I have
+placed an aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The
+aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a
+tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most
+gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too,
+and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my
+little people happily--my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my
+little Chinese dog, has a little house all his own, an old Chinese
+lacquer box with a canopy top and little gold bells. It was once the
+shrine of some little Chinese god, I suppose, but Wee Toi is very happy
+in it, and you can see that it was meant for him in the beginning. It
+sits by the fireplace and gives the room an air of real hominess. I was
+so pleased with the aquarium and the Chinese lacquer bed for Wee Toi
+that I devised a birdcage to go with them, a square cage of gilt wires,
+with a black lacquer pointed canopy top, with little gilt bells at the
+pointed eaves. The cage is fixed to a shallow lacquer tray, and is the
+nicest place you can imagine for a whistling bullfinch to live in. I
+suppose I could have a Persian cat on a gorgeous cushion to complete the
+place, but I can't admit cats into the room. I plan gorgeous cushions
+for _other_ people's "little people," when they happen to be cats.
+
+Miss Marbury's sitting-room is on the next floor, exactly like mine,
+architecturally, but we have worked them out differently. I think there
+is nothing more interesting than the study of the different developments
+of a series of similar rooms, for instance, a dozen drawing-rooms,
+twelve stories deep, in a modern apartment house! Each room is left by
+the builder with the same arrangement of doors and windows, the same
+wall spaces and moldings, the same opportunity for good or bad
+development. It isn't often our luck to see all twelve of the rooms, but
+sometimes we see three or four of them, and how amazingly different they
+are! How amusing is the suggestion of personality, or lack of it!
+
+Now in these two sitting-rooms in our house the rooms are exactly the
+same in size, in exposure, in the placing of doors and windows and
+fireplaces, and we have further paralleled our arrangement by placing
+our day beds in the same wall space, but there the similarity ends. Miss
+Marbury's color plan is different: her walls are a soft gray, the floor
+is covered in a solid blue carpet rug, rather dark in tone, the chintz
+also has a black ground, but the pattern is entirely different in
+character from the room below. There is a day bed, similar to mine, but
+where my bed has been upholstered with brocade, Miss Marbury's has a
+loose slip cover of black chintz. The spaces between the windows in my
+room are filled with bookshelves, and in Miss Marbury's room the same
+spaces are filled with mirrors. The large wall-space that is background
+to my old secretary is in her room given up to long open bookshelves of
+mahogany. My over-mantel is mirrored, and hers is filled with an old
+painting. The recessed spaces on each side of the chimney breast hold
+small semi-circular tables of marquetry, with a pair of long Adam
+mirrors hanging above them. Another Adam mirror hangs above the
+bookshelves on the opposite wall. These mirrors are really the most
+important things in the room, because the moldings and lighting-fixtures
+and picture frames have been made to harmonize with them.
+
+The lighting-fixtures are of wood carved in the Adam manner and painted
+dark blue and gold. The writing-table has been placed squarely in front
+of the center window, in which are hung Miss Marbury's bird cages. There
+are a number of old French prints on the wall. The whole room is quieter
+in tone than my room, which may be because her chosen color is old-blue,
+and mine rose-red.
+
+In a small house where only one woman's tastes have to be considered, a
+small downstairs sitting-room may take the place of the more personal
+boudoir, but where there are a number of people in the household a room
+connecting with the bedroom of the house mistress is more fortunate.
+Here she can be as independent as she pleases of the family and the
+guests who come and go through the other living-rooms of the house.
+Here she can have her counsels with her children, or her tradespeople,
+or her employees, without the distractions of chance interruptions, for
+this one room should have doors that open _and_ close, doors that are
+not to be approached without invitation. The room may be as austere and
+business-like as a down-town office, or it may be a nest of comfort and
+luxury primarily planned for relaxation, but it must be so placed that
+it is a little apart from the noise and flurry of the rest of the house
+or it has no real reason-for-being.
+
+Whenever it is possible, I believe the man of the house should also have
+a small sitting-room that corresponds to his wife's boudoir. We
+Americans have made a violent attempt to incorporate a room of this kind
+in our houses by introducing a "den" or a "study," but somehow the man
+of the house is never keen about such a room. A "den" to him means an
+airless cubby-hole of a room hung with pseudo-Turkish draperies and
+papier-m�ch� shields and weapons, and he has a mighty aversion to it.
+Who could blame him? And as for the study, the average man doesn't want
+a study when he wants to work; he prefers to work in his office, and
+he'd like a room of his own big enough to hold all his junk, and he'd
+like it to have doors and windows and a fireplace. The so-called study
+is usually a heavy, cheerless little room that isn't any good for
+anything else. The ideal arrangement would be a room of average size
+opening from his bedroom, a room that would have little suggestion of
+business and a great flavor of his hobbies. His wife's boudoir must be
+her office also, but he doesn't need a house office, unless he be a
+writer, or a teacher, or some man who works at home. After all, I think
+the painters and illustrators are the happiest of all men, because they
+_have_ to have studios, and their wives generally recognize the fact,
+and give them a free hand. The man who has a studio or a workshop all
+his own is always a popular man. He has a fascination for his less
+fortunate friends, who buzz around him in wistful admiration.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
+
+
+First of all, I think a dining-room should be light, and gay. The first
+thing to be considered is plenty of sunshine. The next thing is the
+planning of a becoming background for the mistress of the house. The
+room should always be gay and charming in color, but the color should be
+selected with due consideration of its becomingness to the hostess.
+Every woman has a right to be pretty in her own dining-room.
+
+I do not favor the dark, heavy treatments and elaborate stuff hangings
+which seem to represent the taste of most of the men who go in for
+decorating nowadays. Nine times out of ten the dining-room seems to be
+the gloomiest room in the house. I think it should be a place where the
+family may meet in gaiety of spirit for a pause in the vexatious
+happenings of the day. I think light tones, gay wallpapers, flowers and
+sunshine are of more importance than storied tapestries and heavily
+carved furniture. These things are all very well for the house that has
+a small dining-room and a gala dining-room for formal occasions as well,
+but there are few such houses.
+
+We New Yorkers have been so accustomed to the gloomy basement
+dining-rooms of the conventional brown-stone houses of the late eighties
+we forgot how nice a dining-room can be. Even though the city
+dining-room is now more fortunately placed in the rear of the second
+floor it is usually overshadowed by other houses, and can be lightened
+only by skilful use of color in curtains, china, and so forth.
+Therefore, I think this is the one room in the city house where one can
+afford to use a boldly decorative paper. I like very much the Chinese
+rice-papers with their broad, sketchy decorations of birds and flowers.
+These papers are never tiresomely realistic and are always done in very
+soft colors or in soft shades of one color, and while if you analyze
+them they are very fantastic, the general effect is as restful as it is
+cheerful. You know you can be most cheerful when you are most rested!
+
+The quaint landscape papers which are seen in so many New England
+dining-rooms seem to belong with American Colonial furniture and white
+woodwork, prim silver and gold banded china. These landscape papers are
+usually gay in effect and make for cheer. There are many new designs
+less complicated than the old ones. Then, too, there are charming
+foliage papers, made up of leaves and branches and birds, which are very
+good.
+
+While we may find color and cheer in these gay papers for gloomy city
+dining-rooms, if we have plenty of light we may get more distinguished
+results with paneled walls. A large dining-room may be paneled with
+dark wood, with a painted fresco, or tapestry frieze, and a ceiling with
+carved or painted beams, or perhaps one of those interesting cream-white
+ceilings with plaster beams judiciously adorned with ornament in low
+relief. Given a large dining-room and a little money, you can do
+anything: you can make a room that will compare favorably with the
+traditional rooms on which we build. You have a right to make your
+dining-room as fine as you please, so long as you give it its measure of
+light and air. But one thing you must have: simplicity! It may be the
+simplicity of a marble floor and tapestried walls and a painted ceiling,
+it may be the simplicity of white paint and muslin and fine furniture,
+but simplicity it must have. The furniture that is required in a
+dining-room declares itself: a table and chairs. You can bring side
+tables and china closets into it, or you can build in cupboards and
+consoles to take their place, but there is little chance for other
+variation, and so the beginning is a declaration of order and
+simplicity.
+
+[Illustration: A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE]
+
+The easiest way to destroy this simplicity is to litter the room with
+displays of silver and glass, to dot the walls with indifferent
+pictures. If you are courageous enough to let your walls take care of
+themselves and to put away your silver and china and glass, the room
+will be as dignified as you could wish. Remember that simplicity depends
+on balance and space. If the walls balance one another in light and
+shadow, if the furniture is placed formally, if walls and furniture
+are free from mistaken ornament, the room will be serene and
+beautiful. In most other rooms we avoid the "pairing" of things, but
+here pairs and sets of things are most desirable. Two console tables are
+more impressive than one. There is great decorative value in a pair of
+mirrors, a pair of candlesticks, a pair of porcelain jars, two cupboards
+flanking a chimney-piece. You would not be guilty of a pair of wall
+fountains, or of two wall clocks, just as you would not have two copies
+of the same portrait in a room. But when things "pair" logically, pair
+them! They will furnish a backbone of precision to the room.
+
+The dining-room in the Iselin house is a fine example of stately
+simplicity. It is extremely formal, and yet there is about it none of
+the gloominess one associates with New York dining-rooms. The severely
+paneled walls, the fine chimney-piece with an old master inset and
+framed by a Grinling Gibbons carving, the absence of the usual mantel
+shelf, the plain dining-table and the fine old lion chairs all go to
+make up a Georgian room of great distinction.
+
+The woman who cannot afford such expensive simplicity might model a
+dining-room on this same plan and accomplish a beautiful room at
+reasonable expense. Paneled walls are always possible; if you can't
+afford wood paneling, paint the plastered wall white or cream and break
+it into panels by using a narrow molding of wood. You can get an effect
+of great dignity by the use of molding at a few cents a foot. A large
+panel would take the place of the Grinling Gibbons carving, and a
+mirror might be inset above the fireplace instead of the portrait. The
+dining-table and chairs might give place to good reproductions of
+Chippendale, and the marble console to a carpenter-made one painted to
+match the woodwork.
+
+The subject of proper furniture for a dining-room is usually settled by
+the house mistress before her wedding bouquet has faded, so I shall only
+touch on the out-of-ordinary things here. Everyone knows that a table
+and a certain number of chairs and a sideboard of some kind "go
+together." The trouble is that everyone knows these things _too_ well,
+and dining-room conventions are so binding that we miss many pleasant
+departures from the usual.
+
+My own dining-room in New York is anything but usual, and yet there is
+nothing undignified about it. The room was practically square, so that
+it had a certain orderly quality to begin with. The rooms of the house
+are all rather small, and so to gain the greatest possible space I have
+the door openings at the extreme end of the wall, leaving as large a
+wall space as possible. You enter this room, then, through a door at the
+extreme left of the south wall of the room. Another door at the extreme
+right of the same wall leads to a private passage. The space left
+between the doors is thereby conserved, and is broken into a large
+central panel flanked by two narrow panels. The space above the doors is
+also paneled. This wall is broken by a console placed under the central
+panel. Above it one of the Mennoyer originals, which you may remember in
+the Washington Irving dining-room, is set in the wall, framed with a
+narrow molding of gray. The walls and woodwork of the room are of
+exactly the same tone of gray--darker than a silver gray and lighter
+than pewter. Everything, color, balance, proportion, objects of art, has
+been uniformly considered.
+
+Continuing, the east wall is broken in the center by the fireplace, with
+a mantel of white and gray marble. A large mirror, surmounted with a
+bas-relief in black and white, fills the space between mantel shelf and
+cornice. This mirror and bas-relief are framed with the narrow carved
+molding painted gray. Here again there is the beauty of balance: two
+Italian candlesticks of carved and gilded wood flank a marble bust on
+the mantel shelf. There is nothing more. On the right of the mirror, in
+a narrow panel, there is a wall clock of carved and gilded wood which
+also takes its place as a part of the wall, and keeps it.
+
+The north wall is broken by two mirrors and a door leading to the
+service-pantry. A large, four-fold screen, made of an uncut tapestry,
+shuts off the door. We need all the light the windows give, so there are
+no curtains except the orange-colored taffeta valances at the top. I
+devised sliding doors of mirrors that are pulled out of the wall at
+night to fill the recessed space of the windows. Ventilation is afforded
+by the open fireplace, and by mechanical means. You see we do not
+occupy this house in summer, so the mirrored windows are quite feasible.
+
+The fourth wall has no openings, and it is broken into three large
+paneled spaces. A console has the place of honor opposite the fireplace,
+and above it there is a mirror like that over the mantel. In the two
+side panels are the two large Mennoyers. There are five of these in the
+room, the smaller ones flanking the chimney piece. You see that the
+salvation of this room depends on this careful repetition and variation
+of similar objects.
+
+Color is brought into the room in the blue and yellow of the Chinese
+rug, in the chairs, and in the painted table. The chairs are painted a
+creamy yellow, pointed with blue, and upholstered with blue and yellow
+striped velvet. I do not like high-backed chairs in a dining-room. Their
+one claim to use is that they make a becoming background, but this does
+not compensate for the difficulties of the service when they are used.
+An awkward servant pouring soup down one's back is not an aid to
+digestion, or to the peace of mind engendered by a good dinner.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR'S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN]
+
+[Illustration: MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE'S PAINTED DINING-TABLE]
+
+The painted table is very unusual. The legs and the carved under-frame
+are painted cream and pointed with blue, like the chairs, but the top is
+as gay as an old-fashioned garden, with stiff little medallions, and
+urns spilling over with flowers, and conventional blossoms picked out
+all over it. The colors used are very soft, blue and cream being
+predominant. The table is covered with a sheet of plate glass. This
+table is, of course, too elaborate for a simple dining-room, but the
+idea could be adapted and varied to suit many color and furniture
+schemes.
+
+Painted furniture is a delight in a small dining-room. In the Colony
+Club I planned a very small room for little dinners that is well worth
+reproducing in a small house. This little room was very hard to manage
+because there were no windows! There were two tiny little openings high
+on the wall at one end of the room, but it would take imagination to
+call them windows. The room was on the top floor, and the real light
+came from a skylight. You can imagine the difficulty of making such a
+little box interesting. However, there was one thing that warmed my
+heart to the little room: a tiny ante-room between the hall proper and
+the room proper. This little ante-room I paneled in yellowish tan and
+gray. I introduced a sofa covered with an old brocade just the color of
+dried rose leaves--ashes of roses, the French call it--and the little
+ante-room became a fitting introduction to the dining-room within.
+
+The walls of the rooms were paneled in a delicious color between yellow
+and tan, the wall proper and the moldings being this color, and the
+panels themselves filled with a gray paper painted in pinky yellows and
+browns. These panels were done by hand by a man who found his
+inspiration in the painted panels of an old French ballroom. As the
+walls were unbroken by windows there was ample space for such
+decoration. A carpet of rose color was chosen, and the skylight was
+curtained with shirred silk of the same rose. The table and chairs were
+of painted wood, the chairs having seats of the brocade used on the
+ante-room sofa. The table was covered with rose colored brocade, and
+over this, cobwebby lace, and over this, plate glass. There are two
+consoles in the room, with small cabinets above which hold certain
+_objets d'art_ in keeping with the room.
+
+Under the two tiny windows were those terrible snags we decorators
+always strike, the radiators. Wrongly placed, they are capable of
+spoiling any room. I concealed these radiators by building two small
+cabinets with panels of iron framework gilded to suggest a graceful
+metal lattice, and lined them with rose-colored silk. I borrowed this
+idea from a fascinating cabinet in an old French palace, and the result
+is worth the deception. The cabinets are nice in themselves, and they do
+not interfere with the radiation of the heat.
+
+I have seen many charming country houses and farm houses in France with
+dining-rooms furnished with painted furniture. Somehow they make the
+average American dining-room seem very commonplace and tiresome. For
+instance, I had the pleasure of furnishing a little country house in
+France and we planned the dining-room in blue and white. The furniture
+was of the simplest, painted white, with a dark blue line for
+decoration. The corner cupboard was a little more elaborate, with a
+gracefully curved top and a large glass door made up of little panes set
+in a quaint design. There were several drawers and a lower cupboard. The
+drawers and the lower doors invited decorations a little more elaborate
+than the blue lines of the furniture, so we painted on gay little
+medallions in soft tones of blue, from the palest gray-blue to a very
+dark blue. The chair cushions were blue, and the china was blue
+sprigged. Three little pitchers of dark-blue luster were on the wall
+cupboard shelf and a mirror in a faded gold frame gave the necessary
+variation of tone.
+
+A very charming treatment for either a country or small city dining-room
+is to have corner cupboards of this kind cutting off two corners. They
+are convenient and unusual and pretty as well. They can be painted in
+white with a colored line defining the panels and can be made highly
+decorative if the panels are painted with a classic or a Chinese design.
+The decoration, however, should be kept in variations of the same tone
+as the stripe on the panels. For instance, if the stripe is gray, then
+the design should be in dark and light gray and blue tones. The chairs
+can be white, in a room of this kind, with small gray and blue
+medallions and either blue and white, or plain blue, cushions.
+
+Another dining-room of the same sort was planned for a small country
+house on Long Island. Here the woodwork was a deep cream, the walls the
+same tone, and the ceiling a little lighter. We found six of those prim
+Duxbury chairs, with flaring spindle-backs, and painted them a soft
+yellow-green. The table was a plain pine one, with straight legs. We
+painted it cream and decorated the top with a conventional border of
+green adapted from the design of the china--a thick creamy Danish ware
+ornamented with queer little wavy lines and figures. I should have
+mentioned the china first, because the whole room grew from that. The
+rug was a square of velvet of a darker green. The curtains were soft
+cream-colored net. One wall was made up of windows, another of doors and
+a cupboard, and against the other two walls we built two long, narrow
+consoles that were so simple anyone could accomplish them: simply two
+wide shelves resting on good brackets, with mirrors above. The one
+splendid thing in the room was a curtain of soft green damask that was
+pulled at night to cover the group of windows. Everything else in the
+room was bought for a song.
+
+[Illustration: THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB]
+
+I have said much of cupboards and consoles because I think they are so
+much better than the awkward, heavy "china closets" and "buffets" and
+sideboards that dominate most dining-rooms. The time has come when we
+should begin to do fine things in the way of building fitment furniture,
+that is, furniture that is actually or apparently a part of the shell of
+the room. It would be so much better to build a house slowly, planning
+the furniture as a part of the architectural detail. With each
+succeeding year the house would become more and more a part of the
+owner, illustrating his life. Of course, this would mean that the
+person who planned the developing of the house must have a certain
+architectural training, must know about scale and proportion, and
+something of general construction. Certainly charming things are to be
+created in this way, things that will last, things immeasurably
+preferable to the cheap jerry-built furniture which so soon becomes
+shabby, which has to be so constantly renewed. People accept new ideas
+with great difficulty, and my only hope is that they may grow to accept
+the idea of fitment furniture through finding the idea a product of
+their own; a personal discovery that comes from their own needs.
+
+I have constantly recommended the use of our native American woods for
+panelings and wall furniture, because we have both the beautiful woods
+of our new world and tried and proven furniture of the old world, and
+what couldn't we achieve with such material available? Why do people
+think of a built-in cupboard as being less important than a detached
+piece of furniture? Isn't it a braggart pose, a desire to show the
+number of things you can buy? Of course it is a very foolish pose, but
+it is a popular one, this display of objects that are ear-marked
+"expensive."
+
+It is very easy to build cupboards on each side of a fireplace, for
+instance, making the wall flush with the chimney-breast. This is always
+good architectural form. One side could have a desk which opens beneath
+the glass doors, and the other could have cupboards, both presenting
+exactly the same appearance when closed. Fitted corner cupboards,
+triangular or rounded, are also excellent in certain dining rooms.
+
+Wall tables, or consoles, may be of the same wood as the woodwork or of
+marble, or of some dark polished wood. There are no more useful pieces
+of furniture than consoles, and yet we only see them in great houses.
+Why? Because they are simple, and we haven't yet learned to demand the
+simple. I have had many interesting old console-tables of wrought iron
+support and marble tops copied, and I have designed others that were
+mere semi-circles of white painted wood supported by four slender legs,
+but whether they be marble or pine the effect is always simple. There
+are charming consoles that have come to us from the Eighteenth Century,
+consoles made in pairs, so that they may stand against the wall as
+serving-tables, or be placed together to form one round table. This is a
+very good arrangement where people have one large living room or hall in
+which they dine and which also serves all the purpose of daily
+intercourse. This entirely removes any suggestion of a dining-room, as
+the consoles may be separated and stand against the wall during the day.
+
+Many modern houses are being built without the conventional dining-room
+we have known so long, there being instead an open-air breakfast room
+which may be glazed in winter and screened in summer. People have come
+to their senses at last, and realize that there is nothing so pleasant
+as eating outdoors. The annual migration of Americans to Europe is
+responsible for the introduction of this excellent custom. French houses
+are always equipped with some outdoor place for eating. Some of them
+have, in addition to the inclosed porch, a fascinating pavilion built in
+the garden, where breakfast and tea may be served. Modern mechanical
+conveniences and the inexpensive electric apparatus make it possible to
+serve meals at this distance from the house and keep them hot in the
+meantime. One may prepare one's own coffee and toast at table, with the
+green trees and flowers and birds all around.
+
+Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper,
+everyone knows that. The simplest meal seems a gala affair when everyone
+is radiant and cheerful, whereas a long and elaborate meal served
+indoors is usually depressing.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE BEDROOM
+
+
+In olden times people rarely slept in their bedrooms, which were mostly
+_chambres de parade_, where everyone was received and much business was
+transacted. The real bedroom was usually a smallish closet nearby. These
+_chambres de parade_ were very splendid, the beds raised on a dais, and
+hung with fine damasks and tapestries--tapestries thick with bullion
+fringes. The horror of fresh air felt by our ancestors was well
+illustrated here. No draughts from ill-constructed windows or badly hung
+doors could reach the sleeper in such a bed.
+
+[Illustration: AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD]
+
+This was certainly different from our modern ideas of hygiene: In those
+days furniture that could not be hastily moved was of little importance.
+The bed was usually a mere frame of wood, made to be covered with
+valuable hangings which could easily be packed and carried away on
+occasions that too often arose in the troublous days of the early Middle
+Ages. The benches and tables one sees in many foreign palaces to-day are
+covered with gorgeous lengths of velvet and brocade. This is a survival
+of the custom when furniture was merely so much baggage. With the early
+Eighteenth Century, however, there came into being _les petits
+appartements_, in which the larger space formerly accorded the bedroom
+was divided into ante-chamber, salon or sitting-room, and the bedroom.
+Very often the bed was placed in an alcove, and the heavy brocades and
+bullion embroideries were replaced by linen or cotton hangings.
+
+When Oberkampf established himself at Jouy in 1760 France took first
+place in the production of these printed linens and cottons. This was
+the beginning of the age of chintz and of the delightful decorative
+fabrics that are so suited to our modern ideas of hygiene. It seems to
+me there are no more charming stuffs for bedroom hangings than these
+simple fabrics, with their enchantingly fanciful designs. Think of the
+changes one could have with several sets of curtains to be changed at
+will, as Marie Antoinette used to do at the Petit Trianon. How amusing
+it would be in our own modern houses to change the bed coverings, window
+curtains, and so forth, twice or three times a year! I like these loose
+slip covers and curtains better than the usual hard upholstery, because
+if properly planned the slips can be washed without losing their color
+or their lines.
+
+Charming Eighteenth Century prints that are full of valuable hints as to
+furniture and decorations for bedrooms can be found in most French
+shops. The series known as "_Moreau le Jeun_" is full of suggestion.
+Some of the interiors shown are very grand, it is true, but many are
+simple enough to serve as models for modern apartments. A set of these
+pictures will do much to give one an insight into the decoration of the
+Eighteenth Century, a vivid insight that can be obtained in no other
+way, perhaps.
+
+I do not like the very large bedrooms, dear to the plans of the American
+architect. I much prefer the space divided. I remember once arriving at
+the Ritz Hotel in London and being given temporarily a very grand royal
+suite, overlooking the park, until the smaller quarters I had reserved
+should be ready for me. How delighted I was at first with all the huge
+vastness of my bedroom! My appreciation waned, however, after a
+despairing morning toilet spent in taking many steps back and forth from
+dressing-table to bathroom, and from bathroom to hang-closets, and I was
+glad indeed, when, at the end of several hours, I was comfortably housed
+in my smaller and humbler quarters.
+
+I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber
+should separate it from the large outside corridor. The ideal
+arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room,
+then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back. This outer
+chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be. It may
+serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and
+concealing them with mirrored doors. The ante-chamber need not be a
+luxury, if you plan your house carefully. It is simply a little well of
+silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.
+
+[Illustration: MISS CROCKER'S LOUIS XVI. BED]
+
+To go on with my ideal bedroom: the walls, I think, should be simply
+paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be
+afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is
+the best solution. You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings
+very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and
+plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of
+times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design
+in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you
+will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the
+figures.
+
+One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper
+that does not belong to the "busy" class, for while the design is
+decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat. This
+is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens
+and grays on a cream ground. I have seen bedrooms papered with huge
+scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and
+methodical thumping of a drum. I cannot imagine anyone sleeping calmly
+in such a room!
+
+This bedroom is eminently suited to the needs of a man. The hangings are
+of a plain, soft stuff, accenting one of the deep tones of the wall
+covering, and the sash curtains are of white muslin. The furniture is of
+oak, of the Jacobean period. The bed is true to its inspiration, with
+turned legs and runners, and slatted head and foot boards. The legs and
+runners of the bed were really inspired by the chairs and tables of the
+period. This is an excellent illustration of the modern furniture that
+may be adapted from old models. It goes without saying that the beds of
+that period were huge, cumbersome affairs, and this adapted bed is
+really more suitable to modern needs in size and weight and line than an
+original one.
+
+There are so many inspirations for bedrooms nowadays that one finds it
+most difficult to decide on any one scheme. One of my greatest joys in
+planning the Colony Club was that I had opportunity to furnish so many
+bedrooms. And they were small, pleasant rooms, too, not the usual
+impersonal boxes that are usually planned for club houses and hotels. I
+worked out the plan of each bedroom as if I were to live in it myself,
+and while they all differed in decorative schemes the essentials were
+the same in each room: a comfortable bed, with a small table beside it
+to hold a reading light, a clock, and a telephone; a _chaise-longue_ for
+resting; a long mirror somewhere; a dressing table with proper lights
+and a glass covered top; a writing table, carefully equipped, and the
+necessary chairs and stools. Some of the bedrooms had no connecting
+baths, and these were given wash stands with bowls and pitchers of clear
+glass. Most of these bedrooms were fitted with mahogany four post beds,
+pie crust tables, colonial highboys, gay chintzes, and such, but there
+were several rooms of entirely different scheme.
+
+[Illustration: A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM]
+
+Perhaps the most fascinating of them all is the bird room. The walls
+are covered with an Oriental paper patterned with marvelous blue and
+green birds, birds of paradise and paroquets perched on flowering
+branches. The black lacquer furniture was especially designed for the
+room. The rug and the hangings are of jade green. I wonder how this
+seems to read of--I can only say it is a very gay and happy room to live
+in!
+
+There is another bedroom in pink and white, which would be an adorable
+room for a young girl. The bed is of my own design, a simple white
+painted metal bed. There is a _chaise-longue_, upholstered in the pink
+and white striped chintz of the room. The same chintz is used for window
+hangings, bed spread, and so forth. There is a little spindle legged
+table of mahogany, and another table at the head of the bed which
+contains the reading light. There is also a little white stool, with a
+cushion of the chintz, beside the bed. The dressing-table is so simple
+that any girl might copy it--it is a chintz-hung box with a sheet of
+plate glass on top, and a white framed mirror hung above it. The
+electric lights in this room are cleverly made into candlesticks which
+are painted to match the chintz. The writing-table is white, with a
+mahogany chair in front of it.
+
+Another bedroom has a narrow four post bed of mahogany, with hangings of
+China blue sprigged with small pink roses. There was another in green
+and white. In every case these bedrooms were equipped with rugs of
+neutral and harmonious tone. The dressing-tables were always painted to
+harmonize with the chintzes or the furniture. Wherever possible there
+was an open fireplace. Roomy clothes closets added much to the comfort
+of each room, and there was always a couch of delicious softness, or a
+_chaise-longue,_ and lounging chairs which invited repose.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM]
+
+Nothing so nice has happened in a long time as the revival of painted
+furniture, and the application of quaint designs to modern beds and
+chairs and chests. You may find inspiration in a length of chintz, in an
+old fan, in a faded print--anywhere! The main thing is to work out a
+color plan for the background--the walls, the furniture, and the
+rugs--and then you can draw or stencil the chosen designs wherever they
+seem to belong, and paint them in with dull tones and soft colors, rose
+and buff and blue and green and a little bit of gray and cream and
+black. Or, if you aren't even as clever as that (and you probably
+_are!_) you can decorate your painted furniture with narrow lines of
+color: dark green on a light green ground; dark blue on yellow; _any_
+color on gray or cream--there are infinite possibilities of color
+combinations. In one of the rooms shown in the illustrations the posy
+garlands on the chest of drawers were inspired by a lamp jar. This
+furniture was carefully planned, as may be seen by the little urns on
+the bedposts, quite in the manner of the Brothers Adam, but delightful
+results may be obtained by using any simple modern cottage furniture
+and applying fanciful decorations.
+
+Be wary of hanging many pictures in your bedroom. I give this advice
+cheerfully, because I know you will hang them anyway (I do) but I warn
+you you will spoil your room if you aren't very stern with yourself.
+Somehow the pictures we most love, small prints and photographs and
+things, look spotty on our walls. We must group them to get a pleasant
+effect. Keep the framed photographs on the writing table, the dressing
+table, the mantel, etc., but do not hang them on your walls. If you have
+small prints that you feel you must have, hang them flat on the wall,
+well within the line of vision. They should be low enough to be
+_examined_, because usually such pictures are not decorative in effect,
+but exquisite in detail. The fewer pictures the better, and in the
+guest-room fewer still!
+
+I planned a guest-room for the top floor of a New York house that is
+very successful. The room was built around a pair of appliques made from
+two old Chinese sprays of metal flowers. I had small electric light
+bulbs fitted among the flowers, mounted them on carved wood brackets on
+each side of a good mantel mirror and worked out the rest of the room
+from them. The walls were painted bluish green, the woodwork white. Just
+below the molding at the top of the room there was a narrow border (four
+inches wide) of a mosaic-like pattern in blue and green. The carpet rug
+is of a blue-green tone. The hangings are of an alluring _Chinoiserie_
+chintz, and there are several Chinese color prints framed and hanging in
+the narrow panels between the front windows. The furniture is painted a
+deep cream pointed with blue and green, and the bed covering is of a
+pale turquoise taffeta.
+
+Another guest room was done in gentian blue and white, with a little
+buff and rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the
+guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and
+adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with
+a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a
+young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and
+white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and
+tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an
+enchanting affair! And simple--why, she could hinge the mirrors
+together, and make the chintz ruffle, and enamel the shelves white, and
+do every bit of it except cut the plate glass. Of course the glass is
+very clean and nice, but an enameled surface with a white linen cover
+would be very pleasant.
+
+The same blue and white chintz was used for the hangings and bed
+coverings. Everything else in the room was white except the thick cream
+rug with its border of blue and rose and buff, and the candlesticks and
+appliques which repeated those colors.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER'S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED]
+
+[Illustration: MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY'S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED]
+
+There is a chintz I love to use called the Green Feather chintz. It is
+most decorative in design and color, and such an aristocratic sort of
+chintz you can use it on handsome old sofas and your post beds that
+would scorn a more commonplace chintz. Mrs. Payne Whitney has a most
+enchanting bed covered with the Green Feather chintz, one of those great
+beds that depend entirely on their hangings for effect, for not a bit of
+the wooden frame shows. Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer has a similar bed
+covered with a _Chinoiserie_ chintz. These great beds are very beautiful
+in large rooms, but they would be out of place in small ones. There are
+draped beds, however, that may be used in smaller rooms. I am showing a
+photograph of a bedroom in the Crocker house in Burlingame, California,
+where I used a small draped bed with charming effect. This bed is placed
+flat against the wall, like a sofa, and the drapery is adapted from that
+of a Louis XVI room. The bed is of gray painted wood, and the hangings
+are of blue and cream chintz lined with blue taffetas. I used the same
+idea in a rose and blue bedroom in a New York house. In this case,
+however, the bed was painted cream white and the large panels of the
+head and foot boards were filled with a rose and blue chintz. The
+bedspread was of deep rose colored taffetas, and from a small canopy
+above the bed four curtains of the rose and blue chintz, lined with the
+taffetas, are pulled to the four corners of the bed. This novel
+arrangement of draperies is very satisfactory in a small room.
+
+In my own house the bedrooms open into dressing-rooms, so much of the
+usual furniture is not necessary. My own bedroom, for instance, is built
+around the same old Breton bed I had in the Washington Irving house. The
+bed dominates the room, but there are also a _chaise-longue_, several
+small tables, many comfortable chairs, and a real fireplace. The
+business of dressing takes place in the dressing-room, so there is no
+dressing-table here, but there are long mirrors filling the wall spaces
+between windows and doors. Miss Marbury's bedroom is just over mine, and
+is a sunshiny place of much rose and blue and cream. Her rooms are
+always full of blue, just as my rooms are always full of rose color.
+This bedroom has cream woodwork and walls of a bluish-gray, cream
+painted furniture covered with a mellow sort of rose-and-cream chintz,
+and a Persian rug made up of blue and cream. The curtains at the windows
+are of plain blue linen bordered with a narrow blue and white fringe.
+The lighting-fixtures are of carved wood, pointed in polychrome. The
+most beautiful thing in the room is a Fifteenth Century painting, the
+Madonna of Bartolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor over the
+mantel.
+
+I haven't said a word about our nice American Colonial bedrooms, because
+all of you know their beauties and requirements as well as I. The great
+drawback to the stately old furniture of our ancestors is the space it
+occupies. Haven't you seen a fine old four post bed simply overflowing a
+poor little room? Fortunately, the furniture-makers are designing
+simple beds of similar lines, but lighter build, and these beds are very
+lovely. The owner of a massive old four-post bed is justly proud of it,
+but our new beds are built for a new service and a new conception of
+hygiene, and so must find new lines and curves that will be friendly to
+the old dressing tables and highboys and chests of drawers.
+
+When we are fortunate enough to inherit great old houses, of course we
+will give them proper furniture--if we can find it.
+
+I remember a house in New Orleans that had a full dozen spacious
+bedrooms, square, closetless chambers that opened into small
+dressing-rooms. One of them, I remember, was absolutely bare of wall and
+floor, with a great Napoleon bed set squarely in the center of it. There
+was the inevitable mosquito net canopy, here somehow endowed with an
+unexpected dignity. One felt the room had been made for sleeping, and
+nothing _but_ sleeping, and while the bed was placed in the middle of
+the floor to get all the air possible, its placing was a master stroke
+of decoration in that great white walled room. It was as impressive as a
+royal bed on a dais.
+
+We are getting more sensible about our bedrooms. There is no doubt about
+it. For the last ten years there has been a dreadful epidemic of brass
+beds, a mistaken vogue that came as a reaction from the heavy walnut
+beds of the last generation. White painted metal beds came first, and
+will last always, but they weren't good enough for people of
+ostentatious tastes, and so the vulgar brass bed came to pass. Why we
+should suffer brass beds in our rooms, I don't know! The plea is that
+they are more sanitary than wooden ones. Hospitals must consider
+sanitation first, last, and always, and they use white iron beds. And
+why shouldn't white iron beds, which are modest and unassuming in
+appearance, serve for homes as well? The truth is that the glitter of
+brass appeals to the untrained eye. But that is passing. Go into the
+better shops and you will see! Recently there was a spasmodic outbreak
+of silver-plated beds, but I think there won't be a vogue for this
+newest object of bad taste. It is a little too much!
+
+If your house is clean and you intend to keep it so, a wooden bed that
+has some relation to the rest of your furniture is the best bed
+possible. Otherwise, a white painted metal one. There is never an excuse
+for a brass one. Indeed, I think the three most glaring errors we
+Americans make are rocking-chairs, lace curtains, and brass beds.
+
+[Illustration: MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED]
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH
+
+
+Dressing-rooms and closets should be necessities, not luxuries, but
+alas! our architects' ideas of the importance of large bedrooms have
+made it almost impossible to incorporate the proper closets and
+dressing-places a woman really requires.
+
+In the foregoing chapter on bedrooms I advised the division of a large
+bedroom into several smaller rooms: ante-chamber, sitting-room,
+sleeping-room, dressing-room and bath. The necessary closets may be
+built along the walls of all these little rooms, or, if there is
+sufficient space, one long, airy closet may serve for all one's personal
+belongings. Of course, such a suite of rooms is possible only in large
+houses. But even in simple houses a small dressing-room can be built
+into the corner of an average-sized bedroom.
+
+In France every woman dresses in her _cabinet de toilette_; it is one of
+the most important rooms in the house. No self-respecting French woman
+would dream of dressing in her sleeping-room. The little _cabinet de
+toilette_ need not be much larger than a closet, if the closets are
+built ceiling high, and the doors are utilized for mirrors. Such an
+arrangement makes for great comfort and privacy. Here I find that most
+of my countrywomen dress in their bedrooms. I infinitely prefer the
+separate dressing-room, which means a change of air, and which can be
+thoroughly ventilated. If one sleeps with the bedroom windows wide open,
+it is a pleasure to have a warm dressing-room to step into.
+
+I think the first thing to be considered about a dressing-room is its
+utility. Here no particular scheme of decoration or over-elaboration of
+color is in place. Everything should be very simple, very clean and very
+hygienic. The floors should not be of wood, but may be of marble or
+mosaic cement or clean white tiles, with a possible touch of color. If
+the dressing-room is bathroom also, there should be as large a bath as
+is compatible with the size of the room. The combination of
+dressing-room and bathroom is successful only in those large houses
+where each bedroom has its bath. I have seen such rooms in modern
+American houses that were quite as large as bedrooms, with the supreme
+luxury of open fireplaces. Think of the comfort of having one's bath and
+of making one's toilet before an open fire! This is an outgrowth of our
+passion for bedrooms that are so be-windowed they become
+sleeping-porches, and we may leave their chill air for the comfortable
+warmth of luxurious dressing-rooms.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS]
+
+If I were giving advice as to the furnishing of a dressing-room, in as
+few words as possible, I should say: "Put in lots of mirrors, and then
+more mirrors, and then more!" Indeed, I do not think one can have too
+many mirrors in a dressing-room. Long mirrors can be set in doors and
+wall panels, so that one may see one's self from hat to boots. Hinged
+mirrors are lovely for sunny wall spaces, and for the tops of
+dressing-tables. I have made so many of them. One of green and gold
+lacquer was made to be used on a plain green enameled dressing-table
+placed squarely in the recess of a great window. I also use small
+mirrors of graceful contour to light up the dark corners of
+dressing-rooms.
+
+Have your mirrors so arranged that you get a good strong light by day,
+and have plenty of electric lights all around the dressing-mirrors for
+night use. In other words, know the worst before you go out! In my own
+dressing-room the lights are arranged just as I used to have them long
+ago in my theater dressing-room when I was on the stage. I can see
+myself back, front and sides before I go out. Really, it is a comfort to
+be on friendly terms with your own back hair! I lay great stress on the
+mirrors and plenty of lights, and yet more lights. Oh, the joy, the
+blessing of electric light! I think every woman would like to dress
+always by a blaze of electric light, and be seen only in the soft
+luminosity of candle light--how lovely we would all look, to be sure! It
+is a great thing to know the worst before one goes out, so that even the
+terrors of the arc lights before our theaters will be powerless to
+dismay us.
+
+If there is room in the dressing-room, there should be a sofa with a
+slip cover of some washable fabric that can be taken off when necessary.
+This sofa may be the simplest wooden frame, with a soft pad, or it may
+be a _chaise-longue_ of elegant lines. The _chaise-longue_ is suitable
+for bedroom or dressing-room, but it is an especially luxurious
+lounging-place when you are having your hair done.
+
+A man came to me just before Christmas, and said, "Do tell me something
+to give my wife. I cannot think of a thing in the world she hasn't
+already." I asked, "Is she a lady of habits?" "What!" he said,
+astonished. "Does she enjoy being comfortable?" I asked. "Well, rather!"
+he smiled. And so I suggested a _couvre-pieds_ for her _chaise-longue._
+Now I am telling you of the _couvre pieds_ because I know all women love
+exquisite things, and surely nothing could be more delicious than my
+_couvre-pieds._ Literally, it is a "cover for the feet," a sort of
+glorified and diminutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk,
+lined with the soft long-haired white fur known as mountain tibet, and
+interlined with down. The coverlet is bordered with a puffing of French
+lace, and the top of it is encrusted with little flowers made of tiny
+French picot ribbons, and quillings of the narrowest of lace. It is
+supposed to be thrown over your feet, fur side down, when you are
+resting or having your hair done.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM]
+
+You may devise a little coverlet for your own sofa, whether it be in
+your bedroom, your boudoir, or your dressing-room, that will be quite
+as useful as this delectable _couvre-pieds_. I saw some amusing ones
+recently, made of gay Austrian silks, lined with astonishing colors and
+bound with puffings and flutings of ribbon of still other colors. A
+coverlet of this kind would be as good as a trip away from home for the
+woman who is bored and wearied. No matter how drab and commonplace her
+house might be, she could devise a gay quilt of one of the enchanting
+new stuffs and wrap herself in it for a holiday hour. One of the most
+amusing ones was of turquoise blue silk, with stiff flowers of violet
+and sulphur yellow scattered over it. The flowers were quite large and
+far apart, so that there was a square expanse of the turquoise blue with
+a stiff flower at each corner. The lining was of sulphur yellow silk,
+and the binding was a puffing of violet ribbons. The color fairly made
+me gasp, at first, but then it became fascinating, and finally
+irresistible. I sighed as I thought of the dreary patchwork quilts of
+our great-grandmothers. How they would have marveled at our audacious
+use of color, our frank joy in it!
+
+Of course the most important thing in the dressing-room is the
+dressing-table. I place my dressing-tables _against_ a group of windows,
+not near them, whenever it is possible. I have used plate glass tops on
+many of them, and mirrors for tops on others, for you can't have too
+many mirrors or too strong a light for dressing. We must see ourselves
+as others will see us.
+
+My own dressing-table contains many drawers, one of which is fitted
+with an ink-well, a tray for pens and pencils, and a sliding shelf on
+which I write. This obviates going into another room to answer hurried
+notes when one is dressing. Beside the dressing-table stands the tall
+hat-stand for the hat I may be wearing that day.
+
+When the maid prepares the dress that is to be worn, she puts the hat
+that goes with the toilette on the tall single stand. Another idea is
+the little hollow table on casters that can easily be slipped under the
+dressing-table, where it is out of the way. All the little ugly things
+that make one lovely can be kept in this table, which can have a lid if
+desired, and even a lock and key. I frequently make them with a glass
+bottom, as they do not get stained or soiled, and can be washed.
+
+There are lots of little dodges that spell comfort for the dressing-room
+of the woman who wants comfort and can have luxury. There is the
+hot-water towel-rack, which is connected with the hot-water system of
+the house and which heats the towels, and incidentally the
+dressing-room. This a boon if you like a hot bath sheet after a cold
+plunge on a winter's morning. Another modern luxury is a wall cabinet
+fitted with glass shelves for one's bottles and sponges and powders.
+There seems to be no end to the little luxuries that are devised for the
+woman who makes a proper toilet. Who can blame her for loving the
+business of making herself attractive, when every one offers her
+encouragement?
+
+A closet is absolutely necessary in the dressing-room, and if space is
+precious every inch of its interior may be fitted with shelves and
+drawers and hooks, so that no space is wasted. The outside of the closet
+door may be fitted with a mirror, and narrow shelves just deep enough to
+hold one's bottles, may be fitted on the inside of the door. If the
+closet is very shallow, the inner shelves should be hollowed out to
+admit the bottle shelves when the door is closed. Otherwise the bottles
+will be smashed the first time a careless maid slams the door. This
+bottle closet has been one of my great successes in small apartments,
+where bathroom and dressing-room are one, and where much must be
+accomplished in a small space.
+
+In the more modern apartments the tub is placed in a recess in the wall
+of the bathroom, leaving more space for dressing purposes. This sort of
+combination dressing-room should have waterproof floor and wall, and no
+fripperies. There should be a screen large enough to conceal the tub,
+and a folding chair that may be placed in the small closet when it is
+not in use.
+
+When the bathroom is too small to admit a dressing-table and chair and
+the bedroom is quite large, a good plan is the building of a tiny room
+in one corner of the bedroom. Of course this little dressing-box must
+have a window. I have used this plan many times with excellent results.
+Another scheme, when the problem was entirely different, and the
+dressing-room was too large for comfort, was to line three walls of it
+with closets, the fourth wall being filled with windows. These closets
+were narrow, each having a mirrored panel in its door. This is the ideal
+arrangement, for there is ample room for all one's gowns, shoes, hats,
+veils, gloves, etc., each article having its own specially planned shelf
+or receptacle. The closets are painted in gay colors inside, and the
+shelves are fitted with thin perfumed pads. They are often further
+decorated with bright lines of color, which is always amusing to the
+woman who opens a door. Hat stands and bags are covered with the same
+chintzes employed in the dressing-room proper. Certain of the closets
+are fitted with the English tray shelves, and each tray has its sachet.
+The hangers for gowns are covered in the chintz or brocade used on the
+hat stands. This makes an effective ensemble whether brocades or printed
+cottons are used, if the arrangement is orderly and full of gay color.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MARBURY'S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE]
+
+One of the most successful gown closets I have done is a long narrow
+closet with a door at each end, really a passageway between a bedroom
+and a boudoir. Long poles run the length of the closet, with curtains
+that enclose a passage from door to door. Back of these curtains are
+long poles that may be raised or lowered by pulleys. Each gown is placed
+on its padded hanger, covered with its muslin bag, and hung on the pole.
+The pole is then drawn up so that the tails of the gowns will not
+touch the dust of the floor. This is a most orderly arrangement for the
+woman of many gowns.
+
+The straightaway bathroom that one finds in apartments and small houses
+is difficult to make beautiful, but may be made airy and clean-looking,
+which is more important. I had to make such a bathroom a little more
+attractive recently, and it was a very pleasant job. I covered the walls
+with a waterproof stuff of white, figured with a small black polkadot.
+The woodwork and the ceiling were painted white. All around the door and
+window frames I used a two-inch border of ivy leaves, also of waterproof
+paper, and although I usually abominate borders I loved this one. A
+plain white framed mirror was also painted with green ivy leaves, and a
+glass shelf above the wash bowl was fitted with glass bottles and dishes
+with labels and lines of clear green. White muslin curtains were hung at
+the window, and a small white stool was given a cushion covered with
+green and white ivy patterned chintz. The floor was painted white, and a
+solid green rug was used. The towels were cross-stitched with the name
+of the owner in the same bright green. The room, when finished, was cool
+and refreshing, and had cost very little in money, and not so very much
+in time and labor.
+
+I think that in country houses where there is not a bathroom with each
+bedroom there should be a very good washstand provided for each guest.
+When a house party is in progress, for instance, and every one comes in
+from tennis or golf or what not, eager for a bath and fresh clothes,
+washstands are most convenient. Why shouldn't a washstand be just as
+attractively furnished as a dressing-table? Just because they have been
+so ugly we condemn them to eternal ugliness, but it is quite possible to
+make the washstand interesting to look upon as well as serviceable. It
+isn't necessary to buy a "set" of dreadful crockery. You can assemble
+the necessary things as carefully as you would assemble the outfit for
+your writing-table. Go to the pottery shops, the glass shops, the
+silversmiths, and you will find dozens of bowls and pitchers and small
+things. A clear glass bowl and pitcher and the necessary glasses and
+bottles can be purchased at any department store. The French peasants
+make an apple-green pottery that is delightful for a washstand set. So
+many of the china shops have large shallow bowls that were made for
+salad and punch, and pitchers that were made for the dining-table, but
+there is no reason why they shouldn't be used on the washstand. I know
+one wash basin that began as a Russian brass pan of flaring rim. With it
+is used an old water can of hammered brass, and brass dishes glass
+lined, to hold soaps and sponges. It is only necessary to desire the
+unusual thing, and you'll get it, though much searching may intervene
+between the idea and its achievement.
+
+The washstand itself is not such a problem. A pair of dressing-tables
+may be bought, and one fitted up as a washstand, and the other left to
+its usual use.
+
+In the Colony Club there are a number of bathrooms, but there are also
+washstands in those rooms that have no private bath. Each bathroom has
+its fittings planned to harmonize with the connecting bedroom, and the
+clear glass bottles are all marked in the color prevailing in the
+bedroom. Each bathroom has a full-length mirror, and all the
+conveniences of a bathroom in a private house. In addition to these
+rooms there is a long hall filled with small _cabinets de toilette_
+which some clever woman dubbed "prinkeries." These are small rooms
+fitted with dressing-tables, where out-of-town members may freshen their
+toilets for an occasion. These little prinkeries would be excellent in
+large country houses, where there are so many motoring guests who come
+for a few hours only, dust-laden and travel-stained, only to find that
+all the bedrooms and dressing-rooms in the house are being used by the
+family and the house guests.
+
+A description of the pool of the Colony Club is hardly within the
+province of this chapter, but so many amazing Americans are building
+themselves great houses incorporating theaters and Roman baths, so many
+women are building club houses, so many others are building palatial
+houses that are known as girls' schools, perhaps the swimming-pool will
+soon be a part of all large houses. This pool occupies the greater part
+of the basement floor of the Club house, the rest of the floor being
+given over to little rooms where one may have a shampoo or massage or a
+dancing lesson or what not before or after one's swim. The pool is
+twenty-two by sixty feet, sunken below the level of the marble floor.
+The depth is graded from four feet to deep water, so that good and bad
+swimmers may enjoy it. The marble margin of floor surrounding the pool
+is bordered with marble benches, placed between the white columns. The
+walls of the great room are paneled with mirrors, so that there are
+endless reflections of columned corridors and pools and shimmering
+lights. The ceiling is covered with a light trellis hung with vines,
+from which hang great greenish-white bunches of grapes holding electric
+lights. One gets the impression of myriads of white columns, and of
+lights and shadows infinitely far-reaching. Surely the old Romans knew
+no pleasanter place than this city-enclosed pool.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE SMALL APARTMENT
+
+
+This is the age of the apartment. Not only in the great cities, but in
+the smaller centers of civilization the apartment has come to stay.
+Modern women demand simplified living, and the apartment reduces the
+mechanical business of living to its lowest terms. A decade ago the
+apartment was considered a sorry makeshift in America, though it has
+been successful abroad for more years than you would believe. We
+Americans have been accustomed to so much space about us that it seemed
+a curtailment of family dignity to give up our gardens, our piazzas and
+halls, our cellars and attics, our front and rear entrances. Now we are
+wiser. We have just so much time, so much money and so much strength,
+and it behooves us to make the best of it. Why should we give our time
+and strength and enthusiasm to drudgery, when our housework were better
+and more economically done by machinery and co-operation? Why should we
+stultify our minds with doing the same things thousands of times over,
+when we might help ourselves and our friends to happiness by intelligent
+occupations and amusements? The apartment is the solution of the living
+problems of the city, and it has been a direct influence on the houses
+of the towns, so simplifying the small-town business of living as well.
+
+Of course, many of us who live in apartments either have a little house
+or a big one in the country for the summer months, or we plan for one
+some day! So hard does habit die--we cannot entirely divorce our ideas
+of Home from gardens and trees and green grass. But I honestly think
+there is a reward for living in a slice of a house: women who have lived
+long in the country sometimes take the beauty of it for granted, but the
+woman who has been hedged in by city walls gets the fine joy of
+out-of-doors when she _is_ out of doors, and a pot of geraniums means
+more to her than a whole garden means to a woman who has been denied the
+privilege of watching things grow.
+
+The modern apartment is an amazing illustration of the rapid development
+of an idea. The larger ones are quite as magnificent as any houses could
+be. I have recently furnished a Chicago apartment that included large
+and small salons, a huge conservatory, and a great group of superb rooms
+that are worthy of a palace. There are apartment houses in New York that
+offer suites of fifteen to twenty rooms, with from five to ten baths, at
+yearly rentals that approximate wealth to the average man, but these
+apartments are for the few, and there are hundreds of thousands of
+apartments for the many that have the same essential conveniences.
+
+One of the most notable achievements of the apartment house architects
+is the duplex apartment, the little house within a house, with its
+two-story high living room, its mezzanine gallery with service rooms
+ranged below and sleeping rooms above, its fine height and spaciousness.
+Most of the duplex apartments are still rather expensive, but some of
+them are to be had at rents that are comparatively low--rents are always
+comparative, you know.
+
+Fortunately, although it is a far cry financially from the duplex
+apartment to the tidy three-room flat of the model tenements, the
+"modern improvements" are very much the same. The model tenement offers
+compact domestic machinery, and cleanliness, and sanitary comforts at a
+few dollars a week that are not to be had at any price in many of the
+fine old houses of Europe. The peasant who has lived on the plane of the
+animals with no thought of cleanliness, or indeed of anything but food
+and drink and shelter, comes over here and enjoys improvements that our
+stately ancestors of a few generations ago would have believed magical.
+Enjoys them--they do say he puts his coal in the bath tub, but his
+grandchildren will be different, perhaps!
+
+But enough of apartments in general. This chapter is concerned with the
+small apartment sought by you young people who are beginning
+housekeeping. You want to find just the proper apartment, of course, and
+then you want to decorate and furnish it. Let me beg of you to demand
+only the actual essentials: a decent neighborhood, good light and air,
+and at least one reasonably large room. Don't demand perfection, for
+you won't find it. Make up your mind just what will make for your
+happiness and comfort, and demand that. You can make any place livable
+by furnishing it wisely. And, oh, let me beg of you, don't buy your
+furniture until you have found and engaged your apartment! It is bad
+enough to buy furniture for a house you haven't seen, but an apartment
+is a place of limitations, and you can so easily mar the place by buying
+things that will not fit in. An apartment is so dependent upon proper
+fittings, skilfully placed, that you may ruin your chances of a real
+home if you go ahead blindly.
+
+Before you sign your lease, be sure that the neighborhood is not too
+noisy. Be sure that you will have plenty of light and air and heat. You
+can interview the other tenants, and find out about many things you
+haven't time or the experience to anticipate. Be sure that your landlord
+is a reasonable human being who will consent to certain changes, if
+necessary, who will be willing for you to build in certain things, who
+will co-operate with you in improving his property, if you go about it
+tactfully.
+
+Be sure that the woodwork is plain and unpretentious, that the
+lighting-fixtures are logically placed, and of simple construction. (Is
+there anything more dreadful than those colored glass domes, with
+fringes of beads, that landlords so proudly hang over the imaginary
+dining-table?) Be sure that the plumbing is in good condition, and
+beware the bedroom on an air shaft--better pay a little more rent and
+save the doctor's bills. Beware of false mantels, and grotesque
+grille-work, and imitation stained glass, and grained woodwork. You
+couldn't be happy in a place that was false to begin with.
+
+Having found just the combination of rooms that suggests a real home to
+you, go slowly about your decorating.
+
+It is almost imperative that the woodwork and walls should have the same
+finish throughout the apartment, unless you wish to find yourself living
+in a crazy-quilt of unfriendly colors. I have seen four room apartments
+in which every room had a different wall paper and different woodwork.
+The "parlor" was papered with poisonous-looking green paper, with
+imitation mahogany woodwork; the dining-room had walls covered with red
+burlap and near-oak woodwork; the bedroom was done in pink satin
+finished paper and bird's-eye maple woodwork, and the kitchen was
+bilious as to woodwork, with bleak gray walls. Could anything be more
+mistaken?
+
+You can make the most commonplace rooms livable if you will paint all
+your woodwork cream, or gray, or sage green, and cover your walls with a
+paper of very much the same tone. Real hard wood trim isn't used in
+ordinary apartments, so why not do away with the badly-grained imitation
+and paint it? You can look through thousands of samples of wall papers,
+and you will finally have to admit that there is nothing better for
+every day living than a deep cream, a misty gray, a tan or a buff paper.
+
+You may have a certain license in the papering of your bedrooms, of
+course, but the living-rooms--hall, dining-room, living-room,
+drawing-room, and so forth--should be pulled together with walls of one
+color. In no other way can you achieve an effect of spaciousness--and
+spaciousness is the thing of all other things most desirable in the
+crowded city. You must have a place where you can breathe and fling your
+arms about!
+
+When you have it really ready for furnishing, get the essentials first;
+do with a bed and a chest of drawers and a table and a few chairs, and
+add things gradually, as the rooms call for them.
+
+Make the best of the opportunities offered for built-in furniture before
+you buy another thing. If you have a built-in china closet in your
+dining-room, you can plan a graceful built-in console-table to serve as
+a buffet or serving-table, and you will require only a good table--not
+too heavily built--and a few chairs for this room. There is rarely a
+room that would not be improved by built-in shelves and inset mirrors.
+
+Of course, I do not advise you to spend a lot of money on someone else's
+property, but why not look the matter squarely in the face? This is to
+be your home. You will find a number of things that annoy you--life in
+any city furnishes annoyances. But if you have one or two reasonably
+large rooms, plenty of light and air, and respectable surroundings, make
+up your mind that you will not move every year. That you will make a
+home of this place, and then go ahead and _treat_ it as a home! If a
+certain recess in the wall suggests bookshelves, don't grudge the few
+dollars necessary to have the bookshelves built in! You can probably
+have them built so that they can be removed, on that far day when this
+apartment is no longer your home, and if you have a dreadful wall paper
+don't hide behind the silly plea that the landlord will not change it.
+Go without a new gown, if necessary, and pay for the paper yourself.
+
+Few apartments have fireplaces, and if you are fortunate enough to find
+one with a real fireplace and a simple mantel shelf you will be far on
+the way toward making a home of your group of rooms. Of course your
+apartment is heated by steam, or hot air, or something, but an open fire
+of coal or wood will be very pleasant on chilly days, and more important
+still your home will have a point of departure--the Hearth.
+
+If the mantel shelf is surmounted by one of those dreadful monstrosities
+made up of gingerbread woodwork and distressing bits of mirrors,
+convince your landlord that it will not be injured in the removing, and
+store it during your residence here. Have the space above the mantel
+papered like the rest of the walls, and hang one good picture, or a good
+mirror, or some such thing above your mantel shelf, and you will have
+offered up your homage to the Spirit of the Hearth.
+
+When you do begin to buy furniture, buy compactly, buy carefully.
+Remember that you will not require the furniture your mother had in a
+sixteen-room house. You will have no hall or piazza furnishings to buy,
+for instance, and therefore you many put a little more into your
+living-room things. The living-room is the nucleus of the modern
+apartment. Sometimes it is studio, living-room and dining-room in one.
+Sometimes living-room, library and guest-room, by the grace of a
+comfortable sleeping-couch and a certain amount of drawer or closet
+space. At any rate, it will be more surely a living-room than a similar
+room in a large house, and therefore everything in it should count for
+something. Do not admit an unnecessary rug, or chair, or picture, lest
+you lose the spaciousness, the dignity of the room. An over-stuffed
+chair will fill a room more obviously than a grand piano--if the piano
+is properly, and the chair improperly placed.
+
+In one of the illustrations of this chapter you will observe a small
+sitting-room in which there are dozens of things, and yet the effect is
+quiet and uncrowded. The secretary against the plain wall serves as a
+cabinet for the display of a small collection of fine old china, and the
+drawers serve the chance guest--for while this is library and
+sitting-room, it has a most comfortable couch bed, and may be used as a
+guest-room as well.
+
+[Illustration: A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR]
+
+The bookshelves are built high on each side of the mantel and between
+the windows, thus giving shelf room to a goodly collection of books,
+with no appearance of heaviness. The writing-table is placed at right
+angles to the windows, so that the light may fall on the writer's left
+shoulder. There is a couch bed--over three feet wide, in this room, with
+frame and mattress and pillows covered in a dark brocaded stuff, and a
+fireside chair, a small chair at the head of the couch and a low stool
+all covered with the same fabric. It really isn't a large room, and yet
+it abundantly fills a dozen needs.
+
+I think it unwise to try to work out a cut-and-dried color plan in a
+small apartment. If your floors and walls are neutral in tone you can
+introduce dozens of soft colors into your rooms.
+
+Don't buy massive furniture for your apartment! Remember that a few good
+chairs of willow will be less expensive and more decorative than the
+heavy, stuffy chairs usually chosen by inexperienced people. Indeed, I
+think one big arm chair, preferably of the wing variety, is the only big
+chair you will require in the living-room. A fireside chair is like a
+grandfather's clock; it gives so much dignity to a room that it is worth
+a dozen inferior things. Suppose you have a wing chair covered with
+dull-toned corduroy, or linen, or chintz; a large willow chair with a
+basket pocket for magazines or your sewing things; a stool or so of
+wood, with rush or cane seats; and a straight chair or so--perhaps a
+painted Windsor chair, or a rush-bottomed mahogany chair, or a low-back
+chair of brown oak--depending on the main furniture of the room, of
+course. You won't need anything more, unless you have space for a
+comfortable couch.
+
+If you have mahogany things, you will require a little mahogany table at
+the head of the couch to hold a reading-lamp--a sewing-table would be
+excellent. A pie-crust or turn top table for tea, or possibly a "nest"
+of three small mahogany tables. A writing table or book table built on
+very simple lines will be needed also. If you happen to have a
+conventional writing-desk, a gate-leg table would be charming for books
+and things.
+
+The wing chair and willow chairs, and the hour-glass Chinese chairs,
+will go beautifully with mahogany things or with oak things. If most of
+your furniture is to be oak, be sure and select well-made pieces stained
+a soft brown and waxed. Oak furniture is delightful when it isn't too
+heavy. A large gate-leg table of dark brown oak is one of the most
+beautiful tables in the world. With it you would need a bench of oak,
+with cane or rush seat; a small octagonal, or butterfly oak table for
+your couch end, and one or two Windsor chairs. Oak demands simple,
+wholesome surroundings, just as mahogany permits a certain feminine
+elegance. Oak furniture invites printed linens and books and brass and
+copper and pewter and gay china. While mahogany may be successfully used
+with such things, it may also be used with brocade and fragile china and
+carved chairs.
+
+Use chintzes in your apartment, if you wish, but do not risk the light
+ones in living-rooms. A chintz or printed linen of some good design on a
+ground of mauve, blue, gray or black will decorate your apartment
+adequately, if you make straight side curtains of it, and cover one
+chair and possibly a stool with it. Don't carry it too far. If your
+rooms are small, have your side curtains of coarse linen or raw silk in
+dull blue, orange, brown, or whatever color you choose as the key color
+of your room, and then select a dark chintz with your chosen color
+dominant in its design, and cover your one big chair with that.
+
+The apartment hall is most difficult, usually long and narrow and
+uninteresting. Don't try to have furniture in a hall of this kind. A
+small table near the front door, a good tile for umbrellas, etc., a good
+mirror--that is all. Perhaps a place for coats and hats, but some halls
+are too narrow for a card table.
+
+The apartment with a dining-room entirely separated from the living-room
+is very unusual, therefore I am hoping that you will apply all that I
+have said about the treatment of your living-room to your dining-room as
+well. People who live in apartments are very foolish if they cut off a
+room so little used as a dining-room and furnish it as if it belonged to
+a huge house. Why not make it a dining-and book-room, using the big
+table for reading, between meals, and having your bookshelves so built
+that they will be in harmony with your china shelves? Keep all your
+glass and silver and china in the kitchen, or butler's pantry, and
+display only the excellent things--the old china, the pewter tankard,
+the brass caddy, and so forth,--in the dining-room.
+
+However, if you have a real dining-room in your apartment, do try to
+have chairs that will be comfortable, for you can't afford to have
+uncomfortable things in so small a space! Windsor chairs and rush bottom
+chairs are best of all for a simple dining-room, I think, though the
+revival of painted furniture has brought about a new interest in the old
+flare-back chairs, painted with dull, soft colored posies on a ground of
+dull green or gray or black. These chairs would be charming in a small
+cottage dining-room, but they might not "wear well" in a city apartment.
+
+[Illustration: BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM]
+
+If your apartment has two small bedrooms, why not use one of them for
+two single beds, with a night stand between, and the other for a
+dressing-room? Apartment bedrooms are usually small, but charming
+furniture may be bought for small rooms. Single beds of mahogany with
+slender posts; beds of painted wood with inset panels of cane; white
+iron beds, wooden beds painted with quaint designs on a ground of some
+soft color--all these are excellent for small rooms. It goes without
+saying that a small bedroom should have plain walls, papered or painted
+in some soft color. Flowered papers, no matter how delightful they may
+be, make a small room seem smaller. Self-toned striped papers and the
+"gingham" papers are sometimes very good. The nicest thing about such
+modest walls is that you can use gay chintz with them successfully.
+
+Use your bedrooms as sleeping-and dressing-rooms, and nothing more. Do
+not keep your sewing things there--a big sewing-basket will add to the
+homelike quality of your living-room. Keep the bedroom floor bare,
+except for a bedside rug, and possibly one or two other rugs. This, of
+course, does not apply to the large bedroom--I am prescribing for the
+usual small one. Place your bed against the side wall, so that the
+morning light will not be directly in your eyes. A folding screen
+covered with chintz or linen will prove a God-send.
+
+Perhaps you will have a guest-room, but I doubt it. Most women find it
+more satisfactory and less expensive to send their guests to a nearby
+hotel than to keep an extra room for a guest. The guest room is
+impractical in a small apartment, but you can arrange to take care of an
+over-night guest by planning your living-room wisely.
+
+As for the kitchen--that is another story. It is impossible to go into
+that subject. And anyway, you will find the essentials supplied for you
+by the landlord. You won't need my advice when you need a broom or a
+coffee pot or a saucepan--you'll go buy it!
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART
+
+
+One must have preserved many na�ve illusions if one may believe in all
+the "antiques" that are offered in the marketplaces of the world to-day.
+Even the greatest connoisseurs are caught napping sometimes, as in the
+case of the famous crown supposedly dating to the Fifth Century, B.C.,
+which was for a brief period one of the treasures of the Louvre. Its
+origin was finally discovered, and great was the outcry! It had been
+traced to a Viennese artisan, a worker in the arts and crafts.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. C.W. HARKNESS'S CABINET FOR _OBJETS D'ART_]
+
+Surely, if the great men of the Louvre could be so deceived it is
+obvious that the amateur collector has little chance at the hands of the
+dealers in old furniture and other objects of art. Fortunately, the
+greatest dealers are quite honest. They tell you frankly if the old
+chair you covet is really old, if it has been partially restored, or if
+it is a copy, and they charge you accordingly. At these dealers a small
+table of the Louis XVI period, or a single chair covered in the original
+tapestry, may cost as much as a man in modest circumstances would spend
+on his whole house. Almost everything outside these princely shops
+(salons is a better word) is false, or atrociously restored. Please
+remember I am not referring to reputable dealers, but to the smaller
+fry, whose name is legion, in whose shops the unwary seeker after
+bargains is sure to be taken in.
+
+Italy is, I think, the greatest workshop of fraudulent reproductions. It
+has an output that all Europe and America can never exhaust. Little
+children on the streets of Naples still find simpletons of ardent faith
+who will buy scraps of old plaster and bits of paving stones that are
+alleged to have been excavated in Pompeii.
+
+In writing about antiques it is not easy to be consistent, and any
+general conclusion is impossible. Certain reproductions are
+objectionable, and yet they are certainly better than poor originals,
+after all. The simplest advice is the best and easiest to follow: The
+less a copy suggests an attempt at "artistic reproduction," the more
+literal and mechanical it is in its copy of the original, the better it
+is. A good photograph of a fine old painting is superior to the average
+copy in oils or watercolors. A chair honestly copied from a worm eaten
+original is better for domestic purpose than the original. The original,
+the moment its usefulness is past, belongs in a museum. A plaster cast
+of a great bust is better than the same object copied in marble or
+bronze by an average sculptor. And so it goes. Think it out for
+yourself.
+
+It may be argued that the budding collector is as happy with a false
+object and a fake bauble as if he possessed the real thing, and
+therefore it were better to leave him to his illusions; that it is his
+own fault; that it is so much the worse for him if he is deceived.
+But--you can't leave the innocent lamb to the slaughter, if you can give
+him a helping hand. If he must be a collector, let him be first a
+collector of the many excellent books now published on old furniture,
+china, rugs, pewter, silver, prints, the things that will come his way.
+You can't begin collecting one thing without developing an enthusiasm
+for the contemporary things. Let him study the museum collections, visit
+the private collections, consult recognized experts. If he is serious,
+he will gradually acquire the intuition of knowing the genuine from the
+false, the worth-while from the worthless, and once he has that
+knowledge, instinct, call it what you will, he can never be satisfied
+with imitations.
+
+The collection and association of antiques and reproductions should be
+determined by the collector's sense of fitness, it seems to me. Every
+man should depend on whatever instinct for rightness, for suitability,
+he may possess. If he finds that he dare not risk his individual
+opinion, then let him be content with the things he _knows_ to be both
+beautiful and useful, and leave the subtler decisions for someone else.
+For instance, there are certain objects that are obviously the better
+for age, the objects that are softened and refined by a bloom that comes
+from usage.
+
+An old rug has a softness that a new one cannot imitate. An old copper
+kettle has an uneven quality that has come from years of use. A new
+kettle may be quite as useful, but age has given the old one a certain
+quality that hanging and pounding cannot reproduce. A pewter platter
+that has been used for generations is dulled and softened to a glow that
+a new platter cannot rival.
+
+What charm is to a woman, the vague thing called quality is to an object
+of art. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it. An old
+Etruscan jar may be reproduced in form, but it would be silly to attempt
+the reproduction of the crudenesses that gave the old jar its real
+beauty. In short, objects that depend on form and fine workmanship for
+their beauty may be successfully reproduced, but objects that depend on
+imperfections of workmanship, on the crudeness of primitive fabrics, on
+the fading of vegetable dyes, on the bloom that age alone can give,
+should not be imitated. We may introduce a reproduction of a fine bust
+into our rooms, but an imitation of a Persian tile or a Venetian vase is
+absurd on the face of it.
+
+The antiques the average American householder is interested in are the
+old mahogany, oak and walnut things that stand for the oldest period of
+our own particular history. It is only the wealthy collector who goes
+abroad and buys masses of old European furniture, real or sham, who is
+concerned with the merits and demerits of French and Italian furniture.
+The native problem is the so-called Colonial mahogany that is always
+alleged to be Chippendale or Heppelwhite, or Sheraton, regardless! There
+must be thousands of these alleged antiques in New York shops alone!
+
+It goes without saying that only a very small part of it can be really
+old. As for it having been made by the men whose names it bears, that is
+something no reputable dealer would affirm. The Chippendales, father,
+son and grandson, published books of designs which were used by all the
+furniture-makers of their day.
+
+No one can swear to a piece of furniture having been made in the
+workshops of the Chippendales. Even the pieces in the Metropolitan
+Museum are marked "Chippendale Style" or "In the Sheraton manner," or
+some such way. If the furniture is in the style of these makers, and if
+it is really old, you will pay a small fortune for it. But even then you
+cannot hope to get more than you pay for, and you would be very silly to
+pay for a name! After all, Chippendale is a sort of god among amateur
+collectors of American furniture, but among more seasoned collectors he
+is not by any means placed first. He adapted and borrowed and produced
+some wonderful things, but he also produced some monstrosities, as you
+will see if you visit the English museums.
+
+Why then lend yourself to possible deception? Why pay for names when
+museums are unable to buy them? If your object is to furnish your home
+suitably, what need have you of antiques?
+
+The serious amateur will fight shy of miracles. If he admires the beauty
+of line of a fine old Heppelwhite bed or Sheraton sideboard, he will
+have reproductions made by an expert cabinet-maker. The new piece will
+not have the soft darkness of the old, but the owner will be planning
+that soft darkness for his grandchildren, and in the meantime he will
+have a beautiful thing to live with. The age of a piece of furniture is
+of great value to a museum, but for domestic purposes, use and beauty
+will do. How fine your home will be if all the things within it have
+those qualities!
+
+Look through the photographs shown on these pages: there are many old
+chairs and tables, but there are more new ones. I am not one of these
+decorators who insist on originals. I believe good reproductions are
+more valuable than feeble originals, unless you are buying your
+furniture as a speculation. You can buy a reproduction of a Chippendale
+ladder back chair for about twenty-five dollars, but an original chair
+would cost at least a hundred and fifty, and then it would be "in the
+style and period of Chippendale." It might amuse you to ask the curator
+of one of the British museums the price of one of the Chippendales _by_
+Chippendale. It would buy you a tidy little acreage. Stuart and
+Cromwellian chairs are being more and more reproduced. These chairs are
+made of oak, the Stuart ones with seats and backs of cane, the
+Cromwellian ones with seats and backs of tapestry, needlework, corded
+velvet, or some such handsome fabric. These reproductions may be had at
+from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars each. Of course, the cost of
+the Cromwellian chairs might be greatly increased by expensive
+coverings.
+
+There is a graceful Louis XV sofa in the Petit Trianon that I have
+copied many times. The copy is as beautiful as the original, because
+this sort of furniture depends upon exquisite design and perfect
+workmanship for its beauty. It is possible that a modern craftsman might
+not have achieved so graceful a design, but the perfection of his
+workmanship cannot be gainsaid. The frame of the sofa must be carved and
+then painted and guilded many times before it is ready for the brocade
+covering, and the cost of three hundred dollars for the finished sofa is
+not too much. The original could not be purchased at any price.
+
+Then there is the Chinese lacquer furniture of the Chippendale period
+that we are using so much now. The process of lacquering is as tedious
+to-day as it ever was, and the reproductions sell for goodly sums. A
+tall secretary of black and gold lacquer may cost six hundred dollars.
+You can imagine what an Eighteenth Century piece would cost!
+
+The person who said that a taste for old furniture and bibelots was
+"worse than a passion, it was a vice," was certainly near the truth! It
+is an absorbing pursuit, an obsession, and it grows with what it feeds
+on. As in objects of art, so in old furniture, the supply will always
+equal the demand of the unwary. The serious amateur will fight shy of
+all miracles and content himself with excellent reproductions. Nothing
+later than the furniture of the Eighteenth Century is included in the
+term, "old furniture." There are many fine cabinet makers in the early
+Nineteenth Century, but from them until the last decade the horrors that
+were perpetrated have never been equaled in the history of household
+decorations.
+
+I fancy the furniture of the mid-Victorian era will never be coveted by
+collectors, unless someone should build a museum for the freakish
+objects of house furnishing. America could contribute much to such a
+collection, for surely the black walnut era of the Nineteenth Century
+will never be surpassed in ugliness and bad taste, unless--rare
+fortune--there should be a sudden epidemic of appreciation among
+cabinet-makers, which would result in their taking the beautiful wood in
+the black walnut beds and wardrobes and such and make it over into
+worth-while things. It would be a fine thing to release the mistreated,
+velvety wood from its grotesqueries, and give it a renaissance in
+graceful cabinets, small tables, footstools, and the many small things
+that could be so easily made from huge unwieldy wardrobes and beds and
+bureaux.
+
+The workmen of to-day have their eyes opened. They have no excuse for
+producing unworthy things, when the greatest private collections are
+loaned or given outright to the museums. The new wing of the
+Metropolitan Museum in New York houses several fine old collections of
+furniture, the Hoentschel collection, for which the wing was really
+planned, having been given to the people of New York by Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan. This collection is an education in the French decorative arts.
+Then, too, there is the Bolles collection of American furniture
+presented to the museum by Mrs. Russell Sage.
+
+I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and
+sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies. There is
+no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers
+of the Eighteenth Century: we give them respect for their masterly
+workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity
+to the masterpieces they reproduce.
+
+Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a
+gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture
+shop. He paid for it--you may be sure of that!--and he could hardly wait
+for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors. Within a few
+months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered
+on the inside of the frame the maker's name and address. Imagine his
+chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture
+factory in his own country. You can't be sorry for him, you feel that it
+served him right.
+
+[Illustration: A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH
+NEEDLEWORK]
+
+[Illustration: A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ]
+
+This is an excellent example of the vain collector who cannot judge
+for himself, but will not admit it. He has not developed his sense of
+beauty, his instinct for excellence of workmanship. He thinks that
+because he has the money to pay for the treasure, the treasure must be
+genuine--hasn't _he_ chosen it?
+
+I can quite understand the pleasure that goes with furnishing a really
+old house with objects of the period in which the house was built. A New
+England farmhouse, for instance, may be an inspiration to the owner, and
+you can understand her quest of old fashioned rush bottomed chairs and
+painted settles and quaint mirrors and blue homespun coverlets. You can
+understand the man who falls heir to a good, square old Colonial house
+who wishes to keep his furnishings true to the period, but you cannot
+understand the crying need for Eighteenth Century furniture in a modern
+shingle house, or the desire for old spinning wheels and battered
+kitchen utensils in a Spanish stucco house, or Chippendale furniture in
+a forest bungalow.
+
+I wish people generally would study the oak and walnut furniture of old
+England, and use more reproductions of these honest, solid pieces of
+furniture in their houses. Its beauty is that it is "at home" in simple
+American houses, and yet by virtue of its very usefulness and sturdiness
+it is not out of place in a room where beautiful objects of other
+periods are used. The long oak table that is so comfortably ample for
+books and magazines and flowers in your living-room may be copied from
+an old refectory table--but what of it? It fulfils its new mission just
+as frankly as the original table served the monks who used it.
+
+The soft brown of oak is a pleasure after the over-polished mahogany of
+a thousand rooms. I do not wish to condemn Colonial mahogany furniture,
+you understand. I simply wish to remind you that there are other woods
+and models available. French furniture of the best type represents the
+supreme art of the cabinet-maker, and is incomparable for formal rooms,
+but I am afraid the time will never come when French furniture will be
+interchangeable with the oak and mahogany of England and America.
+
+In short, the whole thing should be a matter of taste and suitability.
+If you have a few fine old things that have come to you from your
+ancestors--a grandfather's clock, an old portrait or two--you are quite
+justified in bringing good reproductions of similar things into your
+home. The effect is the thing you are after, isn't it? Then, too, you
+will escape the awful fever that makes any antique seem desirable, and
+in buying reproductions you can select really comfortable furniture. You
+will be independent of the dreadful vases and candelabra and steel
+engravings "of the period," and will feel free to use modern prints and
+Chinese porcelains and willow chairs and anything that fits into your
+home. I can think of no slavery more deadly to one's sense of humor than
+collecting antiques indiscriminately!
+
+[Illustration: THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB]
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
+
+
+When I planned the trellis room of the Colony Club in New York I had
+hard work finding workmen who could appreciate the importance of
+crossing and recrossing little strips of green wood, of arranging them
+to form a mural decoration architectural in treatment. This trellis room
+was, I believe, the first in America to be so considered, though the use
+of trellis is as old as architecture in Japan, China, Arabia, Egypt,
+Italy, France and Spain.
+
+The earliest examples of trellis work shown are in certain Roman
+frescoes. In Pompeii the mural paintings give us a very good idea of
+what some of the Roman gardens were like. In the entrance hall of the
+house of Sallust is represented a garden with trellised niches and
+bubbling fountains. Representations that have come down to us in
+documents show that China and Japan both employed the trellis in their
+decorative schemes. You will find a most daring example on your old blue
+willow plate, if you will look closely enough. The bridge over which the
+flying princess goes to her lover is a good model, and could be built in
+many gardens. Even a tiny modern garden, yours or mine, might hold this
+fairy bridge.
+
+Almost all Arabian decorations have their basis in trellis design or
+arabesques filled in with the intricate tracery that covers all their
+buildings. If we examine the details of the most famous of the old
+Moorish buildings that remain to us, the mosque at Cordova and the
+Alhambra at Granada, we shall find them full of endless trellis
+suggestions. Indeed, there are many documents still extant showing how
+admirably trellis decoration lends itself to the decoration of gardens
+and interiors. There are dozens of examples of niches built to hold fine
+busts. Pavilions and summer houses, the quaint gazebos of old England,
+the graceful screens of trellis that terminate a long garden path, the
+arching gateways crowned with vines--all these may be reproduced quite
+easily in American gardens.
+
+The first trellis work in France was inspired by Italy, but the French
+gave it a perfection of architectural character not found in other
+countries. The manuscript of the "Romance of the Rose," dating back to
+the Fifteenth Century, contains the finest possible example of trellis
+in a medieval garden. Most of the old French gardens that remain to us
+have important trellis construction. At Blois one still sees the remains
+of a fine trellis covering the walls of the kitchen gardens. Wonderful
+and elaborate trellis _pavillons_, each containing a statue, often
+formed the centers of very old gardens. These garden houses were called
+gazebos in England, and _Temples d'Amour_ (Temples of Love) in France,
+and the statue most often seen was the god of Love. In the Trianon
+gardens at Versailles there is a charming _Temple d'Amour_ standing on a
+tiny island, with four small canals leading to it.
+
+A knowledge of the history of trelliage and an appreciation of its
+practical application to modern needs is a conjurer's wand--you can wave
+it and create all sorts of ephemeral constructions that will last your
+time and pleasure. You may give your trellis any poetic shape your
+vision may take. You may dream and realize enchanting gardens, with
+clipped hedges and trellis walls. You may transform a commonplace porch
+into a gay garden room, with a few screens of trellis and many flower
+boxes of shrubs and vines. Here indeed is a delightful medium for your
+fancy!
+
+Trelliage and lattice work are often used as interchangeable terms, but
+mistakenly, for any carpenter who has the gift of precision can build a
+good lattice, but a trellis must have architectural character. Trellis
+work is not necessarily flimsy construction; the light chestnut laths
+that were used by the old Frenchmen and still remain to us prove that.
+
+Always in a garden I think one must feel one has not come to the end,
+one must go on and on in search of new beauties and the hidden delights
+we feel sure must be behind the clipped hedges or the trellis walls.
+Even when we come to the end we are not quite sure it is the end, and we
+steep ourselves in seclusion and quiet, knowing full well that to-morrow
+or to-night perhaps when the moon is up and we come back as we promise
+ourselves to do, surely we shall see that ideal corner that is the last
+word of the perfection of our dream garden--that delectable spot for
+which we forever seek!
