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THE
HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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Copyright, 1913, by
THE CENTURY Co.
Copyright, 1911, 1912, by
THE BCTTSRICK PUBLISUINO Co.
ght, 1912, 1913, by
SEKEEPING MAQAZINI
Published, October,
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
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
3
17
27
42
52
71
84
122
THE DRAWING-ROOM 134
XI THE LIVING-ROOM 14$
XII SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR 159
XIII A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM 174
XIV THE BEDROOM
XV THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH
XVI
194
219
THE SMALL APARTMENT 237
XVII REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE
AND OBJECTS OF ART 254
XVIII THE ART OF TRELLIAGE 271
XIX VILLA TRIANON 284
XX NOTES ON MANY THINGS 3OO
282285
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Elsie de Wolfe Frontispiece
In this hall, simplicity, suitability and proportion are observed . 7
Mennoyer drawings and old mirrors set in panelings .... 14
A portrait by Nattier inset above a fine old mantel .... 19
The Washington Irving house was delightfully rambling . . 29
A Washington Irving House bedroom 34
Miss Marbury's bedroom 39
The forecourt and entrance of the Fifty-fifth Street house . . 45
A painted wall broken into panels by narrow moldings ... 57
A wall paper of Elizabethan design with oak furniture ... 64
The scheme of this room grew from the jars on the mantel . . 70
A Louis Seize bedroom in rose and blue and cream .... 75
The writing corner of a chintz bedroom 82
Black chintz used in a dressing-room 87
Printed linen curtains over rose colored silk 92
Straight hangings of rose and yellow shot silk 97
Muslin glass curtains in the Washington Irving house . . . 103
Here are many lighting fixtures harmoniously assembled in a
drawing-room 108
Detail of a fine old French fixture of hand wrought metal . .113
Lighting fixtures inspired by Adam mirrors 118
The staircase in the Bayard Thayer house 127
The drawing-room should be intimate in spirit 138
The fine formality of well-placed paneling 143
The living-room in the C. W. Harkness house at Morristown,
New Jersey 149
Miss Anne Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir 162
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Miss Morgan's Louis XVI lit de repos 167
A Georgian dining-room in the William Iselin house .... 177
Mrs. Ogden Armour's Chinese paper screen 184
Mrs. James Warren Lane's painted dining-table 184
The private dining-room in the Colony Club 189
An old painted bed of the Louis XVI period 196
Miss Crocker's Louis XVI bed 199
A Colony Club bedroom 203
Mauve chintz in a dull green room 208
Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer's Chinoserie chintz bed .... 212
Mrs. Payne Whitney's green feather chintz bed 212
My own bedroom is built around a Breton bed 217
Furniture painted with chintz designs 221
Miss Morgan's Louis XVI dressing-room 226
Miss Marbury's chintz-hung dressing-table 231
A corner of my own boudoir 246
Built-in bookshelves in a small room 251
Mrs. C. W. Harkness's cabinet for objets d'art 256
A banquette of the Louis XV period covered with needlework . 265
A Chinese Chippendale sofa covered with chintz 265
The trellis room in the Colony Club 270
Mrs. Ormond G. Smith's trellis room at Center Island, New
York 275
Looking over the tapis vert to the trellis 282
A fine old consol in the Villa Trianon 287
The broad terrace connects house and garden 292
A proper writing-table in the drawing-room 301
A cream-colored porcelain stove in a New York house . . .314
Mr. James Deering's wall fountain 319
Fountain in the trellis room of Mrs. Ormond G, Smith . . . 319
THE
HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 prom-
ising 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, out-
side 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.
3
^ ^ ; UTHE; HO.USE IN GOOD TASTE
Their spacious, uncrowded interiors were usually beau-
tiful. 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 apart-
ment, our individual castle in Spain, but it is n't nec-
essary to live among intolerable furnishings just be-
cause we cannot realize our castle. There never was
a house so bad that it could n't be made over into some-
thing 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 evi-
dence 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 deco-
rate.
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,
4
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
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 inter-
ested 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 is n'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 per-
manency and emphasis. I once heard a certain Boston
architect say that he taught his clients to be ladies and
gentlemen. He could n't, you know. All he could do
is to set the front door so that it would reprove them
if they were n't !
Who does not know, for instance, those mistaken
5
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
people whose houses represent their own or their archi-
tects' 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 con-
venient closets, but as individual expressions of our-
selves, 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.
Fortunately for us, our best architects are so very
good that we are better than safe if we take our prob-
lems 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 eco-
nomical to be your own architect and trust your house
to a building contractor is a mistaken, and most ex-
pensive, 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
6
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
genius and character of your architect and the person-
ality and character of yourself, as a great painting sug-
gests 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 pa-
rade 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 re-
treat. 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 hus-
9
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
band's death. So you see the idea of a woman plan-
ning 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, bou-
doir, antechamber, and even its bath, and then as deco-
rator she supplanted the old feudal yellow and red
with her famous silver-blue. She covered blue chairs
with silver bullion. She fashioned long, tenderly col-
ored curtains of novel shades. Reticence was always
in evidence, but it was the reticence of elegance. It
was through Madame de Rambouillet that the arm-
chair received its final distribution of yielding parts,
10
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
and began to express the comfort of soft padded back-
ward 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 conse-
crated 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 unspeak-
able, 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 milk-
maid, or seated in a little gray-white interior with
painted wooden furniture, having her supper on an
11
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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. Eng-
lish 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 in^
genuity of the Nineteenth Century, the fundamentals
have changed but little. And now we of the Twentieth
Century can only add material comforts and an expres-
sion 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 hor-
rors of humidity.
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 per-
fection, consummate in its charms, but it is finished, and
what can we do about a thing that is finished?
Does n't it seem that we are back in the old position of
Isabella d'Este — eager, predatory, and "thingy"?
