I don't understand your meaning; shall need more definite instruction.
Is your house intended for ornamental purposes, as summer-houses,
dove-cots, bird-cages, and the like, often are? Is it to be a museum,
art-gallery, or memorial hall? Diamonds and pearls are commonly
thought ornamental to those who can afford them; from pink plaster
images and china vases to bronze dragons and Florentine mosaics, there
is an endless variety of ornaments for domestic apartments. I've heard
of a woman who was an ornament to her husband, and of a man who
ornamented a whole town; but when you ask me to furnish you an
ornamental style of finishing your house, I'm obliged to ask for
particulars. You may have curious carvings in the woodwork about the
doors and windows and on the base-boards; paint pictures, or set
bright-colored tile, grotesque and classic, on the flat surfaces; cut
a row of "scallops and points" around the edge of the casings in
imitation of clam-shells, as I have sometimes seen; or you may build
over your doors and windows enormous Grecian cornices supported by
huge carved consoles,--regular shelves, too high for any earthly use
except to remind you, by their vast store of dust, of your mortal
origin and destiny. I hold it to be the duty of the amiable architect
to carry out the wishes of his employer as far as consistent with his
own peace of mind; and if you insist on having a row of brass buttons
around all your casings, and setting your own tin-type, life-size, at
every corner, I shall acquiesce; but my sober advice is that the
interior work be simple and unobtrusive. The most perfect style in
dress or manner is that which attracts the least attention; so the
essential finish should not, by its elaborate design, challenge notice
and thus detract from the furnishing and true ornamentation of the
room. Avoid fine, unintelligible mouldings, needless crooks and
quirks, and be not afraid of a flat surface terminating in a plain
bead or quarter round. Stairways and mantels are not strictly a part
of the essential structure, and may be treated more liberally. The
doors, too, should be of richer design than the frames in which they
are hung; while on the sideboard, bookcase, or other stationary
furniture you may, figuratively speaking, spread yourself, always
provided you do not make, in the operation, a greater display of
ignorance than of sense.
Rich woodwork throughout, carved panels upon the walls, inlaid floors,
and elaborate ceilings, each separate detail a work of art,
intrinsically beautiful apart from its constructive use, would require
a corresponding treatment in the setting of the doors and windows; but
the most of what is commonly considered ornamental work, in such
cases, is wholly incongruous with walls and ceilings of lath and
plaster and floors of cheap boards. I know you will paste mouldy paper
to the walls and spread dirty carpets on the floors (beg your pardon,
I mean the paper will be mouldy before you know it, and if you ever
saw a wool carpet that had been used a month without being, like
Phoebe's blackberries, "all mixed with sand and dirt," your
observation has been different from mine); perhaps "run" stucco
cornices around the top of walls, and "criss-cross" the ceilings into
a perfect flower-garden of parallelograms with round corners. But the
inharmony remains all the same. Any great outlay of labor or material
on the casings of doors and windows or the bases, when there is no
other woodwork in the room, is surely out of place.
These are my sentiments, in general, upon the ornamental; of the
merely fashionable you already know my opinion. Not that this most
fitful dame has no rights that deserve respect, but her feeble light
is a black spot in the radiance of real fine art. When you can give no
other reason for liking what you like than that Mistress Fashion
approves, beware! beware!--trust her not. The time will come when you
will wish even the modest handmaiden Economy had blessed it. And if a
thing is really beautiful, what difference whether it was introduced
by Mrs. Shoddy last spring, or by Mrs. Noah, before her husband
launched his fairy boat? Nor is fine art unattainable, even in the
door-casings. It does not imply fine work. The size, shape, and
position of the doors and windows, and the relative proportions of
the work about them, is the first thing to be studied. Then have a
care that such mouldings as may be needed are graceful, and you cannot
go far wrong.
