in an angle of the wall: a misplaced attempt at quaintness, making it
inconvenient to sit near the hearth, and seriously interfering with
the general arrangement of the room. When the chimney occupies the
centre of the longitudinal wall there is space, even in a very narrow
room, for a group of chairs about the fireplace--provided, as we are
now supposing, the opening in the parallel wall has been closed. A
bookcase or some other high piece of furniture may be placed on each
side of the mantel, and there will be space opposite for a sofa and a
good-sized writing-table. If the pieces of furniture chosen are in
scale with the dimensions of the room, and are placed against the
wall, instead of being set sideways, with the usual easel or palm-tree
behind them, it is surprising to see how much a small room may contain
without appearing to be overcrowded.
[Illustration: _PLATE L._
DINING-ROOM, PALACE OF COMPIÈGNE. LOUIS XVI PERIOD.
(OVER-DOORS AND OVER-MANTEL PAINTED IN GRISAILLE, BY SAUVAGE.)]
XIII
THE DINING-ROOM
The dining-room, as we know it, is a comparatively recent innovation
in house-planning. In the early middle ages the noble and his
retainers ate in the hall; then the _grand'salle_, built for
ceremonial uses, began to serve as a banqueting-room, while the meals
eaten in private were served in the lord's chamber. As house-planning
adapted itself to the growing complexity of life, the mediæval bedroom
developed into a private suite of living-rooms, preceded by an
antechamber; and this antechamber, or one of the small adjoining
cabinets, was used as the family dining-room, the banqueting-hall
being still reserved for state entertainments.
The plan of dining at haphazard in any of the family living-rooms
persisted on the Continent until the beginning of the eighteenth
century: even then it was comparatively rare, in France, to see a room
set apart for the purpose of dining. In small _hôtels_ and apartments,
people continued to dine in the antechamber; where there were two
antechambers, the inner was used for that purpose; and it was only in
grand houses, or in the luxurious establishments of the _femmes
galantes_, that dining-rooms were to be found. Even in such cases the
room described as a _salle à manger_ was often only a central
antechamber or saloon into which the living-rooms opened; indeed,
Madame du Barry's sumptuous dining-room at Luciennes was a vestibule
giving directly upon the peristyle of the villa.
In England the act of dining seems to have been taken more seriously,
while the rambling outgrowths of the Elizabethan residence included a
greater variety of rooms than could be contained in any but the
largest houses built on more symmetrical lines. Accordingly, in old
English house-plans we find rooms designated as "dining-parlors"; many
houses, in fact, contained two or three, each with a different
exposure, so that they might be used at different seasons. These rooms
can hardly be said to represent our modern dining-room, since they
were not planned in connection with kitchen and offices, and were
probably used as living-rooms when not needed for dining. Still, it
was from the Elizabethan dining-parlor that the modern dining-room
really developed; and so recently has it been specialized into a room
used only for eating, that a generation ago old-fashioned people in
England and America habitually used their dining-rooms to sit in. On
the Continent the incongruous uses of the rooms in which people dined
made it necessary that the furniture should be easily removed. In the
middle ages, people dined at long tables composed of boards resting on
trestles, while the seats were narrow wooden benches or stools, so
constructed that they could easily be carried away when the meal was
over. With the sixteenth century, the _table-à-tréteaux_ gave way to
various folding tables with legs, and the wooden stools were later
replaced by folding seats without arms called _perroquets_. In the
middle ages, when banquets were given in the _grand'salle_, the plate
was displayed on movable shelves covered with a velvet slip, or on
elaborately carved dressers; but on ordinary occasions little silver
was set out in French dining-rooms, and the great English
sideboard, with its array of urns, trays and wine-coolers, was
unknown in France. In the common antechamber dining-room, whatever was
needed for the table was kept in a press or cupboard with solid wooden
doors; changes of service being carried on by means of serving-tables,
or _servantes_--narrow marble-topped consoles ranged against the walls
of the room.