12
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN HOUSE
And is n't it time for us to pull up short lest we side-
step the goal? We are so sure of a thousand appetites
we are in danger of passing by the amiable common-
places. We find ourselves dismayed in old houses that
look too simple. We must stop and ask ourselves ques-
tions, and, if necessary, plan for ourselves little re-
treats 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 rose-
wood of Eastlake walnut and cocobolo, your pickle-
and-plum colored Morris furniture, and make a civil-
ized 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 dis-
position 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
15
/
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 acknowl-
edged 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 fire-places 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.
16
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 ex-
travagant 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-magnifi-
cent hotels and residences! One arrives from a jour-
ney 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
-«
17
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 sum-
moned a reluctant chambermaid, only to be told that
the chimney had never had a fire in it and the pro-
prietor would rather not take such a risk!
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
18
A PORTRAIT BY NATTIER INSET ABOVE A FINE OLD MANTEL
SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY, PROPORTION
find ourselves for the first time, by her surroundings.
We judge her temperament, her habits, her inclina-
tions, 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 refine-
ment and charm the person who welcomes us in a de-
lightful room, where the colors blend and the propor-
tions are as perfect as in a picture. After all,
what surer guarantee can there be of a woman's charac-
ter, 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
err5 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, sim-
plicity 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 archi-
tecture is not necessary to know that a huge stuffed
leather chair in a tiny gold and cream room is unsuit-
able, is hideously complicated, and is as much out of
proportion as the proverbial bull in the china-shop.
21
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 common-
places, 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 com-
fortable, 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 col-
lection of gilt chairs and tables, over-elaborate draper-
ies 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 host-
22
SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY, PROPORTION
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, "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 an-
other 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 heter-
ogeneous 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 Centu-
ries 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
23
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 confi-
dence. 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 pre-
occupations, 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
24
SUITABILITY, SIMPLICITY, PROPORTION
was a jumble of mission furniture, satin wood, 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 Six-
teenth 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 con-
noisseur 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
, 25
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 orna-
mental "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.
26
Ill
THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
I HAVE always lived in enchanting houses. Prob-
ably 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.
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.
27
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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, funda-
mentally, 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
28
THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
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 won-
derful 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 con-
tents, should n'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 per-
fect harmony.
31
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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
32
THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
white muslin curtains. No matter what the inner cur-
tains of a room may be, I use this simple stuff against
the window itself. There is n't any nicer material.
To me there is something unsuitable in an array of
lace against a window, like underclothes hung up to
dry.
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 with-
out 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 conserva-
tory. 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
35
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 ar-
rangement 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
36
THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
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 loung-
ing chairs. The little table must hold a good reading
light, well shaded, for who does n'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 beau-
tiful. Who has n'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 bed-
room 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 writ-
ing-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
37
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 dis-
posal 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 writ-
ing-table in every bedroom. My friends laugh at the
little fat pincushions on my writing-tables, but when
38
THE OLD WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE
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.
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 sky-
scrapers 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 archi-
tect 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 won-
ders 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 thou-
sands 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
42
THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
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 en-
trance 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 feel-
ing 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 win-
dow of the floor above into an impressive composition.
The fagade of the house, instead of being a common-
place 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 ar-
rangement 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
43
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 forest4? This en-
trance 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 en-
trance 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 ad-
dress, 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 in-
ward— and fundamental ! — lack of order.
In this hall there is a charming desk particularly
44
THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET HOUSE
THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
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 avail-
able. There is a shallow drawer which contains sur-
plus 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 stair-
way, 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 stair-
way 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 seem-
ingly 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
47
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 sun-
shine in all rooms.
But I think we can carry the white paint idea too
far: I have grown a little tired of over-careful dec-
orations, 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-
48
THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
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 wn>
dows 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 me-
dallions and border of blue, ivory and rose. Near the
49
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 bed-
rooms. 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 house-
hold 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
50
THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS
chintz curtains and bed-coverings that are especially
chosen, not handed down when they have become
too faded to be used elsewhere!
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 con-
ditions and decorative schemes, the architect and client
of to-day work out these problems with excellent re-
sults. 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 har-
mony 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 keep-
ing 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 ques-
tions 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
THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
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 back-
grounds. 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 dar-
ing 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
53
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 be-
tween 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 ceil-
ings and woodwork — you may begin to plan your wall
coverings. Begin, you understand. You will prob-
ably change your plans a dozen times before you make
the final decisions. I hope you will! Because in-
evitably 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 de-
54
THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
signs may be used successfully — witness the delighted
use of the fantastic landscape papers in the middle of
the Eighteenth Century. Walls should always be ob-
viously 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 dec-
oration. Our ancestors hung their walls with tro-
phies. 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 calen-
dars 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 "differ-
ent" and "pretty"? She selects a "rich" paper for her
hall and an "elegant" paper for her drawing-room — the
55
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 charm-
ing 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 does n'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 composi-
tions 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.
56
THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
To me, the most beautiful wall is the plain and dig-
nified painted wall, broken into graceful panels by the
use of narrow moldings, with lighting fixtures care-
fully 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 de-
sire.
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
59
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 care-
fully. 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 ceil-
ing 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 say-
ing 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 or-<
dinary paper frieze is bad ; it darkens the upper wall un-
pleasantly, 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 some-
times be placed just under the picture rail with good
effect.
In a great room with a beamed ceiling and oak
60
THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
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 magnifi-
cent 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 won-
derful store of woods, here in America, it is worth while
to panel our rooms, copying the simple rectangular Eng-
lish 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 Span-
ish leather, a cold northern room that merits such a
brilliant wall treatment. The primitive colors of the
Cordova leather workers, with gold and crimson dom-
inant, glow from the deep shadows. Spanish and
Italian furniture and fine old velvets and brocades fur-
nish this room. The same sort of room invites wood
61
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 Eigh-
teenth 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 im-
aginable. 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.