+
+We can bring back much of the charm of the old-time gardens by a
+judicious use of trellis. It is suitable for every form of outdoor
+construction. A new garden can be subdivided and made livable in a few
+months with trellis screens, where hedges, even of the quick growing
+privet, would take years to grow. The entrance to the famous maze at
+Versailles, now, alas, utterly destroyed, was in trellis, and I have
+reproduced in our own garden at Villa Trianon, in Versailles, the
+entrance arch and doors, all in trellis. Our high garden fence with its
+curving gate is also in trellis, and you can imagine the joy with which
+we watched the vines grow, climbing over the gatetop as gracefully as if
+they too felt the charm of the curving tracery of green strips, and
+cheerfully added the decoration of their leaves and tendrils.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH'S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW
+YORK]
+
+Our outdoor trellis is at the end of the Villa Trianon garden, in line
+with the terrace where we take our meals. This trellis was rebuilt many
+times before it satisfied me, but now it is my greatest joy. The niches
+are planned to hold two old statues and several prim box trees. I used
+very much the same constructive design on one of the walls of the Colony
+Club trellis room, but there a fountain has the place of honor.
+Formal pedestals surmounted by gracefully curved urns, box trees,
+statues, marble benches, fountains--all these belong to the formal
+outdoor trellis.
+
+The trellis is primarily suitable for garden architecture, but it may be
+fitted to interior uses most skilfully. Pictures of the trellis room in
+the Colony Club have been shown so often it is not necessary to repeat
+more than one of them. The room is long and high, with a floor of large
+red tiles. The walls and ceiling are covered with rough gray plaster, on
+which the green strips of wood are laid. The wall space is entirely
+covered with the trellis design broken into ovals which hold
+lighting-fixtures--grapes and leaves in cloudy glass and green enamel.
+The long room leads up to the ivy-covered trellis of the fountain wall,
+a perfect background for the fountain, a bowl on the brim of which is
+poised a youthful figure, upheld by two dolphins. The water spills over
+into a little pool, banked with evergreens. Ivy has been planted in long
+boxes along the wall, and climbs to the ceiling, where the plaster is
+left bare, save for the trellised cornice and the central trellis
+medallion, from which is suspended an enchanting lantern made up of
+green wires and ivy leaves and little white flames of electric light.
+
+The roof garden of the Colony Club is latticed in a simple design we all
+know. This is lattice, not trellis, and in no way should be confounded
+with the trellis room on the entrance floor. This white-painted lattice
+covers the wall space. Growing vines are placed along the walls and
+clamber to the beams. The glass ceiling is supported by white beams.
+There are always blossoming flowers and singing birds in this room. The
+effect is springlike and joyous on the bleakest winter day. The room is
+heated by two huge stoves of green Majolica brought over from Germany
+when other heating systems failed. Much of the furniture is covered with
+a grape-patterned chintz and a green and white striped linen. The
+ceiling lights are hidden in huge bunches of pale green grapes.
+
+I recently planned a most beautiful trellis room for a New York City
+house. The room is long and narrow, with walls divided into panels by
+upright classic columns. The lower wall space between the columns is
+covered with a simple green lattice, and the upper part is filled with
+little mirrors framed in narrow green moldings, arranged in a
+conventional design which follows the line of the trellis. One end of
+the room is made up of two narrow panels of the trellis with a fireplace
+between. On the opposite wall the middle panel is a background for a
+delightful wall fountain. The fretwork of mirrors which takes the place
+of frieze in the room is continued all around the four walls. One of the
+walls is filled entirely with French doors of plate glass, beneath the
+mirrored frieze; the other long wall has the broad, central panel cut
+into two doors of plate glass, and stone benches placed against the two
+trellised panels flanking the doors. The ceiling is divided into three
+great panels of trellis, and from each of the three panels a lantern is
+suspended.
+
+In the Guinness house in New York there is a little hallway wainscoted
+in white with a green trellis covering the wall space above. Against
+this simple trellis--it is really a lattice--a number of plaster casts
+are hung. In one corner an old marble bowl holds a grapevine, which has
+been trained over the walls. The floor is of white tiles, with a narrow
+Greek border of black and white. This decoration of a little hall might
+be copied very easily.
+
+The architects are building nowadays many houses that have a sun-room,
+or conservatory, or breakfast room. The smallest cottage may have a
+little breakfast room done in green and white lattice, with green
+painted furniture and simple flower boxes. I have had furniture of the
+most satisfactory designs made for my trellis rooms. Green painted wood
+with cane insets seems most suitable for the small rooms, and the
+marbles of the old trellised _Temples d'Amour_ may be replaced by cement
+benches in our modern trellis pavillions.
+
+There is so much of modern furniture that is refreshing in line and
+color, and adapted to these sun-rooms. There is a desk made by Aitchen,
+a notable furniture designer in London, which I have used in a sun-room.
+The desk is painted white, and is decorated with heavy lines of dark
+green. The drawer front and the doors of the little cupboard are filled
+with cane. The knobs are of green. This desk would be nice in a white
+writing-room in a summer cottage, though it was planned for a trellis
+room. It could be used as a dressing table, with a bench or chair of
+white, outlined in green, and a good mirror in white and green frame.
+Another desk I have made is called a jardiniere table, and was designed
+for Mrs. Ogden Armour's garden room at Lake Forest. The desk, or table,
+is painted gray, with faint green decorations. At each end of the long
+top there is a sunken zinc-lined box to hold growing plants. Between the
+flower boxes there is the usual arrangement of the desk outfit, blotter
+pad, paper rack, ink pots, and so forth. The spaces beneath the flower
+boxes are filled with shelves for books and magazines. This idea is
+thoroughly practicable for any garden room, and is so simple that it
+could be constructed by any man who knows how to use tools.
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING OVER THE _TAPIS VERT_ TO THE TRELLIS]
+
+I had the pleasure recently of planning a trellis room for Mrs.
+Ormond-Smith's house at Center Island, New York. Here indeed is a garden
+room with a proper environment. It is as beautiful as a room very well
+can be within, and its great arched windows frame vistas of trees and
+water which take their place as a part of the room, ever changing
+landscapes that are always captivating. This trellis room is beautifully
+proportioned, and large enough to hold four long sofas and many chairs
+and tables of wicker and painted wood. The grouping of the sofas and the
+long tables made to fit between them is most interesting. These
+tables are extremely narrow and just the length of the sofas, and are
+built after the idea of Mrs. Armour's garden room desk, with flower
+boxes sunk in the ends. The backs of two sofas are placed against the
+long sides of the table, which holds a reading lamp and books in
+addition to its masses of flowers at the ends. Two such groups divide
+the room into three smaller rooms, as you can see by the illustration.
+Small tables and chairs are pulled up to the sofas, making conversation
+centers, or comfortable places for reading.
+
+The trellis work covers the spaces between windows and doors, and
+follows the contour of the arches. The ceiling is bordered with the
+trellis, and from a great square of it in the center a lamp is
+suspended. The wall panels are broken by appliques that suggest the
+bounty of summer, flowers and leaves and vines in wrought and painted
+iron. There are pedestals surmounted by marbles against some of the
+panels, and a carved bracket supporting a magnificent bust high on one
+of the wider panels. The room is classic in its fine balance and its
+architectural formality, and modern in its luxurious comfort and its
+refreshing color. Surely there could be no pleasanter room for whiling
+away a summer day.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+VILLA TRIANON
+
+
+The story of the Villa Trianon is a fairy-tale come true. It came true
+because we believed in it--many fairy stories are ready and waiting to
+come true if only people will believe in them long enough.
+
+For many years Elizabeth Marbury and I had spent our summers in that
+charming French town, Versailles, before we had any hope of realizing a
+home of our own there. We loved the place, with its glamour of romance
+and history, and we prowled around the old gardens and explored the old
+houses, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.
+
+One old house that particularly interested us was the villa that had
+once been the home of the Duc de Nemours, son of Louis Philippe. It was
+situated directly on the famous Park of Versailles which is, as everyone
+knows, one of the most beautiful parks in all the world. The villa had
+not been lived in since the occupancy of de Nemours. Before the villa
+came to de Nemours it had been a part of the royal property that was
+portioned out to Mesdames de France, the disagreeable daughters of Louis
+XV. You will remember how disagreeable they were to Marie Antoinette,
+and what a burden they made her life. I wish our house had belonged to
+more romantic people; Madame du Barry or Madame de Pompadour would have
+suited me better!
+
+How many, many times we peeped through the high iron railing at this
+enchanted domain, sleeping like the castle in the fairy tale. The garden
+was overgrown with weeds and shrubbery, the house was shabby and sadly
+in need of paint. We sighed and thought how happy would be our fortune
+if we might some day penetrate the mysteries of the tangled garden and
+the abandoned villa. Little did we dream that this would one day be our
+home.
+
+We first went to Versailles as casual summer visitors and our stay was
+brief. We loved it so much that the next summer we went again, this time
+for the season, and found ourselves members of a happy pension family.
+Then we decided to rent an apartment of our own, for the next year, and
+soon we were considering the leases of houses, and finally we arrived at
+the supreme audacity of negotiating for the purchase of one. We had a
+great friend in Versailles, Victorien Sardou, the novelist and
+playwright so honored by the people of France. His wonderful house at
+Marly le Roi was a constant joy to us, and made us always more eager for
+a permanent home of our own in the neighborhood. Sardou was as eager for
+the finding of our house as we were, and it was he who finally made it
+possible for us to buy our historic villa. He did everything for us,
+introduced us to his friends, wonderful and brilliant people, gave us
+liberally of his charm and knowledge, and finally gave us the chance to
+buy this old house and its two acres of gardens.
+
+The negotiations for the house were long and tedious. Our offer was an
+insult, a joke, a ridiculous affair to the man who had the selling of
+it! He laughed at us, and demanded twice the amount of our offer. We
+were firm, outwardly, and refused to meet him halfway, but secretly we
+spent hours and hours in the old house, sitting patiently on folding
+camp-stools, and planning the remaking of the house as happily as
+children playing make-believe.
+
+I remember vividly the three of us, Miss Marbury, Sardou, and I,
+standing in the garden on a very rainy day. Sardou was bounding up and
+down, saying: "Buy it, buy it! If you don't buy it before twelve o'clock
+to-morrow I will buy it myself!" We were standing there soaking wet,
+perfectly oblivious to the downpour, wondering if we dared do such an
+audacious thing as to purchase property so far from our American
+anchorage.
+
+[Illustration: A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON]
+
+Well, we bought it, and at our own price, practically, and for eight
+years we have been restoring the house and gardens to their Seventeenth
+Century beauty. Sardou was our neighbor, and his wonderful ch�teau at
+Marly, overlooking the valley and terraces of St. Germain, was a
+never-failing surprise to us, so full was it of beauty and charm, so
+flavored with the personality of its owner. Sardou was of great help
+to us when we finally purchased our house. His fund of information never
+failed us, there seemed to be no question he could not answer. He was
+quite the most erudite man I have ever known. He had as much to say
+about the restoration of our house as we. He introduced us to Monsieur
+de Nolhac, the conservator of the Ch�teau de Versailles, who gave us the
+details of our villa as it had been a century and a half ago, and helped
+us remake the garden on the lines of the original one. He loaned us
+pictures and documents, and we felt we were living in a modern version
+of the Sleeping Beauty, with the sleeping villa for heroine.
+
+Our house had always been called "Villa Trianon," and so we kept the
+name, but it should not be confused with the Grand Trianon or the Petit
+Trianon. Of course everyone knows about the Park at Versailles, but
+everyone forgets, so I shall review the history of the Park briefly,
+that you may appreciate our thrills when we really owned a bit of it.
+
+Louis XIV selected Versailles as the site for the royal palace when it
+was a swampy, uninteresting little farm. Louis XIII had built a ch�teau
+there in 1627, but had done little to beautify the flat acres
+surrounding it. Louis the Magnificent lavished fortunes on the laying
+out of his new park. The Grand Trianon was built for Madame de Main
+tenon in 1685, and from this time on, for a full century, the Park of
+Versailles was the most famous royal residence in the world.
+
+The Petit Trianon was built by Louis XV for Madame du Barry. Later,
+during the reign of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, who was then Queen,
+tiring of court etiquette and scorning the stately rooms of Versailles,
+persuaded her husband to make over to her the Petit Trianon. Here she
+built a number of little rustic cottages, where she and the ladies of
+her court, dressed in calicoes, played at being milkmaids. They had a
+little cottage called the "Laiterie," where the white cows with their
+gilded horns were brought in to be milked. Here, too, little plays were
+presented in a tiny theater where only the members of the court were
+admitted. The Queen and her brother, Comte de Provence, were always the
+chief actors.
+
+Our villa adjoins the Park proper. In our deeds to the two acres there
+is a clause which reserves a right-of-way for the King! The deed is
+worded like the old lease that dates back to 1750, and so one day we may
+have to give a King a right-of-way through our garden, if France becomes
+a monarchy again. Anyone who knows French people at all knows how dearly
+they cherish the dream of a monarchy.
+
+[Illustration: THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN]
+
+One of the small houses we found on our small estate had once been a
+part of the _hameau_ of Marie Antoinette. We have had this little house
+rebuilt and connected with the villa, and now use it as a guest
+house. It is very charming, with its walls covered with lattices and
+ivy.
+
+Villa Trianon, like most French houses, is built directly on the street,
+leaving all the space possible for the garden. The fa�ade of the villa
+is very simple, it reminds you of the square houses of the American
+Colonial period, except that there is no "front porch," as is inevitable
+with us in America. The entrance gate and the stone wall that surround
+the place give an interest that our detached and hastily built American
+houses lack. The wall is really a continuation of the fa�ade of the
+villa, and is surmounted by a black iron railing. Vines and flowers that
+have flourished and died and flourished again for over a century climb
+over the wall and through the graceful railing, and give our home an air
+of permanence that is very satisfying. After all, that is the secret of
+Europe's fascination for us Americans--the ever-present suggestion of
+permanence. We feel that houses and gardens were planned and built for
+centuries, not for the passing pleasure of one brief lifetime. We people
+them with ghosts that please us, and make histories for them that are
+always romantic and full of happiness. The survival of an old house and
+its garden through centuries of use and misuse is always an impressive
+and dramatic discovery to us: it gives us courage to add our little bit
+to the ultimate beauty and history, it gives us excuse to dream of the
+fortunate people who will follow us in other centuries, and who will, in
+turn, bless us for our part in the remaking of one old house and
+garden.
+
+There was much to do! We hardly knew where to begin, the house was in
+such wretched condition. The roof was falling in, and the debris of
+years was piled high inside, but the walls and the floors were still
+very beautiful and as sound as ever, structurally. We had the roof
+restored, the debris removed, and the underbrush weeded out of the
+garden, and then we were ready to begin the real business of
+restoration.
+
+The house is very simply planned. There is a broad hall that runs
+straight through it, with dining-room and servants' hall on the right,
+and four connecting salons on the left. These salons are charming rooms,
+with beautiful panelings and over-doors, and great arches framed in
+delicate carvings. First comes the writing-room, then the library, then
+the large and small salons. The rooms opening on the back of the house
+have long French windows that open directly upon the terrace, where we
+have most of our meals. The note of the interior of the house is blue,
+and there are masses of blue flowers in the garden. The interior
+woodwork is cream, pointed with blue, and there are blues innumerable in
+the rugs and curtains and _objets d'art_. There must be a hundred
+different shades of blue on this living-floor, I think. We have tried to
+restore the rooms to a Louis XV scheme of decoration. The tables and
+cabinets are of the fine polished woods of the period. Some of the
+chairs are roomy affairs of carved and painted wooden frames and
+brocade coverings, but others are modern easychairs covered in new
+linens of old designs, linens that were designed for just such interiors
+when Oberkampf first began his designing at Jouy. The mirrors and
+lighting-fixtures are, of course, designed to harmonize with the
+carvings of the woodwork. Monsieur de Nolhac and Sardou were most
+helpful to us when such architectural problems had to be solved.
+
+We have not used the extravagant lace curtains that seem to go with
+brocades and carvings, because we are modern enough not to believe in
+lace curtains. And we find that the thin white muslin ones give our
+brocades and tapestries a chance to assert their decorative importance.
+Somehow, lace curtains give a room such a dressed-up-for-company air
+that they quite spoil the effect of beautiful fabrics. We have a few
+fine old Savonnerie carpets that are very much at home in this house,
+and so many interesting Eighteenth Century prints we hardly know how to
+use them.
+
+Our bedrooms are very simple, with their white panelings and chintz
+hangings. We have furnished them with graceful and feminine things,
+delicately carved mirror frames and inlaid tables, painted beds, and
+chests of drawers of rosewood or satinwood. We feel that the ghosts of
+the fair ladies who live in the Park would adore the bedrooms and
+rejoice in the strange magic of electric lights. If the ghosts should be
+confronted with the electric lights their surprise would not be greater
+than was the consternation of our builders when we demanded five
+bathrooms. They were astounded, and assured us it was not necessary, it
+was not possible. Indeed, it seemed that it was hardly legal to give one
+small French house five American bathrooms. We fought the matter out,
+and got them, however.
+
+We determined to make the house seem a part of the garden, and so we
+built a broad terrace across the rear of the villa. You step directly
+from the long windows of the salon and dining-room upon the terrace, and
+before you is spread out our little garden, and back of that, through an
+opening in the trees, a view of the Ch�teau, our never-failing source of
+inspiration.
+
+The terrace is built of tiles on a cement foundation. Vines are trained
+over square column-like frames of wire, erected at regular intervals.
+Between the edge of the terrace and the smooth green lawn there is a
+mass of blue flowers. We have a number of willow chairs and old stone
+tables here, and you can appreciate the joy of having breakfast and tea
+on the terrace with the birds singing in the boughs of the trees.
+
+I have written at length in the other chapters of my ideas of
+house-furnishing, and in this one I want to give you my ideas of garden
+guilding. True, we had the old garden plan to work from, and trees two
+hundred years old, and old vine-covered walls. Who couldn't accomplish a
+perfect garden with such essentials, people said! Well, it wasn't so
+easy as it seems. You can select furnishings for a room with fair
+success, because you can see and feel textures, and colors, and the
+lines of the furniture and curtains. But gardens are different--you
+cannot make grass and flowers grow just so on short notice! You plant
+and dig and plant again, before things grow as you have visualized them.
+
+There was a double ring of trees in one corner of our domain, enclosing
+the _salle de verdure_, or outdoor drawing-room. In the center of this
+enchanted circle there was a statue by Clodion, a joyous nymph, holding
+a baby faun in her arms. There were several old stone benches under the
+trees that must have known the secrets of the famous ladies of the
+Eighteenth Century courts. The _salle de verdure_ looked just as it did
+when the little daughters of Louis XV came here to have their afternoon
+cakes and tea, so we did not try to change this bit of our garden.
+
+My idea of making over the place was to leave the part of the garden
+against the stone walls in the rear in its tangled, woodsy state, and to
+build against it a trellis that would be in line with the terrace.
+Between the trellis and the terrace there was to be a smooth expanse of
+greensward, bordered with flowers. It seemed very simple, but I hereby
+confess that I built and tore down the trellis three times before it
+pleased me! I had to make it worthy of the statue by Pradier that was
+given us by Sardou, and finally it was done to please me. Painted a
+soft green, with ivy growing over it, and a fountain flanked by white
+marbles outlined against it, this trellis represents (to me, at least)
+my best work.
+
+The _tapis vert_ occupies the greater part of the garden, and it is
+bordered by gravel walks bordered in turn with white flowerbeds. Between
+the walks and the walls there are the groups of trees, the statues with
+green spaces about them, the masses of evergreen trees, and finally the
+great trees that follow the lines of the wall. Indeed, the _tapis vert_
+is like the arena of an ample theater, with the ascending flowers and
+shrubs and trees representing the ascending tiers of seats. One feels
+that all the trees and flowers look down upon the central stretch of
+greensward, and perhaps there is a fairy ring here where plays take
+place by night. Nothing is impossible in this garden. Certainly the
+fairies play in the enchanted ring of the trees of the _salle de
+verdure_. We are convinced of that.
+
+So formal is the _tapis vert_, with its blossoming borders of larkspur
+and daisies and its tall standard roses, you are surprised to find that
+that part of the garden outside this prim rectangle has mysteries. There
+are winding paths that terminate in marble seats. There is the
+_pavilion_, a little house built for outdoor musicales, with electric
+connections that make breakfast and tea possible here. There is the
+guest house, and the motor house--quite as interesting as any other part
+of the garden. And everywhere there are blue and white and rose-colored
+flowers, planted in great masses against the black-green evergreens.
+
+We leave America early in June, tired out with the breathless business
+of living, and find ourselves in our old-world house and garden. We fall
+asleep to the accompaniment of the tiny piping of the little people in
+bur garden. We awake to the matins of the birds. We breakfast on the
+stone terrace, with boughs of trees and clouds for our roof, and as we
+look out over the masses of blue flowers and the smooth green _tapis
+vert_, over the arched trelliage with its fountains and its marbles, the
+great trees back of our domain frame the supremely beautiful towers of
+the Ch�teau le Magnificent, and we are far happier than anyone deserves
+to be in this wicked world!
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+NOTES ON MANY THINGS
+
+A LITTLE TALK ON CLOCKS.
+
+
+The selection of proper clocks for one's house is always long-drawn-out,
+a pursuit of real pleasure. Clocks are such necessary things the
+thoughtless woman is apt to compromise, when she doesn't find exactly
+the right one. How much wiser and happier she would be if she decided to
+depend upon an ordinary alarm clock until the proper clock was
+discovered! If she made a hobby of her quest for clocks she would find
+much amusement, many other valuable objects by-the-way, and finally
+exactly the right clocks for her rooms.
+
+Everyone knows the merits and demerits of the hundreds of clocks of
+commerce, and it isn't for me to go into the subject of
+grandfather-clocks, bracket clocks, and banjo clocks, when there are so
+many excellent books on the subject. I plead for the graceful clocks of
+old France, the _objets d'art_ so lovingly designed by the master
+sculptors of the Eighteenth Century. I plead particularly for the wall
+clocks that are so conspicuous in all good French houses, and so unusual
+in our own country.
+
+[Illustration: A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+Just as surely as our fine old English and American clocks have their
+proper niches, so the French clocks belong inevitably in certain rooms.
+You may never find just the proper clock for this room, but that is your
+fault. There are hundreds of lovely old models available. Why shouldn't
+some manufacturer have them reproduced?
+
+I feel that if women generally knew how very decorative and
+distinguished a good wall clock may be, the demand would soon create a
+supply of these beautiful objects. It would be quite simple for the
+manufacturers to make them from the old models. The late Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan gave to the Metropolitan Museum the magnificent Hoentschel
+collection of _objets d'art_, hoping to stimulate the interest of
+American designers and artisans in the fine models of the Seventeenth
+and Eighteenth Centuries. There are some very fine examples of wall
+clocks in this collection which might be copied in carved wood by the
+students of manual training schools, if the manufacturers refuse to be
+interested.
+
+Wall clocks first came into France in the early part of the Seventeenth
+Century, and are a part of the furnishing of all the fine old French
+houses. A number of the most interesting clocks I have picked up were
+the wooden models which served for the fine bronze clocks of the
+Eighteenth Century. The master designer first worked out his idea in
+wood before making the clock in bronze, and the wooden models were sold
+for a song. I have one of these clocks in my dining-room. It is as much
+a part of the wall decoration as the lights or the mirrors.
+
+The wall clocks I like best are fixed directly on the wall, the dial
+glass opening so that the clock may be wound with a key. You will notice
+such a clock in the photograph of one of my dining-rooms. This fine old
+clock is given the place of honor in the main panel of the wall, above
+the console table. I often use such a clock in a dining-room, just as I
+use the fine old French mantel clocks in my drawing-rooms. You will
+observe a very quaint example of the Empire period in the illustration
+of my drawing-room mantel. This clock is happily placed, for the marble
+of the mantel, the lighting-fixtures near by and the fine little bronze
+busts are all in key with the exquisite workmanship of the clock. In
+another room in my house, a bedroom, there is a beautiful little French
+clock that is the only object allowed on the mantel shelf. The beautiful
+carving of the mirror frame back of it seems a part of the clock, a
+deliberate background for it. This is one of the many wall clocks which
+were known as bracket clocks, the bracket being as carefully designed
+and carved as the clock itself. Most of the clocks we see nowadays grew
+out of the old bracket models.
+
+The American clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those
+jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be
+still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are very
+much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland,
+and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long,
+exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall
+clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine _bas reliefs_, and
+of even greater decorative importance.
+
+Every room in my house has its clock, and to me these magic little
+instruments have an almost human interest. They seem always friendly to
+me, whether they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem
+never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks
+so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where
+there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive,
+exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled "French" and sold at
+a great price in the shops. Somehow, one never expects a clock of this
+kind to keep time--it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it
+wheezes, or gasps, or makes a dreadful noise, and invariably stops at
+half-past three.
+
+I am such a crank about good clocks that I take my own with me, even on
+a railway train. I think I have the smallest clock in the world which
+strikes the hours. There are many tiny clocks made which strike if one
+touches a spring, but my clock always strikes of itself. Cartier, who
+designed and made this extraordinary timepiece, assures me that he has
+never seen so small a clock which strikes. It is very pleasant to have
+this little clock with its friendly chime with me when I am in some
+desolate hotel or some strange house.
+
+There are traveling clocks in small leather cases which can be bought
+very cheaply indeed now, and one of these clocks should be a part of
+everyone's traveling equipment. The humble nickeled watch with a leather
+case is infinitely better than the pretentious clocks, monstrosities of
+marble and brass and bad taste.
+
+
+A CORNER FOR WRITING.
+
+One of my greatest pleasures, when I am planning the furnishing of a
+house, is the selection and equipment of the necessary writing-tables.
+Every room in every house has its own suggestion for an original
+treatment, and I enjoy working out a plan for a writing-corner that will
+offer maximum of convenience, and beauty and charm, for in these busy
+days we need all these qualities for the inspiration of a pleasant note.
+You see, I believe in proper writing-tables, just as I believe in proper
+chairs. I have so many desks in my own house that are in constant use,
+perhaps I can give you my theory best by recording my actual practice of
+it.
+
+I have spoken of the necessity of a desk in the hallway, and indeed, I
+have said much of desks in other rooms, but I have still to emphasize my
+belief in the importance of the equipment of desks.
+
+Of course, one needs a desk in one's own room. Here there is infinite
+latitude, for there are dozens of delightful possibilities. I always
+place my desks near the windows. If the wall space is filled, I place an
+oblong table at right angles to a window, and there you are. In my own
+private sitting-room I have a long desk so placed, in my own house. In a
+guest-room I furnished recently, I used a common oblong table of no
+value, painting the legs a soft green and covering it with a piece of
+sage-green damask. This is one of the nicest writing-tables I know, and
+it could be copied for a song. The equipment of it is what counts. I
+used two lamps, dull green jars with mauve silk shades, a dark green
+leather rack for paper and envelopes, and a great blotter pad that will
+save the damask from ink-spots. The small things are of green pottery
+and crystal. In a young girl's bedroom I used a sweet little desk of
+painted wood, a desk that has the na�ve charm of innocence. I do hope it
+inspires the proper love-letters.
+
+I always make provision for writing in dressing-rooms--a sliding shelf
+in the dressing-table, and a shallow drawer for pencils and paper--and I
+have adequate writing facilities in the servants' quarters, so that
+there may be no excuse for forgetting orders or messages. This seems to
+me absolutely necessary in our modern domestic routine: it is part of
+the business principle we borrow from the efficient office routine of
+our men folk. The dining-room and the bathrooms are the only places
+where the writing-table, in one form or another, isn't required.
+
+I like the long flat tables or small desks much better than the huge
+roll-top affairs or the heavy desks built after the fashion of the old
+_armoire_. If the room is large enough, a secretary after an Eighteenth
+Century model will be a beautiful and distinguished piece of furniture.
+I have such a secretary in my own sitting-room, a chest of drawers
+surmounted by a cabinet of shelves with glass doors, but I do not use it
+as a desk. I use the shelves for my old china and porcelains, and the
+drawers for pamphlets and the thousand and one things that are too
+flimsily bound for bookshelves. Of course, if one has a large
+correspondence and uses one's home as an office, it is better to have a
+large desk with a top which closes. I prefer tables, and I have them
+made big enough to hold all my papers, big enough to spread out on.
+
+There are dozens of enchanting small desks that are exactly right for
+guest-rooms, the extremely feminine desks that come from old France. One
+of the most fascinating ones is copied from a _bureau de toilette_ that
+belonged to Marie Antoinette. In those days the writing of letters and
+the making of a toilet went together. This old desk has a drawer filled
+with compartments for toilet things, powders and perfumes and patches,
+and above this vanity-drawer there is the usual shelf for writing, and
+compartments for paper and letters. The desk itself suggests brocade
+flounces and powdered hair, so exquisitely is it constructed of
+tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many colors.
+
+Then there are the small desks made by modern furniture-makers, just
+large enough to hold a blotting-pad, a paper rack, and a pair of
+candlesticks. There is always a shallow drawer for writing materials.
+Such a desk may be decorated to match the chintzes of any small bedroom.
+
+If it isn't possible for you to have a desk in each guest-room, there
+should be a little writing-room somewhere apart from the family
+living-room. If you live in one of those old-fashioned houses
+intersected by great halls with much wasted space on the upper floors,
+you may make a little writing-room of one of the hall-ends, and screen
+it from the rest of the hall with a high standing screen. If you have a
+house of the other extreme type, a city house with little hall bedrooms,
+use one of these little rooms for a writing-room. You will require a
+desk well stocked with stationery, and all the things the writer will
+need; a shelf of address books and reference books--with a dictionary,
+of course; many pens and pencils and fresh blotters, and so forth. Of
+course, you may have ever so many more things, but it isn't necessary.
+Better a quiet corner with one chair and a desk, than the elaborate
+library with its superb fittings where people come and go.
+
+Given the proper desk, the furnishing of it is most important. The
+blotting-pad should be heavy enough to keep its place, and the
+blotting-paper should be constantly renewed. I know of nothing more
+offensive than dusty, ink-splotched blotting-paper. There are very good
+sets to be had, now, made of brass, bronze, carved wood, porcelain,
+silver or crystal, and there are leather boxes for holding stationery
+and leather portfolios to be had in all colors. I always add to these
+furnishings a good pair of scissors, stationery marked with the house
+address or the monogram of the person to whom the desk especially
+belongs, an almanac, and a _pincushion!_ My pincushions are as much a
+part of the equipment of a desk as the writing things, and they aren't
+frilly, ugly things. They are covered with brocade or damask or some
+stuff used elsewhere in the room and I assure you they are most useful.
+I find that pins are almost as necessary as pens in my correspondence;
+they are much more expedient than pigeon-holes.
+
+In country houses I think it shows forethought and adds greatly to the
+comfort of the guests to have a small framed card showing the arrival
+and departure of trains and of mails, especially if the house is a great
+distance from the railway-station. This saves much inquiry and time. In
+the paper rack there should be not only stamped paper bearing the
+address of the house, telephone number, and so forth, but also telegraph
+blanks, post cards, stamps, and so forth. Very often people who have
+beautiful places have post cards made showing various views of the
+house and garden.
+
+Test the efficiency of your writing-tables occasionally by using them
+yourself. This is the only way to be sure of the success of anything in
+your house--try it yourself.
+
+
+STOOLS AND BENCHES.
+
+I often wonder, when I grope my way through drawing-rooms crowded and
+jammed with chairs and sofas, why more women do not realize the
+advantages of stools and benches. A well-made stool is doubly useful: it
+may be used to sit upon or it may be used to hold a tray, or whatever
+you please. It is really preferable to a small table because it is not
+always full of a nondescript collection of ornaments, which seems to be
+the fate of all small tables. It has also the advantage of being low
+enough to push under a large table, when need be, and it occupies much
+less space than a chair apparently (not actually) because it has no
+back. I have stools, or benches, or both in all my rooms, because I find
+them convenient and easily moved about, but I have noticed an amusing
+thing: Whenever a fat man comes to see me, he always sits on the
+smallest stool in the room. I have many fat friends, and many stools,
+but invariably the fattest man gravitates to the smallest stool.
+
+The stools I like best for the drawing-room are the fine old ones,
+covered with needlework or brocade, but there are many simpler ones of
+plain wood with cane insets that are very good for other rooms. Then
+there are the long _banquettes_, or benches, which are so nice in
+drawing-rooms and hallways and nicest of all in a ballroom. Indeed, a
+ballroom needs no other movable furniture; given plenty of these long
+benches. They may be of the very simplest description, but when used in
+a fine room should be covered with a good damask or velvet or some rich
+fabric.
+
+I have a fine Eighteenth Century _banquette_ in my drawing-room, the
+frame being carved and gilded and the seat covered with Venetian red
+velvet. You will find these gilded stools all over England. There are a
+number at Hampton Court Palace. At Hardwick there are both long and
+short stools, carved with the dolphin's scroll and covered with
+elaborate stuffs. The older the English house, the more stools are in
+evidence. In the early Sixteenth Century joint stools were used in every
+room. In the bedrooms they served the purposes of small tables and
+chairs as well. There are ever so many fine old walnut stools and the
+lower stools used for bed-steps to be bought in London shops that make a
+specialty of old English furniture, and reproductions of them may be
+bought in the better American shops. I often wonder why we do not see
+more bedside stools. They are so convenient, even though the bed be only
+moderately high from the floor. Many of mine are only six inches high,
+about the height of a fat floor cushion.
+
+[Illustration: A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE]
+
+Which reminds me: the floor cushion, made of the same velvet made for
+carpeting, is a modern luxury we can't afford to ignore. Lately I have
+seen such beautiful ones, about three feet long and one foot wide,
+covered with tapestry, with great gold tassels at the corners. The
+possibilities of the floor cushion idea are limitless. They take the
+place of the usual footstool in front of the boudoir easy chair, or
+beside the day bed or _chaise-longue_, or beside the large bed, for that
+matter. They are no longer unsanitary, because with vacuum cleaners they
+may be kept as clean as chair cushions. They may be made to fit into
+almost any room. I saw a half dozen of them in a dining-room, recently,
+small square hard ones, covered with the gold colored velvet of the
+carpet. They were not more than four or five inches thick, but that is
+the ideal height for an under-the-table cushion. Try it.
+
+
+PORCELAIN STOVES.
+
+When the Colony Club was at last finished we discovered that the furnace
+heat did not go up to the roof-garden, and immediately we had to find
+some way of heating this very attractive and very necessary space. Even
+from the beginning we were sadly crowded for room, so popular was the
+club-house, and the roof-garden was much needed for the overflow. We
+conferred with architects, builders and plumbers, and found it would be
+necessary to spend about seven thousand dollars and to close the club
+for about two months in order to carry the heating arrangements up to
+the roof. This was disastrous for a new club, already heavily in arrears
+and running under heavy expenses. I worried and worried over the
+situation, and suddenly one night an idea came to me: I remembered some
+great porcelain stoves I had seen in Germany. I felt that these stoves
+were exactly what we needed, and that we should be rescued from an
+embarrassing situation without much trouble or expense. I was just
+leaving for Europe, so I hurried on to the manufacturers of these
+wonderful stoves and found, after much difficulty, a model that seemed
+practicable, and not too huge in proportion. The model, unfortunately,
+was white with gilded garlands, far too French and magnificent for our
+sun-room. I persuaded them to make two of the stoves for me in green
+Majolica, with garlands of soft-toned flowers, and finally we achieved
+just the stoves for the room.
+
+But my troubles were not over: When the stoves reached New York, we
+tried to take them up to the roof, and found them too large for the
+stairs. We couldn't have them lifted up by pulleys, because the glass
+walls of the roof garden and the fretwork at the top of the roof made it
+impossible for the men to get "purchase" for their pulleys. Finally we
+persuaded a gentleman who lived next door to let us take them over the
+roof of his house, and the deed was accomplished. The stoves were equal
+to the occasion. They heated the roof garden perfectly, and were of
+great decorative value.
+
+Encouraged by this success I purchased another porcelain stove, this
+time a cream-colored porcelain one, and used it in a hallway in an
+uptown house. It was the one thing needed to give the hall great
+distinction. Since then I have used a number of these stoves, and I
+wonder why our American manufacturers do not make them. They are
+admirable for heating difficult rooms--outdoor porches, and draughty
+halls, and rooms not heated by furnaces. The stoves are becoming harder
+and harder to find, though I was fortunate enough to purchase one last
+year from the Marchioness of Anglesey, who was giving up her home at
+Versailles. This stove was of white Majolica with little Loves in terra
+cotta adorning it. The new ones are less attractive, but it would be
+perfectly simple to have any tile manufacturer copy an old one, given
+the design.
+
+
+THE CHARM OF INDOOR FOUNTAINS.
+
+Wall fountains as we know them are introduced into our modern houses for
+their decorative interest and for the joy they give us, the joyous sound
+and color of falling water. We use them because they are beautiful and
+cheerful, but originally they had a most definite purpose. They were
+built into the walls of the dining-halls in medieval times, and used for
+washing the precious plate.
+
+If you look into the history of any _objet d'art_ you will find that it
+was first used for a purpose. All the superb masterly things that have
+come to us had logical beginnings. It has remained for the thoughtless
+designer of our times to produce things of no use and no meaning. The
+old designers decorated the small objects of daily use as faithfully as
+they decorated the greater things, the wall spaces and ceilings and
+great pieces of furniture, and so this little wall basin which began in
+such a homely way soon became a beautiful thing.
+
+Europe has countless small fountains built for interior walls and for
+small alcoves and indoor conservatories, but we are just beginning to
+use them in America. American sculptors are doing such notable work,
+however, that we shall soon plan our indoor fountains as carefully as we
+plan our fireplaces. The fact that our houses are heated mechanically
+has not lessened our appreciation of an open fire, and running water
+brought indoors has the same animate charm.
+
+[Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH]
+
+[Illustration: MR. JAMES DEERING'S WALL FOUNTAIN]
+
+I am showing a picture of the wall fountain in the entrance hall of my
+own New York house in East Fifty-fifth Street. I have had this wall
+fountain built as part of the architectural detail of the room, with a
+background of paneled mirrors. It spills over into a marble curbed pool
+where fat orange-colored goldfish live. I keep the fountain banked with
+flowers. You can imagine the pleasure of leaving the dusty city
+streets and entering this cool, pleasant entrance hall.
+
+Our modern use of indoor fountains is perfectly legitimate: we use them
+to bring the atmosphere of outdoors in. In country houses we use
+fountains in our gardens, but in the city we have no gardens, and so we
+are very wise to bring in the outdoor things that make our lives a
+little more gay and informal. The more suggestive of out-of-doors the
+happier is the effect of the sun room. Occasionally one sees a rare
+house where a glass enclosed garden opens from one of the living-rooms.
+There is a house in Nineteenth Street that has such an enclosed garden,
+built around a wall fountain. The garden opens out of the great
+two-storied music-room. Lofty windows flank a great door, and fill the
+end of the room with a luminous composition of leaded glass. Through the
+door you enter the garden, with its tiled floor, its glass ceiling, and
+its low brick retaining walls. The wall fountain is placed exactly in
+front of the great door, and beneath it there is a little semi-circular
+pool bordered with plants and glittering with goldfish. Evergreens are
+banked against the brick walls, and flat reliefs are hung just under the
+glass ceiling. The garden is quite small, but takes its place as an
+important part of the room. It rivals in interest the massive Gothic
+fireplace, with its huge logs and feudal fire irons.
+
+The better silversmiths are doing much to encourage the development of
+indoor fountains. They display the delightful fountains of our young
+American sculptors, fountains that would make any garden room notable.
+There are so many of these small bronze fountains, with Pan piping his
+irresistible tune of outdoors; children playing with frogs or geese or
+lizards or turtles; gay little figures prancing in enchanted rings of
+friendly beasties. Why don't we make use of them?
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The House in Good Taste, by Elsie de Wolfe</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House in Good Taste, by Elsie de Wolfe</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The House in Good Taste</p>
+<p>Author: Elsie de Wolfe</p>
+<p>Release Date: January 17, 2005  [eBook #14715]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Melissa Er-Raqabi,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (https://www.pgdp.net)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>The House in Good Taste</h1>
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>Elsie de Wolfe</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<h3>Illustrated with photographs
+in color and black and white</h3>
+
+<div class="center">
+<img src="images/001.jpg"
+alt="decoration" title="decoration" />
+</div>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<h6>New York<br />
+The Century Co.</h6>
+
+<h4>1913</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS" />CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><a href="#I"><b>I</b></a></td>
+  <td align='left'>THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#II"><b>II</b></a></td><td align='left'>SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#III"><b>III</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IV"><b>IV</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#V"><b>V</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE TREATMENT OF WALLS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VI"><b>VI</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VII"><b>VII</b></a></td><td align='left'>OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VIII"><b>VIII</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IX"><b>IX</b></a></td><td align='left'>HALLS AND STAIRCASES</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#X"><b>X</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE DRAWING-ROOM</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XI"><b>XI</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE LIVING-ROOM</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XII"><b>XII</b></a></td><td align='left'>SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XIII"><b>XIII</b></a></td><td align='left'>A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XIV"><b>XIV</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE BEDROOM</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XV"><b>XV</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XVI"><b>XVI</b></a></td><td align='left'>THE SMALL APARTMENT</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XVII"><b>XVII</b></a></td><td align='left'>REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XVIII"><b>XVIII</b></a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>THE ART OF TRELLIAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XIX"><b>XIX</b></a></td><td align='left'>VILLA TRIANON</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#XX"><b>XX</b></a></td><td align='left'>NOTES ON MANY THINGS</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
+<br />
+<br />
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0329">Elsie de Wolfe</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0330">In this hall, simplicity, suitability and proportion are observed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0331">Mennoyer drawings and old mirrors set in panelings</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0332">A portrait by Nattier inset above a fine old mantel</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0333">The Washington Irving house was delightfully rambling</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0334">A Washington Irving House bedroom</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0335">Miss Marbury's bedroom</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0336">The fore-court and entrance of the Fifty-fifth Street house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0337">A painted wall broken into panels by narrow moldings</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0338">A wall paper of Elizabethan design with oak furniture</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0339">The scheme of this room grew from the jars on the mantel</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0340">A Louis Seize bedroom in rose and blue and cream</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0341">The writing corner of a chintz bedroom</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0342">Black chintz used in a dressing-room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0343">Printed linen curtains over rose colored silk</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0344">Straight hangings of rose and yellow shot silk</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0345">Muslin glass curtains in the Washington Irving house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0346">Here are many lighting fixtures harmoniously assembled in a drawing-room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0347">Detail of a fine old French fixture of hand wrought metal</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0348">Lighting fixtures inspired by Adam mirrors</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0349">The staircase in the Bayard Thayer house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0350">The drawing-room should be intimate in spirit</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0351">The fine formality of well-placed paneling</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0352">The living-room in the C.W. Harkness house at Morristown, New Jersey</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0353">Miss Anne Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0354">Miss Morgan's Louis XVI <i>lit de repos</i></a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0355">A Georgian dining-room in the William Iselin house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0356-a">Mrs. Ogden Armour's Chinese paper screen</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0356-b">Mrs. James Warren Lane's painted dining-table</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0357">The private dining-room in the Colony Club</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0358">An old painted bed of the Louis XVI period</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0359">Miss Crocker's Louis XVI bed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0360">A Colony Club bedroom</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0361">Mauve chintz in a dull green room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0362-a">Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer's Chinoiserie chintz bed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0362-b">Mrs. Payne Whitney's green feather chintz bed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0363">My own bedroom is built around a Breton bed</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0364">Furniture painted with chintz designs</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0365">Miss Morgan's Louis XVI dressing-room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0366">Miss Marbury's chintz-hung dressing-table</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0367">A corner of my own boudoir</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0368">Built-in bookshelves in a small room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0369">Mrs. C.W. Harkness's cabinet for <i>objets d'art</i></a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0370-a">A banquette of the Louis XV period covered with needlework</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0370-b">A Chinese Chippendale sofa covered with chintz</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0371">The trellis room in the Colony Club</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0372">Mrs. Ormond G. Smith's trellis room at Center Island, New York</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0373">Looking over the <i>tapis vert</i> to the trellis</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0374">A fine old console in the Villa Trianon</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0375">The broad terrace connects house and garden</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0376">A proper writing-table in the drawing-room</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0377">A cream-colored porcelain stove in a New York house</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0378-a">Mr. James Deering's wall fountain</a></p>
+<p class="itoc"><a href="#h0378-b">Fountain in the trellis room of Mrs. Ormond G. Smith</a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0329" id="h0329"></a>
+<img src="images/h0329.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="Elsie de Wolfe"
+title="Elsie de Wolfe" />
+<p class="center"><b>Elsie de Wolfe</b></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I" />I</h2>
+<p><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" /></p>
+
+<h2>THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women
+throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it
+what you will&mdash;awakening, development, American Renaissance&mdash;it is a
+most startling and promising condition of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>It is no longer possible, even to people of only faintly &aelig;sthetic
+tastes, to buy chairs merely to sit upon or a clock merely that it
+should tell the time. Home-makers are determined to have their houses,
+outside and in, correct according to the best standards. What do we mean
+by the best standards? Certainly not those of the useless, overcharged
+house of the average American millionaire, who builds and furnishes his
+home with a hopeless disregard of tradition. We must accept the
+standards that the artists and the architects accept, the standards that
+have come to us from those exceedingly rational people, our ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>Our ancestors built for stability and use, and so their simple houses
+were excellent examples of architecture.<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" /> Their spacious, uncrowded
+interiors were usually beautiful. Houses and furniture fulfilled their
+uses, and if an object fulfils its mission the chances are that it is
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>It is all very well to plan our ideal house or apartment, our individual
+castle in Spain, but it isn't necessary to live among intolerable
+furnishings just because we cannot realize our castle. There never was a
+house so bad that it couldn't be made over into something worth while.
+We shall all be very much happier when we learn to transform the things
+we have into a semblance of our ideal.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, may we go about accomplishing our ideal?</p>
+
+<p>By letting it go!</p>
+
+<p>By forgetting this vaguely pleasing dream, this evidence of our smug
+vanity, and making ourselves ready for a new ideal.</p>
+
+<p>By considering the body of material from which it is good sense to
+choose when we have a house to decorate.</p>
+
+<p>By studying the development of the modern house, its romantic tradition
+and architectural history.</p>
+
+<p>By taking upon ourselves the duty of self-taught lessons of sincerity
+and common sense, and suitability.</p>
+
+<p>By learning what is meant by color and form and line, harmony and
+contrast and proportion.</p>
+
+<p>When we are on familiar terms with our tools, and feel our vague ideas
+clearing into definite inspiration, <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />then we are ready to talk about
+ideals. We are fit to approach the full art of home-making.</p>
+
+<p>We take it for granted that every woman is interested in houses&mdash;that
+she either has a house in course of construction, or dreams of having
+one, or has had a house long enough wrong to wish it right. And we take
+it for granted that this American home is always the woman's home: a man
+may build and decorate a beautiful house, but it remains for a woman to
+make a home of it for him. It is the personality of the mistress that
+the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how
+much happiness they may find there.</p>
+
+<p>You will express yourself in your house, whether you want to or not, so
+you must make up your mind to a long preparatory discipline. You may
+have only one house to furnish in your life-time, possibly, so be
+careful and go warily. Therefore, you must select for your architect a
+man who isn't too determined to have <i>his</i> way. It is a fearful mistake
+to leave the entire planning of your home to a man whose social
+experience may be limited, for instance, for he can impose on you his
+conception of your tastes with a damning permanency and emphasis. I once
+heard a certain Boston architect say that he taught his clients to be
+ladies and gentlemen. He couldn't, you know. All he could do is to set
+the front door so that it would reprove them if they weren't!</p>
+
+<p>Who does not know, for instance, those mistaken <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />people whose houses
+represent their own or their architects' hasty visits to the fine old
+<i>ch&acirc;teaux</i> of the Loire, or the palaces of Versailles, or the fine old
+houses of England, or the gracious villas of Italy? We must avoid such
+aspiring architects, and visualize our homes not as so many specially
+designated rooms and convenient closets, but as individual expressions
+of ourselves, of the future we plan, of our dreams for our children. The
+ideal house is the house that has been long planned for, long awaited.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0330" id="h0330"></a>
+<img src="images/h0330.jpg" width="70%"
+alt="IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE OBSERVED"
+title="IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE OBSERVED" />
+<p class="center"><b>IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE OBSERVED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Fortunately for us, our best architects are so very good that we are
+better than safe if we take our problems to them. These men associate
+with themselves the hundred young architects who are eager to prove
+themselves on small houses. The idea that it is economical to be your
+own architect and trust your house to a building contractor is a
+mistaken, and most expensive, one. The surer you are of your architect's
+common sense and professional ability, the surer you may be that your
+house will be economically efficient. He will not only plan a house that
+will meet the needs of your family, but he will give you inspiration for
+its interior. He will concern himself with the moldings, the
+light-openings, the door-handles and hinges, the unconsidered things
+that make or mar your house. Select for your architect a man you'd like
+for a friend. Perhaps he will be, before the house comes true. If you
+are both sincere, if you both purpose to have the best thing you can
+afford, the house will express the<a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />
+<a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" /><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" />genius and character of your
+architect and the personality and character of yourself, as a great
+painting suggests both painter and sitter. The hard won triumph of a
+well-built house means many compromises, but the ultimate satisfaction
+is worth everything.</p>
+
+<p>I do not purpose, in this book, to go into the historic traditions of
+architecture and decoration&mdash;there are so many excellent books it were
+absurd to review them&mdash;but I do wish to trace briefly the development of
+the modern house, the woman's house, to show you that all that is
+intimate and charming in the home as we know it has come through the
+unmeasured influence of women. Man conceived the great house with its
+parade rooms, its <i>grands appartements</i> but woman found eternal parade
+tiresome, and planned for herself little retreats, rooms small enough
+for comfort and intimacy. In short, man made the house: woman went him
+one better and made of it a home.</p>
+
+<p>The virtues of simplicity and reticence in form first came into being,
+as nearly as we can tell, in the <i>Grotta</i>, the little studio-like
+apartment of Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, away back in
+1496. The Marchioness made of this little studio her personal retreat.
+Here she brought many of the treasures of the Italian Renaissance.
+Really, simplicity and reticence were the last things she considered,
+but the point is that they were considered at all in such a restless,
+passionate age. Later, in 1522, she established the <i>Paradiso</i>, a suite
+of apartments which she occupied after her hus<a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />band's death. So you see
+the idea of a woman planning her own apartment is pretty old, after all.</p>
+
+<p>The next woman who took a stand that revealed genuine social
+consciousness was that half-French, half-Italian woman, Catherine de
+Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet. She seceded from court because the
+court was swaggering and hurly-burly, with florid Marie-de-Medicis at
+its head. And with this recession, she began to express in her conduct,
+her feeling, her conversation, and, finally, in her house, her awakened
+consciousness of beauty and reserve, of simplicity and suitability.</p>
+
+<p>This was the early Seventeenth Century, mind you, when the main salons
+of the French houses were filled with such institutions as rows of red
+chairs and boxed state beds. She undertook, first of all, to have a
+light and gracefully curving stairway leading to her salon instead of
+supplanting it. She grouped her rooms with a lovely diversity of size
+and purpose, whereas before they had been vast, stately halls with
+cubbies hardby for sleeping. She gave the bedroom its alcove, boudoir,
+ante-chamber, and even its bath, and then as decorator she supplanted
+the old feudal yellow and red with her famous silver-blue. She covered
+blue chairs with silver bullion. She fashioned long, tenderly colored
+curtains of novel shades. Reticence was always in evidence, but it was
+the reticence of elegance. It was through Madame de Rambouillet that the
+armchair received its final distribution of yielding parts, <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />and began
+to express the comfort of soft padded backward slope, of width and
+warmth and color.</p>
+
+<p>It was all very heavy, very grave, very angular, this H&ocirc;tel Rambouillet,
+but it was devised for and consecrated to conversation, considered a new
+form of privilege! The <i>pr&eacute;cieuses</i> in their later jargon called chairs
+&quot;the indispensables of conversation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I have been at some length to give a picture of Madame de Rambouillet's
+h&ocirc;tel because it really is the earliest modern house. There, where the
+society that frequented it was analyzing its soul in dialogue and long
+platonic discussion that would seem stark enough to us, the word which
+it invented for itself was <i>urbanit&eacute;</i>&mdash;the coinage of one of its own
+foremost figures.</p>
+
+<p>It is unprofitable to follow on into the grandeurs of Louis XIV, if one
+hopes to find an advance there in truth-telling architecture. At the end
+of that splendid official success the squalor of Versailles was
+unspeakable, its stenches unbearable. In spite of its size the Palace
+was known as the most comfortless house in Europe. After the death of
+its owner society, in a fit of madness, plunged into the <i>rocaille</i>.
+When the restlessness of Louis XV could no longer find moorings in this
+brilliancy, there came into being little houses called <i>folies</i>, garden
+hermitages for the privileged. Here we find Madame de Pompadour in
+calicoes, in a wild garden, bare-foot, playing as a milkmaid, or seated
+in a little gray-white interior with painted wooden furniture, having
+her supper on an <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />earthen-ware service that has replaced old silver and
+gold. Amorous alcoves lost their painted Loves and took on gray and
+white decorations. The casinos of little <i>com&eacute;diennes</i> did not glitter
+any more. English sentiment began to bedim Gallic eyes, and so what we
+know as the Louis XVI style was born.</p>
+
+<p>And so, at that moment, the idea of the modern house came into its own,
+and it could advance&mdash;as an idea&mdash;hardly any further. For with all the
+intrepidity and passion of the later Eighteenth Century in its search
+for beauty, for all the magic-making of convenience and ingenuity of the
+Nineteenth Century, the fundamentals have changed but little. And now we
+of the Twentieth Century can only add material comforts and an
+expression of our personality. We raise the house beyond the reach of
+squalor, we give it measured heat, we give it water in abundance and
+perfect sanitation and light everywhere, we give it ventilation less
+successfully than we might, and finally we give it the human quality
+that is so modern. There are no dungeons in the good modern house, no
+disgraceful lairs for servants, no horrors of humidity.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0331" id="h0331"></a>
+<img src="images/h0331.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS"
+title="MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS" />
+<p class="center"><b>MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And so we women have achieved a house, luminous with kind purpose
+throughout. It is finished&mdash;that is our difficulty! We inherit it, all
+rounded in its perfection, consummate in its charms, but it is finished,
+and what can we do about a thing that is finished I Doesn't it seem that
+we are back in the old position of Isabella d'Este&mdash;eager, predatory,
+and &quot;thingy&quot;?<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" /><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" /> <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />And isn't it time for us to pull up short lest we
+sidestep the goal? We are so sure of a thousand appetites we are in
+danger of passing by the amiable commonplaces. We find ourselves
+dismayed in old houses that look too simple. We must stop and ask
+ourselves questions, and, if necessary, plan for ourselves little
+retreats until we can find ourselves again.</p>
+
+<p>What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes on within it,
+a house that gives us beauty as we understand it&mdash;and beauty of a nobler
+kind that we may grow to understand, a house that <i>looks</i> amenity.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose you have obtained this sort of wisdom&mdash;a sane viewpoint. I think
+it will give you as great a satisfaction to re-arrange your house with
+what you have as to re-build, re-decorate. The results may not be so
+charming, but you can learn by them. You can take your indiscriminate
+inheritance of Victorian rosewood of Eastlake walnut and cocobolo, your
+pickle-and-plum colored Morris furniture, and make a civilized interior
+by placing it right, and putting detail at the right points. Your sense
+of the pleasure and meaning of human intercourse will be clear in your
+disposition of your best things, in your elimination of your worst ones.</p>
+
+<p>When you have emptied the tables of <i>rubbish</i> so that you can put
+<i>things</i> down on them at need, placed them in a light where you can
+write on them in repose, or isolated real works of art in the middle of
+them; when you have set your dropsical sofas where you want them <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />for
+talk, or warmth and reading; when you can see the fire from the bed in
+your sleeping-room, and dress near your bath; if this sort of sense of
+your rights is acknowledged in your rearrangement, your rooms will
+always have meaning, in the end. If you like only the things in a chair
+that have meaning, and grow to hate the rest you will, without any other
+instruction, prefer&mdash;the next time you are buying&mdash;a good Louis XVI
+<i>fauteuil</i> to a stuffed velvet chair. You will never again be guilty of
+the errors of meaningless magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>To most of us in America who must perforce lead workaday lives, the
+absence of beauty is a very distinct lack. I think, indeed, that the
+present awakening has come to stay, and that before very long, we shall
+have simple houses with fireplaces that draw, electric lights in the
+proper places, comfortable and sensible furniture, and not a gilt-legged
+spindle-shanked table or chair anywhere. This may be a decorator's
+optimistic dream, but let us all hope that it may come true.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II" /><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />II</h2>
+
+<h2>SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>When I am asked to decorate a new house, my first thought is
+suitability. My next thought is proportion. Always I keep in mind the
+importance of simplicity. First, I study the people who are to live in
+this house, and their needs, as thoroughly as I studied my parts in the
+days when I was an actress. For the time-being I really am the
+chatelaine of the house. When I have thoroughly familiarized myself with
+my &quot;part,&quot; I let that go for the time, and consider the proportion of
+the house and its rooms. It is much more important that the wall
+openings, windows, doors, and fireplaces should be in the right place
+and should balance one another than that there should be expensive and
+extravagant hangings and carpets.</p>
+
+<p>My first thought in laying out a room is the placing of the electric
+light openings. How rarely does one find the lights in the right place
+in our over-magnificent hotels and residences! One arrives from a
+journey tired out and travel-stained, only to find oneself facing a
+mirror as far removed from the daylight as possible, with the artificial
+lights directly behind one, or high in the ceiling in the center of the
+room. In <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />my houses I always see that each room shall have its lights
+placed for the comfort of its occupants. There must be lights in
+sheltered corners of the fireplace, by the writing-desk, on each side of
+the dressing-table, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>Then I consider the heating of the room. We Americans are slaves to
+steam heat. We ruin our furniture, our complexions, and our dispositions
+by this enervating atmosphere of too much heat. In my own houses I have
+a fireplace in each room, and I burn wood in it. There is a
+heating-system in the basement of my house, but it is under perfect
+control. I prefer the normal heat of sunshine and open fires. But,
+granted that open fires are impossible in all your rooms, do arrange in
+the beginning that the small rooms of your house may not be overheated.
+It is a distinct irritation to a person who loves clean air to go into a
+room where a flood of steam heat pours out of every corner. There is
+usually no way to control it unless you turn it off altogether. I once
+had the temerity to do this in a certain hotel room where there was a
+cold and cheerless empty fireplace. I summoned a reluctant chambermaid,
+only to be told that the chimney had never had a fire in it and the
+proprietor would rather not take such a risk!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0332" id="h0332"></a>
+<img src="images/h0332.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL"
+title="A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL" />
+<p class="center"><b>A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Perhaps the guest in your house would not be so troublesome, but don't
+tempt her! If you have a fireplace, see that it is in working order.<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />
+<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" /><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />We are sure to judge a woman in whose house we find ourselves for the
+first time, by her surroundings. We judge her temperament, her habits,
+her inclinations, by the interior of her home. We may talk of the
+weather, but we are looking at the furniture. We attribute vulgar
+qualities to those who are content to live in ugly surroundings. We
+endow with refinement and charm the person who welcomes us in a
+delightful room, where the colors blend and the proportions are as
+perfect as in a picture. After all, what surer guarantee can there be of
+a woman's character, natural and cultivated, inherent and inherited,
+than taste? It is a compass that never errs. If a woman has taste she
+may have faults, follies, fads, she may err, she may be as human and
+feminine as she pleases, but she will never cause a scandal!</p>
+
+<p>How can we develop taste? Some of us, alas, can never develop it,
+because we can never let go of shams. We must learn to recognize
+suitability, simplicity and proportion, and apply our knowledge to our
+needs. I grant you we may never fully appreciate the full balance of
+proportion, but we can exert our common sense and decide whether a thing
+is suitable; we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is
+simple, and we can train our eyes to recognize good and bad proportion.
+A technical knowledge of architecture is not necessary to know that a
+huge stuffed leather chair in a tiny gold and cream room is unsuitable,
+is hideously complicated, and is as much out of proportion as the
+proverbial bull in the china-shop.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />A woman's environment will speak for her life, whether she likes it or
+not. How can we believe that a woman of sincerity of purpose will hang
+fake &quot;works of art&quot; on her walls, or satisfy herself with imitation
+velvets or silks? How can we attribute taste to a woman who permits
+paper floors and iron ceilings in her house? We are too afraid of the
+restful commonplaces, and yet if we live simple lives, why shouldn't we
+be glad our houses are comfortably commonplace? How much better to have
+plain furniture that is comfortable, simple chintzes printed from old
+blocks, a few good prints, than all the sham things in the world? A
+house is a dead-give-away, anyhow, so you should arrange is so that the
+person who sees your personality in it will be reassured, not
+disconcerted.</p>
+
+<p>Too often, here in America, the most comfortable room in the house is
+given up to a sort of bastard collection of gilt chairs and tables,
+over-elaborate draperies shutting out both light and air, and huge and
+frightful paintings. This style of room, with its museum-like
+furnishings, has been dubbed &quot;Marie Antoinette,&quot; <i>why</i>, no one but the
+American decorator can say. Heaven knows poor Marie Antoinette had
+enough follies to atone for, but certainly she has never been treated
+more shabbily than when they dub these mausoleums &quot;Marie Antoinette
+rooms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remember taking a clever Englishwoman of much taste to see a woman who
+was very proud of her new house. We had seen most of the house when the
+host<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />ess, who had evidently reserved what she considered the best for
+the last, threw open the doors of a large and gorgeous apartment and
+said, &quot;This is my Louis XVI ballroom.&quot; My friend, who had been very
+patient up to that moment, said very quietly, &quot;What makes you think so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Louis XVI thought a salon well furnished with a few fine chairs and a
+table. He wished to be of supreme importance. In the immense salons of
+the Italian palaces there were a few benches and chairs. People then
+wished spaces about them.</p>
+
+<p>Nowadays, people are swamped by their furniture. Too many centuries, too
+many races, crowd one another in a small room. The owner seems
+insignificant among his collections of historical furniture. Whether he
+collects all sorts of things of all periods in one heterogeneous mass,
+or whether he fills his house with the furniture of some one epoch, he
+is not at home in his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The furniture of every epoch records its history. Our ancestors of the
+Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries inherited the troublous times of
+their fathers in their heavy oaken chests. They owned more chests than
+anything else, because a chest could be carried away on the back of a
+sturdy pack mule, when the necessity arose for flight.</p>
+
+<p>People never had time to sit down in the Sixteenth Century. Their
+feverish unrest is recorded in their stiff, backed chairs. It was not
+until the Seventeenth<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" /> Century that they had time to sit down and talk.
+We need no book of history to teach us this&mdash;we have only to observe the
+ample proportions of the arm-chairs of the period.</p>
+
+<p>Our ancestors of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries worked with a
+faith in the permanence of what they created. We have lost this happy
+confidence. We are occupied exclusively with preserving and reproducing.
+We have not succeeded in creating a style adapted to our modern life. It
+is just as well! Our life, with its haste, its nervousness and its
+preoccupations, does not inspire the furniture-makers. We cannot do
+better than to accept the standards of other times, and adapt them to
+our uses.</p>
+
+<p>Why should we American woman run after styles and periods of which we
+know nothing? Why should we not be content with the fundamental things?
+The formal French room is very delightful in the proper place but when
+it is unsuited to the people who must live in it it is as bad as a sham
+room. The woman who wears paste jewels is not so conspicuously wrong as
+the woman who plasters herself with too many real jewels at the wrong
+time!</p>
+
+<p>This is what I am always fighting in people's houses, the unsuitability
+of things. The foolish woman goes about from shop to shop and buys as
+her fancy directs. She sees something &quot;pretty&quot; and buys it, though it
+has no reference either in form or color to the scheme of her house.
+Haven't you been in rooms where there <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />was a jumble of mission
+furniture, satinwood, fine old mahogany and gilt-legged chairs? And it
+is the same with color. A woman says, &quot;Oh, I love blue, let's have
+blue!&quot; regardless of the exposure of her room and the furnishings she
+has already collected. And then when she has treated each one of her
+rooms in a different color, and with a different floor covering, she
+wonders why she is always fretted in going from one room to another.</p>
+
+<p>Don't go about the furnishing of your house with the idea that you must
+select the furniture of some one period and stick to that. It isn't at
+all necessary. There are old English chairs and tables of the Sixteenth
+and Seventeenth Centuries that fit into our quiet, spacious Twentieth
+Century country homes. Lines and fabrics and woods are the things to be
+compared.</p>
+
+<p>There are so many beautiful things that have come to us from other times
+that it should be easy to make our homes beautiful, but I have seen what
+I can best describe as apoplectic chairs whose legs were fashioned like
+aquatic plants; tables upheld by tortured naked women; lighting fixtures
+in the form of tassels, and such horrors, in many houses of to-day under
+the guise of being &quot;authentic period furniture.&quot; Only a connoisseur can
+ever hope to know about the furniture of every period, but all of us can
+easily learn the ear-marks of the furniture that is suited to our homes.
+I shan't talk about ear-marks here, however, because dozens of
+collectors have compiled excellent books that <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />tell you all about curves
+and lines and grain-of-wood and worm-holes. My business is to persuade
+you to use your graceful French sofas and your simple rush bottom New
+England chairs in different rooms&mdash;in other words, to preach to you the
+beauty of suitability. Suitability! <i>Suitability!</i> SUITABILITY!!</p>
+
+<p>It is such a relief to return to the tranquil, simple forms of
+furniture, and to decorate our rooms by a process of elimination. How
+many rooms have I not cleared of junk&mdash;this heterogeneous mass of
+ornamental &quot;period&quot; furniture and bric-a-brac bought to make a room
+&quot;look cozy.&quot; Once cleared of these, the simplicity and dignity of the
+room comes back, the architectural spaces are freed and now stand in
+their proper relation to the furniture. In other words, the architecture
+of the room becomes its decoration.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III" /><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />III</h2>
+
+<h2>THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>I have always lived in enchanting houses. Probably when another woman
+would be dreaming of love affairs, I dream of the delightful houses I
+have lived in. And just as the woman who dreams of many lovers finds one
+dream a little dearer than all the rest, so one of my houses has been
+dearer to me than all the others.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0333" id="h0333"></a>
+<img src="images/h0333.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING"
+title="THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This favorite love of mine is the old Washington Irving house in New
+York, the quaint mansion that gave historic Irving Place its name. For
+twenty years my friend, Elizabeth Marbury, and I made this old house our
+home. Two years ago we reluctantly gave up the old house and moved into
+a more modern one&mdash;also transformed from old into new&mdash;on East
+Fifty-fifth Street. We have also a delightful old house in France, the
+Villa Trianon, at Versailles, where we spend our summers. So you see we
+have had the rare experience of transforming three mistreated old houses
+into very delightful homes.</p>
+
+<p>When we found this old house, so many years ago, we were very young, and
+it is amusing now to think of its evolution. We had so many dreams, so
+many theories, and we tried them all out on the old house.<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" /> And like a
+patient, well-bred maiden aunt, the old house always accepted our
+changes most placidly. There never was such a house!</p>
+
+<p>You could do anything to it, because, fundamentally, it was good. Its
+wall spaces were inviting, its windows were made for framing pleasant
+things. When we moved there we had a broad sweep of view: I can remember
+seeing the river from our dining-room. Now the city has grown up around
+the old house and jostled it rudely, and shut out much of its sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>There is a joy in the opportunity of creating a beautiful interior for a
+new and up-to-date house, but best of all is the joy of furnishing an
+old house like this one. It is like reviving an old garden. It may not
+be just your idea of a garden to begin with, but as you study it and
+deck its barren spaces with masses of color, and fit a sundial into the
+spot that so needs it, and give the sunshine a fountain to play with,
+you love the old garden just a little more every time you touch it,
+until it becomes to you the most beautiful garden in all the world.</p>
+
+<p>Gardens and houses are such whimsical things! This old house of ours had
+been so long mistreated that it was fairly petulant and querulous when I
+began studying it. It asked questions on every turn, and seemed
+surprised when they were answered. The house was delightfully rambling,
+with a tiny entrance hall, and narrow stairs, and sudden up and down
+steps from one room to another like the old, old house one associates
+with far-away places and old times.<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" /></p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" /><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />The little entrance hall was worse than a question, it was a problem,
+but I finally solved it. The floor was paved with little hexagon-shaped
+tiles of a wonderful old red. A door made of little square panes of
+mirrors was placed where it would deceive the old hall into thinking
+itself a spacious thing. The walls were covered with a
+green-and-white-stripe wall-paper that looked as old as Rip Van Winkle.
+This is the same ribbon-grass paper that I afterward used in the Colony
+Club hallway. The woodwork was painted a soft gray-green. Finally, I had
+my collection of faded French costume prints set flat against the top of
+the wall as a frieze. The hall was so very narrow that as you went up
+stairs you could actually examine the old prints in detail. Another
+little thing: I covered the handrail of the stairs with a soft
+gray-green velvet of the same tone as the woodwork, and the effect was
+so very good and the touch of it so very nice that many of my friends
+straightway adopted the idea.</p>
+
+<p>But I am placing the cart before the horse! I should talk of the shell
+of the house before the contents, shouldn't I? It is hard to talk of
+this particular house as a thing apart from its furnishings, however,
+for every bit of paneling, every lighting-fixture, the placing of each
+mirror, was worked out so that the shell of the house and its
+furnishings might be in perfect harmony.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />The drawing-room and dining-room occupied the first floor of the house.
+The drawing-room was a long, narrow room with cream woodwork and walls.
+The walls were broken into panels by the use of a narrow molding. In the
+large panel above the mantel-shelf I had inset a painting by Nattier.
+You will see the same painting used in the Fifty-fifth Street house
+drawing-room, in another illustration.</p>
+
+<p>The color scheme of rose and cream and dull yellow was worked out from
+the rose and yellow Persian rug. Most of the furniture we found in
+France, but it fitted perfectly into this aristocratic and dignified
+room. Miss Marbury and I have a perfect right to French things in our
+drawing-room, you see, for we are French residents for half the year.
+And, besides, this gracious old house welcomed a fine old Louis XIV sofa
+as serenely as you please. I have no idea of swallowing my words about
+unsuitability!</p>
+
+<p>Light, air and comfort&mdash;these three things I must always have in a room,
+whether it be drawing-room or servant's room. This room had all three.
+The chairs were all comfortable, the lights well placed, and there was
+plenty of sunshine and air. The color of the room was so subdued that it
+was restful to the eye&mdash;one color faded into another so subtly that one
+did not realize there was a definite color-scheme. The hangings of the
+room were of a deep rose color. I used the same colors in the coverings
+of the chairs and sofas. The house was curtained throughout with fine
+white muslin curtains. No matter what the inner curtains of a room may
+be, I use this simple stuff against the window itself. There isn't any
+nicer material. To me there is something unsuitable in an array of lace
+against a window, like underclothes hung up to dry.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" /><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0334" id="h0334"></a>
+<img src="images/h0334.jpg" width="70%"
+alt="A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM"
+title="A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />The most delightful part of the drawing-room was the little
+conservatory, which was a plain, lamentable bay-window once upon a time.
+I determined to make a little flower-box of it, and had the floor of it
+paved with large tiles, and between the hardwood floor of the
+drawing-room and the marble of the window space was a narrow curb of
+marble, which made it possible to have a jolly little fountain in the
+window. The fountain splashed away to its heart's content, for there was
+a drain pipe under the curb. At the top of the windows there were
+shallow white boxes filled with trailing ivy that hung down and screened
+the glass, making the window as delightful to the passer-by without as
+to us within. There were several pots of rose-colored flowers standing
+in a prim row on the marble curb.</p>
+
+<p>You see how much simpler it is to make the best of an old bay window
+than to build on a new conservatory. There are thousands of houses with
+windows like this one of ours, an unfortunate space of which no use is
+made. Sometimes there is a gilt table bearing a lofty jar, sometimes a
+timid effort at comfort&mdash;a sofa&mdash;but usually the bay window is sacred to
+its own <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />devices, whatever they may be! Why not spend a few dollars and
+make it the most interesting part of the room by giving it a lot of
+vines and flowers and a small fountain? It isn't at all an expensive
+thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>From the drawing-room you entered the dining-room. This was a long room
+with beautifully spaced walls, a high ceiling, and quaint cupboards. The
+arrangement of the mirrors around the cupboards and doors was unusual
+and most decorative. This room was so beautiful in itself that I used
+very little color&mdash;but <i>such</i> color! We never tired of the gray and
+white and ivory color-scheme, the quiet atmosphere that made glorious
+the old Chinese carpet, with its rose-colored ground and blue-and-gold
+medallions and border. The large India-ink sketches set in the walls are
+originals by Mennoyer, the delightful Eighteenth Century artist who did
+the overdoors of the Petit Trianon.</p>
+
+<p>The mirror-framed lighting fixtures I brought over from France. The
+dining-table too, was French, of a creamy ivory-painted wood. The chairs
+had insets of cane of a deeper tone. The recessed window-seat was
+covered with a soft velvet of a deep yellow, and there were as many
+little footstools beside the window-seat as there were chairs in the
+room. Doesn't everyone long for a footstool at table?</p>
+
+<p>I believe that everything in one's house should be comfortable, but
+one's bedroom must be more than <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />comfortable: it must be intimate,
+personal, one's secret garden, so to speak. It may be as simple as a
+convent cell and still have this quality of the personality of its
+occupant.</p>
+
+<p>There are two things that are as important to me as the bed in the
+bedrooms that I furnish, and they are the little tables at the head of
+the bed, and the lounging chairs. The little table must hold a good
+reading light, well shaded, for who doesn't like to read in bed? There
+must also be a clock, and there really should be a telephone. And the
+<i>chaise-longue</i>, or couch, as the case may be, should be both
+comfortable and beautiful. Who hasn't longed for a comfortable place to
+snatch forty winks at midday?</p>
+
+<p>My own bedroom in this house was very pleasant to me. The house was very
+small, you see, and my bedroom had to be my writing-and reading-room
+too, so that accounts for the bookshelves that fill the wall space above
+and around the mantel and the large writing-table. The room was built
+around a wonderful old French bed which came from Brittany. This old bed
+is of carved mahogany, with mirrored panels on the side against the
+wall, and with tall columns at the ends. It is always hung with
+embroidered silk in the rose color that I adore and has any number of
+pillows, big and little. The <i>chaise-longue</i> was covered with this same
+silk, as were the various chair cushions. The other furnishings were in
+keeping. It was a delightfully comfortable room, and it grew a little at
+<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />a time. I needed bookshelves, and I built them. A drop-light was
+necessary, and I found the old brass lantern which hung from the
+ceiling. And so it was furnished, bit by bit, need by need.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marbury's bedroom in this house was entirely different in type, but
+exactly the same in comfort. The furniture was of white enamel, the
+walls ivory-white, and the rug a soft dull blue. The chintz used was the
+familiar Bird of Paradise, gorgeous in design, but so subdued in tone
+that one never tires of it. The bed had a flat, perfectly fitted cover
+of the chintz, which is tucked under the mattress. The box spring was
+also covered with the chintz, and the effect was always tidy and
+satisfactory. This is the neatest disposal of the bed-clothes I have
+seen. I always advise this arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the bed there was the necessary little table, holding a
+reading-light and so forth, and at the head of the bed a most adorable
+screen of white enamel, paneled with chintz below and glass above. There
+was a soft couch of generous width in this room, with covers and
+cushions of the chintz.</p>
+
+<p>Over near the windows was the dressing-table with the lighting-fixtures
+properly placed. This table, hung with chintz, had a sheet of plate
+glass exactly fitting its top. The writing-table, near the window is
+also part of my creed of comfort. There should be a writing-table in
+every bedroom. My friends laugh at the little fat pincushions on my
+writing-tables, but when they are covered with a bit of the chintz or
+tapestry or brocade of the room they are very pretty, and I am sure pins
+are as necessary on the writing-table as on the dressing-table.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0335" id="h0335"></a>
+<img src="images/h0335.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MISS MARBURY&#39;S BEDROOM"
+title="MISS MARBURY&#39;S BEDROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS MARBURY&#39;S BEDROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" /><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" /></p>
+<p>Another thing I like on every writing-table is a clear glass bowl of
+dried rose petals, which gives the room the faintest spicy fragrance.
+There is also a little bowl of just the proper color to hold pens and
+clips and odds and ends. I get as much pleasure from planning these
+small details as from the planning of the larger furniture of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The house was very simple, you see, and very small, and so when the time
+came to leave it we had grown to love every inch of it. You can love a
+small house so completely! But we couldn't forgive the skyscrapers
+encroaching on our supply of sunshine, and we really needed more room,
+and so we said good-by to our beloved old house and moved into a new
+one. Now we find ourselves in danger of loving the new one as much as
+the old. But that is another story.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV" /><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />IV</h2>
+
+<h2>THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>One walks the streets of New York and receives the fantastic impression
+that some giant architect has made for the city thousands of houses in
+replica. These dismal brownstone buildings are so like without, and
+alas! so like within, that one wonders how their owners know their homes
+from one another. I have had the pleasure of making over many of these
+gloomy barracks into homes for other people, and when we left the old
+Irving Place house we took one of these dreary houses for ourselves, and
+made it over into a semblance of what a city house should be.</p>
+
+<p>You know the kind of house&mdash;there are tens of thousands of them&mdash;a four
+story and basement house of pinkish brownstone, with a long flight of
+ugly stairs from the street to the first floor. The common belief that
+all city houses of this type must be dark and dreary just because they
+always <i>have</i> been dark and dreary is an unnecessary superstition.</p>
+
+<p>My object in taking this house was twofold: I wanted to prove to my
+friends that it was possible to take one of the darkest and grimiest of
+city houses and make it an abode of sunshine and light, and I wanted <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />to
+furnish the whole house exactly as I pleased&mdash;for once!</p>
+
+<p>The remaking of the house was very interesting. I tore away the ugly
+stone steps and centered the entrance door in a little stone-paved
+fore-court on the level of the old area-way. The fore-court is just a
+step below the street level, giving you a pleasant feeling of
+invitation. Everyone hates to climb into a house, but there is a subtle
+allure in a garden or a court yard or a room into which you must step
+down. The fore-court is enclosed with a high iron railing banked with
+formal box-trees. Above the huge green entrance door there is a graceful
+iron balcony, filled with green things, that pulls the great door and
+the central window of the floor above into an impressive composition.
+The fa&ccedil;ade of the house, instead of being a commonplace rectangle of
+stone broken by windows, has this long connected break of the door and
+balcony and window. By such simple devices are happy results
+accomplished!</p>
+
+<p>The door itself is noteworthy, with its great bronze knob set squarely
+in the center. On each side of it there are the low windows of the
+entrance hall, with window-boxes of evergreens. Compare this orderly
+arrangement of windows and entrance door with the badly balanced houses
+of the old type, and you will realize anew the value of balance and
+proportion.</p>
+
+<p>From the fore-court you enter the hall. Once within the hall, the, house
+widens magically. Surely this cool <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />black and white apartment cannot be
+a part of restless New York! Have you ever come suddenly upon an old
+Southern house, and thrilled at the classic purity of white columns in a
+black-green forest? This entrance hall gives you the same thrill; the
+elements of formality, of tranquillity, of coolness, are so evident. The
+walls and ceiling are a deep, flat cream, and the floor is laid in large
+black and white marble tiles. Exactly opposite you as you enter, there
+is a wall fountain with a background of mirrors. The water spills over
+from the fountain into ferns and flowers banked within a marble curb.
+The two wall spaces on your right and left are broken by graceful niches
+which hold old statues. An oval Chinese rug and the white and orange
+flowers of the fountain furnish the necessary color. The windows
+flanking the entrance doorway are hung with flat curtains of coarse
+white linen, with inserts of old filet lace, and there are side curtains
+of dead black silk with borderings of silver and gold threads.</p>
+
+<p>In any house that I have anything to do with, there is some sort of desk
+or table for writing in the hall. How often I have been in other
+people's houses when it was necessary to send a message, or to record an
+address, when the whole household began scurrying around trying to find
+a pencil and paper! This, to my mind, is an outward and visible sign of
+an inward&mdash;and fundamental!&mdash;lack of order.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0336" id="h0336"></a>
+<img src="images/h0336.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET HOUSE"
+title="THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" /><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" /></p>
+<p>In this hall there is a charming desk particularly adapted to its
+place. It is a standing desk which can be lowered or heightened at will,
+so that one who wishes to scribble a line or so may use it without
+sitting down. This desk is called a <i>bureau d'architect</i>. I found it in
+Biarritz. It would be quite easy to have one made by a good
+cabinet-maker, for the lines and method of construction are simple. My
+hall desk is so placed that it is lighted by the window by day and the
+wall lights by night, but it might be lighted by two tall candlesticks
+if a wall light were not available. There is a shallow drawer which
+contains surplus writing materials, but the only things permitted on the
+writing surface of the desk are the tray for cards, the pad and pencils.</p>
+
+<p>The only other furniture in the hall is an old porter's chair near the
+door, a chair that suggests the sedan of old France, but serves its
+purpose admirably.</p>
+
+<p>A glass door leads to the inner hall and the stairway, which I consider
+the best thing in the house. Instead of the usual steep and gloomy
+stairs with which we are all familiar, here is a graceful spiral
+stairway which runs from this floor to the roof. The stair hall has two
+walls made up of mirrors in the French fashion, that is, cut in squares
+and held in place by small rosettes of gilt, and these mirrored walls
+seemingly double the spaciousness of what would be, under ordinary
+conditions, a gloomy inside hallway.</p>
+
+<p>The house is narrow in the extreme, and the secret of its successful
+renaissance is plenty of windows and <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />light color and
+mirrors&mdash;mirrors&mdash;mirrors! It has been called the &quot;Little House of Many
+Mirrors,&quot; for so much of its spaciousness and charm is the effect of
+skilfully managed reflections. The stair-landings are most ingeniously
+planned. There are landings that lead directly from the stairs into the
+rooms of each floor, and back of one of the mirrored stair walls there
+is a little balcony connecting the rooms on that floor, a private
+passageway.</p>
+
+<p>The drawing-room and dining-room occupy the first floor. The
+drawing-room is a pleasant, friendly place, full of quiet color. The
+walls are a deep cream color and the floor is covered with a beautiful
+Savonnerie rug. There are many beautiful old chairs covered with
+Aubusson tapestry, and other chairs and sofas covered with rose colored
+brocade. This drawing-room is seemingly a huge place, this effect being
+given by the careful placing of mirrors and lights, and the skilful
+arrangement of the furniture. I believe in plenty of optimism and white
+paint, comfortable chairs with lights beside them, open fires on the
+hearth and flowers wherever they &quot;belong,&quot; mirrors and sunshine in all
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>But I think we can carry the white paint idea too far: I have grown a
+little tired of over-careful decorations, of plain white walls and white
+woodwork, of carefully matched furniture and over-cautious
+color-schemes. Somehow the feeling of homey-ness is lost when the
+decorator is too careful. In this drawing-<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />room there is furniture of
+many woods, there are stuffs of many weaves, there are candles and
+chandeliers and reading-lamps, but there is harmony of purpose and
+therefore harmony of effect. The room was made for conversation, for
+hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>A narrow landing connects the dining-room and the drawing-room. The
+color of the dining-room has grown of itself, from the superb Chinese
+rug on the floor and the rare old Mennoyer drawings inset in the walls.
