(_Concluded from page 46._)
There is a point at which the inconvenience of superfluities so far
exceeds their utility, that luxury becomes converted into a perfect
bore. What, for instance, but an annoyance, would be the most splendid
feast, to a man whose stomach is already overladen with food? Human
ingenuity may effect much; and the Romans, by means of emetics, met this
emergency with considerable skill; but on a more enlarged experience of
general history, it must be conceded, that it is quite impossible to add
one more superfluous meal to those already established by general usage.
So also in matters of dress, ladies' hats must not be larger than the
actual doorways of the country will admit--not at least until time is
allowed for a corresponding increase in our architectural proportions.
With respect to personal ornaments also, ear-rings must not be so
weighty as to tear the lobes of the ears; nor should a bracelet prevent,
by its size, the motions of the arm. "Barbaric pomp and gold" is a fine
thing; but a medallion, as heavy and as cumbrous as a shield, appended
to a lady's bosom, would be any thing but a luxury. So, in the other
extreme, a watch should not be so small as to render the dial-plate
illegible; nor should a shoe be so tight as to lame its wearer for life.
Beauty, it has been said, should learn to suffer; and there are, I am
aware, resources in vanity, that will reconcile man, and woman too, to
martyrdom; but these resources should not be exhausted wantonly; and in
pleasure, as in economy, there is no benefit in lighting the candle at
both ends. The true philosopher extracts the greatest good out of every
thing; and fools only, as Horace has it, run into one vice in trying to
avoid another. Let not the reader, from these remarks, suppose that
their author is a morose censurer of the times; or that the least sneer
is intended against that idol of all orthodoxy "things as they are." As
a general proposition, nothing can be more true, than that whatever is
established, even in the world of fashion, is, for the time being,
wisest, discreetest, best; and, woe betide the man that flies too
directly in its face.
There is, however, one point upon which I own myself a little sore; and
in which, I do think, superfluities are carried to a somewhat vicious
excess. The point to which I allude, and I beg the patience of the
reader, is the vast increase of superfluities, which of late years have
become primary necessaries in the appointment of a well-furnished house.
Here, indeed, is a revolution; a revolution more formidable than the
French and the American emancipation put together. We all remember the
time when one tea-table, two or three card-tables, a pier glass, a small
detachment of chairs, with two armed corporals to command them, on
either side the fire-place, with a square piece of carpet in the centre
of the floor, made a very decent display in the drawing, or (as it was
then preposterously called) the dining-room. As yet, rugs for the hearth
were not; and twice a day did Betty go upon her knees to scour the
marble and uncovered slab. In the bedrooms of those days, a narrow slip
of carpet round the bed was the maximum of woollen integument allowed
for protecting the feet of the midnight wanderer from his couch; and, in
the staircases of the fairest mansions, a like slip meandered down the
centre of the flight of steps. At that time, curtains rose and fell in a
line parallel to the horizon, after the simple plan of the green
siparium of our theatres; and, being strictly confined to the windows,
they never dreamed of displaying themselves in front of a door. No
golden serpents then twisted their voluminous folds across the entire
breadth of the room; nor did richly-carved cods' heads and shoulders,
under the denomination of dolphins, or glittering spread eagles, with a
brass ring in their mouths, support fenestral draperies, which rival the
display of a Waterloo-house calico-vender. Thus far, I admit, the change
is an improvement. Nay, I could away with ladders to go to bed withal,
though many a time and oft they have broken my shins. I would not either
object to sofas and ottomans, in any reasonable proportion; but protest
I must, and in the strongest terms too, against such a multiplication
and variety of easy chairs, as effectually exclude the possibility of
easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables,
that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a
sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the
short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte,
like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given
drawing-room--"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"--but why
multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An
Indian cabinet also, or a buhl armoire, are, either, or both of them,
very fit and becoming; but it cannot be right to make a broker's shop of
your best apartment. An ink-stand, as large as a show twelfth-cake, is
just and lawful; ditto, an ornamental escrutoire; and a _nécessaire_ for
the work-table is, if there be meaning in language, perfectly necessary.
These, with an adequate contingent of musical snuff-boxes, _or molu_
clocks, China figures, alabaster vases and flower-pots, together with a
discreet superfluity of cut-paper nondescripts, albums, screens, toys,
prints, caricatures, duodecimo classics, new novels and souvenirs, to
cut a dash, and litter the tables, must be allowed to the taste and
refinement of the times. But surely some space should be left for
depositing a coffee-cup, or laying down a useful volume, when the hand
may require to be relieved from its weight, or when it is proper to take
a pinch of snuff, or agreeable to wipe one's forehead. Josses, beakers,
and Sevres' vases have unquestionably the _entrée_ into a genteel
apartment; but they are not entitled to a monopoly of the _locale_; nor
are Roman antiquities, or statues even by Canova, justifiable in
usurping the elbow-room of living men and women. Most unfortunately for
myself, I have a very small house, and a wife of the most enlarged
taste; and the disproportion between these blessings is so great, that I
cannot move without the risk of a heavy pecuniary loss by breakage, and
a heavier personal affliction in perpetual imputations of awkwardness.
Then, again, it is no easy matter to put on a smiling and indifferent
countenance, whenever a friend, accustomed to some latitude of motion,
runs, as is often the case, his devastating chair against a high-priced
work of art, or overturns a table laden with an "infinite thing" in
costly _bijouterie_. I have long made it a rule to exclude from my
visiting-list, or at least not to let up stairs, ladies who pay their
morning calls with a retinue of children: but the thing is not always
possible; and one urchin with his whip will destroy more in half an
hour, than the worth of a month's average domestic expenditure. Oh! how
I hate the little fidgeting, fingering, dislocating imps! A bull in a
china-shop is innocuous to the most orderly and amenable of them. Why
did Providence make children? and why does not some wise Draconic law
banish them for ever to the nursery?
The general merit of nick-nacks is unquestioned. Ornaments, I admit, are
ornamental; and works of art afford intellectual amusement of the
highest order. But then perfection is their only merit; and a crack or a
flaw destroys all the pleasure of a sensible beholder. Yet I have not a
statue that is not a torso, nor a Chelsea china shepherdess with her
full complement of fingers. I have not a vase with both its handles, a
snuff-box that performs its waltz correctly, nor a volume of prints that
is not dogs-eared, stained, and ink-spotted. These are serious evils;
but they are the least that flow from a neglect of the maxim which
stands at the head of my paper. Perpend it well, reader; and bear ever
in mind that, in our desires, as in our corporeal structure, it is not
given to man to add a cubit to his stature. I am very tired; so "dismiss
me--enough." _New Monthly Magazine._
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