Chapter II: With a Little Help, Paul’s Idea Is Developed

In fact, early in the morning Paul might be seen going into his cousin’s room. Everything was ready: drawing-board, T-squares, compasses, and pencils.

“Take your seat here, cousin; you are going to render on paper the result of our meditations, since you know so well how to make use of our instruments. Let us proceed methodically. In the first place, you doubtless know the ground on which your father intends to have your sister’s country house built.”

“Yes, it is down there below the wood, about two miles off—that little valley at the bottom of which runs the brook which turns Michaud’s mill.”

“Just show me that on the plan of the estate. Oh, I see it.”

“You see, cousin, it is here. On the south side of the plateau are the arable lands, then the ground slopes a little to the north towards the brook. Here there is a fine spring of fresh water issuing from the wood, which is on the west. On the declivity of the plateau, and at the bottom of the valley, are meadows with a few trees.”

“On which side then is the pleasantest view?”

“Towards the bottom of the valley, on the south-east.”

“How do you get to the meadow from your father’s house?”

“By crossing the wood; then you go down to the bottom of the valley by this road; you cross a bridge here, then you ascend along the plateau obliquely by this path.”

“Very good; we must therefore build the house almost on the summit of the incline facing the north—sheltering it from the north-west winds under the neighbouring wood. The entrance will have to front the ascending road; but we must arrange for the principal apartments to command the most favourable aspect, which is south-east; moreover, we must take advantage of the open view on the same side, and not disregard the spring of fresh water that flows on the right towards the bottom of the valley; we shall therefore approach it and locate the house in that resting-place which nature has arranged so favourably to our views, some yards below the plateau. We shall thus be tolerably sheltered from the south-west winds, and shall not have the dull-looking plain, which extends as far as the eye can reach, in front of the house. This settled, let us look at the programme. No dimensions of rooms are mentioned; we shall therefore have to determine this. According to what your father has told me, he intends this house to be for constant residence, habitable in summer as well as in winter, and consequently to contain all that is suitable for a large landed proprietor. He means to spend about £8000 upon it; it is therefore a matter which demands serious study, especially as your sister and her husband make a great point of ‘comfort.’ I was at their house in Paris, and found it admirably fitted up, but nothing sacrificed to vanity or mere appearances. We may therefore start from these data. Let us begin by the plan of the ground-floor. The principal apartment is the drawing-room, where the family assemble. We cannot give it less than 16 or 17 feet in width, by 24 to 28 feet in length. First draw a parallelogram to these dimensions. Ah, stay! not mere guess-work. Take your scale.”

Paul looked at his teacher in some perplexity.