+The woodwork and walls have been painted a soft dove-like gray. The
+walls are broken into panels by a narrow gray molding, and the Mennoyers
+are set in five of these panels. In one narrow panel a beautiful wall
+clock has been placed. Above the mantel there is a huge mirror with a
+panel in black and white relief above it. On the opposite wall there is
+another mirror, with a console table of carved wood painted gray beneath
+it. There is also a console table under one of the Mennoyers.</p>
+
+<p>The two windows in this room are obviously windows by day, but at night
+two sliding doors of mirrors are drawn, just as a curtain would be
+drawn, to fill the window spaces. This is a little bit tricky, I admit,
+but it is a very good trick. The dining-table is of carved wood painted
+gray and covered with yellow damask, which in turn is covered with a
+sheet of plate glass. The chairs are covered with a blue and gold
+striped velvet. The rug has a gold ground with medallions and border of
+blue, ivory and rose. Near the <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />door that leads to the service rooms
+there is a huge screen made of one piece of wondrous tapestry. No other
+furniture is needed in the room.</p>
+
+<p>The third floor is given over to my sitting-room, bedroom,
+dressing-room, and so forth, and the fourth floor to Miss Marbury's
+apartments. These rooms will be discussed in other chapters.</p>
+
+<p>The servants' quarters in this house are very well planned. In the back
+yard that always goes with a house of this type I had built a new wing,
+five stories high, connected with the floors of the house proper by
+window-lined passages. On the dining-room floor the passage becomes a
+butler's pantry. On the bedroom floors the passages are large enough for
+dressing-rooms and baths, connecting with the bedrooms, and for outer
+halls and laundries connecting with the maids' rooms and the back
+stairs. In this way, you see, the maids can reach the dressing-rooms
+without invading the bedrooms. The kitchen and its dependencies occupy
+the first floor of the new wing, the servants' bedrooms the next three
+floors, and the top floor is made up of clothes closets, sewing-rooms,
+store rooms, etc.</p>
+
+<p>I firmly believe that the whole question of household comfort evolves
+from the careful planning of the service portion of the house. My
+servants' rooms are all attractive. The woodwork of these rooms is
+white, the walls are cream, the floors are waxed. They are all gay and
+sweet and cheerful, with white painted beds and chests of drawers and
+willow chairs, and <a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />chintz curtains and bed-coverings that are
+especially chosen, <i>not</i> handed down when they have become too faded to
+be used elsewhere!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V" /><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />V</h2>
+
+<h2>THE TREATMENT OF WALLS</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>Surely the first considerations of the house in good taste must be
+light, air and sanitation. Instead of ignoring the relation of sanitary
+conditions and decorative schemes, the architect and client of to-day
+work out these problems with excellent results. Practical needs are
+considered just as worthy of the architect as artistic achievements. He
+is a poor excuse for his profession if he cannot solve the problems of
+utility and beauty, and work out the ultimate harmony of the
+house-to-be.</p>
+
+<p>If one enters a room in which true proportion has been observed, where
+the openings, the doors, windows and fireplace, balance perfectly, where
+the wall spaces are well planned and the height of the ceiling is in
+keeping with the floor-space, one is immediately convinced that here is
+a beautiful and satisfactory room, before a stick of furniture has been
+placed in it. All questions pertaining to the practical equipment and
+the decorative amenities of the house should be approached
+architecturally. If this is done, the result cannot fail to be
+felicitous, and our dream of our house beautiful comes true!</p>
+
+<p>Before you begin the decoration of your walls, be <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />sure that your floors
+have been finished to fulfil their purposes. Stain them or polish them
+to a soft glow, keep them low in tone so that they may be backgrounds.
+We will assume that the woodwork of each room has been finished with a
+view to the future use and decoration of the room. We will assume that
+the ceilings are proper ceilings; that they will stay in their place,
+i.e., the top of the room. This is a most daring assumption, because
+there are so many feeble and threatening ceilings overhanging most of us
+that good ones seem rare. But the ceiling is an architectural problem,
+and you must consider it in the beginning of things. It may be beamed
+and have every evidence of structural beauty and strength, or it may be
+beamed in a ridiculous fashion that advertises the beams as shams,
+leading from nowhere to nowhere. It may be a beautiful expanse of creamy
+modeled plaster resting on a distinguished cornice, or it may be one of
+those ghastly skim-milk ceilings with distorted cupids and roses in
+relief. It may be a rectangle of plain plaster tinted cream or pale
+yellow or gray, and keeping its place serenely, or it may be a
+villainous stretch of ox-blood, hanging over your head like the curse of
+Cain. There are hundreds of magnificent painted ceilings, and vaulted
+arches of marble and gold, but these are not of immediate importance to
+the woman who is furnishing a small house, and are not within the scope
+of this book. So let us exercise common sense and face our especial
+ceiling problem in an architectural <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />spirit. If your house has
+structural beams, leave them exposed, if you like, but treat them as
+beams; stain them, and wax them, and color the spaces between them cream
+or tan or warm gray, and then make the room beneath the beams strong
+enough in color and furnishings to carry the impressive ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>If you have an architect who is also a decorator, and he has ideas for a
+modeled plaster ceiling, or a ceiling with plaster-covered beams and
+cornice and a fine application of ornament, let him do his best for you,
+but remember that a fine ceiling demands certain things of the room it
+covers. If you have a simple little house with simple furnishings, be
+content to have your ceilings tinted a warm cream, keep them always
+clean.</p>
+
+<p>When all these things are settled&mdash;floors and ceilings and woodwork&mdash;you
+may begin to plan your wall coverings. Begin, you understand. You will
+probably change your plans a dozen times before you make the final
+decisions. I hope you will! Because inevitably the last opinion is
+best&mdash;it grows out of so many considerations.</p>
+
+<p>The main thing to remember, when you begin to cover your walls, is that
+they are walls, that they are straight up and down, and have breadth and
+thickness, that they are supposedly strong, in other words, that they
+are a structural part of your house. A wall should always be treated as
+a flat surface and in a conventional way. Pictorial flowers and lifelike
+figures have no place upon it, but conventionalized de<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />signs may be used
+successfully&mdash;witness the delighted use of the fantastic landscape
+papers in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Walls should always be
+obviously <i>walls</i>, and not flimsy partitions hung with gauds and
+trophies. The wall is the background of the room, and so must be flat in
+treatment and reposeful in tone.</p>
+
+<p>Walls have always offered tempting spaces for decoration. Our ancestors
+hung their walls with trophies. Our pioneer of to-day may live in an
+adobe hut, but he hangs his walls with things that suggest beauty and
+color to him, calendars, and trophies and gaudy chromos. The rest of his
+hut he uses for the hard business of living, but his walls are his
+theater, his literature, his recreation. The wolf skin will one day give
+place to a painting of the chase, the gaudy calendars to better things,
+when prosperity comes. But now these crude things speak for the pioneer
+period of the man, and therefore they are the right things for the
+moment. How absurd would be the refined etching and the delicate
+water-color on these clay walls, even were they within his grasp!</p>
+
+<p>The first impulse of all of us is to hang the things we admire on our
+walls. Unfortunately, we do not always select papers and fabrics and
+pictures we will continue to admire. Who doesn't know the woman who goes
+to a shop and selects wall papers as she would select her gowns, because
+they are &quot;new&quot; and &quot;different&quot; and &quot;pretty&quot;? She selects a &quot;rich&quot; paper
+for her hall and an &quot;elegant&quot; paper for her drawing-room&mdash;the <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />chances
+are it is a nile green moire paper! For her library she thinks a paper
+imitating an Oriental fabric is the proper thing, and as likely as not
+she buys gold paper for her dining-room. She finds so many charming
+bedroom papers that she has no trouble in selecting a dozen of them for
+insipid blue rooms and pink rooms and lilac rooms.</p>
+
+<p>She forgets that while she wears only one gown at a time she will live
+with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of
+large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the
+adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give
+them the fair test of living with them a few days.</p>
+
+<p>You can always buy, or borrow, a roll of the paper you like and take it
+home and live with it awhile. The dealer will credit the roll when you
+make the final decisions. You should assemble all the papers that are to
+be used in the house, and all the fabrics, and rugs, and see what the
+effect of the various compositions will be, one with another. You can't
+consider one room alone, unless it be a bedroom, for in our modern
+houses we believe too thoroughly in spaciousness to separate our living
+rooms by ante-chambers and formal approaches. We must preserve a certain
+amount of privacy, and have doors that may be closed when need be, but
+we must also consider the effect of things when those doors are open,
+when the color of one room melts into the color of another.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" /></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0337" id="h0337"></a>
+<img src="images/h0337.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS"
+title="A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS" />
+<p class="center"><b>A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" /><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />To me, the most beautiful wall is the plain and dignified painted
+wall, broken into graceful panels by the use of narrow moldings, with
+lighting fixtures carefully placed, and every picture and mirror hung
+with classic precision. This wall is just as appropriate to the six-room
+cottage as to the twenty-room house. If I could always find perfect
+walls, I'd always paint them, and never use a yard of paper. Painted
+walls, when very well done, are dignified and restful, and most
+sanitary. The trouble is that too few plasterers know how to smooth the
+wall surface, and too few workmen know how to apply paint properly. In
+my new house on East Fifty-fifth Street I have had all the walls
+painted. The woodwork is ivory white throughout the house, except in the
+dining-room, where the walls and woodwork are soft gray. The walls of
+most of the rooms and halls are painted a very deep tone of cream and
+are broken into panels, the moldings being painted cream like the
+woodwork. With such walls you can carry out any color-plan you may
+desire.</p>
+
+<p>You would think that every woman would know that walls are influenced by
+the exposure of the room, but how often I have seen bleak north rooms
+with walls papered in cold gray, and sunshiny south rooms with red or
+yellow wall papers! Dull tones and cool colors are always good in south
+rooms, and live tones and warm colors in north rooms. For instance, if
+you wish to keep your rooms in one color-plan, you may have <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />white
+woodwork in all of them, and walls of varying shades of cream and
+yellow. The north rooms may have walls painted or papered with a soft,
+warm yellow that suggests creamy chiffon over orange. The south rooms
+may have the walls of a cool creamy-gray tone.</p>
+
+<p>Whether you paint or paper your walls, you should consider the placing
+of the picture-molding most carefully. If the ceiling is very high, the
+walls will be more interesting if the picture-molding is placed three or
+four feet below the ceiling line. If the ceiling is low, the molding
+should be within two inches of the ceiling. These measurements are not
+arbitrary, of course. Every room is a law unto itself, and no cut and
+dried rule can be given. A fine frieze is a very beautiful decoration,
+but it must be <i>very</i> fine to be worth while at all. Usually the dropped
+ceiling is better for the upper wall space. It goes without saying that
+those dreadful friezes perpetrated by certain wall paper designers are
+very bad form, and should never be used. Indeed, the very principle of
+the ordinary paper frieze is bad; it darkens the upper wall
+unpleasantly, and violates the good old rule that the floors should be
+darkest in tone, the side walls lighter, and the ceiling lightest. The
+recent vogue of stenciling walls may be objected to on this account,
+though a very narrow and conventional line of stenciling may sometimes
+be placed just under the picture rail with good effect.</p>
+
+<p>In a great room with a beamed ceiling and oak <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />paneled walls a painted
+fresco or a frieze of tapestry or some fine fabric is a very fine thing,
+especially if it has a lot of primitive red and blue and gold in it, but
+in simple rooms&mdash;beware!</p>
+
+<p>Lately there has been a great revival of interest in wood paneling. We
+go abroad, and see the magnificent paneling of old English houses, and
+we come home and copy it. But we cannot get the workmen who will carve
+panels in the old patterns. We cannot wait a hundred years for the soft
+bloom that comes from the constant usage, and so our paneled rooms are
+apt to be too new and woody. But we have such a wonderful store of
+woods, here in America, it is worth while to panel our rooms, copying
+the simple rectangular English patterns, and it is quite permissible to
+&quot;age&quot; our walls by rubbing in black wax, and little shadows of
+water-color, and in fact by any method we can devise. Wood paneled
+walls, like beamed ceilings, are best in great rooms. They make boxes of
+little ones.</p>
+
+<p>Painted walls, and walls hung with tapestries and leather, are not
+possible to many of us, but they are the most magnificent of wall
+treatments. I know a wonderful library with walls hung in squares of
+Spanish leather, a cold northern room that merits such a brilliant wall
+treatment. The primitive colors of the Cordova leather workers, with
+gold and crimson dominant, glow from the deep shadows. Spanish and
+Italian furniture and fine old velvets and brocades furnish this room.
+The same sort of room invites wood <a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />paneling and tapestry, whereas the
+ideal room for painted walls in a lighter key is the ballroom, or some
+such large apartment. I once decorated a ballroom with Pillement panels,
+copied from a beautiful Eighteenth Century room, and so managed to bring
+a riot of color and decoration into a large apartment. The ground of the
+paneling was deep yellow, and all the little birds and flowers
+surrounding the central design were done in the very brightest,
+strongest colors imaginable. The various panels had quaint little scenes
+of the same Chinese flavor. Of course, in such an apartment as a
+ballroom there would be nothing to break into the decorative plan of the
+painted walls, and the unbroken polished floor serves only to throw the
+panels into their proper prominence. Painted walls, when done in some
+such broad and daring manner, are very wonderful, but they should not be
+attempted by the amateur, or, indeed, by an expert in a room that will
+be crowded with furniture, and curtains, and rugs.</p>
+
+<p>If your walls are faulty, you must resort to wall papers or fabrics.
+Properly selected wall papers are not to be despised. The woodwork of a
+room, of course, directly influences the treatment of its walls. So many
+people ask me for advice about wall papers, and forget absolutely to
+tell me of the finish of the framing of their wall spaces. A pale
+yellowish cream wall paper is very charming with woodwork of white, but
+it would not do with woodwork of heavy oak, for instance.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" /><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0338" id="h0338"></a>
+<img src="images/h0338.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE"
+title="A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE" />
+<p class="center"><b>A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" /></p>
+
+<p>A general rule to follow in a small house is: do not have a figured
+wall paper if you expect to use things of large design in your rooms. If
+you have gorgeous rugs and hangings, keep your walls absolutely plain.
+In furnishing the Colony Club I used a ribbon grass paper in the
+hallway. The fresh, spring-like green and white striped paper is very
+delightful with a carpet and runner of plain dark-green velvet, and
+white woodwork, and dark mahogany furniture, and many gold-framed
+mirrors. In another room in this building where many chintzes and
+fabrics were used, I painted the woodwork white and the walls a soft
+cream color. In the bedrooms I used a number of wall papers, the most
+fascinating of these, perhaps, is in the bird room. The walls are hung
+with a daringly gorgeous paper covered with birds&mdash;birds of paradise and
+paroquets perched on flowery tropical branches. The furniture in this
+room is of black and gold lacquer, and the rug and hangings are of jade
+green. It would not be so successful in a room one lived in all the year
+around, but it is a good example of what one can do with a tempting wall
+paper in an occasional room, a guest room, for instance.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the figured wall papers are so decorative that they are more
+than tempting, they are compelling. The Chinese ones are particularly
+fascinating. Recently I planned a small boudoir in a country house that
+depended on a gay Chinoiserie paper for its charm. The design of the
+paper was made up of quaint little <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />figures and parasols and birds and
+twisty trees, all in soft tones of green and blue and mauve on a deep
+cream ground. The woodwork and ceiling repeated the deep cream, and the
+simple furniture (a day bed, a chest of drawers, and several chairs)
+were of wood, painted a flat blue green just the color of the twisty
+pine-trees of the paper.</p>
+
+<p>We had a delightful time decorating the furniture with blue and mauve
+lines, and we painted parasols and birds and flowers on chair backs and
+drawer-knobs and so forth. The large rug was of pinky-mauve-gray, and
+the coverings of the day bed and chairs were of a mauve and gray striped
+stuff, the stripes so small that they had the effect of being threads of
+color. There were no pictures, of course, but there was a long mirror
+above the chest of drawers, and another over the mantel. The
+lighting-fixtures, candlesticks and appliqu&eacute;s, were of carved and
+painted wood, blue-green with shades of thin mauve silk over rose.</p>
+
+<p>Among the most enchanting of the new papers are the black and white
+ones, fantastic Chinese designs and startling Austrian patterns. Black
+and white is always a tempting combination to the decorator, and now
+that Josef Hoffman, the great Austrian decorator, has been working in
+black and white for a number of years, the more venturesome decorators
+of France, and England and America have begun to follow his lead, and
+are using black and white, and black and color, with amazing effect. We
+have black papers patterned in <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />color, and black velvet carpets, and
+white coated papers sprinkled with huge black polka dots, and all manner
+of unusual things. It goes without saying that much of this fad is
+freakish, but there is also much that is good enough and refreshing
+enough to last. One can imagine nothing fresher than a black and white
+scheme in a bedroom, with a saving neutrality of gray or some dull tone
+for rugs, and a brilliant bit of color in porcelain. There is no hint of
+the mournful in the decorator's combination of black and white: rather,
+there is a na&iuml;ve quality suggestive of smartness in a gown, or chic in a
+woman. A white walled room with white woodwork and a black and white
+tiled floor; a black lacquer bed and chest of drawers and chair; glass
+curtains of white muslin and inside ones of black and white Hoffman
+chintz; a splash of warm orange-red in an oval rug at the bedside, if it
+be winter, or a cool green one in summer&mdash;doesn't this tempt you?</p>
+
+<p>I once saw a little serving-maid wearing a calico gown, black crosses on
+a white ground, and I was so enchanted with the cool crispness of it
+that I had a glazed wall paper made in the same design. I have used it
+in bedrooms, and in bathrooms, always with admirable effect. One can
+imagine a girl making a Pierrot and Pierrette room for herself, given
+whitewashed walls, white woodwork, and white painted furniture. An
+ordinary white cotton printed with large black polka dots would make
+delightful curtains, chair-cushions, and so forth. The rug might be
+woven of black and <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />white rags, or might be one of those woven from the
+old homespun coverlet patterns.</p>
+
+<p>The landscape papers that were so popular in the New England and
+Southern houses three generations ago were very wonderful when they were
+used in hallways, with graceful stairs and white woodwork, but they were
+distressing when used in living-rooms. It is all very well to cover the
+walls of your hall with a hand-painted paper, or a landscape, or a
+foliage paper, because you get only an impressionistic idea of a
+hall&mdash;you don't loiter there. But papers of large design are out of
+place in rooms where pictures and books are used. If there is anything
+more dreadful than a busy &quot;parlor&quot; paper, with scrolls that tantalize or
+flowers that demand to be counted, I have yet to encounter it.</p>
+
+<p>Remember, above all things that your walls must be beautiful in
+themselves. They must be plain and quiet, ready to receive sincere
+things, but quite good enough to get along without pictures if
+necessary. A wall that is broken into beautiful spaces and covered with
+a soft creamy paint, or paper, or grasscloth, is good enough for any
+room. It may be broken with lighting fixtures, and it is finished.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" /><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0339" id="h0339"></a>
+<img src="images/h0339.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE MANTEL"
+title="THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE MANTEL" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE MANTEL</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI" /><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />VI</h2>
+
+<h2>THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>What a joyous thing is color! How influenced we all are by it, even if
+we are unconscious of how our sense of restfulness has been brought
+about. Certain colors are antagonistic to each of us, and I think we
+should try to learn just what colors are most sympathetic to our own
+individual emotions, and then make the best of them.</p>
+
+<p>If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live
+in a room in which the prevailing note is red. On the other hand, a
+timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in
+surroundings of rich red tones, the tones of the old Italian damasks in
+which the primitive colors of the Middle Ages have been handed down to
+us. No half shades, no blending of tender tones are needed in an age of
+iron nerves. People worked hard, and they got downright blues and reds
+and greens&mdash;primitive colors, all. Nowadays, we must consider the effect
+of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.</p>
+
+<p>Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music. The
+strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love
+of color. I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at
+twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" /></p>
+
+<p>Color! The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of
+tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life. We
+say that one woman is &quot;so full of color,&quot; when she is alert and happy
+and vividly alive. We say another woman is &quot;colorless,&quot; because she is
+bleak and chilling and unfriendly. We demand that certain music shall be
+full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite
+books. One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard
+and&mdash;gray. We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation
+of color, although often we have not that appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>There is all the difference in the world between the person who
+appreciates color and the person who &quot;likes colors.&quot; The child, playing
+with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American
+Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads&mdash;all these
+primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no
+more feeling for color than a blind man. The appreciation of color is a
+subtle and intellectual quality.</p>
+
+<p>Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on
+housefurnishing, says: &quot;Colors are like musical notes and chords, while
+color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way. So
+colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself. The first are
+tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art composed of many
+lines and shades.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We are aware that some people are &quot;color-blind,&quot;<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" /> but we do not take the
+trouble to ascertain whether the majority of people see colors crudely.
+I suppose there are as many color-blind people as there are people who
+have a deep feeling for color, and the great masses of people in
+between, while they know colors one from another, have no appreciation
+of hue. Just as surely, there are some people who cannot tell one tune
+from another and some people who have a deep and passionate feeling for
+music, while the rest&mdash;the great majority of people&mdash;can follow a tune
+and sing a hymn, but they can go no deeper into music than that.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, each of you must know your own color-sense. You know whether you
+get results, don't you? I have never believed that there is a woman so
+blind that she cannot tell good from bad effects, even though she may
+not be able to tell <i>why</i> one room is good and another bad. It is as
+simple as the problem of the well-gowned woman and the dowdy one. The
+dowdy woman doesn't realize the degree of her own dowdiness, but she
+<i>knows</i> that her neighbor is well-gowned, and she envies her with a
+vague and pathetic envy.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, you are not sure that you appreciate color, if you feel that
+you, like your children, like the green rug with the red roses because
+it is &quot;so cheerful,&quot; you may be sure that you should let color-problems
+alone, and furnish your house in neutral tones, depending on
+book-bindings and flowers and open fires and the necessary small
+furnishings for your color. Then, with an excellent background of soft
+quiet tones, you can ven<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" />ture a little way at a time, trying a bit of
+color here for a few days, and asking yourself if you honestly like it,
+and then trying another color&mdash;a jar or a bowl or a length of
+fabric&mdash;somewhere else, and trying that out. You will soon find that
+your joy in your home is growing, and that you have a source of
+happiness within yourself that you had not suspected. I believe that
+good taste can be developed in any woman, just as surely as good manners
+are possible to anyone. And good taste is as necessary as good manners.</p>
+
+<p>We may take our first lessons in color from Nature, on whose storehouse
+we can draw limitlessly. Nature, when she plans a wondrous splash of
+color, prepares a proper background for it. She gives us color plans for
+all the needs we can conceive. White and gray clouds on a blue sky&mdash;what
+more could she use in such a composition? A bit of gray green moss upon
+a black rock, a field of yellow dandelions, a pink and white spike of
+hollyhocks, an orange-colored butterfly poised on a stalk of
+larkspur&mdash;what color-plans are these!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0340" id="h0340"></a>
+<img src="images/h0340.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM"
+title="A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM" />
+<p class="center"><b>A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I think that the first consideration after you have settled your
+building-site should be to place your house so that its windows may
+frame Nature's own pictures. With windows facing north and south, where
+all the fluctuating and wayward charm of the season unrolls before your
+eyes, your windows become the finest pictures that you can have. When
+this has been arranged, it is time to consider the color-scheme for the
+interior of the house, the colors that shall be in har<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" /><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" /><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />mony with the
+window-framed vistas, the colors that shall be backgrounds for the
+intimate personal furnishings of your daily life. You must think of your
+walls as backgrounds for the colors you wish to bring into your rooms.
+And by colors I do not mean merely the primary colors, red and blue and
+yellow, or the secondary colors, green and orange and violet, I mean the
+white spaces, the black shadows, the gray halftones, the suave creams,
+that give you the <i>feeling</i> of color.</p>
+
+<p>How often we get a more definite idea of brilliant color from a
+white-walled room, with dark and severe furniture and no ornaments, no
+actual color save the blue sky framed by the windows and the flood of
+sunshine that glorifies everything, than from a room that has a dozen
+fine colors, carefully brought together, in its furnishings!</p>
+
+<p>We must decide our wall colors by the aspect of our rooms. Rooms facing
+south may be very light gray, cream, or even white, but northern rooms
+should be rich in color, and should suggest warmth and just a little
+mystery. Some of you have seen the Sala di Cambio at Perugia. Do you
+remember how dark it seems when one enters, and how gradually the
+wonderful coloring glows out from the gloom and one is comforted and
+soothed into a sort of dreamland of pure joy, in the intimate
+satisfaction of it all? It is unsurpassable for sheer decorative charm,
+I think.</p>
+
+<p>For south rooms blues and grays and cool greens and all the dainty gay
+colors are charming. Do you re<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />member the song Edna May used to sing in
+&quot;The Belle of New York&quot;? I am not sure of quoting correctly, but the
+refrain was: &quot;Follow the Light!&quot; I have so often had it in mind when
+I've been planning my color schemes&mdash;&quot;Follow the Light!&quot; But light
+colors for sunshine, remember, and dark ones for shadow.</p>
+
+<p>For north rooms I am strongly inclined to the use of paneling in our
+native American woods, that are so rich in effect, but alas, so little
+used. I hope our architects will soon realize what delightful and
+inexpensive rooms can be made of pine and cherry, chestnut and cypress,
+and the beautiful California redwood. I know of a library paneled with
+cypress. The beamed ceiling, the paneled walls, the built-in shelves,
+the ample chairs and long tables are all of the soft brown cypress.
+Here, if anywhere, you would think a monotony of brown wood would be
+obvious, but think of the thousands of books with brilliant bindings!
+Think of the green branches of trees seen through the casement windows!
+Think of the huge, red-brick fireplace, with its logs blazing in orange
+and yellow and vermillion flame! Think of the distinction of a copper
+bowl of yellow flowers on the long brown table! Can't you see that this
+cypress room is simply glowing with color?</p>
+
+<p>I wish that I might be able to show all you young married girls who are
+working out your home-schemes just how to work out the color of a room.
+Suppose you are given some rare and lovely jar, or a wee rug, or a rare
+old print, or even a quaint old chair from long <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" />ago, and build a room
+around it. I have some such point of interest in every room I build, and
+I think that is why some people like my rooms&mdash;they feel, without quite
+knowing why, that I have loved them while making them. Now there is a
+little sitting-room and bedroom combined in a certain New York house
+that I worked out from a pair of Chinese jars. They were the oddest
+things, of a sort of blue-green and mauve and mulberry, with flecks of
+black, on a cream porcelain ground.</p>
+
+<p>First I found a wee Oriental rug that repeated the colors of the jugs.
+This was to go before the hearth. Then I worked out the shell of the
+room: the woodwork white, the walls bluish green, the plain carpet a
+soft green. I designed the furniture and had it made by a skilful
+carpenter, for I could find none that would harmonize with the room.</p>
+
+<p>The day bed which is forty-two inches wide, is built like a wide roomy
+sofa. One would never suspect it of being a plain bed. Still it makes no
+pretensions to anything else, for it has the best of springs and the
+most comfortable of mattresses, and a dozen soft pillows. The bed is of
+wood and is painted a soft green, with a dark-green line running all
+around, and little painted festoons of flowers in decoration. The
+mattress and springs are covered with a most delightful mauve chintz, on
+which birds and flowers are patterned. There are several easy chairs
+cushioned with this chintz, and the window hangings are also of it.<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" /> The
+chest of drawers is painted in the same manner. There are glass knobs on
+the drawers, and a sheet of plate glass covers the top of it. An old
+painting hangs above it.</p>
+
+<p>The open bookshelves are perfectly plain in construction. They are
+painted the same bluish-green, and the only decoration is the line of
+dark green about half an inch from the edge. Any woman who is skilful
+with her brush could decorate furniture of this kind, and I daresay many
+women could build it.</p>
+
+<p>There is another bedroom in this house, a room in red and blue. &quot;Red and
+blue&quot;&mdash;you shudder. I know it! But <i>such</i> red and <i>such</i> blue!</p>
+
+<p>Will you believe me when I assure you that this room is called cool and
+restful-looking by everyone who sees it? The walls are painted plain
+cream. The woodwork is white. The perfectly plain carpet rug is of a
+dull red that is the color of an old-fashioned rose&mdash;you know the roses
+that become lavender when they fade? The mantel is of Siena marble, and
+over it there is an old mirror with an upper panel painted in colors
+after the manner of some of those delightful old rooms found in France
+about the time of Louis XVI. If you have one very good picture and will
+use it in this way, inset over the mantel with a mirror below it, you
+will need no other pictures in your room.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0341" id="h0341"></a>
+<img src="images/h0341.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM"
+title="THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The chintz used in this room is patterned in the rose red of the carpet
+and a dull cool blue, on a white <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" /><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" /><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />ground. This chintz is used on the
+graceful sofa, the several chairs and the bed, which are ivory in tone.
+The hangings of the bed are lined with taffetas of rose red. The
+bedcover is of the same silk, and the inner curtains at the window are
+lined with it. The small table at the head of the bed, the kidney table
+beside the sofa, and the small cabinets near the mantel, are of
+mahogany. There is a mahogany writing-table placed at right angles to
+the windows.</p>
+
+<p>From this rose and blue bedroom you enter a little dressing-room that is
+also full of color. Here are the same cream walls, the dull red carpet,
+the old blue silk shades on lamps and candles, but the chintz is
+different: the ground is black, and gray parrots and paroquets swing in
+blue-green festoons of leaves and branches. The dressing-table is placed
+in front of the window, so that you can see yourself for better or for
+worse. There is a three-fold mirror of black and gold lacquer, and a
+Chinese cabinet of the same lacquer in the corner. The low seat before
+the dressing-table is covered with the chintz. A few costume prints hang
+on the wall. You can imagine how impossible it would be to be
+ill-tempered in such a cheerful place.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII" /><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />VII</h2>
+
+<h2>OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>What a sense of intimacy, of security, encompasses one when ushered into
+a living room in which the door opens and <i>closes</i>! Who that has read
+Henry James's remarkable article on the vistas dear to the American
+hostess, our portiere-hung spaces, guiltless of doors and open to every
+draft, can fail to feel how much better our conversation might be were
+we not forever conscious that between our guests and the greedy ears of
+our servants there is nothing but a curtain! All that curtains ever were
+used for in the Eighteenth Century was as a means of shutting out drafts
+in large rooms inadequately heated by wood fires.</p>
+
+<p>How often do we see masses of draperies looped back and arranged with
+elaborate dust-catching tassels and fringes that mean nothing. These
+curtains do not even draw! I am sure that a good, well-designed door
+with a simple box-lock and hinges would be much less costly than velvet
+hangings. A door is not an ugly object, to be concealed for very shame,
+but a fine architectural detail of great value. Consider the French and
+Italian doors with their architraves.<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" /> How fine they are, how imposing,
+how honest, and how well they compose!</p>
+
+<p>Of course, if your house has been built with open archways, you will
+need heavy curtains for them, but there are curtains <i>and</i> curtains. If
+you need portieres at all, you need them to cut off one room from
+another, and so they should hang in straight folds. They should be just
+what they pretend to be&mdash;honest curtains with a duty to fulfil. For the
+simple house they may be made of velvet or velveteen in some neutral
+tone that is in harmony with the rugs and furnishings of the rooms that
+are to be divided. They should be double, usually, and a faded gilt gimp
+may be used as an outline or as a binding. There are also excellent
+fabrics reproducing old brocades and even old tapestries, but it is well
+to be careful about using these fabrics. There are machine-made
+&quot;tapestries&quot; of foliage designs in soft greens and tans and browns on a
+dark blue ground that are very pleasing. Many of these stuffs copy in
+color and design the verdure tapestries, and some of them have fine
+blues and greens suggestive of Gobelin. These stuffs are very wide and
+comparatively inexpensive. I thoroughly advise a stuff of this kind, but
+I heartily condemn the imitations of the old tapestries that are covered
+with large figures and intricate designs. These old tapestries are as
+distinguished for their colors, their textures, and their very crudities
+as for their supreme beauty of coloring. It would be foolish to imitate
+them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" /></p>
+
+<p>As for windows and their curtains&mdash;I could write a book about them! A
+window is such a gay, animate thing. By day it should be full of
+sunshine, and if it frames a view worth seeing, the view should be a
+part of it. By night the window should be hidden by soft curtains that
+have been drawn to the side during the sunshiny hours.</p>
+
+<p>In most houses there is somewhere a group of windows that calls for an
+especial kind of curtain. If these windows look out over a pleasant
+garden, or upon a vista of fields and trees, or even upon a striking
+sky-line of housetops, you will be wise to use a thin, sheer glass
+curtain through which you can look out, but which protects you from the
+gaze of passers-by. If your group of windows is so placed that there is
+no danger of people passing and looking in, then a short sash curtain of
+swiss muslin is all that you require, with inside curtains of some
+heavier fabric&mdash;chintz or linen or silk&mdash;that can be drawn at night.</p>
+
+<p>If you are building a new house I strongly advise you to have at least
+one room with a group of deep windows, made up of small panes of leaded
+glass, and a broad window-seat built beneath them. There is something so
+pleasant and mellow in leaded glass, particularly when the glass itself
+has an uneven, colorful quality. When windows are treated thus
+architecturally they need no glass curtains. They need only side
+curtains of some deep-toned fabric.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0342" id="h0342"></a>
+<img src="images/h0342.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM"
+title="BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>As for your single windows, when you are planning <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" /><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" /><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />them you will be
+wise to have the sashes so placed that a broad sill will be possible.
+There is nothing pleasanter than a broad window sill at a convenient
+height from the floor. The tendency of American builders nowadays is to
+use two large glass sashes instead of the small or medium-sized panes of
+older times.</p>
+
+<p>This is very bad from the standpoint of the architect, because these
+huge squares of glass suggest holes in the wall, whereas the square or
+oblong panes with their straight frames and bars advertise their
+suitability. The housewife's objection to small panes is that they are
+harder to clean than the large ones, but this objection is not worthy of
+consideration. If we really wish to make our houses look as if they were
+built for permanency we should consider everything that makes for beauty
+and harmony and hominess. There is nothing more interesting than a
+cottage window sash of small square panes of glass unless it be the
+diamond-paned casement window of an old English house. Such windows are
+obviously windows. The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so
+proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small
+houses.</p>
+
+<p>I remember seeing one plate glass window that was well worth while. It
+was in the mountain studio of an artist and it was fully eight by ten
+feet&mdash;one unbroken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista of
+mountain and valley. It goes without saying that <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />such a window requires
+no curtain other than one that is to be drawn at night.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal treatment for the ordinary single window is a soft curtain of
+some thin white stuff hung flat and full against the glass. This curtain
+should have an inch and a half hem at the bottom and a narrow hem at the
+sides. It should be strung on a small brass rod, and should be placed as
+close to the glass as possible, leaving just enough space for the window
+shade beneath it. The curtain should hang in straight folds to the
+window sill, escaping it by half an inch or so.</p>
+
+<p>I hope it is not necessary for me to go into the matter of lace curtains
+here. I feel sure that no woman of really good taste could prefer a
+cheap curtain of imitation lace to a simple one of white swiss-muslin. I
+have never seen a house room that was too fine for a swiss-muslin
+curtain, though of course there are many rooms that would welcome no
+curtains whatever wherein the windows are their own excuse for being.
+Lace curtains, even if they may have cost a king's ransom, are in
+questionable taste, to put it mildly. Use all the lace you wish on your
+bed linen and table linen, but do not hang it up at your windows for
+passers-by to criticize.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0343" id="h0343"></a>
+<img src="images/h0343.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK"
+title="PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK" />
+<p class="center"><b>PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Many women do not feel the need of inside curtains. Indeed, they are not
+necessary in all houses. They are very attractive when they are well
+hung, and they give the window a distinction and a decorative charm that
+is very valuable. I am using many photographs that <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" /><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" /><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />show the use of
+inside curtains. You will observe that all of these windows have glass
+curtains of plain white muslin, no matter what the inside curtain may
+be.</p>
+
+<p>Chintz curtains are often hung with a valance about ten or twelve inches
+deep across the top of the window. These valances should be strung on a
+separate rod, so that the inside curtains may be pulled together if need
+be. The ruffled valance is more suitable for summer cottages and
+bedrooms than for more formal rooms. A fitted valance of chintz or
+brocade is quite dignified enough for a drawing-room or any other.</p>
+
+<p>In my bedroom I have used a printed linen with a flat valance. This
+printed linen is in soft tones of rose and green on a cream ground. The
+side curtains have a narrow fluted binding of rose-colored silk. Under
+these curtains are still other curtains of rose-colored shot silk, and
+beneath those are white muslin glass curtains. With such a window
+treatment the shot silk curtains are the ones that are drawn together at
+night, making a very soft, comforting sort of color arrangement. You
+will observe in this photograph that the panels between doors and
+windows are filled with mirrors that run the full length from the
+molding to the baseboard. This is a very beautiful setting for the
+windows, of course.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to remember that glass curtains should not be looped back.
+Inside curtains may be looped when there is no illogical break in the
+line. It is absurd to hang up curtains against the glass and then <a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />draw
+them away, for glass curtains are supposed to be a protection from the
+gaze of the passers-by. If you haven't passers-by you can pull your
+curtains to the side so that you may enjoy the out-of-doors. Do not lose
+sight of the fact that your windows are supposed to give you sunshine
+and air; if you drape them so that you get neither sunshine nor air you
+might as well block them up and do away with them entirely.</p>
+
+<p>To me the most amazing evidence of the advance of good taste is the
+revival of chintzes, printed linens, cottons and so forth, of the
+Eighteenth Century. Ten years ago it was almost impossible to find a
+well-designed cretonne; the beautiful chintzes as we know them were
+unknown. Now there are literally thousands of these excellent fabrics of
+old and new designs in the shops. The gay designs of the printed cottons
+that came to us from East India, a hundred years ago, and the fantastic
+chintzes known as Chinese Chippendale, that were in vogue when the Dutch
+East India Company supplied the world with its china and fabrics; the
+dainty French <i>toiles de Jouy</i> that are reminiscent of Marie Antoinette
+and her bewitching apartments, and the printed linens of old England and
+later ones of the England of William Morris, all these are at our
+service. There are charming cottons to be had at as little as twenty
+cents a yard, printed from old patterns. There are linens hand-printed
+from old blocks that rival cut velvet in their lustrous color effect and
+cost almost as much. There are amazing fabrics <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />that seem to have come
+from the land of the Arabian nights&mdash;they really come from Austria and
+are dubbed &quot;Futurist&quot; and &quot;Cubist&quot; and such. Some of them are inspiring,
+some of them are horrifying, but all of them are interesting. Old-time
+chintzes were usually very narrow, and light in ground, but the modern
+chintz is forty or fifty inches wide, with a ground of neutral tone that
+gives it distinction, and defies dust.</p>
+
+<p>When I began my work as a decorator of houses, my friends, astonished
+and just a little amused at my persistent use of chintz, called me the
+&quot;Chintz decorator.&quot; The title pleased me, even though it was bestowed in
+fun, for my theory has always been that chintz, when properly used, is
+the most decorative and satisfactory of all fabrics. At first people
+objected to my bringing chintz into their houses because they had an
+idea it was poor and mean, and rather a doubtful expedient. On the
+contrary, I feel that it is infinitely, better to use good chintzes than
+inferior silks and damasks, just as simple engravings and prints are
+preferable to doubtful paintings. The effect is the thing!</p>
+
+<p>One of the chief objections to the charming fabric was that people felt
+it would become soiled easily, and would often have to be renewed, but
+in our vacuum-cleaned houses we no longer feel that it is necessary to
+have furniture and hangings that will &quot;conceal dirt.&quot; We refuse to
+<i>have</i> dirt! Of course, chintzes in rooms that will have hard wear
+should be carefully <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />selected. They should be printed on linen, or some
+hard twilled fabric, and the ground color should be darker than when
+they are to be used in bedrooms. Many of the newer chintzes have dark
+grounds of blue, mauve, maroon or gray, and a still more recent chintz
+has a black ground with fantastic designs of the most delightful
+colorings. The black chintzes are reproductions of fabrics that were in
+vogue in 1830. They are very good in rooms that must be used a great
+deal, and they are very decorative. Some of them suggest old cut
+velvets&mdash;they are so soft and lustrous.</p>
+
+<p>My greatest difficulty in introducing chintzes here was to convert women
+who loved their plush and satin draperies to a simpler fabric. They were
+unwilling to give up the glories they knew for the charms they knew not.
+I convinced them by showing them results! My first large commission was
+the Colony Club, and I used chintzes throughout the Club: Chintzes of
+cool grapes and leaves in the roof garden, hand-blocked linens of many
+soft colors in the reading-room, rose-sprigged and English posy designs
+in the bedrooms, and so on throughout the building.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am using more chintz than anything else. It is as much at home in
+the New York drawing-room as in the country cottage. I can think of
+nothing more charming for a room in a country house than a sitting-room
+furnished with gray painted furniture and a lovely chintz.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0344" id="h0344"></a>
+<img src="images/h0344.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK"
+title="STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK" />
+<p class="center"><b>STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Not long ago I was asked to furnish a small sea-<a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" /><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" /><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />shore cottage. The
+whole thing had to be done in a month, and the only plan I had to work
+on was a batch of chintz samples that had been selected for the house. I
+extracted the colorings of walls, woodwork, furniture, etc., from these
+chintzes. Instead of buying new furniture I dragged down a lot of old
+things that had been relegated to the attic and painted them with a dull
+ground color and small designs adapted from the chintzes. The lighting
+fixtures, wall brackets, candle sticks, etc.&mdash;were of carved wood,
+painted in polychrome to match the general scheme. One chintz in
+particular I would like to have every woman see and enjoy. It had a
+ground of old blue, patterned regularly with little Persian &quot;pears,&quot; the
+old rug design, you know. The effect of this simple chintz with white
+painted walls and furniture and woodwork and crisp white muslin glass
+curtains was delicious.</p>
+
+<p>The most satisfactory of all chintzes is the <i>Toile de Jouy</i>. The
+designs are interesting and well drawn, and very much more decorative
+than the designs one finds in ordinary silks and other materials. The
+chintzes must be appropriate to the uses of the room, well designed, in
+scale with the height of the ceilings, and so forth. It is well to
+remember that self-color rugs are most effective in chintz rooms. Wilton
+rugs woven in carpet sizes are to be had now at all first class
+furniture stores.</p>
+
+<p>Painted furniture is very popular nowadays and is especially delightful
+when used in chintz rooms. The <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />furniture we see now is really a revival
+and reproduction of the old models made by Angelica Kaufman,
+Heppelwhite, and other furniture-makers of their period. The old
+furniture is rarely seen outside of museums nowadays, but it has been an
+inspiration to modern decorators who are seeking ideas for simple and
+charming furniture.</p>
+
+<p>A very attractive room can be made by taking unfinished pieces of
+furniture&mdash;that is, furniture that has not been stained or painted&mdash;and
+painting them a soft field color, and then adding decorations of
+bouquets or garlands, or birds, or baskets, reproducing parts of the
+design of the chintz used in the room. Of course, many of these patterns
+could be copied by a good draftsman only, but others are simple enough
+for anyone to attempt. For instance, I decorated a room in soft cream,
+gray, yellow and cornflower blue. The chintz had a cornflower design
+that repeated all these colors. I painted the furniture a very soft
+gray, and then painted little garlands of cornflowers in soft blues and
+gray-greens on each piece of furniture. The walls were painted a soft
+cream color. The carpet rug of tan was woven in one piece with a blue
+stripe in the border.</p>
+
+<p>The color illustrations of this book will give you a very good idea of
+how I use chintzes and painted furniture. One of the illustrations shows
+the use of a black chintz in the dressing-room of a city house. The
+chintz is covered with parrots which make gorgeous <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />splashes of color on
+the black ground. The color of the foliage and leaves is greenish-blue,
+which shades into a dozen blues and greens. This greenish-blue tone has
+been used in the small things of the room. The chintz curtains are lined
+with silk of this tone, and the valance at the top of the group of
+windows is finished with a narrow silk fringe of this greenish-blue. The
+small candle shades, the shirred shade of the drop-light, and the
+cushion of the black lacquer chair are also of this blue.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the room are a deep cream in tone, and there are a number
+of old French prints from some Eighteenth Century fashion journals hung
+on the cream ground. The dressing-table is placed against the windows,
+over the radiator, so that there is light and to spare for dressing.
+Half curtains of white muslin are shirred on the sashes back of the
+dressing-table. The quaint triplicate mirror is of black lacquer
+decorated with Chinese figures in gold, and the little, three-cornered
+cabinet in the corner is also of black and gold. The chintz is used as a
+covering for the dressing-seat.</p>
+
+<p>Another illustration shows the writing-corner of the bedroom which leads
+into this dressing-room. The walls and the rose-red carpet are the same
+in both rooms, as you see. This bedroom depends absolutely on the rose
+and blue chintz for its decoration. There is a quaint bed painted a pale
+gray, with rose-red taffeta coverlet. The bed curtains are of the chintz
+<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />lined with the rose-red silk. There are several white-enamel chairs
+upholstered with the chintz, and there is a comfortable French couch
+with a kidney table of mahogany beside it. The corner of the room shown
+in the illustration is the most convenient writing-place. The desk is
+placed at right angles to the wall between the two windows. The small
+furnishings of the writing-desk repeat the queer blues and the rose-red
+of the chintz. A very comfortable stool with a cushion of old velvet is
+an added convenience.</p>
+
+<p>The chintz curtains at the windows hang in straight, full folds. A flat
+valance, cut the length of the design of the chintz, furnishes the top
+of the two windows. Some windows do not need these valances, but these
+windows are very high and need the connecting line of color. The long
+curtains are lined with the rose-red silk, which also shows in a narrow
+piping around the edges.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0345" id="h0345"></a>
+<img src="images/h0345.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE"
+title="MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The other two color illustrations are of the most popular room I have
+done, a bedroom and sitting room combined. Everyone likes the color plan
+of soft greens, mauve and lavender. There is a large day bed of painted
+wood, with mattress, springs and cushions covered with a chintz of mauve
+ground and gay birds. The rug is a self-toned rug of very soft green,
+and the walls are tinted with the palest of greens. The woodwork is
+white, and the furniture is painted a greenish-gray that is just a
+little deeper than pearl. A darker green line of paint outlines all
+<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" /><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" /><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" />the furniture, which is further decorated with prim little garlands
+of flowers painted in dull rose, blue, yellow and green.</p>
+
+<p>The mauve chintz is used for the curtains, and for the huge armchair and
+one or two painted chairs. There is a little footstool covered with
+brocaded violet velvet, with just a thread of green showing on the
+background. The lighting fixtures are of carved wood, painted in soft
+colors to match the garlands on the furniture, with shirred shades of
+lavender silk. Two lamps made of quaint old green jars with lavender
+decorations have shirred shades of the same silk. One of these lamps is
+used on the writing-table and the other on the little chest of drawers.</p>
+
+<p>This little chest of drawers, by the way, is about the simplest piece of
+furniture I can think of, for any girl who can use her brushes at all.
+An ordinary chest of drawers should be given several coats of
+paint&mdash;pale yellow, green or blue, as may be preferred. Then a thin
+stripe of a darker tone should be painted on it. This should be outlined
+in pencil and then painted with a deeper tone of green color; for
+instance, an orange or brown stripe should be used on pale yellow, and
+dark green or blue on the pale green.</p>
+
+<p>A detail of the wall paper or the chintz design may be outlined on the
+panels of the drawers and on the top of the chest by means of a stencil,
+and then painted with rather soft colors. The top of the chest should be
+covered with a piece of plate glass which will have <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />the advantage of
+showing the design of the cover and of being easily cleaned.
+Old-fashioned glass knobs add interest to this piece of furniture. A
+mirror with a gilt frame, or an unframed painting similar to the one
+shown in the illustration would be very nice above the chest of drawers.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" /><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0346" id="h0346"></a>
+<img src="images/h0346.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED IN A DRAWING-ROOM"
+title="HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED IN A DRAWING-ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED IN A DRAWING-ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII" /><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />VIII</h2>
+
+<h2>THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>In all the equipment of the modern house, I think there is nothing more
+difficult than the problem of artificial light. To have the light
+properly distributed so that the rooms may be suffused with just the
+proper glow, but never a glare; so that the base outlets for
+reading-lamps shall be at convenient angles, so that the wall lights
+shall be beautifully balanced,&mdash;all this means prodigious thought and
+care before the actual placing of the lights is accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>In domestic architecture light is usually provided for some special
+function; to dress by, to read by, or to eat by. If properly considered,
+there is no reason why one's lighting fixtures should not be beautiful
+as well as utilitarian. However, it is seldom indeed that one finds
+lights that serve the purposes of utility and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>I have rarely, I might say never, gone into a builder's house (and
+indeed I might say the same of many architects' houses) but that the
+first things to require changing to make the house amenable to modern
+American needs were the openings for lighting fixtures. Usually, side
+openings are placed much too near the trim of a door or window, so that
+no self-<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />respecting bracket can be placed in the space without
+encroaching on the molding. Another favorite mistake is to place the two
+wall openings in a long wall or large panel so close together that no
+large picture or mirror or piece of furniture can be placed against that
+wall. There is also the tendency to place the openings too high, which
+always spoils a good room.</p>
+
+<p>I strongly advise the woman who is having a house built or re-arranged
+to lay out her electric light plan as early in the game as possible,
+with due consideration to the uses of each room. If there is a high
+chest of drawers for a certain wall, the size of it is just as important
+in planning the lighting fixtures for that wall as is the width of the
+fireplace important in the placing of the lights on the chimney-breast.
+I advise putting a liberal number of base openings in a room, for it
+costs little when the room is in embryo. Later on, when you find you can
+change your favorite table and chair to a better position to meet the
+inspiration of the completed room and that your reading-lamp can be
+moved, too, because the outlet is there ready for it, will come the
+compensating moments when you congratulate yourself on forethought.</p>
+
+<p>There are now, fortunately, few communities in America that have not
+electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a
+thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for
+years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the
+smaller the town the cheaper <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />is the cost of electricity. This is not a
+cut-and-dried statement, but an observation from personal experience.
+The little town's electricity is usually a byproduct of some
+manufacturing plant, and current is often sold at so much per light per
+month, instead of being measured by meter. It is pleasant to think that
+many homes have bridged the smelly gap between candles and electricity
+in this magic fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Gas light is more difficult to manage than electricity, for there is
+always the cumbersome tube and the necessity for adding mechanical
+accessories before a good clear light is secured. Gas lamps are hideous,
+for some obscure reason, whereas there are hundreds of simple and
+excellent wall fixtures, drop lights and reading lamps to be bought
+already equipped for electricity. The electric wire is such an
+unobtrusive thing that it can be carried through a small hole in any
+good vase, or jar, and with a suitable shade you have an attractive and
+serviceable reading light. Candlesticks are easily equipped for
+electricity and are the most graceful of all fixtures for
+dressing-tables, bedside tables, tea tables, and such.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to remember that if a room is decorated in dark colors the
+light will be more readily absorbed than in a light-colored room, and
+you should select and place your lighting-fixtures accordingly. Bead
+covers, fringes and silk shades all obscure the light and re-absorb it,
+and so require a great force of light to illuminate properly.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" /></p>
+
+<p>The subject of the selection of lighting-fixtures is limitless. There
+are so many fixtures to be had nowadays&mdash;good, bad and indifferent&mdash;that
+it were impossible to point out the merits and demerits of them all.
+There are copies of all the best lamps and lanterns of old Europe and
+many new designs that grew out of modern American needs. There are Louis
+XVI lanterns simple enough to fit well into many an American hallway,
+that offer excellent lessons in the simplicity of the master decorators
+of old times. Contrast one of these fine old lanterns with the mass of
+colored glass and beads and crude lines and curves of many modern hall
+lanterns. I like a ceiling bowl of crystal or alabaster with lights
+inside, for halls, but the expense of such a bowl is great. However, I
+recently saw a reproduction of an old alabaster bowl made of soft,
+cloudy glass, not of alabaster, which sold at a fraction of the price of
+the original, and it seemed to meet all the requirements.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, one may easily spend as much money on lighting-fixtures as on
+the remainder of the house, but that is no reason why people who must
+practise economy should admit ugly fixtures into their homes. There are
+always good and bad fixtures offered at the lowest and highest prices.
+You have no defense if you build your own house. If you are making the
+best of a rented house or an apartment, that is different. But good
+taste is sufficient armor against the snare of gaudy beads and cheap
+glass.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0347" id="h0347"></a>
+<img src="images/h0347.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT METAL"
+title="DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT METAL" />
+<p class="center"><b>DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT METAL</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" /><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" /></p>
+
+<p>There was recently an exhibition in New York of the craftsmanship of
+the students of a certain school of design. There were some really
+beautiful lanterns and wall brackets and reading lamps shown, designed
+and executed by young women who are self supporting by day and can give
+only a few evening hours, or an occasional day, to the pursuit of their
+avocation. One hanging lantern of terra cotta was very fine indeed, and
+there were many notable fixtures. There must be easily tens of thousands
+of young people who are students in the various schools of design,
+manual training high schools and normal art schools.</p>
+
+<p>Why doesn't some far-seeing manufacturer of lighting-fixtures give these
+young people a chance to adapt the fine old French and Italian designs
+to our modern needs? Why not have your daughter or son copy such an
+object that has use and beauty, instead of encouraging the daubing of
+china or the piercing of brass that leads to nothing? And if you haven't
+a daughter or son, encourage the young artisan, your neighbor, who is
+trying to &quot;find himself.&quot; Let him copy a few good old fixtures for you.
+They will cost no more than the gaudy vulgar fixtures that are sold in
+so many shops.</p>
+
+<p>The photograph shown on page 108 illustrates the possibility of using a
+number of lighting-fixtures in one room. The room shown is my own
+drawing-room. You will observe that in this picture there are many
+different lights. The two old French fixtures <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />of wrought gilt, which
+flank the mantel mirror, hold wax candles. The two easy chairs have
+little tables beside them holding three-pronged silver candlesticks.
+There is also a small table holding an electric reading-lamp, made of a
+Chinese jar, with a shade of shirred silk. The chandelier is a charming
+old French affair of gracefully strung crystal globules. For a formal
+occasion the chandelier is lighted, but when we are few, we love the
+fire glow and candlelight. If we require a stronger light for reading
+there is the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>The photograph here given may suggest a superfluous number of lights,
+but the room itself does not. The wall fixtures are of gilt, you see,
+the candlesticks of silver, the chandelier of crystal and the lamp of
+Chinese porcelain and soft colored silk; so one is not conscious of the
+many lights. If all the lights were screened in the same way the effect
+would be different. I use this picture for this very reason&mdash;to show how
+many lights may be assembled and used in one place. In considering the
+placing of these lights, the firelight was not forgotten, nor the effect
+of the room by day when the sunlight floods in and these many fixtures
+become objects of decorative interest.</p>
+
+<p>A lamp, or a wall fixture, or a chandelier, or a candlestick, must be
+beautiful in itself&mdash;beautiful by sunlight,&mdash;if it is really successful.
+The soft glow of night light may make commonplace things beautiful, but
+the final test of a fixture is its effect in relation to the other
+furnishings of the room in sunlight.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" /><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0348" id="h0348"></a>
+<img src="images/h0348.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS"
+title="LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS" />
+<p class="center"><b>LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" /></p>
+
+<p>The picture on page 118 shows the proper placing of wall fixtures when
+a large picture is the chief point of interest. These wall fixtures are
+particularly interesting because they are in the style of the Adam
+mirrors that hang on the recessed wall spaces flanking the chimney wall.
+This photograph is a lesson in the placing of objects of art. The large
+painting is beautifully spaced between the line of the mantel shelf and
+the lower line of the cornice. The wall fixtures are correctly placed,
+and anyone can see why they would be distressingly out of key if they
+were nearer the picture, or nearer the line of the chimney wall. The
+picture was considered as an important part of the chimney-piece before
+the openings for the fixtures were made.</p>
+
+<p>Another good lamp is shown on the small table in this picture. There is
+really a reading-lamp beside a comfortable couch, which cannot be seen
+in the picture. This lamp, like the one in the drawing-room, is made
+from a porcelain vase, with a shirred silk shade on a wire frame. An
+electric light cord is run through a hole bored for it. If electricity
+were not available, an oil receptacle of brass could be fitted into the
+vase and the beauty of the lamp would be the same.</p>
+
+<p>There are so many possibilities for making beautiful lamps of good jars
+and vases that it is surprising the shops still sell their frightful
+lamps covered with cabbage roses and dragons and monstrosities. A <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />blue
+and white ginger jar, a copper loving-cup, or even a homely brown
+earthenware bean-pot, will make a good bowl for an oil or electric lamp,
+but of the dreadful bowls sold in the shops for the purpose the less
+said the better. How can one see beauty in a lurid bowl and shade of red
+glass! Better stick to wax candles the rest of your life than indulge in
+such a lamp!</p>
+
+<p>I know people plead that they have to buy what is offered; they cannot
+find simple lamps and hanging lanterns at small prices and so they
+<i>must</i> buy bad ones. The manufacturer makes just the objects that people
+demand. So long as you accept these things, just so long will he make
+them. If all the women who complain about the hideous lighting-fixtures
+that are sold were to refuse absolutely to buy them, a few years would
+show a revolution in the designing of these things.</p>
+
+<p>There has been of late a vulgar fashion of having a huge mass of colored
+glass and beads suspended from near-brass chains in the dining-rooms of
+certain apartments and houses. These monstrous things are called
+&quot;domes&quot;&mdash;no one knows why. For the price of one of them you could buy a
+three pronged candlestick, equipped for electricity, for your
+dining-room table. It is the sight of hundreds of these dreadful &quot;domes&quot;
+in the lamp shops that gives one a feeling of discouragement. The
+humblest kitchen lamp of brass and tin would be beautiful by contrast.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" /></p>
+
+<p>When all is said and done, we must come back to wax candles for the
+most beautiful light of all. Electricity is the most efficient, but
+candlelight is the most satisfying. For a drawing-room, or any formal
+room where a clear light is not required, wax candles are perfect. There
+are still a few houses left where candlesticks are things of use and are
+not banished to the shelves as curiosities. Certainly the clear, white
+light of electricity seems heaven-sent when one is dressing or working,
+but for between-hours, for the brief periods of rest, the only thing
+that rivals the comfort of candlelight is the glow of an open fire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX" /><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />IX</h2>
+
+<h2>HALLS AND STAIRCASES</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>In early days the hall was the large formal room in which the main
+business of the house was transacted. It played the part of court-room,
+with the lord of the manor as judge. It was used for dining, living, and
+for whatever entertainment the house afforded. The stairs were not a
+part of it: they found a place as best they could. From the times of the
+primitive ladder of the adobe dwelling to the days of the spiral
+staircase carried up in the thickness of the wall, the stairway was
+always a primitive affair, born of necessity, with little claim to
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>With the Renaissance in Italy came the forerunner of the modern entrance
+hall, with its accompanying stair. Considerations of comfort and beauty
+began to be observed. The Italian staircase grew into a magnificent
+affair, &quot;L'escalier d'honneur,&quot; and often led only to the open galleries
+and <i>salons de parade</i> of the next floor. I think the finest staircases
+in all the world are in the Genoese palaces. The grand staircase of the
+Renaissance may still be seen in many fine Italian palaces, notably in
+the Bargello in Florence. This staircase has been splendidly reproduced
+by Mrs.<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" /> Gardner in Fenway Court, her Italian palace in Boston. This
+house is, by the way, the finest thing of its kind in America. Mrs.
+Gardner has the same far-seeing interest in the furtherance of an
+American appreciation of art as had the late Pierpont Morgan. She has
+assembled a magnificent collection of objects of art, and she opens her
+house to the public occasionally and to artists and designers
+frequently, that they may have the advantage of studying the treasures.</p>
+
+<p>To return to our staircases: In France the intermural, or spiral,
+staircase was considered quite splendid enough for all human needs, and
+in the finest ch&acirc;teaux of the French Renaissance one finds these
+practical staircases. Possibly in those troublous times the French
+architects planned for an aristocracy living under the influence of an
+inherited tradition of treachery and violence, they felt more secure in
+the isolation and ready command of a small, narrow staircase where one
+man well nigh single-handed could keep an army at bay. A large wide
+staircase of easy ascent might have meant many uneasy moments, with
+plots without and treachery within.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, however, the old feudal entrance gave way to its
+sub-divisions of guardroom, vestibule, and salon. England was last to
+capitulate, and in the great Tudor houses still extant one finds the
+entrance door opening directly into the Hall. Often in these English
+houses there was a screen of very beautiful carved wood, behind which
+was the staircase. Inigo<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" /> Jones introduced the Palladian style into
+England, and so brought in the many-storied central salon which served
+as means of access to all the house. The old English halls and
+staircases designed by Inigo Jones would be perfect for our more
+elaborate American country houses. The severe beauty of English paneling
+and the carving of newel-post and spindles are having a just revival.
+The pendulum swings&mdash;and there is nothing new under the sun!</p>
+
+<p>Wooden staircases with carved wooden balustrades were used oftenest in
+England, while in the French ch&acirc;teaux marble stairs with wrought-iron
+stair-rails are generally found. The perfection to which the art of iron
+work may be carried is familiar to everyone who knows the fairy-like
+iron work of Jean L'Amour in the Stanislas Palace at Nancy. This
+staircase in the H&ocirc;tel de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France
+you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects.
+Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work
+door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this
+work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century.
+The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath
+their dignity and talent to devote themselves to designing the knobs of
+doors, the handles of commodes, the bronzes for the decorations of
+fireplaces, the shaping of hinges and locks. They were careful of
+details, and that is the secret of their supremacy. Nowadays, <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />we may
+find a house with a beautiful hall, but the chances are it is spoiled by
+crudely designed fittings.</p>
+
+<p>I have written somewhat at length of the magnificent staircases of older
+countries and older times than our own, because somehow the subject is
+one that cannot be considered apart from its beginnings. All our halls
+and stairs, pretentious or not, have come to us from these superb
+efforts of masterly workmen, and perhaps that is why we feel
+instinctively that they must suggest a certain formality, and restraint.
+This feeling is indirectly a tribute to the architects who gave us such
+notable examples.</p>
+
+<p>We do not, however, have to go abroad for historic examples of stately
+halls and stairs. There are fine old houses scattered all through the
+old thirteen states that cannot be surpassed for dignity and simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>One of the best halls in America is that of &quot;Westover,&quot; probably the
+most famous house in Virginia. This old house was built in 1737 by
+Colonel Byrd on the James River, where so many of the Colonial
+aristocrats of Virginia made their homes. The plan of the hall is
+suggestive of an old English manor house. The walls are beautifully
+paneled from an old English plan. The turned balusters are
+representative of the late Seventeenth or early Eighteenth Century. The
+fine old Jacobean chairs and tables have weathered two centuries, and
+are friendly to their new neighbors, Oriental rugs older than
+themselves. The staircase has two landings, on the first <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />of which
+stands an old Grandfather's-clock, marking the beginning of a custom
+that obtains to this day.</p>
+
+<p>This hall is characteristic of American houses of the Colonial period,
+and indeed of the average large country house of to-day, for the
+straightaway hall, cutting the house squarely in two, is so much a part
+of our architecture that we use it as a standard. It is to be found,
+somewhat narrower and lower of ceiling, in New England farmhouses and in
+Eastern city houses. The Southern house of ante-bellum days varied the
+stair occasionally by patterning the magnificent winding staircases of
+old England, but the long hall open at both ends, and the long stair,
+with one or two landings, is characteristic of all old American houses.</p>
+
+<p>The customary finish for these old halls was a landscape wall paper, a
+painted wall broken into panels by molding, a high white wainscoting
+with white plaster above, or possibly a gay figured paper of
+questionable beauty. Mahogany furniture was characteristic of all these
+halls&mdash;a grandfather's-clock, a turn-top table, a number of dignified
+chairs, and a quaint old mirror. Sometimes there was a fireplace, but
+oftener there were doors opening evenly into various rooms of the first
+floor. These things are irreproachable to-day. Why did we have to go
+through the period of the walnut hat-rack and shiny oak hall furniture,
+only to return to our simplicities?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0349" id="h0349"></a>
+<img src="images/h0349.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE"
+title="THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>When I planned the main hall of the Colony Club I determined to make it
+very Colonial, very American, <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" /><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" /><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />very inviting and comfortable, the sort
+of hall you like to remember having seen in an old Virginia house. One
+enters from the street into a narrow hall that soon broadens into a
+spacious and lofty living-hall. The walls are, of course, white, the
+paneled spaces being broken by quaint old Colonial mirrors and
+appropriate lighting-fixtures. There is a great fireplace at one end of
+the hall, with a deep, chintz-covered davenport before it. There are
+also roomy chairs covered with the same delightful chintz, a green and
+white glazed English chintz that is as serviceable as it is beautiful.
+Besides the chintz-covered chairs, there are two old English chairs
+covered with English needlework. These chairs are among the treasures of
+the Club. There are several long mahogany tables, and many small tea
+tables. The rugs are of a spring green&mdash;I can think of no better name
+for it.</p>
+
+<p>In modern English and American houses of the smaller class the staircase
+is a part of an elongated entrance hall, and there is often no
+vestibule. In many of the more important new houses the stairs are
+divided from the entrance hall, so that one staircase will do for the
+servants, family and all, and the privacy of the entrance hall will be
+secured. In my own house in New York, you enter the square hall
+directly, and the staircase is in a second hall. This entrance hall is a
+real breathing-space, affording the visitor a few moments of rest and
+calm after the crowded streets of the city. The hall is quite large,
+<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />with a color-plan of black and white and dark green. You will find a
+description of this hall in another chapter. I have used this same plan
+in many other city houses, with individual variations, of course. The
+serene quality of such a hall is very valuable in the city. If you
+introduced a lot of furniture the whole thing would be spoiled.</p>
+
+<p>I used an old porcelain stove, creamy and iridescent in glaze, in such a
+hall in an uptown house very similar to my own. The stove is very
+beautiful in itself, but it was used for use as well as beauty. It
+really holds a fire and furnishes an even heat. The stove was flanked by
+two pedestals surmounted with baskets spilling over with fruits, carved
+from wood and gilded and painted in polychrome. Everything in this hall
+is arranged with precision of balance. The stove is flanked by two
+pedestals. The niche that holds the stove and the corresponding niche on
+the other wall, which holds a statue, are flanked by narrow panels
+holding lighting-fixtures. The street wall is broken by doors and its
+two flanking windows. The opposite wall has a large central panel
+flanked by two glass doors, one leading to the stairway and the other to
+a closet, beneath it. Everything is &quot;paired,&quot; with resulting effect of
+great formality and restraint. Very little furniture is required: A
+table to hold cards and notes, two low benches, and a wrought iron stand
+for umbrellas. The windows have curtains of Italian linen, coarse
+homespun stuff that is very lovely with <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />white walls and woodwork. There
+are no pictures on the wall, but there are specially designed
+lighting-fixtures in the small panels that frame the niches.</p>
+
+<p>In several of the finer houses that have been built recently, notably
+that of Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, the staircase is enclosed, and is in no way
+an architectural feature, merely a possible means of communication when
+needed. This solution of the staircase problem has no doubt brought
+about our modern luxury of elevators. In another fine private house
+recently built the grand staircase only goes so far as the formal rooms
+of the second floor, and a small iron staircase enclosed in the wall
+leads to the intimate family rooms of the bedroom floor. The advantage
+of this gain in space can easily be appreciated. All the room usually
+taken up by the large wall of the staircase halls, and so forth, can be
+thrown into the bedrooms upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>The illustrations of the Bayard Thayer hall and staircase speak for
+themselves. Here lighting-fixtures, locks, hinges, have been carefully
+planned, so that the smallest part is worthy of the whole. This hall is
+representative of the finer private houses that are being built in
+America to-day. I had the pleasure of working with the architect and the
+owners here, and so was able to fit the decorations and furnishings of
+the hall to the house and to the requirements of the people who live in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The present tendency of people who build small houses is to make a
+living-room of the hall. I am not <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />in favor of this. I think the hall
+should be much more formal than the rest of the house. It is, after all,
+of public access, not only to the living-rooms but to the street. The
+servant who answers the front door must of necessity constantly traverse
+it, so must anyone&mdash;the guest or tradesman&mdash;admitted to the house. The
+furniture should be severe and architectural in design. A column or
+pedestal surmounted with a statue, a fountain, an old chest to hold
+carriage-rugs, a carved bench, a good table, a standing desk, may be
+used in a large house. Nothing more is admissible. In a small house a
+well-shaped table, a bench or so, possibly a wall clock, will be all
+that is necessary. The wall should be plain in treatment. The stair
+carpet should be plain in color. The floor should be bare, if in good
+condition, with just a small rug for softness at the door. A tiled floor
+is especially beautiful in a hall, if you can afford it.</p>
+
+<p>If your house happens to have the hall and living-room combined, and no
+vestibule, you can place a large screen near the entrance door and
+obtain a little more privacy. A standing screen of wooden panels is
+better than a folding screen, for the folding screen is rarely
+well-built, and will be blown down by the draft of the open door. A
+standing screen may be made by any carpenter, and painted or stained to
+match the woodwork of the room. A straight bench or settle placed
+against it will make the screened space seem more like a vestibule.</p>
+
+<p>Another objection to the staircase leading from the <a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />living-room of a
+small house is that such an arrangement makes it almost impossible to
+heat the house properly in winter. I have seen so many bewildered people
+whose spacious doorless downstairs rooms were a joy in summer, shivering
+all winter long in a polar atmosphere. The stair well seems to suck all
+the warmth from the living-room, and coal bills soar.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, don't try to make your hall &quot;pretty.&quot; Remember that a hall is
+not a living-room, but a thoroughfare open and used by all the dwellers
+in the house. Don't be afraid of your halls and stairs looking &quot;cold.&quot;
+It is a good idea to have one small space in your house where you can go
+and sit down and be calm and cool! You can't keep the rest of the house
+severe and cool looking, but here it is eminently appropriate and
+sensible. The visitor who enters a white and green hall and gets an
+effect of real reserve and coolness is all the more appreciative of the
+warmth and intimacy of the living-rooms of the house.</p>
+
+<p>After all, for simple American houses there is nothing better than a
+straightaway staircase of broad and easy treads, with one or two
+landings. There may be a broad landing with a window and window-seat, if
+there is a real view, but the landing-seat that is built for no especial
+purpose is worse than useless. It is not at all necessary to have the
+stairs carpeted, if the treads are broad enough, and turned balusters
+painted white with a mahogany hand rail are in scheme. Such a staircase
+adds much to the home-quality of a house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X" /><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />X</h2>
+
+<h2>THE DRAWING-ROOM</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>A drawing-room is the logical place for the elegancies of family life.
+The ideal drawing-room, to my mind, contains many comfortable chairs and
+sofas, many softly shaded lights by night, and plenty of sunshine by
+day, well-balanced mirrors set in simple paneled walls, and any number
+of small tables that may be brought out into the room if need be, and an
+open fire.</p>
+
+<p>The old idea of the drawing-room was a horrible apartment of stiffness
+and formality and discomfort. No wonder it was used only for weddings
+and funerals! The modern drawing-room is intended, primarily, as a place
+where a hostess may entertain her friends, and it must not be chill and
+uninviting, whatever else it may be. It should not be littered up with
+personal things&mdash;magazines, books and work-baskets and objects that
+belong in the living-room&mdash;but it welcomes flowers and <i>objets d'art</i>,
+collections of fans, or miniatures, or graceful mirrors, or old French
+prints, or enamels, or porcelains. It should be a place where people may
+converse without interruption from the children.</p>
+
+<p>Most houses, even of the smaller sort, have three day rooms&mdash;the
+dining-room, the parlor and the sit<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />ting-room, as they are usually
+called. People who appreciate more and more the joy of living have
+pulled hall and sitting-room together into one great family meeting
+place, leaving a small vestibule, decreased the size of the dining-room
+and built in many windows, so that it becomes almost an outdoor room,
+and given the parlor a little more dignity and serenity and its right
+name&mdash;the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>We use the terms drawing-room and <i>salon</i> interchangeably in
+America&mdash;though we are a bit more timid of the <i>salon</i>&mdash;but there is a
+subtle difference between the two that is worth noting. The withdrawing
+room of old England was the quiet room to which the ladies retired,
+leaving their lords to the freer pleasures of the great hall. Indeed,
+the room began as a part of my lady's bedroom, but gradually came into
+its proper importance and took on a magnificence all its own. The
+<i>salon</i> of France also began as a part of the great hall, or <i>grande
+salle</i>. Then came the need for an apartment for receiving and so the
+great bed chamber was divided into two parts, one a real sleeping-room
+and the other a <i>chambre de parade,</i> with a great state bed for the
+occasional visitors of great position. The great bed, or <i>lit de
+parade</i>, was representative of all the salons of the time of Louis XIII.
+Gradually the owners of the more magnificent houses saw the opportunity
+for a series of salons, and so the state apartment was divided into two
+parts: a <i>salon de famille</i>, which afforded the family a certain
+privacy, and the<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" /> <i>salon de compagnie</i>, which was sacred to a
+magnificent hospitality. And so the salon expanded until nowadays we use
+the word with awe, and appreciate its implication of brilliant
+conversation and exquisite decoration, of a radiant hostess, an amusing
+and distinguished circle of people. The word has a graciousness, a
+challenge that we fear. If we have not just the right house we should
+not dare risk belittling our pleasant drawing-room by dubbing it
+&quot;salon.&quot; In short, a drawing-room may be a part of any well regulated
+house. A salon is largely a matter of spirit and cleverness.</p>
+
+<p>A drawing-room has no place in the house where there is no other
+living-room. Indeed, if there are many children, and the house is of
+moderate size, I think a number of small day rooms are vastly better
+than the two usual rooms, living-room and drawing-room, because only in
+this way can the various members of the family have a chance at any
+privacy. The one large room so necessary for the gala occasions of a
+large family may be the dining-room, for here it will be easy to push
+back tables and chairs for the occasion. If the children have a nursery,
+and mother has a small sitting-room, and father has a little room for
+books and writing, a living-room may be eliminated in favor of a small
+formal room for visitors and talk.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0350" id="h0350"></a>
+<img src="images/h0350.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT"
+title="THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>No matter how large your drawing-room may be, keep it intimate in
+spirit. There should be a dozen conversation centers in a large room.
+There should <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" /><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" /><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />be one or more sofas, with comfortable chairs pulled up
+beside them. No one chair should be isolated, for some bashful person
+who doesn't talk well anyway is sure to take the most remote chair and
+make herself miserable. I have seen a shy young woman completely changed
+because she happened to sit upon a certain deep cushioned sofa of
+rose-colored damask. Whether it was the rose color, or the enforced
+relaxation the sofa induced, or the proximity of some very charming
+people in comfortable chairs beside her, or all of these things&mdash;I don't
+know! But she found herself. She found herself gay and happy and
+unafraid. I am sure her personality flowered from that hour on. If she
+had been left to herself she would have taken a stiff chair in a far
+corner, and she would have been miserable and self-conscious. I believe
+most firmly in the magic power of inanimate objects!</p>
+
+<p>Don't litter your drawing-room with bric-a-brac. Who hasn't seen what I
+can best describe as a souvenir drawing-room, a room filled with
+curiosities from everywhere! I shall never forget doing a drawing-room
+for a woman of no taste. I persuaded her to put away her heavy velvets
+and gilt fringes and to have one light and spacious room in the house.
+She agreed. We worked out a chintz drawing-room that was delicious. I
+was very happy over it and you can imagine my amazement when she came to
+me and said, &quot;But Miss de Wolfe, what am I to do with my blue satin
+tidies?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" /></p>
+
+<p>In my own drawing-room I have so many objects of art, and yet I think
+you will agree with me that the room has a great serenity. Over the
+little desk in one corner I have my collection of old miniatures and
+fans of the golden days of the French court. There are ever so many
+vases and bowls for flowers, <i>but they are used</i>. There are dozens of
+lighting-fixtures, brackets, and lamps, and a chandelier, and many
+candlesticks, and they are used, also. Somehow, when a beautiful object
+becomes a useful object, it takes its place in the general scheme of
+things and does not disturb the eye.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal drawing-room has a real fireplace, with a wood fire when there
+is excuse for it. An open fire is almost as great an attribute to a
+drawing-room as a tactful hostess; it puts you at ease, instantly, and
+gives you poise. And just as an open fire and sunshine make for ease, so
+do well placed mirrors make for elegance. Use your mirrors as decorative
+panels, not only for the purpose of looking at yourself in them, and you
+will multiply the pleasures of your room. I have the wall space between
+mantel and frieze-line filled with a large mirror, in my New York
+drawing-room, and the two narrow panels between the front windows are
+filled with long narrow mirrors that reflect the color and charm of the
+room. Whenever you can manage it, place your mirror so that it will
+reflect some particularly nice object.</p>
+
+<p>Given plenty of chairs and sofas, and a few small <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />tables to hold lights
+and flowers, you will need very little other furniture in the
+drawing-room. You will need a writing-table, but a very small and
+orderly one. The drawing room desk may be very elegant in design and
+equipment, for it must be a part of the decoration of the room, and it
+must be always immaculate for the visitor who wants to write a note. The
+members of the family are supposed to use their own desks, leaving this
+one for social emergencies. A good desk is a godsend in a drawing-room,
+it makes a room that is usually cold and formal at once more livable and
+more intimate. In my own drawing-room I have a small French
+writing-table placed near a window, so that the light falls over one's
+left shoulder. The small black lacquer desks that are now being
+reproduced from old models would be excellent desks for drawing-rooms,
+because they not only offer service, as all furniture should, but are
+beautiful in themselves. Many of the small tables of walnut and mahogany
+that are sold as dressing-tables might be used as writing-tables in
+formal rooms, if the mirrors were eliminated.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<br />
+<a name="h0351" id="h0351"></a>
+<img src="images/h0351.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING"
+title="THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a great difference in opinion as to the placing of the piano in
+the drawing-room. I think it belongs in the living-room, if it is in
+constant use, though of course it is very convenient to have it near by
+the one big room, be it drawing-room or dining-room, when a small dance
+is planned. I am going to admit that in my opinion there is nothing more
+abused than the piano, I have no piano in my own house in New York.<a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" /> I
+love music&mdash;but I am not a musician, and so I do not expose myself to
+the merciless banging of chance callers. Besides, my house is quite
+small and a good piano would dwarf the other furnishings of my rooms. I
+think pianos are for musicians, not strummers, who spoil all chance for
+any real conversation. If you are fortunate enough to have a musician in
+your family, that is different. Go ahead and give him a music room.
+Musicians are not born every day, but lovers of music are everywhere,
+and I for one am heartily in favor of doing away with the old custom of
+teaching every child to bang a little, and instead, teaching him to
+<i>listen</i> to music. Oh, the crimes that are committed against music in
+American parlors! I prefer the good mechanical cabinet that offers us
+&quot;canned&quot; music to the manual exercise of people who insist on playing
+wherever they see an open piano. Of course the mechanical instrument is
+new, and therefore, subject to much criticism from a decorative
+standpoint, but the music is much better than the amateur's. We are
+still turning up our noses a little at the mechanical piano players, but
+if we will use our common sense we must admit that a new order of things
+has come to pass, and the new &quot;canned&quot; music is not to be despised.
+Certainly if the instrument displeases you, you can say so, but if a
+misguided friend elects to strum on your piano you are helpless. So I
+have no piano in my New York house. I have a cabinet of &quot;canned&quot; music
+that can be turned on for small dances when need be, <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" /><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" /><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />and that can be
+hidden in a closet between times. Why not?</p>
+
+<p>But suppose you have a piano, or need one: do give it a chance! Its very
+size makes it tremendously important, and if you load it with senseless
+fringed scarfs and bric-a-brac you make it the ugliest thing in your
+room. Give it the best place possible, against an inside wall,
+preferably. I saw a new house lately where the placing of the piano had
+been considered by the architect when the house was planned. There was a
+mezzanine floor overhanging the great living-room, and one end of this
+had been made into a piano alcove, a sort of modern minstrel gallery.
