Painted furniture is a delight in a small dining-room. In the Colony Club I planned a very small room for little dinners that is well worth reproducing in a small house. This little room was very hard to manage because there were no windows! There were two tiny little openings high on the wall at one end of the room, but it would take imagination to call them windows. The room was on the top floor, and the real light came from a skylight. You can imagine the difficulty of making such a little box interesting. However, there was one thing that warmed my heart to the little room: a tiny ante-room between the hall proper and the room proper. This little ante-room I paneled in yellowish tan and gray. I introduced a sofa covered with an old brocade just the color of dried rose leaves—ashes of roses, the French call it—and the little ante-room became a fitting introduction to the dining-room within.

The walls of the rooms were paneled in a delicious color between yellow and tan, the wall proper and the moldings being this color, and the panels themselves filled with a gray paper painted in pinky yellows and browns. These panels were done by hand by a man who found his inspiration in the painted panels of an old French ballroom. As the walls were unbroken by windows there was ample space for such decoration. A carpet of rose color was chosen, and the skylight was curtained with shirred silk of the same rose. The table and chairs were of painted wood, the chairs having seats of the brocade used on the ante-room sofa. The table was covered with rose colored brocade, and over this, cobwebby lace, and over this, plate glass. There are two consoles in the room, with small cabinets above which hold certain objets d'art in keeping with the room.

Under the two tiny windows were those terrible snags we decorators always strike, the radiators. Wrongly placed, they are capable of spoiling any room. I concealed these radiators by building two small cabinets with panels of iron framework gilded to suggest a graceful metal lattice, and lined them with rose-colored silk. I borrowed this idea from a fascinating cabinet in an old French palace, and the result is worth the deception. The cabinets are nice in themselves, and they do not interfere with the radiation of the heat.

I have seen many charming country houses and farm houses in France with dining-rooms furnished with painted furniture. Somehow they make the average American dining-room seem very commonplace and tiresome. For instance, I had the pleasure of furnishing a little country house in France and we planned the dining-room in blue and white. The furniture was of the simplest, painted white, with a dark blue line for decoration. The corner cupboard was a little more elaborate, with a gracefully curved top and a large glass door made up of little panes set in a quaint design. There were several drawers and a lower cupboard. The drawers and the lower doors invited decorations a little more elaborate than the blue lines of the furniture, so we painted on gay little medallions in soft tones of blue, from the palest gray-blue to a very dark blue. The chair cushions were blue, and the china was blue sprigged. Three little pitchers of dark-blue luster were on the wall cupboard shelf and a mirror in a faded gold frame gave the necessary variation of tone.

A very charming treatment for either a country or small city dining-room is to have corner cupboards of this kind cutting off two corners. They are convenient and unusual and pretty as well. They can be painted in white with a colored line defining the panels and can be made highly decorative if the panels are painted with a classic or a Chinese design. The decoration, however, should be kept in variations of the same tone as the stripe on the panels. For instance, if the stripe is gray, then the design should be in dark and light gray and blue tones. The chairs can be white, in a room of this kind, with small gray and blue medallions and either blue and white, or plain blue, cushions.

Another dining-room of the same sort was planned for a small country house on Long Island. Here the woodwork was a deep cream, the walls the same tone, and the ceiling a little lighter. We found six of those prim Duxbury chairs, with flaring spindle-backs, and painted them a soft yellow-green. The table was a plain pine one, with straight legs. We painted it cream and decorated the top with a conventional border of green adapted from the design of the china—a thick creamy Danish ware ornamented with queer little wavy lines and figures. I should have mentioned the china first, because the whole room grew from that. The rug was a square of velvet of a darker green. The curtains were soft cream-colored net. One wall was made up of windows, another of doors and a cupboard, and against the other two walls we built two long, narrow consoles that were so simple anyone could accomplish them: simply two wide shelves resting on good brackets, with mirrors above. The one splendid thing in the room was a curtain of soft green damask that was pulled at night to cover the group of windows. Everything else in the room was bought for a song.



I have said much of cupboards and consoles because I think they are so much better than the awkward, heavy "china closets" and "buffets" and sideboards that dominate most dining-rooms. The time has come when we should begin to do fine things in the way of building fitment furniture, that is, furniture that is actually or apparently a part of the shell of the room. It would be so much better to build a house slowly, planning the furniture as a part of the architectural detail. With each succeeding year the house would become more and more a part of the owner, illustrating his life. Of course, this would mean that the person who planned the developing of the house must have a certain architectural training, must know about scale and proportion, and something of general construction. Certainly charming things are to be created in this way, things that will last, things immeasurably preferable to the cheap jerry-built furniture which so soon becomes shabby, which has to be so constantly renewed. People accept new ideas with great difficulty, and my only hope is that they may grow to accept the idea of fitment furniture through finding the idea a product of their own; a personal discovery that comes from their own needs.

I have constantly recommended the use of our native American woods for panelings and wall furniture, because we have both the beautiful woods of our new world and tried and proven furniture of the old world, and what couldn't we achieve with such material available? Why do people think of a built-in cupboard as being less important than a detached piece of furniture? Isn't it a braggart pose, a desire to show the number of things you can buy? Of course it is a very foolish pose, but it is a popular one, this display of objects that are ear-marked "expensive."