“I forgot; perhaps you don’t know what a scale means. Indeed your plan seems to have taken no account of anything of the kind. Listen to me, then: When you wish to build a house, or any edifice, you give the architect a programme, _i.e._, a complete list of all the rooms and accessories that are wanted. But this is not enough; you say such or such a room must have such or such a width by such or such a length, or have such or such an area so as to accommodate so many persons. If it is a dining-room, for instance, you will mention that it must accommodate 10, 15, 20, or 25 persons at table. If it is a bedroom, you will specify that besides the bed (which is a matter of course) it must accommodate such or such pieces of furniture or occupy an area of 300 feet, 400 feet, &c. Now you know that an area of 400 feet is equivalent to a square whose side is 20 feet, or a parallelogram of about 24 feet by 16 feet 8 inches, or of 30 feet by 13 feet 4 inches. But these last dimensions would not suit a room; they are rather the proportions of a gallery. Independently, therefore, of the area of a room, its breadth and length must bear certain relations according to its purpose. A drawing-room or a bedchamber may be square; but a dining-room, if it is to accommodate more than ten persons at table, must be longer than it is broad, because a table increases in length but not in width, according to the number of the guests. You must therefore add ‘leaves’ to the dining-room as you do to the table. Do you understand? Good. At this point then the architect, in preparing the plan, even if it is only a sketch, adopts a scale, _i.e._, he divides a line drawn upon his paper into equal parts, each representing a foot. And to save time, or to simplify the work, he takes for each of these divisions the 192th, or the 96th, or the 48th part of a foot. In the first case we call it a scale of 1/16th of an inch to a foot, or a scale of 16 feet to an inch; in the second, a scale of ⅛th of an inch to a foot, or a scale of 8 feet to an inch; in the third, a scale of ¼th of an inch to a foot, or a scale of 4 feet to an inch. Thus you prepare a plan one hundred and ninety-two, ninety-six, or forty-eight times smaller than its realization will be. I need not say that we may make scales in any proportion _ad infinitum_—one, two, or three hundredths of an inch to a foot, or to 10, 100, or 1,000 feet, as we do for drawing maps. In the same way we may give details on a scale of 6 inches to a foot, or half the actual size; 2 inches to a foot, or a sixth of the actual size, &c. Having chosen his scale, the architect is enabled to give to each part of the plan exact relative dimensions. If he has adopted the scale of one-eighth of an inch to a foot, and wishes to indicate a door 4 feet in width, he takes 4/8ths. Do you understand? I am not quite sure that you do; but a few hours’ practice will render you _au fait_ at it. To show you distinctly the utility of a scale, I will take your plan. Your drawing-room is an oblong. I will suppose it 20 feet by 27 feet; that is pretty nearly the relative proportion of the sides. A ninth of the longer side measured by the compass is 3 feet. I measure your façade by this and find that your lower story is 30 feet high. Now fancy to yourself how (I will not say your drawing-room, but) your entrance-hall, whose sides are only 13 feet, would look with a height of 30 feet between the floor and the ceiling. It would be a well. Your elevation therefore is not on the same scale as your plan. Take for your sister’s drawing-room 18/16ths on this graduated rule, which will give 18 feet on a scale of 1/16th of an inch to a foot. Just so; that gives us the shorter side of the drawing-room. Now take 27/16ths on the same rule, which will give 27 feet; that will be the longer side. Now your oblong is drawn with dimensions perfectly exact. You will have to surround this room with walls, for we can scarcely give ordinary floors a greater width; you must therefore have walls to receive the joists. A rubble wall through which flues have to pass, can hardly be less than 1 foot 8 inches in thickness. Your drawing-room will therefore support itself. Next in importance to the drawing-room is the dining-room. Where are we to place it? We ought, especially in the country, to be able to enter it directly from the drawing-room. Is it to be on the right, or on the left? You have not the least idea; nor I either. But chance cannot settle the question. Let us think about it a little. It would seem natural to put the kitchen near to the dining-room. But the position of the kitchen is a matter presenting some difficulties. When you are not at table you don’t like to have the smell of the viands, or hear the noise of those engaged in kitchen work. On the one hand, the kitchen ought not to be far from the dining-room; on the other hand, it ought to be far enough from the chief rooms for its existence not to be suspected. Besides, the back-yard, the outbuildings, the poultry-yard, a small vegetable garden, wash-houses, &c., ought to be near the kitchen. It is a matter of importance too that the kitchen should not have a south aspect. And we must not forget that your sister, who knows how a house ought to be managed, has taken the precaution to say in her laconic programme: ‘_Kitchen not underground_.’ She is right: underground kitchens are unhealthy for those who live in them, present difficulties in the way of surveillance, and diffuse their odour through the ground floor. We shall put it therefore on a level with the dining-room, but without direct communication with the latter, to avoid odours and noises. Let us examine our ground, its position and aspects. The most undesirable aspect, and that which in the present case offers the least agreeable prospect, is the north-west. We shall therefore place the drawing-room with its exterior angle towards the south-east; on the right we shall put the dining-room; and next the kitchen, which will thus face the north. Do not be in a hurry to draw the plan of these subordinate apartments, for we must know first what position they are to occupy in relation to the drawing-room and the entrance-hall. We are required to provide a billiard-room. It will be well to place it on the south-east, as a pendant to the dining-room. The hall and your brother-in-law’s study must be near the entrance. If we place the dining-room and the billiard-room, whose dimensions are to be nearly equal to those of the drawing-room, in juxtaposition and continuation with the latter, the drawing-room will be lighted only on one of its shorter sides, for we must put the entrance-hall in front. The drawing-room would in that case be gloomy, and would command a view of the country only in one direction. Let us then put the dining-room and the billiard-room at right angles to the drawing-room, allowing the latter to jut out on the sides of the favourable aspect. Let us give each of these two apartments a length of 24 feet by a width of 18 feet. These are convenient dimensions. Then mark in front of the drawing-room an entrance-hall, whose area we shall determine presently.