62
THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
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 car-
pet 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. Re-
cently 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
65
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 man-
tel. 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 al-
ways 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 Eng-
land 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
66
THE TREATMENT OF WALLS
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 mourn-
ful in the decorator's combination of black and white :
rather, there is a nai'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 — does n'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 en-
chanted 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
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 hall-
ways, 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.
68
8
VI
THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
WHAT a joyous thing is color! How in-
fluenced we all are by it, even if we are un-
conscious of how our sense of restfulness
has been brought about. Certain colors are antago-
nistic to each of us, and I think we should try to learn
just what colors are most sympathetic to our own in-
dividual 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 na-
ture 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, feel-
ing I have about decoration is my love of color. I
have felt as intimate a satisfaction at St. Mark's at twi-
light as I ever felt at any opera, though I love music.
71
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
Color! The very word would suggest warm and
agreeable arrangement of tones, a pleasing and encour-
aging 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 un-
friendly. 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, an-
other 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 in-
tellectual 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 re-
sult 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,"
72
THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
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 an-
other and some people who have a deep and passion-
ate feeling for music, while the rest — the great major-
ity 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
does n'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 neces-
sary small furnishings for your color. Then, with an
excellent background of soft quiet tones, you can ven-
73
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 — 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 com-
position? 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 !
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 pic-
tures that you can have. When this has been ar-
ranged, it is time to consider the color-scheme for the
interior of the house, the colors that shall be in har-
74
THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
mony with the window-framed vistas, the colors that •
shall be backgrounds for the intimate personal furnish-
ings 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 sec-
ondary 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 sun-
shine 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 re-
77
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
member 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 am-
ple chairs and long tables are all of the soft brown
cypress. Here, if anywhere, you would think a monot-
ony 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
78
THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
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 wood-
work 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 pil-
lows. 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 delight-
ful mauve chintz, on which birds and flowers are pat-
terned. There are several easy chairs cushioned with
this chintz, and the window hangings are also of it.
79
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 con-
struction. 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 skil-
ful 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 pic-
tures in your room.
The chintz used in this room is patterned in the rose
red of the carpet and a dull cool blue, on a white
80
1
1J
By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
THE WRITING CORNER OF A CHINTZ BEDROOM
THE EFFECTIVE USE OF COLOR
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, en-
compasses 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 conversa-
tion might be were we not forever conscious that be-
tween 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.
84
OF DOORS, WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
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 an-
other, 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 imita-
tions 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.
85
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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, color-
ful quality. When windows are treated thus archi-
tecturally they need no glass curtains. They need
only side curtains of some deep-toned fabric.
As for your single windows, when you are planning
86
By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
BLACK CHINTZ USED IN A DRESSING-ROOM
OF DOORS, WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
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 in-
stead 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 suit-
ability. 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 win-
dow sash of small square panes of glass unless it be
the diamond-paned casement window of an old Eng-
lish 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 un-
broken sheet of glass which framed a marvelous vista
of mountain and valley. It goes without saying that
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 be-
neath 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 mat-
ter 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 ran-
som, 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.
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
90
i
OF DOORS, WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
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 mold-
ing 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
93
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
draw them away, for glass curtains are supposed to
be a protection from the gaze of the passers-by. If you
have n'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-de-
signed cretonne; the beautiful chintzes as we know
them were unknown. Now there are literally thou-
sands 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 Chippen-
dale, that were in vogue when the Dutch East India
Company supplied the world with its china and fab-
rics; the dainty French toiles de Jouy that are remi-
niscent of Marie Antoinette and her bewitching apart-
ments, 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
94
OF DOORS, WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
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 deco-
rator." 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
95
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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.
Not long ago I was asked to furnish a small sea-
OF DOORS, WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
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, furni-
ture, 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 poly-
chrome 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 *foile 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
99
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
furniture we see now is really a revival and reproduc-
tion 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 un-
finished 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 bou-
quets 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
100
OF DOORS, WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
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
101
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 writ-
ing-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.
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
102
OF DOORS, WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
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 laven-
der 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
105
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 similiar to the
one shown in the illustration would be very nice above
the chest of drawers.
106
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 light-
ing fixtures. Usually, side openings are placed much
too near the trim of a door or window, so that no self-
109
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
respecting bracket can be placed in the space without
encroaching on the molding. Another favorite mis-
take 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 plac-
ing of the lights on the chimney-breast. I advise put-
ting 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 con-
gratulate 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
no
THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
is the cost of electricity. This is not a cut-and-dried
statement, but an observation from personal experi-
ence. The little town's electricity is usually a by-
product 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 elec-
tricity, 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 elec-
tricity. 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.
ill
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
The subject of the selection of lighting-fixtures is
limitless. There are so many fixtures to be had now-
adays— good, bad and indifferent — that it were im-
possible to point out the merits and demerits of them
all. There are copies of all the best lamps and lan-
terns 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 Ameri-
can hallway, that offer excellent lessons in the sim-
plicity of the master decorators of old times. Con-
trast 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.
112
DETAIL OF A FINE OLD FRENCH FIXTURE OF HAND-WROUGHT METAL
THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
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 train-
ing high schools and normal art schools.
Why does n't some far-seeing manufacturer of light-
ing-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 en-
couraging the daubing of china or the piercing of brass
that leads to nothing? And if you have n't a daugh-
ter 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
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 super-
fluous 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 beauti-
ful, but the final test of a fixture is its effect in rela-
tion to the other furnishings of the room in sunlight.
116
THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
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 in-
teresting 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
chimneypiece 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 sur-
prising the shops still sell their frightful lamps covered
with cabbage roses and dragons and monstrosities. A
119
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 com-
plain 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 apart-
ments 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 dis-
couragement. The humblest kitchen lamp of brass
and tin would be beautiful by contrast.
120
THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT
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 dress-
ing 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.