You propose to finish with "hard" wood, and ask my opinion. It
depends: if it's the hardness you want, should recommend lignum-vitae
and ebony; if the wood, economy would suggest that white-pine, and
certain other softer sorts, be not overlooked. To answer according to
the spirit of your inquiry, I should say, by all means (if you do not
mind the cost) use wood instead of putty. With all respect for white
paint and striped paint and all other kinds of paint, there is nothing
more enduringly satisfying than the natural tint and grain of the
different kinds of wood suitable for building, of which we have such
great variety in style and color, from the overestimated black
walnut, to the rarely used white-pine,--rarely used without having
its natural beauty extinguished by three coats of paint. What I wish
to say is, that finishing your woodwork without paint does not,
necessarily, require the said wood to be of the kinds commonly called
"hard." Any wood that is not specially disposed to warp, and that can
be smoothly wrought, may be used. Those you mention are all good; so
are half a dozen more,--the different kinds of ash, yellow-pine,
butternut, white-wood, cherry, cedar, even hemlock and spruce in some
situations. There are several important points to be religiously
observed if you leave the wood, whatever the variety, in its unadorned
beauty. It must be the best of its kind; it must be seasoned to its
inmost fibre; it must be wrought skilfully, tenderly cared for, and,
finally, filled and rubbed till it wears a surface that is not liable
to soil, is easily cleaned, resists the action of moisture, and will
grow richer with age. Hence, I say, by all means finish with
unpainted wood, if you are not afraid of the expense, and yet paint
and varnish are good, and putty, like charity, covereth a multitude of
sins. Nothing protects wood better than oil and lead, and by means of
them you have unlimited choice of colors, in the selection and
arrangement of which there is room and need for genuine artistic
taste. Yes; good honest paint is worthy the utmost respect. When it
tries to improve upon nature's divine methods and calls itself
"graining," it becomes unmitigated nonsense,--yes, and worse. It is
one of the sure evidences of man's innate perversity that he persists
in trying to copy certain beautiful lines and shadings in wood, not as
an art study, but for actual use, when he may just as well have the
perfect original as his own faulty imitation. What conceit, what
blindness, what impudence, this reveals! What downright falsehood! Not
in the painter,--O, no, skill is commendable even when unworthily
employed,--but in him who orders it. You may buy a pine door, which is
very well; pine doors are good; you tell every man that comes into
your house it's black-walnut or oak or mahogany. If that isn't
greeting him with lying lips and a deceitful heart, the moral law
isn't as clear as it ought to be. You may think it's of no
consequence, certainly not worth making a fuss about, but I tell you
this spirit of sham that pervades our whole social structure, that
more and more obtrudes itself in every department of life, comes from
the bottomless pit, and will carry us all thither, unless we resist
it, even in these milder manifestations, as we would resist the Father
of Lies himself. Truth and falsehood are getting so hopelessly
confused that we can scarcely distinguish one from the other.
One other suggestion in this connection. Without either painting or
graining you may get a most satisfactory effect, both in looks and
utility, by staining the less costly kinds of woods; using a
transparent stain that will not conceal but strengthen the natural
shading, and at the same time change its tint according to your fancy.
This is an honest and economical expedient. It only requires that your
lumber shall be sound, tolerably clear,--a good hard knot isn't
alarming,--seasoned, and put up with care. The cost is less than
common painting, and the effect as much better than graining as
nature's work is more perfect than ours.
Don't ask me any more questions till I've disposed of these already on
hand.
LETTER XXVIII.
From Fred.
THOUGHT PROVOKES INQUIRY.
MY DEAR ARCHITECT: In spite of your prohibition, I must pursue one or
two of the inquiries already raised, in order to understand the
answers given.
What is the objection to cheap floors, if they are always covered with
carpets? Am I to understand that you do not approve of lath and
plaster for walls and ceilings of first-class dwellings? If so, what
would you substitute?
It seems much easier to say what to avoid than what to accept; but
that, I believe, is the privilege of critics and reformers.
Why do you despise the modern fashions so heartily? Are the old any
better?
Yours,
FRED.
LETTER XXIX.
From the Architect.
CONSISTENCY, COMFORT, AND CARPETS.
