"Girls, one of these days _I_ will write an article for the
'Atlantic,' that your papa need not have _all_ the say to himself;
however, I believe he has hit the nail on the head this time."
"Of course he has," said Marianne. "But, mamma, I am afraid to begin
to depend much on plants for the beauty of my rooms, for fear I should
not have your gift,--and, of all forlorn and hopeless things in a
room, ill-kept plants are the most so."
"I would not recommend," said I, "a young housekeeper, just beginning,
to rest much for her home ornament on plant-keeping, unless she has an
experience of her own love and talent in this line which makes her
sure of success; for plants will not thrive if they are forgotten or
overlooked, and only tended in occasional intervals; and, as Marianne
says, neglected plants are the most forlorn of all things."
"But, papa," said Marianne anxiously, "there, in those patent parlors
of John's that you wrote of, flowers acted a great part."
"The charm of those parlors of John's may be chemically analyzed," I
said. "In the first place, there is sunshine, a thing that always
affects the human nerves of happiness. Why else is it that people are
always so glad to see the sun after a long storm? why are bright days
matters of such congratulation? Sunshine fills a house with a thousand
beautiful and fanciful effects of light and shade,--with soft,
luminous, reflected radiances, that give picturesque effects to the
pictures, books, statuettes of an interior. John, happily, had no
money to buy brocatelle curtains, and, besides this, he loved sunshine
too much to buy them, if he could. He had been enough with artists to
know that heavy damask curtains darken precisely that part of the
window where the light proper for pictures and statuary should come
in, namely, the upper part. The fashionable system of curtains lights
only the legs of the chairs and the carpets, and leaves all the upper
portion of the room in shadow. John's windows have shades which can at
pleasure be drawn down from the top or up from the bottom, so that
the best light to be had may always be arranged for his little
interior."
"Well, papa," said Marianne, "in your chemical analysis of John's
rooms, what is the next thing to the sunshine?"
"The next," said I, "is harmony of color. The wall-paper, the
furniture, the carpets, are of tints that harmonize with one another.
This is a grace in rooms always, and one often neglected. The French
have an expressive phrase with reference to articles which are out of
accord,--they say that they swear at each other, I have been in rooms
where I seemed to hear the wall-paper swearing at the carpet, and the
carpet swearing back at the wall-paper, and each article of furniture
swearing at the rest. These appointments may all of them be of the
most expensive kind, but with such dis-harmony no arrangement can ever
produce anything but a vulgar and disagreeable effect. On the other
hand, I have been in rooms where all the material was cheap and the
furniture poor, but where, from some instinctive knowledge of the
reciprocal effect of colors, everything was harmonious, and produced a
sense of elegance.
"I recollect once traveling on a Western canal through a long stretch
of wilderness, and stopping to spend the night at an obscure
settlement of a dozen houses. We were directed to lodgings in a common
frame house at a little distance, where, it seemed, the only hotel was
kept. When we entered the parlor, we were struck with utter amazement
at its prettiness, which affected us before we began to ask ourselves
how it came to be pretty. It was, in fact, only one of the miracles of
harmonious color working with very simple materials. Some woman had
been busy there, who had both eyes and fingers. The sofa, the common
wooden rocking-chairs, and some ottomans, probably made of old
soap-boxes, were all covered with American nankeen of a soft
yellowish-brown, with a bordering of blue print. The window-shades,
the table-cover, and the piano-cloth all repeated the same colors, in
the same cheap material. A simple straw matting was laid over the
floor, and, with a few books, a vase of flowers, and one or two
prints, the room had a home-like and even elegant air, that struck us
all the more forcibly from its contrast with the usual tawdry,
slovenly style of such parlors.
"The means used for getting up this effect were the most inexpensive
possible,--simply the following out, in cheap material, a law of
uniformity and harmony, which always will produce beauty. In the same
manner, I have seen a room furnished, whose effect was really gorgeous
in color, where the only materials used were Turkey-red cotton and a
simple ingrain carpet of corresponding color.
"Now, you girls have been busy lately in schemes for buying a velvet
carpet for the new parlor that is to be, and the only points that have
seemed to weigh in the council were that it was velvet, that it was
cheaper than velvets usually are, and that it was a genteel pattern."