[Illustration: _PLATE LI._
DINING-ROOM FOUNTAIN, PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU.
LOUIS XV PERIOD.]
For examples of dining-rooms, as we understand the term, one must look
to the grand French houses of the eighteenth century (see Plate L) and
to the same class of dwellings in England. In France such dining-rooms
were usually intended for gala entertainments, the family being still
served in antechamber or cabinet; but English houses of the same
period generally contain a family dining-room and another intended for
state.
The dining-room of Madame du Barry at Luciennes, already referred to,
was a magnificent example of the great dining-saloon. The ceiling was
a painted Olympus; the white marble walls were subdivided by
Corinthian pilasters with plinths and capitals of gilt bronze,
surmounted by a frieze of bas-reliefs framed in gold; four marble
niches contained statues by Pajou, Lecomte, and Moineau; and the
general brilliancy of effect was increased by crystal chandeliers,
hung in the intercolumniations against a background of looking-glass.
Such a room, the banqueting-hall of the official mistress, represents
the _courtisane's_ ideal of magnificence: decorations as splendid, but
more sober and less theatrical, marked the dining-rooms of the
aristocracy, as at Choisy, Gaillon and Rambouillet.
The state dining-rooms of the eighteenth century were often treated
with an order, niches with statues being placed between the pilasters.
Sometimes one of these niches contained a fountain serving as a
wine-cooler--a survival of the stone or metal wall-fountains in which
dishes were washed in the mediæval dining-room. Many of these earlier
fountains had been merely fixed to the wall; but those of the
eighteenth century, though varying greatly in design, were almost
always an organic part of the wall-decoration (see Plate LI).
Sometimes, in apartments of importance, they formed the pedestal of a
life-size group or statue, as in the dining-room of Madame de
Pompadour; while in smaller rooms they consisted of a semicircular
basin of marble projecting from the wall and surmounted by groups of
cupids, dolphins or classic attributes. The banqueting-gallery of
Trianon-sous-Bois contains in one of its longitudinal walls two wide
niches with long marble basins; and Mariette's edition of d'Aviler's
_Cours d'Architecture_ gives the elevation of a recessed buffet
flanked by small niches containing fountains. The following
description, accompanying d'Aviler's plate, is quoted here as an
instance of the manner in which elaborate compositions were worked out
by the old decorators: "The second antechamber, being sometimes used
as a dining-room, is a suitable place for the buffet represented. This
buffet, which may be incrusted with marble or stone, or panelled with
wood-work, consists in a recess occupying one of the side walls of the
room. The recess contains a shelf of marble or stone, supported on
brackets and surmounting a small stone basin which serves as a
wine-cooler. Above the shelf is an attic flanked by volutes, and over
this attic may be placed a picture, generally a flower or fruit-piece,
or the representation of a concert, or some such agreeable scene;
while in the accompanying plate the attic is crowned by a bust of
Comus, wreathed with vines by two little satyrs--the group detaching
itself against a trellised background enlivened with birds. The
composition is completed by two lateral niches for fountains,
adorned with masks, tritons and dolphins of gilded lead."
[Illustration: _PLATE LII._
DINING-CHAIR, LOUIS XIV PERIOD.]
These built-in sideboards and fountains were practically the only
feature distinguishing the old dining-rooms from other gala
apartments. At a period when all rooms were painted, panelled, or hung
with tapestry, no special style of decoration was thought needful for
the dining-room; though tapestry was seldom used, for the practical
reason that stuff hangings are always objectionable in a room intended
for eating.
[Illustration: _PLATE LIII._
DINING-CHAIR, LOUIS XVI PERIOD.]