It is very easy to build cupboards on each side of a fireplace, for instance, making the wall flush with the chimney-breast. This is always good architectural form. One side could have a desk which opens beneath the glass doors, and the other could have cupboards, both presenting exactly the same appearance when closed. Fitted corner cupboards, triangular or rounded, are also excellent in certain dining rooms.

Wall tables, or consoles, may be of the same wood as the woodwork or of marble, or of some dark polished wood. There are no more useful pieces of furniture than consoles, and yet we only see them in great houses. Why? Because they are simple, and we haven't yet learned to demand the simple. I have had many interesting old console-tables of wrought iron support and marble tops copied, and I have designed others that were mere semi-circles of white painted wood supported by four slender legs, but whether they be marble or pine the effect is always simple. There are charming consoles that have come to us from the Eighteenth Century, consoles made in pairs, so that they may stand against the wall as serving-tables, or be placed together to form one round table. This is a very good arrangement where people have one large living room or hall in which they dine and which also serves all the purpose of daily intercourse. This entirely removes any suggestion of a dining-room, as the consoles may be separated and stand against the wall during the day.

Many modern houses are being built without the conventional dining-room we have known so long, there being instead an open-air breakfast room which may be glazed in winter and screened in summer. People have come to their senses at last, and realize that there is nothing so pleasant as eating outdoors. The annual migration of Americans to Europe is responsible for the introduction of this excellent custom. French houses are always equipped with some outdoor place for eating. Some of them have, in addition to the inclosed porch, a fascinating pavilion built in the garden, where breakfast and tea may be served. Modern mechanical conveniences and the inexpensive electric apparatus make it possible to serve meals at this distance from the house and keep them hot in the meantime. One may prepare one's own coffee and toast at table, with the green trees and flowers and birds all around.

Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper, everyone knows that. The simplest meal seems a gala affair when everyone is radiant and cheerful, whereas a long and elaborate meal served indoors is usually depressing.



XIV

THE BEDROOM

In olden times people rarely slept in their bedrooms, which were mostly chambres de parade, where everyone was received and much business was transacted. The real bedroom was usually a smallish closet nearby. These chambres de parade were very splendid, the beds raised on a dais, and hung with fine damasks and tapestries—tapestries thick with bullion fringes. The horror of fresh air felt by our ancestors was well illustrated here. No draughts from ill-constructed windows or badly hung doors could reach the sleeper in such a bed.



This was certainly different from our modern ideas of hygiene: In those days furniture that could not be hastily moved was of little importance. The bed was usually a mere frame of wood, made to be covered with valuable hangings which could easily be packed and carried away on occasions that too often arose in the troublous days of the early Middle Ages. The benches and tables one sees in many foreign palaces to-day are covered with gorgeous lengths of velvet and brocade. This is a survival of the custom when furniture was merely so much baggage. With the early Eighteenth Century, however, there came into being les petits appartements, in which the larger space formerly accorded the bedroom was divided into ante-chamber, salon or sitting-room, and the bedroom. Very often the bed was placed in an alcove, and the heavy brocades and bullion embroideries were replaced by linen or cotton hangings.

When Oberkampf established himself at Jouy in 1760 France took first place in the production of these printed linens and cottons. This was the beginning of the age of chintz and of the delightful decorative fabrics that are so suited to our modern ideas of hygiene. It seems to me there are no more charming stuffs for bedroom hangings than these simple fabrics, with their enchantingly fanciful designs. Think of the changes one could have with several sets of curtains to be changed at will, as Marie Antoinette used to do at the Petit Trianon. How amusing it would be in our own modern houses to change the bed coverings, window curtains, and so forth, twice or three times a year! I like these loose slip covers and curtains better than the usual hard upholstery, because if properly planned the slips can be washed without losing their color or their lines.

Charming Eighteenth Century prints that are full of valuable hints as to furniture and decorations for bedrooms can be found in most French shops. The series known as "Moreau le Jeun" is full of suggestion. Some of the interiors shown are very grand, it is true, but many are simple enough to serve as models for modern apartments. A set of these pictures will do much to give one an insight into the decoration of the Eighteenth Century, a vivid insight that can be obtained in no other way, perhaps.

I do not like the very large bedrooms, dear to the plans of the American architect. I much prefer the space divided. I remember once arriving at the Ritz Hotel in London and being given temporarily a very grand royal suite, overlooking the park, until the smaller quarters I had reserved should be ready for me. How delighted I was at first with all the huge vastness of my bedroom! My appreciation waned, however, after a despairing morning toilet spent in taking many steps back and forth from dressing-table to bathroom, and from bathroom to hang-closets, and I was glad indeed, when, at the end of several hours, I was comfortably housed in my smaller and humbler quarters.

I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber should separate it from the large outside corridor. The ideal arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room, then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back. This outer chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be. It may serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and concealing them with mirrored doors. The ante-chamber need not be a luxury, if you plan your house carefully. It is simply a little well of silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.



To go on with my ideal bedroom: the walls, I think, should be simply paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is the best solution. You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the figures.

One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper that does not belong to the "busy" class, for while the design is decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat. This is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens and grays on a cream ground. I have seen bedrooms papered with huge scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and methodical thumping of a drum. I cannot imagine anyone sleeping calmly in such a room!

