I closed my last letter with an account of the way in which houses are
built here. I am now going to try to describe their contents. And perhaps
the best way to do this will be to describe a type of each class of
house, omitting all exceptions, which are necessarily numerous where so
large a field has to be covered.
We will begin at the top of the tree. Whilst the ambition of the wealthy
colonist not unfrequently finds vent in building a large house, he has
generally been brought up in too rough a school to care to furnish it
even decently. His notion of furniture begins and ends with upholstery,
and I doubt whether he ever comes to look upon this as more than things
to sit on, stand on, lie on, eat off and drink off The idea of deriving
any pleasure from the beauty of his surroundings rarely enters into his
head, and it is not uncommon to find a man who is making £5,000 a year
amply satisfied with what an Englishman with one-tenth of his income
would deem the barest necessaries. The Australian Croesus is generally
very little of a snob, though often his 'lady' has a taste for display.
When this desire for grandeur has led them to furnish expensively, they
are unable to furnish prettily, and usually feel much less comfortable in
their drawing-room, in which they never set foot except when there is
company--than when their chairs and tables were made by a working
carpenter or with their own hands out of a few deal boards.
One or two millionaires have had upholsterers out from Gillow's and
Jackson and Graham's to furnish their houses in the latest and most
correct fashion, and many colonists who go on a trip to England bring
back with them drawing and dining room suites; but even then there is an
entire want of individuality about the Australian's house--which is the
more remarkable seeing how much his individuality has been brought out by
his career, and shows itself in his general actions and opinions. He may
know how to dogmatize on theology and politics, but when he gets down to
furniture he confesses that his eye is out of focus. The furniture
imported or (in Melbourne) made by the large upholsterers is, with few
exceptions, more gorgeous than pretty; whence one may reasonably infer
that the taste of their customers--when they have any--is better suited
by the grandiose than the artistic. But most of the expensively furnished
houses show plainly that the upholsterer has been given _carte blanche_
to do what he will. Look at his shop-window, and you may make a shrewd
guess at his customer's drawing-room.
Nor is the furniture universal in Australia, as one would naturally
suppose, after the style of that in Italy and the South of France. The
frowsy carpets and heavy solid chairs of England's cold and foggy climate
reign supreme beneath the Austral sun. The Exhibitions have done
something towards reforming our domestic interiors, but it will be a long
time before the renaissance of art as applied to households, which
appears to be taking place in England, makes its way here in any
considerable force.
But instead of generalizing, it is time we should go through Muttonwool's
house room by room. On entering the drawing-room the first thing that
strikes the eye is the carpet, with a stiff set pattern large enough to
knock you down, and of a rich gaudy colour. You raise your eyes--find
opposite them the regulation white marble mantelpiece, more or less
carved, and a gilt mirror, which we will hope is not protected from the
flies by green netting. Having made a grimace, you sit down upon one of
the chairs. There are nine in the room besides the sofa--perhaps an
ottoman--and you can take your choice between the 'gent's' armchair, the
lady's low-chair, and the six high ones. If they are not in their
night-shirts you can examine the covering--usually satin or perhaps
cretonne. The pattern is unique, being, I should think, specially
manufactured for the colonial market. Bright hues prevail. Occasional
chairs have only lately been introduced, and the whole suite is in
unison, though harmony with the carpet has been overlooked, or rather
never thought of, the two things having been chosen separately, and
without any idea that it would be an improvement if they were to match.
As for the make of the chairs, they are to be found in plenty of English
middle-class drawing-rooms even now. The shape may be named the
'deformed.' The back is carved out into various contortions of a
horse-shoe, with a bar across the middle which just catches you in the
small of the back, and is a continual reproach if you venture to lean
against it. The wood of which the chairs are made is mahogany, walnut, or
cedar. The large round or oval table which stands in the middle of the
room is of the same wood, and so are the card-table, the Davenport, the
chiffonier, and that Jacob's-ladder-like what-not in the corner. In some
houses the upholsterer has stuffed the room with useless tables. Of
course there is a fender and fire-irons, and probably a black
doleful-looking grate, which during two-thirds of the year is stuffed
with paper shavings of all the colours of the rainbow and several others
which good Mother Nature forgot to put into it. On the chimney-piece is a
Louis XVI. clock and a pair of ornaments to match. A piano, tune
immaterial, is a _sine quâ non_ even in a middle-class house, but when
Muttonwool has got all these things--in short, paid his upholsterer's
bill--he thinks a ten-pound note should cover the rest of his
drawing-room furniture. Household gods are terribly deficient, and it
would not be difficult to fancy yourself in a lodging-house. There may be
a few odds and ends picked up on the overland route, and a set of
stereotyped ornaments bought at an auction sale or sent out as 'sundries'
in a general cargo; but of _bric-à-brac_, in the usual acceptation of
the term, there is little or none.