+The musician who used the piano was very happy, for your real musician
+loves a certain solitude, and those of us who listened to his music in
+the great room below were happy because the maker of the music was far
+enough away from us. We could appreciate the music and forget the
+mechanics of it. For a concert, or a small dance, this balcony
+music-room would be most convenient. Another good place for the piano is
+a sort of alcove, or small room opening from the large living or
+drawing-room, where the piano and a few chairs may be placed. Of course
+if you are to have a real music-room, then there are great
+possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>A piano may be a princely thing, properly built and decorated. The old
+spinets and harpsichords, with their charming inlaid cases, were
+beautiful, but they gave forth only tinkly sounds. Now we have a
+mag<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />nificent mechanism, but the case which encloses it is too often
+hideous.</p>
+
+<p>There is an old double-banked harpsichord of the early Eighteenth
+Century in the Morgan collection at the Metropolitan Museum that would
+be a fine form for a piano, if it would hold the &quot;works.&quot; It is long and
+narrow, fitting against the wall so that it really takes up very little
+room. The case is painted a soft dark gray and outlined in darker gray,
+and the panels and the long top are in soft colors. The legs are carved
+and pointed in polychrome. This harpsichord was made when the beauty of
+an object was of as real importance as the mechanical perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally one sees a modern piano that has been decorated by an
+artist. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Alma Tadema, and many of the other
+English artists of our generation have made beautiful pianos. Sir Robert
+Lorimer recently designed a piano that was decorated, inside and out, by
+Mrs. Traquair. From time to time a great artist interests himself in
+designing and decorating a piano, but the rank and file, when they
+decide to build an extraordinary piano, achieve lumpy masses of wood
+covered with impossible nymphs and too-realistic flowers, pianos
+suggestive of thin and sentimental tunes, but never of <i>music</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When you are furnishing your music-room or drawing-room, be careful
+always of your colors. Remember that not only must the room be beautiful
+in its broad spaces and long lines and soft colors, but it must <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />be a
+background for the gala gowns of women. I once saw a music-room that was
+deliberately planned as a background to the gay colors of women's gowns
+and the heavy black masses of men's evening clothes, a soft shimmering
+green and cream room that was incomplete and cold when empty of the
+color of costume. Such a room must have an architectural flavor. The
+keynote must be elegant simplicity and aristocratic reserve. Walls
+broken into panels, and panels in turn broken by lighting-fixtures, a
+polished floor, a well-considered ceiling, any number of chairs, and the
+room is furnished. This room, indeed, may evolve into a <i>salon</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI" /><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />XI</h2>
+
+<h2>THE LIVING-ROOM</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>The living-room! Shut your eyes a minute and think what that means: A
+room to <i>live</i> in, suited to all human needs; to be sick or sorry or
+glad in, as the day's happenings may be; where one may come back from
+far-reaching ways, for &quot;East or West, Hame's best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Listen a minute while I tell you how I see such a room: Big and restful,
+making for comfort first and always; a little shabby here and there,
+perhaps, but all the more satisfactory for that&mdash;like an old shoe that
+goes on easily. Lots of light by night, and not too much drapery to shut
+out the sunlight by day. Big, welcoming chairs, rather sprawly, and long
+sofas. A big fire blazing on the open hearth. Perhaps, if we are very
+lucky we may have some old logs from long since foundered ships, that
+will flame blue and rose and green. He must indeed be of a poor spirit
+who cannot call all sorts of visions from such a flame!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0352" id="h0352"></a>
+<img src="images/h0352.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY"
+title="THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There should be a certain amount of order, because you cannot really
+rest in a disorderly place, but there should be none of the formality of
+the drawing-room. Formality should be used as a sort of foundation on
+which the pleasant workaday business of the living-<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" /><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" /><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />room is planned.
+The living-room should always have a flavor of the main hobby of the
+family, whether it be books, or music, or sport, or what not. If you
+live in the real country there should be nothing in the room too good
+for all moods and all weather&mdash;no need to think of muddy boots or wet
+riding-clothes or the dogs that have run through the dripping fields.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder if half the fathers and mothers in creation know just what it
+means later on to the boys and girls going out from their roof-tree to
+have the memory of such a living-room?</p>
+
+<p>A living-room may be a simple place used for all the purposes of living,
+or it may be merely an official clearing-house for family moods, one of
+a dozen other living apartments. The living-room in the modern bungalow,
+for instance, is often dining-room, library, hall, music-room, filling
+all the needs of the family, while in a large country or city house
+there may be the central family room, and ever so many little rooms that
+grow out of the overflow needs&mdash;the writing-room, the tea room that is
+also sun and breakfast room, the music-room and the library. In more
+elaborate houses there are also the great hall, the formal drawing-room
+and music-room, and the intimate boudoir. To all these should be given a
+goodly measure of comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it be one or a dozen rooms, the spirit of it must be the
+same&mdash;it must offer comfort, order, and beauty to be worth living in.</p>
+
+<p>Just as when a large family is to be considered I be<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />lieve in one big
+meeting-room and a number of smaller rooms for special purposes, so I
+believe that when a family is very small there should be one great
+living-room and no other day room. Two young people who purpose to live
+in a small cottage or a bungalow will be wise to have this one big room
+that will serve for dining-room, living-room, and all. The same house
+divided into a number of tiny rooms would suffocate them: there would be
+no breathing-space. In furnishing such a room it is well to beware of
+<i>sets</i> of things: of six dining-room chairs, of the conventional
+dining-table, serving-table, and china closet. I advocate the use of a
+long table&mdash;four by seven feet is not too long&mdash;and a number of good
+chairs that are alike in style, but not <i>exactly</i> alike.</p>
+
+<p>The chairs should not be the conventional dining-chairs. The idea that
+the only dining-room chair possible is a perfectly straight up and down
+stiff-backed chair is absurd. In a large house where there is a family
+dining-room the chairs should be alike, but in an informal living-room
+the chairs may be perfectly comfortable and useful between meals and
+serve the purposes of dining-room chairs when necessary. For instance,
+with a long oak table built on the lines of the old English refectory
+tables you might have a long bench of oak and cane; a large high back
+chair with arms of the Stuart order, that is, with graceful, turned
+legs, carved frame work, and cane insets; two Cromwellian chairs covered
+in some good stuff; and two or three <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />straight oak-and-cane chairs of a
+simple type. These chairs may be used for various purposes between
+meals, and will not give the room the stiff and formal air that
+straight-backed chairs invariably produce. One could imagine this table
+drawn up to a window-seat, with bench and chairs beside it, and a dozen
+cheerful people around it. There will be little chance of stiffness at
+such a dining-table.</p>
+
+<p>It should be remembered that when a part of the living-room is used for
+meals, the things that suggest dining should be kept out of sight
+between meals. All the china and so forth should be kept in the pantry
+or in kitchen cupboards. The table may be left bare between meals.</p>
+
+<p>In a room of this kind the furniture should be kept close to the walls,
+leaving all the space possible for moving around in the center of the
+room. The book shelves should be flat against the wall; there should be
+a desk, not too clumsy in build near the book shelves or at right angles
+to some window; there should be a sofa of some kind near the fireplace
+with a small table at the head of it, which may be used for tea or books
+or what not. If there is a piano, it should be very carefully placed so
+that it will not dominate the room, and so that the people who will
+listen to the music may gather in the opposite corner of the room. Of
+course, a living-room of this kind is the jolliest place in the world
+when things go smoothly, but there are times when a little room is a
+very necessary place to <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />retreat. This little room may be the study,
+library, or a tea room, but it is worth while sacrificing your smallest
+bedroom in order to have one small place of retreat.</p>
+
+<p>If you can have a number of living-rooms, you can follow more definite
+schemes of decoration. If you have a little enclosed piazza you can make
+a breakfast room or a trellis room of it, or by bringing in many shelves
+and filling them with flowers you can make the place a delightful little
+flower box of a room for tea and talk.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, if you live in the real country you will be able to use your
+garden and your verandas as additional living-rooms. With a big
+living-porch, the one indoor living-room may become a quiet library, for
+instance. But if you haven't a garden or a sun-room, you should do all
+in your power to bring the sunshine and gaiety into the living-room, and
+take your books and quiet elsewhere. A library eight by ten feet, with
+shelves all the way around and up and down, and two comfortable chairs,
+and one or two windows, will be a most satisfactory library. If the room
+is to be used for reading smallness doesn't matter, you see.</p>
+
+<p>We Americans love books&mdash;popular books!&mdash;and we have had sense enough to
+bring them into our living-rooms, and enjoy them. But when you begin
+calling a room a library it should mean something more than a small
+mahogany bookcase with a hundred volumes hidden behind glass doors. I
+think there is nothing <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />more amusing than the unused library of the
+<i>nouveau riche</i>, the pretentious room with its monumental bookcases and
+its slick area of glass doors and its thousands of unread volumes, caged
+eternally in their indecent newness.</p>
+
+<p>Some day when you have nothing better to do visit the <i>de luxe</i> book
+shops of some department store, and then visit a dusky old second hand
+shop, and you will see what books can do! In the <i>de luxe</i> shop they are
+leathern covered things, gaudy and snobbish in their newness. In the old
+book shop they are books that have lived, books that invite you to
+browse. You'd rather have them with all their germs and dust than the
+soulless tomes of uncut pages. You can judge people pretty well by their
+books, and the wear and tear of them.</p>
+
+<p>Open shelves are good enough for any house in these days of vacuum
+cleaners. In the Bayard Thayer house I had the pleasure of furnishing a
+wonderful library of superb paneled walls of mahogany of a velvety
+softness, not the bright red wood of commerce. The open bookshelves were
+architecturally planned, they filled shallow recesses in the wall, and
+when the books were placed upon them they formed a glowing tapestry of
+bindings, flush with the main wall.</p>
+
+<p>I think the nicest living-room I know is the reading room of the Colony
+Club. I never enjoyed making a room more, and when the Club was first
+opened I was delighted to hear one woman remark to another:<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" /> &quot;Doesn't it
+make you feel that it has been loved and lived in for years?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The room is large and almost square. The walls are paneled in cream and
+white, with the classic mantel and mirror treatment of the Adam period.
+The large carpet rug is of one tone, a soft green blue. The bookcases
+which run around the walls are of mahogany, as are the small, occasional
+tables, and the large table in the center of the room. In this room I
+have successfully exploded the old theory that all furniture in a well
+planned room must be of the same kind! In this room there are several
+Marlborough chairs, a davenport and a semi-circular fireside seat
+upholstered in a soft green leather, several chairs covered in a chintz
+of bird and blossom design, and other chairs covered with old English
+needle-work. The effect is not discord, but harmony. Perhaps it is not
+wise to advise the use of many colors and fabrics unless one has had
+experience in the combining of many tones and hues, but if you are
+careful to keep your walls and floors in subdued tones, you may have
+great license in the selecting of hangings and chair coverings and
+ornament.</p>
+
+<p>I gave great attention to the details of this room. Under the simple
+mantel shelf there is inset a small panel of blue and white Wedgwood. On
+the mantel there are two jars of Chinese porcelain, and between them a
+bronze jardiniere of the Adam period; four figures holding a shallow,
+oblong tray, which is filled with flowers. The lamp on the center-table
+is made of <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />a hawthorn jar, with a flaring shade. There are many low
+tables scattered through the room and beside every chair is a
+reading-lamp easily adjusted to any angle. The fireplace fittings are
+simple old brasses of the Colonial period. There is only one picture in
+this room, and that is the portrait of a long gone lady, framed in a
+carved gilt frame, and hung against the huge wall-mirror which is
+opposite the fireplace end of the room.</p>
+
+<p>I believe, given plenty of light and air, that comfortable chairs and
+good tables go further toward making a living-room comfortable than
+anything else. In the Harkness living-room you will see this theory
+proven. There are chairs and tables of all sizes, from the great sofas
+to the little footstools, from the huge Italian tables to the little
+table especially made to hold a few flower pots. Wherever there is a
+large table there is a long sofa or a few big chairs; wherever there is
+a lone chair there is a small table to hold a reading-light, or flowers,
+or what not. The great size of the room, the fine English ceiling of
+modeled plaster, the generous fireplace with its paneled over-mantel,
+the groups of windows, all these architectural details go far toward
+making the room a success. The comfortable chairs and sofas and the ever
+useful tables do the rest.</p>
+
+<p>So many people ask me: How shall I furnish my living-room? What paper
+shall I use on the walls? What woodwork and curtains&mdash;and rugs? One
+woman asked me what books she should buy!</p>
+
+<p>Your living-room should grow out of the needs of <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />your daily life. There
+could be no two living-rooms exactly alike in scheme if they were lived
+in. You will have to decide on the wall colors and such things, it is
+true, but the rest of the room should grow of itself. You will not make
+the mistake of using a dark paper of heavy figures if you are going to
+use many pictures and books, for instance. You will not use a gay
+bed-roomy paper covered with flowers and birds. You will know without
+being told that your wall colors must be neutral: that your woodwork
+must be stained and waxed, or painted some soft tone of your wall color.
+Then, let the rugs and curtains and things go until you decide you have
+to have them. The room will gradually find itself, though it may take
+years and heartache and a certain self-confession of inadequacy. It will
+express your life, if you use it, so be careful of the life you live in
+it!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII" /><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />XII</h2>
+
+<h2>SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>In some strange way the word <i>boudoir</i> has lost its proper significance.
+People generally think of it as a highfalutin' name for the bedroom, or
+for a dressing-room, whereas really a proper <i>boudoir</i> is the small
+personal sitting-room of a woman of many interests. It began in old
+France as the private sitting-room of the mistress of the house, a part
+of the bedroom suite, and it has evolved into a sort of office <i>de luxe</i>
+where the house mistress spends her precious mornings, plans the routine
+of her household for the day, writes her letters, interviews her
+servants, and so forth. The boudoir has a certain suggestion of intimacy
+because it is a personal and not a general room, but while it may be
+used as a lounging-place occasionally, it is also a thoroughly dignified
+room where a woman may receive her chosen friends when she pleases.
+Nothing more ridiculous has ever happened than the vogue of the
+so-called &quot;boudoir cap,&quot; which is really suited only to one's bedroom or
+dressing-room. Such misnomers lead to a mistaken idea of the real
+meaning of the word.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Eighteenth Century boudoirs were extremely small. I recall
+one charming little room in <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />an old French house that was barely eight
+feet by eleven, but it contained a fireplace, two windows, a day bed,
+one of those graceful desks known as a <i>bonheur du jour</i>, and two
+arm-chairs. An extremely symmetrical arrangement of the room gave a
+sense of order, and order always suggests space. One wall was broken by
+the fireplace, the wall spaces on each side of it being paneled with
+narrow moldings. The space above the mantel was filled with a mirror. On
+the wall opposite the fireplace there was a broad paneling of the same
+width filled with a mirror from baseboard to ceiling. In front of this
+mirror was placed the charming desk. On each side of the long mirror
+were two windows exactly opposite the two long panels of the mantel
+wall. The two narrow end walls were treated as single panels, the day
+bed being placed flat against one of them, while the other was broken by
+a door which led to a little ante-chamber. Old gilt appliques holding
+candles flanked both mantel mirror and desk mirror. Two of those
+graceful chairs of the Louis Seize period and a small footstool
+completed the furnishing of this room.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0353" id="h0353"></a>
+<img src="images/h0353.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MISS ANNE MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR"
+title="MISS ANNE MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS ANNE MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The boudoir should always be a small room, because in no other way can
+you gain a sense of intimacy. Here you may have all the luxury and
+elegance you like, you may stick to white paint and simple chintzes, or
+you may indulge your passion for pale-colored silks and lace frills.
+Here, of all places, you have a right to express your sense of luxury
+and comfort. The <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" /><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" /><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />boudoir furnishings are borrowed from both bedroom
+and drawing-room traditions. There are certain things that are used in
+the bedroom that would be ridiculous in the drawing-room, and yet are
+quite at home in the boudoir. For instance, the <i>chaise-longue</i> is part
+of the bedroom furnishing in most modern houses, and it may also be used
+in the boudoir, but in the drawing-room it would be a violation of good
+taste, because the suggestion of intimacy is too evident.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more comfortable in a boudoir than a day bed. It serves so
+many purposes. In my own house my boudoir is also my sitting-room, and I
+have a large Louis XV day bed there which may be used by an overnight
+guest if necessary. In a small house the boudoir fitted with a day bed
+becomes a guest-room on occasion. I always put two or three of these day
+beds in any country house I am doing, because I have found them so
+admirable and useful in my own house.</p>
+
+<p>As you will see by the photographs, this bed in no way resembles an
+ordinary bed in the daytime, and it seems to me to be a much better
+solution of the extra-bed problem than the mechanical folding-bed, which
+is always hideous and usually dangerous. A good day bed may be designed
+to fit into any room. This one of mine is of carved walnut, a very
+graceful one that I found in France.</p>
+
+<p>In a small sitting-room in an uptown house, an illustration of which is
+shown, I had a day bed made of <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />white wood that was painted to match the
+chintzes of the room. The mattress and springs were covered with a bird
+chintz on a mauve ground, and the pillows were all covered with the same
+stuff. The frame of the bed was painted cream and decorated with a dull
+green line and small garlands of flowers extracted from the design of
+the chintz. When the mattress and springs have been properly covered
+with damask, or chintz, or whatever you choose to use, there is no
+suggestion of the ordinary bed.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose there isn't a more charming room in New York than Miss Anne
+Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir. The everyday sitting-room of a woman of many
+interests, it is radiant with color and individuality, as rare rugs are
+radiant, as jewels are radiant. The cream walls, with their carved
+moldings and graceful panelings, are a pleasant background for all this
+shimmering color. The carvings and moldings are pointed in blue. The
+floor is covered with a Persian rug which glows with all the soft tones
+of the old Persian dye-pots. The day bed, a few of the chairs, and the
+chest of drawers, are of a soft brown walnut. There are other chairs
+covered with Louis XVI tapestries, brocade and needlework, quite in
+harmony with the modern chintz of the day bed and the hangings. Above
+the day bed there is a portrait of a lady, hung by wires covered with
+shirred blue ribbons, and this blue is again used in an old porcelain
+lamp jar on the bedside table. The whole room might have been inspired
+<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />by the lady of the portrait, so essentially is it the room of a
+fastidious woman.</p>
+
+<p>But to go back to my own boudoir: it is really sitting-room, library,
+and rest-room combined, a home room very much like my down-town office
+in the conveniences it offers. In the early morning it is my office,
+where I plan the day's routine and consult my servants. In the rare
+evenings when I may give myself up to solid comfort and a new book it
+becomes a haven of refuge after the business of the day. When I choose
+to work at home with my secretary, it is as business-like a place as my
+down-town office. It is a sort of room of all trades, and good for each
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the room are pretty well filled with built-in bookshelves,
+windows, chimney-piece, and doors, but there is one long wall space for
+the day bed and another for the old secretary that holds my porcelain
+figurines. The room is really quite small, but by making the furniture
+keep its place against the walls an effect of spaciousness has been
+obtained.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the room are painted the palest of egg-shell blue-green.
+The woodwork is ivory white, with applied decorations of sculptured
+white marble. The floor is entirely covered with a carpet rug of jade
+green velvet, and there is a smaller Persian rug of the soft,
+indescribable colors of the Orient. The day bed, of which I spoke in an
+earlier paragraph, is covered with an old brocade, gray-green figures on
+a black ground. A large armchair is also covered with the <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />brocade, and
+the window curtains, which cannot be seen in the picture, are of black
+chintz, printed with birds of pale greens and blues and grays, with
+beaks of rose-red.</p>
+
+<p>There is always a possibility for rose-red in my rooms, I love it so. I
+manage the other colors so that they will admit a chair or a stool or a
+bowl of rose color. In this room the two chairs beside the couch are
+covered with rose-colored damask, and this brings out the rose in the
+rug and in the chintz, and accents the deep red note of the leathern
+book-bindings. The rose red is subordinated to the importance of the
+book-bindings in this room, but there is still opportunity for its use
+in so many small things.</p>
+
+<p>In this room, you will notice, I have used open shelves for my books,
+and the old secretary which was once a combination desk and bookcase, is
+used for the display of my little treasures of porcelain and china, and
+its drawers are used for papers and prints. The built in shelves have
+cupboards beneath them for the flimsy papers and pamphlets that do not
+belong on open shelves. If the same room were pressed into service as a
+guest room I should use the drawers in the secretary instead of the
+usual chest of drawers, and the day bed for sleeping.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0354" id="h0354"></a>
+<img src="images/h0354.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. LIT DE REPOS"
+title="MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. LIT DE REPOS" />
+<p class="figcenter"><b>MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. LIT DE REPOS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The writing-table is placed at right angles to one of the book-filled
+panels between the front windows. I have used a writing-table in this
+room because I like tables better than heavy desks, and because in this
+<a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" /><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" /><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />small apartment a desk would seem heavy and ponderous. The fittings
+of the desk are of dark red leather, like that of many of the
+book-bindings, and the personal touch that makes the desk <i>mine</i> is a
+bowl of roses. Between the two windows in the shallow recess, I have
+placed an aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The
+aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a
+tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most
+gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too,
+and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my
+little people happily&mdash;my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my
+little Chinese dog, has a little house all his own, an old Chinese
+lacquer box with a canopy top and little gold bells. It was once the
+shrine of some little Chinese god, I suppose, but Wee Toi is very happy
+in it, and you can see that it was meant for him in the beginning. It
+sits by the fireplace and gives the room an air of real hominess. I was
+so pleased with the aquarium and the Chinese lacquer bed for Wee Toi
+that I devised a birdcage to go with them, a square cage of gilt wires,
+with a black lacquer pointed canopy top, with little gilt bells at the
+pointed eaves. The cage is fixed to a shallow lacquer tray, and is the
+nicest place you can imagine for a whistling bullfinch to live in. I
+suppose I could have a Persian cat on a gorgeous cushion to complete the
+place, but I can't admit cats into the room. I <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />plan gorgeous cushions
+for <i>other</i> people's &quot;little people,&quot; when they happen to be cats.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marbury's sitting-room is on the next floor, exactly like mine,
+architecturally, but we have worked them out differently. I think there
+is nothing more interesting than the study of the different developments
+of a series of similar rooms, for instance, a dozen drawing-rooms,
+twelve stories deep, in a modern apartment house! Each room is left by
+the builder with the same arrangement of doors and windows, the same
+wall spaces and moldings, the same opportunity for good or bad
+development. It isn't often our luck to see all twelve of the rooms, but
+sometimes we see three or four of them, and how amazingly different they
+are! How amusing is the suggestion of personality, or lack of it!</p>
+
+<p>Now in these two sitting-rooms in our house the rooms are exactly the
+same in size, in exposure, in the placing of doors and windows and
+fireplaces, and we have further paralleled our arrangement by placing
+our day beds in the same wall space, but there the similarity ends. Miss
+Marbury's color plan is different: her walls are a soft gray, the floor
+is covered in a solid blue carpet rug, rather dark in tone, the chintz
+also has a black ground, but the pattern is entirely different in
+character from the room below. There is a day bed, similar to mine, but
+where my bed has been upholstered with brocade, Miss Marbury's has a
+loose slip cover of black chintz. The spaces between the <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />windows in my
+room are filled with bookshelves, and in Miss Marbury's room the same
+spaces are filled with mirrors. The large wall-space that is background
+to my old secretary is in her room given up to long open bookshelves of
+mahogany. My over-mantel is mirrored, and hers is filled with an old
+painting. The recessed spaces on each side of the chimney breast hold
+small semi-circular tables of marquetry, with a pair of long Adam
+mirrors hanging above them. Another Adam mirror hangs above the
+bookshelves on the opposite wall. These mirrors are really the most
+important things in the room, because the moldings and lighting-fixtures
+and picture frames have been made to harmonize with them.</p>
+
+<p>The lighting-fixtures are of wood carved in the Adam manner and painted
+dark blue and gold. The writing-table has been placed squarely in front
+of the center window, in which are hung Miss Marbury's bird cages. There
+are a number of old French prints on the wall. The whole room is quieter
+in tone than my room, which may be because her chosen color is old-blue,
+and mine rose-red.</p>
+
+<p>In a small house where only one woman's tastes have to be considered, a
+small downstairs sitting-room may take the place of the more personal
+boudoir, but where there are a number of people in the household a room
+connecting with the bedroom of the house mistress is more fortunate.
+Here she can be as independent as she pleases of the family and the
+guests <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />who come and go through the other living-rooms of the house.
+Here she can have her counsels with her children, or her tradespeople,
+or her employees, without the distractions of chance interruptions, for
+this one room should have doors that open <i>and</i> close, doors that are
+not to be approached without invitation. The room may be as austere and
+business-like as a down-town office, or it may be a nest of comfort and
+luxury primarily planned for relaxation, but it must be so placed that
+it is a little apart from the noise and flurry of the rest of the house
+or it has no real reason-for-being.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever it is possible, I believe the man of the house should also have
+a small sitting-room that corresponds to his wife's boudoir. We
+Americans have made a violent attempt to incorporate a room of this kind
+in our houses by introducing a &quot;den&quot; or a &quot;study,&quot; but somehow the man
+of the house is never keen about such a room. A &quot;den&quot; to him means an
+airless cubby-hole of a room hung with pseudo-Turkish draperies and
+papier-m&acirc;ch&eacute; shields and weapons, and he has a mighty aversion to it.
+Who could blame him? And as for the study, the average man doesn't want
+a study when he wants to work; he prefers to work in his office, and
+he'd like a room of his own big enough to hold all his junk, and he'd
+like it to have doors and windows and a fireplace. The so-called study
+is usually a heavy, cheerless little room that isn't any good for
+anything else. The ideal arrange<a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" />ment would be a room of average size
+opening from his bedroom, a room that would have little suggestion of
+business and a great flavor of his hobbies. His wife's boudoir must be
+her office also, but he doesn't need a house office, unless he be a
+writer, or a teacher, or some man who works at home. After all, I think
+the painters and illustrators are the happiest of all men, because they
+<i>have</i> to have studios, and their wives generally recognize the fact,
+and give them a free hand. The man who has a studio or a workshop all
+his own is always a popular man. He has a fascination for his less
+fortunate friends, who buzz around him in wistful admiration.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII" /><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />XIII</h2>
+
+<h2>A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>First of all, I think a dining-room should be light, and gay. The first
+thing to be considered is plenty of sunshine. The next thing is the
+planning of a becoming background for the mistress of the house. The
+room should always be gay and charming in color, but the color should be
+selected with due consideration of its becomingness to the hostess.
+Every woman has a right to be pretty in her own dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>I do not favor the dark, heavy treatments and elaborate stuff hangings
+which seem to represent the taste of most of the men who go in for
+decorating nowadays. Nine times out of ten the dining-room seems to be
+the gloomiest room in the house. I think it should be a place where the
+family may meet in gaiety of spirit for a pause in the vexatious
+happenings of the day. I think light tones, gay wallpapers, flowers and
+sunshine are of more importance than storied tapestries and heavily
+carved furniture. These things are all very well for the house that has
+a small dining-room and a gala dining-room for formal occasions as well,
+but there are few such houses.</p>
+
+<p>We New Yorkers have been so accustomed to the <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />gloomy basement
+dining-rooms of the conventional brown-stone houses of the late eighties
+we forgot how nice a dining-room can be. Even though the city
+dining-room is now more fortunately placed in the rear of the second
+floor it is usually overshadowed by other houses, and can be lightened
+only by skilful use of color in curtains, china, and so forth.
+Therefore, I think this is the one room in the city house where one can
+afford to use a boldly decorative paper. I like very much the Chinese
+rice-papers with their broad, sketchy decorations of birds and flowers.
+These papers are never tiresomely realistic and are always done in very
+soft colors or in soft shades of one color, and while if you analyze
+them they are very fantastic, the general effect is as restful as it is
+cheerful. You know you can be most cheerful when you are most rested!</p>
+
+<p>The quaint landscape papers which are seen in so many New England
+dining-rooms seem to belong with American Colonial furniture and white
+woodwork, prim silver and gold banded china. These landscape papers are
+usually gay in effect and make for cheer. There are many new designs
+less complicated than the old ones. Then, too, there are charming
+foliage papers, made up of leaves and branches and birds, which are very
+good.</p>
+
+<p>While we may find color and cheer in these gay papers for gloomy city
+dining-rooms, if we have plenty of light we may get more distinguished
+results with paneled walls. A large dining-room may be paneled <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />with
+dark wood, with a painted fresco, or tapestry frieze, and a ceiling with
+carved or painted beams, or perhaps one of those interesting cream-white
+ceilings with plaster beams judiciously adorned with ornament in low
+relief. Given a large dining-room and a little money, you can do
+anything: you can make a room that will compare favorably with the
+traditional rooms on which we build. You have a right to make your
+dining-room as fine as you please, so long as you give it its measure of
+light and air. But one thing you must have: simplicity! It may be the
+simplicity of a marble floor and tapestried walls and a painted ceiling,
+it may be the simplicity of white paint and muslin and fine furniture,
+but simplicity it must have. The furniture that is required in a
+dining-room declares itself: a table and chairs. You can bring side
+tables and china closets into it, or you can build in cupboards and
+consoles to take their place, but there is little chance for other
+variation, and so the beginning is a declaration of order and
+simplicity.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0355" id="h0355"></a>
+<img src="images/h0355.jpg" width="75%"
+alt="A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE"
+title="A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The easiest way to destroy this simplicity is to litter the room with
+displays of silver and glass, to dot the walls with indifferent
+pictures. If you are courageous enough to let your walls take care of
+themselves and to put away your silver and china and glass, the room
+will be as dignified as you could wish. Remember that simplicity depends
+on balance and space. If the walls balance one another in light and
+shadow, if the furniture is placed formally, if walls and furniture
+<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" /><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" /><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />are free from mistaken ornament, the room will be serene and
+beautiful. In most other rooms we avoid the &quot;pairing&quot; of things, but
+here pairs and sets of things are most desirable. Two console tables are
+more impressive than one. There is great decorative value in a pair of
+mirrors, a pair of candlesticks, a pair of porcelain jars, two cupboards
+flanking a chimney-piece. You would not be guilty of a pair of wall
+fountains, or of two wall clocks, just as you would not have two copies
+of the same portrait in a room. But when things &quot;pair&quot; logically, pair
+them! They will furnish a backbone of precision to the room.</p>
+
+<p>The dining-room in the Iselin house is a fine example of stately
+simplicity. It is extremely formal, and yet there is about it none of
+the gloominess one associates with New York dining-rooms. The severely
+paneled walls, the fine chimney-piece with an old master inset and
+framed by a Grinling Gibbons carving, the absence of the usual mantel
+shelf, the plain dining-table and the fine old lion chairs all go to
+make up a Georgian room of great distinction.</p>
+
+<p>The woman who cannot afford such expensive simplicity might model a
+dining-room on this same plan and accomplish a beautiful room at
+reasonable expense. Paneled walls are always possible; if you can't
+afford wood paneling, paint the plastered wall white or cream and break
+it into panels by using a narrow molding of wood. You can get an effect
+of great dignity by the use of molding at a few cents a foot. A large
+panel <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />would take the place of the Grinling Gibbons carving, and a
+mirror might be inset above the fireplace instead of the portrait. The
+dining-table and chairs might give place to good reproductions of
+Chippendale, and the marble console to a carpenter-made one painted to
+match the woodwork.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of proper furniture for a dining-room is usually settled by
+the house mistress before her wedding bouquet has faded, so I shall only
+touch on the out-of-ordinary things here. Everyone knows that a table
+and a certain number of chairs and a sideboard of some kind &quot;go
+together.&quot; The trouble is that everyone knows these things <i>too</i> well,
+and dining-room conventions are so binding that we miss many pleasant
+departures from the usual.</p>
+
+<p>My own dining-room in New York is anything but usual, and yet there is
+nothing undignified about it. The room was practically square, so that
+it had a certain orderly quality to begin with. The rooms of the house
+are all rather small, and so to gain the greatest possible space I have
+the door openings at the extreme end of the wall, leaving as large a
+wall space as possible. You enter this room, then, through a door at the
+extreme left of the south wall of the room. Another door at the extreme
+right of the same wall leads to a private passage. The space left
+between the doors is thereby conserved, and is broken into a large
+central panel flanked by two narrow panels. The space above the doors is
+also paneled. This wall is <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />broken by a console placed under the central
+panel. Above it one of the Mennoyer originals, which you may remember in
+the Washington Irving dining-room, is set in the wall, framed with a
+narrow molding of gray. The walls and woodwork of the room are of
+exactly the same tone of gray&mdash;darker than a silver gray and lighter
+than pewter. Everything, color, balance, proportion, objects of art, has
+been uniformly considered.</p>
+
+<p>Continuing, the east wall is broken in the center by the fireplace, with
+a mantel of white and gray marble. A large mirror, surmounted with a
+bas-relief in black and white, fills the space between mantel shelf and
+cornice. This mirror and bas-relief are framed with the narrow carved
+molding painted gray. Here again there is the beauty of balance: two
+Italian candlesticks of carved and gilded wood flank a marble bust on
+the mantel shelf. There is nothing more. On the right of the mirror, in
+a narrow panel, there is a wall clock of carved and gilded wood which
+also takes its place as a part of the wall, and keeps it.</p>
+
+<p>The north wall is broken by two mirrors and a door leading to the
+service-pantry. A large, four-fold screen, made of an uncut tapestry,
+shuts off the door. We need all the light the windows give, so there are
+no curtains except the orange-colored taffeta valances at the top. I
+devised sliding doors of mirrors that are pulled out of the wall at
+night to fill the recessed space of the windows. Ventilation is afforded
+by the open <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />fireplace, and by mechanical means. You see we do not
+occupy this house in summer, so the mirrored windows are quite feasible.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth wall has no openings, and it is broken into three large
+paneled spaces. A console has the place of honor opposite the fireplace,
+and above it there is a mirror like that over the mantel. In the two
+side panels are the two large Mennoyers. There are five of these in the
+room, the smaller ones flanking the chimney piece. You see that the
+salvation of this room depends on this careful repetition and variation
+of similar objects.</p>
+
+<p>Color is brought into the room in the blue and yellow of the Chinese
+rug, in the chairs, and in the painted table. The chairs are painted a
+creamy yellow, pointed with blue, and upholstered with blue and yellow
+striped velvet. I do not like high-backed chairs in a dining-room. Their
+one claim to use is that they make a becoming background, but this does
+not compensate for the difficulties of the service when they are used.
+An awkward servant pouring soup down one's back is not an aid to
+digestion, or to the peace of mind engendered by a good dinner.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0356-a" id="h0356-a"></a>
+<img src="images/h0356-a.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR&#39;S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN"
+title="MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR&#39;S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR&#39;S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0356-b" id="h0356-b"></a>
+<img src="images/h0356-b.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE&#39;S PAINTED DINING-TABLE"
+title="MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE&#39;S PAINTED DINING-TABLE" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE&#39;S PAINTED DINING-TABLE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The painted table is very unusual. The legs and the carved under-frame
+are painted cream and pointed with blue, like the chairs, but the top is
+as gay as an old-fashioned garden, with stiff little medallions, and
+urns spilling over with flowers, and conventional blossoms picked out
+all over it. The colors used are very <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" /><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" /><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />soft, blue and cream being
+predominant. The table is covered with a sheet of plate glass. This
+table is, of course, too elaborate for a simple dining-room, but the
+idea could be adapted and varied to suit many color and furniture
+schemes.</p>
+
+<p>Painted furniture is a delight in a small dining-room. In the Colony
+Club I planned a very small room for little dinners that is well worth
+reproducing in a small house. This little room was very hard to manage
+because there were no windows! There were two tiny little openings high
+on the wall at one end of the room, but it would take imagination to
+call them windows. The room was on the top floor, and the real light
+came from a skylight. You can imagine the difficulty of making such a
+little box interesting. However, there was one thing that warmed my
+heart to the little room: a tiny ante-room between the hall proper and
+the room proper. This little ante-room I paneled in yellowish tan and
+gray. I introduced a sofa covered with an old brocade just the color of
+dried rose leaves&mdash;ashes of roses, the French call it&mdash;and the little
+ante-room became a fitting introduction to the dining-room within.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the rooms were paneled in a delicious color between yellow
+and tan, the wall proper and the moldings being this color, and the
+panels themselves filled with a gray paper painted in pinky yellows and
+browns. These panels were done by hand by a man who found his
+inspiration in the painted panels of an <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />old French ballroom. As the
+walls were unbroken by windows there was ample space for such
+decoration. A carpet of rose color was chosen, and the skylight was
+curtained with shirred silk of the same rose. The table and chairs were
+of painted wood, the chairs having seats of the brocade used on the
+ante-room sofa. The table was covered with rose colored brocade, and
+over this, cobwebby lace, and over this, plate glass. There are two
+consoles in the room, with small cabinets above which hold certain
+<i>objets d'art</i> in keeping with the room.</p>
+
+<p>Under the two tiny windows were those terrible snags we decorators
+always strike, the radiators. Wrongly placed, they are capable of
+spoiling any room. I concealed these radiators by building two small
+cabinets with panels of iron framework gilded to suggest a graceful
+metal lattice, and lined them with rose-colored silk. I borrowed this
+idea from a fascinating cabinet in an old French palace, and the result
+is worth the deception. The cabinets are nice in themselves, and they do
+not interfere with the radiation of the heat.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen many charming country houses and farm houses in France with
+dining-rooms furnished with painted furniture. Somehow they make the
+average American dining-room seem very commonplace and tiresome. For
+instance, I had the pleasure of furnishing a little country house in
+France and we planned the dining-room in blue and white. The furniture
+was of the simplest, painted white, with a dark blue line for
+<a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />decoration. The corner cupboard was a little more elaborate, with a
+gracefully curved top and a large glass door made up of little panes set
+in a quaint design. There were several drawers and a lower cupboard. The
+drawers and the lower doors invited decorations a little more elaborate
+than the blue lines of the furniture, so we painted on gay little
+medallions in soft tones of blue, from the palest gray-blue to a very
+dark blue. The chair cushions were blue, and the china was blue
+sprigged. Three little pitchers of dark-blue luster were on the wall
+cupboard shelf and a mirror in a faded gold frame gave the necessary
+variation of tone.</p>
+
+<p>A very charming treatment for either a country or small city dining-room
+is to have corner cupboards of this kind cutting off two corners. They
+are convenient and unusual and pretty as well. They can be painted in
+white with a colored line defining the panels and can be made highly
+decorative if the panels are painted with a classic or a Chinese design.
+The decoration, however, should be kept in variations of the same tone
+as the stripe on the panels. For instance, if the stripe is gray, then
+the design should be in dark and light gray and blue tones. The chairs
+can be white, in a room of this kind, with small gray and blue
+medallions and either blue and white, or plain blue, cushions.</p>
+
+<p>Another dining-room of the same sort was planned for a small country
+house on Long Island. Here the woodwork was a deep cream, the walls the
+same tone, and the ceiling a little lighter. We found six of those <a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />prim
+Duxbury chairs, with flaring spindle-backs, and painted them a soft
+yellow-green. The table was a plain pine one, with straight legs. We
+painted it cream and decorated the top with a conventional border of
+green adapted from the design of the china&mdash;a thick creamy Danish ware
+ornamented with queer little wavy lines and figures. I should have
+mentioned the china first, because the whole room grew from that. The
+rug was a square of velvet of a darker green. The curtains were soft
+cream-colored net. One wall was made up of windows, another of doors and
+a cupboard, and against the other two walls we built two long, narrow
+consoles that were so simple anyone could accomplish them: simply two
+wide shelves resting on good brackets, with mirrors above. The one
+splendid thing in the room was a curtain of soft green damask that was
+pulled at night to cover the group of windows. Everything else in the
+room was bought for a song.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0357" id="h0357"></a>
+<img src="images/h0357.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB"
+title="THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I have said much of cupboards and consoles because I think they are so
+much better than the awkward, heavy &quot;china closets&quot; and &quot;buffets&quot; and
+sideboards that dominate most dining-rooms. The time has come when we
+should begin to do fine things in the way of building fitment furniture,
+that is, furniture that is actually or apparently a part of the shell of
+the room. It would be so much better to build a house slowly, planning
+the furniture as a part of the architectural detail. With each
+succeeding year the house would become more and more a part of the
+owner, illustrating <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" /><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" /><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />his life. Of course, this would mean that the
+person who planned the developing of the house must have a certain
+architectural training, must know about scale and proportion, and
+something of general construction. Certainly charming things are to be
+created in this way, things that will last, things immeasurably
+preferable to the cheap jerry-built furniture which so soon becomes
+shabby, which has to be so constantly renewed. People accept new ideas
+with great difficulty, and my only hope is that they may grow to accept
+the idea of fitment furniture through finding the idea a product of
+their own; a personal discovery that comes from their own needs.</p>
+
+<p>I have constantly recommended the use of our native American woods for
+panelings and wall furniture, because we have both the beautiful woods
+of our new world and tried and proven furniture of the old world, and
+what couldn't we achieve with such material available? Why do people
+think of a built-in cupboard as being less important than a detached
+piece of furniture? Isn't it a braggart pose, a desire to show the
+number of things you can buy? Of course it is a very foolish pose, but
+it is a popular one, this display of objects that are ear-marked
+&quot;expensive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is very easy to build cupboards on each side of a fireplace, for
+instance, making the wall flush with the chimney-breast. This is always
+good architectural form. One side could have a desk which opens beneath
+the glass doors, and the other could have cup<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />boards, both presenting
+exactly the same appearance when closed. Fitted corner cupboards,
+triangular or rounded, are also excellent in certain dining rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Wall tables, or consoles, may be of the same wood as the woodwork or of
+marble, or of some dark polished wood. There are no more useful pieces
+of furniture than consoles, and yet we only see them in great houses.
+Why? Because they are simple, and we haven't yet learned to demand the
+simple. I have had many interesting old console-tables of wrought iron
+support and marble tops copied, and I have designed others that were
+mere semi-circles of white painted wood supported by four slender legs,
+but whether they be marble or pine the effect is always simple. There
+are charming consoles that have come to us from the Eighteenth Century,
+consoles made in pairs, so that they may stand against the wall as
+serving-tables, or be placed together to form one round table. This is a
+very good arrangement where people have one large living room or hall in
+which they dine and which also serves all the purpose of daily
+intercourse. This entirely removes any suggestion of a dining-room, as
+the consoles may be separated and stand against the wall during the day.</p>
+
+<p>Many modern houses are being built without the conventional dining-room
+we have known so long, there being instead an open-air breakfast room
+which may be glazed in winter and screened in summer. People have come
+to their senses at last, and realize that there is nothing so pleasant
+as eating outdoors. The annual <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />migration of Americans to Europe is
+responsible for the introduction of this excellent custom. French houses
+are always equipped with some outdoor place for eating. Some of them
+have, in addition to the inclosed porch, a fascinating pavilion built in
+the garden, where breakfast and tea may be served. Modern mechanical
+conveniences and the inexpensive electric apparatus make it possible to
+serve meals at this distance from the house and keep them hot in the
+meantime. One may prepare one's own coffee and toast at table, with the
+green trees and flowers and birds all around.</p>
+
+<p>Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper,
+everyone knows that. The simplest meal seems a gala affair when everyone
+is radiant and cheerful, whereas a long and elaborate meal served
+indoors is usually depressing.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV" /><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />XIV</h2>
+
+<h2>THE BEDROOM</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>In olden times people rarely slept in their bedrooms, which were mostly
+<i>chambres de parade</i>, where everyone was received and much business was
+transacted. The real bedroom was usually a smallish closet nearby. These
+<i>chambres de parade</i> were very splendid, the beds raised on a dais, and
+hung with fine damasks and tapestries&mdash;tapestries thick with bullion
+fringes. The horror of fresh air felt by our ancestors was well
+illustrated here. No draughts from ill-constructed windows or badly hung
+doors could reach the sleeper in such a bed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0358" id="h0358"></a>
+<img src="images/h0358.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD"
+title="AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD" />
+<p class="center"><b>AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This was certainly different from our modern ideas of hygiene: In those
+days furniture that could not be hastily moved was of little importance.
+The bed was usually a mere frame of wood, made to be covered with
+valuable hangings which could easily be packed and carried away on
+occasions that too often arose in the troublous days of the early Middle
+Ages. The benches and tables one sees in many foreign palaces to-day are
+covered with gorgeous lengths of velvet and brocade. This is a survival
+of the custom when furniture was merely so much baggage. With the early
+Eighteenth Century, however, there came into being<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" /><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" /><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" /> <i>les petits
+appartements</i>, in which the larger space formerly accorded the bedroom
+was divided into ante-chamber, salon or sitting-room, and the bedroom.
+Very often the bed was placed in an alcove, and the heavy brocades and
+bullion embroideries were replaced by linen or cotton hangings.</p>
+
+<p>When Oberkampf established himself at Jouy in 1760 France took first
+place in the production of these printed linens and cottons. This was
+the beginning of the age of chintz and of the delightful decorative
+fabrics that are so suited to our modern ideas of hygiene. It seems to
+me there are no more charming stuffs for bedroom hangings than these
+simple fabrics, with their enchantingly fanciful designs. Think of the
+changes one could have with several sets of curtains to be changed at
+will, as Marie Antoinette used to do at the Petit Trianon. How amusing
+it would be in our own modern houses to change the bed coverings, window
+curtains, and so forth, twice or three times a year! I like these loose
+slip covers and curtains better than the usual hard upholstery, because
+if properly planned the slips can be washed without losing their color
+or their lines.</p>
+
+<p>Charming Eighteenth Century prints that are full of valuable hints as to
+furniture and decorations for bedrooms can be found in most French
+shops. The series known as &quot;<i>Moreau le Jeun</i>&quot; is full of suggestion.
+Some of the interiors shown are very grand, it is true, but many are
+simple enough to serve as models for <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />modern apartments. A set of these
+pictures will do much to give one an insight into the decoration of the
+Eighteenth Century, a vivid insight that can be obtained in no other
+way, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>I do not like the very large bedrooms, dear to the plans of the American
+architect. I much prefer the space divided. I remember once arriving at
+the Ritz Hotel in London and being given temporarily a very grand royal
+suite, overlooking the park, until the smaller quarters I had reserved
+should be ready for me. How delighted I was at first with all the huge
+vastness of my bedroom! My appreciation waned, however, after a
+despairing morning toilet spent in taking many steps back and forth from
+dressing-table to bathroom, and from bathroom to hang-closets, and I was
+glad indeed, when, at the end of several hours, I was comfortably housed
+in my smaller and humbler quarters.</p>
+
+<p>I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber
+should separate it from the large outside corridor. The ideal
+arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room,
+then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back. This outer
+chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be. It may
+serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and
+concealing them with mirrored doors. The ante-chamber need not be a
+luxury, if you plan your house carefully. It is simply a little well of
+silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0359" id="h0359"></a>
+<img src="images/h0359.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MISS CROCKER&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BED"
+title="MISS CROCKER&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BED" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS CROCKER&#39;S LOUIS XVI. BED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" /><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" /></p>
+
+<p>To go on with my ideal bedroom: the walls, I think, should be simply
+paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be
+afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is
+the best solution. You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings
+very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and
+plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of
+times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design
+in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you
+will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the
+figures.</p>
+
+<p>One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper
+that does not belong to the &quot;busy&quot; class, for while the design is
+decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat. This
+is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens
+and grays on a cream ground. I have seen bedrooms papered with huge
+scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and
+methodical thumping of a drum. I cannot imagine anyone sleeping calmly
+in such a room!</p>
+
+<p>This bedroom is eminently suited to the needs of a man. The hangings are
+of a plain, soft stuff, accenting one of the deep tones of the wall
+covering, and the sash curtains are of white muslin. The furniture is of
+oak, of the Jacobean period. The bed is true to its inspiration, with
+turned legs and runners, and slatted head and foot boards. The legs and
+runners of the <a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />bed were really inspired by the chairs and tables of the
+period. This is an excellent illustration of the modern furniture that
+may be adapted from old models. It goes without saying that the beds of
+that period were huge, cumbersome affairs, and this adapted bed is
+really more suitable to modern needs in size and weight and line than an
+original one.</p>
+
+<p>There are so many inspirations for bedrooms nowadays that one finds it
+most difficult to decide on any one scheme. One of my greatest joys in
+planning the Colony Club was that I had opportunity to furnish so many
+bedrooms. And they were small, pleasant rooms, too, not the usual
+impersonal boxes that are usually planned for club houses and hotels. I
+worked out the plan of each bedroom as if I were to live in it myself,
+and while they all differed in decorative schemes the essentials were
+the same in each room: a comfortable bed, with a small table beside it
+to hold a reading light, a clock, and a telephone; a <i>chaise-longue</i> for
+resting; a long mirror somewhere; a dressing table with proper lights
+and a glass covered top; a writing table, carefully equipped, and the
+necessary chairs and stools. Some of the bedrooms had no connecting
+baths, and these were given wash stands with bowls and pitchers of clear
+glass. Most of these bedrooms were fitted with mahogany four post beds,
+pie crust tables, colonial highboys, gay chintzes, and such, but there
+were several rooms of entirely different scheme.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0360" id="h0360"></a>
+<img src="images/h0360.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM"
+title="A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" /><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" /></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most fascinating of them all is the bird room. The walls
+are covered with an Oriental paper patterned with marvelous blue and
+green birds, birds of paradise and paroquets perched on flowering
+branches. The black lacquer furniture was especially designed for the
+room. The rug and the hangings are of jade green. I wonder how this
+seems to read of&mdash;I can only say it is a very gay and happy room to live
+in!</p>
+
+<p>There is another bedroom in pink and white, which would be an adorable
+room for a young girl. The bed is of my own design, a simple white
+painted metal bed. There is a <i>chaise-longue</i>, upholstered in the pink
+and white striped chintz of the room. The same chintz is used for window
+hangings, bed spread, and so forth. There is a little spindle legged
+table of mahogany, and another table at the head of the bed which
+contains the reading light. There is also a little white stool, with a
+cushion of the chintz, beside the bed. The dressing-table is so simple
+that any girl might copy it&mdash;it is a chintz-hung box with a sheet of
+plate glass on top, and a white framed mirror hung above it. The
+electric lights in this room are cleverly made into candlesticks which
+are painted to match the chintz. The writing-table is white, with a
+mahogany chair in front of it.</p>
+
+<p>Another bedroom has a narrow four post bed of mahogany, with hangings of
+China blue sprigged with small pink roses. There was another in green
+and <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />white. In every case these bedrooms were equipped with rugs of
+neutral and harmonious tone. The dressing-tables were always painted to
+harmonize with the chintzes or the furniture. Wherever possible there
+was an open fireplace. Roomy clothes closets added much to the comfort
+of each room, and there was always a couch of delicious softness, or a
+<i>chaise-longue,</i> and lounging chairs which invited repose.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0361" id="h0361"></a>
+<img src="images/h0361.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM"
+title="MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing so nice has happened in a long time as the revival of painted
+furniture, and the application of quaint designs to modern beds and
+chairs and chests. You may find inspiration in a length of chintz, in an
+old fan, in a faded print&mdash;anywhere! The main thing is to work out a
+color plan for the background&mdash;the walls, the furniture, and the
+rugs&mdash;and then you can draw or stencil the chosen designs wherever they
+seem to belong, and paint them in with dull tones and soft colors, rose
+and buff and blue and green and a little bit of gray and cream and
+black. Or, if you aren't even as clever as that (and you probably
+<i>are!</i>) you can decorate your painted furniture with narrow lines of
+color: dark green on a light green ground; dark blue on yellow; <i>any</i>
+color on gray or cream&mdash;there are infinite possibilities of color
+combinations. In one of the rooms shown in the illustrations the posy
+garlands on the chest of drawers were inspired by a lamp jar. This
+furniture was carefully planned, as may be seen by the little urns on
+the bedposts, quite in the manner of the Brothers Adam, but delightful
+<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" /><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" /><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />results may be obtained by using any simple modern cottage furniture
+and applying fanciful decorations.</p>
+
+<p>Be wary of hanging many pictures in your bedroom. I give this advice
+cheerfully, because I know you will hang them anyway (I do) but I warn
+you you will spoil your room if you aren't very stern with yourself.
+Somehow the pictures we most love, small prints and photographs and
+things, look spotty on our walls. We must group them to get a pleasant
+effect. Keep the framed photographs on the writing table, the dressing
+table, the mantel, etc., but do not hang them on your walls. If you have
+small prints that you feel you must have, hang them flat on the wall,
+well within the line of vision. They should be low enough to be
+<i>examined</i>, because usually such pictures are not decorative in effect,
+but exquisite in detail. The fewer pictures the better, and in the
+guest-room fewer still!</p>
+
+<p>I planned a guest-room for the top floor of a New York house that is
+very successful. The room was built around a pair of appliques made from
+two old Chinese sprays of metal flowers. I had small electric light
+bulbs fitted among the flowers, mounted them on carved wood brackets on
+each side of a good mantel mirror and worked out the rest of the room
+from them. The walls were painted bluish green, the woodwork white. Just
+below the molding at the top of the room there was a narrow border (four
+inches wide) of a mosaic-like pattern in blue and green. The carpet rug
+is of a blue-green tone. The hangings are of an <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />alluring <i>Chinoiserie</i>
+chintz, and there are several Chinese color prints framed and hanging in
+the narrow panels between the front windows. The furniture is painted a
+deep cream pointed with blue and green, and the bed covering is of a
+pale turquoise taffeta.</p>
+
+<p>Another guest room was done in gentian blue and white, with a little
+buff and rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the
+guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and
+adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with
+a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a
+young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and
+white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and
+tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an
+enchanting affair! And simple&mdash;why, she could hinge the mirrors
+together, and make the chintz ruffle, and enamel the shelves white, and
+do every bit of it except cut the plate glass. Of course the glass is
+very clean and nice, but an enameled surface with a white linen cover
+would be very pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>The same blue and white chintz was used for the hangings and bed
+coverings. Everything else in the room was white except the thick cream
+rug with its border of blue and rose and buff, and the candlesticks and
+appliques which repeated those colors.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0362-a" id="h0362-a"></a>
+<img src="images/h0362-a.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER&#39;S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED"
+title="MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER&#39;S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER&#39;S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0362-b" id="h0362-b"></a>
+<img src="images/h0362-b.jpg" width="55%"
+alt="MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY&#39;S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED"
+title="MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY&#39;S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY&#39;S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a chintz I love to use called the Green Feather chintz. It is
+most decorative in design and <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />
+<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" /><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" />
+color, and such an aristocratic sort of
+chintz you can use it on handsome old sofas and your post beds that
+would scorn a more commonplace chintz. Mrs. Payne Whitney has a most
+enchanting bed covered with the Green Feather chintz, one of those great
+beds that depend entirely on their hangings for effect, for not a bit of
+the wooden frame shows. Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer has a similar bed
+covered with a <i>Chinoiserie</i> chintz. These great beds are very beautiful
+in large rooms, but they would be out of place in small ones. There are
+draped beds, however, that may be used in smaller rooms. I am showing a
+photograph of a bedroom in the Crocker house in Burlingame, California,
+where I used a small draped bed with charming effect. This bed is placed
+flat against the wall, like a sofa, and the drapery is adapted from that
+of a Louis XVI room. The bed is of gray painted wood, and the hangings
+are of blue and cream chintz lined with blue taffetas. I used the same
+idea in a rose and blue bedroom in a New York house. In this case,
+however, the bed was painted cream white and the large panels of the
+head and foot boards were filled with a rose and blue chintz. The
+bedspread was of deep rose colored taffetas, and from a small canopy
+above the bed four curtains of the rose and blue chintz, lined with the
+taffetas, are pulled to the four corners of the bed. This novel
+arrangement of draperies is very satisfactory in a small room.</p>
+
+<p>In my own house the bedrooms open into dressing-<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />rooms, so much of the
+usual furniture is not necessary. My own bedroom, for instance, is built
+around the same old Breton bed I had in the Washington Irving house. The
+bed dominates the room, but there are also a <i>chaise-longue</i>, several
+small tables, many comfortable chairs, and a real fireplace. The
+business of dressing takes place in the dressing-room, so there is no
+dressing-table here, but there are long mirrors filling the wall spaces
+between windows and doors. Miss Marbury's bedroom is just over mine, and
+is a sunshiny place of much rose and blue and cream. Her rooms are
+always full of blue, just as my rooms are always full of rose color.
+This bedroom has cream woodwork and walls of a bluish-gray, cream
+painted furniture covered with a mellow sort of rose-and-cream chintz,
+and a Persian rug made up of blue and cream. The curtains at the windows
+are of plain blue linen bordered with a narrow blue and white fringe.
+The lighting-fixtures are of carved wood, pointed in polychrome. The
+most beautiful thing in the room is a Fifteenth Century painting, the
+Madonna of Bartolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor over the
+mantel.</p>
+
+<p>I haven't said a word about our nice American Colonial bedrooms, because
+all of you know their beauties and requirements as well as I. The great
+drawback to the stately old furniture of our ancestors is the space it
+occupies. Haven't you seen a fine old four post bed simply overflowing a
+poor little room? Fortu<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />nately, the furniture-makers are designing
+simple beds of similar lines, but lighter build, and these beds are very
+lovely. The owner of a massive old four-post bed is justly proud of it,
+but our new beds are built for a new service and a new conception of
+hygiene, and so must find new lines and curves that will be friendly to
+the old dressing tables and highboys and chests of drawers.</p>
+
+<p>When we are fortunate enough to inherit great old houses, of course we
+will give them proper furniture&mdash;if we can find it.</p>
+
+<p>I remember a house in New Orleans that had a full dozen spacious
+bedrooms, square, closetless chambers that opened into small
+dressing-rooms. One of them, I remember, was absolutely bare of wall and
+floor, with a great Napoleon bed set squarely in the center of it. There
+was the inevitable mosquito net canopy, here somehow endowed with an
+unexpected dignity. One felt the room had been made for sleeping, and
+nothing <i>but</i> sleeping, and while the bed was placed in the middle of
+the floor to get all the air possible, its placing was a master stroke
+of decoration in that great white walled room. It was as impressive as a
+royal bed on a dais.</p>
+
+<p>We are getting more sensible about our bedrooms. There is no doubt about
+it. For the last ten years there has been a dreadful epidemic of brass
+beds, a mistaken vogue that came as a reaction from the heavy walnut
+beds of the last generation. White painted <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />metal beds came first, and
+will last always, but they weren't good enough for people of
+ostentatious tastes, and so the vulgar brass bed came to pass. Why we
+should suffer brass beds in our rooms, I don't know! The plea is that
+they are more sanitary than wooden ones. Hospitals must consider
+sanitation first, last, and always, and they use white iron beds. And
+why shouldn't white iron beds, which are modest and unassuming in
+appearance, serve for homes as well? The truth is that the glitter of
+brass appeals to the untrained eye. But that is passing. Go into the
+better shops and you will see! Recently there was a spasmodic outbreak
+of silver-plated beds, but I think there won't be a vogue for this
+newest object of bad taste. It is a little too much!</p>
+
+<p>If your house is clean and you intend to keep it so, a wooden bed that
+has some relation to the rest of your furniture is the best bed
+possible. Otherwise, a white painted metal one. There is never an excuse
+for a brass one. Indeed, I think the three most glaring errors we
+Americans make are rocking-chairs, lace curtains, and brass beds.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0363" id="h0363"></a>
+<img src="images/h0363.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED"
+title="MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED" />
+<p class="center"><b>MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV" /><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" /><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />XV</h2>
+
+<h2>THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>Dressing-rooms and closets should be necessities, not luxuries, but
+alas! our architects' ideas of the importance of large bedrooms have
+made it almost impossible to incorporate the proper closets and
+dressing-places a woman really requires.</p>
+
+<p>In the foregoing chapter on bedrooms I advised the division of a large
+bedroom into several smaller rooms: ante-chamber, sitting-room,
+sleeping-room, dressing-room and bath. The necessary closets may be
+built along the walls of all these little rooms, or, if there is
+sufficient space, one long, airy closet may serve for all one's personal
+belongings. Of course, such a suite of rooms is possible only in large
+houses. But even in simple houses a small dressing-room can be built
+into the corner of an average-sized bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>In France every woman dresses in her <i>cabinet de toilette</i>; it is one of
+the most important rooms in the house. No self-respecting French woman
+would dream of dressing in her sleeping-room. The little <i>cabinet de
+toilette</i> need not be much larger than a closet, if the closets are
+built ceiling high, and the doors are utilized for mirrors. Such an
+arrangement <a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />makes for great comfort and privacy. Here I find that most
+of my countrywomen dress in their bedrooms. I infinitely prefer the
+separate dressing-room, which means a change of air, and which can be
+thoroughly ventilated. If one sleeps with the bedroom windows wide open,
+it is a pleasure to have a warm dressing-room to step into.</p>
+
+<p>I think the first thing to be considered about a dressing-room is its
+utility. Here no particular scheme of decoration or over-elaboration of
+color is in place. Everything should be very simple, very clean and very
+hygienic. The floors should not be of wood, but may be of marble or
+mosaic cement or clean white tiles, with a possible touch of color. If
+the dressing-room is bathroom also, there should be as large a bath as
+is compatible with the size of the room. The combination of
+dressing-room and bathroom is successful only in those large houses
+where each bedroom has its bath. I have seen such rooms in modern
+American houses that were quite as large as bedrooms, with the supreme
+luxury of open fireplaces. Think of the comfort of having one's bath and
+of making one's toilet before an open fire! This is an outgrowth of our
+passion for bedrooms that are so be-windowed they become
+sleeping-porches, and we may leave their chill air for the comfortable
+warmth of luxurious dressing-rooms.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0364" id="h0364"></a>
+<img src="images/h0364.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS"
+title="FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS" />
+<p class="center"><b>FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>If I were giving advice as to the furnishing of a dressing-room, in as
+few words as possible, I should say: &quot;Put in lots of mirrors, and then
+more mirrors, <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" /><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" /><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />and then more!&quot; Indeed, I do not think one can have too
+many mirrors in a dressing-room. Long mirrors can be set in doors and
+wall panels, so that one may see one's self from hat to boots. Hinged
+mirrors are lovely for sunny wall spaces, and for the tops of
+dressing-tables. I have made so many of them. One of green and gold
+lacquer was made to be used on a plain green enameled dressing-table
+placed squarely in the recess of a great window. I also use small
+mirrors of graceful contour to light up the dark corners of
+dressing-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Have your mirrors so arranged that you get a good strong light by day,
+and have plenty of electric lights all around the dressing-mirrors for
+night use. In other words, know the worst before you go out! In my own
+dressing-room the lights are arranged just as I used to have them long
+ago in my theater dressing-room when I was on the stage. I can see
+myself back, front and sides before I go out. Really, it is a comfort to
+be on friendly terms with your own back hair! I lay great stress on the
+mirrors and plenty of lights, and yet more lights. Oh, the joy, the
+blessing of electric light! I think every woman would like to dress
+always by a blaze of electric light, and be seen only in the soft
+luminosity of candle light&mdash;how lovely we would all look, to be sure! It
+is a great thing to know the worst before one goes out, so that even the
+terrors of the arc lights before our theaters will be powerless to
+dismay us.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" /></p>
+
+<p>If there is room in the dressing-room, there should be a sofa with a
+slip cover of some washable fabric that can be taken off when necessary.
+This sofa may be the simplest wooden frame, with a soft pad, or it may
+be a <i>chaise-longue</i> of elegant lines. The <i>chaise-longue</i> is suitable
+for bedroom or dressing-room, but it is an especially luxurious
+lounging-place when you are having your hair done.</p>
+
+<p>A man came to me just before Christmas, and said, &quot;Do tell me something
+to give my wife. I cannot think of a thing in the world she hasn't
+already.&quot; I asked, &quot;Is she a lady of habits?&quot; &quot;What!&quot; he said,
+astonished. &quot;Does she enjoy being comfortable?&quot; I asked. &quot;Well, rather!&quot;
+he smiled. And so I suggested a <i>couvre-pieds</i> for her <i>chaise-longue.</i>
+Now I am telling you of the <i>couvre pieds</i> because I know all women love
+exquisite things, and surely nothing could be more delicious than my
+<i>couvre-pieds.</i> Literally, it is a &quot;cover for the feet,&quot; a sort of
+glorified and diminutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk,
+lined with the soft long-haired white fur known as mountain tibet, and
+interlined with down. The coverlet is bordered with a puffing of French
+lace, and the top of it is encrusted with little flowers made of tiny
+French picot ribbons, and quillings of the narrowest of lace. It is
+supposed to be thrown over your feet, fur side down, when you are
+resting or having your hair done.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0365" id="h0365"></a>
+<img src="images/h0365.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM"
+title="MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS MORGAN&#39;S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>You may devise a little coverlet for your own sofa, whether it be in
+your bedroom, your boudoir, or your <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" /><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" /><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />dressing-room, that will be quite
+as useful as this delectable <i>couvre-pieds</i>. I saw some amusing ones
+recently, made of gay Austrian silks, lined with astonishing colors and
+bound with puffings and flutings of ribbon of still other colors. A
+coverlet of this kind would be as good as a trip away from home for the
+woman who is bored and wearied. No matter how drab and commonplace her
+house might be, she could devise a gay quilt of one of the enchanting
+new stuffs and wrap herself in it for a holiday hour. One of the most
+amusing ones was of turquoise blue silk, with stiff flowers of violet
+and sulphur yellow scattered over it. The flowers were quite large and
+far apart, so that there was a square expanse of the turquoise blue with
+a stiff flower at each corner. The lining was of sulphur yellow silk,
+and the binding was a puffing of violet ribbons. The color fairly made
+me gasp, at first, but then it became fascinating, and finally
+irresistible. I sighed as I thought of the dreary patchwork quilts of
+our great-grandmothers. How they would have marveled at our audacious
+use of color, our frank joy in it!</p>
+
+<p>Of course the most important thing in the dressing-room is the
+dressing-table. I place my dressing-tables <i>against</i> a group of windows,
+not near them, whenever it is possible. I have used plate glass tops on
+many of them, and mirrors for tops on others, for you can't have too
+many mirrors or too strong a light for dressing. We must see ourselves
+as others will see us.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" /></p>
+
+<p>My own dressing-table contains many drawers, one of which is fitted
+with an ink-well, a tray for pens and pencils, and a sliding shelf on
+which I write. This obviates going into another room to answer hurried
+notes when one is dressing. Beside the dressing-table stands the tall
+hat-stand for the hat I may be wearing that day.</p>
+
+<p>When the maid prepares the dress that is to be worn, she puts the hat
+that goes with the toilette on the tall single stand. Another idea is
+the little hollow table on casters that can easily be slipped under the
+dressing-table, where it is out of the way. All the little ugly things
+that make one lovely can be kept in this table, which can have a lid if
+desired, and even a lock and key. I frequently make them with a glass
+bottom, as they do not get stained or soiled, and can be washed.</p>
+
+<p>There are lots of little dodges that spell comfort for the dressing-room
+of the woman who wants comfort and can have luxury. There is the
+hot-water towel-rack, which is connected with the hot-water system of
+the house and which heats the towels, and incidentally the
+dressing-room. This a boon if you like a hot bath sheet after a cold
+plunge on a winter's morning. Another modern luxury is a wall cabinet
+fitted with glass shelves for one's bottles and sponges and powders.
+There seems to be no end to the little luxuries that are devised for the
+woman who makes a proper toilet. Who can blame her for loving the
+business of making <a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />herself attractive, when every one offers her
+encouragement?</p>
+
+<p>A closet is absolutely necessary in the dressing-room, and if space is
+precious every inch of its interior may be fitted with shelves and
+drawers and hooks, so that no space is wasted. The outside of the closet
+door may be fitted with a mirror, and narrow shelves just deep enough to
+hold one's bottles, may be fitted on the inside of the door. If the
+closet is very shallow, the inner shelves should be hollowed out to
+admit the bottle shelves when the door is closed. Otherwise the bottles
+will be smashed the first time a careless maid slams the door. This
+bottle closet has been one of my great successes in small apartments,
+where bathroom and dressing-room are one, and where much must be
+accomplished in a small space.</p>
+
+<p>In the more modern apartments the tub is placed in a recess in the wall
+of the bathroom, leaving more space for dressing purposes. This sort of
+combination dressing-room should have waterproof floor and wall, and no
+fripperies. There should be a screen large enough to conceal the tub,
+and a folding chair that may be placed in the small closet when it is
+not in use.</p>
+
+<p>When the bathroom is too small to admit a dressing-table and chair and
+the bedroom is quite large, a good plan is the building of a tiny room
+in one corner of the bedroom. Of course this little dressing-box must
+have a window. I have used this plan many times with excellent results.
+Another scheme, when the problem <a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />was entirely different, and the
+dressing-room was too large for comfort, was to line three walls of it
+with closets, the fourth wall being filled with windows. These closets
+were narrow, each having a mirrored panel in its door. This is the ideal
+arrangement, for there is ample room for all one's gowns, shoes, hats,
+veils, gloves, etc., each article having its own specially planned shelf
+or receptacle. The closets are painted in gay colors inside, and the
+shelves are fitted with thin perfumed pads. They are often further
+decorated with bright lines of color, which is always amusing to the
+woman who opens a door. Hat stands and bags are covered with the same
+chintzes employed in the dressing-room proper. Certain of the closets
+are fitted with the English tray shelves, and each tray has its sachet.
+The hangers for gowns are covered in the chintz or brocade used on the
+hat stands. This makes an effective ensemble whether brocades or printed
+cottons are used, if the arrangement is orderly and full of gay color.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<br />
+<a name="h0366" id="h0366"></a>
+<img src="images/h0366.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MISS MARBURY&#39;S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE"
+title="MISS MARBURY&#39;S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE" />
+<p class="center"><b>MISS MARBURY&#39;S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the most successful gown closets I have done is a long narrow
+closet with a door at each end, really a passageway between a bedroom
+and a boudoir. Long poles run the length of the closet, with curtains
+that enclose a passage from door to door. Back of these curtains are
+long poles that may be raised or lowered by pulleys. Each gown is placed
+on its padded hanger, covered with its muslin bag, and hung on the pole.
+The pole is then drawn up so that the tails of the gowns <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" /><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" /><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />will not
+touch the dust of the floor. This is a most orderly arrangement for the
+woman of many gowns.</p>
+
+<p>The straightaway bathroom that one finds in apartments and small houses
+is difficult to make beautiful, but may be made airy and clean-looking,
+which is more important. I had to make such a bathroom a little more
+attractive recently, and it was a very pleasant job. I covered the walls
+with a waterproof stuff of white, figured with a small black polkadot.
+The woodwork and the ceiling were painted white. All around the door and
+window frames I used a two-inch border of ivy leaves, also of waterproof
+paper, and although I usually abominate borders I loved this one. A
+plain white framed mirror was also painted with green ivy leaves, and a
+glass shelf above the wash bowl was fitted with glass bottles and dishes
+with labels and lines of clear green. White muslin curtains were hung at
+the window, and a small white stool was given a cushion covered with
+green and white ivy patterned chintz. The floor was painted white, and a
+solid green rug was used. The towels were cross-stitched with the name
+of the owner in the same bright green. The room, when finished, was cool
+and refreshing, and had cost very little in money, and not so very much
+in time and labor.</p>
+
+<p>I think that in country houses where there is not a bathroom with each
+bedroom there should be a very good washstand provided for each guest.
+When a house party is in progress, for instance, and every one <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />comes in
+from tennis or golf or what not, eager for a bath and fresh clothes,
+washstands are most convenient. Why shouldn't a washstand be just as
+attractively furnished as a dressing-table? Just because they have been
+so ugly we condemn them to eternal ugliness, but it is quite possible to
+make the washstand interesting to look upon as well as serviceable. It
+isn't necessary to buy a &quot;set&quot; of dreadful crockery. You can assemble
+the necessary things as carefully as you would assemble the outfit for
+your writing-table. Go to the pottery shops, the glass shops, the
+silversmiths, and you will find dozens of bowls and pitchers and small
+things. A clear glass bowl and pitcher and the necessary glasses and
+bottles can be purchased at any department store. The French peasants
+make an apple-green pottery that is delightful for a washstand set. So
+many of the china shops have large shallow bowls that were made for
+salad and punch, and pitchers that were made for the dining-table, but
+there is no reason why they shouldn't be used on the washstand. I know
+one wash basin that began as a Russian brass pan of flaring rim. With it
+is used an old water can of hammered brass, and brass dishes glass
+lined, to hold soaps and sponges. It is only necessary to desire the
+unusual thing, and you'll get it, though much searching may intervene
+between the idea and its achievement.</p>
+
+<p>The washstand itself is not such a problem. A pair of dressing-tables
+may be bought, and one fitted up as a washstand, and the other left to
+its usual use.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" /></p>
+
+<p>In the Colony Club there are a number of bathrooms, but there are also
+washstands in those rooms that have no private bath. Each bathroom has
+its fittings planned to harmonize with the connecting bedroom, and the
+clear glass bottles are all marked in the color prevailing in the
+bedroom. Each bathroom has a full-length mirror, and all the
+conveniences of a bathroom in a private house. In addition to these
+rooms there is a long hall filled with small <i>cabinets de toilette</i>
+which some clever woman dubbed &quot;prinkeries.&quot; These are small rooms
+fitted with dressing-tables, where out-of-town members may freshen their
+toilets for an occasion. These little prinkeries would be excellent in
+large country houses, where there are so many motoring guests who come
+for a few hours only, dust-laden and travel-stained, only to find that
+all the bedrooms and dressing-rooms in the house are being used by the
+family and the house guests.</p>
+
+<p>A description of the pool of the Colony Club is hardly within the
+province of this chapter, but so many amazing Americans are building
+themselves great houses incorporating theaters and Roman baths, so many
+women are building club houses, so many others are building palatial
+houses that are known as girls' schools, perhaps the swimming-pool will
+soon be a part of all large houses. This pool occupies the greater part
+of the basement floor of the Club house, the rest of the floor being
+given over to little rooms where one may have a shampoo or massage or a
+dancing <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />lesson or what not before or after one's swim. The pool is
+twenty-two by sixty feet, sunken below the level of the marble floor.
+The depth is graded from four feet to deep water, so that good and bad
+swimmers may enjoy it. The marble margin of floor surrounding the pool
+is bordered with marble benches, placed between the white columns. The
+walls of the great room are paneled with mirrors, so that there are
+endless reflections of columned corridors and pools and shimmering
+lights. The ceiling is covered with a light trellis hung with vines,
+from which hang great greenish-white bunches of grapes holding electric
+lights. One gets the impression of myriads of white columns, and of
+lights and shadows infinitely far-reaching. Surely the old Romans knew
+no pleasanter place than this city-enclosed pool.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI" /><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />XVI</h2>
+
+<h2>THE SMALL APARTMENT</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>This is the age of the apartment. Not only in the great cities, but in
+the smaller centers of civilization the apartment has come to stay.
+Modern women demand simplified living, and the apartment reduces the
+mechanical business of living to its lowest terms. A decade ago the
+apartment was considered a sorry makeshift in America, though it has
+been successful abroad for more years than you would believe. We
+Americans have been accustomed to so much space about us that it seemed
+a curtailment of family dignity to give up our gardens, our piazzas and
+halls, our cellars and attics, our front and rear entrances. Now we are
+wiser. We have just so much time, so much money and so much strength,
+and it behooves us to make the best of it. Why should we give our time
+and strength and enthusiasm to drudgery, when our housework were better
+and more economically done by machinery and co-operation? Why should we
+stultify our minds with doing the same things thousands of times over,
+when we might help ourselves and our friends to happiness by intelligent
+occupations and amusements? The apartment is the solution of the living
+problems of the city, and it has been <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />a direct influence on the houses
+of the towns, so simplifying the small-town business of living as well.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, many of us who live in apartments either have a little house
+or a big one in the country for the summer months, or we plan for one
+some day! So hard does habit die&mdash;we cannot entirely divorce our ideas
+of Home from gardens and trees and green grass. But I honestly think
+there is a reward for living in a slice of a house: women who have lived
+long in the country sometimes take the beauty of it for granted, but the
+woman who has been hedged in by city walls gets the fine joy of
+out-of-doors when she <i>is</i> out of doors, and a pot of geraniums means
+more to her than a whole garden means to a woman who has been denied the
+privilege of watching things grow.</p>
+
+<p>The modern apartment is an amazing illustration of the rapid development
+of an idea. The larger ones are quite as magnificent as any houses could
+be. I have recently furnished a Chicago apartment that included large
+and small salons, a huge conservatory, and a great group of superb rooms
+that are worthy of a palace. There are apartment houses in New York that
+offer suites of fifteen to twenty rooms, with from five to ten baths, at
+yearly rentals that approximate wealth to the average man, but these
+apartments are for the few, and there are hundreds of thousands of
+apartments for the many that have the same essential conveniences.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most notable achievements of the apartment house architects
+is the duplex apartment, the little <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />house within a house, with its
+two-story high living room, its mezzanine gallery with service rooms
+ranged below and sleeping rooms above, its fine height and spaciousness.
+Most of the duplex apartments are still rather expensive, but some of
+them are to be had at rents that are comparatively low&mdash;rents are always
+comparative, you know.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, although it is a far cry financially from the duplex
+apartment to the tidy three-room flat of the model tenements, the
+&quot;modern improvements&quot; are very much the same. The model tenement offers
+compact domestic machinery, and cleanliness, and sanitary comforts at a
+few dollars a week that are not to be had at any price in many of the
+fine old houses of Europe. The peasant who has lived on the plane of the
+animals with no thought of cleanliness, or indeed of anything but food
+and drink and shelter, comes over here and enjoys improvements that our
+stately ancestors of a few generations ago would have believed magical.
+Enjoys them&mdash;they do say he puts his coal in the bath tub, but his
+grandchildren will be different, perhaps!</p>
+
+<p>But enough of apartments in general. This chapter is concerned with the
+small apartment sought by you young people who are beginning
+housekeeping. You want to find just the proper apartment, of course, and
+then you want to decorate and furnish it. Let me beg of you to demand
+only the actual essentials: a decent neighborhood, good light and air,
+and at least one reasonably large room. Don't demand perfection, for
+<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />you won't find it. Make up your mind just what will make for your
+happiness and comfort, and demand that. You can make any place livable
+by furnishing it wisely. And, oh, let me beg of you, don't buy your
+furniture until you have found and engaged your apartment! It is bad
+enough to buy furniture for a house you haven't seen, but an apartment
+is a place of limitations, and you can so easily mar the place by buying
+things that will not fit in. An apartment is so dependent upon proper
+fittings, skilfully placed, that you may ruin your chances of a real
+home if you go ahead blindly.</p>
+
+<p>Before you sign your lease, be sure that the neighborhood is not too
+noisy. Be sure that you will have plenty of light and air and heat. You
+can interview the other tenants, and find out about many things you
+haven't time or the experience to anticipate. Be sure that your landlord
+is a reasonable human being who will consent to certain changes, if
+necessary, who will be willing for you to build in certain things, who
+will co-operate with you in improving his property, if you go about it
+tactfully.</p>
+
+<p>Be sure that the woodwork is plain and unpretentious, that the
+lighting-fixtures are logically placed, and of simple construction. (Is
+there anything more dreadful than those colored glass domes, with
+fringes of beads, that landlords so proudly hang over the imaginary
+dining-table?) Be sure that the plumbing is in good condition, and
+beware the bedroom on an air shaft&mdash;better<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" /> pay a little more rent and
+save the doctor's bills. Beware of false mantels, and grotesque
+grille-work, and imitation stained glass, and grained woodwork. You
+couldn't be happy in a place that was false to begin with.</p>
+
+<p>Having found just the combination of rooms that suggests a real home to
+you, go slowly about your decorating.</p>
+
+<p>It is almost imperative that the woodwork and walls should have the same
+finish throughout the apartment, unless you wish to find yourself living
+in a crazy-quilt of unfriendly colors. I have seen four room apartments
+in which every room had a different wall paper and different woodwork.
+The &quot;parlor&quot; was papered with poisonous-looking green paper, with
+imitation mahogany woodwork; the dining-room had walls covered with red
+burlap and near-oak woodwork; the bedroom was done in pink satin
+finished paper and bird's-eye maple woodwork, and the kitchen was
+bilious as to woodwork, with bleak gray walls. Could anything be more
+mistaken?</p>
+
+<p>You can make the most commonplace rooms livable if you will paint all
+your woodwork cream, or gray, or sage green, and cover your walls with a
+paper of very much the same tone. Real hard wood trim isn't used in
+ordinary apartments, so why not do away with the badly-grained imitation
+and paint it? You can look through thousands of samples of wall papers,
+and you will finally have to admit that there is nothing better <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />for
+every day living than a deep cream, a misty gray, a tan or a buff paper.</p>
+
+<p>You may have a certain license in the papering of your bedrooms, of
+course, but the living-rooms&mdash;hall, dining-room, living-room,
+drawing-room, and so forth&mdash;should be pulled together with walls of one
+color. In no other way can you achieve an effect of spaciousness&mdash;and
+spaciousness is the thing of all other things most desirable in the
+crowded city. You must have a place where you can breathe and fling your
+arms about!</p>
+
+<p>When you have it really ready for furnishing, get the essentials first;
+do with a bed and a chest of drawers and a table and a few chairs, and
+add things gradually, as the rooms call for them.</p>
+
+<p>Make the best of the opportunities offered for built-in furniture before
+you buy another thing. If you have a built-in china closet in your
+dining-room, you can plan a graceful built-in console-table to serve as
+a buffet or serving-table, and you will require only a good table&mdash;not
+too heavily built&mdash;and a few chairs for this room. There is rarely a
+room that would not be improved by built-in shelves and inset mirrors.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I do not advise you to spend a lot of money on someone else's
+property, but why not look the matter squarely in the face? This is to
+be your home. You will find a number of things that annoy you&mdash;life in
+any city furnishes annoyances. But if you have one or two reasonably
+large rooms, plenty of light and air, and respectable surroundings, make
+up <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />your mind that you will not move every year. That you will make a
+home of this place, and then go ahead and <i>treat</i> it as a home! If a
+certain recess in the wall suggests bookshelves, don't grudge the few
+dollars necessary to have the bookshelves built in! You can probably
+have them built so that they can be removed, on that far day when this
+apartment is no longer your home, and if you have a dreadful wall paper
+don't hide behind the silly plea that the landlord will not change it.
+Go without a new gown, if necessary, and pay for the paper yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Few apartments have fireplaces, and if you are fortunate enough to find
+one with a real fireplace and a simple mantel shelf you will be far on
+the way toward making a home of your group of rooms. Of course your
+apartment is heated by steam, or hot air, or something, but an open fire
+of coal or wood will be very pleasant on chilly days, and more important
+still your home will have a point of departure&mdash;the Hearth.</p>
+
+<p>If the mantel shelf is surmounted by one of those dreadful monstrosities
+made up of gingerbread woodwork and distressing bits of mirrors,
+convince your landlord that it will not be injured in the removing, and
+store it during your residence here. Have the space above the mantel
+papered like the rest of the walls, and hang one good picture, or a good
+mirror, or some such thing above your mantel shelf, and you will have
+offered up your homage to the Spirit of the Hearth.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" /></p>
+
+<p>When you do begin to buy furniture, buy compactly, buy carefully.