This bedroom is eminently suited to the needs of a man. The hangings are of a plain, soft stuff, accenting one of the deep tones of the wall covering, and the sash curtains are of white muslin. The furniture is of oak, of the Jacobean period. The bed is true to its inspiration, with turned legs and runners, and slatted head and foot boards. The legs and runners of the bed were really inspired by the chairs and tables of the period. This is an excellent illustration of the modern furniture that may be adapted from old models. It goes without saying that the beds of that period were huge, cumbersome affairs, and this adapted bed is really more suitable to modern needs in size and weight and line than an original one.

There are so many inspirations for bedrooms nowadays that one finds it most difficult to decide on any one scheme. One of my greatest joys in planning the Colony Club was that I had opportunity to furnish so many bedrooms. And they were small, pleasant rooms, too, not the usual impersonal boxes that are usually planned for club houses and hotels. I worked out the plan of each bedroom as if I were to live in it myself, and while they all differed in decorative schemes the essentials were the same in each room: a comfortable bed, with a small table beside it to hold a reading light, a clock, and a telephone; a chaise-longue for resting; a long mirror somewhere; a dressing table with proper lights and a glass covered top; a writing table, carefully equipped, and the necessary chairs and stools. Some of the bedrooms had no connecting baths, and these were given wash stands with bowls and pitchers of clear glass. Most of these bedrooms were fitted with mahogany four post beds, pie crust tables, colonial highboys, gay chintzes, and such, but there were several rooms of entirely different scheme.



Perhaps the most fascinating of them all is the bird room. The walls are covered with an Oriental paper patterned with marvelous blue and green birds, birds of paradise and paroquets perched on flowering branches. The black lacquer furniture was especially designed for the room. The rug and the hangings are of jade green. I wonder how this seems to read of—I can only say it is a very gay and happy room to live in!

There is another bedroom in pink and white, which would be an adorable room for a young girl. The bed is of my own design, a simple white painted metal bed. There is a chaise-longue, upholstered in the pink and white striped chintz of the room. The same chintz is used for window hangings, bed spread, and so forth. There is a little spindle legged table of mahogany, and another table at the head of the bed which contains the reading light. There is also a little white stool, with a cushion of the chintz, beside the bed. The dressing-table is so simple that any girl might copy it—it is a chintz-hung box with a sheet of plate glass on top, and a white framed mirror hung above it. The electric lights in this room are cleverly made into candlesticks which are painted to match the chintz. The writing-table is white, with a mahogany chair in front of it.

Another bedroom has a narrow four post bed of mahogany, with hangings of China blue sprigged with small pink roses. There was another in green and white. In every case these bedrooms were equipped with rugs of neutral and harmonious tone. The dressing-tables were always painted to harmonize with the chintzes or the furniture. Wherever possible there was an open fireplace. Roomy clothes closets added much to the comfort of each room, and there was always a couch of delicious softness, or a chaise-longue, and lounging chairs which invited repose.



Nothing so nice has happened in a long time as the revival of painted furniture, and the application of quaint designs to modern beds and chairs and chests. You may find inspiration in a length of chintz, in an old fan, in a faded print—anywhere! The main thing is to work out a color plan for the background—the walls, the furniture, and the rugs—and then you can draw or stencil the chosen designs wherever they seem to belong, and paint them in with dull tones and soft colors, rose and buff and blue and green and a little bit of gray and cream and black. Or, if you aren't even as clever as that (and you probably are!) you can decorate your painted furniture with narrow lines of color: dark green on a light green ground; dark blue on yellow; any color on gray or cream—there are infinite possibilities of color combinations. In one of the rooms shown in the illustrations the posy garlands on the chest of drawers were inspired by a lamp jar. This furniture was carefully planned, as may be seen by the little urns on the bedposts, quite in the manner of the Brothers Adam, but delightful results may be obtained by using any simple modern cottage furniture and applying fanciful decorations.

Be wary of hanging many pictures in your bedroom. I give this advice cheerfully, because I know you will hang them anyway (I do) but I warn you you will spoil your room if you aren't very stern with yourself. Somehow the pictures we most love, small prints and photographs and things, look spotty on our walls. We must group them to get a pleasant effect. Keep the framed photographs on the writing table, the dressing table, the mantel, etc., but do not hang them on your walls. If you have small prints that you feel you must have, hang them flat on the wall, well within the line of vision. They should be low enough to be examined, because usually such pictures are not decorative in effect, but exquisite in detail. The fewer pictures the better, and in the guest-room fewer still!

I planned a guest-room for the top floor of a New York house that is very successful. The room was built around a pair of appliques made from two old Chinese sprays of metal flowers. I had small electric light bulbs fitted among the flowers, mounted them on carved wood brackets on each side of a good mantel mirror and worked out the rest of the room from them. The walls were painted bluish green, the woodwork white. Just below the molding at the top of the room there was a narrow border (four inches wide) of a mosaic-like pattern in blue and green. The carpet rug is of a blue-green tone. The hangings are of an alluring Chinoiserie chintz, and there are several Chinese color prints framed and hanging in the narrow panels between the front windows. The furniture is painted a deep cream pointed with blue and green, and the bed covering is of a pale turquoise taffeta.

Another guest room was done in gentian blue and white, with a little buff and rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an enchanting affair! And simple—why, she could hinge the mirrors together, and make the chintz ruffle, and enamel the shelves white, and do every bit of it except cut the plate glass. Of course the glass is very clean and nice, but an enameled surface with a white linen cover would be very pleasant.

The same blue and white chintz was used for the hangings and bed coverings. Everything else in the room was white except the thick cream rug with its border of blue and rose and buff, and the candlesticks and appliques which repeated those colors.