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when comfortable seats
began to be made, an admirably designed dining-room chair replaced the
earlier benches and _perroquets_. The eighteenth century dining-chair
is now often confounded with the light _chaise volante_ used in
drawing-rooms, and cabinet-makers frequently sell the latter as copies
of old dining-chairs. These were in fact much heavier and more
comfortable, and whether cane-seated or upholstered, were invariably
made with wide deep seats, so that the long banquets of the day might
be endured without constraint or fatigue; while the backs were low and
narrow, in order not to interfere with the service of the table. (See
Plates LII and LIII. Plates XLVI and L also contain good examples of
dining-chairs.) In England the state dining-room was decorated much as
it was in France: the family dining-room was simply a plain parlor,
with wide mahogany sideboards or tall glazed cupboards for the display
of plate and china. The solid English dining-chairs of mahogany, if
less graceful than those used on the Continent, are equally well
adapted to their purpose.
The foregoing indications may serve to suggest the lines upon which
dining-room decoration might be carried out in the present day. The
avoidance of all stuff hangings and heavy curtains is of great
importance: it will be observed that even window-curtains were seldom
used in old dining-rooms, such care being given to the decorative
detail of window and embrasure that they needed no additional ornament
in the way of drapery. A bare floor of stone or marble is best suited
to the dining-room; but where the floor is covered, it should be with
a rug, not with a nailed-down carpet.
The dining-room should be lit by wax candles in side _appliques_ or in
a chandelier; and since anything tending to produce heat and to
exhaust air is especially objectionable in a room used for eating, the
walls should be sufficiently light in color to make little artificial
light necessary. In the dining-rooms of the last century, in England
as well as on the Continent, the color-scheme was usually regulated by
this principle: the dark dining-room panelled with mahogany or hung
with sombre leather is an invention of our own times. It has already
been said that the old family dining-room was merely a panelled
parlor. Sometimes the panels were of light unvarnished oak, but
oftener they were painted in white or in some pale tint easily lit by
wax candles. The walls were often hung with fruit or flower-pieces, or
with pictures of fish and game: a somewhat obvious form of adornment
which it has long been the fashion to ridicule, but which was not
without decorative value and appropriateness. Pictures representing
life and action often grow tiresome when looked at over and over
again, day after day: a fact which the old decorators probably had in
mind when they hung what the French call _natures mortes_ in the
dining-room.
Concerning the state dining-room that forms a part of many modern houses
little remains to be said beyond the descriptions already given of the
various gala apartments. It is obvious that the banqueting-hall
should be less brilliant than a ball-room and less fanciful in
decoration than a music-room: a severer and more restful treatment
naturally suggests itself, but beyond this no special indications are
required.
The old dining-rooms were usually heated by porcelain stoves. Such a
stove, of fine architectural design, set in a niche corresponding with
that which contains the fountain, is of great decorative value in the
composition of the room; and as it has the advantage of giving out
less concentrated heat than an open fire, it is specially well suited
to a small or narrow dining-room, where some of the guests must
necessarily sit close to the hearth.
Most houses which have banquet-halls contain also a smaller apartment
called a breakfast-room; but as this generally corresponds in size and
usage with the ordinary family dining-room, the same style of
decoration is applicable to both. However ornate the banquet-hall may
be, the breakfast-room must of course be simple and free from gilding:
the more elaborate the decorations of the larger room, the more
restful such a contrast will be found.
Of the dinner-table, as we now know it, little need be said. The
ingenious but ugly extension-table with a central support, now used
all over the world, is an English invention. There seems no reason why
the general design should not be improved without interfering with the
mechanism of this table; but of course it can never be so satisfactory
to the eye as one of the old round or square tables, with four or six
tapering legs, such as were used in eighteenth-century dining-rooms
before the introduction of the "extension."
XIV
BEDROOMS
The history of the bedroom has been incidentally touched upon in
tracing the development of the drawing-room from the mediæval hall. It
was shown that early in the middle ages the sleeping-chamber, which
had been one of the first outgrowths of the hall, was divided into the
_chambre de parade_, or incipient drawing-room, and the _chambre au
giste_, or actual sleeping-room.