"Now, papa," said Jenny, "what ears you have! We thought you were
reading all the time!"
"I see what you are going to say," said Marianne. "You think that we
have not once mentioned the consideration which should determine the
carpet, whether it will harmonize with our other things. But you see,
papa, we don't really know what our other things are to be."
"Yes," said Jenny, "and Aunt Easygo said it was an unusually good
chance to get a velvet carpet."
"Yet, good as the chance is, it costs just twice as much as an
ingrain."
"Yes, papa, it does."
"And you are not sure that the effect of it, after you get it down,
will be as good as a well-chosen ingrain one."
"That's true," said Marianne reflectively.
"But then, papa," said Jenny, "Aunt Easygo said she never heard of
such a bargain; only think, two dollars a yard for a _velvet_!"
"And why is it two dollars a yard? Is the man a personal friend, that
he wishes to make you a present of a dollar on the yard, or is there
some reason why it is undesirable?" said I.
"Well, you know, papa, he said those large patterns were not so
salable."
"To tell the truth," said Marianne, "I never did like the pattern
exactly; as to uniformity of tint, it might match with anything, for
there's every color of the rainbow in it."
"You see, papa, it's a gorgeous flower-pattern," said Jenny.
"Well, Marianne, how many yards of this wonderfully cheap carpet do
you want?"
"We want sixty yards for both rooms," said Jenny, always primed with
statistics.
"That will be a hundred and twenty dollars," I said.
"Yes," said Jenny; "and we went over the figures together, and thought
we could make it out by economizing in other things. Aunt Easygo said
that the carpet was half the battle,--that it gave the air to
everything else."
"Well, Marianne, if you want a man's advice in the case, mine is at
your service."
"That is just what I want, papa."
"Well, then, my dear, choose your wall-papers and borderings, and,
when they are up, choose an ingrain carpet to harmonize with them, and
adapt your furniture to the same idea. The sixty dollars that you save
on your carpet spend on engravings, chromo lithographs, or photographs
of some good works of art, to adorn your walls."
"Papa, I'll do it," said Marianne.
"My little dear," said I, "your papa may seem to be a sleepy old
book-worm, yet he has his eyes open. Do you think I don't know why my
girls have the credit of being the best-dressed girls on the street?"
"Oh papa!" cried out both girls in a breath.
"Fact, that!" said Bob, with energy, pulling at his mustache.
"Everybody talks about your dress, and wonders how you make it out."
"Well," said I, "I presume you do not go into a shop and buy a yard of
ribbon because it is selling at half price, and put it on without
considering complexion, eyes, hair, and shade of the dress, do you?"
"Of course we don't!" chimed in the duo with energy.
"Of course you don't. Haven't I seen you mincing downstairs, with all
your colors harmonized, even to your gloves and gaiters? Now, a room
must be dressed as carefully as a lady."
"Well, I'm convinced," said Jenny, "that papa knows how to make rooms
prettier than Aunt Easygo; but then she said this was cheap, because
it would outlast two common carpets."
"But, as you pay double price," said I, "I don't see that. Besides, I
would rather, in the course of twenty years, have two nice, fresh
ingrain carpets, of just the color and pattern that suited my rooms,
than labor along with one ill-chosen velvet that harmonized with
nothing."
"I give it up," said Jenny; "I give it up."
"Now, understand me," said I; "I am not traducing velvet or Brussels
or Axminster. I admit that more beautiful effects can be found in
those goods than in the humbler fabrics of the carpet rooms. Nothing
would delight me more than to put an unlimited credit to Marianne's
account, and let her work out the problems of harmonious color in
velvet and damask. All I have to say is, that certain unities of
color, certain general arrangements, will secure very nearly as good
general effects in either material. A library with a neat, mossy green
carpet on the floor, harmonizing with wall-paper and furniture, looks
generally as well, whether the mossy green is made in Brussels or in
ingrain. In the carpet stores, these two materials stand side by side
in the very same pattern, and one is often as good for the purpose as
the other. A lady of my acquaintance, some years since, employed an
artist to decorate her parlors. The walls being frescoed and tinted to
suit his ideal, he immediately issued his decree that her splendid
velvet carpets must be sent to auction, and others bought of certain
colors harmonizing with the walls. Unable to find exactly the color
and pattern he wanted, he at last had the carpets woven in a
neighboring factory, where, as yet, they had only the art of weaving
ingrains. Thus was the material sacrificed at once to the harmony."