There is a chintz I love to use called the Green Feather chintz. It is most decorative in design and color, and such an aristocratic sort of chintz you can use it on handsome old sofas and your post beds that would scorn a more commonplace chintz. Mrs. Payne Whitney has a most enchanting bed covered with the Green Feather chintz, one of those great beds that depend entirely on their hangings for effect, for not a bit of the wooden frame shows. Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer has a similar bed covered with a Chinoiserie chintz. These great beds are very beautiful in large rooms, but they would be out of place in small ones. There are draped beds, however, that may be used in smaller rooms. I am showing a photograph of a bedroom in the Crocker house in Burlingame, California, where I used a small draped bed with charming effect. This bed is placed flat against the wall, like a sofa, and the drapery is adapted from that of a Louis XVI room. The bed is of gray painted wood, and the hangings are of blue and cream chintz lined with blue taffetas. I used the same idea in a rose and blue bedroom in a New York house. In this case, however, the bed was painted cream white and the large panels of the head and foot boards were filled with a rose and blue chintz. The bedspread was of deep rose colored taffetas, and from a small canopy above the bed four curtains of the rose and blue chintz, lined with the taffetas, are pulled to the four corners of the bed. This novel arrangement of draperies is very satisfactory in a small room.

In my own house the bedrooms open into dressing-rooms, so much of the usual furniture is not necessary. My own bedroom, for instance, is built around the same old Breton bed I had in the Washington Irving house. The bed dominates the room, but there are also a chaise-longue, several small tables, many comfortable chairs, and a real fireplace. The business of dressing takes place in the dressing-room, so there is no dressing-table here, but there are long mirrors filling the wall spaces between windows and doors. Miss Marbury's bedroom is just over mine, and is a sunshiny place of much rose and blue and cream. Her rooms are always full of blue, just as my rooms are always full of rose color. This bedroom has cream woodwork and walls of a bluish-gray, cream painted furniture covered with a mellow sort of rose-and-cream chintz, and a Persian rug made up of blue and cream. The curtains at the windows are of plain blue linen bordered with a narrow blue and white fringe. The lighting-fixtures are of carved wood, pointed in polychrome. The most beautiful thing in the room is a Fifteenth Century painting, the Madonna of Bartolomeo Montagna, which has the place of honor over the mantel.

I haven't said a word about our nice American Colonial bedrooms, because all of you know their beauties and requirements as well as I. The great drawback to the stately old furniture of our ancestors is the space it occupies. Haven't you seen a fine old four post bed simply overflowing a poor little room? Fortunately, the furniture-makers are designing simple beds of similar lines, but lighter build, and these beds are very lovely. The owner of a massive old four-post bed is justly proud of it, but our new beds are built for a new service and a new conception of hygiene, and so must find new lines and curves that will be friendly to the old dressing tables and highboys and chests of drawers.

When we are fortunate enough to inherit great old houses, of course we will give them proper furniture—if we can find it.

I remember a house in New Orleans that had a full dozen spacious bedrooms, square, closetless chambers that opened into small dressing-rooms. One of them, I remember, was absolutely bare of wall and floor, with a great Napoleon bed set squarely in the center of it. There was the inevitable mosquito net canopy, here somehow endowed with an unexpected dignity. One felt the room had been made for sleeping, and nothing but sleeping, and while the bed was placed in the middle of the floor to get all the air possible, its placing was a master stroke of decoration in that great white walled room. It was as impressive as a royal bed on a dais.

We are getting more sensible about our bedrooms. There is no doubt about it. For the last ten years there has been a dreadful epidemic of brass beds, a mistaken vogue that came as a reaction from the heavy walnut beds of the last generation. White painted metal beds came first, and will last always, but they weren't good enough for people of ostentatious tastes, and so the vulgar brass bed came to pass. Why we should suffer brass beds in our rooms, I don't know! The plea is that they are more sanitary than wooden ones. Hospitals must consider sanitation first, last, and always, and they use white iron beds. And why shouldn't white iron beds, which are modest and unassuming in appearance, serve for homes as well? The truth is that the glitter of brass appeals to the untrained eye. But that is passing. Go into the better shops and you will see! Recently there was a spasmodic outbreak of silver-plated beds, but I think there won't be a vogue for this newest object of bad taste. It is a little too much!

If your house is clean and you intend to keep it so, a wooden bed that has some relation to the rest of your furniture is the best bed possible. Otherwise, a white painted metal one. There is never an excuse for a brass one. Indeed, I think the three most glaring errors we Americans make are rocking-chairs, lace curtains, and brass beds.



XV

THE DRESSING-ROOM AND THE BATH

Dressing-rooms and closets should be necessities, not luxuries, but alas! our architects' ideas of the importance of large bedrooms have made it almost impossible to incorporate the proper closets and dressing-places a woman really requires.

In the foregoing chapter on bedrooms I advised the division of a large bedroom into several smaller rooms: ante-chamber, sitting-room, sleeping-room, dressing-room and bath. The necessary closets may be built along the walls of all these little rooms, or, if there is sufficient space, one long, airy closet may serve for all one's personal belongings. Of course, such a suite of rooms is possible only in large houses. But even in simple houses a small dressing-room can be built into the corner of an average-sized bedroom.

