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
revarnished; then I have found such a lovely _rep_, of just the richest
shade of marroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to cover the
lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and ottomans all alike, you know they
will be quite another thing.”
“Trust you for that, Mary! By the by, 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 and 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 and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which
give you all the style and charm of the best English water-color 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 Merton’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
daguerrotype, 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 and 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.
RAKING UP THE FIRE.
WE have a custom at our house which we call _raking up the fire_. That
is to say, the last half-hour before bedtime, we draw in, shoulder to
shoulder, around the last brands and embers of our hearth, which we
prick up and brighten, and dispose for a few farewell flickers and
glimmers. This is a grand time for discussion. Then we talk over
parties, if the young people have been out of an evening,—a book, if we
have been reading one; we discuss and analyze characters,—give our views
on all subjects, æsthetic, theological, and scientific, in a way most
wonderful to hear; and, in fact, we sometimes get so engaged in our
discussions that every spark of the fire burns out, and we begin to feel
ourselves shivering around the shoulders, before we can remember that it
is bedtime.
So, after the reading of my last article, we had a “raking-up talk,”—to
wit, Jenny, Marianne, and I, with Bob Stephens;—my wife, still busy at
her work-basket, sat at the table a little behind us. Jenny, of course,
opened the ball in her usual incisive manner.
“But now, papa, after all you say in your piece there, I cannot help
feeling, that, if I had the taste and the money too, it would be better
than the taste alone with no money. I like the nice arrangements and the
books and the drawings; but I think all these would appear better still
with really elegant furniture.”
“Who doubts that?” said I. “Give me a large tub of gold coin to dip
into, and the furnishing and beautifying of a house is a simple affair.
The same taste that could make beauty out of cents and dimes could make
it more abundantly out of dollars and eagles. But I have been speaking
for those who have not, and cannot get, riches, and who wish to have
agreeable houses; and I begin in the outset by saying that beauty is a
thing to be respected, reverenced, and devoutly cared for,—and then I
say that BEAUTY IS CHEAP, nay, to put it so that the shrewdest Yankee
will understand it, BEAUTY IS THE CHEAPEST THING YOU CAN HAVE, because
in many ways it is a substitute for expense. A few vases of flowers in a
room, a few blooming, well-kept plants, a few prints framed in fanciful
frames of cheap domestic fabric, a statuette, a bracket, an engraving, a
pencil-sketch, above all, a few choice books,—all these arranged by a
woman who has the gift in her finger-ends often produce such an illusion
on the mind’s eye that one goes away without once having noticed that
the cushion of the arm-chair was worn out, and that some veneering had
fallen off the centre-table.
“I have a friend, a schoolmistress, who lives in a poor little cottage
enough, which, let alone of the Graces, might seem mean and sordid, but
a few flowerseeds and a little weeding in the spring make it, all
summer, an object which everybody stops to look at. Her æsthetic soul
was at first greatly tried with the water-barrel which stood under the
eaves spout,—a most necessary evil, since only thus could her scanty
supply of soft water for domestic purposes be secured. One of the
Graces, however, suggested to her a happy thought. She planted a row of
morning-glories round the bottom of her barrel, and drove a row of tacks
around the top, and strung her water-butt with twine, like a great
harpsichord. A few weeks covered the twine with blossoming plants, which
every morning were a mass of many-colored airy blooms, waving in
graceful sprays, and looking at themselves in the water. The
water-barrel, in fact, became a celebrated stroke of ornamental
gardening, which the neighbors came to look at.”
“Well, but,” said Jenny, “everybody hasn’t mamma’s faculty with flowers.
Flowers will grow for some people, and for some they won’t. Nobody can
see what mamma does so very much, but her plants always look fresh and
thriving and healthy,—her things blossom just when she wants them, and
do anything else she wishes them to; and there are other people that
fume and fuss and try, and their things won’t do anything at all.
There’s Aunt Easygo has plant after plant brought from the greenhouse,
and hanging-baskets, and all sorts of things; but her plants grow yellow
and drop their leaves, and her hanging-baskets get dusty and
poverty-stricken, while mamma’s go on flourishing as heart could
desire.”
“I can tell you what your mother puts into her plants,” said I,—“just
what she has put into her children, and all her other home-things,—her
_heart_. She _loves_ them; she lives in them; she has in herself a
plant-life and a plant-sympathy. She feels for them as if she herself
were a plant; she anticipates their wants,—always remembers them without
an effort, and so the care flows to them daily and hourly. She hardly
knows when she does the things that make them grow,—but she gives them a
minute a hundred times a day. She moves this nearer the glass,—draws
that back,—detects some thief of a worm on one,—digs at the root of
another, to see why it droops,—washes these leaves, and sprinkles
those,—waters, and refrains from watering, all with the habitual care of
love. Your mother herself doesn’t know why her plants grow; it takes a
philosopher and a writer for the ‘Atlantic’ to tell her what the cause
is.”
Here I saw my wife laughing over her work-basket as she answered,—
“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 house-keeper, 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 travelling 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
really _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?”
“O 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 down-stairs, 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.”