+Remember that you will not require the furniture your mother had in a
+sixteen-room house. You will have no hall or piazza furnishings to buy,
+for instance, and therefore you many put a little more into your
+living-room things. The living-room is the nucleus of the modern
+apartment. Sometimes it is studio, living-room and dining-room in one.
+Sometimes living-room, library and guest-room, by the grace of a
+comfortable sleeping-couch and a certain amount of drawer or closet
+space. At any rate, it will be more surely a living-room than a similar
+room in a large house, and therefore everything in it should count for
+something. Do not admit an unnecessary rug, or chair, or picture, lest
+you lose the spaciousness, the dignity of the room. An over-stuffed
+chair will fill a room more obviously than a grand piano&mdash;if the piano
+is properly, and the chair improperly placed.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the illustrations of this chapter you will observe a small
+sitting-room in which there are dozens of things, and yet the effect is
+quiet and uncrowded. The secretary against the plain wall serves as a
+cabinet for the display of a small collection of fine old china, and the
+drawers serve the chance guest&mdash;for while this is library and
+sitting-room, it has a most comfortable couch bed, and may be used as a
+guest-room as well.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0367" id="h0367"></a>
+<img src="images/h0367.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR"
+title="A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR" />
+<p class="center"><b>A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The bookshelves are built high on each side of the mantel and between
+the windows, thus giving shelf room to a goodly collection of books,
+with no appear<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" /><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" /><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />ance of heaviness. The writing-table is placed at right
+angles to the windows, so that the light may fall on the writer's left
+shoulder. There is a couch bed&mdash;over three feet wide, in this room, with
+frame and mattress and pillows covered in a dark brocaded stuff, and a
+fireside chair, a small chair at the head of the couch and a low stool
+all covered with the same fabric. It really isn't a large room, and yet
+it abundantly fills a dozen needs.</p>
+
+<p>I think it unwise to try to work out a cut-and-dried color plan in a
+small apartment. If your floors and walls are neutral in tone you can
+introduce dozens of soft colors into your rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Don't buy massive furniture for your apartment! Remember that a few good
+chairs of willow will be less expensive and more decorative than the
+heavy, stuffy chairs usually chosen by inexperienced people. Indeed, I
+think one big arm chair, preferably of the wing variety, is the only big
+chair you will require in the living-room. A fireside chair is like a
+grandfather's clock; it gives so much dignity to a room that it is worth
+a dozen inferior things. Suppose you have a wing chair covered with
+dull-toned corduroy, or linen, or chintz; a large willow chair with a
+basket pocket for magazines or your sewing things; a stool or so of
+wood, with rush or cane seats; and a straight chair or so&mdash;perhaps a
+painted Windsor chair, or a rush-bottomed mahogany chair, or a low-back
+chair of brown oak&mdash;depending on the main furniture of the room, of
+course.<a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" /> You won't need anything more, unless you have space for a
+comfortable couch.</p>
+
+<p>If you have mahogany things, you will require a little mahogany table at
+the head of the couch to hold a reading-lamp&mdash;a sewing-table would be
+excellent. A pie-crust or turn top table for tea, or possibly a &quot;nest&quot;
+of three small mahogany tables. A writing table or book table built on
+very simple lines will be needed also. If you happen to have a
+conventional writing-desk, a gate-leg table would be charming for books
+and things.</p>
+
+<p>The wing chair and willow chairs, and the hour-glass Chinese chairs,
+will go beautifully with mahogany things or with oak things. If most of
+your furniture is to be oak, be sure and select well-made pieces stained
+a soft brown and waxed. Oak furniture is delightful when it isn't too
+heavy. A large gate-leg table of dark brown oak is one of the most
+beautiful tables in the world. With it you would need a bench of oak,
+with cane or rush seat; a small octagonal, or butterfly oak table for
+your couch end, and one or two Windsor chairs. Oak demands simple,
+wholesome surroundings, just as mahogany permits a certain feminine
+elegance. Oak furniture invites printed linens and books and brass and
+copper and pewter and gay china. While mahogany may be successfully used
+with such things, it may also be used with brocade and fragile china and
+carved chairs.</p>
+
+<p>Use chintzes in your apartment, if you wish, but <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" />do not risk the light
+ones in living-rooms. A chintz or printed linen of some good design on a
+ground of mauve, blue, gray or black will decorate your apartment
+adequately, if you make straight side curtains of it, and cover one
+chair and possibly a stool with it. Don't carry it too far. If your
+rooms are small, have your side curtains of coarse linen or raw silk in
+dull blue, orange, brown, or whatever color you choose as the key color
+of your room, and then select a dark chintz with your chosen color
+dominant in its design, and cover your one big chair with that.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment hall is most difficult, usually long and narrow and
+uninteresting. Don't try to have furniture in a hall of this kind. A
+small table near the front door, a good tile for umbrellas, etc., a good
+mirror&mdash;that is all. Perhaps a place for coats and hats, but some halls
+are too narrow for a card table.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment with a dining-room entirely separated from the living-room
+is very unusual, therefore I am hoping that you will apply all that I
+have said about the treatment of your living-room to your dining-room as
+well. People who live in apartments are very foolish if they cut off a
+room so little used as a dining-room and furnish it as if it belonged to
+a huge house. Why not make it a dining-and book-room, using the big
+table for reading, between meals, and having your bookshelves so built
+that they will be in harmony with your china shelves? Keep all your
+glass and silver and china in the kitchen, or butler's pantry, and
+dis<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" />play only the excellent things&mdash;the old china, the pewter tankard,
+the brass caddy, and so forth,&mdash;in the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>However, if you have a real dining-room in your apartment, do try to
+have chairs that will be comfortable, for you can't afford to have
+uncomfortable things in so small a space! Windsor chairs and rush bottom
+chairs are best of all for a simple dining-room, I think, though the
+revival of painted furniture has brought about a new interest in the old
+flare-back chairs, painted with dull, soft colored posies on a ground of
+dull green or gray or black. These chairs would be charming in a small
+cottage dining-room, but they might not &quot;wear well&quot; in a city apartment.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0368" id="h0368"></a>
+<img src="images/h0368.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM"
+title="BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM" />
+<p class="center"><b>BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>If your apartment has two small bedrooms, why not use one of them for
+two single beds, with a night stand between, and the other for a
+dressing-room? Apartment bedrooms are usually small, but charming
+furniture may be bought for small rooms. Single beds of mahogany with
+slender posts; beds of painted wood with inset panels of cane; white
+iron beds, wooden beds painted with quaint designs on a ground of some
+soft color&mdash;all these are excellent for small rooms. It goes without
+saying that a small bedroom should have plain walls, papered or painted
+in some soft color. Flowered papers, no matter how delightful they may
+be, make a small room seem smaller. Self-toned striped papers and the
+&quot;gingham&quot; papers are sometimes very good.<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" /><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" /><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" /> The nicest thing about such
+modest walls is that you can use gay chintz with them successfully.</p>
+
+<p>Use your bedrooms as sleeping-and dressing-rooms, and nothing more. Do
+not keep your sewing things there&mdash;a big sewing-basket will add to the
+homelike quality of your living-room. Keep the bedroom floor bare,
+except for a bedside rug, and possibly one or two other rugs. This, of
+course, does not apply to the large bedroom&mdash;I am prescribing for the
+usual small one. Place your bed against the side wall, so that the
+morning light will not be directly in your eyes. A folding screen
+covered with chintz or linen will prove a God-send.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you will have a guest-room, but I doubt it. Most women find it
+more satisfactory and less expensive to send their guests to a nearby
+hotel than to keep an extra room for a guest. The guest room is
+impractical in a small apartment, but you can arrange to take care of an
+over-night guest by planning your living-room wisely.</p>
+
+<p>As for the kitchen&mdash;that is another story. It is impossible to go into
+that subject. And anyway, you will find the essentials supplied for you
+by the landlord. You won't need my advice when you need a broom or a
+coffee pot or a saucepan&mdash;you'll go buy it!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII" /><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />XVII</h2>
+
+<h2>REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>One must have preserved many na&iuml;ve illusions if one may believe in all
+the &quot;antiques&quot; that are offered in the marketplaces of the world to-day.
+Even the greatest connoisseurs are caught napping sometimes, as in the
+case of the famous crown supposedly dating to the Fifth Century, B.C.,
+which was for a brief period one of the treasures of the Louvre. Its
+origin was finally discovered, and great was the outcry! It had been
+traced to a Viennese artisan, a worker in the arts and crafts.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0369" id="h0369"></a>
+<img src="images/h0369.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MRS. C.W. HARKNESS&#39;S CABINET FOR OBJETS D&#39;ART"
+title="MRS. C.W. HARKNESS&#39;S CABINET FOR OBJETS D&#39;ART" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. C.W. HARKNESS&#39;S CABINET FOR OBJETS D&#39;ART</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Surely, if the great men of the Louvre could be so deceived it is
+obvious that the amateur collector has little chance at the hands of the
+dealers in old furniture and other objects of art. Fortunately, the
+greatest dealers are quite honest. They tell you frankly if the old
+chair you covet is really old, if it has been partially restored, or if
+it is a copy, and they charge you accordingly. At these dealers a small
+table of the Louis XVI period, or a single chair covered in the original
+tapestry, may cost as much as a man in modest circumstances would spend
+on his whole house. Almost everything outside these princely shops
+(salons is a<a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" /><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" /><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" /> better word) is false, or atrociously restored. Please
+remember I am not referring to reputable dealers, but to the smaller
+fry, whose name is legion, in whose shops the unwary seeker after
+bargains is sure to be taken in.</p>
+
+<p>Italy is, I think, the greatest workshop of fraudulent reproductions. It
+has an output that all Europe and America can never exhaust. Little
+children on the streets of Naples still find simpletons of ardent faith
+who will buy scraps of old plaster and bits of paving stones that are
+alleged to have been excavated in Pompeii.</p>
+
+<p>In writing about antiques it is not easy to be consistent, and any
+general conclusion is impossible. Certain reproductions are
+objectionable, and yet they are certainly better than poor originals,
+after all. The simplest advice is the best and easiest to follow: The
+less a copy suggests an attempt at &quot;artistic reproduction,&quot; the more
+literal and mechanical it is in its copy of the original, the better it
+is. A good photograph of a fine old painting is superior to the average
+copy in oils or watercolors. A chair honestly copied from a worm eaten
+original is better for domestic purpose than the original. The original,
+the moment its usefulness is past, belongs in a museum. A plaster cast
+of a great bust is better than the same object copied in marble or
+bronze by an average sculptor. And so it goes. Think it out for
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>It may be argued that the budding collector is as<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" /> happy with a false
+object and a fake bauble as if he possessed the real thing, and
+therefore it were better to leave him to his illusions; that it is his
+own fault; that it is so much the worse for him if he is deceived.
+But&mdash;you can't leave the innocent lamb to the slaughter, if you can give
+him a helping hand. If he must be a collector, let him be first a
+collector of the many excellent books now published on old furniture,
+china, rugs, pewter, silver, prints, the things that will come his way.
+You can't begin collecting one thing without developing an enthusiasm
+for the contemporary things. Let him study the museum collections, visit
+the private collections, consult recognized experts. If he is serious,
+he will gradually acquire the intuition of knowing the genuine from the
+false, the worth-while from the worthless, and once he has that
+knowledge, instinct, call it what you will, he can never be satisfied
+with imitations.</p>
+
+<p>The collection and association of antiques and reproductions should be
+determined by the collector's sense of fitness, it seems to me. Every
+man should depend on whatever instinct for rightness, for suitability,
+he may possess. If he finds that he dare not risk his individual
+opinion, then let him be content with the things he <i>knows</i> to be both
+beautiful and useful, and leave the subtler decisions for someone else.
+For instance, there are certain objects that are obviously the better
+for age, the objects that are softened and refined by a bloom that comes
+from usage.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" /></p>
+
+<p>An old rug has a softness that a new one cannot imitate. An old copper
+kettle has an uneven quality that has come from years of use. A new
+kettle may be quite as useful, but age has given the old one a certain
+quality that hanging and pounding cannot reproduce. A pewter platter
+that has been used for generations is dulled and softened to a glow that
+a new platter cannot rival.</p>
+
+<p>What charm is to a woman, the vague thing called quality is to an object
+of art. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it. An old
+Etruscan jar may be reproduced in form, but it would be silly to attempt
+the reproduction of the crudenesses that gave the old jar its real
+beauty. In short, objects that depend on form and fine workmanship for
+their beauty may be successfully reproduced, but objects that depend on
+imperfections of workmanship, on the crudeness of primitive fabrics, on
+the fading of vegetable dyes, on the bloom that age alone can give,
+should not be imitated. We may introduce a reproduction of a fine bust
+into our rooms, but an imitation of a Persian tile or a Venetian vase is
+absurd on the face of it.</p>
+
+<p>The antiques the average American householder is interested in are the
+old mahogany, oak and walnut things that stand for the oldest period of
+our own particular history. It is only the wealthy collector who goes
+abroad and buys masses of old European furniture, real or sham, who is
+concerned with the merits and demerits of French and Italian furniture.<a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />
+The native problem is the so-called Colonial mahogany that is always
+alleged to be Chippendale or Heppelwhite, or Sheraton, regardless! There
+must be thousands of these alleged antiques in New York shops alone!</p>
+
+<p>It goes without saying that only a very small part of it can be really
+old. As for it having been made by the men whose names it bears, that is
+something no reputable dealer would affirm. The Chippendales, father,
+son and grandson, published books of designs which were used by all the
+furniture-makers of their day.</p>
+
+<p>No one can swear to a piece of furniture having been made in the
+workshops of the Chippendales. Even the pieces in the Metropolitan
+Museum are marked &quot;Chippendale Style&quot; or &quot;In the Sheraton manner,&quot; or
+some such way. If the furniture is in the style of these makers, and if
+it is really old, you will pay a small fortune for it. But even then you
+cannot hope to get more than you pay for, and you would be very silly to
+pay for a name! After all, Chippendale is a sort of god among amateur
+collectors of American furniture, but among more seasoned collectors he
+is not by any means placed first. He adapted and borrowed and produced
+some wonderful things, but he also produced some monstrosities, as you
+will see if you visit the English museums.</p>
+
+<p>Why then lend yourself to possible deception? Why pay for names when
+museums are unable to buy<a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" /> them? If your object is to furnish your home
+suitably, what need have you of antiques?</p>
+
+<p>The serious amateur will fight shy of miracles. If he admires the beauty
+of line of a fine old Heppelwhite bed or Sheraton sideboard, he will
+have reproductions made by an expert cabinet-maker. The new piece will
+not have the soft darkness of the old, but the owner will be planning
+that soft darkness for his grandchildren, and in the meantime he will
+have a beautiful thing to live with. The age of a piece of furniture is
+of great value to a museum, but for domestic purposes, use and beauty
+will do. How fine your home will be if all the things within it have
+those qualities!</p>
+
+<p>Look through the photographs shown on these pages: there are many old
+chairs and tables, but there are more new ones. I am not one of these
+decorators who insist on originals. I believe good reproductions are
+more valuable than feeble originals, unless you are buying your
+furniture as a speculation. You can buy a reproduction of a Chippendale
+ladder back chair for about twenty-five dollars, but an original chair
+would cost at least a hundred and fifty, and then it would be &quot;in the
+style and period of Chippendale.&quot; It might amuse you to ask the curator
+of one of the British museums the price of one of the Chippendales <i>by</i>
+Chippendale. It would buy you a tidy little acreage. Stuart and
+Cromwellian chairs are being more and more reproduced. These chairs are
+made of oak, the Stuart ones<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" /> with seats and backs of cane, the
+Cromwellian ones with seats and backs of tapestry, needlework, corded
+velvet, or some such handsome fabric. These reproductions may be had at
+from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars each. Of course, the cost of
+the Cromwellian chairs might be greatly increased by expensive
+coverings.</p>
+
+<p>There is a graceful Louis XV sofa in the Petit Trianon that I have
+copied many times. The copy is as beautiful as the original, because
+this sort of furniture depends upon exquisite design and perfect
+workmanship for its beauty. It is possible that a modern craftsman might
+not have achieved so graceful a design, but the perfection of his
+workmanship cannot be gainsaid. The frame of the sofa must be carved and
+then painted and guilded many times before it is ready for the brocade
+covering, and the cost of three hundred dollars for the finished sofa is
+not too much. The original could not be purchased at any price.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the Chinese lacquer furniture of the Chippendale period
+that we are using so much now. The process of lacquering is as tedious
+to-day as it ever was, and the reproductions sell for goodly sums. A
+tall secretary of black and gold lacquer may cost six hundred dollars.
+You can imagine what an Eighteenth Century piece would cost!</p>
+
+<p>The person who said that a taste for old furniture and bibelots was
+&quot;worse than a passion, it was a vice,&quot; was certainly near the truth! It
+is an absorbing<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" /> pursuit, an obsession, and it grows with what it feeds
+on. As in objects of art, so in old furniture, the supply will always
+equal the demand of the unwary. The serious amateur will fight shy of
+all miracles and content himself with excellent reproductions. Nothing
+later than the furniture of the Eighteenth Century is included in the
+term, &quot;old furniture.&quot; There are many fine cabinet makers in the early
+Nineteenth Century, but from them until the last decade the horrors that
+were perpetrated have never been equaled in the history of household
+decorations.</p>
+
+<p>I fancy the furniture of the mid-Victorian era will never be coveted by
+collectors, unless someone should build a museum for the freakish
+objects of house furnishing. America could contribute much to such a
+collection, for surely the black walnut era of the Nineteenth Century
+will never be surpassed in ugliness and bad taste, unless&mdash;rare
+fortune&mdash;there should be a sudden epidemic of appreciation among
+cabinet-makers, which would result in their taking the beautiful wood in
+the black walnut beds and wardrobes and such and make it over into
+worth-while things. It would be a fine thing to release the mistreated,
+velvety wood from its grotesqueries, and give it a renaissance in
+graceful cabinets, small tables, footstools, and the many small things
+that could be so easily made from huge unwieldy wardrobes and beds and
+bureaux.</p>
+
+<p>The workmen of to-day have their eyes opened. They have no excuse for
+producing unworthy things,<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" /> when the greatest private collections are
+loaned or given outright to the museums. The new wing of the
+Metropolitan Museum in New York houses several fine old collections of
+furniture, the Hoentschel collection, for which the wing was really
+planned, having been given to the people of New York by Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan. This collection is an education in the French decorative arts.
+Then, too, there is the Bolles collection of American furniture
+presented to the museum by Mrs. Russell Sage.</p>
+
+<p>I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and
+sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies. There is
+no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers
+of the Eighteenth Century: we give them respect for their masterly
+workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity
+to the masterpieces they reproduce.</p>
+
+<p>Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a
+gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture
+shop. He paid for it&mdash;you may be sure of that!&mdash;and he could hardly wait
+for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors. Within a few
+months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered
+on the inside of the frame the maker's name and address. Imagine his
+chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture
+factory in his own country. You can't be sorry for him, you feel that it
+served him right.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0370-a" id="h0370-a"></a>
+<img src="images/h0370-a.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH NEEDLEWORK"
+title="A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH NEEDLEWORK" />
+<p class="center"><b>A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH NEEDLEWORK</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0370-b" id="h0370-b"></a>
+<img src="images/h0370-b.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ"
+title="A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ" />
+<p class="center"><b>A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" /><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" /></p>
+
+<p>This is an excellent example of the vain collector who cannot judge
+for himself, but will not admit it. He has not developed his sense of
+beauty, his instinct for excellence of workmanship. He thinks that
+because he has the money to pay for the treasure, the treasure must be
+genuine&mdash;hasn't <i>he</i> chosen it?</p>
+
+<p>I can quite understand the pleasure that goes with furnishing a really
+old house with objects of the period in which the house was built. A New
+England farmhouse, for instance, may be an inspiration to the owner, and
+you can understand her quest of old fashioned rush bottomed chairs and
+painted settles and quaint mirrors and blue homespun coverlets. You can
+understand the man who falls heir to a good, square old Colonial house
+who wishes to keep his furnishings true to the period, but you cannot
+understand the crying need for Eighteenth Century furniture in a modern
+shingle house, or the desire for old spinning wheels and battered
+kitchen utensils in a Spanish stucco house, or Chippendale furniture in
+a forest bungalow.</p>
+
+<p>I wish people generally would study the oak and walnut furniture of old
+England, and use more reproductions of these honest, solid pieces of
+furniture in their houses. Its beauty is that it is &quot;at home&quot; in simple
+American houses, and yet by virtue of its very usefulness and sturdiness
+it is not out of place in a room where beautiful objects of other
+periods are used. The long oak table that is so comfortably ample for
+books and magazines and flowers in your living-room<a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" /> may be copied from
+an old refectory table&mdash;but what of it? It fulfils its new mission just
+as frankly as the original table served the monks who used it.</p>
+
+<p>The soft brown of oak is a pleasure after the over-polished mahogany of
+a thousand rooms. I do not wish to condemn Colonial mahogany furniture,
+you understand. I simply wish to remind you that there are other woods
+and models available. French furniture of the best type represents the
+supreme art of the cabinet-maker, and is incomparable for formal rooms,
+but I am afraid the time will never come when French furniture will be
+interchangeable with the oak and mahogany of England and America.</p>
+
+<p>In short, the whole thing should be a matter of taste and suitability.
+If you have a few fine old things that have come to you from your
+ancestors&mdash;a grandfather's clock, an old portrait or two&mdash;you are quite
+justified in bringing good reproductions of similar things into your
+home. The effect is the thing you are after, isn't it? Then, too, you
+will escape the awful fever that makes any antique seem desirable, and
+in buying reproductions you can select really comfortable furniture. You
+will be independent of the dreadful vases and candelabra and steel
+engravings &quot;of the period,&quot; and will feel free to use modern prints and
+Chinese porcelains and willow chairs and anything that fits into your
+home. I can think of no slavery more deadly to one's sense of humor than
+collecting antiques indiscriminately!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" /><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0371" id="h0371"></a>
+<img src="images/h0371.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB"
+title="THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII" /><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />XVIII</h2>
+
+<h2>THE ART OF TRELLIAGE</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>When I planned the trellis room of the Colony Club in New York I had
+hard work finding workmen who could appreciate the importance of
+crossing and recrossing little strips of green wood, of arranging them
+to form a mural decoration architectural in treatment. This trellis room
+was, I believe, the first in America to be so considered, though the use
+of trellis is as old as architecture in Japan, China, Arabia, Egypt,
+Italy, France and Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest examples of trellis work shown are in certain Roman
+frescoes. In Pompeii the mural paintings give us a very good idea of
+what some of the Roman gardens were like. In the entrance hall of the
+house of Sallust is represented a garden with trellised niches and
+bubbling fountains. Representations that have come down to us in
+documents show that China and Japan both employed the trellis in their
+decorative schemes. You will find a most daring example on your old blue
+willow plate, if you will look closely enough. The bridge over which the
+flying princess goes to her lover is a good model, and could be built in
+many gardens. Even a tiny modern garden, yours or mine, might hold this
+fairy bridge.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" /></p>
+
+<p>Almost all Arabian decorations have their basis in trellis design or
+arabesques filled in with the intricate tracery that covers all their
+buildings. If we examine the details of the most famous of the old
+Moorish buildings that remain to us, the mosque at Cordova and the
+Alhambra at Granada, we shall find them full of endless trellis
+suggestions. Indeed, there are many documents still extant showing how
+admirably trellis decoration lends itself to the decoration of gardens
+and interiors. There are dozens of examples of niches built to hold fine
+busts. Pavilions and summer houses, the quaint gazebos of old England,
+the graceful screens of trellis that terminate a long garden path, the
+arching gateways crowned with vines&mdash;all these may be reproduced quite
+easily in American gardens.</p>
+
+<p>The first trellis work in France was inspired by Italy, but the French
+gave it a perfection of architectural character not found in other
+countries. The manuscript of the &quot;Romance of the Rose,&quot; dating back to
+the Fifteenth Century, contains the finest possible example of trellis
+in a medieval garden. Most of the old French gardens that remain to us
+have important trellis construction. At Blois one still sees the remains
+of a fine trellis covering the walls of the kitchen gardens. Wonderful
+and elaborate trellis <i>pavillons</i>, each containing a statue, often
+formed the centers of very old gardens. These garden houses were called
+gazebos in England, and <i>Temples d'Amour</i> (Temples of Love) in France,
+and the statue most<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" /> often seen was the god of Love. In the Trianon
+gardens at Versailles there is a charming <i>Temple d'Amour</i> standing on a
+tiny island, with four small canals leading to it.</p>
+
+<p>A knowledge of the history of trelliage and an appreciation of its
+practical application to modern needs is a conjurer's wand&mdash;you can wave
+it and create all sorts of ephemeral constructions that will last your
+time and pleasure. You may give your trellis any poetic shape your
+vision may take. You may dream and realize enchanting gardens, with
+clipped hedges and trellis walls. You may transform a commonplace porch
+into a gay garden room, with a few screens of trellis and many flower
+boxes of shrubs and vines. Here indeed is a delightful medium for your
+fancy!</p>
+
+<p>Trelliage and lattice work are often used as interchangeable terms, but
+mistakenly, for any carpenter who has the gift of precision can build a
+good lattice, but a trellis must have architectural character. Trellis
+work is not necessarily flimsy construction; the light chestnut laths
+that were used by the old Frenchmen and still remain to us prove that.</p>
+
+<p>Always in a garden I think one must feel one has not come to the end,
+one must go on and on in search of new beauties and the hidden delights
+we feel sure must be behind the clipped hedges or the trellis walls.
+Even when we come to the end we are not quite sure it is the end, and we
+steep ourselves in seclusion and quiet, knowing full well that to-morrow
+or to-night perhaps<a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" /> when the moon is up and we come back as we promise
+ourselves to do, surely we shall see that ideal corner that is the last
+word of the perfection of our dream garden&mdash;that delectable spot for
+which we forever seek!</p>
+
+<p>We can bring back much of the charm of the old-time gardens by a
+judicious use of trellis. It is suitable for every form of outdoor
+construction. A new garden can be subdivided and made livable in a few
+months with trellis screens, where hedges, even of the quick growing
+privet, would take years to grow. The entrance to the famous maze at
+Versailles, now, alas, utterly destroyed, was in trellis, and I have
+reproduced in our own garden at Villa Trianon, in Versailles, the
+entrance arch and doors, all in trellis. Our high garden fence with its
+curving gate is also in trellis, and you can imagine the joy with which
+we watched the vines grow, climbing over the gatetop as gracefully as if
+they too felt the charm of the curving tracery of green strips, and
+cheerfully added the decoration of their leaves and tendrils.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0372" id="h0372"></a>
+<img src="images/h0372.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH&#39;S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW YORK"
+title="MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH&#39;S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW YORK" />
+<p class="center"><b>MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH&#39;S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW YORK</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Our outdoor trellis is at the end of the Villa Trianon garden, in line
+with the terrace where we take our meals. This trellis was rebuilt many
+times before it satisfied me, but now it is my greatest joy. The niches
+are planned to hold two old statues and several prim box trees. I used
+very much the same constructive design on one of the walls of the Colony
+Club trellis room, but there a fountain has the place of<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" /><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" /><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" /> honor.
+Formal pedestals surmounted by gracefully curved urns, box trees,
+statues, marble benches, fountains&mdash;all these belong to the formal
+outdoor trellis.</p>
+
+<p>The trellis is primarily suitable for garden architecture, but it may be
+fitted to interior uses most skilfully. Pictures of the trellis room in
+the Colony Club have been shown so often it is not necessary to repeat
+more than one of them. The room is long and high, with a floor of large
+red tiles. The walls and ceiling are covered with rough gray plaster, on
+which the green strips of wood are laid. The wall space is entirely
+covered with the trellis design broken into ovals which hold
+lighting-fixtures&mdash;grapes and leaves in cloudy glass and green enamel.
+The long room leads up to the ivy-covered trellis of the fountain wall,
+a perfect background for the fountain, a bowl on the brim of which is
+poised a youthful figure, upheld by two dolphins. The water spills over
+into a little pool, banked with evergreens. Ivy has been planted in long
+boxes along the wall, and climbs to the ceiling, where the plaster is
+left bare, save for the trellised cornice and the central trellis
+medallion, from which is suspended an enchanting lantern made up of
+green wires and ivy leaves and little white flames of electric light.</p>
+
+<p>The roof garden of the Colony Club is latticed in a simple design we all
+know. This is lattice, not trellis, and in no way should be confounded
+with the trellis room on the entrance floor. This white-painted lattice
+covers the wall space. Growing vines are placed<a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" /> along the walls and
+clamber to the beams. The glass ceiling is supported by white beams.
+There are always blossoming flowers and singing birds in this room. The
+effect is springlike and joyous on the bleakest winter day. The room is
+heated by two huge stoves of green Majolica brought over from Germany
+when other heating systems failed. Much of the furniture is covered with
+a grape-patterned chintz and a green and white striped linen. The
+ceiling lights are hidden in huge bunches of pale green grapes.</p>
+
+<p>I recently planned a most beautiful trellis room for a New York City
+house. The room is long and narrow, with walls divided into panels by
+upright classic columns. The lower wall space between the columns is
+covered with a simple green lattice, and the upper part is filled with
+little mirrors framed in narrow green moldings, arranged in a
+conventional design which follows the line of the trellis. One end of
+the room is made up of two narrow panels of the trellis with a fireplace
+between. On the opposite wall the middle panel is a background for a
+delightful wall fountain. The fretwork of mirrors which takes the place
+of frieze in the room is continued all around the four walls. One of the
+walls is filled entirely with French doors of plate glass, beneath the
+mirrored frieze; the other long wall has the broad, central panel cut
+into two doors of plate glass, and stone benches placed against the two
+trellised panels flanking the doors. The ceiling is divided into three
+great panels<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" /> of trellis, and from each of the three panels a lantern is
+suspended.</p>
+
+<p>In the Guinness house in New York there is a little hallway wainscoted
+in white with a green trellis covering the wall space above. Against
+this simple trellis&mdash;it is really a lattice&mdash;a number of plaster casts
+are hung. In one corner an old marble bowl holds a grapevine, which has
+been trained over the walls. The floor is of white tiles, with a narrow
+Greek border of black and white. This decoration of a little hall might
+be copied very easily.</p>
+
+<p>The architects are building nowadays many houses that have a sun-room,
+or conservatory, or breakfast room. The smallest cottage may have a
+little breakfast room done in green and white lattice, with green
+painted furniture and simple flower boxes. I have had furniture of the
+most satisfactory designs made for my trellis rooms. Green painted wood
+with cane insets seems most suitable for the small rooms, and the
+marbles of the old trellised <i>Temples d'Amour</i> may be replaced by cement
+benches in our modern trellis pavillions.</p>
+
+<p>There is so much of modern furniture that is refreshing in line and
+color, and adapted to these sun-rooms. There is a desk made by Aitchen,
+a notable furniture designer in London, which I have used in a sun-room.
+The desk is painted white, and is decorated with heavy lines of dark
+green. The drawer front and the doors of the little cupboard are filled<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />
+with cane. The knobs are of green. This desk would be nice in a white
+writing-room in a summer cottage, though it was planned for a trellis
+room. It could be used as a dressing table, with a bench or chair of
+white, outlined in green, and a good mirror in white and green frame.
+Another desk I have made is called a jardiniere table, and was designed
+for Mrs. Ogden Armour's garden room at Lake Forest. The desk, or table,
+is painted gray, with faint green decorations. At each end of the long
+top there is a sunken zinc-lined box to hold growing plants. Between the
+flower boxes there is the usual arrangement of the desk outfit, blotter
+pad, paper rack, ink pots, and so forth. The spaces beneath the flower
+boxes are filled with shelves for books and magazines. This idea is
+thoroughly practicable for any garden room, and is so simple that it
+could be constructed by any man who knows how to use tools.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0373" id="h0373"></a>
+<img src="images/h0373.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="LOOKING OVER THE TAPIS VERT TO THE TRELLIS"
+title="LOOKING OVER THE TAPIS VERT TO THE TRELLIS" />
+<p class="center"><b>LOOKING OVER THE TAPIS VERT TO THE TRELLIS</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I had the pleasure recently of planning a trellis room for Mrs.
+Ormond-Smith's house at Center Island, New York. Here indeed is a garden
+room with a proper environment. It is as beautiful as a room very well
+can be within, and its great arched windows frame vistas of trees and
+water which take their place as a part of the room, ever changing
+landscapes that are always captivating. This trellis room is beautifully
+proportioned, and large enough to hold four long sofas and many chairs
+and tables of wicker and painted wood. The grouping of the sofas and the
+long tables <a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" /><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" /><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" />made to fit between them is most interesting. These
+tables are extremely narrow and just the length of the sofas, and are
+built after the idea of Mrs. Armour's garden room desk, with flower
+boxes sunk in the ends. The backs of two sofas are placed against the
+long sides of the table, which holds a reading lamp and books in
+addition to its masses of flowers at the ends. Two such groups divide
+the room into three smaller rooms, as you can see by the illustration.
+Small tables and chairs are pulled up to the sofas, making conversation
+centers, or comfortable places for reading.</p>
+
+<p>The trellis work covers the spaces between windows and doors, and
+follows the contour of the arches. The ceiling is bordered with the
+trellis, and from a great square of it in the center a lamp is
+suspended. The wall panels are broken by appliques that suggest the
+bounty of summer, flowers and leaves and vines in wrought and painted
+iron. There are pedestals surmounted by marbles against some of the
+panels, and a carved bracket supporting a magnificent bust high on one
+of the wider panels. The room is classic in its fine balance and its
+architectural formality, and modern in its luxurious comfort and its
+refreshing color. Surely there could be no pleasanter room for whiling
+away a summer day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX" /><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" />XIX</h2>
+
+<h2>VILLA TRIANON</h2>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>The story of the Villa Trianon is a fairy-tale come true. It came true
+because we believed in it&mdash;many fairy stories are ready and waiting to
+come true if only people will believe in them long enough.</p>
+
+<p>For many years Elizabeth Marbury and I had spent our summers in that
+charming French town, Versailles, before we had any hope of realizing a
+home of our own there. We loved the place, with its glamour of romance
+and history, and we prowled around the old gardens and explored the old
+houses, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.</p>
+
+<p>One old house that particularly interested us was the villa that had
+once been the home of the Duc de Nemours, son of Louis Philippe. It was
+situated directly on the famous Park of Versailles which is, as everyone
+knows, one of the most beautiful parks in all the world. The villa had
+not been lived in since the occupancy of de Nemours. Before the villa
+came to de Nemours it had been a part of the royal property that was
+portioned out to Mesdames de France, the disagreeable daughters of Louis
+XV. You will remember how disagreeable they were to Marie An<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" />toinette,
+and what a burden they made her life. I wish our house had belonged to
+more romantic people; Madame du Barry or Madame de Pompadour would have
+suited me better!</p>
+
+<p>How many, many times we peeped through the high iron railing at this
+enchanted domain, sleeping like the castle in the fairy tale. The garden
+was overgrown with weeds and shrubbery, the house was shabby and sadly
+in need of paint. We sighed and thought how happy would be our fortune
+if we might some day penetrate the mysteries of the tangled garden and
+the abandoned villa. Little did we dream that this would one day be our
+home.</p>
+
+<p>We first went to Versailles as casual summer visitors and our stay was
+brief. We loved it so much that the next summer we went again, this time
+for the season, and found ourselves members of a happy pension family.
+Then we decided to rent an apartment of our own, for the next year, and
+soon we were considering the leases of houses, and finally we arrived at
+the supreme audacity of negotiating for the purchase of one. We had a
+great friend in Versailles, Victorien Sardou, the novelist and
+playwright so honored by the people of France. His wonderful house at
+Marly le Roi was a constant joy to us, and made us always more eager for
+a permanent home of our own in the neighborhood. Sardou was as eager for
+the finding of our house as we were, and it was he who finally made it
+possible for us to buy our historic villa. He<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" /> did everything for us,
+introduced us to his friends, wonderful and brilliant people, gave us
+liberally of his charm and knowledge, and finally gave us the chance to
+buy this old house and its two acres of gardens.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiations for the house were long and tedious. Our offer was an
+insult, a joke, a ridiculous affair to the man who had the selling of
+it! He laughed at us, and demanded twice the amount of our offer. We
+were firm, outwardly, and refused to meet him halfway, but secretly we
+spent hours and hours in the old house, sitting patiently on folding
+camp-stools, and planning the remaking of the house as happily as
+children playing make-believe.</p>
+
+<p>I remember vividly the three of us, Miss Marbury, Sardou, and I,
+standing in the garden on a very rainy day. Sardou was bounding up and
+down, saying: &quot;Buy it, buy it! If you don't buy it before twelve o'clock
+to-morrow I will buy it myself!&quot; We were standing there soaking wet,
+perfectly oblivious to the downpour, wondering if we dared do such an
+audacious thing as to purchase property so far from our American
+anchorage.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0374" id="h0374"></a>
+<img src="images/h0374.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON"
+title="A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON" />
+<p class="center"><b>A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Well, we bought it, and at our own price, practically, and for eight
+years we have been restoring the house and gardens to their Seventeenth
+Century beauty. Sardou was our neighbor, and his wonderful ch&acirc;teau at
+Marly, overlooking the valley and terraces of St. Germain, was a
+never-failing surprise to us, so full was it of beauty and charm, so
+flavored with<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" /><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" /><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" /> the personality of its owner. Sardou was of great help
+to us when we finally purchased our house. His fund of information never
+failed us, there seemed to be no question he could not answer. He was
+quite the most erudite man I have ever known. He had as much to say
+about the restoration of our house as we. He introduced us to Monsieur
+de Nolhac, the conservator of the Ch&acirc;teau de Versailles, who gave us the
+details of our villa as it had been a century and a half ago, and helped
+us remake the garden on the lines of the original one. He loaned us
+pictures and documents, and we felt we were living in a modern version
+of the Sleeping Beauty, with the sleeping villa for heroine.</p>
+
+<p>Our house had always been called &quot;Villa Trianon,&quot; and so we kept the
+name, but it should not be confused with the Grand Trianon or the Petit
+Trianon. Of course everyone knows about the Park at Versailles, but
+everyone forgets, so I shall review the history of the Park briefly,
+that you may appreciate our thrills when we really owned a bit of it.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV selected Versailles as the site for the royal palace when it
+was a swampy, uninteresting little farm. Louis XIII had built a ch&acirc;teau
+there in 1627, but had done little to beautify the flat acres
+surrounding it. Louis the Magnificent lavished fortunes on the laying
+out of his new park. The Grand Trianon was built for Madame de Main
+tenon in 1685, and from this<a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" /> time on, for a full century, the Park of
+Versailles was the most famous royal residence in the world.</p>
+
+<p>The Petit Trianon was built by Louis XV for Madame du Barry. Later,
+during the reign of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, who was then Queen,
+tiring of court etiquette and scorning the stately rooms of Versailles,
+persuaded her husband to make over to her the Petit Trianon. Here she
+built a number of little rustic cottages, where she and the ladies of
+her court, dressed in calicoes, played at being milkmaids. They had a
+little cottage called the &quot;Laiterie,&quot; where the white cows with their
+gilded horns were brought in to be milked. Here, too, little plays were
+presented in a tiny theater where only the members of the court were
+admitted. The Queen and her brother, Comte de Provence, were always the
+chief actors.</p>
+
+<p>Our villa adjoins the Park proper. In our deeds to the two acres there
+is a clause which reserves a right-of-way for the King! The deed is
+worded like the old lease that dates back to 1750, and so one day we may
+have to give a King a right-of-way through our garden, if France becomes
+a monarchy again. Anyone who knows French people at all knows how dearly
+they cherish the dream of a monarchy.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0375" id="h0375"></a>
+<img src="images/h0375.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN"
+title="THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN" />
+<p class="center"><b>THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the small houses we found on our small estate had once been a
+part of the <i>hameau</i> of Marie Antoinette. We have had this little house
+rebuilt and connected with the villa, and now use it as a guest<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" /><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" /><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" />
+house. It is very charming, with its walls covered with lattices and
+ivy.</p>
+
+<p>Villa Trianon, like most French houses, is built directly on the street,
+leaving all the space possible for the garden. The fa&ccedil;ade of the villa
+is very simple, it reminds you of the square houses of the American
+Colonial period, except that there is no &quot;front porch,&quot; as is inevitable
+with us in America. The entrance gate and the stone wall that surround
+the place give an interest that our detached and hastily built American
+houses lack. The wall is really a continuation of the fa&ccedil;ade of the
+villa, and is surmounted by a black iron railing. Vines and flowers that
+have flourished and died and flourished again for over a century climb
+over the wall and through the graceful railing, and give our home an air
+of permanence that is very satisfying. After all, that is the secret of
+Europe's fascination for us Americans&mdash;the ever-present suggestion of
+permanence. We feel that houses and gardens were planned and built for
+centuries, not for the passing pleasure of one brief lifetime. We people
+them with ghosts that please us, and make histories for them that are
+always romantic and full of happiness. The survival of an old house and
+its garden through centuries of use and misuse is always an impressive
+and dramatic discovery to us: it gives us courage to add our little bit
+to the ultimate beauty and history, it gives us excuse to dream of the
+fortunate people who will follow us in other centuries, and who will, in
+turn,<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" /> bless us for our part in the remaking of one old house and
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>There was much to do! We hardly knew where to begin, the house was in
+such wretched condition. The roof was falling in, and the debris of
+years was piled high inside, but the walls and the floors were still
+very beautiful and as sound as ever, structurally. We had the roof
+restored, the debris removed, and the underbrush weeded out of the
+garden, and then we were ready to begin the real business of
+restoration.</p>
+
+<p>The house is very simply planned. There is a broad hall that runs
+straight through it, with dining-room and servants' hall on the right,
+and four connecting salons on the left. These salons are charming rooms,
+with beautiful panelings and over-doors, and great arches framed in
+delicate carvings. First comes the writing-room, then the library, then
+the large and small salons. The rooms opening on the back of the house
+have long French windows that open directly upon the terrace, where we
+have most of our meals. The note of the interior of the house is blue,
+and there are masses of blue flowers in the garden. The interior
+woodwork is cream, pointed with blue, and there are blues innumerable in
+the rugs and curtains and <i>objets d'art</i>. There must be a hundred
+different shades of blue on this living-floor, I think. We have tried to
+restore the rooms to a Louis XV scheme of decoration. The tables and
+cabinets are of the fine polished woods of the period. Some of the
+chairs are roomy<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" /> affairs of carved and painted wooden frames and
+brocade coverings, but others are modern easychairs covered in new
+linens of old designs, linens that were designed for just such interiors
+when Oberkampf first began his designing at Jouy. The mirrors and
+lighting-fixtures are, of course, designed to harmonize with the
+carvings of the woodwork. Monsieur de Nolhac and Sardou were most
+helpful to us when such architectural problems had to be solved.</p>
+
+<p>We have not used the extravagant lace curtains that seem to go with
+brocades and carvings, because we are modern enough not to believe in
+lace curtains. And we find that the thin white muslin ones give our
+brocades and tapestries a chance to assert their decorative importance.
+Somehow, lace curtains give a room such a dressed-up-for-company air
+that they quite spoil the effect of beautiful fabrics. We have a few
+fine old Savonnerie carpets that are very much at home in this house,
+and so many interesting Eighteenth Century prints we hardly know how to
+use them.</p>
+
+<p>Our bedrooms are very simple, with their white panelings and chintz
+hangings. We have furnished them with graceful and feminine things,
+delicately carved mirror frames and inlaid tables, painted beds, and
+chests of drawers of rosewood or satinwood. We feel that the ghosts of
+the fair ladies who live in the Park would adore the bedrooms and
+rejoice in the strange magic of electric lights. If the ghosts should be
+confronted with the electric lights their surprise<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" /> would not be greater
+than was the consternation of our builders when we demanded five
+bathrooms. They were astounded, and assured us it was not necessary, it
+was not possible. Indeed, it seemed that it was hardly legal to give one
+small French house five American bathrooms. We fought the matter out,
+and got them, however.</p>
+
+<p>We determined to make the house seem a part of the garden, and so we
+built a broad terrace across the rear of the villa. You step directly
+from the long windows of the salon and dining-room upon the terrace, and
+before you is spread out our little garden, and back of that, through an
+opening in the trees, a view of the Ch&acirc;teau, our never-failing source of
+inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>The terrace is built of tiles on a cement foundation. Vines are trained
+over square column-like frames of wire, erected at regular intervals.
+Between the edge of the terrace and the smooth green lawn there is a
+mass of blue flowers. We have a number of willow chairs and old stone
+tables here, and you can appreciate the joy of having breakfast and tea
+on the terrace with the birds singing in the boughs of the trees.</p>
+
+<p>I have written at length in the other chapters of my ideas of
+house-furnishing, and in this one I want to give you my ideas of garden
+guilding. True, we had the old garden plan to work from, and trees two
+hundred years old, and old vine-covered walls. Who couldn't accomplish a
+perfect garden with such es<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" />sentials, people said! Well, it wasn't so
+easy as it seems. You can select furnishings for a room with fair
+success, because you can see and feel textures, and colors, and the
+lines of the furniture and curtains. But gardens are different&mdash;you
+cannot make grass and flowers grow just so on short notice! You plant
+and dig and plant again, before things grow as you have visualized them.</p>
+
+<p>There was a double ring of trees in one corner of our domain, enclosing
+the <i>salle de verdure</i>, or outdoor drawing-room. In the center of this
+enchanted circle there was a statue by Clodion, a joyous nymph, holding
+a baby faun in her arms. There were several old stone benches under the
+trees that must have known the secrets of the famous ladies of the
+Eighteenth Century courts. The <i>salle de verdure</i> looked just as it did
+when the little daughters of Louis XV came here to have their afternoon
+cakes and tea, so we did not try to change this bit of our garden.</p>
+
+<p>My idea of making over the place was to leave the part of the garden
+against the stone walls in the rear in its tangled, woodsy state, and to
+build against it a trellis that would be in line with the terrace.
+Between the trellis and the terrace there was to be a smooth expanse of
+greensward, bordered with flowers. It seemed very simple, but I hereby
+confess that I built and tore down the trellis three times before it
+pleased me! I had to make it worthy of the statue by Pradier that was
+given us by Sardou, and finally<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" /> it was done to please me. Painted a
+soft green, with ivy growing over it, and a fountain flanked by white
+marbles outlined against it, this trellis represents (to me, at least)
+my best work.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>tapis vert</i> occupies the greater part of the garden, and it is
+bordered by gravel walks bordered in turn with white flowerbeds. Between
+the walks and the walls there are the groups of trees, the statues with
+green spaces about them, the masses of evergreen trees, and finally the
+great trees that follow the lines of the wall. Indeed, the <i>tapis vert</i>
+is like the arena of an ample theater, with the ascending flowers and
+shrubs and trees representing the ascending tiers of seats. One feels
+that all the trees and flowers look down upon the central stretch of
+greensward, and perhaps there is a fairy ring here where plays take
+place by night. Nothing is impossible in this garden. Certainly the
+fairies play in the enchanted ring of the trees of the <i>salle de
+verdure</i>. We are convinced of that.</p>
+
+<p>So formal is the <i>tapis vert</i>, with its blossoming borders of larkspur
+and daisies and its tall standard roses, you are surprised to find that
+that part of the garden outside this prim rectangle has mysteries. There
+are winding paths that terminate in marble seats. There is the
+<i>pavilion</i>, a little house built for outdoor musicales, with electric
+connections that make breakfast and tea possible here. There is the
+guest house, and the motor house&mdash;quite as interesting as any other part
+<a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" />of the garden. And everywhere there are blue and white and rose-colored
+flowers, planted in great masses against the black-green evergreens.</p>
+
+<p>We leave America early in June, tired out with the breathless business
+of living, and find ourselves in our old-world house and garden. We fall
+asleep to the accompaniment of the tiny piping of the little people in
+bur garden. We awake to the matins of the birds. We breakfast on the
+stone terrace, with boughs of trees and clouds for our roof, and as we
+look out over the masses of blue flowers and the smooth green <i>tapis
+vert</i>, over the arched trelliage with its fountains and its marbles, the
+great trees back of our domain frame the supremely beautiful towers of
+the Ch&acirc;teau le Magnificent, and we are far happier than anyone deserves
+to be in this wicked world!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX" /><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" />XX</h2>
+
+<h2>NOTES ON MANY THINGS</h2>
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>A LITTLE TALK ON CLOCKS.</h3>
+
+<p>The selection of proper clocks for one's house is always long-drawn-out,
+a pursuit of real pleasure. Clocks are such necessary things the
+thoughtless woman is apt to compromise, when she doesn't find exactly
+the right one. How much wiser and happier she would be if she decided to
+depend upon an ordinary alarm clock until the proper clock was
+discovered! If she made a hobby of her quest for clocks she would find
+much amusement, many other valuable objects by-the-way, and finally
+exactly the right clocks for her rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone knows the merits and demerits of the hundreds of clocks of
+commerce, and it isn't for me to go into the subject of
+grandfather-clocks, bracket clocks, and banjo clocks, when there are so
+many excellent books on the subject. I plead for the graceful clocks of
+old France, the <i>objets d'art</i> so lovingly designed by the master
+sculptors of the Eighteenth Century. I plead particularly for the wall
+clocks that are so conspicuous in all good French houses, and so unusual
+in our own country.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0376" id="h0376"></a>
+<img src="images/h0376.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM."
+title="A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM." />
+<p class="center"><b>A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Just as surely as our fine old English and American <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" /><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" /><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303" />clocks have their
+proper niches, so the French clocks belong inevitably in certain rooms.
+You may never find just the proper clock for this room, but that is your
+fault. There are hundreds of lovely old models available. Why shouldn't
+some manufacturer have them reproduced?</p>
+
+<p>I feel that if women generally knew how very decorative and
+distinguished a good wall clock may be, the demand would soon create a
+supply of these beautiful objects. It would be quite simple for the
+manufacturers to make them from the old models. The late Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan gave to the Metropolitan Museum the magnificent Hoentschel
+collection of <i>objets d'art</i>, hoping to stimulate the interest of
+American designers and artisans in the fine models of the Seventeenth
+and Eighteenth Centuries. There are some very fine examples of wall
+clocks in this collection which might be copied in carved wood by the
+students of manual training schools, if the manufacturers refuse to be
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>Wall clocks first came into France in the early part of the Seventeenth
+Century, and are a part of the furnishing of all the fine old French
+houses. A number of the most interesting clocks I have picked up were
+the wooden models which served for the fine bronze clocks of the
+Eighteenth Century. The master designer first worked out his idea in
+wood before making the clock in bronze, and the wooden models were sold
+for a song. I have one of these clocks in my dining-<a name="Page_304" id="Page_304" />room. It is as much
+a part of the wall decoration as the lights or the mirrors.</p>
+
+<p>The wall clocks I like best are fixed directly on the wall, the dial
+glass opening so that the clock may be wound with a key. You will notice
+such a clock in the photograph of one of my dining-rooms. This fine old
+clock is given the place of honor in the main panel of the wall, above
+the console table. I often use such a clock in a dining-room, just as I
+use the fine old French mantel clocks in my drawing-rooms. You will
+observe a very quaint example of the Empire period in the illustration
+of my drawing-room mantel. This clock is happily placed, for the marble
+of the mantel, the lighting-fixtures near by and the fine little bronze
+busts are all in key with the exquisite workmanship of the clock. In
+another room in my house, a bedroom, there is a beautiful little French
+clock that is the only object allowed on the mantel shelf. The beautiful
+carving of the mirror frame back of it seems a part of the clock, a
+deliberate background for it. This is one of the many wall clocks which
+were known as bracket clocks, the bracket being as carefully designed
+and carved as the clock itself. Most of the clocks we see nowadays grew
+out of the old bracket models.</p>
+
+<p>The American clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those
+jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be
+still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are <a name="Page_305" id="Page_305" />very
+much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland,
+and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long,
+exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall
+clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine <i>bas reliefs</i>, and
+of even greater decorative importance.</p>
+
+<p>Every room in my house has its clock, and to me these magic little
+instruments have an almost human interest. They seem always friendly to
+me, whether they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem
+never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks
+so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where
+there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive,
+exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled &quot;French&quot; and sold at
+a great price in the shops. Somehow, one never expects a clock of this
+kind to keep time&mdash;it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it
+wheezes, or gasps, or makes a dreadful noise, and invariably stops at
+half-past three.</p>
+
+<p>I am such a crank about good clocks that I take my own with me, even on
+a railway train. I think I have the smallest clock in the world which
+strikes the hours. There are many tiny clocks made which strike if one
+touches a spring, but my clock always strikes of itself. Cartier, who
+designed and made this extraordinary timepiece, assures me that he has
+never seen so small a clock which strikes. It is very pleasant to <a name="Page_306" id="Page_306" />have
+this little clock with its friendly chime with me when I am in some
+desolate hotel or some strange house.</p>
+
+<p>There are traveling clocks in small leather cases which can be bought
+very cheaply indeed now, and one of these clocks should be a part of
+everyone's traveling equipment. The humble nickeled watch with a leather
+case is infinitely better than the pretentious clocks, monstrosities of
+marble and brass and bad taste.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>A CORNER FOR WRITING.</h3>
+
+<p>One of my greatest pleasures, when I am planning the furnishing of a
+house, is the selection and equipment of the necessary writing-tables.
+Every room in every house has its own suggestion for an original
+treatment, and I enjoy working out a plan for a writing-corner that will
+offer maximum of convenience, and beauty and charm, for in these busy
+days we need all these qualities for the inspiration of a pleasant note.
+You see, I believe in proper writing-tables, just as I believe in proper
+chairs. I have so many desks in my own house that are in constant use,
+perhaps I can give you my theory best by recording my actual practice of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the necessity of a desk in the hallway, and indeed, I
+have said much of desks in other rooms, but I have still to emphasize my
+belief in the importance of the equipment of desks.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307" /></p>
+
+<p>Of course, one needs a desk in one's own room. Here there is infinite
+latitude, for there are dozens of delightful possibilities. I always
+place my desks near the windows. If the wall space is filled, I place an
+oblong table at right angles to a window, and there you are. In my own
+private sitting-room I have a long desk so placed, in my own house. In a
+guest-room I furnished recently, I used a common oblong table of no
+value, painting the legs a soft green and covering it with a piece of
+sage-green damask. This is one of the nicest writing-tables I know, and
+it could be copied for a song. The equipment of it is what counts. I
+used two lamps, dull green jars with mauve silk shades, a dark green
+leather rack for paper and envelopes, and a great blotter pad that will
+save the damask from ink-spots. The small things are of green pottery
+and crystal. In a young girl's bedroom I used a sweet little desk of
+painted wood, a desk that has the na&iuml;ve charm of innocence. I do hope it
+inspires the proper love-letters.</p>
+
+<p>I always make provision for writing in dressing-rooms&mdash;a sliding shelf
+in the dressing-table, and a shallow drawer for pencils and paper&mdash;and I
+have adequate writing facilities in the servants' quarters, so that
+there may be no excuse for forgetting orders or messages. This seems to
+me absolutely necessary in our modern domestic routine: it is part of
+the business principle we borrow from the efficient office routine of
+our men folk. The dining-room and the bathrooms <a name="Page_308" id="Page_308" />are the only places
+where the writing-table, in one form or another, isn't required.</p>
+
+<p>I like the long flat tables or small desks much better than the huge
+roll-top affairs or the heavy desks built after the fashion of the old
+<i>armoire</i>. If the room is large enough, a secretary after an Eighteenth
+Century model will be a beautiful and distinguished piece of furniture.
+I have such a secretary in my own sitting-room, a chest of drawers
+surmounted by a cabinet of shelves with glass doors, but I do not use it
+as a desk. I use the shelves for my old china and porcelains, and the
+drawers for pamphlets and the thousand and one things that are too
+flimsily bound for bookshelves. Of course, if one has a large
+correspondence and uses one's home as an office, it is better to have a
+large desk with a top which closes. I prefer tables, and I have them
+made big enough to hold all my papers, big enough to spread out on.</p>
+
+<p>There are dozens of enchanting small desks that are exactly right for
+guest-rooms, the extremely feminine desks that come from old France. One
+of the most fascinating ones is copied from a <i>bureau de toilette</i> that
+belonged to Marie Antoinette. In those days the writing of letters and
+the making of a toilet went together. This old desk has a drawer filled
+with compartments for toilet things, powders and perfumes and patches,
+and above this vanity-drawer there is the usual shelf for writing, and
+compartments for paper and letters. The desk itself suggests brocade
+flounces <a name="Page_309" id="Page_309" />and powdered hair, so exquisitely is it constructed of
+tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many colors.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are the small desks made by modern furniture-makers, just
+large enough to hold a blotting-pad, a paper rack, and a pair of
+candlesticks. There is always a shallow drawer for writing materials.
+Such a desk may be decorated to match the chintzes of any small bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>If it isn't possible for you to have a desk in each guest-room, there
+should be a little writing-room somewhere apart from the family
+living-room. If you live in one of those old-fashioned houses
+intersected by great halls with much wasted space on the upper floors,
+you may make a little writing-room of one of the hall-ends, and screen
+it from the rest of the hall with a high standing screen. If you have a
+house of the other extreme type, a city house with little hall bedrooms,
+use one of these little rooms for a writing-room. You will require a
+desk well stocked with stationery, and all the things the writer will
+need; a shelf of address books and reference books&mdash;with a dictionary,
+of course; many pens and pencils and fresh blotters, and so forth. Of
+course, you may have ever so many more things, but it isn't necessary.
+Better a quiet corner with one chair and a desk, than the elaborate
+library with its superb fittings where people come and go.</p>
+
+<p>Given the proper desk, the furnishing of it is most <a name="Page_310" id="Page_310" />important. The
+blotting-pad should be heavy enough to keep its place, and the
+blotting-paper should be constantly renewed. I know of nothing more
+offensive than dusty, ink-splotched blotting-paper. There are very good
+sets to be had, now, made of brass, bronze, carved wood, porcelain,
+silver or crystal, and there are leather boxes for holding stationery
+and leather portfolios to be had in all colors. I always add to these
+furnishings a good pair of scissors, stationery marked with the house
+address or the monogram of the person to whom the desk especially
+belongs, an almanac, and a <i>pincushion!</i> My pincushions are as much a
+part of the equipment of a desk as the writing things, and they aren't
+frilly, ugly things. They are covered with brocade or damask or some
+stuff used elsewhere in the room and I assure you they are most useful.
+I find that pins are almost as necessary as pens in my correspondence;
+they are much more expedient than pigeon-holes.</p>
+
+<p>In country houses I think it shows forethought and adds greatly to the
+comfort of the guests to have a small framed card showing the arrival
+and departure of trains and of mails, especially if the house is a great
+distance from the railway-station. This saves much inquiry and time. In
+the paper rack there should be not only stamped paper bearing the
+address of the house, telephone number, and so forth, but also telegraph
+blanks, post cards, stamps, and so forth. Very often people who have
+beautiful places have <a name="Page_311" id="Page_311" />post cards made showing various views of the
+house and garden.</p>
+
+<p>Test the efficiency of your writing-tables occasionally by using them
+yourself. This is the only way to be sure of the success of anything in
+your house&mdash;try it yourself.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>STOOLS AND BENCHES.</h3>
+
+<p>I often wonder, when I grope my way through drawing-rooms crowded and
+jammed with chairs and sofas, why more women do not realize the
+advantages of stools and benches. A well-made stool is doubly useful: it
+may be used to sit upon or it may be used to hold a tray, or whatever
+you please. It is really preferable to a small table because it is not
+always full of a nondescript collection of ornaments, which seems to be
+the fate of all small tables. It has also the advantage of being low
+enough to push under a large table, when need be, and it occupies much
+less space than a chair apparently (not actually) because it has no
+back. I have stools, or benches, or both in all my rooms, because I find
+them convenient and easily moved about, but I have noticed an amusing
+thing: Whenever a fat man comes to see me, he always sits on the
+smallest stool in the room. I have many fat friends, and many stools,
+but invariably the fattest man gravitates to the smallest stool.</p>
+
+<p>The stools I like best for the drawing-room are the fine old ones,
+covered with needlework or brocade, but <a name="Page_312" id="Page_312" />there are many simpler ones of
+plain wood with cane insets that are very good for other rooms. Then
+there are the long <i>banquettes</i>, or benches, which are so nice in
+drawing-rooms and hallways and nicest of all in a ballroom. Indeed, a
+ballroom needs no other movable furniture; given plenty of these long
+benches. They may be of the very simplest description, but when used in
+a fine room should be covered with a good damask or velvet or some rich
+fabric.</p>
+
+<p>I have a fine Eighteenth Century <i>banquette</i> in my drawing-room, the
+frame being carved and gilded and the seat covered with Venetian red
+velvet. You will find these gilded stools all over England. There are a
+number at Hampton Court Palace. At Hardwick there are both long and
+short stools, carved with the dolphin's scroll and covered with
+elaborate stuffs. The older the English house, the more stools are in
+evidence. In the early Sixteenth Century joint stools were used in every
+room. In the bedrooms they served the purposes of small tables and
+chairs as well. There are ever so many fine old walnut stools and the
+lower stools used for bed-steps to be bought in London shops that make a
+specialty of old English furniture, and reproductions of them may be
+bought in the better American shops. I often wonder why we do not see
+more bedside stools. They are so convenient, even though the bed be only
+moderately high from the floor. Many of mine are only six inches high,
+about the height of a fat floor cushion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313" /><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314" /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0377" id="h0377"></a>
+<img src="images/h0377.jpg" width="80%"
+alt="A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE"
+title="A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE" />
+<p class="center"><b>A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315" /></p>
+
+<p>Which reminds me: the floor cushion, made of the same velvet made for
+carpeting, is a modern luxury we can't afford to ignore. Lately I have
+seen such beautiful ones, about three feet long and one foot wide,
+covered with tapestry, with great gold tassels at the corners. The
+possibilities of the floor cushion idea are limitless. They take the
+place of the usual footstool in front of the boudoir easy chair, or
+beside the day bed or <i>chaise-longue</i>, or beside the large bed, for that
+matter. They are no longer unsanitary, because with vacuum cleaners they
+may be kept as clean as chair cushions. They may be made to fit into
+almost any room. I saw a half dozen of them in a dining-room, recently,
+small square hard ones, covered with the gold colored velvet of the
+carpet. They were not more than four or five inches thick, but that is
+the ideal height for an under-the-table cushion. Try it.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>PORCELAIN STOVES.</h3>
+
+<p>When the Colony Club was at last finished we discovered that the furnace
+heat did not go up to the roof-garden, and immediately we had to find
+some way of heating this very attractive and very necessary space. Even
+from the beginning we were sadly crowded for room, so popular was the
+club-house, and the roof-garden was much needed for the overflow. We
+conferred with architects, builders and plumbers, and found it would be
+necessary to spend about seven <a name="Page_316" id="Page_316" />thousand dollars and to close the club
+for about two months in order to carry the heating arrangements up to
+the roof. This was disastrous for a new club, already heavily in arrears
+and running under heavy expenses. I worried and worried over the
+situation, and suddenly one night an idea came to me: I remembered some
+great porcelain stoves I had seen in Germany. I felt that these stoves
+were exactly what we needed, and that we should be rescued from an
+embarrassing situation without much trouble or expense. I was just
+leaving for Europe, so I hurried on to the manufacturers of these
+wonderful stoves and found, after much difficulty, a model that seemed
+practicable, and not too huge in proportion. The model, unfortunately,
+was white with gilded garlands, far too French and magnificent for our
+sun-room. I persuaded them to make two of the stoves for me in green
+Majolica, with garlands of soft-toned flowers, and finally we achieved
+just the stoves for the room.</p>
+
+<p>But my troubles were not over: When the stoves reached New York, we
+tried to take them up to the roof, and found them too large for the
+stairs. We couldn't have them lifted up by pulleys, because the glass
+walls of the roof garden and the fretwork at the top of the roof made it
+impossible for the men to get &quot;purchase&quot; for their pulleys. Finally we
+persuaded a gentleman who lived next door to let us take them over the
+roof of his house, and the deed was accomplished. The stoves were equal
+to the occasion.<a name="Page_317" id="Page_317" /> They heated the roof garden perfectly, and were of
+great decorative value.</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by this success I purchased another porcelain stove, this
+time a cream-colored porcelain one, and used it in a hallway in an
+uptown house. It was the one thing needed to give the hall great
+distinction. Since then I have used a number of these stoves, and I
+wonder why our American manufacturers do not make them. They are
+admirable for heating difficult rooms&mdash;outdoor porches, and draughty
+halls, and rooms not heated by furnaces. The stoves are becoming harder
+and harder to find, though I was fortunate enough to purchase one last
+year from the Marchioness of Anglesey, who was giving up her home at
+Versailles. This stove was of white Majolica with little Loves in terra
+cotta adorning it. The new ones are less attractive, but it would be
+perfectly simple to have any tile manufacturer copy an old one, given
+the design.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<h3>THE CHARM OF INDOOR FOUNTAINS.</h3>
+
+<p>Wall fountains as we know them are introduced into our modern houses for
+their decorative interest and for the joy they give us, the joyous sound
+and color of falling water. We use them because they are beautiful and
+cheerful, but originally they had a most definite purpose. They were
+built into the walls of the dining-halls in medieval times, and used for
+washing the precious plate.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318" /></p>
+
+<p>If you look into the history of any <i>objet d'art</i> you will find that it
+was first used for a purpose. All the superb masterly things that have
+come to us had logical beginnings. It has remained for the thoughtless
+designer of our times to produce things of no use and no meaning. The
+old designers decorated the small objects of daily use as faithfully as
+they decorated the greater things, the wall spaces and ceilings and
+great pieces of furniture, and so this little wall basin which began in
+such a homely way soon became a beautiful thing.</p>
+
+<p>Europe has countless small fountains built for interior walls and for
+small alcoves and indoor conservatories, but we are just beginning to
+use them in America. American sculptors are doing such notable work,
+however, that we shall soon plan our indoor fountains as carefully as we
+plan our fireplaces. The fact that our houses are heated mechanically
+has not lessened our appreciation of an open fire, and running water
+brought indoors has the same animate charm.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0378-a" id="h0378-a"></a>
+<img src="images/h0378-a.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH"
+title="FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH" />
+<p class="center"><b>FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<br />
+<a name="h0378-b" id="h0378-b"></a>
+<img src="images/h0378-b.jpg" width="50%"
+alt="MR. JAMES DEERING&#39;S WALL FOUNTAIN"
+title="MR. JAMES DEERING&#39;S WALL FOUNTAIN" />
+<p class="center"><b>MR. JAMES DEERING&#39;S WALL FOUNTAIN</b></p>
+<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I am showing a picture of the wall fountain in the entrance hall of my
+own New York house in East Fifty-fifth Street. I have had this wall
+fountain built as part of the architectural detail of the room, with a
+background of paneled mirrors. It spills over into a marble curbed pool
+where fat orange-colored goldfish live. I keep the fountain banked with
+flowers. You can imagine the pleasure of leaving the <a name="Page_319" id="Page_319" /><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320" /><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321" />dusty city
+streets and entering this cool, pleasant entrance hall.</p>
+
+<p>Our modern use of indoor fountains is perfectly legitimate: we use them
+to bring the atmosphere of outdoors in. In country houses we use
+fountains in our gardens, but in the city we have no gardens, and so we
+are very wise to bring in the outdoor things that make our lives a
+little more gay and informal. The more suggestive of out-of-doors the
+happier is the effect of the sun room. Occasionally one sees a rare
+house where a glass enclosed garden opens from one of the living-rooms.
+There is a house in Nineteenth Street that has such an enclosed garden,
+built around a wall fountain. The garden opens out of the great
+two-storied music-room. Lofty windows flank a great door, and fill the
+end of the room with a luminous composition of leaded glass. Through the
+door you enter the garden, with its tiled floor, its glass ceiling, and
+its low brick retaining walls. The wall fountain is placed exactly in
+front of the great door, and beneath it there is a little semi-circular
+pool bordered with plants and glittering with goldfish. Evergreens are
+banked against the brick walls, and flat reliefs are hung just under the
+glass ceiling. The garden is quite small, but takes its place as an
+important part of the room. It rivals in interest the massive Gothic
+fireplace, with its huge logs and feudal fire irons.</p>
+
+<p>The better silversmiths are doing much to encour<a name="Page_322" id="Page_322" />age the development of
+indoor fountains. They display the delightful fountains of our young
+American sculptors, fountains that would make any garden room notable.
+There are so many of these small bronze fountains, with Pan piping his
+irresistible tune of outdoors; children playing with frogs or geese or
+lizards or turtles; gay little figures prancing in enchanted rings of
+friendly beasties. Why don't we make use of them?</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE***</p>
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@@ -0,0 +1,5883 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House in Good Taste, by Elsie de Wolfe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The House in Good Taste
+
+Author: Elsie de Wolfe
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2005  [eBook #14715]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
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+
+
+THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
+
+by
+
+ELSIE DE WOLFE
+
+Illustrated with photographs in color and black and white
+
+New York
+The Century Co.
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+      I.  THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
+     II.  SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION
+    III.  THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
+     IV.  THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
+      V.  THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
+     VI.  THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
+    VII.  OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
+   VIII.  THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
+     IX.  HALLS AND STAIRCASES
+      X.  THE DRAWING-ROOM
+     XI.  THE LIVING-ROOM
+    XII.  SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
+   XIII.  A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
+    XIV.  THE BEDROOM
+     XV.  THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH
+    XVI.  THE SMALL APARTMENT
+   XVII.  REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART
+  XVIII.  THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
+    XIX.  VILLA TRIANON
+     XX.  NOTES ON MANY THINGS
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+   Elsie de Wolfe (Frontispiece)
+   In this hall, simplicity, suitability and proportion are observed
+   Mennoyer drawings and old mirrors set in panelings
+   A portrait by Nattier inset above a fine old mantel
+   The Washington Irving house was delightfully rambling
+   A Washington Irving House bedroom
+   Miss Marbury's bedroom
+   The fore-court and entrance of the Fifty-fifth Street house
+   A painted wall broken into panels by narrow moldings
+   A wall paper of Elizabethan design with oak furniture
+   The scheme of this room grew from the jars on the mantel
+   A Louis Seize bedroom in rose and blue and cream
+   The writing corner of a chintz bedroom
+   Black chintz used in a dressing-room
+   Printed linen curtains over rose colored silk
+   Straight hangings of rose and yellow shot silk
+   Muslin glass curtains in the Washington Irving house
+   Here are many lighting fixtures harmoniously assembled in a
+       drawing-room
+   Detail of a fine old French fixture of hand wrought metal
+   Lighting fixtures inspired by Adam mirrors
+   The staircase in the Bayard Thayer house
+   The drawing-room should be intimate in spirit
+   The fine formality of well-placed paneling
+   The living-room in the C.W. Harkness house at Morristown, New Jersey
+   Miss Anne Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir
+   Miss Morgan's Louis XVI _lit de repos_
+   A Georgian dining-room in the William Iselin house
+   Mrs. Ogden Armour's Chinese paper screen
+   Mrs. James Warren Lane's painted dining-table
+   The private dining-room in the Colony Club
+   An old painted bed of the Louis XVI period
+   Miss Crocker's Louis XVI bed
+   A Colony Club bedroom
+   Mauve chintz in a dull green room
+   Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer's Chinoiserie chintz bed
+   Mrs. Payne Whitney's green feather chintz bed
+   My own bedroom is built around a Breton bed
+   Furniture painted with chintz designs
+   Miss Morgan's Louis XVI dressing-room
+   Miss Marbury's chintz-hung dressing-table
+   A corner of my own boudoir
+   Built-in bookshelves in a small room
+   Mrs. C.W. Harkness's cabinet for _objets d'art_
+   A banquette of the Louis XV period covered with needlework
+   A Chinese Chippendale sofa covered with chintz
+   The trellis room in the Colony Club
+   Mrs. Ormond G. Smith's trellis room at Center Island, New York
+   Looking over the _tapis vert_ to the trellis
+   A fine old console in the Villa Trianon
+   The broad terrace connects house and garden
+   A proper writing-table in the drawing-room
+   A cream-colored porcelain stove in a New York house
+   Mr. James Deering's wall fountain
+   Fountain in the trellis room of Mrs. Ormond G. Smith
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
+
+
+I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women
+throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it
+what you will--awakening, development, American Renaissance--it is a
+most startling and promising condition of affairs.
+
+It is no longer possible, even to people of only faintly aesthetic
+tastes, to buy chairs merely to sit upon or a clock merely that it
+should tell the time. Home-makers are determined to have their houses,
+outside and in, correct according to the best standards. What do we mean
+by the best standards? Certainly not those of the useless, overcharged
+house of the average American millionaire, who builds and furnishes his
+home with a hopeless disregard of tradition. We must accept the
+standards that the artists and the architects accept, the standards that
+have come to us from those exceedingly rational people, our ancestors.
+
+Our ancestors built for stability and use, and so their simple houses
+were excellent examples of architecture. Their spacious, uncrowded
+interiors were usually beautiful. Houses and furniture fulfilled their
+uses, and if an object fulfils its mission the chances are that it is
+beautiful.
+
+It is all very well to plan our ideal house or apartment, our individual
+castle in Spain, but it isn't necessary to live among intolerable
+furnishings just because we cannot realize our castle. There never was a
+house so bad that it couldn't be made over into something worth while.
+We shall all be very much happier when we learn to transform the things
+we have into a semblance of our ideal.
+
+How, then, may we go about accomplishing our ideal?
+
+By letting it go!
+
+By forgetting this vaguely pleasing dream, this evidence of our smug
+vanity, and making ourselves ready for a new ideal.
+
+By considering the body of material from which it is good sense to
+choose when we have a house to decorate.
+
+By studying the development of the modern house, its romantic tradition
+and architectural history.
+
+By taking upon ourselves the duty of self-taught lessons of sincerity
+and common sense, and suitability.
+
+By learning what is meant by color and form and line, harmony and
+contrast and proportion.
+
+When we are on familiar terms with our tools, and feel our vague ideas
+clearing into definite inspiration, then we are ready to talk about
+ideals. We are fit to approach the full art of home-making.
+
+We take it for granted that every woman is interested in houses--that
+she either has a house in course of construction, or dreams of having
+one, or has had a house long enough wrong to wish it right. And we take
+it for granted that this American home is always the woman's home: a man
+may build and decorate a beautiful house, but it remains for a woman to
+make a home of it for him. It is the personality of the mistress that
+the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how
+much happiness they may find there.
+
+You will express yourself in your house, whether you want to or not, so
+you must make up your mind to a long preparatory discipline. You may
+have only one house to furnish in your life-time, possibly, so be
+careful and go warily. Therefore, you must select for your architect a
+man who isn't too determined to have _his_ way. It is a fearful mistake
+to leave the entire planning of your home to a man whose social
+experience may be limited, for instance, for he can impose on you his
+conception of your tastes with a damning permanency and emphasis. I once
+heard a certain Boston architect say that he taught his clients to be
+ladies and gentlemen. He couldn't, you know. All he could do is to set
+the front door so that it would reprove them if they weren't!
+
+Who does not know, for instance, those mistaken people whose houses
+represent their own or their architects' hasty visits to the fine old
+_chateaux_ of the Loire, or the palaces of Versailles, or the fine old
+houses of England, or the gracious villas of Italy? We must avoid such
+aspiring architects, and visualize our homes not as so many specially
+designated rooms and convenient closets, but as individual expressions
+of ourselves, of the future we plan, of our dreams for our children. The
+ideal house is the house that has been long planned for, long awaited.
+
+[Illustration: IN THIS HALL, SIMPLICITY, SUITABILITY AND PROPORTION ARE
+OBSERVED]
+
+Fortunately for us, our best architects are so very good that we are
+better than safe if we take our problems to them. These men associate
+with themselves the hundred young architects who are eager to prove
+themselves on small houses. The idea that it is economical to be your
+own architect and trust your house to a building contractor is a
+mistaken, and most expensive, one. The surer you are of your architect's
+common sense and professional ability, the surer you may be that your
+house will be economically efficient. He will not only plan a house that
+will meet the needs of your family, but he will give you inspiration for
+its interior. He will concern himself with the moldings, the
+light-openings, the door-handles and hinges, the unconsidered things
+that make or mar your house. Select for your architect a man you'd like
+for a friend. Perhaps he will be, before the house comes true. If you
+are both sincere, if you both purpose to have the best thing you can
+afford, the house will express the genius and character of your
+architect and the personality and character of yourself, as a great
+painting suggests both painter and sitter. The hard won triumph of a
+well-built house means many compromises, but the ultimate satisfaction
+is worth everything.
+
+I do not purpose, in this book, to go into the historic traditions of
+architecture and decoration--there are so many excellent books it were
+absurd to review them--but I do wish to trace briefly the development of
+the modern house, the woman's house, to show you that all that is
+intimate and charming in the home as we know it has come through the
+unmeasured influence of women. Man conceived the great house with its
+parade rooms, its _grands appartements_ but woman found eternal parade
+tiresome, and planned for herself little retreats, rooms small enough
+for comfort and intimacy. In short, man made the house: woman went him
+one better and made of it a home.
+
+The virtues of simplicity and reticence in form first came into being,
+as nearly as we can tell, in the _Grotta_, the little studio-like
+apartment of Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, away back in
+1496. The Marchioness made of this little studio her personal retreat.
+Here she brought many of the treasures of the Italian Renaissance.
+Really, simplicity and reticence were the last things she considered,
+but the point is that they were considered at all in such a restless,
+passionate age. Later, in 1522, she established the _Paradiso_, a suite
+of apartments which she occupied after her husband's death. So you see
+the idea of a woman planning her own apartment is pretty old, after all.
+
+The next woman who took a stand that revealed genuine social
+consciousness was that half-French, half-Italian woman, Catherine de
+Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet. She seceded from court because the
+court was swaggering and hurly-burly, with florid Marie-de-Medicis at
+its head. And with this recession, she began to express in her conduct,
+her feeling, her conversation, and, finally, in her house, her awakened
+consciousness of beauty and reserve, of simplicity and suitability.
+
+This was the early Seventeenth Century, mind you, when the main salons
+of the French houses were filled with such institutions as rows of red
+chairs and boxed state beds. She undertook, first of all, to have a
+light and gracefully curving stairway leading to her salon instead of
+supplanting it. She grouped her rooms with a lovely diversity of size
+and purpose, whereas before they had been vast, stately halls with
+cubbies hardby for sleeping. She gave the bedroom its alcove, boudoir,
+ante-chamber, and even its bath, and then as decorator she supplanted
+the old feudal yellow and red with her famous silver-blue. She covered
+blue chairs with silver bullion. She fashioned long, tenderly colored
+curtains of novel shades. Reticence was always in evidence, but it was
+the reticence of elegance. It was through Madame de Rambouillet that the
+armchair received its final distribution of yielding parts, and began
+to express the comfort of soft padded backward slope, of width and
+warmth and color.
+
+It was all very heavy, very grave, very angular, this Hotel Rambouillet,
+but it was devised for and consecrated to conversation, considered a new
+form of privilege! The _precieuses_ in their later jargon called chairs
+"the indispensables of conversation."
+
+I have been at some length to give a picture of Madame de Rambouillet's
+hotel because it really is the earliest modern house. There, where the
+society that frequented it was analyzing its soul in dialogue and long
+platonic discussion that would seem stark enough to us, the word which
+it invented for itself was _urbanite_--the coinage of one of its own
+foremost figures.
+
+It is unprofitable to follow on into the grandeurs of Louis XIV, if one
+hopes to find an advance there in truth-telling architecture. At the end
+of that splendid official success the squalor of Versailles was
+unspeakable, its stenches unbearable. In spite of its size the Palace
+was known as the most comfortless house in Europe. After the death of
+its owner society, in a fit of madness, plunged into the _rocaille_.
+When the restlessness of Louis XV could no longer find moorings in this
+brilliancy, there came into being little houses called _folies_, garden
+hermitages for the privileged. Here we find Madame de Pompadour in
+calicoes, in a wild garden, bare-foot, playing as a milkmaid, or seated
+in a little gray-white interior with painted wooden furniture, having
+her supper on an earthen-ware service that has replaced old silver and
+gold. Amorous alcoves lost their painted Loves and took on gray and
+white decorations. The casinos of little _comediennes_ did not glitter
+any more. English sentiment began to bedim Gallic eyes, and so what we
+know as the Louis XVI style was born.
+
+And so, at that moment, the idea of the modern house came into its own,
+and it could advance--as an idea--hardly any further. For with all the
+intrepidity and passion of the later Eighteenth Century in its search
+for beauty, for all the magic-making of convenience and ingenuity of the
+Nineteenth Century, the fundamentals have changed but little. And now we
+of the Twentieth Century can only add material comforts and an
+expression of our personality. We raise the house beyond the reach of
+squalor, we give it measured heat, we give it water in abundance and
+perfect sanitation and light everywhere, we give it ventilation less
+successfully than we might, and finally we give it the human quality
+that is so modern. There are no dungeons in the good modern house, no
+disgraceful lairs for servants, no horrors of humidity.
+
+[Illustration: MENNOYER DRAWINGS AND OLD MIRRORS SET IN PANELINGS]
+
+And so we women have achieved a house, luminous with kind purpose
+throughout. It is finished--that is our difficulty! We inherit it, all
+rounded in its perfection, consummate in its charms, but it is finished,
+and what can we do about a thing that is finished I Doesn't it seem that
+we are back in the old position of Isabella d'Este--eager, predatory,
+and "thingy"? And isn't it time for us to pull up short lest we
+sidestep the goal? We are so sure of a thousand appetites we are in
+danger of passing by the amiable commonplaces. We find ourselves
+dismayed in old houses that look too simple. We must stop and ask
+ourselves questions, and, if necessary, plan for ourselves little
+retreats until we can find ourselves again.
+
+What is the goal? A house that is like the life that goes on within it,
+a house that gives us beauty as we understand it--and beauty of a nobler
+kind that we may grow to understand, a house that _looks_ amenity.