MY DEAR FRED: I don't despise the new fashions. I admire them--when
they are good. Will you please try to understand that a thing of
beauty is a joy _forever_? Whatever is born of truth, whether in art
or religion, belongs to eternity; it never goes out of fashion. Will
you also remember that modern styles, modes, fashions, inventions,--call
them what you will,--are the mere average product of human thought and
labor during a few years; the old that abides is drawn from the
superlatively good of former countless generations, culled over and
over again till that alone remains which has stood the test of your
critics and reformers all along down from Adam, or up from the last
monkey who wept to find his first-born without a tail and morally
accountable.
Certainly it is easier to say what to avoid than what to accept, for
there's more of it. Broad is the road of error, and the faults and
follies, vices and sins, that wrangle and riot therein, are thicker
than crickets on a sandy road in October,--thicker and blacker. You
may catch them all day and there'll be just as many left. But the
devoted followers of truth you may count on your fingers and carry
them home in your bosom. Besides, the right thing to do cannot be told
in detail for another, since every man must manifest his own
individuality as he must work out his own salvation. In the millennium
I expect we shall find no two houses built or furnished alike.
No; you are not to understand that lath and plaster are unfit for
first-class dwellings, but there is no sense in trimming a gingham
suit with point lace. A general uniformity of value in the material of
which your castle is built is as essential as uniformity of style.
Yes; there is an objection to cheap floors, carpets or not; and now
I've gone through your last lot of interrogation-points backward,
which brings me where I left off in the former letter.
You propose to carpet the floors and ask to have them made to fit the
carpets. Would you also like the walls to fit the paper-hangings, and
the windows the curtains? Do you know what kind of carpets you will
use in each room; just how long and how wide they will be to half an
inch; the width of the borders; how much they will stretch in putting
down; how much "take up" in the making (you see I can use
interrogation-points)? Do you really know anything about them with
certainty? I ask for information, as the same request is often made as
to building the house to fit the carpets, and any attempt to comply
with it seems to me a great waste of mathematics.
Concerning, the floors themselves,--leaving the yardstick out of the
question,--even if they are covered by carpets six inches thick, it
will not pay to lay poor ones. They should be double for solidity and
warmth, well nailed for stiffness, seasoned for economy, and of good
lumber for conscience' sake. Seasoned for economy, I say, since
nothing is more destructive to carpets, especially to oil-cloth, than
cracks in the floor underneath them. Yes,--one thing; the warped edges
of the boards, that sometimes raise themselves,--that are almost sure
to do so in spruce, which is never fit for floors, though often used.
It's my conviction that spruce floor-boards, two inches thick and one
and a half wide, would contrive to curl up at the edges. If you have
good floors, furthermore, you will not feel obliged to cover them at
all times and at all hazards. I remarked that the houses built when
the good time coming comes will not be all alike. I can tell you
another thing about them, though you may not believe it; there will be
no wool carpets on the floors,--no, nor rag ones either. The people
will walk upon planks of fir and boards of cedar, sycamore from the
plains and algum-trees, gopher wood and Georgia pine, inlaid in forms
of wondrous grace. There will be no moth or _dust_ to corrupt and
strangle, neither creaks nor cracks to annoy. It's a question among
theologians whether the millennium will come "all at once and all
o'er," or gradually. I think the millennial floors must be introduced
gradually,--say around the edges,--for I do not suppose you or any one
else in New England will give up the warm-feeling carpets altogether.
And yet one who has seen a carpet of any sort taken and well shaken,
after a six months' service, will hardly expect added health or
comfort from its ministration. If your observation of this semiannual
performance isn't sufficient, and you are curious to know how much
noisome dirt and dust, how much woolly fibre and microscopic animal
life, you respire,--how these poisonous particles fill your lungs with
tubercles, your head with catarrh, and prepare your whole body for an
untimely grave,--you can study medical books at your leisure. They
will all tell the same story, and will justify my supposition that you
will cover the floors with _dirty_ carpets. Doubtless they will be
shaken and "whipped" (they deserve it) two or three times a year, and
swept, maybe, every day. The shaking is very well, but though it seems
neater to sweep them, yet for actual cleanliness of the whole room,
carpet and all, I suppose it would be better at the end of six months
if they were swept--not once! For whatever can be removed from a
carpet by ordinary sweeping is comparatively clean and harmless,--that
which sinks out of sight and remains is unclean and poisonous.