The increasing development of social life in the sixteenth century
brought about a further change; the state bedroom being set aside for
entertainments of ceremony, while the sleeping-chamber was used as the
family living-room and as the scene of suppers, card-parties, and
informal receptions--or sometimes actually as the kitchen. Indeed, so
varied were the uses to which the _chambre au giste_ was put, that in
France especially it can hardly be said to have offered a refuge from
the promiscuity of the hall.
[Illustration: _PLATE LIV._
BEDROOM. PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU. LOUIS XIV PERIOD.
(LOUIS XVI BED AND CHAIR, MODERN SOFA.)]
As a rule, the bedrooms of the Renaissance and of the seventeenth
century were very richly furnished. The fashion of raising the bed on
a dais separated from the rest of the room by columns and a balustrade
was introduced in France in the time of Louis XIV. This innovation
gave rise to the habit of dividing the decoration of the room into two
parts; the walls being usually panelled or painted, while the
"alcove," as it was called, was hung in tapestry, velvet, or some
rich stuff in keeping with the heavy curtains that completely
enveloped the bedstead. This use of stuff hangings about the bed, so
contrary to our ideas of bedroom hygiene, was due to the difficulty of
heating the large high-studded rooms of the period, and also, it must
be owned, to the prevalent dread of fresh air as of something
essentially unwholesome and pernicious.
In the early middle ages people usually slept on the floor; though it
would seem that occasionally, to avoid cold or dampness, the mattress
was laid on cords stretched upon a low wooden framework. In the
fourteenth century the use of such frameworks became more general, and
the bed was often enclosed in curtains hung from a tester resting on
four posts. Bed-hangings and coverlet were often magnificently
embroidered; but in order that it might not be necessary to transport
from place to place the unwieldy bedstead and tester, these were made
in the rudest manner, without attempt at carving or adornment. In
course of time this primitive framework developed into the sumptuous
four-post bedstead of the Renaissance, with elaborately carved cornice
and _colonnes torses_ enriched with gilding. Thenceforward more wealth
and skill were expended upon the bedstead than upon any other article
of furniture. Gilding, carving, and inlaying of silver, ivory or
mother-of-pearl, combined to adorn the framework, and embroidery made
the coverlet and hangings resplendent as church vestments. This
magnificence is explained by the fact that it was customary for the
lady of the house to lie in bed while receiving company. In many old
prints representing suppers, card-parties, or afternoon visits, the
hostess is thus seen, with elaborately dressed head and stiff brocade
gown, while her friends are grouped about the bedside in equally rich
attire. This curious custom persisted until late in the eighteenth
century; and under such conditions it was natural that the old
cabinet-makers should vie with each other in producing a variety of
ornate and fanciful bedsteads. It would be useless to enumerate here
the modifications in design marking the different periods of
decoration: those who are interested in the subject will find it
treated in detail in the various French works on furniture.
It was natural that while the bedroom was used as a _salon_ it should
be decorated with more elaboration than would otherwise have been
fitting; but two causes combined to simplify its treatment in the
eighteenth century. One of these was the new fashion of _petits
appartements_. With artists so keenly alive to proportion as the old
French designers, it was inevitable that such a change in dimensions
should bring about a corresponding change in decoration. The bedrooms
of the eighteenth century, though sometimes elaborate in detail, had
none of the pompous richness of the great Renaissance or Louis XIV
room (see Plate LIV). The pretentious dais with its screen of columns
was replaced by a niche containing the bed; plain wood-panelling
succeeded to tapestry and embroidered hangings; and the heavy carved
ceiling with its mythological centre-picture made way for light
traceries on plaster.