+
+Suppose you have obtained this sort of wisdom--a sane viewpoint. I think
+it will give you as great a satisfaction to re-arrange your house with
+what you have as to re-build, re-decorate. The results may not be so
+charming, but you can learn by them. You can take your indiscriminate
+inheritance of Victorian rosewood of Eastlake walnut and cocobolo, your
+pickle-and-plum colored Morris furniture, and make a civilized interior
+by placing it right, and putting detail at the right points. Your sense
+of the pleasure and meaning of human intercourse will be clear in your
+disposition of your best things, in your elimination of your worst ones.
+
+When you have emptied the tables of _rubbish_ so that you can put
+_things_ down on them at need, placed them in a light where you can
+write on them in repose, or isolated real works of art in the middle of
+them; when you have set your dropsical sofas where you want them for
+talk, or warmth and reading; when you can see the fire from the bed in
+your sleeping-room, and dress near your bath; if this sort of sense of
+your rights is acknowledged in your rearrangement, your rooms will
+always have meaning, in the end. If you like only the things in a chair
+that have meaning, and grow to hate the rest you will, without any other
+instruction, prefer--the next time you are buying--a good Louis XVI
+_fauteuil_ to a stuffed velvet chair. You will never again be guilty of
+the errors of meaningless magnificence.
+
+To most of us in America who must perforce lead workaday lives, the
+absence of beauty is a very distinct lack. I think, indeed, that the
+present awakening has come to stay, and that before very long, we shall
+have simple houses with fireplaces that draw, electric lights in the
+proper places, comfortable and sensible furniture, and not a gilt-legged
+spindle-shanked table or chair anywhere. This may be a decorator's
+optimistic dream, but let us all hope that it may come true.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY AND PROPORTION
+
+
+When I am asked to decorate a new house, my first thought is
+suitability. My next thought is proportion. Always I keep in mind the
+importance of simplicity. First, I study the people who are to live in
+this house, and their needs, as thoroughly as I studied my parts in the
+days when I was an actress. For the time-being I really am the
+chatelaine of the house. When I have thoroughly familiarized myself with
+my "part," I let that go for the time, and consider the proportion of
+the house and its rooms. It is much more important that the wall
+openings, windows, doors, and fireplaces should be in the right place
+and should balance one another than that there should be expensive and
+extravagant hangings and carpets.
+
+My first thought in laying out a room is the placing of the electric
+light openings. How rarely does one find the lights in the right place
+in our over-magnificent hotels and residences! One arrives from a
+journey tired out and travel-stained, only to find oneself facing a
+mirror as far removed from the daylight as possible, with the artificial
+lights directly behind one, or high in the ceiling in the center of the
+room. In my houses I always see that each room shall have its lights
+placed for the comfort of its occupants. There must be lights in
+sheltered corners of the fireplace, by the writing-desk, on each side of
+the dressing-table, and so on.
+
+Then I consider the heating of the room. We Americans are slaves to
+steam heat. We ruin our furniture, our complexions, and our dispositions
+by this enervating atmosphere of too much heat. In my own houses I have
+a fireplace in each room, and I burn wood in it. There is a
+heating-system in the basement of my house, but it is under perfect
+control. I prefer the normal heat of sunshine and open fires. But,
+granted that open fires are impossible in all your rooms, do arrange in
+the beginning that the small rooms of your house may not be overheated.
+It is a distinct irritation to a person who loves clean air to go into a
+room where a flood of steam heat pours out of every corner. There is
+usually no way to control it unless you turn it off altogether. I once
+had the temerity to do this in a certain hotel room where there was a
+cold and cheerless empty fireplace. I summoned a reluctant chambermaid,
+only to be told that the chimney had never had a fire in it and the
+proprietor would rather not take such a risk!
+
+[Illustration: A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL]
+
+Perhaps the guest in your house would not be so troublesome, but don't
+tempt her! If you have a fireplace, see that it is in working order.
+We are sure to judge a woman in whose house we find ourselves for the
+first time, by her surroundings. We judge her temperament, her habits,
+her inclinations, by the interior of her home. We may talk of the
+weather, but we are looking at the furniture. We attribute vulgar
+qualities to those who are content to live in ugly surroundings. We
+endow with refinement and charm the person who welcomes us in a
+delightful room, where the colors blend and the proportions are as
+perfect as in a picture. After all, what surer guarantee can there be of
+a woman's character, natural and cultivated, inherent and inherited,
+than taste? It is a compass that never errs. If a woman has taste she
+may have faults, follies, fads, she may err, she may be as human and
+feminine as she pleases, but she will never cause a scandal!
+
+How can we develop taste? Some of us, alas, can never develop it,
+because we can never let go of shams. We must learn to recognize
+suitability, simplicity and proportion, and apply our knowledge to our
+needs. I grant you we may never fully appreciate the full balance of
+proportion, but we can exert our common sense and decide whether a thing
+is suitable; we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is
+simple, and we can train our eyes to recognize good and bad proportion.
+A technical knowledge of architecture is not necessary to know that a
+huge stuffed leather chair in a tiny gold and cream room is unsuitable,
+is hideously complicated, and is as much out of proportion as the
+proverbial bull in the china-shop.
+
+A woman's environment will speak for her life, whether she likes it or
+not. How can we believe that a woman of sincerity of purpose will hang
+fake "works of art" on her walls, or satisfy herself with imitation
+velvets or silks? How can we attribute taste to a woman who permits
+paper floors and iron ceilings in her house? We are too afraid of the
+restful commonplaces, and yet if we live simple lives, why shouldn't we
+be glad our houses are comfortably commonplace? How much better to have
+plain furniture that is comfortable, simple chintzes printed from old
+blocks, a few good prints, than all the sham things in the world? A
+house is a dead-give-away, anyhow, so you should arrange is so that the
+person who sees your personality in it will be reassured, not
+disconcerted.
+
+Too often, here in America, the most comfortable room in the house is
+given up to a sort of bastard collection of gilt chairs and tables,
+over-elaborate draperies shutting out both light and air, and huge and
+frightful paintings. This style of room, with its museum-like
+furnishings, has been dubbed "Marie Antoinette," _why_, no one but the
+American decorator can say. Heaven knows poor Marie Antoinette had
+enough follies to atone for, but certainly she has never been treated
+more shabbily than when they dub these mausoleums "Marie Antoinette
+rooms."
+
+I remember taking a clever Englishwoman of much taste to see a woman who
+was very proud of her new house. We had seen most of the house when the
+hostess, who had evidently reserved what she considered the best for
+the last, threw open the doors of a large and gorgeous apartment and
+said, "This is my Louis XVI ballroom." My friend, who had been very
+patient up to that moment, said very quietly, "What makes you think so?"
+
+Louis XVI thought a salon well furnished with a few fine chairs and a
+table. He wished to be of supreme importance. In the immense salons of
+the Italian palaces there were a few benches and chairs. People then
+wished spaces about them.
+
+Nowadays, people are swamped by their furniture. Too many centuries, too
+many races, crowd one another in a small room. The owner seems
+insignificant among his collections of historical furniture. Whether he
+collects all sorts of things of all periods in one heterogeneous mass,
+or whether he fills his house with the furniture of some one epoch, he
+is not at home in his surroundings.
+
+The furniture of every epoch records its history. Our ancestors of the
+Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries inherited the troublous times of
+their fathers in their heavy oaken chests. They owned more chests than
+anything else, because a chest could be carried away on the back of a
+sturdy pack mule, when the necessity arose for flight.
+
+People never had time to sit down in the Sixteenth Century. Their
+feverish unrest is recorded in their stiff, backed chairs. It was not
+until the Seventeenth Century that they had time to sit down and talk.
+We need no book of history to teach us this--we have only to observe the
+ample proportions of the arm-chairs of the period.
+
+Our ancestors of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries worked with a
+faith in the permanence of what they created. We have lost this happy
+confidence. We are occupied exclusively with preserving and reproducing.
+We have not succeeded in creating a style adapted to our modern life. It
+is just as well! Our life, with its haste, its nervousness and its
+preoccupations, does not inspire the furniture-makers. We cannot do
+better than to accept the standards of other times, and adapt them to
+our uses.
+
+Why should we American woman run after styles and periods of which we
+know nothing? Why should we not be content with the fundamental things?
+The formal French room is very delightful in the proper place but when
+it is unsuited to the people who must live in it it is as bad as a sham
+room. The woman who wears paste jewels is not so conspicuously wrong as
+the woman who plasters herself with too many real jewels at the wrong
+time!
+
+This is what I am always fighting in people's houses, the unsuitability
+of things. The foolish woman goes about from shop to shop and buys as
+her fancy directs. She sees something "pretty" and buys it, though it
+has no reference either in form or color to the scheme of her house.
+Haven't you been in rooms where there was a jumble of mission
+furniture, satinwood, fine old mahogany and gilt-legged chairs? And it
+is the same with color. A woman says, "Oh, I love blue, let's have
+blue!" regardless of the exposure of her room and the furnishings she
+has already collected. And then when she has treated each one of her
+rooms in a different color, and with a different floor covering, she
+wonders why she is always fretted in going from one room to another.
+
+Don't go about the furnishing of your house with the idea that you must
+select the furniture of some one period and stick to that. It isn't at
+all necessary. There are old English chairs and tables of the Sixteenth
+and Seventeenth Centuries that fit into our quiet, spacious Twentieth
+Century country homes. Lines and fabrics and woods are the things to be
+compared.
+
+There are so many beautiful things that have come to us from other times
+that it should be easy to make our homes beautiful, but I have seen what
+I can best describe as apoplectic chairs whose legs were fashioned like
+aquatic plants; tables upheld by tortured naked women; lighting fixtures
+in the form of tassels, and such horrors, in many houses of to-day under
+the guise of being "authentic period furniture." Only a connoisseur can
+ever hope to know about the furniture of every period, but all of us can
+easily learn the ear-marks of the furniture that is suited to our homes.
+I shan't talk about ear-marks here, however, because dozens of
+collectors have compiled excellent books that tell you all about curves
+and lines and grain-of-wood and worm-holes. My business is to persuade
+you to use your graceful French sofas and your simple rush bottom New
+England chairs in different rooms--in other words, to preach to you the
+beauty of suitability. Suitability! _Suitability!_ SUITABILITY!!
+
+It is such a relief to return to the tranquil, simple forms of
+furniture, and to decorate our rooms by a process of elimination. How
+many rooms have I not cleared of junk--this heterogeneous mass of
+ornamental "period" furniture and bric-a-brac bought to make a room
+"look cozy." Once cleared of these, the simplicity and dignity of the
+room comes back, the architectural spaces are freed and now stand in
+their proper relation to the furniture. In other words, the architecture
+of the room becomes its decoration.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
+
+
+I have always lived in enchanting houses. Probably when another woman
+would be dreaming of love affairs, I dream of the delightful houses I
+have lived in. And just as the woman who dreams of many lovers finds one
+dream a little dearer than all the rest, so one of my houses has been
+dearer to me than all the others.
+
+[Illustration: THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING]
+
+This favorite love of mine is the old Washington Irving house in New
+York, the quaint mansion that gave historic Irving Place its name. For
+twenty years my friend, Elizabeth Marbury, and I made this old house our
+home. Two years ago we reluctantly gave up the old house and moved into
+a more modern one--also transformed from old into new--on East
+Fifty-fifth Street. We have also a delightful old house in France, the
+Villa Trianon, at Versailles, where we spend our summers. So you see we
+have had the rare experience of transforming three mistreated old houses
+into very delightful homes.
+
+When we found this old house, so many years ago, we were very young, and
+it is amusing now to think of its evolution. We had so many dreams, so
+many theories, and we tried them all out on the old house. And like a
+patient, well-bred maiden aunt, the old house always accepted our
+changes most placidly. There never was such a house!
+
+You could do anything to it, because, fundamentally, it was good. Its
+wall spaces were inviting, its windows were made for framing pleasant
+things. When we moved there we had a broad sweep of view: I can remember
+seeing the river from our dining-room. Now the city has grown up around
+the old house and jostled it rudely, and shut out much of its sunshine.
+
+There is a joy in the opportunity of creating a beautiful interior for a
+new and up-to-date house, but best of all is the joy of furnishing an
+old house like this one. It is like reviving an old garden. It may not
+be just your idea of a garden to begin with, but as you study it and
+deck its barren spaces with masses of color, and fit a sundial into the
+spot that so needs it, and give the sunshine a fountain to play with,
+you love the old garden just a little more every time you touch it,
+until it becomes to you the most beautiful garden in all the world.
+
+Gardens and houses are such whimsical things! This old house of ours had
+been so long mistreated that it was fairly petulant and querulous when I
+began studying it. It asked questions on every turn, and seemed
+surprised when they were answered. The house was delightfully rambling,
+with a tiny entrance hall, and narrow stairs, and sudden up and down
+steps from one room to another like the old, old house one associates
+with far-away places and old times.
+
+The little entrance hall was worse than a question, it was a problem, but
+I finally solved it. The floor was paved with little hexagon-shaped tiles
+of a wonderful old red. A door made of little square panes of mirrors was
+placed where it would deceive the old hall into thinking itself a spacious
+thing. The walls were covered with a green-and-white-stripe wall-paper
+that looked as old as Rip Van Winkle. This is the same ribbon-grass paper
+that I afterward used in the Colony Club hallway. The woodwork was painted
+a soft gray-green. Finally, I had my collection of faded French costume
+prints set flat against the top of the wall as a frieze. The hall was so
+very narrow that as you went up stairs you could actually examine the old
+prints in detail. Another little thing: I covered the handrail of the
+stairs with a soft gray-green velvet of the same tone as the woodwork, and
+the effect was so very good and the touch of it so very nice that many of
+my friends straightway adopted the idea.
+
+But I am placing the cart before the horse! I should talk of the shell
+of the house before the contents, shouldn't I? It is hard to talk of
+this particular house as a thing apart from its furnishings, however,
+for every bit of paneling, every lighting-fixture, the placing of each
+mirror, was worked out so that the shell of the house and its
+furnishings might be in perfect harmony.
+
+The drawing-room and dining-room occupied the first floor of the house.
+The drawing-room was a long, narrow room with cream woodwork and walls.
+The walls were broken into panels by the use of a narrow molding. In the
+large panel above the mantel-shelf I had inset a painting by Nattier.
+You will see the same painting used in the Fifty-fifth Street house
+drawing-room, in another illustration.
+
+The color scheme of rose and cream and dull yellow was worked out from
+the rose and yellow Persian rug. Most of the furniture we found in
+France, but it fitted perfectly into this aristocratic and dignified
+room. Miss Marbury and I have a perfect right to French things in our
+drawing-room, you see, for we are French residents for half the year.
+And, besides, this gracious old house welcomed a fine old Louis XIV sofa
+as serenely as you please. I have no idea of swallowing my words about
+unsuitability!
+
+Light, air and comfort--these three things I must always have in a room,
+whether it be drawing-room or servant's room. This room had all three.
+The chairs were all comfortable, the lights well placed, and there was
+plenty of sunshine and air. The color of the room was so subdued that it
+was restful to the eye--one color faded into another so subtly that one
+did not realize there was a definite color-scheme. The hangings of the
+room were of a deep rose color. I used the same colors in the coverings
+of the chairs and sofas. The house was curtained throughout with fine
+white muslin curtains. No matter what the inner curtains of a room may
+be, I use this simple stuff against the window itself. There isn't any
+nicer material. To me there is something unsuitable in an array of lace
+against a window, like underclothes hung up to dry.
+
+[Illustration: A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM]
+
+The most delightful part of the drawing-room was the little
+conservatory, which was a plain, lamentable bay-window once upon a time.
+I determined to make a little flower-box of it, and had the floor of it
+paved with large tiles, and between the hardwood floor of the
+drawing-room and the marble of the window space was a narrow curb of
+marble, which made it possible to have a jolly little fountain in the
+window. The fountain splashed away to its heart's content, for there was
+a drain pipe under the curb. At the top of the windows there were
+shallow white boxes filled with trailing ivy that hung down and screened
+the glass, making the window as delightful to the passer-by without as
+to us within. There were several pots of rose-colored flowers standing
+in a prim row on the marble curb.
+
+You see how much simpler it is to make the best of an old bay window
+than to build on a new conservatory. There are thousands of houses with
+windows like this one of ours, an unfortunate space of which no use is
+made. Sometimes there is a gilt table bearing a lofty jar, sometimes a
+timid effort at comfort--a sofa--but usually the bay window is sacred to
+its own devices, whatever they may be! Why not spend a few dollars and
+make it the most interesting part of the room by giving it a lot of
+vines and flowers and a small fountain? It isn't at all an expensive
+thing to do.
+
+From the drawing-room you entered the dining-room. This was a long room
+with beautifully spaced walls, a high ceiling, and quaint cupboards. The
+arrangement of the mirrors around the cupboards and doors was unusual
+and most decorative. This room was so beautiful in itself that I used
+very little color--but _such_ color! We never tired of the gray and
+white and ivory color-scheme, the quiet atmosphere that made glorious
+the old Chinese carpet, with its rose-colored ground and blue-and-gold
+medallions and border. The large India-ink sketches set in the walls are
+originals by Mennoyer, the delightful Eighteenth Century artist who did
+the overdoors of the Petit Trianon.
+
+The mirror-framed lighting fixtures I brought over from France. The
+dining-table too, was French, of a creamy ivory-painted wood. The chairs
+had insets of cane of a deeper tone. The recessed window-seat was
+covered with a soft velvet of a deep yellow, and there were as many
+little footstools beside the window-seat as there were chairs in the
+room. Doesn't everyone long for a footstool at table?
+
+I believe that everything in one's house should be comfortable, but
+one's bedroom must be more than comfortable: it must be intimate,
+personal, one's secret garden, so to speak. It may be as simple as a
+convent cell and still have this quality of the personality of its
+occupant.
+
+There are two things that are as important to me as the bed in the
+bedrooms that I furnish, and they are the little tables at the head of
+the bed, and the lounging chairs. The little table must hold a good
+reading light, well shaded, for who doesn't like to read in bed? There
+must also be a clock, and there really should be a telephone. And the
+_chaise-longue_, or couch, as the case may be, should be both
+comfortable and beautiful. Who hasn't longed for a comfortable place to
+snatch forty winks at midday?
+
+My own bedroom in this house was very pleasant to me. The house was very
+small, you see, and my bedroom had to be my writing-and reading-room
+too, so that accounts for the bookshelves that fill the wall space above
+and around the mantel and the large writing-table. The room was built
+around a wonderful old French bed which came from Brittany. This old bed
+is of carved mahogany, with mirrored panels on the side against the
+wall, and with tall columns at the ends. It is always hung with
+embroidered silk in the rose color that I adore and has any number of
+pillows, big and little. The _chaise-longue_ was covered with this same
+silk, as were the various chair cushions. The other furnishings were in
+keeping. It was a delightfully comfortable room, and it grew a little at
+a time. I needed bookshelves, and I built them. A drop-light was
+necessary, and I found the old brass lantern which hung from the
+ceiling. And so it was furnished, bit by bit, need by need.
+
+Miss Marbury's bedroom in this house was entirely different in type, but
+exactly the same in comfort. The furniture was of white enamel, the
+walls ivory-white, and the rug a soft dull blue. The chintz used was the
+familiar Bird of Paradise, gorgeous in design, but so subdued in tone
+that one never tires of it. The bed had a flat, perfectly fitted cover
+of the chintz, which is tucked under the mattress. The box spring was
+also covered with the chintz, and the effect was always tidy and
+satisfactory. This is the neatest disposal of the bed-clothes I have
+seen. I always advise this arrangement.
+
+Besides the bed there was the necessary little table, holding a
+reading-light and so forth, and at the head of the bed a most adorable
+screen of white enamel, paneled with chintz below and glass above. There
+was a soft couch of generous width in this room, with covers and
+cushions of the chintz.
+
+Over near the windows was the dressing-table with the lighting-fixtures
+properly placed. This table, hung with chintz, had a sheet of plate
+glass exactly fitting its top. The writing-table, near the window is
+also part of my creed of comfort. There should be a writing-table in
+every bedroom. My friends laugh at the little fat pincushions on my
+writing-tables, but when they are covered with a bit of the chintz or
+tapestry or brocade of the room they are very pretty, and I am sure pins
+are as necessary on the writing-table as on the dressing-table.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MARBURY'S BEDROOM]
+
+Another thing I like on every writing-table is a clear glass bowl of
+dried rose petals, which gives the room the faintest spicy fragrance.
+There is also a little bowl of just the proper color to hold pens and
+clips and odds and ends. I get as much pleasure from planning these
+small details as from the planning of the larger furniture of the room.
+
+The house was very simple, you see, and very small, and so when the time
+came to leave it we had grown to love every inch of it. You can love a
+small house so completely! But we couldn't forgive the skyscrapers
+encroaching on our supply of sunshine, and we really needed more room,
+and so we said good-by to our beloved old house and moved into a new
+one. Now we find ourselves in danger of loving the new one as much as
+the old. But that is another story.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
+
+
+One walks the streets of New York and receives the fantastic impression
+that some giant architect has made for the city thousands of houses in
+replica. These dismal brownstone buildings are so like without, and
+alas! so like within, that one wonders how their owners know their homes
+from one another. I have had the pleasure of making over many of these
+gloomy barracks into homes for other people, and when we left the old
+Irving Place house we took one of these dreary houses for ourselves, and
+made it over into a semblance of what a city house should be.
+
+You know the kind of house--there are tens of thousands of them--a four
+story and basement house of pinkish brownstone, with a long flight of
+ugly stairs from the street to the first floor. The common belief that
+all city houses of this type must be dark and dreary just because they
+always _have_ been dark and dreary is an unnecessary superstition.
+
+My object in taking this house was twofold: I wanted to prove to my
+friends that it was possible to take one of the darkest and grimiest of
+city houses and make it an abode of sunshine and light, and I wanted to
+furnish the whole house exactly as I pleased--for once!
+
+The remaking of the house was very interesting. I tore away the ugly
+stone steps and centered the entrance door in a little stone-paved
+fore-court on the level of the old area-way. The fore-court is just a
+step below the street level, giving you a pleasant feeling of
+invitation. Everyone hates to climb into a house, but there is a subtle
+allure in a garden or a court yard or a room into which you must step
+down. The fore-court is enclosed with a high iron railing banked with
+formal box-trees. Above the huge green entrance door there is a graceful
+iron balcony, filled with green things, that pulls the great door and
+the central window of the floor above into an impressive composition.
+The facade of the house, instead of being a commonplace rectangle of
+stone broken by windows, has this long connected break of the door and
+balcony and window. By such simple devices are happy results
+accomplished!
+
+The door itself is noteworthy, with its great bronze knob set squarely
+in the center. On each side of it there are the low windows of the
+entrance hall, with window-boxes of evergreens. Compare this orderly
+arrangement of windows and entrance door with the badly balanced houses
+of the old type, and you will realize anew the value of balance and
+proportion.
+
+From the fore-court you enter the hall. Once within the hall, the, house
+widens magically. Surely this cool black and white apartment cannot be
+a part of restless New York! Have you ever come suddenly upon an old
+Southern house, and thrilled at the classic purity of white columns in a
+black-green forest? This entrance hall gives you the same thrill; the
+elements of formality, of tranquillity, of coolness, are so evident. The
+walls and ceiling are a deep, flat cream, and the floor is laid in large
+black and white marble tiles. Exactly opposite you as you enter, there
+is a wall fountain with a background of mirrors. The water spills over
+from the fountain into ferns and flowers banked within a marble curb.
+The two wall spaces on your right and left are broken by graceful niches
+which hold old statues. An oval Chinese rug and the white and orange
+flowers of the fountain furnish the necessary color. The windows
+flanking the entrance doorway are hung with flat curtains of coarse
+white linen, with inserts of old filet lace, and there are side curtains
+of dead black silk with borderings of silver and gold threads.
+
+In any house that I have anything to do with, there is some sort of desk
+or table for writing in the hall. How often I have been in other
+people's houses when it was necessary to send a message, or to record an
+address, when the whole household began scurrying around trying to find
+a pencil and paper! This, to my mind, is an outward and visible sign of
+an inward--and fundamental!--lack of order.
+
+[Illustration: THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET
+HOUSE]
+
+In this hall there is a charming desk particularly adapted to its
+place. It is a standing desk which can be lowered or heightened at will,
+so that one who wishes to scribble a line or so may use it without
+sitting down. This desk is called a _bureau d'architect_. I found it in
+Biarritz. It would be quite easy to have one made by a good
+cabinet-maker, for the lines and method of construction are simple. My
+hall desk is so placed that it is lighted by the window by day and the
+wall lights by night, but it might be lighted by two tall candlesticks
+if a wall light were not available. There is a shallow drawer which
+contains surplus writing materials, but the only things permitted on the
+writing surface of the desk are the tray for cards, the pad and pencils.
+
+The only other furniture in the hall is an old porter's chair near the
+door, a chair that suggests the sedan of old France, but serves its
+purpose admirably.
+
+A glass door leads to the inner hall and the stairway, which I consider
+the best thing in the house. Instead of the usual steep and gloomy
+stairs with which we are all familiar, here is a graceful spiral
+stairway which runs from this floor to the roof. The stair hall has two
+walls made up of mirrors in the French fashion, that is, cut in squares
+and held in place by small rosettes of gilt, and these mirrored walls
+seemingly double the spaciousness of what would be, under ordinary
+conditions, a gloomy inside hallway.
+
+The house is narrow in the extreme, and the secret of its
+successful renaissance is plenty of windows and light color and
+mirrors--mirrors--mirrors! It has been called the "Little House of Many
+Mirrors," for so much of its spaciousness and charm is the effect of
+skilfully managed reflections. The stair-landings are most ingeniously
+planned. There are landings that lead directly from the stairs into the
+rooms of each floor, and back of one of the mirrored stair walls there
+is a little balcony connecting the rooms on that floor, a private
+passageway.
+
+The drawing-room and dining-room occupy the first floor. The
+drawing-room is a pleasant, friendly place, full of quiet color. The
+walls are a deep cream color and the floor is covered with a beautiful
+Savonnerie rug. There are many beautiful old chairs covered with
+Aubusson tapestry, and other chairs and sofas covered with rose colored
+brocade. This drawing-room is seemingly a huge place, this effect being
+given by the careful placing of mirrors and lights, and the skilful
+arrangement of the furniture. I believe in plenty of optimism and white
+paint, comfortable chairs with lights beside them, open fires on the
+hearth and flowers wherever they "belong," mirrors and sunshine in all
+rooms.
+
+But I think we can carry the white paint idea too far: I have grown a
+little tired of over-careful decorations, of plain white walls and white
+woodwork, of carefully matched furniture and over-cautious
+color-schemes. Somehow the feeling of homey-ness is lost when the
+decorator is too careful. In this drawing-room there is furniture of
+many woods, there are stuffs of many weaves, there are candles and
+chandeliers and reading-lamps, but there is harmony of purpose and
+therefore harmony of effect. The room was made for conversation, for
+hospitality.
+
+A narrow landing connects the dining-room and the drawing-room. The
+color of the dining-room has grown of itself, from the superb Chinese
+rug on the floor and the rare old Mennoyer drawings inset in the walls.
+The woodwork and walls have been painted a soft dove-like gray. The
+walls are broken into panels by a narrow gray molding, and the Mennoyers
+are set in five of these panels. In one narrow panel a beautiful wall
+clock has been placed. Above the mantel there is a huge mirror with a
+panel in black and white relief above it. On the opposite wall there is
+another mirror, with a console table of carved wood painted gray beneath
+it. There is also a console table under one of the Mennoyers.
+
+The two windows in this room are obviously windows by day, but at night
+two sliding doors of mirrors are drawn, just as a curtain would be
+drawn, to fill the window spaces. This is a little bit tricky, I admit,
+but it is a very good trick. The dining-table is of carved wood painted
+gray and covered with yellow damask, which in turn is covered with a
+sheet of plate glass. The chairs are covered with a blue and gold
+striped velvet. The rug has a gold ground with medallions and border of
+blue, ivory and rose. Near the door that leads to the service rooms
+there is a huge screen made of one piece of wondrous tapestry. No other
+furniture is needed in the room.
+
+The third floor is given over to my sitting-room, bedroom,
+dressing-room, and so forth, and the fourth floor to Miss Marbury's
+apartments. These rooms will be discussed in other chapters.
+
+The servants' quarters in this house are very well planned. In the back
+yard that always goes with a house of this type I had built a new wing,
+five stories high, connected with the floors of the house proper by
+window-lined passages. On the dining-room floor the passage becomes a
+butler's pantry. On the bedroom floors the passages are large enough for
+dressing-rooms and baths, connecting with the bedrooms, and for outer
+halls and laundries connecting with the maids' rooms and the back
+stairs. In this way, you see, the maids can reach the dressing-rooms
+without invading the bedrooms. The kitchen and its dependencies occupy
+the first floor of the new wing, the servants' bedrooms the next three
+floors, and the top floor is made up of clothes closets, sewing-rooms,
+store rooms, etc.
+
+I firmly believe that the whole question of household comfort evolves
+from the careful planning of the service portion of the house. My
+servants' rooms are all attractive. The woodwork of these rooms is
+white, the walls are cream, the floors are waxed. They are all gay and
+sweet and cheerful, with white painted beds and chests of drawers and
+willow chairs, and chintz curtains and bed-coverings that are
+especially chosen, _not_ handed down when they have become too faded to
+be used elsewhere!
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
+
+
+Surely the first considerations of the house in good taste must be
+light, air and sanitation. Instead of ignoring the relation of sanitary
+conditions and decorative schemes, the architect and client of to-day
+work out these problems with excellent results. Practical needs are
+considered just as worthy of the architect as artistic achievements. He
+is a poor excuse for his profession if he cannot solve the problems of
+utility and beauty, and work out the ultimate harmony of the
+house-to-be.
+
+If one enters a room in which true proportion has been observed, where
+the openings, the doors, windows and fireplace, balance perfectly, where
+the wall spaces are well planned and the height of the ceiling is in
+keeping with the floor-space, one is immediately convinced that here is
+a beautiful and satisfactory room, before a stick of furniture has been
+placed in it. All questions pertaining to the practical equipment and
+the decorative amenities of the house should be approached
+architecturally. If this is done, the result cannot fail to be
+felicitous, and our dream of our house beautiful comes true!
+
+Before you begin the decoration of your walls, be sure that your floors
+have been finished to fulfil their purposes. Stain them or polish them
+to a soft glow, keep them low in tone so that they may be backgrounds.
+We will assume that the woodwork of each room has been finished with a
+view to the future use and decoration of the room. We will assume that
+the ceilings are proper ceilings; that they will stay in their place,
+i.e., the top of the room. This is a most daring assumption, because
+there are so many feeble and threatening ceilings overhanging most of us
+that good ones seem rare. But the ceiling is an architectural problem,
+and you must consider it in the beginning of things. It may be beamed
+and have every evidence of structural beauty and strength, or it may be
+beamed in a ridiculous fashion that advertises the beams as shams,
+leading from nowhere to nowhere. It may be a beautiful expanse of creamy
+modeled plaster resting on a distinguished cornice, or it may be one of
+those ghastly skim-milk ceilings with distorted cupids and roses in
+relief. It may be a rectangle of plain plaster tinted cream or pale
+yellow or gray, and keeping its place serenely, or it may be a
+villainous stretch of ox-blood, hanging over your head like the curse of
+Cain. There are hundreds of magnificent painted ceilings, and vaulted
+arches of marble and gold, but these are not of immediate importance to
+the woman who is furnishing a small house, and are not within the scope
+of this book. So let us exercise common sense and face our especial
+ceiling problem in an architectural spirit. If your house has
+structural beams, leave them exposed, if you like, but treat them as
+beams; stain them, and wax them, and color the spaces between them cream
+or tan or warm gray, and then make the room beneath the beams strong
+enough in color and furnishings to carry the impressive ceiling.
+
+If you have an architect who is also a decorator, and he has ideas for a
+modeled plaster ceiling, or a ceiling with plaster-covered beams and
+cornice and a fine application of ornament, let him do his best for you,
+but remember that a fine ceiling demands certain things of the room it
+covers. If you have a simple little house with simple furnishings, be
+content to have your ceilings tinted a warm cream, keep them always
+clean.
+
+When all these things are settled--floors and ceilings and woodwork--you
+may begin to plan your wall coverings. Begin, you understand. You will
+probably change your plans a dozen times before you make the final
+decisions. I hope you will! Because inevitably the last opinion is
+best--it grows out of so many considerations.
+
+The main thing to remember, when you begin to cover your walls, is that
+they are walls, that they are straight up and down, and have breadth and
+thickness, that they are supposedly strong, in other words, that they
+are a structural part of your house. A wall should always be treated as
+a flat surface and in a conventional way. Pictorial flowers and lifelike
+figures have no place upon it, but conventionalized designs may be used
+successfully--witness the delighted use of the fantastic landscape
+papers in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Walls should always be
+obviously _walls_, and not flimsy partitions hung with gauds and
+trophies. The wall is the background of the room, and so must be flat in
+treatment and reposeful in tone.
+
+Walls have always offered tempting spaces for decoration. Our ancestors
+hung their walls with trophies. Our pioneer of to-day may live in an
+adobe hut, but he hangs his walls with things that suggest beauty and
+color to him, calendars, and trophies and gaudy chromos. The rest of his
+hut he uses for the hard business of living, but his walls are his
+theater, his literature, his recreation. The wolf skin will one day give
+place to a painting of the chase, the gaudy calendars to better things,
+when prosperity comes. But now these crude things speak for the pioneer
+period of the man, and therefore they are the right things for the
+moment. How absurd would be the refined etching and the delicate
+water-color on these clay walls, even were they within his grasp!
+
+The first impulse of all of us is to hang the things we admire on our
+walls. Unfortunately, we do not always select papers and fabrics and
+pictures we will continue to admire. Who doesn't know the woman who goes
+to a shop and selects wall papers as she would select her gowns, because
+they are "new" and "different" and "pretty"? She selects a "rich" paper
+for her hall and an "elegant" paper for her drawing-room--the chances
+are it is a nile green moire paper! For her library she thinks a paper
+imitating an Oriental fabric is the proper thing, and as likely as not
+she buys gold paper for her dining-room. She finds so many charming
+bedroom papers that she has no trouble in selecting a dozen of them for
+insipid blue rooms and pink rooms and lilac rooms.
+
+She forgets that while she wears only one gown at a time she will live
+with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of
+large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the
+adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give
+them the fair test of living with them a few days.
+
+You can always buy, or borrow, a roll of the paper you like and take it
+home and live with it awhile. The dealer will credit the roll when you
+make the final decisions. You should assemble all the papers that are to
+be used in the house, and all the fabrics, and rugs, and see what the
+effect of the various compositions will be, one with another. You can't
+consider one room alone, unless it be a bedroom, for in our modern
+houses we believe too thoroughly in spaciousness to separate our living
+rooms by ante-chambers and formal approaches. We must preserve a certain
+amount of privacy, and have doors that may be closed when need be, but
+we must also consider the effect of things when those doors are open,
+when the color of one room melts into the color of another.
+
+[Illustration: A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS]
+
+To me, the most beautiful wall is the plain and dignified painted
+wall, broken into graceful panels by the use of narrow moldings, with
+lighting fixtures carefully placed, and every picture and mirror hung
+with classic precision. This wall is just as appropriate to the six-room
+cottage as to the twenty-room house. If I could always find perfect
+walls, I'd always paint them, and never use a yard of paper. Painted
+walls, when very well done, are dignified and restful, and most
+sanitary. The trouble is that too few plasterers know how to smooth the
+wall surface, and too few workmen know how to apply paint properly. In
+my new house on East Fifty-fifth Street I have had all the walls
+painted. The woodwork is ivory white throughout the house, except in the
+dining-room, where the walls and woodwork are soft gray. The walls of
+most of the rooms and halls are painted a very deep tone of cream and
+are broken into panels, the moldings being painted cream like the
+woodwork. With such walls you can carry out any color-plan you may
+desire.
+
+You would think that every woman would know that walls are influenced by
+the exposure of the room, but how often I have seen bleak north rooms
+with walls papered in cold gray, and sunshiny south rooms with red or
+yellow wall papers! Dull tones and cool colors are always good in south
+rooms, and live tones and warm colors in north rooms. For instance, if
+you wish to keep your rooms in one color-plan, you may have white
+woodwork in all of them, and walls of varying shades of cream and
+yellow. The north rooms may have walls painted or papered with a soft,
+warm yellow that suggests creamy chiffon over orange. The south rooms
+may have the walls of a cool creamy-gray tone.
+
+Whether you paint or paper your walls, you should consider the placing
+of the picture-molding most carefully. If the ceiling is very high, the
+walls will be more interesting if the picture-molding is placed three or
+four feet below the ceiling line. If the ceiling is low, the molding
+should be within two inches of the ceiling. These measurements are not
+arbitrary, of course. Every room is a law unto itself, and no cut and
+dried rule can be given. A fine frieze is a very beautiful decoration,
+but it must be _very_ fine to be worth while at all. Usually the dropped
+ceiling is better for the upper wall space. It goes without saying that
+those dreadful friezes perpetrated by certain wall paper designers are
+very bad form, and should never be used. Indeed, the very principle of
+the ordinary paper frieze is bad; it darkens the upper wall
+unpleasantly, and violates the good old rule that the floors should be
+darkest in tone, the side walls lighter, and the ceiling lightest. The
+recent vogue of stenciling walls may be objected to on this account,
+though a very narrow and conventional line of stenciling may sometimes
+be placed just under the picture rail with good effect.
+
+In a great room with a beamed ceiling and oak paneled walls a painted
+fresco or a frieze of tapestry or some fine fabric is a very fine thing,
+especially if it has a lot of primitive red and blue and gold in it, but
+in simple rooms--beware!
+
+Lately there has been a great revival of interest in wood paneling. We
+go abroad, and see the magnificent paneling of old English houses, and
+we come home and copy it. But we cannot get the workmen who will carve
+panels in the old patterns. We cannot wait a hundred years for the soft
+bloom that comes from the constant usage, and so our paneled rooms are
+apt to be too new and woody. But we have such a wonderful store of
+woods, here in America, it is worth while to panel our rooms, copying
+the simple rectangular English patterns, and it is quite permissible to
+"age" our walls by rubbing in black wax, and little shadows of
+water-color, and in fact by any method we can devise. Wood paneled
+walls, like beamed ceilings, are best in great rooms. They make boxes of
+little ones.
+
+Painted walls, and walls hung with tapestries and leather, are not
+possible to many of us, but they are the most magnificent of wall
+treatments. I know a wonderful library with walls hung in squares of
+Spanish leather, a cold northern room that merits such a brilliant wall
+treatment. The primitive colors of the Cordova leather workers, with
+gold and crimson dominant, glow from the deep shadows. Spanish and
+Italian furniture and fine old velvets and brocades furnish this room.
+The same sort of room invites wood paneling and tapestry, whereas the
+ideal room for painted walls in a lighter key is the ballroom, or some
+such large apartment. I once decorated a ballroom with Pillement panels,
+copied from a beautiful Eighteenth Century room, and so managed to bring
+a riot of color and decoration into a large apartment. The ground of the
+paneling was deep yellow, and all the little birds and flowers
+surrounding the central design were done in the very brightest,
+strongest colors imaginable. The various panels had quaint little scenes
+of the same Chinese flavor. Of course, in such an apartment as a
+ballroom there would be nothing to break into the decorative plan of the
+painted walls, and the unbroken polished floor serves only to throw the
+panels into their proper prominence. Painted walls, when done in some
+such broad and daring manner, are very wonderful, but they should not be
+attempted by the amateur, or, indeed, by an expert in a room that will
+be crowded with furniture, and curtains, and rugs.
+
+If your walls are faulty, you must resort to wall papers or fabrics.
+Properly selected wall papers are not to be despised. The woodwork of a
+room, of course, directly influences the treatment of its walls. So many
+people ask me for advice about wall papers, and forget absolutely to
+tell me of the finish of the framing of their wall spaces. A pale
+yellowish cream wall paper is very charming with woodwork of white, but
+it would not do with woodwork of heavy oak, for instance.
+
+[Illustration: A WALL PAPER OF ELIZABETHAN DESIGN WITH OAK FURNITURE]
+
+A general rule to follow in a small house is: do not have a figured
+wall paper if you expect to use things of large design in your rooms. If
+you have gorgeous rugs and hangings, keep your walls absolutely plain.
+In furnishing the Colony Club I used a ribbon grass paper in the
+hallway. The fresh, spring-like green and white striped paper is very
+delightful with a carpet and runner of plain dark-green velvet, and
+white woodwork, and dark mahogany furniture, and many gold-framed
+mirrors. In another room in this building where many chintzes and
+fabrics were used, I painted the woodwork white and the walls a soft
+cream color. In the bedrooms I used a number of wall papers, the most
+fascinating of these, perhaps, is in the bird room. The walls are hung
+with a daringly gorgeous paper covered with birds--birds of paradise and
+paroquets perched on flowery tropical branches. The furniture in this
+room is of black and gold lacquer, and the rug and hangings are of jade
+green. It would not be so successful in a room one lived in all the year
+around, but it is a good example of what one can do with a tempting wall
+paper in an occasional room, a guest room, for instance.
+
+Some of the figured wall papers are so decorative that they are more
+than tempting, they are compelling. The Chinese ones are particularly
+fascinating. Recently I planned a small boudoir in a country house that
+depended on a gay Chinoiserie paper for its charm. The design of the
+paper was made up of quaint little figures and parasols and birds and
+twisty trees, all in soft tones of green and blue and mauve on a deep
+cream ground. The woodwork and ceiling repeated the deep cream, and the
+simple furniture (a day bed, a chest of drawers, and several chairs)
+were of wood, painted a flat blue green just the color of the twisty
+pine-trees of the paper.
+
+We had a delightful time decorating the furniture with blue and mauve
+lines, and we painted parasols and birds and flowers on chair backs and
+drawer-knobs and so forth. The large rug was of pinky-mauve-gray, and
+the coverings of the day bed and chairs were of a mauve and gray striped
+stuff, the stripes so small that they had the effect of being threads of
+color. There were no pictures, of course, but there was a long mirror
+above the chest of drawers, and another over the mantel. The
+lighting-fixtures, candlesticks and appliques, were of carved and
+painted wood, blue-green with shades of thin mauve silk over rose.
+
+Among the most enchanting of the new papers are the black and white
+ones, fantastic Chinese designs and startling Austrian patterns. Black
+and white is always a tempting combination to the decorator, and now
+that Josef Hoffman, the great Austrian decorator, has been working in
+black and white for a number of years, the more venturesome decorators
+of France, and England and America have begun to follow his lead, and
+are using black and white, and black and color, with amazing effect. We
+have black papers patterned in color, and black velvet carpets, and
+white coated papers sprinkled with huge black polka dots, and all manner
+of unusual things. It goes without saying that much of this fad is
+freakish, but there is also much that is good enough and refreshing
+enough to last. One can imagine nothing fresher than a black and white
+scheme in a bedroom, with a saving neutrality of gray or some dull tone
+for rugs, and a brilliant bit of color in porcelain. There is no hint of
+the mournful in the decorator's combination of black and white: rather,
+there is a naive quality suggestive of smartness in a gown, or chic in a
+woman. A white walled room with white woodwork and a black and white
+tiled floor; a black lacquer bed and chest of drawers and chair; glass
+curtains of white muslin and inside ones of black and white Hoffman
+chintz; a splash of warm orange-red in an oval rug at the bedside, if it
+be winter, or a cool green one in summer--doesn't this tempt you?
+
+I once saw a little serving-maid wearing a calico gown, black crosses on
+a white ground, and I was so enchanted with the cool crispness of it
+that I had a glazed wall paper made in the same design. I have used it
+in bedrooms, and in bathrooms, always with admirable effect. One can
+imagine a girl making a Pierrot and Pierrette room for herself, given
+whitewashed walls, white woodwork, and white painted furniture. An
+ordinary white cotton printed with large black polka dots would make
+delightful curtains, chair-cushions, and so forth. The rug might be
+woven of black and white rags, or might be one of those woven from the
+old homespun coverlet patterns.
+
+The landscape papers that were so popular in the New England and
+Southern houses three generations ago were very wonderful when they were
+used in hallways, with graceful stairs and white woodwork, but they were
+distressing when used in living-rooms. It is all very well to cover the
+walls of your hall with a hand-painted paper, or a landscape, or a
+foliage paper, because you get only an impressionistic idea of a
+hall--you don't loiter there. But papers of large design are out of
+place in rooms where pictures and books are used. If there is anything
+more dreadful than a busy "parlor" paper, with scrolls that tantalize or
+flowers that demand to be counted, I have yet to encounter it.
+
+Remember, above all things that your walls must be beautiful in
+themselves. They must be plain and quiet, ready to receive sincere
+things, but quite good enough to get along without pictures if
+necessary. A wall that is broken into beautiful spaces and covered with
+a soft creamy paint, or paper, or grasscloth, is good enough for any
+room. It may be broken with lighting fixtures, and it is finished.
+
+[Illustration: THE SCHEME OF THIS ROOM GREW FROM THE JARS ON THE
+MANTEL]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
+
+
+What a joyous thing is color! How influenced we all are by it, even if
+we are unconscious of how our sense of restfulness has been brought
+about. Certain colors are antagonistic to each of us, and I think we
+should try to learn just what colors are most sympathetic to our own
+individual emotions, and then make the best of them.
+
+If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live
+in a room in which the prevailing note is red. On the other hand, a
+timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in
+surroundings of rich red tones, the tones of the old Italian damasks in
+which the primitive colors of the Middle Ages have been handed down to
+us. No half shades, no blending of tender tones are needed in an age of
+iron nerves. People worked hard, and they got downright blues and reds
+and greens--primitive colors, all. Nowadays, we must consider the effect
+of color on our nerves, our eyes, our moods, everything.
+
+Love of color is an emotional matter, just as much as love of music. The
+strongest, the most intense, feeling I have about decoration is my love
+of color. I have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at
+twilight as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.
+
+Color! The very word would suggest warm and agreeable arrangement of
+tones, a pleasing and encouraging atmosphere which is full of life. We
+say that one woman is "so full of color," when she is alert and happy
+and vividly alive. We say another woman is "colorless," because she is
+bleak and chilling and unfriendly. We demand that certain music shall be
+full of color, and we always seek color in the pages of our favorite
+books. One poet has color and to spare, another is cynical and hard
+and--gray. We think and criticize from the standpoint of an appreciation
+of color, although often we have not that appreciation.
+
+There is all the difference in the world between the person who
+appreciates color and the person who "likes colors." The child, playing
+with his broken toys and bits of gay china and glass, the American
+Indian with his gorgeous blankets and baskets and beads--all these
+primitive minds enjoy the combination of vivid tones, but they have no
+more feeling for color than a blind man. The appreciation of color is a
+subtle and intellectual quality.
+
+Sparrow, the Englishman who has written so many books on
+housefurnishing, says: "Colors are like musical notes and chords, while
+color is a pleasing result of their artistic use in a combined way. So
+colors are means to an end, while color is the end itself. The first are
+tools, while the other is a distinctive harmony in art composed of many
+lines and shades."
+
+We are aware that some people are "color-blind," but we do not take the
+trouble to ascertain whether the majority of people see colors crudely.
+I suppose there are as many color-blind people as there are people who
+have a deep feeling for color, and the great masses of people in
+between, while they know colors one from another, have no appreciation
+of hue. Just as surely, there are some people who cannot tell one tune
+from another and some people who have a deep and passionate feeling for
+music, while the rest--the great majority of people--can follow a tune
+and sing a hymn, but they can go no deeper into music than that.
+
+Surely, each of you must know your own color-sense. You know whether you
+get results, don't you? I have never believed that there is a woman so
+blind that she cannot tell good from bad effects, even though she may
+not be able to tell _why_ one room is good and another bad. It is as
+simple as the problem of the well-gowned woman and the dowdy one. The
+dowdy woman doesn't realize the degree of her own dowdiness, but she
+_knows_ that her neighbor is well-gowned, and she envies her with a
+vague and pathetic envy.
+
+If, then, you are not sure that you appreciate color, if you feel that
+you, like your children, like the green rug with the red roses because
+it is "so cheerful," you may be sure that you should let color-problems
+alone, and furnish your house in neutral tones, depending on
+book-bindings and flowers and open fires and the necessary small
+furnishings for your color. Then, with an excellent background of soft
+quiet tones, you can venture a little way at a time, trying a bit of
+color here for a few days, and asking yourself if you honestly like it,
+and then trying another color--a jar or a bowl or a length of
+fabric--somewhere else, and trying that out. You will soon find that
+your joy in your home is growing, and that you have a source of
+happiness within yourself that you had not suspected. I believe that
+good taste can be developed in any woman, just as surely as good manners
+are possible to anyone. And good taste is as necessary as good manners.
+
+We may take our first lessons in color from Nature, on whose storehouse
+we can draw limitlessly. Nature, when she plans a wondrous splash of
+color, prepares a proper background for it. She gives us color plans for
+all the needs we can conceive. White and gray clouds on a blue sky--what
+more could she use in such a composition? A bit of gray green moss upon
+a black rock, a field of yellow dandelions, a pink and white spike of
+hollyhocks, an orange-colored butterfly poised on a stalk of
+larkspur--what color-plans are these!
+
+[Illustration: A LOUIS SEIZE BEDROOM IN ROSE AND BLUE AND CREAM]
+
+I think that the first consideration after you have settled your
+building-site should be to place your house so that its windows may
+frame Nature's own pictures. With windows facing north and south, where
+all the fluctuating and wayward charm of the season unrolls before your
+eyes, your windows become the finest pictures that you can have. When
+this has been arranged, it is time to consider the color-scheme for the
+interior of the house, the colors that shall be in harmony with the
+window-framed vistas, the colors that shall be backgrounds for the
+intimate personal furnishings of your daily life. You must think of your
+walls as backgrounds for the colors you wish to bring into your rooms.
+And by colors I do not mean merely the primary colors, red and blue and
+yellow, or the secondary colors, green and orange and violet, I mean the
+white spaces, the black shadows, the gray halftones, the suave creams,
+that give you the _feeling_ of color.
+
+How often we get a more definite idea of brilliant color from a
+white-walled room, with dark and severe furniture and no ornaments, no
+actual color save the blue sky framed by the windows and the flood of
+sunshine that glorifies everything, than from a room that has a dozen
+fine colors, carefully brought together, in its furnishings!
+
+We must decide our wall colors by the aspect of our rooms. Rooms facing
+south may be very light gray, cream, or even white, but northern rooms
+should be rich in color, and should suggest warmth and just a little
+mystery. Some of you have seen the Sala di Cambio at Perugia. Do you
+remember how dark it seems when one enters, and how gradually the
+wonderful coloring glows out from the gloom and one is comforted and
+soothed into a sort of dreamland of pure joy, in the intimate
+satisfaction of it all? It is unsurpassable for sheer decorative charm,
+I think.
+
+For south rooms blues and grays and cool greens and all the dainty gay
+colors are charming. Do you remember the song Edna May used to sing in
+"The Belle of New York"? I am not sure of quoting correctly, but the
+refrain was: "Follow the Light!" I have so often had it in mind when
+I've been planning my color schemes--"Follow the Light!" But light
+colors for sunshine, remember, and dark ones for shadow.
+
+For north rooms I am strongly inclined to the use of paneling in our
+native American woods, that are so rich in effect, but alas, so little
+used. I hope our architects will soon realize what delightful and
+inexpensive rooms can be made of pine and cherry, chestnut and cypress,
+and the beautiful California redwood. I know of a library paneled with
+cypress. The beamed ceiling, the paneled walls, the built-in shelves,
+the ample chairs and long tables are all of the soft brown cypress.
+Here, if anywhere, you would think a monotony of brown wood would be
+obvious, but think of the thousands of books with brilliant bindings!
+Think of the green branches of trees seen through the casement windows!
+Think of the huge, red-brick fireplace, with its logs blazing in orange
+and yellow and vermillion flame! Think of the distinction of a copper
+bowl of yellow flowers on the long brown table! Can't you see that this
+cypress room is simply glowing with color?
+
+I wish that I might be able to show all you young married girls who are
+working out your home-schemes just how to work out the color of a room.
+Suppose you are given some rare and lovely jar, or a wee rug, or a rare
+old print, or even a quaint old chair from long ago, and build a room
+around it. I have some such point of interest in every room I build, and
+I think that is why some people like my rooms--they feel, without quite
+knowing why, that I have loved them while making them. Now there is a
+little sitting-room and bedroom combined in a certain New York house
+that I worked out from a pair of Chinese jars. They were the oddest
+things, of a sort of blue-green and mauve and mulberry, with flecks of
+black, on a cream porcelain ground.
+
+First I found a wee Oriental rug that repeated the colors of the jugs.
+This was to go before the hearth. Then I worked out the shell of the
+room: the woodwork white, the walls bluish green, the plain carpet a
+soft green. I designed the furniture and had it made by a skilful
+carpenter, for I could find none that would harmonize with the room.
+
+The day bed which is forty-two inches wide, is built like a wide roomy
+sofa. One would never suspect it of being a plain bed. Still it makes no
+pretensions to anything else, for it has the best of springs and the
+most comfortable of mattresses, and a dozen soft pillows. The bed is of
+wood and is painted a soft green, with a dark-green line running all
+around, and little painted festoons of flowers in decoration. The
+mattress and springs are covered with a most delightful mauve chintz, on
+which birds and flowers are patterned. There are several easy chairs
+cushioned with this chintz, and the window hangings are also of it. The
+chest of drawers is painted in the same manner. There are glass knobs on
+the drawers, and a sheet of plate glass covers the top of it. An old
+painting hangs above it.
+
+The open bookshelves are perfectly plain in construction. They are
+painted the same bluish-green, and the only decoration is the line of
+dark green about half an inch from the edge. Any woman who is skilful
+with her brush could decorate furniture of this kind, and I daresay many
+women could build it.
+
+There is another bedroom in this house, a room in red and blue. "Red and
+blue"--you shudder. I know it! But _such_ red and _such_ blue!
+
+Will you believe me when I assure you that this room is called cool and
+restful-looking by everyone who sees it? The walls are painted plain
+cream. The woodwork is white. The perfectly plain carpet rug is of a
+dull red that is the color of an old-fashioned rose--you know the roses
+that become lavender when they fade? The mantel is of Siena marble, and
+over it there is an old mirror with an upper panel painted in colors
+after the manner of some of those delightful old rooms found in France
+about the time of Louis XVI. If you have one very good picture and will
+use it in this way, inset over the mantel with a mirror below it, you
+will need no other pictures in your room.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM]
+
+The chintz used in this room is patterned in the rose red of the carpet
+and a dull cool blue, on a white ground. This chintz is used on the
+graceful sofa, the several chairs and the bed, which are ivory in tone.
+The hangings of the bed are lined with taffetas of rose red. The
+bedcover is of the same silk, and the inner curtains at the window are
+lined with it. The small table at the head of the bed, the kidney table
+beside the sofa, and the small cabinets near the mantel, are of
+mahogany. There is a mahogany writing-table placed at right angles to
+the windows.
+
+From this rose and blue bedroom you enter a little dressing-room that is
+also full of color. Here are the same cream walls, the dull red carpet,
+the old blue silk shades on lamps and candles, but the chintz is
+different: the ground is black, and gray parrots and paroquets swing in
+blue-green festoons of leaves and branches. The dressing-table is placed
+in front of the window, so that you can see yourself for better or for
+worse. There is a three-fold mirror of black and gold lacquer, and a
+Chinese cabinet of the same lacquer in the corner. The low seat before
+the dressing-table is covered with the chintz. A few costume prints hang
+on the wall. You can imagine how impossible it would be to be
+ill-tempered in such a cheerful place.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+OF DOORS, AND WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
+
+
+What a sense of intimacy, of security, encompasses one when ushered into
+a living room in which the door opens and _closes_! Who that has read
+Henry James's remarkable article on the vistas dear to the American
+hostess, our portiere-hung spaces, guiltless of doors and open to every
+draft, can fail to feel how much better our conversation might be were
+we not forever conscious that between our guests and the greedy ears of
+our servants there is nothing but a curtain! All that curtains ever were
+used for in the Eighteenth Century was as a means of shutting out drafts
+in large rooms inadequately heated by wood fires.
+
+How often do we see masses of draperies looped back and arranged with
+elaborate dust-catching tassels and fringes that mean nothing. These
+curtains do not even draw! I am sure that a good, well-designed door
+with a simple box-lock and hinges would be much less costly than velvet
+hangings. A door is not an ugly object, to be concealed for very shame,
+but a fine architectural detail of great value. Consider the French and
+Italian doors with their architraves. How fine they are, how imposing,
+how honest, and how well they compose!
+
+Of course, if your house has been built with open archways, you will
+need heavy curtains for them, but there are curtains _and_ curtains. If
+you need portieres at all, you need them to cut off one room from
+another, and so they should hang in straight folds. They should be just
+what they pretend to be--honest curtains with a duty to fulfil. For the
+simple house they may be made of velvet or velveteen in some neutral
+tone that is in harmony with the rugs and furnishings of the rooms that
+are to be divided. They should be double, usually, and a faded gilt gimp
+may be used as an outline or as a binding. There are also excellent
+fabrics reproducing old brocades and even old tapestries, but it is well
+to be careful about using these fabrics. There are machine-made
+"tapestries" of foliage designs in soft greens and tans and browns on a
+dark blue ground that are very pleasing. Many of these stuffs copy in
+color and design the verdure tapestries, and some of them have fine
+blues and greens suggestive of Gobelin. These stuffs are very wide and
+comparatively inexpensive. I thoroughly advise a stuff of this kind, but
+I heartily condemn the imitations of the old tapestries that are covered
+with large figures and intricate designs. These old tapestries are as
+distinguished for their colors, their textures, and their very crudities
+as for their supreme beauty of coloring. It would be foolish to imitate
+them.
+
+As for windows and their curtains--I could write a book about them! A
+window is such a gay, animate thing. By day it should be full of
+sunshine, and if it frames a view worth seeing, the view should be a
+part of it. By night the window should be hidden by soft curtains that
+have been drawn to the side during the sunshiny hours.
+
+In most houses there is somewhere a group of windows that calls for an
+especial kind of curtain. If these windows look out over a pleasant
+garden, or upon a vista of fields and trees, or even upon a striking
+sky-line of housetops, you will be wise to use a thin, sheer glass
+curtain through which you can look out, but which protects you from the
+gaze of passers-by. If your group of windows is so placed that there is
+no danger of people passing and looking in, then a short sash curtain of
+swiss muslin is all that you require, with inside curtains of some
+heavier fabric--chintz or linen or silk--that can be drawn at night.
+
+If you are building a new house I strongly advise you to have at least
+one room with a group of deep windows, made up of small panes of leaded
+glass, and a broad window-seat built beneath them. There is something so
+pleasant and mellow in leaded glass, particularly when the glass itself
+has an uneven, colorful quality. When windows are treated thus
+architecturally they need no glass curtains. They need only side
+curtains of some deep-toned fabric.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM]
+
+As for your single windows, when you are planning them you will be
+wise to have the sashes so placed that a broad sill will be possible.
+There is nothing pleasanter than a broad window sill at a convenient
+height from the floor. The tendency of American builders nowadays is to
+use two large glass sashes instead of the small or medium-sized panes of
+older times.
+
+This is very bad from the standpoint of the architect, because these
+huge squares of glass suggest holes in the wall, whereas the square or
+oblong panes with their straight frames and bars advertise their
+suitability. The housewife's objection to small panes is that they are
+harder to clean than the large ones, but this objection is not worthy of
+consideration. If we really wish to make our houses look as if they were
+built for permanency we should consider everything that makes for beauty
+and harmony and hominess. There is nothing more interesting than a
+cottage window sash of small square panes of glass unless it be the
+diamond-paned casement window of an old English house. Such windows are
+obviously windows. The huge sheets of plate glass that people are so
+proud of are all very well for shops, but they are seldom right in small
+houses.
+
+I remember seeing one plate glass window that was well worth while. It
+was in the mountain studio of an artist and it was fully eight by ten
+feet--one unbroken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista of
+mountain and valley. It goes without saying that such a window requires
+no curtain other than one that is to be drawn at night.
+
+The ideal treatment for the ordinary single window is a soft curtain of
+some thin white stuff hung flat and full against the glass. This curtain
+should have an inch and a half hem at the bottom and a narrow hem at the
+sides. It should be strung on a small brass rod, and should be placed as
+close to the glass as possible, leaving just enough space for the window
+shade beneath it. The curtain should hang in straight folds to the
+window sill, escaping it by half an inch or so.
+
+I hope it is not necessary for me to go into the matter of lace curtains
+here. I feel sure that no woman of really good taste could prefer a
+cheap curtain of imitation lace to a simple one of white swiss-muslin. I
+have never seen a house room that was too fine for a swiss-muslin
+curtain, though of course there are many rooms that would welcome no
+curtains whatever wherein the windows are their own excuse for being.
+Lace curtains, even if they may have cost a king's ransom, are in
+questionable taste, to put it mildly. Use all the lace you wish on your
+bed linen and table linen, but do not hang it up at your windows for
+passers-by to criticize.
+
+[Illustration: PRINTED LINEN CURTAINS OVER ROSE-COLORED SILK]
+
+Many women do not feel the need of inside curtains. Indeed, they are not
+necessary in all houses. They are very attractive when they are well
+hung, and they give the window a distinction and a decorative charm that
+is very valuable. I am using many photographs that show the use of
+inside curtains. You will observe that all of these windows have glass
+curtains of plain white muslin, no matter what the inside curtain may
+be.
+
+Chintz curtains are often hung with a valance about ten or twelve inches
+deep across the top of the window. These valances should be strung on a
+separate rod, so that the inside curtains may be pulled together if need
+be. The ruffled valance is more suitable for summer cottages and
+bedrooms than for more formal rooms. A fitted valance of chintz or
+brocade is quite dignified enough for a drawing-room or any other.
+
+In my bedroom I have used a printed linen with a flat valance. This
+printed linen is in soft tones of rose and green on a cream ground. The
+side curtains have a narrow fluted binding of rose-colored silk. Under
+these curtains are still other curtains of rose-colored shot silk, and
+beneath those are white muslin glass curtains. With such a window
+treatment the shot silk curtains are the ones that are drawn together at
+night, making a very soft, comforting sort of color arrangement. You
+will observe in this photograph that the panels between doors and
+windows are filled with mirrors that run the full length from the
+molding to the baseboard. This is a very beautiful setting for the
+windows, of course.
+
+It is well to remember that glass curtains should not be looped back.
+Inside curtains may be looped when there is no illogical break in the
+line. It is absurd to hang up curtains against the glass and then draw
+them away, for glass curtains are supposed to be a protection from the
+gaze of the passers-by. If you haven't passers-by you can pull your
+curtains to the side so that you may enjoy the out-of-doors. Do not lose
+sight of the fact that your windows are supposed to give you sunshine
+and air; if you drape them so that you get neither sunshine nor air you
+might as well block them up and do away with them entirely.
+
+To me the most amazing evidence of the advance of good taste is the
+revival of chintzes, printed linens, cottons and so forth, of the
+Eighteenth Century. Ten years ago it was almost impossible to find a
+well-designed cretonne; the beautiful chintzes as we know them were
+unknown. Now there are literally thousands of these excellent fabrics of
+old and new designs in the shops. The gay designs of the printed cottons
+that came to us from East India, a hundred years ago, and the fantastic
+chintzes known as Chinese Chippendale, that were in vogue when the Dutch
+East India Company supplied the world with its china and fabrics; the
+dainty French _toiles de Jouy_ that are reminiscent of Marie Antoinette
+and her bewitching apartments, and the printed linens of old England and
+later ones of the England of William Morris, all these are at our
+service. There are charming cottons to be had at as little as twenty
+cents a yard, printed from old patterns. There are linens hand-printed
+from old blocks that rival cut velvet in their lustrous color effect and
+cost almost as much. There are amazing fabrics that seem to have come
+from the land of the Arabian nights--they really come from Austria and
+are dubbed "Futurist" and "Cubist" and such. Some of them are inspiring,
+some of them are horrifying, but all of them are interesting. Old-time
+chintzes were usually very narrow, and light in ground, but the modern
+chintz is forty or fifty inches wide, with a ground of neutral tone that
+gives it distinction, and defies dust.
+
+When I began my work as a decorator of houses, my friends, astonished
+and just a little amused at my persistent use of chintz, called me the
+"Chintz decorator." The title pleased me, even though it was bestowed in
+fun, for my theory has always been that chintz, when properly used, is
+the most decorative and satisfactory of all fabrics. At first people
+objected to my bringing chintz into their houses because they had an
+idea it was poor and mean, and rather a doubtful expedient. On the
+contrary, I feel that it is infinitely, better to use good chintzes than
+inferior silks and damasks, just as simple engravings and prints are
+preferable to doubtful paintings. The effect is the thing!
+
+One of the chief objections to the charming fabric was that people felt
+it would become soiled easily, and would often have to be renewed, but
+in our vacuum-cleaned houses we no longer feel that it is necessary to
+have furniture and hangings that will "conceal dirt." We refuse to
+_have_ dirt! Of course, chintzes in rooms that will have hard wear
+should be carefully selected. They should be printed on linen, or some
+hard twilled fabric, and the ground color should be darker than when
+they are to be used in bedrooms. Many of the newer chintzes have dark
+grounds of blue, mauve, maroon or gray, and a still more recent chintz
+has a black ground with fantastic designs of the most delightful
+colorings. The black chintzes are reproductions of fabrics that were in
+vogue in 1830. They are very good in rooms that must be used a great
+deal, and they are very decorative. Some of them suggest old cut
+velvets--they are so soft and lustrous.
+
+My greatest difficulty in introducing chintzes here was to convert women
+who loved their plush and satin draperies to a simpler fabric. They were
+unwilling to give up the glories they knew for the charms they knew not.
+I convinced them by showing them results! My first large commission was
+the Colony Club, and I used chintzes throughout the Club: Chintzes of
+cool grapes and leaves in the roof garden, hand-blocked linens of many
+soft colors in the reading-room, rose-sprigged and English posy designs
+in the bedrooms, and so on throughout the building.
+
+Now I am using more chintz than anything else. It is as much at home in
+the New York drawing-room as in the country cottage. I can think of
+nothing more charming for a room in a country house than a sitting-room
+furnished with gray painted furniture and a lovely chintz.
+
+[Illustration: STRAIGHT HANGINGS OF ROSE AND YELLOW SHOT SILK]
+
+Not long ago I was asked to furnish a small sea-shore cottage. The
+whole thing had to be done in a month, and the only plan I had to work
+on was a batch of chintz samples that had been selected for the house. I
+extracted the colorings of walls, woodwork, furniture, etc., from these
+chintzes. Instead of buying new furniture I dragged down a lot of old
+things that had been relegated to the attic and painted them with a dull
+ground color and small designs adapted from the chintzes. The lighting
+fixtures, wall brackets, candle sticks, etc.--were of carved wood,
+painted in polychrome to match the general scheme. One chintz in
+particular I would like to have every woman see and enjoy. It had a
+ground of old blue, patterned regularly with little Persian "pears," the
+old rug design, you know. The effect of this simple chintz with white
+painted walls and furniture and woodwork and crisp white muslin glass
+curtains was delicious.
+
+The most satisfactory of all chintzes is the _Toile de Jouy_. The
+designs are interesting and well drawn, and very much more decorative
+than the designs one finds in ordinary silks and other materials. The
+chintzes must be appropriate to the uses of the room, well designed, in
+scale with the height of the ceilings, and so forth. It is well to
+remember that self-color rugs are most effective in chintz rooms. Wilton
+rugs woven in carpet sizes are to be had now at all first class
+furniture stores.
+
+Painted furniture is very popular nowadays and is especially delightful
+when used in chintz rooms. The furniture we see now is really a revival
+and reproduction of the old models made by Angelica Kaufman,
+Heppelwhite, and other furniture-makers of their period. The old
+furniture is rarely seen outside of museums nowadays, but it has been an
+inspiration to modern decorators who are seeking ideas for simple and
+charming furniture.
+
+A very attractive room can be made by taking unfinished pieces of
+furniture--that is, furniture that has not been stained or painted--and
+painting them a soft field color, and then adding decorations of
+bouquets or garlands, or birds, or baskets, reproducing parts of the
+design of the chintz used in the room. Of course, many of these patterns
+could be copied by a good draftsman only, but others are simple enough
+for anyone to attempt. For instance, I decorated a room in soft cream,
+gray, yellow and cornflower blue. The chintz had a cornflower design
+that repeated all these colors. I painted the furniture a very soft
+gray, and then painted little garlands of cornflowers in soft blues and
+gray-greens on each piece of furniture. The walls were painted a soft
+cream color. The carpet rug of tan was woven in one piece with a blue
+stripe in the border.
+
+The color illustrations of this book will give you a very good idea of
+how I use chintzes and painted furniture. One of the illustrations shows
+the use of a black chintz in the dressing-room of a city house. The
+chintz is covered with parrots which make gorgeous splashes of color on
+the black ground. The color of the foliage and leaves is greenish-blue,
+which shades into a dozen blues and greens. This greenish-blue tone has
+been used in the small things of the room. The chintz curtains are lined
+with silk of this tone, and the valance at the top of the group of
+windows is finished with a narrow silk fringe of this greenish-blue. The
+small candle shades, the shirred shade of the drop-light, and the
+cushion of the black lacquer chair are also of this blue.
+
+The walls of the room are a deep cream in tone, and there are a number
+of old French prints from some Eighteenth Century fashion journals hung
+on the cream ground. The dressing-table is placed against the windows,
+over the radiator, so that there is light and to spare for dressing.
+Half curtains of white muslin are shirred on the sashes back of the
+dressing-table. The quaint triplicate mirror is of black lacquer
+decorated with Chinese figures in gold, and the little, three-cornered
+cabinet in the corner is also of black and gold. The chintz is used as a
+covering for the dressing-seat.
+
+Another illustration shows the writing-corner of the bedroom which leads
+into this dressing-room. The walls and the rose-red carpet are the same
+in both rooms, as you see. This bedroom depends absolutely on the rose
+and blue chintz for its decoration. There is a quaint bed painted a pale
+gray, with rose-red taffeta coverlet. The bed curtains are of the chintz
+lined with the rose-red silk. There are several white-enamel chairs
+upholstered with the chintz, and there is a comfortable French couch
+with a kidney table of mahogany beside it. The corner of the room shown
+in the illustration is the most convenient writing-place. The desk is
+placed at right angles to the wall between the two windows. The small
+furnishings of the writing-desk repeat the queer blues and the rose-red
+of the chintz. A very comfortable stool with a cushion of old velvet is
+an added convenience.
+
+The chintz curtains at the windows hang in straight, full folds. A flat
+valance, cut the length of the design of the chintz, furnishes the top
+of the two windows. Some windows do not need these valances, but these
+windows are very high and need the connecting line of color. The long
+curtains are lined with the rose-red silk, which also shows in a narrow
+piping around the edges.
+
+[Illustration: MUSLIN GLASS CURTAINS IN THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE]
+
+The other two color illustrations are of the most popular room I have
+done, a bedroom and sitting room combined. Everyone likes the color plan
+of soft greens, mauve and lavender. There is a large day bed of painted
+wood, with mattress, springs and cushions covered with a chintz of mauve
+ground and gay birds. The rug is a self-toned rug of very soft green,
+and the walls are tinted with the palest of greens. The woodwork is
+white, and the furniture is painted a greenish-gray that is just a
+little deeper than pearl. A darker green line of paint outlines all
+the furniture, which is further decorated with prim little garlands
+of flowers painted in dull rose, blue, yellow and green.
+
+The mauve chintz is used for the curtains, and for the huge armchair and
+one or two painted chairs. There is a little footstool covered with
+brocaded violet velvet, with just a thread of green showing on the
+background. The lighting fixtures are of carved wood, painted in soft
+colors to match the garlands on the furniture, with shirred shades of
+lavender silk. Two lamps made of quaint old green jars with lavender
+decorations have shirred shades of the same silk. One of these lamps is
+used on the writing-table and the other on the little chest of drawers.
+
+This little chest of drawers, by the way, is about the simplest piece of
+furniture I can think of, for any girl who can use her brushes at all.
+An ordinary chest of drawers should be given several coats of
+paint--pale yellow, green or blue, as may be preferred. Then a thin
+stripe of a darker tone should be painted on it. This should be outlined
+in pencil and then painted with a deeper tone of green color; for
+instance, an orange or brown stripe should be used on pale yellow, and
+dark green or blue on the pale green.
+
+A detail of the wall paper or the chintz design may be outlined on the
+panels of the drawers and on the top of the chest by means of a stencil,
+and then painted with rather soft colors. The top of the chest should be
+covered with a piece of plate glass which will have the advantage of
+showing the design of the cover and of being easily cleaned.
+Old-fashioned glass knobs add interest to this piece of furniture. A
+mirror with a gilt frame, or an unframed painting similar to the one
+shown in the illustration would be very nice above the chest of drawers.
+
+[Illustration: HERE ARE MANY LIGHTING FIXTURES HARMONIOUSLY ASSEMBLED
+IN A DRAWING-ROOM]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
+
+
+In all the equipment of the modern house, I think there is nothing more
+difficult than the problem of artificial light. To have the light
+properly distributed so that the rooms may be suffused with just the
+proper glow, but never a glare; so that the base outlets for
+reading-lamps shall be at convenient angles, so that the wall lights
+shall be beautifully balanced,--all this means prodigious thought and
+care before the actual placing of the lights is accomplished.
+
+In domestic architecture light is usually provided for some special
+function; to dress by, to read by, or to eat by. If properly considered,
+there is no reason why one's lighting fixtures should not be beautiful
+as well as utilitarian. However, it is seldom indeed that one finds
+lights that serve the purposes of utility and beauty.
+
+I have rarely, I might say never, gone into a builder's house (and
+indeed I might say the same of many architects' houses) but that the
+first things to require changing to make the house amenable to modern
+American needs were the openings for lighting fixtures. Usually, side
+openings are placed much too near the trim of a door or window, so that
+no self-respecting bracket can be placed in the space without
+encroaching on the molding. Another favorite mistake is to place the two
+wall openings in a long wall or large panel so close together that no
+large picture or mirror or piece of furniture can be placed against that
+wall. There is also the tendency to place the openings too high, which
+always spoils a good room.
+
+I strongly advise the woman who is having a house built or re-arranged
+to lay out her electric light plan as early in the game as possible,
+with due consideration to the uses of each room. If there is a high
+chest of drawers for a certain wall, the size of it is just as important
+in planning the lighting fixtures for that wall as is the width of the
+fireplace important in the placing of the lights on the chimney-breast.
+I advise putting a liberal number of base openings in a room, for it
+costs little when the room is in embryo. Later on, when you find you can
+change your favorite table and chair to a better position to meet the
+inspiration of the completed room and that your reading-lamp can be
+moved, too, because the outlet is there ready for it, will come the
+compensating moments when you congratulate yourself on forethought.
+
+There are now, fortunately, few communities in America that have not
+electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a
+thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for
+years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the
+smaller the town the cheaper is the cost of electricity. This is not a
+cut-and-dried statement, but an observation from personal experience.
+The little town's electricity is usually a byproduct of some
+manufacturing plant, and current is often sold at so much per light per
+month, instead of being measured by meter. It is pleasant to think that
+many homes have bridged the smelly gap between candles and electricity
+in this magic fashion.
+
+Gas light is more difficult to manage than electricity, for there is
+always the cumbersome tube and the necessity for adding mechanical
+accessories before a good clear light is secured. Gas lamps are hideous,
+for some obscure reason, whereas there are hundreds of simple and
+excellent wall fixtures, drop lights and reading lamps to be bought
+already equipped for electricity. The electric wire is such an
+unobtrusive thing that it can be carried through a small hole in any
+good vase, or jar, and with a suitable shade you have an attractive and
+serviceable reading light. Candlesticks are easily equipped for
+electricity and are the most graceful of all fixtures for
+dressing-tables, bedside tables, tea tables, and such.
+
+It is well to remember that if a room is decorated in dark colors the
+light will be more readily absorbed than in a light-colored room, and
+you should select and place your lighting-fixtures accordingly. Bead
+covers, fringes and silk shades all obscure the light and re-absorb it,
+and so require a great force of light to illuminate properly.
+
+The subject of the selection of lighting-fixtures is limitless. There
+are so many fixtures to be had nowadays--good, bad and indifferent--that
+it were impossible to point out the merits and demerits of them all.
+There are copies of all the best lamps and lanterns of old Europe and
+many new designs that grew out of modern American needs. There are Louis
+XVI lanterns simple enough to fit well into many an American hallway,
+that offer excellent lessons in the simplicity of the master decorators
+of old times. Contrast one of these fine old lanterns with the mass of
+colored glass and beads and crude lines and curves of many modern hall
+lanterns. I like a ceiling bowl of crystal or alabaster with lights
+inside, for halls, but the expense of such a bowl is great. However, I
+recently saw a reproduction of an old alabaster bowl made of soft,
+cloudy glass, not of alabaster, which sold at a fraction of the price of
+the original, and it seemed to meet all the requirements.
+
+Of course, one may easily spend as much money on lighting-fixtures as on
+the remainder of the house, but that is no reason why people who must
+practise economy should admit ugly fixtures into their homes. There are
+always good and bad fixtures offered at the lowest and highest prices.
+You have no defense if you build your own house. If you are making the
+best of a rented house or an apartment, that is different. But good
+taste is sufficient armor against the snare of gaudy beads and cheap
+glass.
+
+[Illustration: DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT
+METAL]
+
+There was recently an exhibition in New York of the craftsmanship of
+the students of a certain school of design. There were some really
+beautiful lanterns and wall brackets and reading lamps shown, designed
+and executed by young women who are self supporting by day and can give
+only a few evening hours, or an occasional day, to the pursuit of their
+avocation. One hanging lantern of terra cotta was very fine indeed, and
+there were many notable fixtures. There must be easily tens of thousands
+of young people who are students in the various schools of design,
+manual training high schools and normal art schools.
+
+Why doesn't some far-seeing manufacturer of lighting-fixtures give these
+young people a chance to adapt the fine old French and Italian designs
+to our modern needs? Why not have your daughter or son copy such an
+object that has use and beauty, instead of encouraging the daubing of
+china or the piercing of brass that leads to nothing? And if you haven't
+a daughter or son, encourage the young artisan, your neighbor, who is
+trying to "find himself." Let him copy a few good old fixtures for you.
+They will cost no more than the gaudy vulgar fixtures that are sold in
+so many shops.
+
+The photograph shown on page 108 illustrates the possibility of using a
+number of lighting-fixtures in one room. The room shown is my own
+drawing-room. You will observe that in this picture there are many
+different lights. The two old French fixtures of wrought gilt, which
+flank the mantel mirror, hold wax candles. The two easy chairs have
+little tables beside them holding three-pronged silver candlesticks.
+There is also a small table holding an electric reading-lamp, made of a
+Chinese jar, with a shade of shirred silk. The chandelier is a charming
+old French affair of gracefully strung crystal globules. For a formal
+occasion the chandelier is lighted, but when we are few, we love the
+fire glow and candlelight. If we require a stronger light for reading
+there is the lamp.
+
+The photograph here given may suggest a superfluous number of lights,
+but the room itself does not. The wall fixtures are of gilt, you see,
+the candlesticks of silver, the chandelier of crystal and the lamp of
+Chinese porcelain and soft colored silk; so one is not conscious of the
+many lights. If all the lights were screened in the same way the effect
+would be different. I use this picture for this very reason--to show how
+many lights may be assembled and used in one place. In considering the
+placing of these lights, the firelight was not forgotten, nor the effect
+of the room by day when the sunlight floods in and these many fixtures
+become objects of decorative interest.
+
+A lamp, or a wall fixture, or a chandelier, or a candlestick, must be
+beautiful in itself--beautiful by sunlight,--if it is really successful.
+The soft glow of night light may make commonplace things beautiful, but
+the final test of a fixture is its effect in relation to the other
+furnishings of the room in sunlight.
+
+[Illustration: LIGHTING FIXTURES INSPIRED BY ADAM MIRRORS]
+
+The picture on page 118 shows the proper placing of wall fixtures when
+a large picture is the chief point of interest. These wall fixtures are
+particularly interesting because they are in the style of the Adam
+mirrors that hang on the recessed wall spaces flanking the chimney wall.
+This photograph is a lesson in the placing of objects of art. The large
+painting is beautifully spaced between the line of the mantel shelf and
+the lower line of the cornice. The wall fixtures are correctly placed,
+and anyone can see why they would be distressingly out of key if they
+were nearer the picture, or nearer the line of the chimney wall. The
+picture was considered as an important part of the chimney-piece before
+the openings for the fixtures were made.
+
+Another good lamp is shown on the small table in this picture. There is
+really a reading-lamp beside a comfortable couch, which cannot be seen
+in the picture. This lamp, like the one in the drawing-room, is made
+from a porcelain vase, with a shirred silk shade on a wire frame. An
+electric light cord is run through a hole bored for it. If electricity
+were not available, an oil receptacle of brass could be fitted into the
+vase and the beauty of the lamp would be the same.
+
+There are so many possibilities for making beautiful lamps of good jars
+and vases that it is surprising the shops still sell their frightful
+lamps covered with cabbage roses and dragons and monstrosities. A blue
+and white ginger jar, a copper loving-cup, or even a homely brown
+earthenware bean-pot, will make a good bowl for an oil or electric lamp,
+but of the dreadful bowls sold in the shops for the purpose the less
+said the better. How can one see beauty in a lurid bowl and shade of red
+glass! Better stick to wax candles the rest of your life than indulge in
+such a lamp!
+
+I know people plead that they have to buy what is offered; they cannot
+find simple lamps and hanging lanterns at small prices and so they
+_must_ buy bad ones. The manufacturer makes just the objects that people
+demand. So long as you accept these things, just so long will he make
+them. If all the women who complain about the hideous lighting-fixtures
+that are sold were to refuse absolutely to buy them, a few years would
+show a revolution in the designing of these things.
+
+There has been of late a vulgar fashion of having a huge mass of colored
+glass and beads suspended from near-brass chains in the dining-rooms of
+certain apartments and houses. These monstrous things are called
+"domes"--no one knows why. For the price of one of them you could buy a
+three pronged candlestick, equipped for electricity, for your
+dining-room table. It is the sight of hundreds of these dreadful "domes"
+in the lamp shops that gives one a feeling of discouragement. The
+humblest kitchen lamp of brass and tin would be beautiful by contrast.
