Chapter III: Nooks and Corners (2)

In room No. 1 the wall-paper was my favourite yellow and white from Mr. Smee; all the paint was a deep ivory, and the dado-rail was ivory too; for about a yard below the rail the wall was coloured primrose, and over this was hung a full soft curtain of yellow silk closely plaited on tiny rings, which again were hung on nails below the rail, which curved out over them and hid them completely; this curtain could be taken down and shaken and replaced every week if desired, while, of course, during absence from town the silk would be folded up and put away. The loose curtain looks charming round the room, which is a very tiny one, and has been admirably arranged by Mr. Smee with a fitted seat at one side of the wall, with side curtains to give an idea of privacy, and above that is a long bookcase; the curtains are of the beautiful larkspur cretonne which has yellow and blue in it; the carpet is a deep red, to give more colour, as the room is to be used for day, and therefore requires to be made to look warmer than could be done were only blue and yellow used; and the furniture is all ivory, and upholstered in different brocades; albeit these are also covered with loose cretonne covers in the larkspur cretonne, which is 2_s._ 10_d._ a yard, but really deserves to cost as much, it is so pretty, although I do own it is rather expensive for a mere cretonne.

The other room in which I saw the curtain dado was much more sombre in design and colouring; and I do not for one moment recommend such a distressingly dark arrangement, although I do most heartily commend the clever designer of this original room. The dado was not the straight curtain which goes all round the room, which I have been writing about, but it started from the window at one end five feet above the floor; this continued for halfway along the wall, where it suddenly lowered to within three feet of the floor, leaving a piece of wall about three feet across and two deep; after running along for three feet at this lowered angle, it rose again and continued along the wall to the door. Just on the other side of the door the curtain began at three feet from the wainscoting, and continued for about five feet, when it rose once more, and continued at the first altitude for the rest of the wall, which ended in a corner; the curtain lowered from that to the fireplace, which, with its overmantel, filled one square, the dado beginning once more at the five-foot altitude after the fireplace was passed. The curtain was moss-green serge, and was hung from a pole painted moss-green, with brass rings, which were _en évidence_; and above the curtain the wall was covered with a very good Japanese leather paper; the squares made by the dropping of the curtain being filled in one place by a choice picture, in another by an admirably designed bracket for books and china, and in another by a square beaten brass shield holding an elaborate and beautiful clustered candelabra; and had the drapery been of some bright colour, or some really decorative brocade, the house would have been as charming as it was original, but, arranged with the dark Japanese paper and the much darker drapery, the whole effect was so depressing, that I felt, were I obliged to remain in that house, I should have committed suicide, for my spirits would never have borne up under it. But it was a dark day, as the owner pointed out, when I told him, at his request, what I thought of it all. But I maintain that as most of our English days, and more especially our London days, are extremely dark, we are bound to try and make our rooms so beautiful that they, at least, shall not in any way add to the depression that is inseparable from sage-green walls and darkness generally. We cannot have too much cheerfulness I maintain; it is absolutely impossible to be too happy and too lively; and as our climate does not help us to be either the one or the other, we must endeavour to simulate as much sunshine as we can, by making our rooms cheerful and as sunny-looking as we have the power to do. I never go into my own rooms, or the many rooms I have helped to decorate, without feeling that, whatever else may be their faults, they certainly cannot be called gloomy. They are all bright and cheerful; and I defy anyone to be miserable long, unless, of course, some real misfortune has occurred, in one of my rooms in the green serge abode. A misfitting dress would be as dreadful a sorrow as a broken arm, a disappointment about an entertainment as serious as an illness or loss of money! Flowers again should never be forgotten, or allowed to become dead and shabby; and, above all, each room we occupy should be scrupulously clean, and without being aggressively neat should be absolutely tidy. Directly a thing becomes dirty or untidy it should be cleaned or replaced by something else. We should never overlook the soiling of the paint, a crushed antimacassar, a dirty ceiling, and, above all, we should remember that no amount of artistic knowledge and careful decoration can make up for grimy tablecloths and crooked vases, heaped-up papers and crushed chairbacks and damaged cretonnes. A room must not only be made nice, it must be kept so; and if we cannot afford good servants, who will respect our belongings, we must do the finer parts of the housework ourselves. It is no disgrace to wash fine china, and turn and fold our tablecloths and draperies; it is disgraceful to have dirty ornaments, and to be untidy and careless about our rooms.

Indeed, if any of us really want our rooms to look nice we should, no matter how good are our servants, go carefully over them ourselves the moment the housemaid’s work is done, and see that all is as we like it. Servants do not place furniture, they _ram_ it into its place. The tablecloths are usually put on wrong side out, and, somehow or other, all seems to require the lady’s touch, which cannot be explained, but is certainly observable in any house where the mistress is untidy, and so naturally excuses untidiness in those around her.