121
IX
HALLS AND STAIRCASES
IN early days the hall was the large formal room
in which the main business of the house was trans-
acted. 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 primi-
tive 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 stair-
case 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.
122
HALLS AND STAIRCASES
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 ap-
preciation 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 occasion-
ally and to artists and designers frequently, that they
may have the advantage of studying the treasures.
To return to our staircases: In France the inter-
mural, or spiral, staircase was considered quite splen-
did 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 treach-
ery 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 with-
out 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
123
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 panel-
ing 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 ih
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 excel-
lence 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,
124
HALLS AND STAIRCASES
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 magnifi-
cent staircases of older countries and older times than
our own, because somehow the subject is one that can-
not 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 "West-
over," 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 Viiginia 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 repre-
sentative 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 them-
selves. The staircase has two landings, on the first
125
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 coun-
try 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 wind-
ing staircases of old England, but the long hall open
at both ends, and the long stair, with one or two land-
ings, is characteristic of all old American houses.
The customary finish for these old halls was a land-
scape 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 of tener 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'?
When I planned the main hall of the Colony Club
I determined to make it very Colonial, very American,
126
THE STAIRCASE IN THE BAYARD THAYER HOUSE
HALLS AND STAIRCASES
and comfortable, the
of hall
very inviting
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,
129
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 simi-
lar 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 re-
sulting 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
130
HALLS AND STAIRCASES
white walls and woodwork. There are no pictures on
the wall, but there are specially designed lighting-fix-
tures 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 ele-
vators. 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 work-
ing 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
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 foun-
tain, 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
132
HALLS AND STAIRCASES
living-room of a small house is that such an arrange-
ment 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 look-
ing "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 ap-
propriate 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 noth-
ing better than a staightaway 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.
133
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 sit-
134
/
THE DRAWING-ROOM
ting-room, as they are usually called. People who ap-
preciate 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 inter-
changeably in America — though we are a bit more
timid of the salon — but there is a subtle difference be-
tween 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 cham-
ber 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 /// de parade, was representative of
all the salons of the time of Louis XIII. Gradually
the owners of the more magnificent houses saw the op-
portunity for a series of salons, and so the state apart-
ment was divided into two parts: a salon de famille^
which afforded the family a certain privacy, and the
135
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
salon de compagnie^ which was sacred to a magnificent
hospitality. And so the salon expanded until nowa-
days we use the word with awe, and appreciate its im-
plication of brilliant conversation and exquisite decora-
tion, of a radiant hostess, an amusing and distinguished
circle of people. The word has a graciousness, a chal-
lenge 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 clever-
\ ness.
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 mem-
bers 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.
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
136
UHIV. OF
CALIFORNIA
I
THE DRAWING-ROOM
be one or more sofas, with comfortable chairs pulledT
up beside them. No one chair should be isolated, for
some bashful person who does n't talk well anyway
is sure to take the most remote chair and make herself
miserable. I have seen a shy young woman com-
pletely 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 relaxa-
tion 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 una-
fraid. 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 has n'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 deli-
cious. 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?"
139
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 particu-
larly nice object.
Given plenty of chairs and sofas, and a few small
140
THE DRAWING-ROOM
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 god-
send in a drawing-room, it makes a room that is usually
cold and formal at once more livable and more inti-
mate. 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.
There is a great difference in opinion as to the plac-
ing of the piano in the drawing-room. I think it be-
longs 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.
141
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 me-
chanical 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. Cer-
tainly 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,
142
THE DRAWING-ROOM
and that can be hidden in a closet between times.
Why not4?
But suppose you have a piano, or need one : do give
it a chance ! Its very size makes it tremendously im-
portant, 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 in-
side 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 be-
cause 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 mag-
H5
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
nificent 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 harpsi-
chord 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 design-
ing 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 draw-
ing-room, be careful always of your colors. Remem-
ber that not only must the room be beautiful in its
broad spaces and long lines and soft colors, but it must
146
THE DRAWING-ROOM
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 in-
complete 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.
H7
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 can-
not call all sorts of visions from such a flame !
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-
148
THE LIVING-ROOM
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 be-
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 furnish-
ing 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 possi-
ble is a perfectly straight up and down stiff-backed
chair is absurd. In a large house where there is a fam-
ily dining-room the chairs should be alike, but in an in-
v formal living-room the chairs may be perfectly comfor-
table 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
152
THE LIVING-ROOM
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 shquld be very
carefully placed so that ft 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 j oiliest place
in the world when things go smoothly, but there are
times when a little room is a very necessary place to
153
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 in-
door living-room may become a quiet library, for in-
stance. But if you have n't a garden or a sunroom,
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 does n't matter, you see.
We Americans love books — popular books! — and
we have had sense enough to bring them into our liv-
ing-rooms, and enjoy them. But when you begin call-
ing a room a library it should mean something more
than a small mahogany bookcase with a hundred vol-
umes hidden behind glass doors. I think there is nothing
154
THE LIVING-ROOM
more amusing than the unused library of the nouveau
riche, the pretentious room with its monumental book-
cases 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 soft-
ness, 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:
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THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
"Does n't it make you feel that it has been loved and
lived in for years 9"
The room is large and almost square. The walls
are paneled in cream and white, with the classic man-
tel 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 mahog-
any, 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 daven-
port 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
156
THE LIVING-ROOM
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 Co-
lonial 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 comfort-
able 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
157
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 grad-
ually find itself, though it may take years and heart-
ache 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!
158
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 sit-
ting-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 inti-
macy because it is a personal and not a general room,
but while it may be used as a lounging-place occasion-
ally, 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 ex-
tremely small. I recall one charming little room in
159
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 bon-
heur du jour, and two armchairs. 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 panel-
ing of the same width filled with a mirror from base-
board 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 ap-
pliques 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.
The boudoir should always be a small room, be-
cause 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
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SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
boudoir furnishings are borrowed from both bedroom
and drawing-room traditions. There are certain
things that are used in the bedroom that would be ri-
diculous 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 evi-
dent.