[Illustration: DUST TO DUST.]
There are two ways of lessening the evil without exterminating the
cause. One is to shut the room, never using or opening it, except for
the spring and fall cleaning; the other is to lay the carpet in such
way that it may be taken up and relaid without demoralizing the entire
household. Talk about the carpets fitting the rooms; there should be a
margin of two feet--a few inches, more or less, is unimportant--at
each side. Then if you have a handsome floor, the carpet becomes a
large rug--no matter how elegant--that may be removed, cleansed, and
put back again every morning if you like. You may fancy a border of
wood either plain or ornamental, the surface of which shall be level
with the top of the carpet. This is easily made, either by using
thicker boards around the edges or by laying wood carpeting over the
regular floor. One caution concerning fancy floors; don't make them
too fanciful. We don't like to feel that we're treading under foot a
rare work of art, and I've seen certain zigzag patterns which merely
to look at fairly makes one stagger. Thresholds are on the floor,
but not of them, nor of anything else, for that matter, and though
somewhat useful in poetry, are often provoking stumbling-blocks in
practice. Necessary at times, doubtless, but we have far too many and
too much of them. Even where rooms are carpeted differently they are
not needed. If you must have them, let them lie low and keep dark.
[Illustration: WOOL AND WOOD.]
If you paint or paper the walls, as you will if they are plastered,
keep this in mind: the trowel finishes them as far as use is
concerned. Whatever is added is purely in the nature of ornament, and
must be tried by the laws of decoration. If you enjoy seeing "a
parrot, a poppy, and a shepherdess," bunches of blue roses, and
impossible landscapes, spotted, at regular intervals, over the inner
walls of the rooms, you will choose some large-figured paper. Perhaps,
if the pattern is sufficiently distinct and gorgeous, you will think
you need no other pictures; and the pictures themselves will be glad
to be left out if they have any self-respect. I'm sure you don't enjoy
any such thing. Some of the fancy paper-hangings are artistic and
beautiful in design; for that very reason they ought not to be
repeated. I would as soon hang up a few dozens of religious-newspaper
prize-chromos. The general effect is the point to be considered. Why
not have both? Because you can't. When you have a picture so pretty
and complete as to attract your attention and fix itself in your
memory, the general effect is lost if you discover the same thing
staring at you whichever way you turn. 'T is the easiest thing in the
world to have too much of a good thing. Sometimes the better the thing
the worse the repetition. This general effect which we must have is
well secured by a small, inconspicuous figure, or by those vine-like
patterns, so delicate and wandering that you don't attempt to follow
them. Better than either are the plain tints, which give you, in
fact, all you require; a modification of the cold white wall, and the
most effective background for pictures and other furnishing. As much
ornament as you please in the border at the top, and at the bottom,
too, if the rooms are high enough. All horizontal lines and
subdivisions reduce the apparent height of the room. Indeed, you may
use trimming without limit, either of paper or paint, wood and gilt
moldings, provided they are well used. Color, after all, is the main
thing. If there is any good reason for putting this upon paper and
then sticking the paper to the wall, I've not learned it. It is
cheaper, cleaner, and better to apply it directly to the plastering,
either in oil or water-colors. Oil is the best; water the cheapest. In
any case, the best quality of plastering is none too good. For the
papering it may be left smooth, but for painting, especially with
distemper, the rough coarse-grained surface is very much the best. The
chief objection to stucco arises from its being a cheap material,
easily wrought. It is so often introduced as if quantity would
compensate for quality,--a common error in other things than stucco.
Though often desirable and appropriate, as a general rule the more the
worse. No amount of gilding will give it anything but a frail, often
tawdry appearance, that does not improve, but deteriorates, with age.
[Illustration: WOODWORK ON PLASTERED WALLS]
Wainscoting is always in order; it is a question of harmony, when and
where to use it. What you have in mind is really an extended and
ornamented base. Of course, it enriches the room, but it begins a work
to which there is no limit. It should be supplemented by a
corresponding wood cornice at the top of the room, and between the two
as much decorative woodwork as you can afford; until "the walls of
the house within, the floor of the house, and the walls of the
ceilings" are carved with "cherubims and palm-trees and open flowers."