+
+When all is said and done, we must come back to wax candles for the
+most beautiful light of all. Electricity is the most efficient, but
+candlelight is the most satisfying. For a drawing-room, or any formal
+room where a clear light is not required, wax candles are perfect. There
+are still a few houses left where candlesticks are things of use and are
+not banished to the shelves as curiosities. Certainly the clear, white
+light of electricity seems heaven-sent when one is dressing or working,
+but for between-hours, for the brief periods of rest, the only thing
+that rivals the comfort of candlelight is the glow of an open fire.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+HALLS AND STAIRCASES
+
+
+In early days the hall was the large formal room in which the main
+business of the house was transacted. It played the part of court-room,
+with the lord of the manor as judge. It was used for dining, living, and
+for whatever entertainment the house afforded. The stairs were not a
+part of it: they found a place as best they could. From the times of the
+primitive ladder of the adobe dwelling to the days of the spiral
+staircase carried up in the thickness of the wall, the stairway was
+always a primitive affair, born of necessity, with little claim to
+beauty.
+
+With the Renaissance in Italy came the forerunner of the modern entrance
+hall, with its accompanying stair. Considerations of comfort and beauty
+began to be observed. The Italian staircase grew into a magnificent
+affair, "L'escalier d'honneur," and often led only to the open galleries
+and _salons de parade_ of the next floor. I think the finest staircases
+in all the world are in the Genoese palaces. The grand staircase of the
+Renaissance may still be seen in many fine Italian palaces, notably in
+the Bargello in Florence. This staircase has been splendidly reproduced
+by Mrs. Gardner in Fenway Court, her Italian palace in Boston. This
+house is, by the way, the finest thing of its kind in America. Mrs.
+Gardner has the same far-seeing interest in the furtherance of an
+American appreciation of art as had the late Pierpont Morgan. She has
+assembled a magnificent collection of objects of art, and she opens her
+house to the public occasionally and to artists and designers
+frequently, that they may have the advantage of studying the treasures.
+
+To return to our staircases: In France the intermural, or spiral,
+staircase was considered quite splendid enough for all human needs, and
+in the finest chateaux of the French Renaissance one finds these
+practical staircases. Possibly in those troublous times the French
+architects planned for an aristocracy living under the influence of an
+inherited tradition of treachery and violence, they felt more secure in
+the isolation and ready command of a small, narrow staircase where one
+man well nigh single-handed could keep an army at bay. A large wide
+staircase of easy ascent might have meant many uneasy moments, with
+plots without and treachery within.
+
+Gradually, however, the old feudal entrance gave way to its
+sub-divisions of guardroom, vestibule, and salon. England was last to
+capitulate, and in the great Tudor houses still extant one finds the
+entrance door opening directly into the Hall. Often in these English
+houses there was a screen of very beautiful carved wood, behind which
+was the staircase. Inigo Jones introduced the Palladian style into
+England, and so brought in the many-storied central salon which served
+as means of access to all the house. The old English halls and
+staircases designed by Inigo Jones would be perfect for our more
+elaborate American country houses. The severe beauty of English paneling
+and the carving of newel-post and spindles are having a just revival.
+The pendulum swings--and there is nothing new under the sun!
+
+Wooden staircases with carved wooden balustrades were used oftenest in
+England, while in the French chateaux marble stairs with wrought-iron
+stair-rails are generally found. The perfection to which the art of iron
+work may be carried is familiar to everyone who knows the fairy-like
+iron work of Jean L'Amour in the Stanislas Palace at Nancy. This
+staircase in the Hotel de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France
+you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects.
+Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work
+door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this
+work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century.
+The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath
+their dignity and talent to devote themselves to designing the knobs of
+doors, the handles of commodes, the bronzes for the decorations of
+fireplaces, the shaping of hinges and locks. They were careful of
+details, and that is the secret of their supremacy. Nowadays, we may
+find a house with a beautiful hall, but the chances are it is spoiled by
+crudely designed fittings.
+
+I have written somewhat at length of the magnificent staircases of older
+countries and older times than our own, because somehow the subject is
+one that cannot be considered apart from its beginnings. All our halls
+and stairs, pretentious or not, have come to us from these superb
+efforts of masterly workmen, and perhaps that is why we feel
+instinctively that they must suggest a certain formality, and restraint.
+This feeling is indirectly a tribute to the architects who gave us such
+notable examples.
+
+We do not, however, have to go abroad for historic examples of stately
+halls and stairs. There are fine old houses scattered all through the
+old thirteen states that cannot be surpassed for dignity and simplicity.
+
+One of the best halls in America is that of "Westover," probably the
+most famous house in Virginia. This old house was built in 1737 by
+Colonel Byrd on the James River, where so many of the Colonial
+aristocrats of Virginia made their homes. The plan of the hall is
+suggestive of an old English manor house. The walls are beautifully
+paneled from an old English plan. The turned balusters are
+representative of the late Seventeenth or early Eighteenth Century. The
+fine old Jacobean chairs and tables have weathered two centuries, and
+are friendly to their new neighbors, Oriental rugs older than
+themselves. The staircase has two landings, on the first of which
+stands an old Grandfather's-clock, marking the beginning of a custom
+that obtains to this day.
+
+This hall is characteristic of American houses of the Colonial period,
+and indeed of the average large country house of to-day, for the
+straightaway hall, cutting the house squarely in two, is so much a part
+of our architecture that we use it as a standard. It is to be found,
+somewhat narrower and lower of ceiling, in New England farmhouses and in
+Eastern city houses. The Southern house of ante-bellum days varied the
+stair occasionally by patterning the magnificent winding staircases of
+old England, but the long hall open at both ends, and the long stair,
+with one or two landings, is characteristic of all old American houses.
+
+The customary finish for these old halls was a landscape wall paper, a
+painted wall broken into panels by molding, a high white wainscoting
+with white plaster above, or possibly a gay figured paper of
+questionable beauty. Mahogany furniture was characteristic of all these
+halls--a grandfather's-clock, a turn-top table, a number of dignified
+chairs, and a quaint old mirror. Sometimes there was a fireplace, but
+oftener there were doors opening evenly into various rooms of the first
+floor. These things are irreproachable to-day. Why did we have to go
+through the period of the walnut hat-rack and shiny oak hall furniture,
+only to return to our simplicities?
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE]
+
+When I planned the main hall of the Colony Club I determined to make it
+very Colonial, very American, very inviting and comfortable, the sort
+of hall you like to remember having seen in an old Virginia house. One
+enters from the street into a narrow hall that soon broadens into a
+spacious and lofty living-hall. The walls are, of course, white, the
+paneled spaces being broken by quaint old Colonial mirrors and
+appropriate lighting-fixtures. There is a great fireplace at one end of
+the hall, with a deep, chintz-covered davenport before it. There are
+also roomy chairs covered with the same delightful chintz, a green and
+white glazed English chintz that is as serviceable as it is beautiful.
+Besides the chintz-covered chairs, there are two old English chairs
+covered with English needlework. These chairs are among the treasures of
+the Club. There are several long mahogany tables, and many small tea
+tables. The rugs are of a spring green--I can think of no better name
+for it.
+
+In modern English and American houses of the smaller class the staircase
+is a part of an elongated entrance hall, and there is often no
+vestibule. In many of the more important new houses the stairs are
+divided from the entrance hall, so that one staircase will do for the
+servants, family and all, and the privacy of the entrance hall will be
+secured. In my own house in New York, you enter the square hall
+directly, and the staircase is in a second hall. This entrance hall is a
+real breathing-space, affording the visitor a few moments of rest and
+calm after the crowded streets of the city. The hall is quite large,
+with a color-plan of black and white and dark green. You will find a
+description of this hall in another chapter. I have used this same plan
+in many other city houses, with individual variations, of course. The
+serene quality of such a hall is very valuable in the city. If you
+introduced a lot of furniture the whole thing would be spoiled.
+
+I used an old porcelain stove, creamy and iridescent in glaze, in such a
+hall in an uptown house very similar to my own. The stove is very
+beautiful in itself, but it was used for use as well as beauty. It
+really holds a fire and furnishes an even heat. The stove was flanked by
+two pedestals surmounted with baskets spilling over with fruits, carved
+from wood and gilded and painted in polychrome. Everything in this hall
+is arranged with precision of balance. The stove is flanked by two
+pedestals. The niche that holds the stove and the corresponding niche on
+the other wall, which holds a statue, are flanked by narrow panels
+holding lighting-fixtures. The street wall is broken by doors and its
+two flanking windows. The opposite wall has a large central panel
+flanked by two glass doors, one leading to the stairway and the other to
+a closet, beneath it. Everything is "paired," with resulting effect of
+great formality and restraint. Very little furniture is required: A
+table to hold cards and notes, two low benches, and a wrought iron stand
+for umbrellas. The windows have curtains of Italian linen, coarse
+homespun stuff that is very lovely with white walls and woodwork. There
+are no pictures on the wall, but there are specially designed
+lighting-fixtures in the small panels that frame the niches.
+
+In several of the finer houses that have been built recently, notably
+that of Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, the staircase is enclosed, and is in no way
+an architectural feature, merely a possible means of communication when
+needed. This solution of the staircase problem has no doubt brought
+about our modern luxury of elevators. In another fine private house
+recently built the grand staircase only goes so far as the formal rooms
+of the second floor, and a small iron staircase enclosed in the wall
+leads to the intimate family rooms of the bedroom floor. The advantage
+of this gain in space can easily be appreciated. All the room usually
+taken up by the large wall of the staircase halls, and so forth, can be
+thrown into the bedrooms upstairs.
+
+The illustrations of the Bayard Thayer hall and staircase speak for
+themselves. Here lighting-fixtures, locks, hinges, have been carefully
+planned, so that the smallest part is worthy of the whole. This hall is
+representative of the finer private houses that are being built in
+America to-day. I had the pleasure of working with the architect and the
+owners here, and so was able to fit the decorations and furnishings of
+the hall to the house and to the requirements of the people who live in
+it.
+
+The present tendency of people who build small houses is to make a
+living-room of the hall. I am not in favor of this. I think the hall
+should be much more formal than the rest of the house. It is, after all,
+of public access, not only to the living-rooms but to the street. The
+servant who answers the front door must of necessity constantly traverse
+it, so must anyone--the guest or tradesman--admitted to the house. The
+furniture should be severe and architectural in design. A column or
+pedestal surmounted with a statue, a fountain, an old chest to hold
+carriage-rugs, a carved bench, a good table, a standing desk, may be
+used in a large house. Nothing more is admissible. In a small house a
+well-shaped table, a bench or so, possibly a wall clock, will be all
+that is necessary. The wall should be plain in treatment. The stair
+carpet should be plain in color. The floor should be bare, if in good
+condition, with just a small rug for softness at the door. A tiled floor
+is especially beautiful in a hall, if you can afford it.
+
+If your house happens to have the hall and living-room combined, and no
+vestibule, you can place a large screen near the entrance door and
+obtain a little more privacy. A standing screen of wooden panels is
+better than a folding screen, for the folding screen is rarely
+well-built, and will be blown down by the draft of the open door. A
+standing screen may be made by any carpenter, and painted or stained to
+match the woodwork of the room. A straight bench or settle placed
+against it will make the screened space seem more like a vestibule.
+
+Another objection to the staircase leading from the living-room of a
+small house is that such an arrangement makes it almost impossible to
+heat the house properly in winter. I have seen so many bewildered people
+whose spacious doorless downstairs rooms were a joy in summer, shivering
+all winter long in a polar atmosphere. The stair well seems to suck all
+the warmth from the living-room, and coal bills soar.
+
+Above all, don't try to make your hall "pretty." Remember that a hall is
+not a living-room, but a thoroughfare open and used by all the dwellers
+in the house. Don't be afraid of your halls and stairs looking "cold."
+It is a good idea to have one small space in your house where you can go
+and sit down and be calm and cool! You can't keep the rest of the house
+severe and cool looking, but here it is eminently appropriate and
+sensible. The visitor who enters a white and green hall and gets an
+effect of real reserve and coolness is all the more appreciative of the
+warmth and intimacy of the living-rooms of the house.
+
+After all, for simple American houses there is nothing better than a
+straightaway staircase of broad and easy treads, with one or two
+landings. There may be a broad landing with a window and window-seat, if
+there is a real view, but the landing-seat that is built for no especial
+purpose is worse than useless. It is not at all necessary to have the
+stairs carpeted, if the treads are broad enough, and turned balusters
+painted white with a mahogany hand rail are in scheme. Such a staircase
+adds much to the home-quality of a house.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE DRAWING-ROOM
+
+
+A drawing-room is the logical place for the elegancies of family life.
+The ideal drawing-room, to my mind, contains many comfortable chairs and
+sofas, many softly shaded lights by night, and plenty of sunshine by
+day, well-balanced mirrors set in simple paneled walls, and any number
+of small tables that may be brought out into the room if need be, and an
+open fire.
+
+The old idea of the drawing-room was a horrible apartment of stiffness
+and formality and discomfort. No wonder it was used only for weddings
+and funerals! The modern drawing-room is intended, primarily, as a place
+where a hostess may entertain her friends, and it must not be chill and
+uninviting, whatever else it may be. It should not be littered up with
+personal things--magazines, books and work-baskets and objects that
+belong in the living-room--but it welcomes flowers and _objets d'art_,
+collections of fans, or miniatures, or graceful mirrors, or old French
+prints, or enamels, or porcelains. It should be a place where people may
+converse without interruption from the children.
+
+Most houses, even of the smaller sort, have three day rooms--the
+dining-room, the parlor and the sitting-room, as they are usually
+called. People who appreciate more and more the joy of living have
+pulled hall and sitting-room together into one great family meeting
+place, leaving a small vestibule, decreased the size of the dining-room
+and built in many windows, so that it becomes almost an outdoor room,
+and given the parlor a little more dignity and serenity and its right
+name--the drawing-room.
+
+We use the terms drawing-room and _salon_ interchangeably in
+America--though we are a bit more timid of the _salon_--but there is a
+subtle difference between the two that is worth noting. The withdrawing
+room of old England was the quiet room to which the ladies retired,
+leaving their lords to the freer pleasures of the great hall. Indeed,
+the room began as a part of my lady's bedroom, but gradually came into
+its proper importance and took on a magnificence all its own. The
+_salon_ of France also began as a part of the great hall, or _grande
+salle_. Then came the need for an apartment for receiving and so the
+great bed chamber was divided into two parts, one a real sleeping-room
+and the other a _chambre de parade,_ with a great state bed for the
+occasional visitors of great position. The great bed, or _lit de
+parade_, was representative of all the salons of the time of Louis XIII.
+Gradually the owners of the more magnificent houses saw the opportunity
+for a series of salons, and so the state apartment was divided into two
+parts: a _salon de famille_, which afforded the family a certain
+privacy, and the _salon de compagnie_, which was sacred to a
+magnificent hospitality. And so the salon expanded until nowadays we use
+the word with awe, and appreciate its implication of brilliant
+conversation and exquisite decoration, of a radiant hostess, an amusing
+and distinguished circle of people. The word has a graciousness, a
+challenge that we fear. If we have not just the right house we should
+not dare risk belittling our pleasant drawing-room by dubbing it
+"salon." In short, a drawing-room may be a part of any well regulated
+house. A salon is largely a matter of spirit and cleverness.
+
+A drawing-room has no place in the house where there is no other
+living-room. Indeed, if there are many children, and the house is of
+moderate size, I think a number of small day rooms are vastly better
+than the two usual rooms, living-room and drawing-room, because only in
+this way can the various members of the family have a chance at any
+privacy. The one large room so necessary for the gala occasions of a
+large family may be the dining-room, for here it will be easy to push
+back tables and chairs for the occasion. If the children have a nursery,
+and mother has a small sitting-room, and father has a little room for
+books and writing, a living-room may be eliminated in favor of a small
+formal room for visitors and talk.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM SHOULD BE INTIMATE IN SPIRIT]
+
+No matter how large your drawing-room may be, keep it intimate in
+spirit. There should be a dozen conversation centers in a large room.
+There should be one or more sofas, with comfortable chairs pulled up
+beside them. No one chair should be isolated, for some bashful person
+who doesn't talk well anyway is sure to take the most remote chair and
+make herself miserable. I have seen a shy young woman completely changed
+because she happened to sit upon a certain deep cushioned sofa of
+rose-colored damask. Whether it was the rose color, or the enforced
+relaxation the sofa induced, or the proximity of some very charming
+people in comfortable chairs beside her, or all of these things--I don't
+know! But she found herself. She found herself gay and happy and
+unafraid. I am sure her personality flowered from that hour on. If she
+had been left to herself she would have taken a stiff chair in a far
+corner, and she would have been miserable and self-conscious. I believe
+most firmly in the magic power of inanimate objects!
+
+Don't litter your drawing-room with bric-a-brac. Who hasn't seen what I
+can best describe as a souvenir drawing-room, a room filled with
+curiosities from everywhere! I shall never forget doing a drawing-room
+for a woman of no taste. I persuaded her to put away her heavy velvets
+and gilt fringes and to have one light and spacious room in the house.
+She agreed. We worked out a chintz drawing-room that was delicious. I
+was very happy over it and you can imagine my amazement when she came to
+me and said, "But Miss de Wolfe, what am I to do with my blue satin
+tidies?"
+
+In my own drawing-room I have so many objects of art, and yet I think
+you will agree with me that the room has a great serenity. Over the
+little desk in one corner I have my collection of old miniatures and
+fans of the golden days of the French court. There are ever so many
+vases and bowls for flowers, _but they are used_. There are dozens of
+lighting-fixtures, brackets, and lamps, and a chandelier, and many
+candlesticks, and they are used, also. Somehow, when a beautiful object
+becomes a useful object, it takes its place in the general scheme of
+things and does not disturb the eye.
+
+The ideal drawing-room has a real fireplace, with a wood fire when there
+is excuse for it. An open fire is almost as great an attribute to a
+drawing-room as a tactful hostess; it puts you at ease, instantly, and
+gives you poise. And just as an open fire and sunshine make for ease, so
+do well placed mirrors make for elegance. Use your mirrors as decorative
+panels, not only for the purpose of looking at yourself in them, and you
+will multiply the pleasures of your room. I have the wall space between
+mantel and frieze-line filled with a large mirror, in my New York
+drawing-room, and the two narrow panels between the front windows are
+filled with long narrow mirrors that reflect the color and charm of the
+room. Whenever you can manage it, place your mirror so that it will
+reflect some particularly nice object.
+
+Given plenty of chairs and sofas, and a few small tables to hold lights
+and flowers, you will need very little other furniture in the
+drawing-room. You will need a writing-table, but a very small and
+orderly one. The drawing room desk may be very elegant in design and
+equipment, for it must be a part of the decoration of the room, and it
+must be always immaculate for the visitor who wants to write a note. The
+members of the family are supposed to use their own desks, leaving this
+one for social emergencies. A good desk is a godsend in a drawing-room,
+it makes a room that is usually cold and formal at once more livable and
+more intimate. In my own drawing-room I have a small French
+writing-table placed near a window, so that the light falls over one's
+left shoulder. The small black lacquer desks that are now being
+reproduced from old models would be excellent desks for drawing-rooms,
+because they not only offer service, as all furniture should, but are
+beautiful in themselves. Many of the small tables of walnut and mahogany
+that are sold as dressing-tables might be used as writing-tables in
+formal rooms, if the mirrors were eliminated.
+
+[Illustration: THE FINE FORMALITY OF WELL-PLACED PANELING]
+
+There is a great difference in opinion as to the placing of the piano in
+the drawing-room. I think it belongs in the living-room, if it is in
+constant use, though of course it is very convenient to have it near by
+the one big room, be it drawing-room or dining-room, when a small dance
+is planned. I am going to admit that in my opinion there is nothing more
+abused than the piano, I have no piano in my own house in New York. I
+love music--but I am not a musician, and so I do not expose myself to
+the merciless banging of chance callers. Besides, my house is quite
+small and a good piano would dwarf the other furnishings of my rooms. I
+think pianos are for musicians, not strummers, who spoil all chance for
+any real conversation. If you are fortunate enough to have a musician in
+your family, that is different. Go ahead and give him a music room.
+Musicians are not born every day, but lovers of music are everywhere,
+and I for one am heartily in favor of doing away with the old custom of
+teaching every child to bang a little, and instead, teaching him to
+_listen_ to music. Oh, the crimes that are committed against music in
+American parlors! I prefer the good mechanical cabinet that offers us
+"canned" music to the manual exercise of people who insist on playing
+wherever they see an open piano. Of course the mechanical instrument is
+new, and therefore, subject to much criticism from a decorative
+standpoint, but the music is much better than the amateur's. We are
+still turning up our noses a little at the mechanical piano players, but
+if we will use our common sense we must admit that a new order of things
+has come to pass, and the new "canned" music is not to be despised.
+Certainly if the instrument displeases you, you can say so, but if a
+misguided friend elects to strum on your piano you are helpless. So I
+have no piano in my New York house. I have a cabinet of "canned" music
+that can be turned on for small dances when need be, and that can be
+hidden in a closet between times. Why not?
+
+But suppose you have a piano, or need one: do give it a chance! Its very
+size makes it tremendously important, and if you load it with senseless
+fringed scarfs and bric-a-brac you make it the ugliest thing in your
+room. Give it the best place possible, against an inside wall,
+preferably. I saw a new house lately where the placing of the piano had
+been considered by the architect when the house was planned. There was a
+mezzanine floor overhanging the great living-room, and one end of this
+had been made into a piano alcove, a sort of modern minstrel gallery.
+The musician who used the piano was very happy, for your real musician
+loves a certain solitude, and those of us who listened to his music in
+the great room below were happy because the maker of the music was far
+enough away from us. We could appreciate the music and forget the
+mechanics of it. For a concert, or a small dance, this balcony
+music-room would be most convenient. Another good place for the piano is
+a sort of alcove, or small room opening from the large living or
+drawing-room, where the piano and a few chairs may be placed. Of course
+if you are to have a real music-room, then there are great
+possibilities.
+
+A piano may be a princely thing, properly built and decorated. The old
+spinets and harpsichords, with their charming inlaid cases, were
+beautiful, but they gave forth only tinkly sounds. Now we have a
+magnificent mechanism, but the case which encloses it is too often
+hideous.
+
+There is an old double-banked harpsichord of the early Eighteenth
+Century in the Morgan collection at the Metropolitan Museum that would
+be a fine form for a piano, if it would hold the "works." It is long and
+narrow, fitting against the wall so that it really takes up very little
+room. The case is painted a soft dark gray and outlined in darker gray,
+and the panels and the long top are in soft colors. The legs are carved
+and pointed in polychrome. This harpsichord was made when the beauty of
+an object was of as real importance as the mechanical perfection.
+
+Occasionally one sees a modern piano that has been decorated by an
+artist. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Alma Tadema, and many of the other
+English artists of our generation have made beautiful pianos. Sir Robert
+Lorimer recently designed a piano that was decorated, inside and out, by
+Mrs. Traquair. From time to time a great artist interests himself in
+designing and decorating a piano, but the rank and file, when they
+decide to build an extraordinary piano, achieve lumpy masses of wood
+covered with impossible nymphs and too-realistic flowers, pianos
+suggestive of thin and sentimental tunes, but never of _music_.
+
+When you are furnishing your music-room or drawing-room, be careful
+always of your colors. Remember that not only must the room be beautiful
+in its broad spaces and long lines and soft colors, but it must be a
+background for the gala gowns of women. I once saw a music-room that was
+deliberately planned as a background to the gay colors of women's gowns
+and the heavy black masses of men's evening clothes, a soft shimmering
+green and cream room that was incomplete and cold when empty of the
+color of costume. Such a room must have an architectural flavor. The
+keynote must be elegant simplicity and aristocratic reserve. Walls
+broken into panels, and panels in turn broken by lighting-fixtures, a
+polished floor, a well-considered ceiling, any number of chairs, and the
+room is furnished. This room, indeed, may evolve into a _salon_.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE LIVING-ROOM
+
+
+The living-room! Shut your eyes a minute and think what that means: A
+room to _live_ in, suited to all human needs; to be sick or sorry or
+glad in, as the day's happenings may be; where one may come back from
+far-reaching ways, for "East or West, Hame's best."
+
+Listen a minute while I tell you how I see such a room: Big and restful,
+making for comfort first and always; a little shabby here and there,
+perhaps, but all the more satisfactory for that--like an old shoe that
+goes on easily. Lots of light by night, and not too much drapery to shut
+out the sunlight by day. Big, welcoming chairs, rather sprawly, and long
+sofas. A big fire blazing on the open hearth. Perhaps, if we are very
+lucky we may have some old logs from long since foundered ships, that
+will flame blue and rose and green. He must indeed be of a poor spirit
+who cannot call all sorts of visions from such a flame!
+
+[Illustration: THE LIVING-ROOM IN THE C.W. HARKNESS HOUSE AT MORRISTOWN,
+NEW JERSEY]
+
+There should be a certain amount of order, because you cannot really
+rest in a disorderly place, but there should be none of the formality of
+the drawing-room. Formality should be used as a sort of foundation on
+which the pleasant workaday business of the living-room is planned.
+The living-room should always have a flavor of the main hobby of the
+family, whether it be books, or music, or sport, or what not. If you
+live in the real country there should be nothing in the room too good
+for all moods and all weather--no need to think of muddy boots or wet
+riding-clothes or the dogs that have run through the dripping fields.
+
+I wonder if half the fathers and mothers in creation know just what it
+means later on to the boys and girls going out from their roof-tree to
+have the memory of such a living-room?
+
+A living-room may be a simple place used for all the purposes of living,
+or it may be merely an official clearing-house for family moods, one of
+a dozen other living apartments. The living-room in the modern bungalow,
+for instance, is often dining-room, library, hall, music-room, filling
+all the needs of the family, while in a large country or city house
+there may be the central family room, and ever so many little rooms that
+grow out of the overflow needs--the writing-room, the tea room that is
+also sun and breakfast room, the music-room and the library. In more
+elaborate houses there are also the great hall, the formal drawing-room
+and music-room, and the intimate boudoir. To all these should be given a
+goodly measure of comfort.
+
+Whether it be one or a dozen rooms, the spirit of it must be the
+same--it must offer comfort, order, and beauty to be worth living in.
+
+Just as when a large family is to be considered I believe in one big
+meeting-room and a number of smaller rooms for special purposes, so I
+believe that when a family is very small there should be one great
+living-room and no other day room. Two young people who purpose to live
+in a small cottage or a bungalow will be wise to have this one big room
+that will serve for dining-room, living-room, and all. The same house
+divided into a number of tiny rooms would suffocate them: there would be
+no breathing-space. In furnishing such a room it is well to beware of
+_sets_ of things: of six dining-room chairs, of the conventional
+dining-table, serving-table, and china closet. I advocate the use of a
+long table--four by seven feet is not too long--and a number of good
+chairs that are alike in style, but not _exactly_ alike.
+
+The chairs should not be the conventional dining-chairs. The idea that
+the only dining-room chair possible is a perfectly straight up and down
+stiff-backed chair is absurd. In a large house where there is a family
+dining-room the chairs should be alike, but in an informal living-room
+the chairs may be perfectly comfortable and useful between meals and
+serve the purposes of dining-room chairs when necessary. For instance,
+with a long oak table built on the lines of the old English refectory
+tables you might have a long bench of oak and cane; a large high back
+chair with arms of the Stuart order, that is, with graceful, turned
+legs, carved frame work, and cane insets; two Cromwellian chairs covered
+in some good stuff; and two or three straight oak-and-cane chairs of a
+simple type. These chairs may be used for various purposes between
+meals, and will not give the room the stiff and formal air that
+straight-backed chairs invariably produce. One could imagine this table
+drawn up to a window-seat, with bench and chairs beside it, and a dozen
+cheerful people around it. There will be little chance of stiffness at
+such a dining-table.
+
+It should be remembered that when a part of the living-room is used for
+meals, the things that suggest dining should be kept out of sight
+between meals. All the china and so forth should be kept in the pantry
+or in kitchen cupboards. The table may be left bare between meals.
+
+In a room of this kind the furniture should be kept close to the walls,
+leaving all the space possible for moving around in the center of the
+room. The book shelves should be flat against the wall; there should be
+a desk, not too clumsy in build near the book shelves or at right angles
+to some window; there should be a sofa of some kind near the fireplace
+with a small table at the head of it, which may be used for tea or books
+or what not. If there is a piano, it should be very carefully placed so
+that it will not dominate the room, and so that the people who will
+listen to the music may gather in the opposite corner of the room. Of
+course, a living-room of this kind is the jolliest place in the world
+when things go smoothly, but there are times when a little room is a
+very necessary place to retreat. This little room may be the study,
+library, or a tea room, but it is worth while sacrificing your smallest
+bedroom in order to have one small place of retreat.
+
+If you can have a number of living-rooms, you can follow more definite
+schemes of decoration. If you have a little enclosed piazza you can make
+a breakfast room or a trellis room of it, or by bringing in many shelves
+and filling them with flowers you can make the place a delightful little
+flower box of a room for tea and talk.
+
+Of course, if you live in the real country you will be able to use your
+garden and your verandas as additional living-rooms. With a big
+living-porch, the one indoor living-room may become a quiet library, for
+instance. But if you haven't a garden or a sun-room, you should do all
+in your power to bring the sunshine and gaiety into the living-room, and
+take your books and quiet elsewhere. A library eight by ten feet, with
+shelves all the way around and up and down, and two comfortable chairs,
+and one or two windows, will be a most satisfactory library. If the room
+is to be used for reading smallness doesn't matter, you see.
+
+We Americans love books--popular books!--and we have had sense enough to
+bring them into our living-rooms, and enjoy them. But when you begin
+calling a room a library it should mean something more than a small
+mahogany bookcase with a hundred volumes hidden behind glass doors. I
+think there is nothing more amusing than the unused library of the
+_nouveau riche_, the pretentious room with its monumental bookcases and
+its slick area of glass doors and its thousands of unread volumes, caged
+eternally in their indecent newness.
+
+Some day when you have nothing better to do visit the _de luxe_ book
+shops of some department store, and then visit a dusky old second hand
+shop, and you will see what books can do! In the _de luxe_ shop they are
+leathern covered things, gaudy and snobbish in their newness. In the old
+book shop they are books that have lived, books that invite you to
+browse. You'd rather have them with all their germs and dust than the
+soulless tomes of uncut pages. You can judge people pretty well by their
+books, and the wear and tear of them.
+
+Open shelves are good enough for any house in these days of vacuum
+cleaners. In the Bayard Thayer house I had the pleasure of furnishing a
+wonderful library of superb paneled walls of mahogany of a velvety
+softness, not the bright red wood of commerce. The open bookshelves were
+architecturally planned, they filled shallow recesses in the wall, and
+when the books were placed upon them they formed a glowing tapestry of
+bindings, flush with the main wall.
+
+I think the nicest living-room I know is the reading room of the Colony
+Club. I never enjoyed making a room more, and when the Club was first
+opened I was delighted to hear one woman remark to another: "Doesn't it
+make you feel that it has been loved and lived in for years?"
+
+The room is large and almost square. The walls are paneled in cream and
+white, with the classic mantel and mirror treatment of the Adam period.
+The large carpet rug is of one tone, a soft green blue. The bookcases
+which run around the walls are of mahogany, as are the small, occasional
+tables, and the large table in the center of the room. In this room I
+have successfully exploded the old theory that all furniture in a well
+planned room must be of the same kind! In this room there are several
+Marlborough chairs, a davenport and a semi-circular fireside seat
+upholstered in a soft green leather, several chairs covered in a chintz
+of bird and blossom design, and other chairs covered with old English
+needle-work. The effect is not discord, but harmony. Perhaps it is not
+wise to advise the use of many colors and fabrics unless one has had
+experience in the combining of many tones and hues, but if you are
+careful to keep your walls and floors in subdued tones, you may have
+great license in the selecting of hangings and chair coverings and
+ornament.
+
+I gave great attention to the details of this room. Under the simple
+mantel shelf there is inset a small panel of blue and white Wedgwood. On
+the mantel there are two jars of Chinese porcelain, and between them a
+bronze jardiniere of the Adam period; four figures holding a shallow,
+oblong tray, which is filled with flowers. The lamp on the center-table
+is made of a hawthorn jar, with a flaring shade. There are many low
+tables scattered through the room and beside every chair is a
+reading-lamp easily adjusted to any angle. The fireplace fittings are
+simple old brasses of the Colonial period. There is only one picture in
+this room, and that is the portrait of a long gone lady, framed in a
+carved gilt frame, and hung against the huge wall-mirror which is
+opposite the fireplace end of the room.
+
+I believe, given plenty of light and air, that comfortable chairs and
+good tables go further toward making a living-room comfortable than
+anything else. In the Harkness living-room you will see this theory
+proven. There are chairs and tables of all sizes, from the great sofas
+to the little footstools, from the huge Italian tables to the little
+table especially made to hold a few flower pots. Wherever there is a
+large table there is a long sofa or a few big chairs; wherever there is
+a lone chair there is a small table to hold a reading-light, or flowers,
+or what not. The great size of the room, the fine English ceiling of
+modeled plaster, the generous fireplace with its paneled over-mantel,
+the groups of windows, all these architectural details go far toward
+making the room a success. The comfortable chairs and sofas and the ever
+useful tables do the rest.
+
+So many people ask me: How shall I furnish my living-room? What paper
+shall I use on the walls? What woodwork and curtains--and rugs? One
+woman asked me what books she should buy!
+
+Your living-room should grow out of the needs of your daily life. There
+could be no two living-rooms exactly alike in scheme if they were lived
+in. You will have to decide on the wall colors and such things, it is
+true, but the rest of the room should grow of itself. You will not make
+the mistake of using a dark paper of heavy figures if you are going to
+use many pictures and books, for instance. You will not use a gay
+bed-roomy paper covered with flowers and birds. You will know without
+being told that your wall colors must be neutral: that your woodwork
+must be stained and waxed, or painted some soft tone of your wall color.
+Then, let the rugs and curtains and things go until you decide you have
+to have them. The room will gradually find itself, though it may take
+years and heartache and a certain self-confession of inadequacy. It will
+express your life, if you use it, so be careful of the life you live in
+it!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
+
+
+In some strange way the word _boudoir_ has lost its proper significance.
+People generally think of it as a highfalutin' name for the bedroom, or
+for a dressing-room, whereas really a proper _boudoir_ is the small
+personal sitting-room of a woman of many interests. It began in old
+France as the private sitting-room of the mistress of the house, a part
+of the bedroom suite, and it has evolved into a sort of office _de luxe_
+where the house mistress spends her precious mornings, plans the routine
+of her household for the day, writes her letters, interviews her
+servants, and so forth. The boudoir has a certain suggestion of intimacy
+because it is a personal and not a general room, but while it may be
+used as a lounging-place occasionally, it is also a thoroughly dignified
+room where a woman may receive her chosen friends when she pleases.
+Nothing more ridiculous has ever happened than the vogue of the
+so-called "boudoir cap," which is really suited only to one's bedroom or
+dressing-room. Such misnomers lead to a mistaken idea of the real
+meaning of the word.
+
+Some of the Eighteenth Century boudoirs were extremely small. I recall
+one charming little room in an old French house that was barely eight
+feet by eleven, but it contained a fireplace, two windows, a day bed,
+one of those graceful desks known as a _bonheur du jour_, and two
+arm-chairs. An extremely symmetrical arrangement of the room gave a
+sense of order, and order always suggests space. One wall was broken by
+the fireplace, the wall spaces on each side of it being paneled with
+narrow moldings. The space above the mantel was filled with a mirror. On
+the wall opposite the fireplace there was a broad paneling of the same
+width filled with a mirror from baseboard to ceiling. In front of this
+mirror was placed the charming desk. On each side of the long mirror
+were two windows exactly opposite the two long panels of the mantel
+wall. The two narrow end walls were treated as single panels, the day
+bed being placed flat against one of them, while the other was broken by
+a door which led to a little ante-chamber. Old gilt appliques holding
+candles flanked both mantel mirror and desk mirror. Two of those
+graceful chairs of the Louis Seize period and a small footstool
+completed the furnishing of this room.
+
+[Illustration: MISS ANNE MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. BOUDOIR]
+
+The boudoir should always be a small room, because in no other way can
+you gain a sense of intimacy. Here you may have all the luxury and
+elegance you like, you may stick to white paint and simple chintzes, or
+you may indulge your passion for pale-colored silks and lace frills.
+Here, of all places, you have a right to express your sense of luxury
+and comfort. The boudoir furnishings are borrowed from both bedroom
+and drawing-room traditions. There are certain things that are used in
+the bedroom that would be ridiculous in the drawing-room, and yet are
+quite at home in the boudoir. For instance, the _chaise-longue_ is part
+of the bedroom furnishing in most modern houses, and it may also be used
+in the boudoir, but in the drawing-room it would be a violation of good
+taste, because the suggestion of intimacy is too evident.
+
+Nothing is more comfortable in a boudoir than a day bed. It serves so
+many purposes. In my own house my boudoir is also my sitting-room, and I
+have a large Louis XV day bed there which may be used by an overnight
+guest if necessary. In a small house the boudoir fitted with a day bed
+becomes a guest-room on occasion. I always put two or three of these day
+beds in any country house I am doing, because I have found them so
+admirable and useful in my own house.
+
+As you will see by the photographs, this bed in no way resembles an
+ordinary bed in the daytime, and it seems to me to be a much better
+solution of the extra-bed problem than the mechanical folding-bed, which
+is always hideous and usually dangerous. A good day bed may be designed
+to fit into any room. This one of mine is of carved walnut, a very
+graceful one that I found in France.
+
+In a small sitting-room in an uptown house, an illustration of which is
+shown, I had a day bed made of white wood that was painted to match the
+chintzes of the room. The mattress and springs were covered with a bird
+chintz on a mauve ground, and the pillows were all covered with the same
+stuff. The frame of the bed was painted cream and decorated with a dull
+green line and small garlands of flowers extracted from the design of
+the chintz. When the mattress and springs have been properly covered
+with damask, or chintz, or whatever you choose to use, there is no
+suggestion of the ordinary bed.
+
+I suppose there isn't a more charming room in New York than Miss Anne
+Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir. The everyday sitting-room of a woman of many
+interests, it is radiant with color and individuality, as rare rugs are
+radiant, as jewels are radiant. The cream walls, with their carved
+moldings and graceful panelings, are a pleasant background for all this
+shimmering color. The carvings and moldings are pointed in blue. The
+floor is covered with a Persian rug which glows with all the soft tones
+of the old Persian dye-pots. The day bed, a few of the chairs, and the
+chest of drawers, are of a soft brown walnut. There are other chairs
+covered with Louis XVI tapestries, brocade and needlework, quite in
+harmony with the modern chintz of the day bed and the hangings. Above
+the day bed there is a portrait of a lady, hung by wires covered with
+shirred blue ribbons, and this blue is again used in an old porcelain
+lamp jar on the bedside table. The whole room might have been inspired
+by the lady of the portrait, so essentially is it the room of a
+fastidious woman.
+
+But to go back to my own boudoir: it is really sitting-room, library,
+and rest-room combined, a home room very much like my down-town office
+in the conveniences it offers. In the early morning it is my office,
+where I plan the day's routine and consult my servants. In the rare
+evenings when I may give myself up to solid comfort and a new book it
+becomes a haven of refuge after the business of the day. When I choose
+to work at home with my secretary, it is as business-like a place as my
+down-town office. It is a sort of room of all trades, and good for each
+of them.
+
+The walls of the room are pretty well filled with built-in bookshelves,
+windows, chimney-piece, and doors, but there is one long wall space for
+the day bed and another for the old secretary that holds my porcelain
+figurines. The room is really quite small, but by making the furniture
+keep its place against the walls an effect of spaciousness has been
+obtained.
+
+The walls of the room are painted the palest of egg-shell blue-green.
+The woodwork is ivory white, with applied decorations of sculptured
+white marble. The floor is entirely covered with a carpet rug of jade
+green velvet, and there is a smaller Persian rug of the soft,
+indescribable colors of the Orient. The day bed, of which I spoke in an
+earlier paragraph, is covered with an old brocade, gray-green figures on
+a black ground. A large armchair is also covered with the brocade, and
+the window curtains, which cannot be seen in the picture, are of black
+chintz, printed with birds of pale greens and blues and grays, with
+beaks of rose-red.
+
+There is always a possibility for rose-red in my rooms, I love it so. I
+manage the other colors so that they will admit a chair or a stool or a
+bowl of rose color. In this room the two chairs beside the couch are
+covered with rose-colored damask, and this brings out the rose in the
+rug and in the chintz, and accents the deep red note of the leathern
+book-bindings. The rose red is subordinated to the importance of the
+book-bindings in this room, but there is still opportunity for its use
+in so many small things.
+
+In this room, you will notice, I have used open shelves for my books,
+and the old secretary which was once a combination desk and bookcase, is
+used for the display of my little treasures of porcelain and china, and
+its drawers are used for papers and prints. The built in shelves have
+cupboards beneath them for the flimsy papers and pamphlets that do not
+belong on open shelves. If the same room were pressed into service as a
+guest room I should use the drawers in the secretary instead of the
+usual chest of drawers, and the day bed for sleeping.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. _LIT DE REPOS_]
+
+The writing-table is placed at right angles to one of the book-filled
+panels between the front windows. I have used a writing-table in this
+room because I like tables better than heavy desks, and because in this
+small apartment a desk would seem heavy and ponderous. The fittings
+of the desk are of dark red leather, like that of many of the
+book-bindings, and the personal touch that makes the desk _mine_ is a
+bowl of roses. Between the two windows in the shallow recess, I have
+placed an aquarium, a recent acquisition that delights my soul. The
+aquarium is simply an oblong glass box mounted on a teak stand, with a
+tracery of teak carving outlining the box, which is the home of the most
+gorgeous fan-tailed goldfish. There are water plants in the box, too,
+and funny little Chinese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my
+little people happily--my dogs and my birds and my fish. Wee Toi, my
+little Chinese dog, has a little house all his own, an old Chinese
+lacquer box with a canopy top and little gold bells. It was once the
+shrine of some little Chinese god, I suppose, but Wee Toi is very happy
+in it, and you can see that it was meant for him in the beginning. It
+sits by the fireplace and gives the room an air of real hominess. I was
+so pleased with the aquarium and the Chinese lacquer bed for Wee Toi
+that I devised a birdcage to go with them, a square cage of gilt wires,
+with a black lacquer pointed canopy top, with little gilt bells at the
+pointed eaves. The cage is fixed to a shallow lacquer tray, and is the
+nicest place you can imagine for a whistling bullfinch to live in. I
+suppose I could have a Persian cat on a gorgeous cushion to complete the
+place, but I can't admit cats into the room. I plan gorgeous cushions
+for _other_ people's "little people," when they happen to be cats.
+
+Miss Marbury's sitting-room is on the next floor, exactly like mine,
+architecturally, but we have worked them out differently. I think there
+is nothing more interesting than the study of the different developments
+of a series of similar rooms, for instance, a dozen drawing-rooms,
+twelve stories deep, in a modern apartment house! Each room is left by
+the builder with the same arrangement of doors and windows, the same
+wall spaces and moldings, the same opportunity for good or bad
+development. It isn't often our luck to see all twelve of the rooms, but
+sometimes we see three or four of them, and how amazingly different they
+are! How amusing is the suggestion of personality, or lack of it!
+
+Now in these two sitting-rooms in our house the rooms are exactly the
+same in size, in exposure, in the placing of doors and windows and
+fireplaces, and we have further paralleled our arrangement by placing
+our day beds in the same wall space, but there the similarity ends. Miss
+Marbury's color plan is different: her walls are a soft gray, the floor
+is covered in a solid blue carpet rug, rather dark in tone, the chintz
+also has a black ground, but the pattern is entirely different in
+character from the room below. There is a day bed, similar to mine, but
+where my bed has been upholstered with brocade, Miss Marbury's has a
+loose slip cover of black chintz. The spaces between the windows in my
+room are filled with bookshelves, and in Miss Marbury's room the same
+spaces are filled with mirrors. The large wall-space that is background
+to my old secretary is in her room given up to long open bookshelves of
+mahogany. My over-mantel is mirrored, and hers is filled with an old
+painting. The recessed spaces on each side of the chimney breast hold
+small semi-circular tables of marquetry, with a pair of long Adam
+mirrors hanging above them. Another Adam mirror hangs above the
+bookshelves on the opposite wall. These mirrors are really the most
+important things in the room, because the moldings and lighting-fixtures
+and picture frames have been made to harmonize with them.
+
+The lighting-fixtures are of wood carved in the Adam manner and painted
+dark blue and gold. The writing-table has been placed squarely in front
+of the center window, in which are hung Miss Marbury's bird cages. There
+are a number of old French prints on the wall. The whole room is quieter
+in tone than my room, which may be because her chosen color is old-blue,
+and mine rose-red.
+
+In a small house where only one woman's tastes have to be considered, a
+small downstairs sitting-room may take the place of the more personal
+boudoir, but where there are a number of people in the household a room
+connecting with the bedroom of the house mistress is more fortunate.
+Here she can be as independent as she pleases of the family and the
+guests who come and go through the other living-rooms of the house.
+Here she can have her counsels with her children, or her tradespeople,
+or her employees, without the distractions of chance interruptions, for
+this one room should have doors that open _and_ close, doors that are
+not to be approached without invitation. The room may be as austere and
+business-like as a down-town office, or it may be a nest of comfort and
+luxury primarily planned for relaxation, but it must be so placed that
+it is a little apart from the noise and flurry of the rest of the house
+or it has no real reason-for-being.
+
+Whenever it is possible, I believe the man of the house should also have
+a small sitting-room that corresponds to his wife's boudoir. We
+Americans have made a violent attempt to incorporate a room of this kind
+in our houses by introducing a "den" or a "study," but somehow the man
+of the house is never keen about such a room. A "den" to him means an
+airless cubby-hole of a room hung with pseudo-Turkish draperies and
+papier-mache shields and weapons, and he has a mighty aversion to it.
+Who could blame him? And as for the study, the average man doesn't want
+a study when he wants to work; he prefers to work in his office, and
+he'd like a room of his own big enough to hold all his junk, and he'd
+like it to have doors and windows and a fireplace. The so-called study
+is usually a heavy, cheerless little room that isn't any good for
+anything else. The ideal arrangement would be a room of average size
+opening from his bedroom, a room that would have little suggestion of
+business and a great flavor of his hobbies. His wife's boudoir must be
+her office also, but he doesn't need a house office, unless he be a
+writer, or a teacher, or some man who works at home. After all, I think
+the painters and illustrators are the happiest of all men, because they
+_have_ to have studios, and their wives generally recognize the fact,
+and give them a free hand. The man who has a studio or a workshop all
+his own is always a popular man. He has a fascination for his less
+fortunate friends, who buzz around him in wistful admiration.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
+
+
+First of all, I think a dining-room should be light, and gay. The first
+thing to be considered is plenty of sunshine. The next thing is the
+planning of a becoming background for the mistress of the house. The
+room should always be gay and charming in color, but the color should be
+selected with due consideration of its becomingness to the hostess.
+Every woman has a right to be pretty in her own dining-room.
+
+I do not favor the dark, heavy treatments and elaborate stuff hangings
+which seem to represent the taste of most of the men who go in for
+decorating nowadays. Nine times out of ten the dining-room seems to be
+the gloomiest room in the house. I think it should be a place where the
+family may meet in gaiety of spirit for a pause in the vexatious
+happenings of the day. I think light tones, gay wallpapers, flowers and
+sunshine are of more importance than storied tapestries and heavily
+carved furniture. These things are all very well for the house that has
+a small dining-room and a gala dining-room for formal occasions as well,
+but there are few such houses.
+
+We New Yorkers have been so accustomed to the gloomy basement
+dining-rooms of the conventional brown-stone houses of the late eighties
+we forgot how nice a dining-room can be. Even though the city
+dining-room is now more fortunately placed in the rear of the second
+floor it is usually overshadowed by other houses, and can be lightened
+only by skilful use of color in curtains, china, and so forth.
+Therefore, I think this is the one room in the city house where one can
+afford to use a boldly decorative paper. I like very much the Chinese
+rice-papers with their broad, sketchy decorations of birds and flowers.
+These papers are never tiresomely realistic and are always done in very
+soft colors or in soft shades of one color, and while if you analyze
+them they are very fantastic, the general effect is as restful as it is
+cheerful. You know you can be most cheerful when you are most rested!
+
+The quaint landscape papers which are seen in so many New England
+dining-rooms seem to belong with American Colonial furniture and white
+woodwork, prim silver and gold banded china. These landscape papers are
+usually gay in effect and make for cheer. There are many new designs
+less complicated than the old ones. Then, too, there are charming
+foliage papers, made up of leaves and branches and birds, which are very
+good.
+
+While we may find color and cheer in these gay papers for gloomy city
+dining-rooms, if we have plenty of light we may get more distinguished
+results with paneled walls. A large dining-room may be paneled with
+dark wood, with a painted fresco, or tapestry frieze, and a ceiling with
+carved or painted beams, or perhaps one of those interesting cream-white
+ceilings with plaster beams judiciously adorned with ornament in low
+relief. Given a large dining-room and a little money, you can do
+anything: you can make a room that will compare favorably with the
+traditional rooms on which we build. You have a right to make your
+dining-room as fine as you please, so long as you give it its measure of
+light and air. But one thing you must have: simplicity! It may be the
+simplicity of a marble floor and tapestried walls and a painted ceiling,
+it may be the simplicity of white paint and muslin and fine furniture,
+but simplicity it must have. The furniture that is required in a
+dining-room declares itself: a table and chairs. You can bring side
+tables and china closets into it, or you can build in cupboards and
+consoles to take their place, but there is little chance for other
+variation, and so the beginning is a declaration of order and
+simplicity.
+
+[Illustration: A GEORGIAN DINING-ROOM IN THE WILLIAM ISELIN HOUSE]
+
+The easiest way to destroy this simplicity is to litter the room with
+displays of silver and glass, to dot the walls with indifferent
+pictures. If you are courageous enough to let your walls take care of
+themselves and to put away your silver and china and glass, the room
+will be as dignified as you could wish. Remember that simplicity depends
+on balance and space. If the walls balance one another in light and
+shadow, if the furniture is placed formally, if walls and furniture
+are free from mistaken ornament, the room will be serene and
+beautiful. In most other rooms we avoid the "pairing" of things, but
+here pairs and sets of things are most desirable. Two console tables are
+more impressive than one. There is great decorative value in a pair of
+mirrors, a pair of candlesticks, a pair of porcelain jars, two cupboards
+flanking a chimney-piece. You would not be guilty of a pair of wall
+fountains, or of two wall clocks, just as you would not have two copies
+of the same portrait in a room. But when things "pair" logically, pair
+them! They will furnish a backbone of precision to the room.
+
+The dining-room in the Iselin house is a fine example of stately
+simplicity. It is extremely formal, and yet there is about it none of
+the gloominess one associates with New York dining-rooms. The severely
+paneled walls, the fine chimney-piece with an old master inset and
+framed by a Grinling Gibbons carving, the absence of the usual mantel
+shelf, the plain dining-table and the fine old lion chairs all go to
+make up a Georgian room of great distinction.
+
+The woman who cannot afford such expensive simplicity might model a
+dining-room on this same plan and accomplish a beautiful room at
+reasonable expense. Paneled walls are always possible; if you can't
+afford wood paneling, paint the plastered wall white or cream and break
+it into panels by using a narrow molding of wood. You can get an effect
+of great dignity by the use of molding at a few cents a foot. A large
+panel would take the place of the Grinling Gibbons carving, and a
+mirror might be inset above the fireplace instead of the portrait. The
+dining-table and chairs might give place to good reproductions of
+Chippendale, and the marble console to a carpenter-made one painted to
+match the woodwork.
+
+The subject of proper furniture for a dining-room is usually settled by
+the house mistress before her wedding bouquet has faded, so I shall only
+touch on the out-of-ordinary things here. Everyone knows that a table
+and a certain number of chairs and a sideboard of some kind "go
+together." The trouble is that everyone knows these things _too_ well,
+and dining-room conventions are so binding that we miss many pleasant
+departures from the usual.
+
+My own dining-room in New York is anything but usual, and yet there is
+nothing undignified about it. The room was practically square, so that
+it had a certain orderly quality to begin with. The rooms of the house
+are all rather small, and so to gain the greatest possible space I have
+the door openings at the extreme end of the wall, leaving as large a
+wall space as possible. You enter this room, then, through a door at the
+extreme left of the south wall of the room. Another door at the extreme
+right of the same wall leads to a private passage. The space left
+between the doors is thereby conserved, and is broken into a large
+central panel flanked by two narrow panels. The space above the doors is
+also paneled. This wall is broken by a console placed under the central
+panel. Above it one of the Mennoyer originals, which you may remember in
+the Washington Irving dining-room, is set in the wall, framed with a
+narrow molding of gray. The walls and woodwork of the room are of
+exactly the same tone of gray--darker than a silver gray and lighter
+than pewter. Everything, color, balance, proportion, objects of art, has
+been uniformly considered.
+
+Continuing, the east wall is broken in the center by the fireplace, with
+a mantel of white and gray marble. A large mirror, surmounted with a
+bas-relief in black and white, fills the space between mantel shelf and
+cornice. This mirror and bas-relief are framed with the narrow carved
+molding painted gray. Here again there is the beauty of balance: two
+Italian candlesticks of carved and gilded wood flank a marble bust on
+the mantel shelf. There is nothing more. On the right of the mirror, in
+a narrow panel, there is a wall clock of carved and gilded wood which
+also takes its place as a part of the wall, and keeps it.
+
+The north wall is broken by two mirrors and a door leading to the
+service-pantry. A large, four-fold screen, made of an uncut tapestry,
+shuts off the door. We need all the light the windows give, so there are
+no curtains except the orange-colored taffeta valances at the top. I
+devised sliding doors of mirrors that are pulled out of the wall at
+night to fill the recessed space of the windows. Ventilation is afforded
+by the open fireplace, and by mechanical means. You see we do not
+occupy this house in summer, so the mirrored windows are quite feasible.
+
+The fourth wall has no openings, and it is broken into three large
+paneled spaces. A console has the place of honor opposite the fireplace,
+and above it there is a mirror like that over the mantel. In the two
+side panels are the two large Mennoyers. There are five of these in the
+room, the smaller ones flanking the chimney piece. You see that the
+salvation of this room depends on this careful repetition and variation
+of similar objects.
+
+Color is brought into the room in the blue and yellow of the Chinese
+rug, in the chairs, and in the painted table. The chairs are painted a
+creamy yellow, pointed with blue, and upholstered with blue and yellow
+striped velvet. I do not like high-backed chairs in a dining-room. Their
+one claim to use is that they make a becoming background, but this does
+not compensate for the difficulties of the service when they are used.
+An awkward servant pouring soup down one's back is not an aid to
+digestion, or to the peace of mind engendered by a good dinner.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. OGDEN ARMOUR'S CHINESE-PAPER SCREEN]
+
+[Illustration: MRS. JAMES WARREN LANE'S PAINTED DINING-TABLE]
+
+The painted table is very unusual. The legs and the carved under-frame
+are painted cream and pointed with blue, like the chairs, but the top is
+as gay as an old-fashioned garden, with stiff little medallions, and
+urns spilling over with flowers, and conventional blossoms picked out
+all over it. The colors used are very soft, blue and cream being
+predominant. The table is covered with a sheet of plate glass. This
+table is, of course, too elaborate for a simple dining-room, but the
+idea could be adapted and varied to suit many color and furniture
+schemes.
+
+Painted furniture is a delight in a small dining-room. In the Colony
+Club I planned a very small room for little dinners that is well worth
+reproducing in a small house. This little room was very hard to manage
+because there were no windows! There were two tiny little openings high
+on the wall at one end of the room, but it would take imagination to
+call them windows. The room was on the top floor, and the real light
+came from a skylight. You can imagine the difficulty of making such a
+little box interesting. However, there was one thing that warmed my
+heart to the little room: a tiny ante-room between the hall proper and
+the room proper. This little ante-room I paneled in yellowish tan and
+gray. I introduced a sofa covered with an old brocade just the color of
+dried rose leaves--ashes of roses, the French call it--and the little
+ante-room became a fitting introduction to the dining-room within.
+
+The walls of the rooms were paneled in a delicious color between yellow
+and tan, the wall proper and the moldings being this color, and the
+panels themselves filled with a gray paper painted in pinky yellows and
+browns. These panels were done by hand by a man who found his
+inspiration in the painted panels of an old French ballroom. As the
+walls were unbroken by windows there was ample space for such
+decoration. A carpet of rose color was chosen, and the skylight was
+curtained with shirred silk of the same rose. The table and chairs were
+of painted wood, the chairs having seats of the brocade used on the
+ante-room sofa. The table was covered with rose colored brocade, and
+over this, cobwebby lace, and over this, plate glass. There are two
+consoles in the room, with small cabinets above which hold certain
+_objets d'art_ in keeping with the room.
+
+Under the two tiny windows were those terrible snags we decorators
+always strike, the radiators. Wrongly placed, they are capable of
+spoiling any room. I concealed these radiators by building two small
+cabinets with panels of iron framework gilded to suggest a graceful
+metal lattice, and lined them with rose-colored silk. I borrowed this
+idea from a fascinating cabinet in an old French palace, and the result
+is worth the deception. The cabinets are nice in themselves, and they do
+not interfere with the radiation of the heat.
+
+I have seen many charming country houses and farm houses in France with
+dining-rooms furnished with painted furniture. Somehow they make the
+average American dining-room seem very commonplace and tiresome. For
+instance, I had the pleasure of furnishing a little country house in
+France and we planned the dining-room in blue and white. The furniture
+was of the simplest, painted white, with a dark blue line for
+decoration. The corner cupboard was a little more elaborate, with a
+gracefully curved top and a large glass door made up of little panes set
+in a quaint design. There were several drawers and a lower cupboard. The
+drawers and the lower doors invited decorations a little more elaborate
+than the blue lines of the furniture, so we painted on gay little
+medallions in soft tones of blue, from the palest gray-blue to a very
+dark blue. The chair cushions were blue, and the china was blue
+sprigged. Three little pitchers of dark-blue luster were on the wall
+cupboard shelf and a mirror in a faded gold frame gave the necessary
+variation of tone.
+
+A very charming treatment for either a country or small city dining-room
+is to have corner cupboards of this kind cutting off two corners. They
+are convenient and unusual and pretty as well. They can be painted in
+white with a colored line defining the panels and can be made highly
+decorative if the panels are painted with a classic or a Chinese design.
+The decoration, however, should be kept in variations of the same tone
+as the stripe on the panels. For instance, if the stripe is gray, then
+the design should be in dark and light gray and blue tones. The chairs
+can be white, in a room of this kind, with small gray and blue
+medallions and either blue and white, or plain blue, cushions.
+
+Another dining-room of the same sort was planned for a small country
+house on Long Island. Here the woodwork was a deep cream, the walls the
+same tone, and the ceiling a little lighter. We found six of those prim
+Duxbury chairs, with flaring spindle-backs, and painted them a soft
+yellow-green. The table was a plain pine one, with straight legs. We
+painted it cream and decorated the top with a conventional border of
+green adapted from the design of the china--a thick creamy Danish ware
+ornamented with queer little wavy lines and figures. I should have
+mentioned the china first, because the whole room grew from that. The
+rug was a square of velvet of a darker green. The curtains were soft
+cream-colored net. One wall was made up of windows, another of doors and
+a cupboard, and against the other two walls we built two long, narrow
+consoles that were so simple anyone could accomplish them: simply two
+wide shelves resting on good brackets, with mirrors above. The one
+splendid thing in the room was a curtain of soft green damask that was
+pulled at night to cover the group of windows. Everything else in the
+room was bought for a song.
+
+[Illustration: THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB]
+
+I have said much of cupboards and consoles because I think they are so
+much better than the awkward, heavy "china closets" and "buffets" and
+sideboards that dominate most dining-rooms. The time has come when we
+should begin to do fine things in the way of building fitment furniture,
+that is, furniture that is actually or apparently a part of the shell of
+the room. It would be so much better to build a house slowly, planning
+the furniture as a part of the architectural detail. With each
+succeeding year the house would become more and more a part of the
+owner, illustrating his life. Of course, this would mean that the
+person who planned the developing of the house must have a certain
+architectural training, must know about scale and proportion, and
+something of general construction. Certainly charming things are to be
+created in this way, things that will last, things immeasurably
+preferable to the cheap jerry-built furniture which so soon becomes
+shabby, which has to be so constantly renewed. People accept new ideas
+with great difficulty, and my only hope is that they may grow to accept
+the idea of fitment furniture through finding the idea a product of
+their own; a personal discovery that comes from their own needs.
+
+I have constantly recommended the use of our native American woods for
+panelings and wall furniture, because we have both the beautiful woods
+of our new world and tried and proven furniture of the old world, and
+what couldn't we achieve with such material available? Why do people
+think of a built-in cupboard as being less important than a detached
+piece of furniture? Isn't it a braggart pose, a desire to show the
+number of things you can buy? Of course it is a very foolish pose, but
+it is a popular one, this display of objects that are ear-marked
+"expensive."
+
+It is very easy to build cupboards on each side of a fireplace, for
+instance, making the wall flush with the chimney-breast. This is always
+good architectural form. One side could have a desk which opens beneath
+the glass doors, and the other could have cupboards, both presenting
+exactly the same appearance when closed. Fitted corner cupboards,
+triangular or rounded, are also excellent in certain dining rooms.
+
+Wall tables, or consoles, may be of the same wood as the woodwork or of
+marble, or of some dark polished wood. There are no more useful pieces
+of furniture than consoles, and yet we only see them in great houses.
+Why? Because they are simple, and we haven't yet learned to demand the
+simple. I have had many interesting old console-tables of wrought iron
+support and marble tops copied, and I have designed others that were
+mere semi-circles of white painted wood supported by four slender legs,
+but whether they be marble or pine the effect is always simple. There
+are charming consoles that have come to us from the Eighteenth Century,
+consoles made in pairs, so that they may stand against the wall as
+serving-tables, or be placed together to form one round table. This is a
+very good arrangement where people have one large living room or hall in
+which they dine and which also serves all the purpose of daily
+intercourse. This entirely removes any suggestion of a dining-room, as
+the consoles may be separated and stand against the wall during the day.
+
+Many modern houses are being built without the conventional dining-room
+we have known so long, there being instead an open-air breakfast room
+which may be glazed in winter and screened in summer. People have come
+to their senses at last, and realize that there is nothing so pleasant
+as eating outdoors. The annual migration of Americans to Europe is
+responsible for the introduction of this excellent custom. French houses
+are always equipped with some outdoor place for eating. Some of them
+have, in addition to the inclosed porch, a fascinating pavilion built in
+the garden, where breakfast and tea may be served. Modern mechanical
+conveniences and the inexpensive electric apparatus make it possible to
+serve meals at this distance from the house and keep them hot in the
+meantime. One may prepare one's own coffee and toast at table, with the
+green trees and flowers and birds all around.
+
+Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper,
+everyone knows that. The simplest meal seems a gala affair when everyone
+is radiant and cheerful, whereas a long and elaborate meal served
+indoors is usually depressing.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE BEDROOM
+
+
+In olden times people rarely slept in their bedrooms, which were mostly
+_chambres de parade_, where everyone was received and much business was
+transacted. The real bedroom was usually a smallish closet nearby. These
+_chambres de parade_ were very splendid, the beds raised on a dais, and
+hung with fine damasks and tapestries--tapestries thick with bullion
+fringes. The horror of fresh air felt by our ancestors was well
+illustrated here. No draughts from ill-constructed windows or badly hung
+doors could reach the sleeper in such a bed.
+
+[Illustration: AN OLD PAINTED BED OF THE LOUIS XVI. PERIOD]
+
+This was certainly different from our modern ideas of hygiene: In those
+days furniture that could not be hastily moved was of little importance.
+The bed was usually a mere frame of wood, made to be covered with
+valuable hangings which could easily be packed and carried away on
+occasions that too often arose in the troublous days of the early Middle
+Ages. The benches and tables one sees in many foreign palaces to-day are
+covered with gorgeous lengths of velvet and brocade. This is a survival
+of the custom when furniture was merely so much baggage. With the early
+Eighteenth Century, however, there came into being _les petits
+appartements_, in which the larger space formerly accorded the bedroom
+was divided into ante-chamber, salon or sitting-room, and the bedroom.
+Very often the bed was placed in an alcove, and the heavy brocades and
+bullion embroideries were replaced by linen or cotton hangings.
+
+When Oberkampf established himself at Jouy in 1760 France took first
+place in the production of these printed linens and cottons. This was
+the beginning of the age of chintz and of the delightful decorative
+fabrics that are so suited to our modern ideas of hygiene. It seems to
+me there are no more charming stuffs for bedroom hangings than these
+simple fabrics, with their enchantingly fanciful designs. Think of the
+changes one could have with several sets of curtains to be changed at
+will, as Marie Antoinette used to do at the Petit Trianon. How amusing
+it would be in our own modern houses to change the bed coverings, window
+curtains, and so forth, twice or three times a year! I like these loose
+slip covers and curtains better than the usual hard upholstery, because
+if properly planned the slips can be washed without losing their color
+or their lines.
+
+Charming Eighteenth Century prints that are full of valuable hints as to
+furniture and decorations for bedrooms can be found in most French
+shops. The series known as "_Moreau le Jeun_" is full of suggestion.
+Some of the interiors shown are very grand, it is true, but many are
+simple enough to serve as models for modern apartments. A set of these
+pictures will do much to give one an insight into the decoration of the
+Eighteenth Century, a vivid insight that can be obtained in no other
+way, perhaps.
+
+I do not like the very large bedrooms, dear to the plans of the American
+architect. I much prefer the space divided. I remember once arriving at
+the Ritz Hotel in London and being given temporarily a very grand royal
+suite, overlooking the park, until the smaller quarters I had reserved
+should be ready for me. How delighted I was at first with all the huge
+vastness of my bedroom! My appreciation waned, however, after a
+despairing morning toilet spent in taking many steps back and forth from
+dressing-table to bathroom, and from bathroom to hang-closets, and I was
+glad indeed, when, at the end of several hours, I was comfortably housed
+in my smaller and humbler quarters.
+
+I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber
+should separate it from the large outside corridor. The ideal
+arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room,
+then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back. This outer
+chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be. It may
+serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and
+concealing them with mirrored doors. The ante-chamber need not be a
+luxury, if you plan your house carefully. It is simply a little well of
+silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.
+
+[Illustration: MISS CROCKER'S LOUIS XVI. BED]
+
+To go on with my ideal bedroom: the walls, I think, should be simply
+paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be
+afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is
+the best solution. You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings
+very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and
+plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of
+times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design
+in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you
+will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the
+figures.
+
+One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper
+that does not belong to the "busy" class, for while the design is
+decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat. This
+is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens
+and grays on a cream ground. I have seen bedrooms papered with huge
+scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and
+methodical thumping of a drum. I cannot imagine anyone sleeping calmly
+in such a room!
+
+This bedroom is eminently suited to the needs of a man. The hangings are
+of a plain, soft stuff, accenting one of the deep tones of the wall
+covering, and the sash curtains are of white muslin. The furniture is of
+oak, of the Jacobean period. The bed is true to its inspiration, with
+turned legs and runners, and slatted head and foot boards. The legs and
+runners of the bed were really inspired by the chairs and tables of the
+period. This is an excellent illustration of the modern furniture that
+may be adapted from old models. It goes without saying that the beds of
+that period were huge, cumbersome affairs, and this adapted bed is
+really more suitable to modern needs in size and weight and line than an
+original one.
+
+There are so many inspirations for bedrooms nowadays that one finds it
+most difficult to decide on any one scheme. One of my greatest joys in
+planning the Colony Club was that I had opportunity to furnish so many
+bedrooms. And they were small, pleasant rooms, too, not the usual
+impersonal boxes that are usually planned for club houses and hotels. I
+worked out the plan of each bedroom as if I were to live in it myself,
+and while they all differed in decorative schemes the essentials were
+the same in each room: a comfortable bed, with a small table beside it
+to hold a reading light, a clock, and a telephone; a _chaise-longue_ for
+resting; a long mirror somewhere; a dressing table with proper lights
+and a glass covered top; a writing table, carefully equipped, and the
+necessary chairs and stools. Some of the bedrooms had no connecting
+baths, and these were given wash stands with bowls and pitchers of clear
+glass. Most of these bedrooms were fitted with mahogany four post beds,
+pie crust tables, colonial highboys, gay chintzes, and such, but there
+were several rooms of entirely different scheme.
+
+[Illustration: A COLONY CLUB BEDROOM]
+
+Perhaps the most fascinating of them all is the bird room. The walls
+are covered with an Oriental paper patterned with marvelous blue and
+green birds, birds of paradise and paroquets perched on flowering
+branches. The black lacquer furniture was especially designed for the
+room. The rug and the hangings are of jade green. I wonder how this
+seems to read of--I can only say it is a very gay and happy room to live
+in!
+
+There is another bedroom in pink and white, which would be an adorable
+room for a young girl. The bed is of my own design, a simple white
+painted metal bed. There is a _chaise-longue_, upholstered in the pink
+and white striped chintz of the room. The same chintz is used for window
+hangings, bed spread, and so forth. There is a little spindle legged
+table of mahogany, and another table at the head of the bed which
+contains the reading light. There is also a little white stool, with a
+cushion of the chintz, beside the bed. The dressing-table is so simple
+that any girl might copy it--it is a chintz-hung box with a sheet of
+plate glass on top, and a white framed mirror hung above it. The
+electric lights in this room are cleverly made into candlesticks which
+are painted to match the chintz. The writing-table is white, with a
+mahogany chair in front of it.
+
+Another bedroom has a narrow four post bed of mahogany, with hangings of
+China blue sprigged with small pink roses. There was another in green
+and white. In every case these bedrooms were equipped with rugs of
+neutral and harmonious tone. The dressing-tables were always painted to
+harmonize with the chintzes or the furniture. Wherever possible there
+was an open fireplace. Roomy clothes closets added much to the comfort
+of each room, and there was always a couch of delicious softness, or a
+_chaise-longue,_ and lounging chairs which invited repose.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM]
+
+Nothing so nice has happened in a long time as the revival of painted
+furniture, and the application of quaint designs to modern beds and
+chairs and chests. You may find inspiration in a length of chintz, in an
+old fan, in a faded print--anywhere! The main thing is to work out a
+color plan for the background--the walls, the furniture, and the
+rugs--and then you can draw or stencil the chosen designs wherever they
+seem to belong, and paint them in with dull tones and soft colors, rose
+and buff and blue and green and a little bit of gray and cream and
+black. Or, if you aren't even as clever as that (and you probably
+_are!_) you can decorate your painted furniture with narrow lines of
+color: dark green on a light green ground; dark blue on yellow; _any_
+color on gray or cream--there are infinite possibilities of color
+combinations. In one of the rooms shown in the illustrations the posy
+garlands on the chest of drawers were inspired by a lamp jar. This
+furniture was carefully planned, as may be seen by the little urns on
+the bedposts, quite in the manner of the Brothers Adam, but delightful
+results may be obtained by using any simple modern cottage furniture
+and applying fanciful decorations.
+
+Be wary of hanging many pictures in your bedroom. I give this advice
+cheerfully, because I know you will hang them anyway (I do) but I warn
+you you will spoil your room if you aren't very stern with yourself.
+Somehow the pictures we most love, small prints and photographs and
+things, look spotty on our walls. We must group them to get a pleasant
+effect. Keep the framed photographs on the writing table, the dressing
+table, the mantel, etc., but do not hang them on your walls. If you have
+small prints that you feel you must have, hang them flat on the wall,
+well within the line of vision. They should be low enough to be
+_examined_, because usually such pictures are not decorative in effect,
+but exquisite in detail. The fewer pictures the better, and in the
+guest-room fewer still!
+
+I planned a guest-room for the top floor of a New York house that is
+very successful. The room was built around a pair of appliques made from
+two old Chinese sprays of metal flowers. I had small electric light
+bulbs fitted among the flowers, mounted them on carved wood brackets on
+each side of a good mantel mirror and worked out the rest of the room
+from them. The walls were painted bluish green, the woodwork white. Just
+below the molding at the top of the room there was a narrow border (four
+inches wide) of a mosaic-like pattern in blue and green. The carpet rug
+is of a blue-green tone. The hangings are of an alluring _Chinoiserie_
+chintz, and there are several Chinese color prints framed and hanging in
+the narrow panels between the front windows. The furniture is painted a
+deep cream pointed with blue and green, and the bed covering is of a
+pale turquoise taffeta.
+
+Another guest room was done in gentian blue and white, with a little
+buff and rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the
+guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and
+adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with
+a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a
+young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and
+white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and
+tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an
+enchanting affair! And simple--why, she could hinge the mirrors
+together, and make the chintz ruffle, and enamel the shelves white, and
+do every bit of it except cut the plate glass. Of course the glass is
+very clean and nice, but an enameled surface with a white linen cover
+would be very pleasant.
+
+The same blue and white chintz was used for the hangings and bed
+coverings. Everything else in the room was white except the thick cream
+rug with its border of blue and rose and buff, and the candlesticks and
+appliques which repeated those colors.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. FREDERICK HAVEMEYER'S CHINOISERIE CHINTZ BED]
+
+[Illustration: MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY'S GREEN FEATHER CHINTZ BED]
+
+There is a chintz I love to use called the Green Feather chintz. It is
+most decorative in design and color, and such an aristocratic sort of
+chintz you can use it on handsome old sofas and your post beds that
+would scorn a more commonplace chintz. Mrs. Payne Whitney has a most
+enchanting bed covered with the Green Feather chintz, one of those great
+beds that depend entirely on their hangings for effect, for not a bit of
+the wooden frame shows. Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer has a similar bed
+covered with a _Chinoiserie_ chintz. These great beds are very beautiful
+in large rooms, but they would be out of place in small ones. There are
+draped beds, however, that may be used in smaller rooms. I am showing a
+photograph of a bedroom in the Crocker house in Burlingame, California,
+where I used a small draped bed with charming effect. This bed is placed
+flat against the wall, like a sofa, and the drapery is adapted from that
+of a Louis XVI room. The bed is of gray painted wood, and the hangings
+are of blue and cream chintz lined with blue taffetas. I used the same
+idea in a rose and blue bedroom in a New York house. In this case,
+however, the bed was painted cream white and the large panels of the
+head and foot boards were filled with a rose and blue chintz. The
+bedspread was of deep rose colored taffetas, and from a small canopy
+above the bed four curtains of the rose and blue chintz, lined with the
+taffetas, are pulled to the four corners of the bed. This novel
+arrangement of draperies is very satisfactory in a small room.
+
+In my own house the bedrooms open into dressing-rooms, so much of the
+usual furniture is not necessary. My own bedroom, for instance, is built
+around the same old Breton bed I had in the Washington Irving house. The
+bed dominates the room, but there are also a _chaise-longue_, several
+small tables, many comfortable chairs, and a real fireplace. The
+business of dressing takes place in the dressing-room, so there is no
+dressing-table here, but there are long mirrors filling the wall spaces
+between windows and doors. Miss Marbury's bedroom is just over mine, and
+is a sunshiny place of much rose and blue and cream. Her rooms are
+always full of blue, just as my rooms are always full of rose color.
+This bedroom has cream woodwork and walls of a bluish-gray, cream
+painted furniture covered with a mellow sort of rose-and-cream chintz,
+and a Persian rug made up of blue and cream. The curtains at the windows
+are of plain blue linen bordered with a narrow blue and white fringe.
+The lighting-fixtures are of carved wood, pointed in polychrome. The
+most beautiful thing in the room is a Fifteenth Century painting, the
+Madonna of Bartolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor over the
+mantel.
+
+I haven't said a word about our nice American Colonial bedrooms, because
+all of you know their beauties and requirements as well as I. The great
+drawback to the stately old furniture of our ancestors is the space it
+occupies. Haven't you seen a fine old four post bed simply overflowing a
+poor little room? Fortunately, the furniture-makers are designing
+simple beds of similar lines, but lighter build, and these beds are very
+lovely. The owner of a massive old four-post bed is justly proud of it,
+but our new beds are built for a new service and a new conception of
+hygiene, and so must find new lines and curves that will be friendly to
+the old dressing tables and highboys and chests of drawers.
+
+When we are fortunate enough to inherit great old houses, of course we
+will give them proper furniture--if we can find it.
+
+I remember a house in New Orleans that had a full dozen spacious
+bedrooms, square, closetless chambers that opened into small
+dressing-rooms. One of them, I remember, was absolutely bare of wall and
+floor, with a great Napoleon bed set squarely in the center of it. There
+was the inevitable mosquito net canopy, here somehow endowed with an
+unexpected dignity. One felt the room had been made for sleeping, and
+nothing _but_ sleeping, and while the bed was placed in the middle of
+the floor to get all the air possible, its placing was a master stroke
+of decoration in that great white walled room. It was as impressive as a
+royal bed on a dais.
+
+We are getting more sensible about our bedrooms. There is no doubt about
+it. For the last ten years there has been a dreadful epidemic of brass
+beds, a mistaken vogue that came as a reaction from the heavy walnut
+beds of the last generation. White painted metal beds came first, and
+will last always, but they weren't good enough for people of
+ostentatious tastes, and so the vulgar brass bed came to pass. Why we
+should suffer brass beds in our rooms, I don't know! The plea is that
+they are more sanitary than wooden ones. Hospitals must consider
+sanitation first, last, and always, and they use white iron beds. And
+why shouldn't white iron beds, which are modest and unassuming in
+appearance, serve for homes as well? The truth is that the glitter of
+brass appeals to the untrained eye. But that is passing. Go into the
+better shops and you will see! Recently there was a spasmodic outbreak
+of silver-plated beds, but I think there won't be a vogue for this
+newest object of bad taste. It is a little too much!
+
+If your house is clean and you intend to keep it so, a wooden bed that
+has some relation to the rest of your furniture is the best bed
+possible. Otherwise, a white painted metal one. There is never an excuse
+for a brass one. Indeed, I think the three most glaring errors we
+Americans make are rocking-chairs, lace curtains, and brass beds.
+
+[Illustration: MY OWN BEDROOM IS BUILT AROUND A BRETON BED]
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH
+
+
+Dressing-rooms and closets should be necessities, not luxuries, but
+alas! our architects' ideas of the importance of large bedrooms have
+made it almost impossible to incorporate the proper closets and
+dressing-places a woman really requires.
+
+In the foregoing chapter on bedrooms I advised the division of a large
+bedroom into several smaller rooms: ante-chamber, sitting-room,
+sleeping-room, dressing-room and bath. The necessary closets may be
+built along the walls of all these little rooms, or, if there is
+sufficient space, one long, airy closet may serve for all one's personal
+belongings. Of course, such a suite of rooms is possible only in large
+houses. But even in simple houses a small dressing-room can be built
+into the corner of an average-sized bedroom.
+
+In France every woman dresses in her _cabinet de toilette_; it is one of
+the most important rooms in the house. No self-respecting French woman
+would dream of dressing in her sleeping-room. The little _cabinet de
+toilette_ need not be much larger than a closet, if the closets are
+built ceiling high, and the doors are utilized for mirrors. Such an
+arrangement makes for great comfort and privacy. Here I find that most
+of my countrywomen dress in their bedrooms. I infinitely prefer the
+separate dressing-room, which means a change of air, and which can be
+thoroughly ventilated. If one sleeps with the bedroom windows wide open,
+it is a pleasure to have a warm dressing-room to step into.
+
+I think the first thing to be considered about a dressing-room is its
+utility. Here no particular scheme of decoration or over-elaboration of
+color is in place. Everything should be very simple, very clean and very
+hygienic. The floors should not be of wood, but may be of marble or
+mosaic cement or clean white tiles, with a possible touch of color. If
+the dressing-room is bathroom also, there should be as large a bath as
+is compatible with the size of the room. The combination of
+dressing-room and bathroom is successful only in those large houses
+where each bedroom has its bath. I have seen such rooms in modern
+American houses that were quite as large as bedrooms, with the supreme
+luxury of open fireplaces. Think of the comfort of having one's bath and
+of making one's toilet before an open fire! This is an outgrowth of our
+passion for bedrooms that are so be-windowed they become
+sleeping-porches, and we may leave their chill air for the comfortable
+warmth of luxurious dressing-rooms.
+
+[Illustration: By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
+FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS]
+
+If I were giving advice as to the furnishing of a dressing-room, in as
+few words as possible, I should say: "Put in lots of mirrors, and then
+more mirrors, and then more!" Indeed, I do not think one can have too
+many mirrors in a dressing-room. Long mirrors can be set in doors and
+wall panels, so that one may see one's self from hat to boots. Hinged
+mirrors are lovely for sunny wall spaces, and for the tops of
+dressing-tables. I have made so many of them. One of green and gold
+lacquer was made to be used on a plain green enameled dressing-table
+placed squarely in the recess of a great window. I also use small
+mirrors of graceful contour to light up the dark corners of
+dressing-rooms.
+
+Have your mirrors so arranged that you get a good strong light by day,
+and have plenty of electric lights all around the dressing-mirrors for
+night use. In other words, know the worst before you go out! In my own
+dressing-room the lights are arranged just as I used to have them long
+ago in my theater dressing-room when I was on the stage. I can see
+myself back, front and sides before I go out. Really, it is a comfort to
+be on friendly terms with your own back hair! I lay great stress on the
+mirrors and plenty of lights, and yet more lights. Oh, the joy, the
+blessing of electric light! I think every woman would like to dress
+always by a blaze of electric light, and be seen only in the soft
+luminosity of candle light--how lovely we would all look, to be sure! It
+is a great thing to know the worst before one goes out, so that even the
+terrors of the arc lights before our theaters will be powerless to
+dismay us.
+
+If there is room in the dressing-room, there should be a sofa with a
+slip cover of some washable fabric that can be taken off when necessary.
+This sofa may be the simplest wooden frame, with a soft pad, or it may
+be a _chaise-longue_ of elegant lines. The _chaise-longue_ is suitable
+for bedroom or dressing-room, but it is an especially luxurious
+lounging-place when you are having your hair done.
+
+A man came to me just before Christmas, and said, "Do tell me something
+to give my wife. I cannot think of a thing in the world she hasn't
+already." I asked, "Is she a lady of habits?" "What!" he said,
+astonished. "Does she enjoy being comfortable?" I asked. "Well, rather!"