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 il-
lustration of which is shown, I had a day bed made of
163
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
white wood that was painted to match the chintzes
of the room. The mattress and springs were cov-
ered 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 is n'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 in-
terests, 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 shim-
mering 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, bro-
cade and needlework, quite in harmony with the mod-
ern 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
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SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
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 sit-
ting-room, library, and rest-room combined, a home
room very much like my down-town office in the con-
veniences it offers. In the early morning it is my of-
fice, where I plan the day's routine and consult my
servants. In the rare evenings when I may give my-
self 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 book-shelves, 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 por-
celain 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
165
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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.
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
166
SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
small apartment a desk would seem heavy and ponder-
ous. The fittings of the desk are of dark red leather,
like that of many of the book-bindings, and the per-
sonal touch that makes the desk mine is a bowl of
roses. Between the two windows in the shallow re-
cess, I have placed an aquarium, a recent acquisition
that delights my soul. The aquarium is simply an ob-
long 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 Chi-
nese temples and dwarf trees. I love to house my lit-
tle 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 fire-
place and givis 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
169
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
plan gorgeous cushions for other people's "little peo-
ple," 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 develop-
ments 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 is n'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 person-
ality, 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 differ-
ent: 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
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SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
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 back-
ground to my old secretary is in her room given up to
long open bookshelves of mahogany. My over-man-
tel 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. An-
other 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 mis-
tress is more fortunate. Here she can be as inde-
pendent as she pleases of the family and the guests
171
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
who come and go through the other living-rooms of the
house. Here she can have her counsels with her chil-
dren, 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 cor-
responds 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-Turk-
ish 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 does n'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
is n't any good for anything else. The ideal arrange-
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SITTING-ROOM AND BOUDOIR
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 does n'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 fasci-
nation for his less fortunate friends, who buzz around
him in wistful admiration.
173
XIII
A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
FIRST of all, I think a dining-room should be
light, and gay. The first thing to be consid-
ered is plenty of sunshine. The next thing is
the planning of a becoming background for the mis-
tress 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 hos-
tess. Every woman has a right to be pretty in her own
dining-room.
I do not favor the dark, heavy treatments and elab-
orate 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
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A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
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 din-
ing-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
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THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 din-
ing-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 con-
soles to take their place, but there is little chance for
other variation, and so the beginning is a declaration
of order and simplicity.
The easiest way to destroy this simplicity is to litter
the ro'om 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
176
LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
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 decora-
tive 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 ab-
sence of the usual mantel shelf, the plain dining- table
and the fine old lion chairs all go to make up a Geor-
gian room of great distinction.
The woman who cannot afford such expensive sim-
plicity 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
179
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 wed-
ding 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 every-
one knows these things too well, and dining-room con-
ventions are so binding that we miss many pleasant de-
partures 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 cer-
tain 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 possi-
ble. You enter this room, then, through a door at
the extreme left of the south wall of the room. An-
other 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
180
A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
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, bal-
ance, 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
181
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
fireplace, and by mechanical means. You see we do
not occupy this house in summer, so the mirrored win-
dows 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 chim-
ney piece. You see that the salvation of this room
depends on this careful repetition and variation of sim-
ilar objects.
Color is brought into the room in the blue and yel-
low 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 yel-
low 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 com-
pensate 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.
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 blos-
soms picked out all over it. The colors used are very
182
*» w
A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
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, thp 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
185
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 (Part 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 cabi-
nets 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 furnish-
ing 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
186
A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
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 furni-
ture, 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
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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.
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 be-
come more and more a part of the owner, illustrating
188
A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
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 pref-
erable 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, be-
cause we have both the beautiful woods of our new
world and tried and proven furniture of the old
world, and what could n'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? Is n'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 dis-
play 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 be-
neath the glass doors, and the other could have cup-
191
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
boards, 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 have n't yet
learned to demand the simple. I have had many in-
teresting 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 Cen-
tury, 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 arrange-
ment where people have one large living room or hall
in which they dine and which also serves all the pur-
pose 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
192
A LIGHT, GAY DINING-ROOM
migration of Americans to Europe is responsible for the
introduction of this excellent custom. French houses
are always equipped with some outdoor place for eat-
ing. 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 in-
doors is usually depressing.
193
XIV
THE BEDROOM
IN olden times people rarely slept in their bed-
rooms, 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.
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 furni-
ture was merely so much baggage. With the early
Eighteenth Century, however, there came into being
194
THE BEDROOM
les petits appartements, in which the larger space for-
merly 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 hy-
giene. 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 bed-
rooms 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
197
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 ob-
tained 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 in-
deed, when, at the end of several hours, I was com-
fortably 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 mat-
ter how small it may be. It may serve as a clothes-
closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and conceal-
ing 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.
198
MISS CROCKER'S LOUIS xvi. BED
THE BEDROOM
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 plas-
tered 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 charm-
ing 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 sug-
gest 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, accent-
ing 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
201
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 mod-
els. 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 now-
adays 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 dress-
ing 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 con-
necting baths, and these were given wash stands with
bowls and pitchers of clear glass. Most of these bed-
rooms 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.
202
THE 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 ma-
hogany, 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
205
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
white. In every case these bedrooms were equipped
with rugs of neutral and harmonious tone. The dress-
ing-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.
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
are n'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
206
By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
MAUVE CHINTZ IN A DULL-GREEN ROOM
THE BEDROOM
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 are n'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 deco-
rative 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
209
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
alluring Chinoiserie chintz, and there are several Chi-
nese 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 ador-
ably 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 crino-
line. 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 mir-
rors 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.
There is a chintz I love to use called the Green
Feather chintz. It is most decorative in design and
210
THE BEDROOM
color, and such an aristocratic sort of chintz you can
use it on handsome old sofas and four 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 o£ a bed-
room 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 ar-
rangement of draperies is very satisfactory in a small
room.