I maintain that tidiness is quite a gift, and that she who is possessed of that admirable quality makes things go twice as far as does she who never attempts to put a thing straight, who overlooks dust and dirt, and without knowing precisely how it is managed, gets her house into endless muddle and never allows it to look nice, albeit she spends three times as much over it as does she who is gifted with tidiness and a ‘straight eye.’ Therefore, if a house is to be properly kept, the moment a handle comes off a door, replace it; the instant a thing looks in the least degree dirty, have it washed or cleaned; let any carpet be mended before it goes into a hole; have black cleaned off any ceiling the moment it comes on it; and, above all, have the china clean and straight, and never overlook a rent or a dirty mark. If a house is kept nice the expenses are gradual; if all is neglected, the day of reckoning, which must come inevitably, will be such a heavy one that it will cost more than can be afforded by anyone who is not a millionaire; and it must come, for even if the house is our own, we must leave it some time, and our successor will not revere our memory, or remember us even with kindness, when he comes after us and repairs our ravages, which need have been unimportant had we punctually spent the yearly sum for repairs, &c., which should always be set aside by every careful householder.

Every room in every house should be re-painted and papered at least every seventh year. Outside painting should be done every third year. The ceilings should be cleansed the moment they begin to look dirty; and we should never possess curtains or carpets which we cannot afford to replace somehow, or that will not readily wash and darn, and shake when they begin to show signs of having been used.

A pretty house in good order will always let, should we desire to move; while a house in bad repair, and dirty, will never find a tenant, even if the landlord is a model one, and is willing to do all he can in the matter of new decorations, for somehow the squalor and grime that greet the eye first on entering never seem forgotten, and the house is passed over again and again, because it is impossible to believe a house in such a state can ever be made either healthy or beautiful.

Before passing away from the three ordinary sitting-rooms in a house I should like just to speak of some of the new styles of decoration which have come to the fore lately, and which, I am glad to say, are all as cheerful as can be; not that the arrangements I have advocated have been relegated to that mysterious limbo dedicated to the fashions of last week. I have at last, I am delighted to be able to tell my readers, persuaded one or two of the more enterprising tradesmen to recognise the fact that a thing which was good and satisfactory last week is just as good and satisfactory this, and all the schemes of decoration I gave before are still to be had. But tastes change, and it is always well to be prepared with some new ideas, for rooms are all different, and what suits one room will not suit another.

I still like the Japanese plain paper, red and gold leather dado, and red paint better than anything else for a dining-room, just as I cling to my blue morning-room; but as it would not do for us all to have this same decoration, I often advise an admirable tapestry paper, sold by Pither at 4_s._ 6_d._ a piece. This can either have ‘holly-green’ or ‘imperial red’ paint, and a dado of Japanese leather paper, carefully chosen to harmonise with the paper, and which should have dull red and green and gold in its design, in very dark and unobtrusive shades. The ceiling paper should be pale yellow and white, the cornice cream. The doors should be panelled with the Japanese paper, and the curtains should either be of Colbourne’s Gobelin tapestry, at 6_s._ 11_d._ a yard, wide width, or else of self-coloured velveteen or serge, the colour of the paint (whichever is chosen), and the carpet should be an Oriental one if possible, with a dark red matting surround, or else of Wallace’s dark red ‘anemone,’ either in pile, Brussels, or Kidderminster, according to the price one wishes to give. This style of decoration would suit almost any furniture, though I should prefer the chairs to be covered with the Gobelin tapestry, which wears admirably, and which should always be used to re-cover old or shabby chairs, instead of a cheap leather. This covering could be done at home by an upholsteress if necessary; but I should advise the chairs being taken in hand by someone who can re-make the stuffing, if the expense can be afforded; if it cannot, the leather should be left as it is, all unevennesses and excrescences should be made even by judicious use of cotton-wool on the leather, then a tight cover of holland should be first put on, finally the cover of Gobelin tapestry, which should not be buttoned down, but should be stretched over and secured in its place with a gimp. Each chair would cost about 4_s._ or 5_s._, certainly not more.

Where the old-furniture mania exists, an artistic dining-room can be made by using all nut-brown paint, Essex & Co.’s ‘Kenesaw’ design, stamped on real brown paper, a gold and brown leather dado, all yellow serge or velveteen curtains, and a golden-brown square carpet; and great care should be taken in both rooms to have the proper tablecloths, which Burnett makes from a design I gave him, and which have been largely used (and recommended by the several imitators of mine which have sprung up in divers papers since I first began my own notion of giving advice on the matter of house decoration and arrangement through the columns of a newspaper, now some six long years ago), and which are far better and more artistic than any others I have ever seen. The cloth is plain serge or felt, with a contrasting border united to the cloth itself by a gimp in which both colours are mingled, and finished off with a ball fringe. These cloths cost about 25_s._ for an ordinary table, and, as they will clean and dye, would last some years if properly looked after.