+he smiled. And so I suggested a _couvre-pieds_ for her _chaise-longue._
+Now I am telling you of the _couvre pieds_ because I know all women love
+exquisite things, and surely nothing could be more delicious than my
+_couvre-pieds._ Literally, it is a "cover for the feet," a sort of
+glorified and diminutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk,
+lined with the soft long-haired white fur known as mountain tibet, and
+interlined with down. The coverlet is bordered with a puffing of French
+lace, and the top of it is encrusted with little flowers made of tiny
+French picot ribbons, and quillings of the narrowest of lace. It is
+supposed to be thrown over your feet, fur side down, when you are
+resting or having your hair done.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MORGAN'S LOUIS XVI. DRESSING-ROOM]
+
+You may devise a little coverlet for your own sofa, whether it be in
+your bedroom, your boudoir, or your dressing-room, that will be quite
+as useful as this delectable _couvre-pieds_. I saw some amusing ones
+recently, made of gay Austrian silks, lined with astonishing colors and
+bound with puffings and flutings of ribbon of still other colors. A
+coverlet of this kind would be as good as a trip away from home for the
+woman who is bored and wearied. No matter how drab and commonplace her
+house might be, she could devise a gay quilt of one of the enchanting
+new stuffs and wrap herself in it for a holiday hour. One of the most
+amusing ones was of turquoise blue silk, with stiff flowers of violet
+and sulphur yellow scattered over it. The flowers were quite large and
+far apart, so that there was a square expanse of the turquoise blue with
+a stiff flower at each corner. The lining was of sulphur yellow silk,
+and the binding was a puffing of violet ribbons. The color fairly made
+me gasp, at first, but then it became fascinating, and finally
+irresistible. I sighed as I thought of the dreary patchwork quilts of
+our great-grandmothers. How they would have marveled at our audacious
+use of color, our frank joy in it!
+
+Of course the most important thing in the dressing-room is the
+dressing-table. I place my dressing-tables _against_ a group of windows,
+not near them, whenever it is possible. I have used plate glass tops on
+many of them, and mirrors for tops on others, for you can't have too
+many mirrors or too strong a light for dressing. We must see ourselves
+as others will see us.
+
+My own dressing-table contains many drawers, one of which is fitted
+with an ink-well, a tray for pens and pencils, and a sliding shelf on
+which I write. This obviates going into another room to answer hurried
+notes when one is dressing. Beside the dressing-table stands the tall
+hat-stand for the hat I may be wearing that day.
+
+When the maid prepares the dress that is to be worn, she puts the hat
+that goes with the toilette on the tall single stand. Another idea is
+the little hollow table on casters that can easily be slipped under the
+dressing-table, where it is out of the way. All the little ugly things
+that make one lovely can be kept in this table, which can have a lid if
+desired, and even a lock and key. I frequently make them with a glass
+bottom, as they do not get stained or soiled, and can be washed.
+
+There are lots of little dodges that spell comfort for the dressing-room
+of the woman who wants comfort and can have luxury. There is the
+hot-water towel-rack, which is connected with the hot-water system of
+the house and which heats the towels, and incidentally the
+dressing-room. This a boon if you like a hot bath sheet after a cold
+plunge on a winter's morning. Another modern luxury is a wall cabinet
+fitted with glass shelves for one's bottles and sponges and powders.
+There seems to be no end to the little luxuries that are devised for the
+woman who makes a proper toilet. Who can blame her for loving the
+business of making herself attractive, when every one offers her
+encouragement?
+
+A closet is absolutely necessary in the dressing-room, and if space is
+precious every inch of its interior may be fitted with shelves and
+drawers and hooks, so that no space is wasted. The outside of the closet
+door may be fitted with a mirror, and narrow shelves just deep enough to
+hold one's bottles, may be fitted on the inside of the door. If the
+closet is very shallow, the inner shelves should be hollowed out to
+admit the bottle shelves when the door is closed. Otherwise the bottles
+will be smashed the first time a careless maid slams the door. This
+bottle closet has been one of my great successes in small apartments,
+where bathroom and dressing-room are one, and where much must be
+accomplished in a small space.
+
+In the more modern apartments the tub is placed in a recess in the wall
+of the bathroom, leaving more space for dressing purposes. This sort of
+combination dressing-room should have waterproof floor and wall, and no
+fripperies. There should be a screen large enough to conceal the tub,
+and a folding chair that may be placed in the small closet when it is
+not in use.
+
+When the bathroom is too small to admit a dressing-table and chair and
+the bedroom is quite large, a good plan is the building of a tiny room
+in one corner of the bedroom. Of course this little dressing-box must
+have a window. I have used this plan many times with excellent results.
+Another scheme, when the problem was entirely different, and the
+dressing-room was too large for comfort, was to line three walls of it
+with closets, the fourth wall being filled with windows. These closets
+were narrow, each having a mirrored panel in its door. This is the ideal
+arrangement, for there is ample room for all one's gowns, shoes, hats,
+veils, gloves, etc., each article having its own specially planned shelf
+or receptacle. The closets are painted in gay colors inside, and the
+shelves are fitted with thin perfumed pads. They are often further
+decorated with bright lines of color, which is always amusing to the
+woman who opens a door. Hat stands and bags are covered with the same
+chintzes employed in the dressing-room proper. Certain of the closets
+are fitted with the English tray shelves, and each tray has its sachet.
+The hangers for gowns are covered in the chintz or brocade used on the
+hat stands. This makes an effective ensemble whether brocades or printed
+cottons are used, if the arrangement is orderly and full of gay color.
+
+[Illustration: MISS MARBURY'S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING-TABLE]
+
+One of the most successful gown closets I have done is a long narrow
+closet with a door at each end, really a passageway between a bedroom
+and a boudoir. Long poles run the length of the closet, with curtains
+that enclose a passage from door to door. Back of these curtains are
+long poles that may be raised or lowered by pulleys. Each gown is placed
+on its padded hanger, covered with its muslin bag, and hung on the pole.
+The pole is then drawn up so that the tails of the gowns will not
+touch the dust of the floor. This is a most orderly arrangement for the
+woman of many gowns.
+
+The straightaway bathroom that one finds in apartments and small houses
+is difficult to make beautiful, but may be made airy and clean-looking,
+which is more important. I had to make such a bathroom a little more
+attractive recently, and it was a very pleasant job. I covered the walls
+with a waterproof stuff of white, figured with a small black polkadot.
+The woodwork and the ceiling were painted white. All around the door and
+window frames I used a two-inch border of ivy leaves, also of waterproof
+paper, and although I usually abominate borders I loved this one. A
+plain white framed mirror was also painted with green ivy leaves, and a
+glass shelf above the wash bowl was fitted with glass bottles and dishes
+with labels and lines of clear green. White muslin curtains were hung at
+the window, and a small white stool was given a cushion covered with
+green and white ivy patterned chintz. The floor was painted white, and a
+solid green rug was used. The towels were cross-stitched with the name
+of the owner in the same bright green. The room, when finished, was cool
+and refreshing, and had cost very little in money, and not so very much
+in time and labor.
+
+I think that in country houses where there is not a bathroom with each
+bedroom there should be a very good washstand provided for each guest.
+When a house party is in progress, for instance, and every one comes in
+from tennis or golf or what not, eager for a bath and fresh clothes,
+washstands are most convenient. Why shouldn't a washstand be just as
+attractively furnished as a dressing-table? Just because they have been
+so ugly we condemn them to eternal ugliness, but it is quite possible to
+make the washstand interesting to look upon as well as serviceable. It
+isn't necessary to buy a "set" of dreadful crockery. You can assemble
+the necessary things as carefully as you would assemble the outfit for
+your writing-table. Go to the pottery shops, the glass shops, the
+silversmiths, and you will find dozens of bowls and pitchers and small
+things. A clear glass bowl and pitcher and the necessary glasses and
+bottles can be purchased at any department store. The French peasants
+make an apple-green pottery that is delightful for a washstand set. So
+many of the china shops have large shallow bowls that were made for
+salad and punch, and pitchers that were made for the dining-table, but
+there is no reason why they shouldn't be used on the washstand. I know
+one wash basin that began as a Russian brass pan of flaring rim. With it
+is used an old water can of hammered brass, and brass dishes glass
+lined, to hold soaps and sponges. It is only necessary to desire the
+unusual thing, and you'll get it, though much searching may intervene
+between the idea and its achievement.
+
+The washstand itself is not such a problem. A pair of dressing-tables
+may be bought, and one fitted up as a washstand, and the other left to
+its usual use.
+
+In the Colony Club there are a number of bathrooms, but there are also
+washstands in those rooms that have no private bath. Each bathroom has
+its fittings planned to harmonize with the connecting bedroom, and the
+clear glass bottles are all marked in the color prevailing in the
+bedroom. Each bathroom has a full-length mirror, and all the
+conveniences of a bathroom in a private house. In addition to these
+rooms there is a long hall filled with small _cabinets de toilette_
+which some clever woman dubbed "prinkeries." These are small rooms
+fitted with dressing-tables, where out-of-town members may freshen their
+toilets for an occasion. These little prinkeries would be excellent in
+large country houses, where there are so many motoring guests who come
+for a few hours only, dust-laden and travel-stained, only to find that
+all the bedrooms and dressing-rooms in the house are being used by the
+family and the house guests.
+
+A description of the pool of the Colony Club is hardly within the
+province of this chapter, but so many amazing Americans are building
+themselves great houses incorporating theaters and Roman baths, so many
+women are building club houses, so many others are building palatial
+houses that are known as girls' schools, perhaps the swimming-pool will
+soon be a part of all large houses. This pool occupies the greater part
+of the basement floor of the Club house, the rest of the floor being
+given over to little rooms where one may have a shampoo or massage or a
+dancing lesson or what not before or after one's swim. The pool is
+twenty-two by sixty feet, sunken below the level of the marble floor.
+The depth is graded from four feet to deep water, so that good and bad
+swimmers may enjoy it. The marble margin of floor surrounding the pool
+is bordered with marble benches, placed between the white columns. The
+walls of the great room are paneled with mirrors, so that there are
+endless reflections of columned corridors and pools and shimmering
+lights. The ceiling is covered with a light trellis hung with vines,
+from which hang great greenish-white bunches of grapes holding electric
+lights. One gets the impression of myriads of white columns, and of
+lights and shadows infinitely far-reaching. Surely the old Romans knew
+no pleasanter place than this city-enclosed pool.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE SMALL APARTMENT
+
+
+This is the age of the apartment. Not only in the great cities, but in
+the smaller centers of civilization the apartment has come to stay.
+Modern women demand simplified living, and the apartment reduces the
+mechanical business of living to its lowest terms. A decade ago the
+apartment was considered a sorry makeshift in America, though it has
+been successful abroad for more years than you would believe. We
+Americans have been accustomed to so much space about us that it seemed
+a curtailment of family dignity to give up our gardens, our piazzas and
+halls, our cellars and attics, our front and rear entrances. Now we are
+wiser. We have just so much time, so much money and so much strength,
+and it behooves us to make the best of it. Why should we give our time
+and strength and enthusiasm to drudgery, when our housework were better
+and more economically done by machinery and co-operation? Why should we
+stultify our minds with doing the same things thousands of times over,
+when we might help ourselves and our friends to happiness by intelligent
+occupations and amusements? The apartment is the solution of the living
+problems of the city, and it has been a direct influence on the houses
+of the towns, so simplifying the small-town business of living as well.
+
+Of course, many of us who live in apartments either have a little house
+or a big one in the country for the summer months, or we plan for one
+some day! So hard does habit die--we cannot entirely divorce our ideas
+of Home from gardens and trees and green grass. But I honestly think
+there is a reward for living in a slice of a house: women who have lived
+long in the country sometimes take the beauty of it for granted, but the
+woman who has been hedged in by city walls gets the fine joy of
+out-of-doors when she _is_ out of doors, and a pot of geraniums means
+more to her than a whole garden means to a woman who has been denied the
+privilege of watching things grow.
+
+The modern apartment is an amazing illustration of the rapid development
+of an idea. The larger ones are quite as magnificent as any houses could
+be. I have recently furnished a Chicago apartment that included large
+and small salons, a huge conservatory, and a great group of superb rooms
+that are worthy of a palace. There are apartment houses in New York that
+offer suites of fifteen to twenty rooms, with from five to ten baths, at
+yearly rentals that approximate wealth to the average man, but these
+apartments are for the few, and there are hundreds of thousands of
+apartments for the many that have the same essential conveniences.
+
+One of the most notable achievements of the apartment house architects
+is the duplex apartment, the little house within a house, with its
+two-story high living room, its mezzanine gallery with service rooms
+ranged below and sleeping rooms above, its fine height and spaciousness.
+Most of the duplex apartments are still rather expensive, but some of
+them are to be had at rents that are comparatively low--rents are always
+comparative, you know.
+
+Fortunately, although it is a far cry financially from the duplex
+apartment to the tidy three-room flat of the model tenements, the
+"modern improvements" are very much the same. The model tenement offers
+compact domestic machinery, and cleanliness, and sanitary comforts at a
+few dollars a week that are not to be had at any price in many of the
+fine old houses of Europe. The peasant who has lived on the plane of the
+animals with no thought of cleanliness, or indeed of anything but food
+and drink and shelter, comes over here and enjoys improvements that our
+stately ancestors of a few generations ago would have believed magical.
+Enjoys them--they do say he puts his coal in the bath tub, but his
+grandchildren will be different, perhaps!
+
+But enough of apartments in general. This chapter is concerned with the
+small apartment sought by you young people who are beginning
+housekeeping. You want to find just the proper apartment, of course, and
+then you want to decorate and furnish it. Let me beg of you to demand
+only the actual essentials: a decent neighborhood, good light and air,
+and at least one reasonably large room. Don't demand perfection, for
+you won't find it. Make up your mind just what will make for your
+happiness and comfort, and demand that. You can make any place livable
+by furnishing it wisely. And, oh, let me beg of you, don't buy your
+furniture until you have found and engaged your apartment! It is bad
+enough to buy furniture for a house you haven't seen, but an apartment
+is a place of limitations, and you can so easily mar the place by buying
+things that will not fit in. An apartment is so dependent upon proper
+fittings, skilfully placed, that you may ruin your chances of a real
+home if you go ahead blindly.
+
+Before you sign your lease, be sure that the neighborhood is not too
+noisy. Be sure that you will have plenty of light and air and heat. You
+can interview the other tenants, and find out about many things you
+haven't time or the experience to anticipate. Be sure that your landlord
+is a reasonable human being who will consent to certain changes, if
+necessary, who will be willing for you to build in certain things, who
+will co-operate with you in improving his property, if you go about it
+tactfully.
+
+Be sure that the woodwork is plain and unpretentious, that the
+lighting-fixtures are logically placed, and of simple construction. (Is
+there anything more dreadful than those colored glass domes, with
+fringes of beads, that landlords so proudly hang over the imaginary
+dining-table?) Be sure that the plumbing is in good condition, and
+beware the bedroom on an air shaft--better pay a little more rent and
+save the doctor's bills. Beware of false mantels, and grotesque
+grille-work, and imitation stained glass, and grained woodwork. You
+couldn't be happy in a place that was false to begin with.
+
+Having found just the combination of rooms that suggests a real home to
+you, go slowly about your decorating.
+
+It is almost imperative that the woodwork and walls should have the same
+finish throughout the apartment, unless you wish to find yourself living
+in a crazy-quilt of unfriendly colors. I have seen four room apartments
+in which every room had a different wall paper and different woodwork.
+The "parlor" was papered with poisonous-looking green paper, with
+imitation mahogany woodwork; the dining-room had walls covered with red
+burlap and near-oak woodwork; the bedroom was done in pink satin
+finished paper and bird's-eye maple woodwork, and the kitchen was
+bilious as to woodwork, with bleak gray walls. Could anything be more
+mistaken?
+
+You can make the most commonplace rooms livable if you will paint all
+your woodwork cream, or gray, or sage green, and cover your walls with a
+paper of very much the same tone. Real hard wood trim isn't used in
+ordinary apartments, so why not do away with the badly-grained imitation
+and paint it? You can look through thousands of samples of wall papers,
+and you will finally have to admit that there is nothing better for
+every day living than a deep cream, a misty gray, a tan or a buff paper.
+
+You may have a certain license in the papering of your bedrooms, of
+course, but the living-rooms--hall, dining-room, living-room,
+drawing-room, and so forth--should be pulled together with walls of one
+color. In no other way can you achieve an effect of spaciousness--and
+spaciousness is the thing of all other things most desirable in the
+crowded city. You must have a place where you can breathe and fling your
+arms about!
+
+When you have it really ready for furnishing, get the essentials first;
+do with a bed and a chest of drawers and a table and a few chairs, and
+add things gradually, as the rooms call for them.
+
+Make the best of the opportunities offered for built-in furniture before
+you buy another thing. If you have a built-in china closet in your
+dining-room, you can plan a graceful built-in console-table to serve as
+a buffet or serving-table, and you will require only a good table--not
+too heavily built--and a few chairs for this room. There is rarely a
+room that would not be improved by built-in shelves and inset mirrors.
+
+Of course, I do not advise you to spend a lot of money on someone else's
+property, but why not look the matter squarely in the face? This is to
+be your home. You will find a number of things that annoy you--life in
+any city furnishes annoyances. But if you have one or two reasonably
+large rooms, plenty of light and air, and respectable surroundings, make
+up your mind that you will not move every year. That you will make a
+home of this place, and then go ahead and _treat_ it as a home! If a
+certain recess in the wall suggests bookshelves, don't grudge the few
+dollars necessary to have the bookshelves built in! You can probably
+have them built so that they can be removed, on that far day when this
+apartment is no longer your home, and if you have a dreadful wall paper
+don't hide behind the silly plea that the landlord will not change it.
+Go without a new gown, if necessary, and pay for the paper yourself.
+
+Few apartments have fireplaces, and if you are fortunate enough to find
+one with a real fireplace and a simple mantel shelf you will be far on
+the way toward making a home of your group of rooms. Of course your
+apartment is heated by steam, or hot air, or something, but an open fire
+of coal or wood will be very pleasant on chilly days, and more important
+still your home will have a point of departure--the Hearth.
+
+If the mantel shelf is surmounted by one of those dreadful monstrosities
+made up of gingerbread woodwork and distressing bits of mirrors,
+convince your landlord that it will not be injured in the removing, and
+store it during your residence here. Have the space above the mantel
+papered like the rest of the walls, and hang one good picture, or a good
+mirror, or some such thing above your mantel shelf, and you will have
+offered up your homage to the Spirit of the Hearth.
+
+When you do begin to buy furniture, buy compactly, buy carefully.
+Remember that you will not require the furniture your mother had in a
+sixteen-room house. You will have no hall or piazza furnishings to buy,
+for instance, and therefore you many put a little more into your
+living-room things. The living-room is the nucleus of the modern
+apartment. Sometimes it is studio, living-room and dining-room in one.
+Sometimes living-room, library and guest-room, by the grace of a
+comfortable sleeping-couch and a certain amount of drawer or closet
+space. At any rate, it will be more surely a living-room than a similar
+room in a large house, and therefore everything in it should count for
+something. Do not admit an unnecessary rug, or chair, or picture, lest
+you lose the spaciousness, the dignity of the room. An over-stuffed
+chair will fill a room more obviously than a grand piano--if the piano
+is properly, and the chair improperly placed.
+
+In one of the illustrations of this chapter you will observe a small
+sitting-room in which there are dozens of things, and yet the effect is
+quiet and uncrowded. The secretary against the plain wall serves as a
+cabinet for the display of a small collection of fine old china, and the
+drawers serve the chance guest--for while this is library and
+sitting-room, it has a most comfortable couch bed, and may be used as a
+guest-room as well.
+
+[Illustration: A CORNER OF MY OWN BOUDOIR]
+
+The bookshelves are built high on each side of the mantel and between
+the windows, thus giving shelf room to a goodly collection of books,
+with no appearance of heaviness. The writing-table is placed at right
+angles to the windows, so that the light may fall on the writer's left
+shoulder. There is a couch bed--over three feet wide, in this room, with
+frame and mattress and pillows covered in a dark brocaded stuff, and a
+fireside chair, a small chair at the head of the couch and a low stool
+all covered with the same fabric. It really isn't a large room, and yet
+it abundantly fills a dozen needs.
+
+I think it unwise to try to work out a cut-and-dried color plan in a
+small apartment. If your floors and walls are neutral in tone you can
+introduce dozens of soft colors into your rooms.
+
+Don't buy massive furniture for your apartment! Remember that a few good
+chairs of willow will be less expensive and more decorative than the
+heavy, stuffy chairs usually chosen by inexperienced people. Indeed, I
+think one big arm chair, preferably of the wing variety, is the only big
+chair you will require in the living-room. A fireside chair is like a
+grandfather's clock; it gives so much dignity to a room that it is worth
+a dozen inferior things. Suppose you have a wing chair covered with
+dull-toned corduroy, or linen, or chintz; a large willow chair with a
+basket pocket for magazines or your sewing things; a stool or so of
+wood, with rush or cane seats; and a straight chair or so--perhaps a
+painted Windsor chair, or a rush-bottomed mahogany chair, or a low-back
+chair of brown oak--depending on the main furniture of the room, of
+course. You won't need anything more, unless you have space for a
+comfortable couch.
+
+If you have mahogany things, you will require a little mahogany table at
+the head of the couch to hold a reading-lamp--a sewing-table would be
+excellent. A pie-crust or turn top table for tea, or possibly a "nest"
+of three small mahogany tables. A writing table or book table built on
+very simple lines will be needed also. If you happen to have a
+conventional writing-desk, a gate-leg table would be charming for books
+and things.
+
+The wing chair and willow chairs, and the hour-glass Chinese chairs,
+will go beautifully with mahogany things or with oak things. If most of
+your furniture is to be oak, be sure and select well-made pieces stained
+a soft brown and waxed. Oak furniture is delightful when it isn't too
+heavy. A large gate-leg table of dark brown oak is one of the most
+beautiful tables in the world. With it you would need a bench of oak,
+with cane or rush seat; a small octagonal, or butterfly oak table for
+your couch end, and one or two Windsor chairs. Oak demands simple,
+wholesome surroundings, just as mahogany permits a certain feminine
+elegance. Oak furniture invites printed linens and books and brass and
+copper and pewter and gay china. While mahogany may be successfully used
+with such things, it may also be used with brocade and fragile china and
+carved chairs.
+
+Use chintzes in your apartment, if you wish, but do not risk the light
+ones in living-rooms. A chintz or printed linen of some good design on a
+ground of mauve, blue, gray or black will decorate your apartment
+adequately, if you make straight side curtains of it, and cover one
+chair and possibly a stool with it. Don't carry it too far. If your
+rooms are small, have your side curtains of coarse linen or raw silk in
+dull blue, orange, brown, or whatever color you choose as the key color
+of your room, and then select a dark chintz with your chosen color
+dominant in its design, and cover your one big chair with that.
+
+The apartment hall is most difficult, usually long and narrow and
+uninteresting. Don't try to have furniture in a hall of this kind. A
+small table near the front door, a good tile for umbrellas, etc., a good
+mirror--that is all. Perhaps a place for coats and hats, but some halls
+are too narrow for a card table.
+
+The apartment with a dining-room entirely separated from the living-room
+is very unusual, therefore I am hoping that you will apply all that I
+have said about the treatment of your living-room to your dining-room as
+well. People who live in apartments are very foolish if they cut off a
+room so little used as a dining-room and furnish it as if it belonged to
+a huge house. Why not make it a dining-and book-room, using the big
+table for reading, between meals, and having your bookshelves so built
+that they will be in harmony with your china shelves? Keep all your
+glass and silver and china in the kitchen, or butler's pantry, and
+display only the excellent things--the old china, the pewter tankard,
+the brass caddy, and so forth,--in the dining-room.
+
+However, if you have a real dining-room in your apartment, do try to
+have chairs that will be comfortable, for you can't afford to have
+uncomfortable things in so small a space! Windsor chairs and rush bottom
+chairs are best of all for a simple dining-room, I think, though the
+revival of painted furniture has brought about a new interest in the old
+flare-back chairs, painted with dull, soft colored posies on a ground of
+dull green or gray or black. These chairs would be charming in a small
+cottage dining-room, but they might not "wear well" in a city apartment.
+
+[Illustration: BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES IN A SMALL ROOM]
+
+If your apartment has two small bedrooms, why not use one of them for
+two single beds, with a night stand between, and the other for a
+dressing-room? Apartment bedrooms are usually small, but charming
+furniture may be bought for small rooms. Single beds of mahogany with
+slender posts; beds of painted wood with inset panels of cane; white
+iron beds, wooden beds painted with quaint designs on a ground of some
+soft color--all these are excellent for small rooms. It goes without
+saying that a small bedroom should have plain walls, papered or painted
+in some soft color. Flowered papers, no matter how delightful they may
+be, make a small room seem smaller. Self-toned striped papers and the
+"gingham" papers are sometimes very good. The nicest thing about such
+modest walls is that you can use gay chintz with them successfully.
+
+Use your bedrooms as sleeping-and dressing-rooms, and nothing more. Do
+not keep your sewing things there--a big sewing-basket will add to the
+homelike quality of your living-room. Keep the bedroom floor bare,
+except for a bedside rug, and possibly one or two other rugs. This, of
+course, does not apply to the large bedroom--I am prescribing for the
+usual small one. Place your bed against the side wall, so that the
+morning light will not be directly in your eyes. A folding screen
+covered with chintz or linen will prove a God-send.
+
+Perhaps you will have a guest-room, but I doubt it. Most women find it
+more satisfactory and less expensive to send their guests to a nearby
+hotel than to keep an extra room for a guest. The guest room is
+impractical in a small apartment, but you can arrange to take care of an
+over-night guest by planning your living-room wisely.
+
+As for the kitchen--that is another story. It is impossible to go into
+that subject. And anyway, you will find the essentials supplied for you
+by the landlord. You won't need my advice when you need a broom or a
+coffee pot or a saucepan--you'll go buy it!
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART
+
+
+One must have preserved many naive illusions if one may believe in all
+the "antiques" that are offered in the marketplaces of the world to-day.
+Even the greatest connoisseurs are caught napping sometimes, as in the
+case of the famous crown supposedly dating to the Fifth Century, B.C.,
+which was for a brief period one of the treasures of the Louvre. Its
+origin was finally discovered, and great was the outcry! It had been
+traced to a Viennese artisan, a worker in the arts and crafts.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. C.W. HARKNESS'S CABINET FOR _OBJETS D'ART_]
+
+Surely, if the great men of the Louvre could be so deceived it is
+obvious that the amateur collector has little chance at the hands of the
+dealers in old furniture and other objects of art. Fortunately, the
+greatest dealers are quite honest. They tell you frankly if the old
+chair you covet is really old, if it has been partially restored, or if
+it is a copy, and they charge you accordingly. At these dealers a small
+table of the Louis XVI period, or a single chair covered in the original
+tapestry, may cost as much as a man in modest circumstances would spend
+on his whole house. Almost everything outside these princely shops
+(salons is a better word) is false, or atrociously restored. Please
+remember I am not referring to reputable dealers, but to the smaller
+fry, whose name is legion, in whose shops the unwary seeker after
+bargains is sure to be taken in.
+
+Italy is, I think, the greatest workshop of fraudulent reproductions. It
+has an output that all Europe and America can never exhaust. Little
+children on the streets of Naples still find simpletons of ardent faith
+who will buy scraps of old plaster and bits of paving stones that are
+alleged to have been excavated in Pompeii.
+
+In writing about antiques it is not easy to be consistent, and any
+general conclusion is impossible. Certain reproductions are
+objectionable, and yet they are certainly better than poor originals,
+after all. The simplest advice is the best and easiest to follow: The
+less a copy suggests an attempt at "artistic reproduction," the more
+literal and mechanical it is in its copy of the original, the better it
+is. A good photograph of a fine old painting is superior to the average
+copy in oils or watercolors. A chair honestly copied from a worm eaten
+original is better for domestic purpose than the original. The original,
+the moment its usefulness is past, belongs in a museum. A plaster cast
+of a great bust is better than the same object copied in marble or
+bronze by an average sculptor. And so it goes. Think it out for
+yourself.
+
+It may be argued that the budding collector is as happy with a false
+object and a fake bauble as if he possessed the real thing, and
+therefore it were better to leave him to his illusions; that it is his
+own fault; that it is so much the worse for him if he is deceived.
+But--you can't leave the innocent lamb to the slaughter, if you can give
+him a helping hand. If he must be a collector, let him be first a
+collector of the many excellent books now published on old furniture,
+china, rugs, pewter, silver, prints, the things that will come his way.
+You can't begin collecting one thing without developing an enthusiasm
+for the contemporary things. Let him study the museum collections, visit
+the private collections, consult recognized experts. If he is serious,
+he will gradually acquire the intuition of knowing the genuine from the
+false, the worth-while from the worthless, and once he has that
+knowledge, instinct, call it what you will, he can never be satisfied
+with imitations.
+
+The collection and association of antiques and reproductions should be
+determined by the collector's sense of fitness, it seems to me. Every
+man should depend on whatever instinct for rightness, for suitability,
+he may possess. If he finds that he dare not risk his individual
+opinion, then let him be content with the things he _knows_ to be both
+beautiful and useful, and leave the subtler decisions for someone else.
+For instance, there are certain objects that are obviously the better
+for age, the objects that are softened and refined by a bloom that comes
+from usage.
+
+An old rug has a softness that a new one cannot imitate. An old copper
+kettle has an uneven quality that has come from years of use. A new
+kettle may be quite as useful, but age has given the old one a certain
+quality that hanging and pounding cannot reproduce. A pewter platter
+that has been used for generations is dulled and softened to a glow that
+a new platter cannot rival.
+
+What charm is to a woman, the vague thing called quality is to an object
+of art. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it. An old
+Etruscan jar may be reproduced in form, but it would be silly to attempt
+the reproduction of the crudenesses that gave the old jar its real
+beauty. In short, objects that depend on form and fine workmanship for
+their beauty may be successfully reproduced, but objects that depend on
+imperfections of workmanship, on the crudeness of primitive fabrics, on
+the fading of vegetable dyes, on the bloom that age alone can give,
+should not be imitated. We may introduce a reproduction of a fine bust
+into our rooms, but an imitation of a Persian tile or a Venetian vase is
+absurd on the face of it.
+
+The antiques the average American householder is interested in are the
+old mahogany, oak and walnut things that stand for the oldest period of
+our own particular history. It is only the wealthy collector who goes
+abroad and buys masses of old European furniture, real or sham, who is
+concerned with the merits and demerits of French and Italian furniture.
+The native problem is the so-called Colonial mahogany that is always
+alleged to be Chippendale or Heppelwhite, or Sheraton, regardless! There
+must be thousands of these alleged antiques in New York shops alone!
+
+It goes without saying that only a very small part of it can be really
+old. As for it having been made by the men whose names it bears, that is
+something no reputable dealer would affirm. The Chippendales, father,
+son and grandson, published books of designs which were used by all the
+furniture-makers of their day.
+
+No one can swear to a piece of furniture having been made in the
+workshops of the Chippendales. Even the pieces in the Metropolitan
+Museum are marked "Chippendale Style" or "In the Sheraton manner," or
+some such way. If the furniture is in the style of these makers, and if
+it is really old, you will pay a small fortune for it. But even then you
+cannot hope to get more than you pay for, and you would be very silly to
+pay for a name! After all, Chippendale is a sort of god among amateur
+collectors of American furniture, but among more seasoned collectors he
+is not by any means placed first. He adapted and borrowed and produced
+some wonderful things, but he also produced some monstrosities, as you
+will see if you visit the English museums.
+
+Why then lend yourself to possible deception? Why pay for names when
+museums are unable to buy them? If your object is to furnish your home
+suitably, what need have you of antiques?
+
+The serious amateur will fight shy of miracles. If he admires the beauty
+of line of a fine old Heppelwhite bed or Sheraton sideboard, he will
+have reproductions made by an expert cabinet-maker. The new piece will
+not have the soft darkness of the old, but the owner will be planning
+that soft darkness for his grandchildren, and in the meantime he will
+have a beautiful thing to live with. The age of a piece of furniture is
+of great value to a museum, but for domestic purposes, use and beauty
+will do. How fine your home will be if all the things within it have
+those qualities!
+
+Look through the photographs shown on these pages: there are many old
+chairs and tables, but there are more new ones. I am not one of these
+decorators who insist on originals. I believe good reproductions are
+more valuable than feeble originals, unless you are buying your
+furniture as a speculation. You can buy a reproduction of a Chippendale
+ladder back chair for about twenty-five dollars, but an original chair
+would cost at least a hundred and fifty, and then it would be "in the
+style and period of Chippendale." It might amuse you to ask the curator
+of one of the British museums the price of one of the Chippendales _by_
+Chippendale. It would buy you a tidy little acreage. Stuart and
+Cromwellian chairs are being more and more reproduced. These chairs are
+made of oak, the Stuart ones with seats and backs of cane, the
+Cromwellian ones with seats and backs of tapestry, needlework, corded
+velvet, or some such handsome fabric. These reproductions may be had at
+from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars each. Of course, the cost of
+the Cromwellian chairs might be greatly increased by expensive
+coverings.
+
+There is a graceful Louis XV sofa in the Petit Trianon that I have
+copied many times. The copy is as beautiful as the original, because
+this sort of furniture depends upon exquisite design and perfect
+workmanship for its beauty. It is possible that a modern craftsman might
+not have achieved so graceful a design, but the perfection of his
+workmanship cannot be gainsaid. The frame of the sofa must be carved and
+then painted and guilded many times before it is ready for the brocade
+covering, and the cost of three hundred dollars for the finished sofa is
+not too much. The original could not be purchased at any price.
+
+Then there is the Chinese lacquer furniture of the Chippendale period
+that we are using so much now. The process of lacquering is as tedious
+to-day as it ever was, and the reproductions sell for goodly sums. A
+tall secretary of black and gold lacquer may cost six hundred dollars.
+You can imagine what an Eighteenth Century piece would cost!
+
+The person who said that a taste for old furniture and bibelots was
+"worse than a passion, it was a vice," was certainly near the truth! It
+is an absorbing pursuit, an obsession, and it grows with what it feeds
+on. As in objects of art, so in old furniture, the supply will always
+equal the demand of the unwary. The serious amateur will fight shy of
+all miracles and content himself with excellent reproductions. Nothing
+later than the furniture of the Eighteenth Century is included in the
+term, "old furniture." There are many fine cabinet makers in the early
+Nineteenth Century, but from them until the last decade the horrors that
+were perpetrated have never been equaled in the history of household
+decorations.
+
+I fancy the furniture of the mid-Victorian era will never be coveted by
+collectors, unless someone should build a museum for the freakish
+objects of house furnishing. America could contribute much to such a
+collection, for surely the black walnut era of the Nineteenth Century
+will never be surpassed in ugliness and bad taste, unless--rare
+fortune--there should be a sudden epidemic of appreciation among
+cabinet-makers, which would result in their taking the beautiful wood in
+the black walnut beds and wardrobes and such and make it over into
+worth-while things. It would be a fine thing to release the mistreated,
+velvety wood from its grotesqueries, and give it a renaissance in
+graceful cabinets, small tables, footstools, and the many small things
+that could be so easily made from huge unwieldy wardrobes and beds and
+bureaux.
+
+The workmen of to-day have their eyes opened. They have no excuse for
+producing unworthy things, when the greatest private collections are
+loaned or given outright to the museums. The new wing of the
+Metropolitan Museum in New York houses several fine old collections of
+furniture, the Hoentschel collection, for which the wing was really
+planned, having been given to the people of New York by Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan. This collection is an education in the French decorative arts.
+Then, too, there is the Bolles collection of American furniture
+presented to the museum by Mrs. Russell Sage.
+
+I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and
+sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies. There is
+no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers
+of the Eighteenth Century: we give them respect for their masterly
+workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity
+to the masterpieces they reproduce.
+
+Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a
+gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture
+shop. He paid for it--you may be sure of that!--and he could hardly wait
+for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors. Within a few
+months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered
+on the inside of the frame the maker's name and address. Imagine his
+chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture
+factory in his own country. You can't be sorry for him, you feel that it
+served him right.
+
+[Illustration: A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH
+NEEDLEWORK]
+
+[Illustration: A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ]
+
+This is an excellent example of the vain collector who cannot judge
+for himself, but will not admit it. He has not developed his sense of
+beauty, his instinct for excellence of workmanship. He thinks that
+because he has the money to pay for the treasure, the treasure must be
+genuine--hasn't _he_ chosen it?
+
+I can quite understand the pleasure that goes with furnishing a really
+old house with objects of the period in which the house was built. A New
+England farmhouse, for instance, may be an inspiration to the owner, and
+you can understand her quest of old fashioned rush bottomed chairs and
+painted settles and quaint mirrors and blue homespun coverlets. You can
+understand the man who falls heir to a good, square old Colonial house
+who wishes to keep his furnishings true to the period, but you cannot
+understand the crying need for Eighteenth Century furniture in a modern
+shingle house, or the desire for old spinning wheels and battered
+kitchen utensils in a Spanish stucco house, or Chippendale furniture in
+a forest bungalow.
+
+I wish people generally would study the oak and walnut furniture of old
+England, and use more reproductions of these honest, solid pieces of
+furniture in their houses. Its beauty is that it is "at home" in simple
+American houses, and yet by virtue of its very usefulness and sturdiness
+it is not out of place in a room where beautiful objects of other
+periods are used. The long oak table that is so comfortably ample for
+books and magazines and flowers in your living-room may be copied from
+an old refectory table--but what of it? It fulfils its new mission just
+as frankly as the original table served the monks who used it.
+
+The soft brown of oak is a pleasure after the over-polished mahogany of
+a thousand rooms. I do not wish to condemn Colonial mahogany furniture,
+you understand. I simply wish to remind you that there are other woods
+and models available. French furniture of the best type represents the
+supreme art of the cabinet-maker, and is incomparable for formal rooms,
+but I am afraid the time will never come when French furniture will be
+interchangeable with the oak and mahogany of England and America.
+
+In short, the whole thing should be a matter of taste and suitability.
+If you have a few fine old things that have come to you from your
+ancestors--a grandfather's clock, an old portrait or two--you are quite
+justified in bringing good reproductions of similar things into your
+home. The effect is the thing you are after, isn't it? Then, too, you
+will escape the awful fever that makes any antique seem desirable, and
+in buying reproductions you can select really comfortable furniture. You
+will be independent of the dreadful vases and candelabra and steel
+engravings "of the period," and will feel free to use modern prints and
+Chinese porcelains and willow chairs and anything that fits into your
+home. I can think of no slavery more deadly to one's sense of humor than
+collecting antiques indiscriminately!
+
+[Illustration: THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB]
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
+
+
+When I planned the trellis room of the Colony Club in New York I had
+hard work finding workmen who could appreciate the importance of
+crossing and recrossing little strips of green wood, of arranging them
+to form a mural decoration architectural in treatment. This trellis room
+was, I believe, the first in America to be so considered, though the use
+of trellis is as old as architecture in Japan, China, Arabia, Egypt,
+Italy, France and Spain.
+
+The earliest examples of trellis work shown are in certain Roman
+frescoes. In Pompeii the mural paintings give us a very good idea of
+what some of the Roman gardens were like. In the entrance hall of the
+house of Sallust is represented a garden with trellised niches and
+bubbling fountains. Representations that have come down to us in
+documents show that China and Japan both employed the trellis in their
+decorative schemes. You will find a most daring example on your old blue
+willow plate, if you will look closely enough. The bridge over which the
+flying princess goes to her lover is a good model, and could be built in
+many gardens. Even a tiny modern garden, yours or mine, might hold this
+fairy bridge.
+
+Almost all Arabian decorations have their basis in trellis design or
+arabesques filled in with the intricate tracery that covers all their
+buildings. If we examine the details of the most famous of the old
+Moorish buildings that remain to us, the mosque at Cordova and the
+Alhambra at Granada, we shall find them full of endless trellis
+suggestions. Indeed, there are many documents still extant showing how
+admirably trellis decoration lends itself to the decoration of gardens
+and interiors. There are dozens of examples of niches built to hold fine
+busts. Pavilions and summer houses, the quaint gazebos of old England,
+the graceful screens of trellis that terminate a long garden path, the
+arching gateways crowned with vines--all these may be reproduced quite
+easily in American gardens.
+
+The first trellis work in France was inspired by Italy, but the French
+gave it a perfection of architectural character not found in other
+countries. The manuscript of the "Romance of the Rose," dating back to
+the Fifteenth Century, contains the finest possible example of trellis
+in a medieval garden. Most of the old French gardens that remain to us
+have important trellis construction. At Blois one still sees the remains
+of a fine trellis covering the walls of the kitchen gardens. Wonderful
+and elaborate trellis _pavillons_, each containing a statue, often
+formed the centers of very old gardens. These garden houses were called
+gazebos in England, and _Temples d'Amour_ (Temples of Love) in France,
+and the statue most often seen was the god of Love. In the Trianon
+gardens at Versailles there is a charming _Temple d'Amour_ standing on a
+tiny island, with four small canals leading to it.
+
+A knowledge of the history of trelliage and an appreciation of its
+practical application to modern needs is a conjurer's wand--you can wave
+it and create all sorts of ephemeral constructions that will last your
+time and pleasure. You may give your trellis any poetic shape your
+vision may take. You may dream and realize enchanting gardens, with
+clipped hedges and trellis walls. You may transform a commonplace porch
+into a gay garden room, with a few screens of trellis and many flower
+boxes of shrubs and vines. Here indeed is a delightful medium for your
+fancy!
+
+Trelliage and lattice work are often used as interchangeable terms, but
+mistakenly, for any carpenter who has the gift of precision can build a
+good lattice, but a trellis must have architectural character. Trellis
+work is not necessarily flimsy construction; the light chestnut laths
+that were used by the old Frenchmen and still remain to us prove that.
+
+Always in a garden I think one must feel one has not come to the end,
+one must go on and on in search of new beauties and the hidden delights
+we feel sure must be behind the clipped hedges or the trellis walls.
+Even when we come to the end we are not quite sure it is the end, and we
+steep ourselves in seclusion and quiet, knowing full well that to-morrow
+or to-night perhaps when the moon is up and we come back as we promise
+ourselves to do, surely we shall see that ideal corner that is the last
+word of the perfection of our dream garden--that delectable spot for
+which we forever seek!
+
+We can bring back much of the charm of the old-time gardens by a
+judicious use of trellis. It is suitable for every form of outdoor
+construction. A new garden can be subdivided and made livable in a few
+months with trellis screens, where hedges, even of the quick growing
+privet, would take years to grow. The entrance to the famous maze at
+Versailles, now, alas, utterly destroyed, was in trellis, and I have
+reproduced in our own garden at Villa Trianon, in Versailles, the
+entrance arch and doors, all in trellis. Our high garden fence with its
+curving gate is also in trellis, and you can imagine the joy with which
+we watched the vines grow, climbing over the gatetop as gracefully as if
+they too felt the charm of the curving tracery of green strips, and
+cheerfully added the decoration of their leaves and tendrils.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH'S TRELLIS ROOM AT CENTER ISLAND, NEW
+YORK]
+
+Our outdoor trellis is at the end of the Villa Trianon garden, in line
+with the terrace where we take our meals. This trellis was rebuilt many
+times before it satisfied me, but now it is my greatest joy. The niches
+are planned to hold two old statues and several prim box trees. I used
+very much the same constructive design on one of the walls of the Colony
+Club trellis room, but there a fountain has the place of honor.
+Formal pedestals surmounted by gracefully curved urns, box trees,
+statues, marble benches, fountains--all these belong to the formal
+outdoor trellis.
+
+The trellis is primarily suitable for garden architecture, but it may be
+fitted to interior uses most skilfully. Pictures of the trellis room in
+the Colony Club have been shown so often it is not necessary to repeat
+more than one of them. The room is long and high, with a floor of large
+red tiles. The walls and ceiling are covered with rough gray plaster, on
+which the green strips of wood are laid. The wall space is entirely
+covered with the trellis design broken into ovals which hold
+lighting-fixtures--grapes and leaves in cloudy glass and green enamel.
+The long room leads up to the ivy-covered trellis of the fountain wall,
+a perfect background for the fountain, a bowl on the brim of which is
+poised a youthful figure, upheld by two dolphins. The water spills over
+into a little pool, banked with evergreens. Ivy has been planted in long
+boxes along the wall, and climbs to the ceiling, where the plaster is
+left bare, save for the trellised cornice and the central trellis
+medallion, from which is suspended an enchanting lantern made up of
+green wires and ivy leaves and little white flames of electric light.
+
+The roof garden of the Colony Club is latticed in a simple design we all
+know. This is lattice, not trellis, and in no way should be confounded
+with the trellis room on the entrance floor. This white-painted lattice
+covers the wall space. Growing vines are placed along the walls and
+clamber to the beams. The glass ceiling is supported by white beams.
+There are always blossoming flowers and singing birds in this room. The
+effect is springlike and joyous on the bleakest winter day. The room is
+heated by two huge stoves of green Majolica brought over from Germany
+when other heating systems failed. Much of the furniture is covered with
+a grape-patterned chintz and a green and white striped linen. The
+ceiling lights are hidden in huge bunches of pale green grapes.
+
+I recently planned a most beautiful trellis room for a New York City
+house. The room is long and narrow, with walls divided into panels by
+upright classic columns. The lower wall space between the columns is
+covered with a simple green lattice, and the upper part is filled with
+little mirrors framed in narrow green moldings, arranged in a
+conventional design which follows the line of the trellis. One end of
+the room is made up of two narrow panels of the trellis with a fireplace
+between. On the opposite wall the middle panel is a background for a
+delightful wall fountain. The fretwork of mirrors which takes the place
+of frieze in the room is continued all around the four walls. One of the
+walls is filled entirely with French doors of plate glass, beneath the
+mirrored frieze; the other long wall has the broad, central panel cut
+into two doors of plate glass, and stone benches placed against the two
+trellised panels flanking the doors. The ceiling is divided into three
+great panels of trellis, and from each of the three panels a lantern is
+suspended.
+
+In the Guinness house in New York there is a little hallway wainscoted
+in white with a green trellis covering the wall space above. Against
+this simple trellis--it is really a lattice--a number of plaster casts
+are hung. In one corner an old marble bowl holds a grapevine, which has
+been trained over the walls. The floor is of white tiles, with a narrow
+Greek border of black and white. This decoration of a little hall might
+be copied very easily.
+
+The architects are building nowadays many houses that have a sun-room,
+or conservatory, or breakfast room. The smallest cottage may have a
+little breakfast room done in green and white lattice, with green
+painted furniture and simple flower boxes. I have had furniture of the
+most satisfactory designs made for my trellis rooms. Green painted wood
+with cane insets seems most suitable for the small rooms, and the
+marbles of the old trellised _Temples d'Amour_ may be replaced by cement
+benches in our modern trellis pavillions.
+
+There is so much of modern furniture that is refreshing in line and
+color, and adapted to these sun-rooms. There is a desk made by Aitchen,
+a notable furniture designer in London, which I have used in a sun-room.
+The desk is painted white, and is decorated with heavy lines of dark
+green. The drawer front and the doors of the little cupboard are filled
+with cane. The knobs are of green. This desk would be nice in a white
+writing-room in a summer cottage, though it was planned for a trellis
+room. It could be used as a dressing table, with a bench or chair of
+white, outlined in green, and a good mirror in white and green frame.
+Another desk I have made is called a jardiniere table, and was designed
+for Mrs. Ogden Armour's garden room at Lake Forest. The desk, or table,
+is painted gray, with faint green decorations. At each end of the long
+top there is a sunken zinc-lined box to hold growing plants. Between the
+flower boxes there is the usual arrangement of the desk outfit, blotter
+pad, paper rack, ink pots, and so forth. The spaces beneath the flower
+boxes are filled with shelves for books and magazines. This idea is
+thoroughly practicable for any garden room, and is so simple that it
+could be constructed by any man who knows how to use tools.
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING OVER THE _TAPIS VERT_ TO THE TRELLIS]
+
+I had the pleasure recently of planning a trellis room for Mrs.
+Ormond-Smith's house at Center Island, New York. Here indeed is a garden
+room with a proper environment. It is as beautiful as a room very well
+can be within, and its great arched windows frame vistas of trees and
+water which take their place as a part of the room, ever changing
+landscapes that are always captivating. This trellis room is beautifully
+proportioned, and large enough to hold four long sofas and many chairs
+and tables of wicker and painted wood. The grouping of the sofas and the
+long tables made to fit between them is most interesting. These
+tables are extremely narrow and just the length of the sofas, and are
+built after the idea of Mrs. Armour's garden room desk, with flower
+boxes sunk in the ends. The backs of two sofas are placed against the
+long sides of the table, which holds a reading lamp and books in
+addition to its masses of flowers at the ends. Two such groups divide
+the room into three smaller rooms, as you can see by the illustration.
+Small tables and chairs are pulled up to the sofas, making conversation
+centers, or comfortable places for reading.
+
+The trellis work covers the spaces between windows and doors, and
+follows the contour of the arches. The ceiling is bordered with the
+trellis, and from a great square of it in the center a lamp is
+suspended. The wall panels are broken by appliques that suggest the
+bounty of summer, flowers and leaves and vines in wrought and painted
+iron. There are pedestals surmounted by marbles against some of the
+panels, and a carved bracket supporting a magnificent bust high on one
+of the wider panels. The room is classic in its fine balance and its
+architectural formality, and modern in its luxurious comfort and its
+refreshing color. Surely there could be no pleasanter room for whiling
+away a summer day.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+VILLA TRIANON
+
+
+The story of the Villa Trianon is a fairy-tale come true. It came true
+because we believed in it--many fairy stories are ready and waiting to
+come true if only people will believe in them long enough.
+
+For many years Elizabeth Marbury and I had spent our summers in that
+charming French town, Versailles, before we had any hope of realizing a
+home of our own there. We loved the place, with its glamour of romance
+and history, and we prowled around the old gardens and explored the old
+houses, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.
+
+One old house that particularly interested us was the villa that had
+once been the home of the Duc de Nemours, son of Louis Philippe. It was
+situated directly on the famous Park of Versailles which is, as everyone
+knows, one of the most beautiful parks in all the world. The villa had
+not been lived in since the occupancy of de Nemours. Before the villa
+came to de Nemours it had been a part of the royal property that was
+portioned out to Mesdames de France, the disagreeable daughters of Louis
+XV. You will remember how disagreeable they were to Marie Antoinette,
+and what a burden they made her life. I wish our house had belonged to
+more romantic people; Madame du Barry or Madame de Pompadour would have
+suited me better!
+
+How many, many times we peeped through the high iron railing at this
+enchanted domain, sleeping like the castle in the fairy tale. The garden
+was overgrown with weeds and shrubbery, the house was shabby and sadly
+in need of paint. We sighed and thought how happy would be our fortune
+if we might some day penetrate the mysteries of the tangled garden and
+the abandoned villa. Little did we dream that this would one day be our
+home.
+
+We first went to Versailles as casual summer visitors and our stay was
+brief. We loved it so much that the next summer we went again, this time
+for the season, and found ourselves members of a happy pension family.
+Then we decided to rent an apartment of our own, for the next year, and
+soon we were considering the leases of houses, and finally we arrived at
+the supreme audacity of negotiating for the purchase of one. We had a
+great friend in Versailles, Victorien Sardou, the novelist and
+playwright so honored by the people of France. His wonderful house at
+Marly le Roi was a constant joy to us, and made us always more eager for
+a permanent home of our own in the neighborhood. Sardou was as eager for
+the finding of our house as we were, and it was he who finally made it
+possible for us to buy our historic villa. He did everything for us,
+introduced us to his friends, wonderful and brilliant people, gave us
+liberally of his charm and knowledge, and finally gave us the chance to
+buy this old house and its two acres of gardens.
+
+The negotiations for the house were long and tedious. Our offer was an
+insult, a joke, a ridiculous affair to the man who had the selling of
+it! He laughed at us, and demanded twice the amount of our offer. We
+were firm, outwardly, and refused to meet him halfway, but secretly we
+spent hours and hours in the old house, sitting patiently on folding
+camp-stools, and planning the remaking of the house as happily as
+children playing make-believe.
+
+I remember vividly the three of us, Miss Marbury, Sardou, and I,
+standing in the garden on a very rainy day. Sardou was bounding up and
+down, saying: "Buy it, buy it! If you don't buy it before twelve o'clock
+to-morrow I will buy it myself!" We were standing there soaking wet,
+perfectly oblivious to the downpour, wondering if we dared do such an
+audacious thing as to purchase property so far from our American
+anchorage.
+
+[Illustration: A FINE OLD CONSOLE IN THE VILLA TRIANON]
+
+Well, we bought it, and at our own price, practically, and for eight
+years we have been restoring the house and gardens to their Seventeenth
+Century beauty. Sardou was our neighbor, and his wonderful chateau at
+Marly, overlooking the valley and terraces of St. Germain, was a
+never-failing surprise to us, so full was it of beauty and charm, so
+flavored with the personality of its owner. Sardou was of great help
+to us when we finally purchased our house. His fund of information never
+failed us, there seemed to be no question he could not answer. He was
+quite the most erudite man I have ever known. He had as much to say
+about the restoration of our house as we. He introduced us to Monsieur
+de Nolhac, the conservator of the Chateau de Versailles, who gave us the
+details of our villa as it had been a century and a half ago, and helped
+us remake the garden on the lines of the original one. He loaned us
+pictures and documents, and we felt we were living in a modern version
+of the Sleeping Beauty, with the sleeping villa for heroine.
+
+Our house had always been called "Villa Trianon," and so we kept the
+name, but it should not be confused with the Grand Trianon or the Petit
+Trianon. Of course everyone knows about the Park at Versailles, but
+everyone forgets, so I shall review the history of the Park briefly,
+that you may appreciate our thrills when we really owned a bit of it.
+
+Louis XIV selected Versailles as the site for the royal palace when it
+was a swampy, uninteresting little farm. Louis XIII had built a chateau
+there in 1627, but had done little to beautify the flat acres
+surrounding it. Louis the Magnificent lavished fortunes on the laying
+out of his new park. The Grand Trianon was built for Madame de Main
+tenon in 1685, and from this time on, for a full century, the Park of
+Versailles was the most famous royal residence in the world.
+
+The Petit Trianon was built by Louis XV for Madame du Barry. Later,
+during the reign of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, who was then Queen,
+tiring of court etiquette and scorning the stately rooms of Versailles,
+persuaded her husband to make over to her the Petit Trianon. Here she
+built a number of little rustic cottages, where she and the ladies of
+her court, dressed in calicoes, played at being milkmaids. They had a
+little cottage called the "Laiterie," where the white cows with their
+gilded horns were brought in to be milked. Here, too, little plays were
+presented in a tiny theater where only the members of the court were
+admitted. The Queen and her brother, Comte de Provence, were always the
+chief actors.
+
+Our villa adjoins the Park proper. In our deeds to the two acres there
+is a clause which reserves a right-of-way for the King! The deed is
+worded like the old lease that dates back to 1750, and so one day we may
+have to give a King a right-of-way through our garden, if France becomes
+a monarchy again. Anyone who knows French people at all knows how dearly
+they cherish the dream of a monarchy.
+
+[Illustration: THE BROAD TERRACE CONNECTS HOUSE AND GARDEN]
+
+One of the small houses we found on our small estate had once been a
+part of the _hameau_ of Marie Antoinette. We have had this little house
+rebuilt and connected with the villa, and now use it as a guest
+house. It is very charming, with its walls covered with lattices and
+ivy.
+
+Villa Trianon, like most French houses, is built directly on the street,
+leaving all the space possible for the garden. The facade of the villa
+is very simple, it reminds you of the square houses of the American
+Colonial period, except that there is no "front porch," as is inevitable
+with us in America. The entrance gate and the stone wall that surround
+the place give an interest that our detached and hastily built American
+houses lack. The wall is really a continuation of the facade of the
+villa, and is surmounted by a black iron railing. Vines and flowers that
+have flourished and died and flourished again for over a century climb
+over the wall and through the graceful railing, and give our home an air
+of permanence that is very satisfying. After all, that is the secret of
+Europe's fascination for us Americans--the ever-present suggestion of
+permanence. We feel that houses and gardens were planned and built for
+centuries, not for the passing pleasure of one brief lifetime. We people
+them with ghosts that please us, and make histories for them that are
+always romantic and full of happiness. The survival of an old house and
+its garden through centuries of use and misuse is always an impressive
+and dramatic discovery to us: it gives us courage to add our little bit
+to the ultimate beauty and history, it gives us excuse to dream of the
+fortunate people who will follow us in other centuries, and who will, in
+turn, bless us for our part in the remaking of one old house and
+garden.
+
+There was much to do! We hardly knew where to begin, the house was in
+such wretched condition. The roof was falling in, and the debris of
+years was piled high inside, but the walls and the floors were still
+very beautiful and as sound as ever, structurally. We had the roof
+restored, the debris removed, and the underbrush weeded out of the
+garden, and then we were ready to begin the real business of
+restoration.
+
+The house is very simply planned. There is a broad hall that runs
+straight through it, with dining-room and servants' hall on the right,
+and four connecting salons on the left. These salons are charming rooms,
+with beautiful panelings and over-doors, and great arches framed in
+delicate carvings. First comes the writing-room, then the library, then
+the large and small salons. The rooms opening on the back of the house
+have long French windows that open directly upon the terrace, where we
+have most of our meals. The note of the interior of the house is blue,
+and there are masses of blue flowers in the garden. The interior
+woodwork is cream, pointed with blue, and there are blues innumerable in
+the rugs and curtains and _objets d'art_. There must be a hundred
+different shades of blue on this living-floor, I think. We have tried to
+restore the rooms to a Louis XV scheme of decoration. The tables and
+cabinets are of the fine polished woods of the period. Some of the
+chairs are roomy affairs of carved and painted wooden frames and
+brocade coverings, but others are modern easychairs covered in new
+linens of old designs, linens that were designed for just such interiors
+when Oberkampf first began his designing at Jouy. The mirrors and
+lighting-fixtures are, of course, designed to harmonize with the
+carvings of the woodwork. Monsieur de Nolhac and Sardou were most
+helpful to us when such architectural problems had to be solved.
+
+We have not used the extravagant lace curtains that seem to go with
+brocades and carvings, because we are modern enough not to believe in
+lace curtains. And we find that the thin white muslin ones give our
+brocades and tapestries a chance to assert their decorative importance.
+Somehow, lace curtains give a room such a dressed-up-for-company air
+that they quite spoil the effect of beautiful fabrics. We have a few
+fine old Savonnerie carpets that are very much at home in this house,
+and so many interesting Eighteenth Century prints we hardly know how to
+use them.
+
+Our bedrooms are very simple, with their white panelings and chintz
+hangings. We have furnished them with graceful and feminine things,
+delicately carved mirror frames and inlaid tables, painted beds, and
+chests of drawers of rosewood or satinwood. We feel that the ghosts of
+the fair ladies who live in the Park would adore the bedrooms and
+rejoice in the strange magic of electric lights. If the ghosts should be
+confronted with the electric lights their surprise would not be greater
+than was the consternation of our builders when we demanded five
+bathrooms. They were astounded, and assured us it was not necessary, it
+was not possible. Indeed, it seemed that it was hardly legal to give one
+small French house five American bathrooms. We fought the matter out,
+and got them, however.
+
+We determined to make the house seem a part of the garden, and so we
+built a broad terrace across the rear of the villa. You step directly
+from the long windows of the salon and dining-room upon the terrace, and
+before you is spread out our little garden, and back of that, through an
+opening in the trees, a view of the Chateau, our never-failing source of
+inspiration.
+
+The terrace is built of tiles on a cement foundation. Vines are trained
+over square column-like frames of wire, erected at regular intervals.
+Between the edge of the terrace and the smooth green lawn there is a
+mass of blue flowers. We have a number of willow chairs and old stone
+tables here, and you can appreciate the joy of having breakfast and tea
+on the terrace with the birds singing in the boughs of the trees.
+
+I have written at length in the other chapters of my ideas of
+house-furnishing, and in this one I want to give you my ideas of garden
+guilding. True, we had the old garden plan to work from, and trees two
+hundred years old, and old vine-covered walls. Who couldn't accomplish a
+perfect garden with such essentials, people said! Well, it wasn't so
+easy as it seems. You can select furnishings for a room with fair
+success, because you can see and feel textures, and colors, and the
+lines of the furniture and curtains. But gardens are different--you
+cannot make grass and flowers grow just so on short notice! You plant
+and dig and plant again, before things grow as you have visualized them.
+
+There was a double ring of trees in one corner of our domain, enclosing
+the _salle de verdure_, or outdoor drawing-room. In the center of this
+enchanted circle there was a statue by Clodion, a joyous nymph, holding
+a baby faun in her arms. There were several old stone benches under the
+trees that must have known the secrets of the famous ladies of the
+Eighteenth Century courts. The _salle de verdure_ looked just as it did
+when the little daughters of Louis XV came here to have their afternoon
+cakes and tea, so we did not try to change this bit of our garden.
+
+My idea of making over the place was to leave the part of the garden
+against the stone walls in the rear in its tangled, woodsy state, and to
+build against it a trellis that would be in line with the terrace.
+Between the trellis and the terrace there was to be a smooth expanse of
+greensward, bordered with flowers. It seemed very simple, but I hereby
+confess that I built and tore down the trellis three times before it
+pleased me! I had to make it worthy of the statue by Pradier that was
+given us by Sardou, and finally it was done to please me. Painted a
+soft green, with ivy growing over it, and a fountain flanked by white
+marbles outlined against it, this trellis represents (to me, at least)
+my best work.
+
+The _tapis vert_ occupies the greater part of the garden, and it is
+bordered by gravel walks bordered in turn with white flowerbeds. Between
+the walks and the walls there are the groups of trees, the statues with
+green spaces about them, the masses of evergreen trees, and finally the
+great trees that follow the lines of the wall. Indeed, the _tapis vert_
+is like the arena of an ample theater, with the ascending flowers and
+shrubs and trees representing the ascending tiers of seats. One feels
+that all the trees and flowers look down upon the central stretch of
+greensward, and perhaps there is a fairy ring here where plays take
+place by night. Nothing is impossible in this garden. Certainly the
+fairies play in the enchanted ring of the trees of the _salle de
+verdure_. We are convinced of that.
+
+So formal is the _tapis vert_, with its blossoming borders of larkspur
+and daisies and its tall standard roses, you are surprised to find that
+that part of the garden outside this prim rectangle has mysteries. There
+are winding paths that terminate in marble seats. There is the
+_pavilion_, a little house built for outdoor musicales, with electric
+connections that make breakfast and tea possible here. There is the
+guest house, and the motor house--quite as interesting as any other part
+of the garden. And everywhere there are blue and white and rose-colored
+flowers, planted in great masses against the black-green evergreens.
+
+We leave America early in June, tired out with the breathless business
+of living, and find ourselves in our old-world house and garden. We fall
+asleep to the accompaniment of the tiny piping of the little people in
+bur garden. We awake to the matins of the birds. We breakfast on the
+stone terrace, with boughs of trees and clouds for our roof, and as we
+look out over the masses of blue flowers and the smooth green _tapis
+vert_, over the arched trelliage with its fountains and its marbles, the
+great trees back of our domain frame the supremely beautiful towers of
+the Chateau le Magnificent, and we are far happier than anyone deserves
+to be in this wicked world!
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+NOTES ON MANY THINGS
+
+A LITTLE TALK ON CLOCKS.
+
+
+The selection of proper clocks for one's house is always long-drawn-out,
+a pursuit of real pleasure. Clocks are such necessary things the
+thoughtless woman is apt to compromise, when she doesn't find exactly
+the right one. How much wiser and happier she would be if she decided to
+depend upon an ordinary alarm clock until the proper clock was
+discovered! If she made a hobby of her quest for clocks she would find
+much amusement, many other valuable objects by-the-way, and finally
+exactly the right clocks for her rooms.
+
+Everyone knows the merits and demerits of the hundreds of clocks of
+commerce, and it isn't for me to go into the subject of
+grandfather-clocks, bracket clocks, and banjo clocks, when there are so
+many excellent books on the subject. I plead for the graceful clocks of
+old France, the _objets d'art_ so lovingly designed by the master
+sculptors of the Eighteenth Century. I plead particularly for the wall
+clocks that are so conspicuous in all good French houses, and so unusual
+in our own country.
+
+[Illustration: A PROPER WRITING-TABLE IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+Just as surely as our fine old English and American clocks have their
+proper niches, so the French clocks belong inevitably in certain rooms.
+You may never find just the proper clock for this room, but that is your
+fault. There are hundreds of lovely old models available. Why shouldn't
+some manufacturer have them reproduced?
+
+I feel that if women generally knew how very decorative and
+distinguished a good wall clock may be, the demand would soon create a
+supply of these beautiful objects. It would be quite simple for the
+manufacturers to make them from the old models. The late Mr. Pierpont
+Morgan gave to the Metropolitan Museum the magnificent Hoentschel
+collection of _objets d'art_, hoping to stimulate the interest of
+American designers and artisans in the fine models of the Seventeenth
+and Eighteenth Centuries. There are some very fine examples of wall
+clocks in this collection which might be copied in carved wood by the
+students of manual training schools, if the manufacturers refuse to be
+interested.
+
+Wall clocks first came into France in the early part of the Seventeenth
+Century, and are a part of the furnishing of all the fine old French
+houses. A number of the most interesting clocks I have picked up were
+the wooden models which served for the fine bronze clocks of the
+Eighteenth Century. The master designer first worked out his idea in
+wood before making the clock in bronze, and the wooden models were sold
+for a song. I have one of these clocks in my dining-room. It is as much
+a part of the wall decoration as the lights or the mirrors.
+
+The wall clocks I like best are fixed directly on the wall, the dial
+glass opening so that the clock may be wound with a key. You will notice
+such a clock in the photograph of one of my dining-rooms. This fine old
+clock is given the place of honor in the main panel of the wall, above
+the console table. I often use such a clock in a dining-room, just as I
+use the fine old French mantel clocks in my drawing-rooms. You will
+observe a very quaint example of the Empire period in the illustration
+of my drawing-room mantel. This clock is happily placed, for the marble
+of the mantel, the lighting-fixtures near by and the fine little bronze
+busts are all in key with the exquisite workmanship of the clock. In
+another room in my house, a bedroom, there is a beautiful little French
+clock that is the only object allowed on the mantel shelf. The beautiful
+carving of the mirror frame back of it seems a part of the clock, a
+deliberate background for it. This is one of the many wall clocks which
+were known as bracket clocks, the bracket being as carefully designed
+and carved as the clock itself. Most of the clocks we see nowadays grew
+out of the old bracket models.
+
+The American clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those
+jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be
+still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are very
+much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland,
+and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long,
+exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall
+clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine _bas reliefs_, and
+of even greater decorative importance.
+
+Every room in my house has its clock, and to me these magic little
+instruments have an almost human interest. They seem always friendly to
+me, whether they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem
+never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks
+so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where
+there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive,
+exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled "French" and sold at
+a great price in the shops. Somehow, one never expects a clock of this
+kind to keep time--it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it
+wheezes, or gasps, or makes a dreadful noise, and invariably stops at
+half-past three.
+
+I am such a crank about good clocks that I take my own with me, even on
+a railway train. I think I have the smallest clock in the world which
+strikes the hours. There are many tiny clocks made which strike if one
+touches a spring, but my clock always strikes of itself. Cartier, who
+designed and made this extraordinary timepiece, assures me that he has
+never seen so small a clock which strikes. It is very pleasant to have
+this little clock with its friendly chime with me when I am in some
+desolate hotel or some strange house.
+
+There are traveling clocks in small leather cases which can be bought
+very cheaply indeed now, and one of these clocks should be a part of
+everyone's traveling equipment. The humble nickeled watch with a leather
+case is infinitely better than the pretentious clocks, monstrosities of
+marble and brass and bad taste.
+
+
+A CORNER FOR WRITING.
+
+One of my greatest pleasures, when I am planning the furnishing of a
+house, is the selection and equipment of the necessary writing-tables.
+Every room in every house has its own suggestion for an original
+treatment, and I enjoy working out a plan for a writing-corner that will
+offer maximum of convenience, and beauty and charm, for in these busy
+days we need all these qualities for the inspiration of a pleasant note.
+You see, I believe in proper writing-tables, just as I believe in proper
+chairs. I have so many desks in my own house that are in constant use,
+perhaps I can give you my theory best by recording my actual practice of
+it.
+
+I have spoken of the necessity of a desk in the hallway, and indeed, I
+have said much of desks in other rooms, but I have still to emphasize my
+belief in the importance of the equipment of desks.
+
+Of course, one needs a desk in one's own room. Here there is infinite
+latitude, for there are dozens of delightful possibilities. I always
+place my desks near the windows. If the wall space is filled, I place an
+oblong table at right angles to a window, and there you are. In my own
+private sitting-room I have a long desk so placed, in my own house. In a
+guest-room I furnished recently, I used a common oblong table of no
+value, painting the legs a soft green and covering it with a piece of
+sage-green damask. This is one of the nicest writing-tables I know, and
+it could be copied for a song. The equipment of it is what counts. I
+used two lamps, dull green jars with mauve silk shades, a dark green
+leather rack for paper and envelopes, and a great blotter pad that will
+save the damask from ink-spots. The small things are of green pottery
+and crystal. In a young girl's bedroom I used a sweet little desk of
+painted wood, a desk that has the naive charm of innocence. I do hope it
+inspires the proper love-letters.
+
+I always make provision for writing in dressing-rooms--a sliding shelf
+in the dressing-table, and a shallow drawer for pencils and paper--and I
+have adequate writing facilities in the servants' quarters, so that
+there may be no excuse for forgetting orders or messages. This seems to
+me absolutely necessary in our modern domestic routine: it is part of
+the business principle we borrow from the efficient office routine of
+our men folk. The dining-room and the bathrooms are the only places
+where the writing-table, in one form or another, isn't required.
+
+I like the long flat tables or small desks much better than the huge
+roll-top affairs or the heavy desks built after the fashion of the old
+_armoire_. If the room is large enough, a secretary after an Eighteenth
+Century model will be a beautiful and distinguished piece of furniture.
+I have such a secretary in my own sitting-room, a chest of drawers
+surmounted by a cabinet of shelves with glass doors, but I do not use it
+as a desk. I use the shelves for my old china and porcelains, and the
+drawers for pamphlets and the thousand and one things that are too
+flimsily bound for bookshelves. Of course, if one has a large
+correspondence and uses one's home as an office, it is better to have a
+large desk with a top which closes. I prefer tables, and I have them
+made big enough to hold all my papers, big enough to spread out on.
+
+There are dozens of enchanting small desks that are exactly right for
+guest-rooms, the extremely feminine desks that come from old France. One
+of the most fascinating ones is copied from a _bureau de toilette_ that
+belonged to Marie Antoinette. In those days the writing of letters and
+the making of a toilet went together. This old desk has a drawer filled
+with compartments for toilet things, powders and perfumes and patches,
+and above this vanity-drawer there is the usual shelf for writing, and
+compartments for paper and letters. The desk itself suggests brocade
+flounces and powdered hair, so exquisitely is it constructed of
+tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many colors.
+
+Then there are the small desks made by modern furniture-makers, just
+large enough to hold a blotting-pad, a paper rack, and a pair of
+candlesticks. There is always a shallow drawer for writing materials.
+Such a desk may be decorated to match the chintzes of any small bedroom.
+
+If it isn't possible for you to have a desk in each guest-room, there
+should be a little writing-room somewhere apart from the family
+living-room. If you live in one of those old-fashioned houses
+intersected by great halls with much wasted space on the upper floors,
+you may make a little writing-room of one of the hall-ends, and screen
+it from the rest of the hall with a high standing screen. If you have a
+house of the other extreme type, a city house with little hall bedrooms,
+use one of these little rooms for a writing-room. You will require a
+desk well stocked with stationery, and all the things the writer will
+need; a shelf of address books and reference books--with a dictionary,
+of course; many pens and pencils and fresh blotters, and so forth. Of
+course, you may have ever so many more things, but it isn't necessary.
+Better a quiet corner with one chair and a desk, than the elaborate
+library with its superb fittings where people come and go.
+
+Given the proper desk, the furnishing of it is most important. The
+blotting-pad should be heavy enough to keep its place, and the
+blotting-paper should be constantly renewed. I know of nothing more
+offensive than dusty, ink-splotched blotting-paper. There are very good
+sets to be had, now, made of brass, bronze, carved wood, porcelain,
+silver or crystal, and there are leather boxes for holding stationery
+and leather portfolios to be had in all colors. I always add to these
+furnishings a good pair of scissors, stationery marked with the house
+address or the monogram of the person to whom the desk especially
+belongs, an almanac, and a _pincushion!_ My pincushions are as much a
+part of the equipment of a desk as the writing things, and they aren't
+frilly, ugly things. They are covered with brocade or damask or some
+stuff used elsewhere in the room and I assure you they are most useful.
+I find that pins are almost as necessary as pens in my correspondence;
+they are much more expedient than pigeon-holes.
+
+In country houses I think it shows forethought and adds greatly to the
+comfort of the guests to have a small framed card showing the arrival
+and departure of trains and of mails, especially if the house is a great
+distance from the railway-station. This saves much inquiry and time. In
+the paper rack there should be not only stamped paper bearing the
+address of the house, telephone number, and so forth, but also telegraph
+blanks, post cards, stamps, and so forth. Very often people who have
+beautiful places have post cards made showing various views of the
+house and garden.
+
+Test the efficiency of your writing-tables occasionally by using them
+yourself. This is the only way to be sure of the success of anything in
+your house--try it yourself.
+
+
+STOOLS AND BENCHES.
+
+I often wonder, when I grope my way through drawing-rooms crowded and
+jammed with chairs and sofas, why more women do not realize the
+advantages of stools and benches. A well-made stool is doubly useful: it
+may be used to sit upon or it may be used to hold a tray, or whatever
+you please. It is really preferable to a small table because it is not
+always full of a nondescript collection of ornaments, which seems to be
+the fate of all small tables. It has also the advantage of being low
+enough to push under a large table, when need be, and it occupies much
+less space than a chair apparently (not actually) because it has no
+back. I have stools, or benches, or both in all my rooms, because I find
+them convenient and easily moved about, but I have noticed an amusing
+thing: Whenever a fat man comes to see me, he always sits on the
+smallest stool in the room. I have many fat friends, and many stools,
+but invariably the fattest man gravitates to the smallest stool.
+
+The stools I like best for the drawing-room are the fine old ones,
+covered with needlework or brocade, but there are many simpler ones of
+plain wood with cane insets that are very good for other rooms. Then
+there are the long _banquettes_, or benches, which are so nice in
+drawing-rooms and hallways and nicest of all in a ballroom. Indeed, a
+ballroom needs no other movable furniture; given plenty of these long
+benches. They may be of the very simplest description, but when used in
+a fine room should be covered with a good damask or velvet or some rich
+fabric.
+
+I have a fine Eighteenth Century _banquette_ in my drawing-room, the
+frame being carved and gilded and the seat covered with Venetian red
+velvet. You will find these gilded stools all over England. There are a
+number at Hampton Court Palace. At Hardwick there are both long and
+short stools, carved with the dolphin's scroll and covered with
+elaborate stuffs. The older the English house, the more stools are in
+evidence. In the early Sixteenth Century joint stools were used in every
+room. In the bedrooms they served the purposes of small tables and
+chairs as well. There are ever so many fine old walnut stools and the
+lower stools used for bed-steps to be bought in London shops that make a
+specialty of old English furniture, and reproductions of them may be
+bought in the better American shops. I often wonder why we do not see
+more bedside stools. They are so convenient, even though the bed be only
+moderately high from the floor. Many of mine are only six inches high,
+about the height of a fat floor cushion.
+
+[Illustration: A CREAM-COLORED PORCELAIN STOVE IN A NEW YORK HOUSE]
+
+Which reminds me: the floor cushion, made of the same velvet made for
+carpeting, is a modern luxury we can't afford to ignore. Lately I have
+seen such beautiful ones, about three feet long and one foot wide,
+covered with tapestry, with great gold tassels at the corners. The
+possibilities of the floor cushion idea are limitless. They take the
+place of the usual footstool in front of the boudoir easy chair, or
+beside the day bed or _chaise-longue_, or beside the large bed, for that
+matter. They are no longer unsanitary, because with vacuum cleaners they
+may be kept as clean as chair cushions. They may be made to fit into
+almost any room. I saw a half dozen of them in a dining-room, recently,
+small square hard ones, covered with the gold colored velvet of the
+carpet. They were not more than four or five inches thick, but that is
+the ideal height for an under-the-table cushion. Try it.
+
+
+PORCELAIN STOVES.
+
+When the Colony Club was at last finished we discovered that the furnace
+heat did not go up to the roof-garden, and immediately we had to find
+some way of heating this very attractive and very necessary space. Even
+from the beginning we were sadly crowded for room, so popular was the
+club-house, and the roof-garden was much needed for the overflow. We
+conferred with architects, builders and plumbers, and found it would be
+necessary to spend about seven thousand dollars and to close the club
+for about two months in order to carry the heating arrangements up to
+the roof. This was disastrous for a new club, already heavily in arrears
+and running under heavy expenses. I worried and worried over the
+situation, and suddenly one night an idea came to me: I remembered some
+great porcelain stoves I had seen in Germany. I felt that these stoves
+were exactly what we needed, and that we should be rescued from an
+embarrassing situation without much trouble or expense. I was just
+leaving for Europe, so I hurried on to the manufacturers of these
+wonderful stoves and found, after much difficulty, a model that seemed
+practicable, and not too huge in proportion. The model, unfortunately,
+was white with gilded garlands, far too French and magnificent for our
+sun-room. I persuaded them to make two of the stoves for me in green
+Majolica, with garlands of soft-toned flowers, and finally we achieved
+just the stoves for the room.
+
+But my troubles were not over: When the stoves reached New York, we
+tried to take them up to the roof, and found them too large for the
+stairs. We couldn't have them lifted up by pulleys, because the glass
+walls of the roof garden and the fretwork at the top of the roof made it
+impossible for the men to get "purchase" for their pulleys. Finally we
+persuaded a gentleman who lived next door to let us take them over the
+roof of his house, and the deed was accomplished. The stoves were equal
+to the occasion. They heated the roof garden perfectly, and were of
+great decorative value.
+
+Encouraged by this success I purchased another porcelain stove, this
+time a cream-colored porcelain one, and used it in a hallway in an
+uptown house. It was the one thing needed to give the hall great
+distinction. Since then I have used a number of these stoves, and I
+wonder why our American manufacturers do not make them. They are
+admirable for heating difficult rooms--outdoor porches, and draughty
+halls, and rooms not heated by furnaces. The stoves are becoming harder
+and harder to find, though I was fortunate enough to purchase one last
+year from the Marchioness of Anglesey, who was giving up her home at
+Versailles. This stove was of white Majolica with little Loves in terra
+cotta adorning it. The new ones are less attractive, but it would be
+perfectly simple to have any tile manufacturer copy an old one, given
+the design.
+
+
+THE CHARM OF INDOOR FOUNTAINS.
+
+Wall fountains as we know them are introduced into our modern houses for
+their decorative interest and for the joy they give us, the joyous sound
+and color of falling water. We use them because they are beautiful and
+cheerful, but originally they had a most definite purpose. They were
+built into the walls of the dining-halls in medieval times, and used for
+washing the precious plate.
+
+If you look into the history of any _objet d'art_ you will find that it
+was first used for a purpose. All the superb masterly things that have
+come to us had logical beginnings. It has remained for the thoughtless
+designer of our times to produce things of no use and no meaning. The
+old designers decorated the small objects of daily use as faithfully as
+they decorated the greater things, the wall spaces and ceilings and
+great pieces of furniture, and so this little wall basin which began in
+such a homely way soon became a beautiful thing.
+
+Europe has countless small fountains built for interior walls and for
+small alcoves and indoor conservatories, but we are just beginning to
+use them in America. American sculptors are doing such notable work,
+however, that we shall soon plan our indoor fountains as carefully as we
+plan our fireplaces. The fact that our houses are heated mechanically
+has not lessened our appreciation of an open fire, and running water
+brought indoors has the same animate charm.
+
+[Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE TRELLIS ROOM OF MRS. ORMOND G. SMITH]
+
+[Illustration: MR. JAMES DEERING'S WALL FOUNTAIN]
+
+I am showing a picture of the wall fountain in the entrance hall of my
+own New York house in East Fifty-fifth Street. I have had this wall
+fountain built as part of the architectural detail of the room, with a
+background of paneled mirrors. It spills over into a marble curbed pool
+where fat orange-colored goldfish live. I keep the fountain banked with
+flowers. You can imagine the pleasure of leaving the dusty city
+streets and entering this cool, pleasant entrance hall.
+
+Our modern use of indoor fountains is perfectly legitimate: we use them
+to bring the atmosphere of outdoors in. In country houses we use
+fountains in our gardens, but in the city we have no gardens, and so we
+are very wise to bring in the outdoor things that make our lives a
+little more gay and informal. The more suggestive of out-of-doors the
+happier is the effect of the sun room. Occasionally one sees a rare
+house where a glass enclosed garden opens from one of the living-rooms.
+There is a house in Nineteenth Street that has such an enclosed garden,
+built around a wall fountain. The garden opens out of the great
+two-storied music-room. Lofty windows flank a great door, and fill the
+end of the room with a luminous composition of leaded glass. Through the
+door you enter the garden, with its tiled floor, its glass ceiling, and
+its low brick retaining walls. The wall fountain is placed exactly in
+front of the great door, and beneath it there is a little semi-circular
+pool bordered with plants and glittering with goldfish. Evergreens are
+banked against the brick walls, and flat reliefs are hung just under the
+glass ceiling. The garden is quite small, but takes its place as an
+important part of the room. It rivals in interest the massive Gothic
+fireplace, with its huge logs and feudal fire irons.
+
+The better silversmiths are doing much to encourage the development of
+indoor fountains. They display the delightful fountains of our young
+American sculptors, fountains that would make any garden room notable.
+There are so many of these small bronze fountains, with Pan piping his
+irresistible tune of outdoors; children playing with frogs or geese or
+lizards or turtles; gay little figures prancing in enchanted rings of
+friendly beasties. Why don't we make use of them?
+
+
+
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