In my own house the bedrooms open into dressing-
213
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 comfort-
able 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 bedoom 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 wood-
work and walls of a bluish-gray, cream painted furni-
ture 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 poly-
chrome. The most beautiful thing in the room is a
Fifteenth Century painting, the Madonna of Bar-
tolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor over
the mantel.
I have n't said a word about our nice American Co-
lonial 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. Have n't you seen a fine old four post
bed simply overflowing a poor little room? Fortu-
214
THE BEDROOM
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.
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
215
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
metal beds came first, and will last always, but they
were n'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
should n't white iron beds, which are modest and unas-
suming in appearance, serve for homes as well? The
truth is that the glitter of brass appeals to the un-
trained eye. But that is passing. Go into the better
shops and you will see! Recently there was a spas-
modic 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 er-
rors we Americans make are rocking-chairs, lace cur-
tains, and brass beds.
216
XV
THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH
DRESSING-ROOMS and closets should be ne-
cessities, 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 re-
quires.
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
219
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
makes for great comfort and privacy. Here I find
that most of my countrywomen dress iri their bed-
rooms. I infinitely prefer the separate dressing-room,
which means a change of air, and which can be thor-
oughly 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 dress-
ing-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 combina-
tion 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 sleep-
ing-porches, and we may leave their chill air for the
comfortable warmth of luxurious dressing-rooms.
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,
220
J
By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.
FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS
THE DRESSING-ROOM AND BATH
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 dress-
ing-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 dress-
ing-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 al-
ways 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.
223
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 hav-
ing 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 has n'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 sug-
gested 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 di-
minutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk, lined
with the soft long-haired white fur known as moun-
tain 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.
You may devise a little coverlet for your own sofa,
whether it be in your bedroom, your boudoir, or your
224
MISS MORGAN'S LOUIS xvi. DRESSING-ROOM
THE DRESSING-ROOM AND BATH
dressing-room, that will be quite as useful as this de-
lectable couvre-pieds. I saw some amusing ones re-
cently, made of gay Austrian silks, lined with astonish-
ing colors and bound with puffings and flutings of rib-
bon 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 irre-
sistible. I sighed as I thought of the dreary patch-
work 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-ta-
bles against a group of windows, not near them, when-
ever 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.
227
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 toi-
lette on the tall single stand. Another idea is the lit-
tle 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. An-
other 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
228
THE DRESSING-ROOM AND BATH
herself attractive, when every one offers her encourage-
ment?
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 bot-
tle 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 ex-
cellent results. Another scheme, when the problem
229
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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, hats5
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 cot-
tons are used, if the arrangement is orderly and full of
gay color.
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 en-
close a passage from door to door. Back of these cur-
tains 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
230
MISS MARBURY'S CHINTZ-HUNG DRESSING -TABLE
THE DRESSING-ROOM AND BATH
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 apart-
ments 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 la-
bels 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 pat-
terned 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 re-
freshing, 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
233
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
comes in from tennis or golf or what not, eager for a
bath and fresh clothes, washstands are most convenient.
Why should n'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 is n't necessary
to buy a "set" of dreadful crockery. You can assem-
ble the necessary things as carefully as you would as-
semble 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 neces-
sary glasses and bottles can be purchased at any depart-
ment 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 should n'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 '11 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.
234
THE DRESSING-ROOM AND BATH
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 ex-
cellent 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 bed-
rooms 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
235
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 surround-
ing 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 end-
less reflections of columned corridors and pools and
shimmering lights. The ceiling is covered with a light
trellis hung with vines, from which hang great green-
ish-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.
236
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 con-
sidered 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 our-
selves and our friends to happiness by intelligent occu-
pations and amusements^ The apartment is the solu-
tion of the living problems of the city, and it has been
237
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
a direct influence on the houses of the towns, so simpli-
fying 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 dented""
r^'K«*
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 apart-
ment house architects is the duplex apartment, the little
238
THE SMALL APARTMENT
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 com-
forts 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
239
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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
have n't seen, but an apartment is a place of limita-
tions, and you can so easily mar the place by buying
things that will not fit in. An apartment is so depend-
ent 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 neighbor-
hood 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
have n'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 unpreten-
tious, that the lighting-fixtures are logically placed, and
of simple construction. (Is there anything more dread-
ful than those colored glass domes, with fringes of
beads, that landlords so proudly hang over the imagi-
nary dining-table*?) Be sure that the plumbing is in
good condition, and beware the bedroom on an air shaft
240
THE SMALL APARTMENT
— 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 wood-
work. You could n'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 any-
thing 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 is n'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
241
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 spacious-
ness— 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 im-
proved 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
242
THE SMALL APARTMENT
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 nec-
essary 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 fortu-
nate 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 some-
thing, 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 wood-
work 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.
243
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 ma^y 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. Some-
times 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.
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-
244
THE SMALL APARTMENT
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 — over
three feet wide, in this room, with frame and mattress
and pillows covered in a dark brocaded stuff, and a fire-
side chair, a small chair at the head of the couch and a
low stool all covered with the same fabric. It really
is n'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 — per-
haps 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.
247
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 surround-
ings, 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
248
THE SMALL APARTMENT
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 apart-
ment 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 dis-
249
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
play 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 com-
fortable, for you can't afford to have uncom-
fortable 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 apart-
ment.
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? Apart-
ment bedrooms are usually small, but charming furni-
ture 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.
250
THE SMALL APARTMENT
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 '11 go buy it!
253
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.