I have already spoken about the morning-room decoration, and therefore I will only add a few words on the subject of the drawing-room, where the yellow-and-white scheme I so often recommend cannot be improved upon by those who can afford a reasonably expensive scheme of decoration. Of course the very greatest care must be taken to avoid anything like the gold-and-white paper of our ancestors, but this usually was accompanied by grained maple paint, which gave the last touch of horror to the scene, and therefore could never resemble the delicate ivory paint which Aspinall has made so easy for us; and I still admire Mr. Smee’s beautiful yellow-and-white paper at 11_s._ a piece better than anything else, and with this I advise a dado of Collinson & Lock’s ‘47’ cretonne. This should be secured with a screwed-on dado-rail, as then the cretonne could be removed to be washed; all the chairs should be put into frilled cretonne covers of the same cretonne, made like those in Fig. 13; the curtains should be of Pither’s printed linen at 1_s._ a yard, edged with ball

fringe at 6_d._ a yard, and the carpet should be dark blue pile, with a pattern that resembles tiny daisies powdered all over the surface in a paler shade of blue.

Great exception has been taken to Pither’s printed linen because it fades. So it does; but then it is very cheap, it lasts two years in a sunny window, four in one that is not sunny, and, finally, dyes beautifully, fringe and all, coming back from the immortal Pullar as good as on the day it was first bought. I don’t think one can complain very much about a material which behaves like that, can one? But, of course, the printed linen as curtains can be replaced by silk, damask, or by ‘47’ cretonne itself, should the first-named material be objected to.

No colour lights up so well as yellow--I am quite sure of that; and another decoration could be made from the yellow ‘Othmar’ paper sold by Essex, all cream paint, and a frieze of chrysanthemums, either painted by hand, or else of the excellent printed design sold by Haines at 3_s._ 6_d._ the yard. With this the carpet should be red, and the curtains should either be of a brocade which introduces the shades in the flowers, or else of a cretonne: all would depend on how much money there was to spend; but whether cretonne or brocade is used, it must match the frieze in some measure. Though great cornices and vast pier-glasses over mantel-pieces are entirely out of date, and will never, I trust, return into fashion, there are still some unfortunates who labour under these possessions, and who dare not rid themselves of them, much as they would like to do so, and who may be glad to learn how these horrors may in some measure be mitigated. All cornices become less repulsive directly they are Aspinalled ivory. I cannot tell why, but this seems to metamorphose them at once, and makes them quite ornamental, while the frame of the glass can be treated in the same manner, unless the frames are quite flat, in which case they should be covered with brocade, in the same manner in which the fashionable frames for photographs are now managed. In any case, all the heavy flourishes and ‘ornaments’ should be removed, and the glass made in every way as plain and unobtrusive as possible. Draping with muslin, or even with Liberty silk, is never successful, and only makes the object draped like one of the lodging-house possessions, carefully guarded in a similar manner by the careful landlady from the encroachments of the flies, and is therefore much to be avoided.

Never, no matter what the time of year, put it out of your power to have a fire, should you so desire it. I still cling to the Japanese umbrella, and have never found a substitute for it which is so absolutely satisfactory. If its stick is properly cut it hides the wood and coal and grate entirely, and gives a bright spot of colour, and can be removed at once. A curtain hung straight down from a slight rod just under the top of the grate itself looks very neat, as does a series of rings to hold flower-pots, just brought out by Hamilton, of the Quentin Matsys Forge, York Street, Westminster. This holds twelve pots of flowers, and can be lifted out in a moment altogether should a fire be required, and would always look well put down in a corner of the room. One of the Guild brocade screens with miniatures answers well too, and Giles has invented from my description a fireplace cabinet, which, put under the wooden mantel-piece--which is _de rigueur_ in an artistic house--continues the mantel and overmantel decorations, and makes the whole appear like a good cabinet for books, china, and flowers. This can also be removed in a few minutes, and either hung on the wall or placed in a corner of the room.

The perfect câche-feu has yet to be invented, but until some clever genius has done this, either of the above ideas answers quite well; but I do solemnly warn my readers against fashionable trellis-work with paper ivy and grapes wandering over it, fans outstretched in plush with senseless photographs let in--as if photographs could be in place on the hearth!--and all the thousand and one freaks of fashion that are brought out by those who ought to know better, and who have filled many houses to overflowing with terrible plush frames, soiled satin bags, useless odds and ends, and ghastly painted tables, brackets, and stands, which are costly to begin with, and so we do not like to dispose of them too hastily, and which should never be seen in the houses of those who really want to have an artistic and pretty home; with which solemn warning we will pass on to sterner subjects, and will consider in another chapter how to treat the more ‘manly’ portion of the house, where work or pleasure may be gone in for.