As for the pictures, they are altogether abominable. Can you imagine a
man with £5,000 a year (or £500, for that matter) covering his walls with
chromos? The inferior kinds of these 'popularizers of art,' as the papers
call them, have an immense sale here. Even when a wealthy man has been
told that it is his duty to buy pictures, the chances are that he will
attend an auction and pick up rubbish at low prices, rubbing his hands
over what he considers a good bargain; or if he wants to tell his
visitors how much he gave for his pictures he gets mediocre work with a
name on it. A recent number of the _Adelaide Punch_ has a caricature
entitled ''Igh Art in Adelaide,' which though of course a caricature, is
worth quoting as showing how the wind blows: 'Tallowfat, pointing to a
picture in a dealer's shop, _loq._: "What's the price of that there
thing with the trees and the 'ut in the distance?" Dealer: "That, sir!
that's a gem by Johnstone" (a local artist of some merit)--"twenty
guineas, sir." Tallowfat: "Twenty tomfools!" "What d'ye take me for? Why,
I bought a picture twice that size, with much more colour in it, and a
frame half as thick again, and I only paid ten for it! Show us something
with more style."' A few men have good pictures, but I hardly know anyone
who has any good engravings. Muttonwool can see no difference between a
proof before letters and the illustrations from the newspapers, which may
be seen pasted on the walls of every small shop and working-man's
cottage. That there is a taste for pictures here is undeniable. But that
is common to every child till it knows how to read, and will want a deal
of educating before it can be called 'art.'
We will now go into the dining-room, which is probably the best furnished
room in the house. It is not easy to make a dining-room look out of joint
provided you are not particular about the cost, though there is a very
wide margin between the decent and the handsome. The upholstery is much
the same as in an ordinary upper middle-class house in England--sofa,
sideboard, chiffonier, two easy and eight or ten upright chairs in cedar
frames and covered with leather, marble mantelpiece and clock, Louis XVI.
glass, and a carpet which is at any rate better than the drawing-room
one. If there is a breakfast-room it is a smaller edition of the
dining-room. The study is chiefly remarkable for the absence of books, or
for an inappropriateness to the owner's tastes which smacks of a job-lot.
The bedrooms are disappointing. Pictures and knick-knacks rarely extend
beyond the 'company' precincts. Muttonwool would think it a waste of good
bawbees to put pretty things in the bedrooms, where no one but the family
will see them. In these rooms he is _au naturel_, and with all his
good-nature and genuineness he is rather a rough fellow. The brute is
expelled from the drawing-room, but he jumps in again at the bedroom
window. As for the servants' rooms, anything is good enough for them.
Probably the master himself was contented with still less in his younger
days. The kitchen is ordinarily very poorly provided with utensils.
Ranges and stoves are only found in the wealthier houses, the usual
cooking apparatus being a colonial oven--a sort of box with fire above
and below, which is very convenient for burning wood, the usual fuel
throughout Australia.
I think this is about as much as need be said about an average wealthy
Australian's house; but before going on to describe middle-class homes, I
must ask you to remember that all large colonial houses are not furnished
on this wise. There are a large number of people in Australia, and
especially in Victoria, who have as good an idea of how to furnish as
other middle-class Englishmen--though perhaps that is not saying much.
But in articles of this kind I am obliged to strike an average. The type
of house I have described is the most common. You must leave a marain on
either side of it according to the education and tastes of the owner. And
here let me note that in Melbourne houses are certainly more expensively,
and perhaps better furnished than in any of the other towns. The
Victorians have a much greater love of show than any of their
fellow-Australians. Where a Sydney man spends £400 on his furniture you
may safely predict that a Melbourner will spend £600. Consequently the
furniture establishments in the latter city are much superior to those in
the former, and that although, owing to the enormous duty-25 per
cent.--but little English furniture is imported into Victoria.
Let us now hie us to humbler abodes, and visit an eight-roomed cottage,
inhabited by a young solicitor whose income is from £500 to £1000 a year.
Here the whole drawing-room suite is in cretonne or rep, and comprises
the couch, six chairs, and lady's and gent's easy-chairs, which we saw
before at Muttonwool's. The carpet is also ditto. The glass, ornaments,
etc., are similar, but on a smaller scale; and if there are any pictures
on the wall they are almost bound to be chromos, for whilst Croesus
sometimes invests in expensive paintings, the middle-class, who cannot
afford to give from £100 upwards for a picture, will make no effort to
obtain something moderately good, such as can be easily obtained in
England for a very small outlay. The gasalier is bronze instead of glass.
The real living-room of the house is the dining-room, which is therefore
the best furnished, and on a tapestry carpet are a leather couch, six
balloon-back carved chairs, two easy-chairs, a chiffonier, a side-table,
and a cheap chimney-glass. In the best bedroom the bedstead is a tubular
half-tester, the toilet-ware gold and white, the carpet again tapestry.
Throughout the house the furniture is made of cedar. The kitchen is
summarily disposed of; Biddy has to content herself with d table,
dresser, safe, pasteboard and rolling-pin, and a couple of chairs. Her
bedroom furniture is even more scanty--a paillasse on trestles, a chair,
a half-crown looking-glass, an old jug and a basin on a wooden table.