A costly wainscot at the base of the walls, with paper and stucco
above, seems to me a great lack of harmony. I would spread my richness
more evenly. In using different kinds of wood, the raised portions,
being more exposed, may be of hard varieties, the sunken portions of
softer materials, even lath and plaster, which may be frescoed,
covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet
velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned
chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the
debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat
enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from
that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is
really carrying out the idea of panelling, to which there is hardly a
limit in the way of variety.
Some of your questions have led me a little way from the building
toward the furnishing, but I've tried to dispose of them
categorically, and am now ready for another lot.
LETTER XXX.
From Miss Jane.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE, POTATOES AND POSTSCRIPTS.
MR. ARCHITECT: Dear Sir,--After so long an indirect acquaintance
through our mutual friends, it is quite time we were formally
introduced. Allow me to present myself: Sister Jane, spinster; native
of New England, born to idleness, bred to school-teaching; age not
reported, temperament hopeful, abilities average; possessor of a
moderate competence, partly acquired, mainly inherited; greatly
overestimated by a friendly few, somewhat abused as peculiar (in
American idiom "funny") by strangers; especially interested in the
building of homes, and quite willing to help Mr. Fred carry out his
ambitions in that direction by any suggestions I am able to make.
[Illustration: "SISTER JANE, SPINSTER."]
I've taught school, and I've taught music; sold goods in a store and
worked in a factory; run a sewing-machine, travelled with
subscription-books, and hired out to do house-work; and I solemnly
aver that the only time I was conscious of genuine enthusiasm for my
work, or felt that I was doing myself or others any actual good, was
while keeping house. In school I was required to teach things I knew
little and cared less about, and to punish the dear children for doing
precisely what I would have done myself had I been in their places,
losing all the while in amiability more than was gained in mental
discipline. My experience in a factory was limited to three months.
From working with the machines and as they worked, hardly using more
intelligent volition than they, I began to fancy myself becoming like
them, with no more rights to be respected, no more moral
responsibility, and left without even serving my notice. Clerking I
tried "just for fun." If all people who came to trade were like some,
it would be the pleasantest, easiest work imaginable; if all were like
others, the veriest torment. It was an excellent place to study human
nature, but made me somewhat cynical. My sewing-machine had fits and
gave me a back-ache, so I've locked it up until some one invents a
motive-power that can be applied to house-work, washing, churning,
mincing meat and vegetables, driving sewing-machines, and--if it only
could--kneading bread, sweeping floors, washing dishes, ironing
clothes, and making beds. My book agency was undertaken for the sake
of travel,--of learning something, not only of the land we live in,
but of its people and homes. If I had gone from house to house and
with malice aforethought begged an outright gift of a sum equal to my
commission on each book, I should have felt more self-approval than in
asking people to buy what I had not the slightest reason to suppose
they wanted.
Now I'm sure you are beginning to think me one of the disagreeably
strong-minded, who think the whole world has gone astray when it's
only themselves who are out of tune, but, truly, I'm not; only I don't
like to be or to feel idle and useless, nor yet to be constantly
striving to do from a sense of duty what is positively distasteful.
Like many other important discoveries, my aptness for house-work was
found out by accident. Our next neighbor happened to be thrown,
without a word of warning, into one of those dreadful whirlpools in
regard to help, to which even the best regulated households are
liable. My services, charitably volunteered as temporary relief, were
gladly accepted, and the result on my part was two years of pleasant
and profitable labor. All I earned was clear profit, and I had the
satisfaction of knowing I saved the family many times over what was
paid me. I'm converted beyond the possibility of backsliding to this
truth: that there is no work so fit and pleasant, so profitable and
improving, to the mass of womankind,--rich or poor, wise or
unlearned, strong or weak,--yes, proud or meek,--as the care and
control of a home; none so worthy of thorough study, none so full of
opportunity for exercising all the better bodily and mental powers,
from mere mechanical and muscular skill, up through philosophy and
science, mathematics and invention, to poetry and fine art.