In France every woman dresses in her cabinet de toilette; it is one of the most important rooms in the house. No self-respecting French woman would dream of dressing in her sleeping-room. The little cabinet de toilette need not be much larger than a closet, if the closets are built ceiling high, and the doors are utilized for mirrors. Such an arrangement makes for great comfort and privacy. Here I find that most of my countrywomen dress in their bedrooms. I infinitely prefer the separate dressing-room, which means a change of air, and which can be thoroughly ventilated. If one sleeps with the bedroom windows wide open, it is a pleasure to have a warm dressing-room to step into.

I think the first thing to be considered about a dressing-room is its utility. Here no particular scheme of decoration or over-elaboration of color is in place. Everything should be very simple, very clean and very hygienic. The floors should not be of wood, but may be of marble or mosaic cement or clean white tiles, with a possible touch of color. If the dressing-room is bathroom also, there should be as large a bath as is compatible with the size of the room. The combination of dressing-room and bathroom is successful only in those large houses where each bedroom has its bath. I have seen such rooms in modern American houses that were quite as large as bedrooms, with the supreme luxury of open fireplaces. Think of the comfort of having one's bath and of making one's toilet before an open fire! This is an outgrowth of our passion for bedrooms that are so be-windowed they become sleeping-porches, and we may leave their chill air for the comfortable warmth of luxurious dressing-rooms.



If I were giving advice as to the furnishing of a dressing-room, in as few words as possible, I should say: "Put in lots of mirrors, and then more mirrors, and then more!" Indeed, I do not think one can have too many mirrors in a dressing-room. Long mirrors can be set in doors and wall panels, so that one may see one's self from hat to boots. Hinged mirrors are lovely for sunny wall spaces, and for the tops of dressing-tables. I have made so many of them. One of green and gold lacquer was made to be used on a plain green enameled dressing-table placed squarely in the recess of a great window. I also use small mirrors of graceful contour to light up the dark corners of dressing-rooms.

Have your mirrors so arranged that you get a good strong light by day, and have plenty of electric lights all around the dressing-mirrors for night use. In other words, know the worst before you go out! In my own dressing-room the lights are arranged just as I used to have them long ago in my theater dressing-room when I was on the stage. I can see myself back, front and sides before I go out. Really, it is a comfort to be on friendly terms with your own back hair! I lay great stress on the mirrors and plenty of lights, and yet more lights. Oh, the joy, the blessing of electric light! I think every woman would like to dress always by a blaze of electric light, and be seen only in the soft luminosity of candle light—how lovely we would all look, to be sure! It is a great thing to know the worst before one goes out, so that even the terrors of the arc lights before our theaters will be powerless to dismay us.

If there is room in the dressing-room, there should be a sofa with a slip cover of some washable fabric that can be taken off when necessary. This sofa may be the simplest wooden frame, with a soft pad, or it may be a chaise-longue of elegant lines. The chaise-longue is suitable for bedroom or dressing-room, but it is an especially luxurious lounging-place when you are having your hair done.

A man came to me just before Christmas, and said, "Do tell me something to give my wife. I cannot think of a thing in the world she hasn't already." I asked, "Is she a lady of habits?" "What!" he said, astonished. "Does she enjoy being comfortable?" I asked. "Well, rather!" he smiled. And so I suggested a couvre-pieds for her chaise-longue. Now I am telling you of the couvre pieds because I know all women love exquisite things, and surely nothing could be more delicious than my couvre-pieds. Literally, it is a "cover for the feet," a sort of glorified and diminutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk, lined with the soft long-haired white fur known as mountain tibet, and interlined with down. The coverlet is bordered with a puffing of French lace, and the top of it is encrusted with little flowers made of tiny French picot ribbons, and quillings of the narrowest of lace. It is supposed to be thrown over your feet, fur side down, when you are resting or having your hair done.



You may devise a little coverlet for your own sofa, whether it be in your bedroom, your boudoir, or your dressing-room, that will be quite as useful as this delectable couvre-pieds. I saw some amusing ones recently, made of gay Austrian silks, lined with astonishing colors and bound with puffings and flutings of ribbon of still other colors. A coverlet of this kind would be as good as a trip away from home for the woman who is bored and wearied. No matter how drab and commonplace her house might be, she could devise a gay quilt of one of the enchanting new stuffs and wrap herself in it for a holiday hour. One of the most amusing ones was of turquoise blue silk, with stiff flowers of violet and sulphur yellow scattered over it. The flowers were quite large and far apart, so that there was a square expanse of the turquoise blue with a stiff flower at each corner. The lining was of sulphur yellow silk, and the binding was a puffing of violet ribbons. The color fairly made me gasp, at first, but then it became fascinating, and finally irresistible. I sighed as I thought of the dreary patchwork quilts of our great-grandmothers. How they would have marveled at our audacious use of color, our frank joy in it!

Of course the most important thing in the dressing-room is the dressing-table. I place my dressing-tables against a group of windows, not near them, whenever it is possible. I have used plate glass tops on many of them, and mirrors for tops on others, for you can't have too many mirrors or too strong a light for dressing. We must see ourselves as others will see us.

My own dressing-table contains many drawers, one of which is fitted with an ink-well, a tray for pens and pencils, and a sliding shelf on which I write. This obviates going into another room to answer hurried notes when one is dressing. Beside the dressing-table stands the tall hat-stand for the hat I may be wearing that day.