I remarked, in passing, that this was before Bigelow's mechanical
genius had unlocked for America the higher secrets of carpet-weaving,
and made it possible to have one's desires accomplished in Brussels or
velvet. In those days, English carpet-weavers did not send to America
for their looms, as they now do.
"But now to return to my analysis of John's rooms.
"Another thing which goes a great way towards giving them their
agreeable air is the books in them. Some people are fond of treating
books as others do children. One room in the house is selected, and
every book driven into it and kept there. Yet nothing makes a room so
home-like, so companionable, and gives it such an air of refinement,
as the presence of books. They change the aspect of a parlor from that
of a mere reception-room, where visitors perch for a transient call,
and give it the air of a room where one feels like taking off one's
things to stay. It gives the appearance of permanence and repose and
quiet fellowship; and, next to pictures on the walls, the many-colored
bindings and gildings of books are the most agreeable adornment of a
room."
"Then, Marianne," said Bob, "we have something to start with, at all
events. There are my English Classics and English Poets, and my
uniform editions of Scott and Thackeray and Macaulay and Prescott and
Irving and Longfellow and Lowell and Hawthorne and Holmes and a host
more. We really have something pretty there."
"You are a lucky girl," I said, "to have so much secured. A girl
brought up in a house full of books, always able to turn to this or
that author and look for any passage or poem when she thinks of it,
doesn't know what a blank a house without books might be."
"Well," said Marianne, "mamma and I were counting over my treasures
the other day. Do you know, I have one really fine old engraving,
that Bob says is quite a genuine thing; and then there is that
pencil-sketch that poor Schoene made for me the month before he
died,--it is truly artistic."
"And I have a couple of capital things of Landseer's," said Bob.
"There's no danger that your rooms will not be pretty," said I, "now
you are fairly on the right track."
"But, papa," said Marianne, "I am troubled about one thing. My love of
beauty runs into everything. I want pretty things for my table; and
yet, as you say, servants are so careless, one cannot use such things
freely without great waste."
"For my part," said my wife, "I believe in best china, to be kept
carefully on an upper shelf, and taken down for high-days and
holidays; it may be a superstition, but I believe in it. It must never
be taken out except when the mistress herself can see that it is
safely cared for. My mother always washed her china herself; and it
was a very pretty social ceremony, after tea was over, while she sat
among us washing her pretty cups, and wiping them on a fine damask
towel."
"With all my heart," said I; "have your best china and venerate
it,--it is one of the loveliest of domestic superstitions; only do
not make it a bar to hospitality, and shrink from having a friend to
tea with you, unless you feel equal to getting up to the high shelf
where you keep it, getting it down, washing, and putting it up again.
"But in serving a table, I say, as I said of a house, beauty is a
necessity, and beauty is cheap. Because you cannot afford beauty in
one form, it does not follow that you cannot have it in another.
Because one cannot afford to keep up a perennial supply of delicate
china and crystal, subject to the accidents of raw, untrained
servants, it does not follow that the every-day table need present a
sordid assortment of articles chosen simply for cheapness, while the
whole capacity of the purse is given to the set forever locked away
for state occasions.
"A table-service all of simple white, of graceful forms, even
though not of china, if arranged with care, with snowy, well-kept
table-linen, clear glasses, and bright American plate in place of
solid silver, may be made to look inviting; add a glass of flowers
every day, and your table may look pretty: and it is far more
important that it should look pretty for the family every day than
for company once in two weeks."
"I tell my girls," said my wife, "as the result of my experience, you
may have your pretty china and your lovely fanciful articles for the
table only so long as you can take all the care of them yourselves. As
soon as you get tired of doing this, and put them into the hands of
the trustiest servants, some good, well-meaning creature is sure to
break her heart and your own and your very pet darling china pitcher
all in one and the same minute, and then her frantic despair leaves
you not even the relief of scolding."