“We will try next to give to the walls of those apartments the position required by the general construction. The entrance to the dining-room and the billiard-room—which is also a place of assembly—is to be from the drawing-room. The opening from the drawing-room into the billiard-room must therefore be wide enough for those who may be in either of those apartments to assemble without inconvenience. But we ought to be able to reach the entrance-hall from the billiard-room without going through the drawing-room; and so with the dining-room. We observe that lateral prospects were required for the drawing-room, whose length is 27 feet. If we take 8 feet for the side-lights, and 1 foot 6 inches for the thickness of the wall of the billiard-room or the dining-room, there will remain 17 feet 6 inches to the entrance partition of the drawing-room; our billiard-room and dining-room being 18 feet wide, these apartments will reach 8 inches beyond the entrance-partition of the drawing-room. That does not matter. Let us mark out the second wall, also 1 foot 6 inches thick. Thus we have the three chief apartments determined. In the central line of the billiard-room we will make an opening into the drawing-room of 8 feet 6 inches. On the side of the wall separating it from the dining-room we will open a door of 4 feet 6 inches into the dining-room, within 8 inches of the partition separating the drawing-room from the entrance-hall. Thus we shall enter this dining-room, not in the centre, but on one side, which is more convenient; for you know that in going to or leaving it the gentlemen offer their arms to the ladies. It is therefore desirable that in going out or coming in there should be no obstacle in their way. The door leading from the drawing-room to the dining-room will be also out of the central line of the opening from the drawing-room into the billiard-room; but that I do not mind. This door will balance with the window on this side looking outwards, and we will put the fireplace between them. We will open a central door from the entrance-hall into the drawing-room.

“In front, against the wall of the billiard-room, let us put your brother-in-law’s study, with a small anteroom, where people who have business with him can wait, so as not to be wandering about in the hall. On the dining-room side (of the hall) we will put the pantry. The study must be at least 12 feet 6 inches wide. We will make the entrance-hall jut out a little to form a projection.

“The staircase is a very important point in every house. It should be proportioned to the house,—neither too spacious nor too scanty. It must not occupy space uselessly; it must give easy access to the upper stories, and be sufficiently conspicuous. If we take a part of the staircase out of the entrance-hall, which is very large—18 feet by 16 feet—it will be very conspicuous, and we shall gain room. The width of a staircase in a house of this style and size should be at least 4 feet. But the hall ought to communicate directly with the dining-room, the pantry, and all the offices to the right of the plan. Let us reserve a passage of 4 feet and mark the first step. The height of the lower story between floor and floor should be, reckoning the size of the rooms, 15 feet; which will give them a clear height of 14 feet, reserving 1 foot for the thickness of the floor of the chamber story. The steps of an easy staircase should be about 6 inches high. To ascend 15 feet we require thirty steps. Each step should be 10 to 12 inches wide. The staircase should have an extension of 25 feet for steps of 10 inches in width, or 30 feet for steps of 12 inches, reckoning thirty steps. Let us take a mean—say 27 feet. We must find room for this extension of 27 feet at the least. We will therefore place a staircase projection at the angle of the entrance-hall prominent enough to bring us, in winding round a newel (which will be in the prolongation of the wall on the right of the drawing-room), to the first floor, passing out into the antechamber of this floor.... I mark out this staircase for you: we shall have to return to it. The first fifteen steps come into the length of the newel and the wall, and allow us to place below the last half flight of the stairs the water-closet for the family on the ground floor. Opening from the passage we will next put the pantry. Then the servants’ staircase in a tower; then the serving-room; then the kitchen in the wing; a bakehouse and scullery, a wash-house, and a way out from the kitchen to the kitchen garden. Forming a return, we will put a stable for three horses, a coach-house for two carriages, a harness-room, and a small flight of stairs to reach the rooms for the coachman and groom, and the hay-loft in the roof. Near the stable we will leave a way into the yard and the larder and servants’ conveniences.

“We will separate all these offices from the main building by a plinth wall and trellis-work at the right of the round tower servants’ staircase, which will give us a courtyard for the kitchen, stable, and coach-house. In front we will reserve a space for the poultry-yard, the fowl-house, and the manure pit....

“Now that we have traced out the general plan of our ground floor, let us try to improve it in detail.

“It would be very nice to have a bay window at the end of the drawing-room looking out on the garden. Nothing prevents us from planning another at the end of the billiard-room, with a divan where the gentlemen might smoke, and a third at the end of the dining-room, which would allow the dishes to be passed in through a turn from the serving-room, and afford room for the sideboard and carving tables.

“We shall find these projections useful on the first floor.

“But we ought to have a way out from the drawing-room or the billiard-room into the garden. I must confess that I am not very fond of those flights of steps, which are scorching under a hot sun and very disagreeable in wind and rain; if, then, in the angle formed by the billiard-room with the drawing-room, and along it, we were to place a conservatory inclosing a flight of steps, I think it would be a convenient arrangement. Thus we could pass from the drawing-room or the billiard-room into this conservatory, and could take coffee there in wet weather, and have a covered approach to the garden. Some flowers and shrubs placed along the glazed side would enliven the billiard-room without darkening it. But in front of the entrance-hall we will have a flight of steps in the usual style, which we shall take care to put under shelter, the position of the staircase allowing us to do so without difficulty.