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 quiet 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 accord-
ingly. At these dealers a small table of the Louis XVI
period, or a single chair covered in the original tap-
estry, may cost as much as a man in modest circum-
stances would spend on his whole house. Almost
everything outside these princely shops (salons is a
254
MRS. C. W. HARKNESS'S CABINET FOR OBJETS D'ART
ANTIQUE FURNITURE
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 con-
sistent, 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 repro-
duction,3' the more literal and mechanical it is in its
copy of the original, the better it is. A good photo-
graph 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 pur-
pose 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
257
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 slaugh-
ter, if you can give him a helping hand. If he must be
a collector, let him be first a collector of the many excel-
lent 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 develop-
ing an enthusiasm for the contemporary things. Let
him study the museum collections, visit the private col-
lections, 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 repro-
ductions should be determined by the collector's sense
of fitness, it seems to me. Every man should depend
on whatever instinct for Tightness, for suitability, he
may possess. If he finds that he dare not risk his in-
dividual 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.
ANTIQUE FURNITURE
An old rug has a softness that a new one cannot imi-
tate. 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 crude-
ness 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.
25-9
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
The native problem is the so-called Colonial mahogany
that is always alleged to be Chippendale or Heppel-
white, or Sheraton, regardless! There must be thou-
sands 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 some-
thing no reputable dealer would affirm. The Chippen-
dales, 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 pro-
duced 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
260
ANTIQUE FURNITURE
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 do-
mestic 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 in-
sist 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 mu-
seums the price of one of the Chippendales by Chippen-
dale. It would buy you a tidy little acreage. Stuart
and Cromwellian chairs are being more and more repro-
duced. These chairs are made of oak, the Stuart ones
261
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
with seats and backs of cane, the Cromwellian ones
with seats and backs of tapestry, needlework, corded
velvet, or some such handsome fabric. These repro-
ductions 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 cover-
ings.
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 furni-
ture depends upon exquisite design and perfect work-
manship 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 gain-
said. 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
262
ANTIQUE FURNITURE
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 con-
tent 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 Cen-
tury, 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 fur-
nishing. America could contribute much to such a
collection, for surely the black walnut era of the Nine-
teenth 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 un-
wieldy wardrobes and beds and bureaux.
The workmen of to-day have their eyes opened.
They have no excuse for producing unworthy things,
263
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 collec-
tion, 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 collec-
tion 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 re-
produce.
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.
264
A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH NEEDLEWORK
A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ
ANTIQUE FURNITURE
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 be-
cause he has the money to pay for the treasure, the
treasure must be genuine — has n'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 farm-
house, 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 bat-
tered 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 repro-
ductions 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
267
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 under-
stand. 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 cab-
inet-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, is n'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 !
268
XVIII
THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
WHEN I planned the trellis room of the Col-
ony 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 dec-
oration 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 Ja-
pan, China, Arabia, Egypt, Italy, France and Spain.
The earliest examples of trellis work shown are in
certain Roman frescoes. In Pompeii the mural paint-
ings give us a very good idea of what some of the Ro-
man 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.
271
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 grace-
ful 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 archi-
tectural character not found in other countries. The
manuscript of the "Romance of the Rose," dating
back to the Fifteenth Century, contains the finest pos-
sible example of trellis in a medieval garden. Most
of the old French gardens that remain to us have im-
portant trellis construction. At Blois one still sees
the remains of a fine trellis covering the walls of the
kitchen gardens. Wonderful and elaborate trellis
pavilions, 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
272
THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
often seen was the god of Love. In the Trianon gar-
dens at Versailles there is a charming Temple d' Amour
standing on a tiny island, with four small canals lead-
ing to it.
A knowledge of the history of trelliage and an ap-
preciation 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 inter-
changeable terms, but mistakenly, for any carpenter
who has the gift of precision can build a good lattice,
but a trellis must have architectural character. Trel-
lis 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
273
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 suit-
able 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 gar-
den 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.
Our outdoor trellis is at the end of the Villa Tri-
anon 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 construct-
ive design on one of the walls of the Colony Club
trellis room, but there a fountain has the place of
274
THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
honor. Formal pedestals surmounted by gracefully
curved urns, box trees, statues, marble benches, foun-
tains— all these belong to the formal outdoor trellis.
The trellis is primarily suitable for garden archi-
tecture, but it may be fitted to interior uses most skil-
fully. 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 en-
tirely 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 sus-
pended 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 lat-
tice covers the wall space. Growing vines are placed
277
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
along the walls and clamber to the beams. The glass
ceiling is supported by white beams. There are al-
ways 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 nar-
row, 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 nar-
row green moldings, arranged in a conventional de-
sign 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
278
THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
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 cover-
ing 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 break-
fast 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 in-
sets 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 pa-
villions.
There is so much of modern furniture that is re-
freshing 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 deco-
rated with heavy lines of dark green. The drawer
front and the doors of the little cupboard are filled
279
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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.
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
280
THE ART OF TRELLIAGE
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 ta-
bles and chairs are pulled up to the sofas, making con-
versation 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 sur-
mounted 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 mod-
ern in its luxurious comfort and its refreshing color.
Surely there could be no pleasanter room for whiling
away a summer day.
283
XIX
VILLA TRIANON
THE story of the Villa Trianon is a fairy-tale
come true. It came true because we be-
lieved 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, Ver-
sailles, 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 Due de
Nemours, son of Louis Philippe. It was situated di-
rectly 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 prop-
erty that was portioned out to Mesdames de France,
the disagreeable daughters of Louis XV. You will
remember how disagreeable they were to Marie An-
284
VILLA TRIANON
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!
How many, many times we peeped through the
high iron railing at this enchanted domain, sleep-
ing 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 howr happy would be our fortune if we might
some day penetrate the mysteries of the tangled gar-
den and the abandoned villa. Little did we dream
that this would one day be our home.
We first went to Versailles as casual summer visit-
ors and our stay was brief. We loved it so much that
the next summer we went again, this time for the sea-
son, 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 con-
sidering 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
285
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 tedi-
ous. Our offer was an insult, a joke, a ridiculous af-
fair 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 auda-
cious thing as to purchase property so far from our
American anchorage.
