Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston were bought by
two friends, Philip and John. Philip had plenty of money, and paid the
cash down for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy in his
pocket. John, who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a
flourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings for years in
the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage remaining, which
he hoped to clear off by his future successes. Philip begins the work of
furnishing as people do with whom money is abundant, and who have simply
to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their fancy and is
considered 'the thing' in good society. John begins to furnish with very
little money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he wisely deems
that to insure to them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation,
with conveniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise
beginning in life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond.
Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, going the rounds of
shops and stores in fitting up their new dwelling, and let us follow
step by step. To begin with the wall-paper. Imagine a front and back
parlor, with folding-doors, with two south windows on the front, and two
looking on a back court, after the general manner of city houses. We
will suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper. Philip buys
the heaviest French velvet, with gildings and traceries, at four dollars
a roll. This, by the time it has been put on, with gold mouldings,
according to the most established taste of the best paper-hangers, will
bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two
hundred dollars. Now they proceed to the carpet-stores, and there are
thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters, with
flowery convolutions and medallion-centres, as if the flower-gardens of
the tropics were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of
arabesque,--roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue
and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color and tracery.
There, is no restraint in price,--four or six dollars a yard, it is all
the same to them,--and soon a magic flower-garden blooms on the floors,
at a cost of five hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs, at fifty
dollars apiece, complete the inventory, and bring our rooms to the mark
of eight hundred dollars for papering and carpeting alone. Now come the
great mantel-mirrors for four hundred more, and our rooms progress. Then
comes the upholsterer, and measures our four windows, that he may
skilfully barricade them from air and sunshine. The fortifications
against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of damask, cord,
tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, about two hundred dollars per
window. To be sure, they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave;
but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the sun would only
reflect, he would see, himself, how foolish it was for him to try to
force himself into a window guarded by his betters. If there is anything
cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air! Behold us, then, with
our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained for two thousand dollars;
and now are to be put in them sofas, lounges, étageres, centre-tables,
screens, chairs of every pattern and device, for which it is but
moderate to allow a thousand more. We have now two parlors furnished at
an outlay of three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a single
article of statuary, a single object of Art of any kind, and without any
light to see them by, if they were there. We must say for our Boston
upholsterers and furniture-makers that such good taste generally reigns
in their establishments that rooms furnished at hap-hazard from them
cannot fail of a certain air of good taste, so far as the individual
things are concerned. But the different articles we have supposed,
having been ordered without reference to one another or the rooms, have,
when brought together, no unity of effect, and the general result is
scattering and confused. If asked how Philip's parlors look, your reply
is,--"Oh, the usual way of such parlors,--everything that such people
usually get,--medallion-carpets, carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze
mantel-ornaments, and so on." The only impression a stranger receives,
while waiting in the dim twilight of these rooms, is that their owner
is rich, and able to get good, handsome things, such as all other rich
people get.
Now our friend John, as often happens in America, is moving in the same
social circle with Philip, visiting the same people,--his house is the
twin of the one Philip has been furnishing, and how shall he, with a few
hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable beside those which
Philip has fitted up elegantly and three thousand?
Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must make his prayer to the
Graces,--for, if they cannot save him, nobody can. One thing John has to
begin with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic cestus of
Venus,--not around her waist, but, if such a thing could be, in her
finger-ends. All that she touches falls at once into harmony and
proportion. Her eye for color and form is intuitive: let her arrange a
garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off furniture in it,
and ten to one she makes it seem the most attractive place in the house.
It is a veritable "gift of good faërie," this tact of beautifying and
arranging, that some women have,--and, on the present occasion, it has a
real material value, that can be estimated in dollars and cents. Come
with us and you can see the pair taking their survey of the yet
unfurnished parlors, as busy and happy as a couple of blue-birds picking
up the first sticks and straws for their nest.
"There are two sunny windows to begin with," says the good fairy, with
an appreciative glance. "That insures flowers all winter."
"Yes," says John; "I never would look at a house without a good sunny
exposure. Sunshine is the best ornament of a house, and worth an extra
thousand a year.
"Now for our wall-paper," says she. "Have you looked at wall-papers,
John?"
"Yes; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven cents a roll; all
you want of a paper, you know, is to make a ground-tint to throw out
your pictures and other matters, and to reflect a pleasant tone of
light."
"Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a stone-color is the
best,--but I can't bear those cold blue grays."
"Nor I," says John. "If we must have gray, let it at least be a gray
suffused with gold or rose-color, such as you see at evening in the
clouds."
"So I think," responds she; "but better, I should like a paper with a
tone of buff,--something that produces warm yellowish reflections, and
will almost make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weather; and
then there is nothing that lights up so cheerfully in the evening. In
short, John, I think the color of a _zafferano_ rose will be just about
the shade we want."
"Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as I said before, at
from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll. Then, our bordering: there's an
important question, for that must determine the carpet, the chairs, and
everything else. Now what shall be the ground-tint of our rooms?"
"There are only two to choose between," says the lady,--"green and
maroon: which is the best for the picture?"
"I think," says John, looking above the mantel-piece, as if he saw a
picture there,--"I think a border of maroon velvet, with maroon
furniture, is the best for the picture."
"I think so too," said she; "and then we will have that lovely maroon
and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe's;--it is an ingrain, to be sure,
but has a Brussels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades
of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover
the lounges and our two old arm-chairs with a pretty maroon _rep_, it
will make such a pretty effect."
"Yes," said John; "and then, you know, our picture is so bright, it will
light up the whole. Everything depends on the picture."
Now as to "the picture," it has a story must be told. John, having been
all his life a worshipper and adorer of beauty and beautiful things,
had never passed to or from his business without stopping at the
print-shop windows, and seeing a little of what was there.
On one of these occasions he was smitten to the heart with the beauty of
an autumn landscape, where the red maples and sumachs, the purple and
crimson oaks, all stood swathed and harmonized together in the hazy
Indian-summer atmosphere. There was a great yellow chestnut-tree, on a
distant hill, which stood out so naturally that John instinctively felt
his fingers tingling for a basket, and his heels alive with a desire to
bound over on to the rustling hill-side and pick up the glossy brown
nuts. Everything was there of autumn, even to the golden-rod and purple
asters and scarlet creepers in the foreground.
John went in and inquired. It was by an unknown French artist, without
name or patrons, who had just come to our shores to study our scenery,
and this was the first picture he had exposed for sale. John had just
been paid a quarter's salary; he bethought him of board-bill and
washerwoman, sighed, and faintly offered fifty dollars.
To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the picture became his.
John thought himself dreaming. He examined his treasure over and over,
and felt sure that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a
trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his way to the studio
of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem for so much
less than its worth. "It was all I _could_ give, though," he said; "and
one who paid four times as much could not value it more." And so John
took one and another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, to
the studio of the modest stranger; and now his pieces command their full
worth in the market, and he works with orders far ahead of his ability
to execute, giving to the canvas the traits of American scenery as
appreciated and felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind,--our
rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, misty delicacy
of our snowy winter landscapes. Whoso would know the truth of the same,
let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier, at Malden, scarce a
bow-shot from our Boston.
This picture had always been the ruling star of John's house, his main
dependence for brightening up his bachelor-apartments; and when he came
to the task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occupant, the
picture was still his mine of gold. For a picture, painted by a real
artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something
of the charm of the good Mother herself,--something of her faculty of
putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife
had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it
looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a
golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the
cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died
off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to
be furnished, the picture was still the tower of strength, the
rallying-point of their hopes.
"Do you know, John," said the wife, hesitating, "I am really in doubt
whether we shall not have to get at least a few new chairs and a sofa
for our parlors? They are putting in such splendid things at the other
door that I am positively ashamed of ours; the fact is, they look almost
disreputable,--like a heap of rubbish."
"Well," said John, laughing, "I don't suppose all together sent to an
auction-room would bring us fifty dollars, and yet, such as they are,
they answer the place of better things for us; and the fact is, Mary,
the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there really _is no
money to get any more_."
"Ah, well, then, if there isn't, we must see what we can do with these,
and summon all the good fairies to our aid," said Mary. "There's your
little cabinet-maker, John, will look over the things, and furbish them
up; there's that broken arm of the chair must be mended, and everything
revarnished; then I have found such a lovely _rep_, of just the richest
shade of maroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to cover the
lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and ottomans all alike, you know they
will be quite another thing."
"Trust you for that, Mary! By-the-by, I've found a nice little woman,
who has worked on upholstery, who will come in by the day, and be the
hands that shall execute the decrees of your taste."
"Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you know that I'm almost
glad we can't get new things? it's a sort of enterprise to see what we
can do with old ones."
"Now, you see, Mary," said John, seating himself on a lime-cask which
the plasterers had left, and taking out his memorandum-book, "you see,
I've calculated this thing all over; I've found a way by which I can
make our rooms beautiful and attractive without a cent expended on new
furniture."
"Well, let's hear."
"Well, my way is short and simple. We must put things into our rooms
that people will look at, so that they will forget to look at the
furniture, and never once trouble their heads about it. People never
look at furniture so long as there is anything else to look at; just as
Napoleon, when away on one of his expeditions, being told that the
French populace were getting disaffected, wrote back, 'Gild the _dome
des Invalides_' and so they gilded it, and the people, looking at that,
forgot everything else."