“Let us draw out all this as nearly as we can; we shall have to revise it when we have studied the first floor, whose arrangements may oblige us to modify some of those on the ground floor (Fig. 1).

“As the walls must rise from the bottom, you will put a piece of tracing paper over this ground-plan to avoid loss of time. You will thus have beneath your eyes and pencil the walls to which you must accommodate the superstructure, and we shall presently see whether there is reason to modify some parts of this ground-plan.

A, entrance-hall; B, drawing-room; C, dining-room; D, billiard-room;
E, study; F, conservatory inclosing flight of steps; G, butler’s
pantry; H, kitchen; I, serving-room; K, L, bakehouse and wash-house;
M, office-yard; N, S, poultry-yard; O, stable; P, coach-house; R,
harness-room; _a_, servants’ staircase; _b_, cellar steps; _c_,
groom’s staircase; V, W, water-closets.]

“Just so. Let us first trace the termination of the staircase; the last of the thirty steps we shall require is in a line with the wall on the right of the entrance-hall; it is the landing which will open on the antechamber above the hall. Over the drawing-room we shall place Madame N.’s room; but as this area would be too large, we shall take advantage of the space to put a second partition, which will give double doors and a capital space for closets, which ladies never find superfluous. To give light in this space we shall glaze an upper portion of the partition next to the antechamber. These double doors will insure greater privacy in the bedroom, and prevent the passage of sounds. Besides, this second antechamber will enable us to provide a direct communication with Monsieur N.’s apartment, which we shall place in the favourable aspect, that is over the billiard-room.

“As this area also is too large, we shall take out of the space thus available a lady’s dressing-room, and a bathroom; and provide an entrance to Monsieur N.’s room direct from the antechamber through a private passage, which will also open into the lady’s dressing-room, that for your brother-in-law over the study, his bedchamber and the closets for these apartments. Thus when the two doors leading to the antechamber are shut, these rooms will be completely cut off. With a corridor answering to that of the ground floor on the right we shall establish a communication between the antechamber, the servants’ staircase, the linen-room (an important matter), which we shall place over the kitchen, with a large wardrobe for your sister on the right of her bedroom, and a nursery (for we must provide for every contingency), which, as well as the wardrobe, will be over the dining-room. The recess or bay window of the ground floor will afford us the means of giving a nice dressing-room for the children’s or guests’ room on the first floor; and that of the billiard-room will furnish a very agreeable addition to Monsieur N.’s room. As to the bay window in the drawing-room, we will cover with a flat, with a balustrade, which will give your sister’s room a handsome balcony, where an awning and flowers can be placed in the summer. (Fig. 2.)

“You see, Paul, our plan begins to assume a definite shape. Breakfast will soon be ready: go and take a walk, and in the afternoon we will resume our work, that is to say, we will proceed to the elevations.”

A, antechamber; B, Madame N.’s bedroom; C, dressing-room and bathroom;
D, wardrobe; E, Monsieur N.’s bedroom; F, dressing-room and bathroom;
G, nursery; H, dressing-room; I, linen-room; P, lumber-room; W,
water-closets.]

On going down to the garden, Paul began to examine the family mansion with an attention he had never yet bestowed upon it. He had never thought before of observing how its apartments were arranged. He began to calculate the space lost in those interminable passages; he perceived here and there dark and useless corners. The staircase started badly. On the ground floor it could not be found without knowing the arrangement of the house. The kitchen was at a vast distance from the dining-room, and to get from the one to the other you must cross a carriage road, go down two steps and mount six. For the first time in his life this struck him as barbarous. Walking about waiting for the breakfast bell, Paul began to ask himself whether his father would not do well to pull down his old mansion and build one on a new plan devised by himself with his cousin’s advice. He began to reckon up the several faults in the arrangement of the house, not forgetting its too numerous break-neck passages. He considered the sombre drawing-room, flanked on two sides by the two old towers that masked the side views, his father’s little study lighted by a narrow window and entered by a pretty large room, generally unused, and which served as a fruit-room in the autumn; many other defects besides....

“Well,” said his father, as soon as they were seated at table, “you have been already at work this morning?”

Paul, full of the subject that had engaged him, gave an exact description of the plan which had been prepared; but could not finish without indulging in some critical remarks on the family mansion.