When the maid prepares the dress that is to be worn, she puts the hat that goes with the toilette on the tall single stand. Another idea is the little hollow table on casters that can easily be slipped under the dressing-table, where it is out of the way. All the little ugly things that make one lovely can be kept in this table, which can have a lid if desired, and even a lock and key. I frequently make them with a glass bottom, as they do not get stained or soiled, and can be washed.

There are lots of little dodges that spell comfort for the dressing-room of the woman who wants comfort and can have luxury. There is the hot-water towel-rack, which is connected with the hot-water system of the house and which heats the towels, and incidentally the dressing-room. This a boon if you like a hot bath sheet after a cold plunge on a winter's morning. Another modern luxury is a wall cabinet fitted with glass shelves for one's bottles and sponges and powders. There seems to be no end to the little luxuries that are devised for the woman who makes a proper toilet. Who can blame her for loving the business of making herself attractive, when every one offers her encouragement?

A closet is absolutely necessary in the dressing-room, and if space is precious every inch of its interior may be fitted with shelves and drawers and hooks, so that no space is wasted. The outside of the closet door may be fitted with a mirror, and narrow shelves just deep enough to hold one's bottles, may be fitted on the inside of the door. If the closet is very shallow, the inner shelves should be hollowed out to admit the bottle shelves when the door is closed. Otherwise the bottles will be smashed the first time a careless maid slams the door. This bottle closet has been one of my great successes in small apartments, where bathroom and dressing-room are one, and where much must be accomplished in a small space.

In the more modern apartments the tub is placed in a recess in the wall of the bathroom, leaving more space for dressing purposes. This sort of combination dressing-room should have waterproof floor and wall, and no fripperies. There should be a screen large enough to conceal the tub, and a folding chair that may be placed in the small closet when it is not in use.

When the bathroom is too small to admit a dressing-table and chair and the bedroom is quite large, a good plan is the building of a tiny room in one corner of the bedroom. Of course this little dressing-box must have a window. I have used this plan many times with excellent results. Another scheme, when the problem was entirely different, and the dressing-room was too large for comfort, was to line three walls of it with closets, the fourth wall being filled with windows. These closets were narrow, each having a mirrored panel in its door. This is the ideal arrangement, for there is ample room for all one's gowns, shoes, hats, veils, gloves, etc., each article having its own specially planned shelf or receptacle. The closets are painted in gay colors inside, and the shelves are fitted with thin perfumed pads. They are often further decorated with bright lines of color, which is always amusing to the woman who opens a door. Hat stands and bags are covered with the same chintzes employed in the dressing-room proper. Certain of the closets are fitted with the English tray shelves, and each tray has its sachet. The hangers for gowns are covered in the chintz or brocade used on the hat stands. This makes an effective ensemble whether brocades or printed cottons are used, if the arrangement is orderly and full of gay color.



One of the most successful gown closets I have done is a long narrow closet with a door at each end, really a passageway between a bedroom and a boudoir. Long poles run the length of the closet, with curtains that enclose a passage from door to door. Back of these curtains are long poles that may be raised or lowered by pulleys. Each gown is placed on its padded hanger, covered with its muslin bag, and hung on the pole. The pole is then drawn up so that the tails of the gowns will not touch the dust of the floor. This is a most orderly arrangement for the woman of many gowns.

The straightaway bathroom that one finds in apartments and small houses is difficult to make beautiful, but may be made airy and clean-looking, which is more important. I had to make such a bathroom a little more attractive recently, and it was a very pleasant job. I covered the walls with a waterproof stuff of white, figured with a small black polkadot. The woodwork and the ceiling were painted white. All around the door and window frames I used a two-inch border of ivy leaves, also of waterproof paper, and although I usually abominate borders I loved this one. A plain white framed mirror was also painted with green ivy leaves, and a glass shelf above the wash bowl was fitted with glass bottles and dishes with labels and lines of clear green. White muslin curtains were hung at the window, and a small white stool was given a cushion covered with green and white ivy patterned chintz. The floor was painted white, and a solid green rug was used. The towels were cross-stitched with the name of the owner in the same bright green. The room, when finished, was cool and refreshing, and had cost very little in money, and not so very much in time and labor.

I think that in country houses where there is not a bathroom with each bedroom there should be a very good washstand provided for each guest. When a house party is in progress, for instance, and every one comes in from tennis or golf or what not, eager for a bath and fresh clothes, washstands are most convenient. Why shouldn't a washstand be just as attractively furnished as a dressing-table? Just because they have been so ugly we condemn them to eternal ugliness, but it is quite possible to make the washstand interesting to look upon as well as serviceable. It isn't necessary to buy a "set" of dreadful crockery. You can assemble the necessary things as carefully as you would assemble the outfit for your writing-table. Go to the pottery shops, the glass shops, the silversmiths, and you will find dozens of bowls and pitchers and small things. A clear glass bowl and pitcher and the necessary glasses and bottles can be purchased at any department store. The French peasants make an apple-green pottery that is delightful for a washstand set. So many of the china shops have large shallow bowls that were made for salad and punch, and pitchers that were made for the dining-table, but there is no reason why they shouldn't be used on the washstand. I know one wash basin that began as a Russian brass pan of flaring rim. With it is used an old water can of hammered brass, and brass dishes glass lined, to hold soaps and sponges. It is only necessary to desire the unusual thing, and you'll get it, though much searching may intervene between the idea and its achievement.

The washstand itself is not such a problem. A pair of dressing-tables may be bought, and one fitted up as a washstand, and the other left to its usual use.