Even in the houses of the wealthy poor Biddy is very badly treated in
this respect. In Muttonwool's house, if he keeps two servants, they both
sleep in one room, and not improbably share the same basin. Servants are
undoubtedly troublesome to a degree in Australia, but it is not
altogether a satisfactory feature in colonial life that the provision
made for their comfort is literally nil.
Having seen the £600 a year cottage it is almost needless to visit the
£300 and £400, belonging to clerks and the smaller shopkeepers. The style
is the same, but the quantity and quality inferior. For instance, the
drawing-room carpet is tapestry instead of Brussels; the dining-room
furniture is covered with horse-hair instead of leather, and so on. We
will go into the next cottage--less pretentious-looking and a little
smaller. The rent is twelve shillings a week, and it belongs to a
carpenter in good employ. Here there is no drawing-room, but the parlour
aspires to comfort quite undreamt of by an English tradesman. Our old
friends the horse-hair cedar couch, the gent's and lady's chairs together
with four balloon high chairs, turn up again. There is a four-foot
chiffonier, a tapestry carpet, a gilt chimney-glass, a hearthrug, a
bronze fender and fire-irons, and a round table with turned pillar and
carved claws. In the parents' bedroom are a half-tester bedstead with
coir-fibre or woollen flock mattress, two cane chairs, washstand,
toilet-table, glass and ware, towel-horse, chest of drawers, and a couple
of yards of bedside carpet. The two youngest children sleep in this room,
and three or four others in the second bedroom, where the bedsteads are
less showy and the ware very inferior. The carpet is replaced by china
matting. The chest of drawers does duty as a toilet-table, and there are
of course no such luxuries as towel-horses. Yet, take it all in all,
Chips has much to be thankful for.
With labour so dear as it is here, it is wonderful to think that a
working-man can furnish, and furnish comfortably, a four-roomed cottage
for £27; and yet this is what has recently been done in Melbourne by my
friend Hornyhand, who is a common labourer, earning only eight to nine
shillings a day, and paying about as much a week for rent. He is really
uncommonly well off, everything in his house being brand-new; and yet, as
he tells me, he is absolutely at the root of the honest social tree--the
worst paid of the working-classes. I think it worth while to subjoin his
bill. He certainly has not gone in for luxuries, but then he is of a
frugal mind. If he wanted it, his house could be as well furnished as
Chips'; but he doesn't see any object in wasting money on that kind of
thing, and is content with little:
Parlour. £ s. d.
Cedar polished couch, covered with horse-hair 2 10 0
Four cane-seat chairs, each 7s. 6d. 1 10 0
Cedar polished table, 3 ft. 6 in., on claws 1 10 0
Maple rocking-chair, with elbows 0 17 6
Carpet 1 5 0
Hearthrug, 8s. 6d. fender, 9s. irons, 6s. 6d. 1 4 0
Bedroom.
French bedstead, 4 ft. 6 in. by 6 ft. 6 in. 1 15 0
Pair paillasses 12 6
Woollen flock mattrass 1 0 0
Woollen flock bolster and 2 pillows 8 0
Washstand, and rail attached 10 6
Toilet table, to match 10 6
Toilet glass, 14 in. by 10 in. 8 6
2 cane-scat chairs (Albert), 6s. each 12 0
4 yards matting at 9d. 3 0
Toilet-ware, six pieces 12 6
Second Bedroom.
2 French bedsteads, 3 ft. by 6 ft. 6 in. at 30s. 3 0 0
4 paillasses, at 10s. per pair 1 0 0
2 woollen flock mattrasses, at 16. 3d. each 1 12 6
2 bolsters, flock, at 4s. 6d. each 9 0
2 pillows, flock, at 3s. each 6 0
Toilet chest of drawers
(to serve for toilet table), cedar 2 5 0
Toilet glass, 14 in. by 10 in. 7 0
Washstand, 2 ft. 6 in. 12 0
Wash, etc., 6 pieces 12 6
Kitchen.
Deal table, turned legs, varnished 10 6
2 wood chairs, each 4s. 6d. 9 0
Safe in Kauri pine 10 6
Pasteboard and rolling-pin 4 0
£27 7 0
Note.--That if he had not had two children to provide for in a second
bedroom, nor indulged in the luxury of a chest of drawers, the whole of
his furnishing would only have cost him £17 3s.
Before closing this letter, a word as to what may be called the
accessories of the household. But few families have any large quantity of
plate, and electro has almost entirely superseded silver; metal is not
common for dishes, and is quite unknown for plates. Nor is the crockery
at all a strong point even in the wealthiest houses. In the shops it is
almost impossible to get anything satisfactory in this line; and until
the exhibitions, nine Australians out of ten had no idea what was meant
by hand-painted china. The difference between china and earthenware is,
it goes almost without saying, little if at all appreciated, much less
that between hand-painted and stamped ware. The display of cut-glass at
the exhibitions was almost as great a revelation to colonists as that of
porcelain; hitherto all middle-class and most wealthy households have
been contented with the commonest stuff. Table-cloths and napkins are
also very second-rate, and sheets are almost invariably of calico.