"I have become perfectly sure," said I "that there are spiteful little
brownies, intent on seducing good women to sin, who mount guard over
the special idols of the china closet. If you hear a crash, and a loud
Irish wail from the inner depths, you never think of its being a
yellow pie-plate, or that dreadful one-handled tureen that you have
been wishing were broken these five years; no, indeed,--it is sure to
be the lovely painted china bowl, wreathed with morning-glories and
sweet-peas, or the engraved glass goblet, with quaint Old English
initials. China sacrificed must be a great means of saintship to
women. Pope, I think, puts it as the crowning grace of his perfect
woman that she is
"'Mistress of herself though china fall.'"
"I ought to be a saint by this time, then," said mamma; "for in the
course of my days I have lost so many idols by breakage, and peculiar
accidents that seemed by a special fatality to befall my prettiest and
most irreplaceable things, that in fact it has come to be a
superstitious feeling now with which I regard anything particularly
pretty of a breakable nature."
"Well," said Marianne, "unless one has a great deal of money, it seems
to me that the investment in these pretty fragilities is rather a poor
one."
"Yet," said I, "the principle of beauty is never so captivating as
when it presides over the hour of daily meals. I would have the room
where they are served one of the pleasantest and sunniest in the
house. I would have its coloring cheerful, and there should be
companionable pictures and engravings on the walls. Of all things, I
dislike a room that seems to be kept, like a restaurant, merely to eat
in. I like to see in a dining-room something that betokens a pleasant
sitting-room at other hours. I like there some books, a comfortable
sofa or lounge, and all that should make it cosy and inviting. The
custom in some families, of adopting for the daily meals one of the
two parlors which a city house furnishes, has often seemed to me a
particularly happy one. You take your meals, then, in an agreeable
place, surrounded by the little pleasant arrangements of your daily
sitting-room; and after the meal, if the lady of the house does the
honors of her own pretty china herself, the office may be a pleasant
and social one.
"But in regard to your table-service I have my advice at hand. Invest
in pretty table-linen, in delicate napkins, have your vase of flowers,
and be guided by the eye of taste in the choice and arrangement of
even the every-day table articles, and have no ugly things when you
can have pretty ones by taking a little thought. If you are sore
tempted with lovely china and crystal, too fragile to last, too
expensive to be renewed, turn away to a print-shop and comfort
yourself by hanging around the walls of your dining-room beauty that
will not break or fade, that will meet your eye from year to year,
though plates, tumblers, and teasets successively vanish. There is my
advice for you, Marianne."
At the same time let me say, in parenthesis, that my wife, whose
weakness is china, informed me that night, when we were by ourselves,
that she was ordering secretly a teaset as a bridal gift for Marianne
every cup of which was to be exquisitely painted with the wild flowers
of America, from designs of her own,--a thing, by the by, that can now
be very nicely executed in our country, as one may find by looking in
at our friend Briggs's on School Street. "It will last her all her
life," she said, "and always be such a pleasure to look at; and a
pretty tea-table is such a pretty sight!" So spoke Mrs. Crowfield,
"unweaned from china by a thousand falls." She spoke even with tears
in her eyes. Verily these women are harps of a thousand strings!
But to return to my subject.
"Finally and lastly," I said, "in my analysis and explication of the
agreeableness of those same parlors, comes the growing grace,--their
_homeliness_. By 'homeliness' I mean not ugliness, as the word is apt
to be used, but the air that is given to a room by being really at
home in it. Not the most skillful arrangement can impart this charm.
"It is said that a king of France once remarked, 'My son, you must
seem to love your people.'
"'Father, how shall I _seem_ to love them?'
"'My son, you _must_ love them.'
"So, to make rooms seem home-like, you must be at home in them. Human
light and warmth are so wanting in some rooms, it is so evident that
they are never used, that you can never be at ease there. In vain the
housemaid is taught to wheel the sofa and turn chair toward chair; in
vain it is attempted to imitate a negligent arrangement of the
centre-table.
"Books that have really been read and laid down, chairs that have
really been moved here and there in the animation of social contact,
have a sort of human vitality in them; and a room in which people
really live and enjoy is as different from a shut-up apartment as a
live woman from a wax image.
"Even rooms furnished without taste often become charming from this
one grace, that they seem to let you into the home life and home
current. You seem to understand in a moment that you are taken into
the family, and are moving in its inner circles, and not revolving at
a distance in some outer court of the gentiles.