The other change in the decoration of French bedrooms was due to the
substitution of linen or cotton bed and window-hangings for the
sumptuous velvets and brocades of the seventeenth century. This change
has usually been ascribed to the importation of linens and cottons
from the East; and no doubt the novelty of these gay _indiennes_
stimulated the taste for simple hangings. The old inventories,
however, show that, in addition to the imported India hangings, plain
white linen curtains with a colored border were much used; and it is
probably the change in the size of rooms that first led to the
adoption of thin washable hangings. The curtains and bed-draperies of
damask or brocatelle, so well suited to the high-studded rooms of the
seventeenth century, would have been out of place in the small
apartments of the Regency. In studying the history of decoration, it
will generally be found that the supposed vagaries of house-furnishing
were actually based on some practical requirement; and in this
instance the old decorators were doubtless guided rather by common
sense than by caprice. The adoption of these washable materials
certainly introduced a style of bedroom-furnishing answering to all
the requirements of recent hygiene; for not only were windows and
bedsteads hung with unlined cotton or linen, but chairs and sofas were
covered with removable _housses_, or slip-covers; while the painted
wall-panelling and bare brick or parquet floors came far nearer to the
modern sanitary ideal than do the papered walls and nailed-down
carpets still seen in many bedrooms. This simple form of decoration
had the additional charm of variety; for it was not unusual to have
several complete sets of curtains and slip-covers, embroidered to
match, and changed with the seasons. The hangings and covers of the
queen's bedroom at Versailles were changed four times a year.
Although bedrooms are still "done" in chintz, and though of late
especially there has been a reaction from the satin-damask bedroom
with its dust-collecting upholstery and knick-knacks, the modern habit
of lining chintz curtains and of tufting chairs has done away with the
chief advantages of the simpler style of treatment. There is something
illogical in using washable stuffs in such a way that they cannot be
washed, especially in view of the fact that the heavily lined
curtains, which might be useful to exclude light and cold, are in nine
cases out of ten so hung by the upholsterer that they cannot possibly
be drawn at night. Besides, the patterns of modern chintzes have so
little in common with the _toiles imprimées_ of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries that they scarcely serve the same decorative
purpose; and it is therefore needful to give some account of the old
French bedroom hangings, as well as of the manner in which they were
employed.
The liking for _cotonnades_ showed itself in France early in the
seventeenth century. Before this, cotton materials had been imported
from the East; but in the seventeenth century a manufactory was
established in France, and until about 1800 cotton and linen curtains
and furniture-coverings remained in fashion. This taste was encouraged
by the importation of the _toiles des Indes_, printed cottons of gay
color and fanciful design, much sought after in France, especially
after the government, in order to protect native industry, had
restricted the privilege of importing them to the _Compagnie des
Indes_. It was not until Oberkampf established his manufactory at Jouy
in 1760 that the French _toiles_ began to replace those of foreign
manufacture. Hitherto the cottons made in France had been stamped
merely in outline, the colors being filled in by hand; but Oberkampf
invented a method of printing in colors, thereby making France the
leading market for such stuffs.
The earliest printed cottons having been imported from India and
China, it was natural that the style of the Oriental designers should
influence their European imitators. Europe had, in fact, been prompt
to recognize the singular beauty of Chinese art, and in France the
passion for _chinoiseries_, first aroused by Mazarin's collection of
Oriental objects of art, continued unabated until the general decline
of taste at the end of the eighteenth century. Nowhere, perhaps, was
the influence of Chinese art more beneficial to European designers
than in the composition of stuff-patterns. The fantastic gaiety and
variety of Chinese designs, in which the human figure so largely
predominates, gave fresh animation to European compositions, while the
absence of perspective and modelling preserved that conventionalism so
essential in pattern-designing. The voluminous acanthus-leaves, the
fleur-de-lys, arabesques and massive scroll-work so suitable to the
Genoese velvets and Lyons silks of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, would have been far too magnificent for the cotton stuffs
that were beginning to replace those splendid tissues. On a thin
material a heavy architectural pattern was obviously inappropriate;
besides, it would have been out of scale with the smaller rooms and
lighter style of decoration then coming into fashion.