In the Colony Club there are a number of bathrooms, but there are also washstands in those rooms that have no private bath. Each bathroom has its fittings planned to harmonize with the connecting bedroom, and the clear glass bottles are all marked in the color prevailing in the bedroom. Each bathroom has a full-length mirror, and all the conveniences of a bathroom in a private house. In addition to these rooms there is a long hall filled with small cabinets de toilette which some clever woman dubbed "prinkeries." These are small rooms fitted with dressing-tables, where out-of-town members may freshen their toilets for an occasion. These little prinkeries would be excellent in large country houses, where there are so many motoring guests who come for a few hours only, dust-laden and travel-stained, only to find that all the bedrooms and dressing-rooms in the house are being used by the family and the house guests.

A description of the pool of the Colony Club is hardly within the province of this chapter, but so many amazing Americans are building themselves great houses incorporating theaters and Roman baths, so many women are building club houses, so many others are building palatial houses that are known as girls' schools, perhaps the swimming-pool will soon be a part of all large houses. This pool occupies the greater part of the basement floor of the Club house, the rest of the floor being given over to little rooms where one may have a shampoo or massage or a dancing lesson or what not before or after one's swim. The pool is twenty-two by sixty feet, sunken below the level of the marble floor. The depth is graded from four feet to deep water, so that good and bad swimmers may enjoy it. The marble margin of floor surrounding the pool is bordered with marble benches, placed between the white columns. The walls of the great room are paneled with mirrors, so that there are endless reflections of columned corridors and pools and shimmering lights. The ceiling is covered with a light trellis hung with vines, from which hang great greenish-white bunches of grapes holding electric lights. One gets the impression of myriads of white columns, and of lights and shadows infinitely far-reaching. Surely the old Romans knew no pleasanter place than this city-enclosed pool.



XVI

THE SMALL APARTMENT

This is the age of the apartment. Not only in the great cities, but in the smaller centers of civilization the apartment has come to stay. Modern women demand simplified living, and the apartment reduces the mechanical business of living to its lowest terms. A decade ago the apartment was considered a sorry makeshift in America, though it has been successful abroad for more years than you would believe. We Americans have been accustomed to so much space about us that it seemed a curtailment of family dignity to give up our gardens, our piazzas and halls, our cellars and attics, our front and rear entrances. Now we are wiser. We have just so much time, so much money and so much strength, and it behooves us to make the best of it. Why should we give our time and strength and enthusiasm to drudgery, when our housework were better and more economically done by machinery and co-operation? Why should we stultify our minds with doing the same things thousands of times over, when we might help ourselves and our friends to happiness by intelligent occupations and amusements? The apartment is the solution of the living problems of the city, and it has been a direct influence on the houses of the towns, so simplifying the small-town business of living as well.

Of course, many of us who live in apartments either have a little house or a big one in the country for the summer months, or we plan for one some day! So hard does habit die—we cannot entirely divorce our ideas of Home from gardens and trees and green grass. But I honestly think there is a reward for living in a slice of a house: women who have lived long in the country sometimes take the beauty of it for granted, but the woman who has been hedged in by city walls gets the fine joy of out-of-doors when she is out of doors, and a pot of geraniums means more to her than a whole garden means to a woman who has been denied the privilege of watching things grow.

The modern apartment is an amazing illustration of the rapid development of an idea. The larger ones are quite as magnificent as any houses could be. I have recently furnished a Chicago apartment that included large and small salons, a huge conservatory, and a great group of superb rooms that are worthy of a palace. There are apartment houses in New York that offer suites of fifteen to twenty rooms, with from five to ten baths, at yearly rentals that approximate wealth to the average man, but these apartments are for the few, and there are hundreds of thousands of apartments for the many that have the same essential conveniences.

One of the most notable achievements of the apartment house architects is the duplex apartment, the little house within a house, with its two-story high living room, its mezzanine gallery with service rooms ranged below and sleeping rooms above, its fine height and spaciousness. Most of the duplex apartments are still rather expensive, but some of them are to be had at rents that are comparatively low—rents are always comparative, you know.

Fortunately, although it is a far cry financially from the duplex apartment to the tidy three-room flat of the model tenements, the "modern improvements" are very much the same. The model tenement offers compact domestic machinery, and cleanliness, and sanitary comforts at a few dollars a week that are not to be had at any price in many of the fine old houses of Europe. The peasant who has lived on the plane of the animals with no thought of cleanliness, or indeed of anything but food and drink and shelter, comes over here and enjoys improvements that our stately ancestors of a few generations ago would have believed magical. Enjoys them—they do say he puts his coal in the bath tub, but his grandchildren will be different, perhaps!

But enough of apartments in general. This chapter is concerned with the small apartment sought by you young people who are beginning housekeeping. You want to find just the proper apartment, of course, and then you want to decorate and furnish it. Let me beg of you to demand only the actual essentials: a decent neighborhood, good light and air, and at least one reasonably large room. Don't demand perfection, for you won't find it. Make up your mind just what will make for your happiness and comfort, and demand that. You can make any place livable by furnishing it wisely. And, oh, let me beg of you, don't buy your furniture until you have found and engaged your apartment! It is bad enough to buy furniture for a house you haven't seen, but an apartment is a place of limitations, and you can so easily mar the place by buying things that will not fit in. An apartment is so dependent upon proper fittings, skilfully placed, that you may ruin your chances of a real home if you go ahead blindly.