Well, we bought it, and at our own price, practi-
cally, 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
286
A FINE OTD CONSOL IN THE VILLA TRIANON
VILLA TRIANON
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 conserv-
ator 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 docu-
ments, 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, anc^ from this
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 Ma-
dame 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.
One of the small houses we found on our small es-
tate had once been a part of the hameau of Marie An-
toinette. We have had this little house rebuilt and
connected with the villa, and now use it as a guest
2QO
VILLA TRIANON
house. It is very charming, with its walls covered
with lattices and ivy.
Villa Trianon, like most French houses, is built di-
rectly on the street, leaving all the space possible for
the garden. The fagade 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 Ameri-
can 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 satis-
fying. After all, that is the secret of Europe's fasci-
nation for us Americans — the ever-present suggestion
of permanence. We feel that houses and gardens
were planned and built for centuries, not for the pass-
ing 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 cen-
turies 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,
2Q3
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 under-
brush 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 connect-
ing 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
294
VILLA TRIANON
affairs of carved and painted wooden frames and bro-
cade coverings, but others are modern easychairs cov-
ered in new linens of old designs, linens that were de-
signed for just such interiors when Oberkampf first
began his designing at Jouy. The mirrors and light-
ing-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 archi-
tectural 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 enotigh 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 deco-
rative 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 Savonyerie 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
29?
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 Amer-
ican 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 ter-
race, 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 inspi-
ration.
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 hun-
dred years old, and old vine-covered walls. Who
could n't accomplish a perfect garden with such es-
2Q6
VILLA TRIANON
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 — 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, hold-
ing 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 Cen-
tury 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. Be-
tween 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
2Q7
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 gar-
den, 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. Cer-
tainly 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 bor-
ders 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 music-
ales, 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
298
VILLA TRIANON
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 our 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 Magnif-
icent, and we are far happier than anyone deserves
to be in this wicked world !
299
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
does n'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 is n't for me to
go into the subject of grandfather-clocks, bracket
clocks, and banjo clocks, when there are so many ex-
cellent books on the subject. I plead for the graceful
clocks of old France, the objets d'art so lovingly de-
signed by the master sculptors of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury. I plead particularly for the wall clocks that
are so conspicuous in all good French houses, and so
unusual in our own country.
Just as surely as our fine old English and American
300
NOTES ON MANY THINGS
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 should n't some manufacturer have
them reproduced?
I feel that if women generally knew how very deco-
rative and distinguished a good wall clock may be,
the demand would soon create a supply of these beau-
tiful objects. It would be quite simple for the manu-
facturers to make them from the old models. The
late Mr. Pierpont Morgan gave to the Metropolitan
Museum the magnificent Hoentschel collection of ob-
jets d'art, hoping to stimulate the interest of American
designers and artisans in the fine models of the Seven-
teenth 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 re-
fuse to be interested.
Wall clocks first came into France in the early part
of the Seventeenth Century, and are a part of the fur-
nishing 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 de-
signer 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-
303
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 bed-
room, 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 de-
signed 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 Cen-
tury 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
3°4
NOTES ON MANY THINGS
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 them-
selves as fine bas relief :s, 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 extraor-
dinary timepiece, assures me that he has never seen so
small a clock which strikes. It is very pleasant to
305
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 preten-
tious 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 equip-
ment 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 writ-
ing-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 hall-
way, 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.
306
NOTES ON MANY THINGS
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 en-
velopes, 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 in-
spires 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 ad-
equate 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
307
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
are the only places where the writing-table, in one
form or another, is n'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 ar moire. 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 to-
gether. This old desk has a drawer filled with com-
partments 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
308
NOTES ON MANY THINGS
and powdered hair, so exquisitely is h constructed of
tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many col-
ors.
Then there are the small desks made by modern fur-
niture-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 some-
where 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 sta-
tionery, 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 is n't necessary. Better
a quiet corner with one chair and a desk, than the elab-
orate library with its superb fittings where people come
and go.
Given the proper desk, the furnishing of it is most
309
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 offen-
sive 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, sta-
tionery marked with the house address or the mono-
gram of the person to whom the desk especially be-
longs, an almanac, and a 'pincushion! My pin-
cushions are as much a part of the equipment of a
desk as the writing things, and they are n'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
310
Y\r\C +
NOTES ON MANY THINGS
post cards made showing various views of the house
and garden.
Test the efficiency of your writing-tables occasion-
ally 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
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 con-
venient, 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.
312
NOTES ON MANY THINGS
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, cov-
ered 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 dis-
covered 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
315
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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, al-
ready heavily in arrears and running under heavy ex-
penses. I worried and worried over the situation, and
suddenly one night an idea came to me: I remem-
bered some great porcelain stoves I had seen in Ger-
many. I felt that these stoves were exactly what we
needed, and that we should be rescued from an em-
barrassing 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, unfor-
tunately, was white with gilded garlands, far too
French and magnificent for our sun-room. I per-
suaded 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
could n'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 accom-
plished. The stoves were equal to the occasion.
316
NOTES ON MANY THINGS
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 dis-
tinction. Since then I have used a number of these
stoves, and I wonder why our American manufactur-
ers do not make them. They are admirable for heat-
ing 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.
317
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
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 log-
ical 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 in-
terior walls and for small alcoves and indoor conserv-
atories, 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 run-
ning water brought indoors has the same animate
charm.
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 flow-
ers. You can imagine the pleasure of leaving the
318
NOTES ON MANY THINGS
dusty city streets and entering this cool, pleasant en-
trance 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 lu-
minous 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 bor-
dered with plants and glittering with goldfish. Ever-
greens are banked against the brick walls, and flat re-
liefs are hung just under the glass ceiling. The gar-
den 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 encour-
321
THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
age the development of indoor fountains. They dis-
play 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 liz-
ards or turtles ; gay little figures prancing in enchanted
rings of friendly beasties. Why don't we make use
of them?
THE END
322
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