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
skillfully 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,
etageres, 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 haphazard 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 at 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 faerie," 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 bluebirds 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 mantelpiece, 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 armchairs with 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 which must be told. John,
having been all his life a worshiper 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 hillside
and pick up the glossy brown nuts. Everything was there of autumn,
even to the goldenrod 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 trails 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 Maiden, scarce a bowshot 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 re-varnished; 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 armchairs and sofas and ottomans
all alike, you know they will be quite another thing."
"Trust you for that, Mary! By the bye, 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 & 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 & Everett two of their chromo lithographs, which give you
all the style and charm of the best English watercolor 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 Morton'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 byword 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 daguerreotype, 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 namable 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 & 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 the 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 Jenny, have I not? _In house-furnishing
nothing is more economical than beauty._"
"Yes, papa," said Jenny; "I give it up."
V