"But I'm not clear yet," said Mary, "what is coming of this rhetoric."
"Well, then, Mary, I'll tell you. A suit of new carved black-walnut
furniture, severe in taste and perfect in style, such as I should choose
at David and Saul's, could not be got under three hundred dollars, and I
haven't the three hundred to give. What, then, shall we do? We must fall
back on our resources; we must look over our treasures. We have our
proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus di Milo; we have
those six beautiful photographs of Rome, that Brown brought to us; we
have the great German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, and
we have the two angel-heads, from the same; we have that lovely golden
twilight sketch of Heade's; we have some sea-photographs of Bradford's;
we have an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings; and then, as before,
we have 'our picture.' What has been the use of our watching at the
gates and waiting at the doors of Beauty all our lives, if she hasn't
thrown us out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for time of
need? Now, you see, Mary, we must make the toilet of our rooms just as a
pretty woman makes hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens
her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a bow
here, and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere else, dazzles us
into thinking that she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms
are new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint of the paper,
and the rich coloring of the border, corresponding with the furniture
and carpets, will make them seem prettier. And now for arrangement. Take
this front-room. I propose to fill those two recesses each side of the
fireplace with my books, in their plain pine cases, just breast-high
from the floor: they are stained a good dark color, and nobody need
stick a pin in them to find out that they are not rosewood. The top of
these shelves on either side to be covered with the same stuff as the
furniture, finished with a crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one
side of the fireplace I shall set our noble Venus di Milo, and I shall
buy at Cicci's the lovely Clytie and put it the other side. Then I shall
get of Williams and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which give
you all the style and charm of the best English water-color school. I
will have the lovely Bay of Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from
those suns and skies of Southern Italy, and I will hang Lake Como over
my Clytie. Then, in the middle, over the fireplace, shall be 'our
picture.' Over each door shall hang one of the lithographed angel-heads
of the San Sisto, to watch our going-out and coming-in; and the glorious
Mother and Child shall hang opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how
Greek and Christian unite in giving the noblest type to womanhood. And
then, when we have all our sketches and lithographs framed and hung here
and there, and your flowers blooming as they always do, and your ivies
wandering and rambling as they used to, and hanging in the most graceful
ways and places, and all those little shells and ferns and vases, which
you are always conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I'll venture to say
that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, and that people
will oftener say, 'How beautiful!' when they enter, than if we spent
three times the money on new furniture."
In the course of a year after this conversation, one and another of my
acquaintances were often heard speaking of John Merton's house. "Such
beautiful rooms,--so charmingly furnished,--you must go and see them.
What does make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the other
house, which have everything in them that money can buy?" So said the
folk,--for nine people out of ten only feel the effect of a room, and
never analyze the causes from which it flows: they know that certain
rooms seem dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know why; that
certain others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not
why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often,
"How beautiful!" that it became rather a by-word in the family.
Estimated by their mere money-value, the articles in the rooms were of
very trifling worth; but as they stood arranged and combined, they had
all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only
plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the
compass of limited means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its
own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest works of Art. A
good plaster cast is a daguerrotype, so to speak, of a great statue,
though it may be bought for five or six dollars, while its original is
not to be had for any nameable sum. A chromo-lithograph of the best sort
gives all the style and manner and effect of Turner or Stanfield, or any
of the best of modern artists, though you buy it for five or ten
dollars, and though the original would command a thousand guineas. The
lithographs from Raphael's immortal picture give you the results of a
whole age of artistic culture, in a form within the compass of very
humble means. There is now selling for five dollars at Williams and
Everett's a photograph of Cheney's crayon drawing of the San Sisto
Madonna and Child, which has the very spirit of the glorious original.
Such a picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would train its
eye from infancy; and yet how many will freely spend five dollars in
embroidery on its dress, that say they cannot afford works of Art!
There was one advantage which John and his wife found in the way in
which they furnished their house, that I have hinted at before: it gave
freedom to their children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was not
with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks.
Pictures hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brackets,
speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of reach of childish
fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They are not like china
and crystal, liable to be used and abused by servants; they do not wear
out; they are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The beauty
once there is always there; though the mother be ill and in her chamber,
she has no fears that she shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And
this style of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious
furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to
draw or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table; but a
room surrounded with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a
thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is
found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks for a book on Venice, or
wants to hear the history of the Roman Forum.
But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral
and intellectual effects of house-furnishing.
* * * * *
"I have proved my point, Miss Jennie, have I not? _In house-furnishing,
nothing is more economical than beauty_."
"Yes, papa," said Jennie; "I give it up."
* * * * *