I have always lived in enchanting houses. Probably 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.
[Illustration: THE WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE WAS DELIGHTFULLY RAMBLING]
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. 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, fundamentally, 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 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 wonderful 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 contents, shouldn'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 perfect harmony.
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
white muslin curtains. No matter what the inner curtains of a room may
be, I use this simple stuff against the window itself. There isn't any
nicer material. To me there is something unsuitable in an array of lace
against a window, like underclothes hung up to dry.
[Illustration: A WASHINGTON IRVING HOUSE BEDROOM]
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 without 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 conservatory. 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 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
arrangement 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 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 lounging chairs. The little table must hold a good
reading light, well shaded, for who doesn'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 beautiful. Who hasn'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 bedroom 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 writing-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
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 disposal 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 writing-table in
every bedroom. My friends laugh at the little fat pincushions on my
writing-tables, but when 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.
[Illustration: MISS MARBURY'S BEDROOM]
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 skyscrapers
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.