"How many people do we call on from year to year and know no more of
their feelings, habits, tastes, family ideas and ways, than if they
lived in Kamtschatka! And why? Because the room which they call a
front parlor is made expressly so that you never shall know. They sit
in a back room,--work, talk, read, perhaps. After the servant has let
you in and opened a crack of the shutters, and while you sit waiting
for them to change their dress and come in, you speculate as to what
they may be doing. From some distant region, the laugh of a child,
the song of a canary-bird reaches you, and then a door claps hastily
to. Do they love plants? Do they write letters, sew, embroider,
crochet? Do they ever romp and frolic? What books do they read? Do
they sketch or paint? Of all these possibilities the mute and muffled
room says nothing. A sofa and six chairs, two ottomans fresh from the
upholsterer's, a Brussels carpet, a centre-table with four gilt Books
of Beauty on it, a mantel-clock from Paris, and two bronze vases,--all
those tell you only in frigid tones, 'This is the best room,'--only
that, and nothing more,--and soon _she_ trips in in her best clothes,
and apologizes for keeping you waiting, asks how your mother is, and
you remark that it is a pleasant day, and thus the acquaintance
progresses from year to year. One hour in the back room, where the
plants and canary-bird and children are, might have made you fast
friends for life; but, little as it is, you care no more for them than
for the gilt clock on the mantel.
"And now, girls," said I, pulling a paper out of my pocket, "you must
know that your father is getting to be famous by means of these 'House
and Home Papers.' Here is a letter I have just received:--
"MOST EXCELLENT MR. CROWFIELD,--Your thoughts have lighted into
our family circle and echoed from our fireside. We all feel the
force of them, and are delighted with the felicity of your
treatment of the topic you have chosen. You have taken hold of a
subject that lies deep in our hearts, in a genial, temperate, and
convincing spirit. All must acknowledge the power of your
sentiments upon their imaginations; if they could only trust to
them in actual life! There is the rub.
"Omitting further upon these points, there is a special feature of
your articles upon which we wish to address you. You seem as yet
(we do not know, of course, what you may hereafter do) to speak
only of homes whose conduct depends upon the help of servants. Now
your principles apply, as some of us well conceive, to nearly all
classes of society; yet most people, to take an impressive hint,
must have their portraits drawn out more exactly. We therefore
hope that you will give a reasonable share of your attention to us
who do not employ servants, so that you may ease us of some of our
burdens, which, in spite of common sense, we dare not throw off.
For instance, we have company,--a friend from afar (perhaps
wealthy), or a minister, or some other man of note. What do we do?
Sit down and receive our visitor with all good will and the
freedom of a home? No; we (the lady of the house) flutter about to
clear up things, apologizing about this, that, and the other
condition of unpreparedness, and, having settled the visitor in
the parlor, set about marshaling the elements of a grand dinner or
supper, such as no person but a gourmand wants to sit down to,
when at home and comfortable; and in getting up this meal,
clearing away and washing the dishes, we use up a good half of the
time which our guest spends with us. We have spread ourselves, and
shown him what we could do; but what a paltry, heart-sickening
achievement! Now, good Mr. Crowfield, thou friend of the robbed
and despairing, wilt thou not descend into our purgatorial circle,
and tell the world what thou hast seen there of doleful
remembrance? Tell us how we, who must do and desire to do our own
work, can show forth in our homes a homely yet genial hospitality,
and entertain our guests without making a fuss and hurlyburly, and
seeming to be anxious for their sake about many things, and
spending too much time getting meals, as if eating were the chief
social pleasure. Won't you do this, Mr. Crowfield?
"Yours beseechingly,
"R. H. A."
"That's a good letter," said Jenny.
"To be sure it is," said I.
"And shall you answer it, papa?"
"In the very next 'Atlantic,' you may be sure I shall. The class that
do their own work are the strongest, the most numerous, and, taking
one thing with another, quite as well cultivated a class as any other.
They are the anomaly of our country,--the distinctive feature of the
new society that we are building up here; and, if we are to accomplish
our national destiny, that class must increase rather than diminish. I
shall certainly do my best to answer the very sensible and pregnant
questions of that letter."
Here Marianne shivered and drew up a shawl, and Jenny gaped; my wife
folded up the garment in which she had set the last stitch, and the
clock struck twelve.