Before you sign your lease, be sure that the neighborhood is not too noisy. Be sure that you will have plenty of light and air and heat. You can interview the other tenants, and find out about many things you haven't time or the experience to anticipate. Be sure that your landlord is a reasonable human being who will consent to certain changes, if necessary, who will be willing for you to build in certain things, who will co-operate with you in improving his property, if you go about it tactfully.

Be sure that the woodwork is plain and unpretentious, that the lighting-fixtures are logically placed, and of simple construction. (Is there anything more dreadful than those colored glass domes, with fringes of beads, that landlords so proudly hang over the imaginary dining-table?) Be sure that the plumbing is in good condition, and beware the bedroom on an air shaft—better pay a little more rent and save the doctor's bills. Beware of false mantels, and grotesque grille-work, and imitation stained glass, and grained woodwork. You couldn't be happy in a place that was false to begin with.

Having found just the combination of rooms that suggests a real home to you, go slowly about your decorating.

It is almost imperative that the woodwork and walls should have the same finish throughout the apartment, unless you wish to find yourself living in a crazy-quilt of unfriendly colors. I have seen four room apartments in which every room had a different wall paper and different woodwork. The "parlor" was papered with poisonous-looking green paper, with imitation mahogany woodwork; the dining-room had walls covered with red burlap and near-oak woodwork; the bedroom was done in pink satin finished paper and bird's-eye maple woodwork, and the kitchen was bilious as to woodwork, with bleak gray walls. Could anything be more mistaken?

You can make the most commonplace rooms livable if you will paint all your woodwork cream, or gray, or sage green, and cover your walls with a paper of very much the same tone. Real hard wood trim isn't used in ordinary apartments, so why not do away with the badly-grained imitation and paint it? You can look through thousands of samples of wall papers, and you will finally have to admit that there is nothing better for every day living than a deep cream, a misty gray, a tan or a buff paper.

You may have a certain license in the papering of your bedrooms, of course, but the living-rooms—hall, dining-room, living-room, drawing-room, and so forth—should be pulled together with walls of one color. In no other way can you achieve an effect of spaciousness—and spaciousness is the thing of all other things most desirable in the crowded city. You must have a place where you can breathe and fling your arms about!

When you have it really ready for furnishing, get the essentials first; do with a bed and a chest of drawers and a table and a few chairs, and add things gradually, as the rooms call for them.

Make the best of the opportunities offered for built-in furniture before you buy another thing. If you have a built-in china closet in your dining-room, you can plan a graceful built-in console-table to serve as a buffet or serving-table, and you will require only a good table—not too heavily built—and a few chairs for this room. There is rarely a room that would not be improved by built-in shelves and inset mirrors.

Of course, I do not advise you to spend a lot of money on someone else's property, but why not look the matter squarely in the face? This is to be your home. You will find a number of things that annoy you—life in any city furnishes annoyances. But if you have one or two reasonably large rooms, plenty of light and air, and respectable surroundings, make up your mind that you will not move every year. That you will make a home of this place, and then go ahead and treat it as a home! If a certain recess in the wall suggests bookshelves, don't grudge the few dollars necessary to have the bookshelves built in! You can probably have them built so that they can be removed, on that far day when this apartment is no longer your home, and if you have a dreadful wall paper don't hide behind the silly plea that the landlord will not change it. Go without a new gown, if necessary, and pay for the paper yourself.

Few apartments have fireplaces, and if you are fortunate enough to find one with a real fireplace and a simple mantel shelf you will be far on the way toward making a home of your group of rooms. Of course your apartment is heated by steam, or hot air, or something, but an open fire of coal or wood will be very pleasant on chilly days, and more important still your home will have a point of departure—the Hearth.

If the mantel shelf is surmounted by one of those dreadful monstrosities made up of gingerbread woodwork and distressing bits of mirrors, convince your landlord that it will not be injured in the removing, and store it during your residence here. Have the space above the mantel papered like the rest of the walls, and hang one good picture, or a good mirror, or some such thing above your mantel shelf, and you will have offered up your homage to the Spirit of the Hearth.

When you do begin to buy furniture, buy compactly, buy carefully. Remember that you will not require the furniture your mother had in a sixteen-room house. You will have no hall or piazza furnishings to buy, for instance, and therefore you many put a little more into your living-room things. The living-room is the nucleus of the modern apartment. Sometimes it is studio, living-room and dining-room in one. Sometimes living-room, library and guest-room, by the grace of a comfortable sleeping-couch and a certain amount of drawer or closet space. At any rate, it will be more surely a living-room than a similar room in a large house, and therefore everything in it should count for something. Do not admit an unnecessary rug, or chair, or picture, lest you lose the spaciousness, the dignity of the room. An over-stuffed chair will fill a room more obviously than a grand piano—if the piano is properly, and the chair improperly placed.

In one of the illustrations of this chapter you will observe a small sitting-room in which there are dozens of things, and yet the effect is quiet and uncrowded. The secretary against the plain wall serves as a cabinet for the display of a small collection of fine old china, and the drawers serve the chance guest—for while this is library and sitting-room, it has a most comfortable couch bed, and may be used as a guest-room as well.



The bookshelves are built high on each side of the mantel and between the windows, thus giving shelf room to a goodly collection of books, with no appearance of heaviness. The writing-table is placed at right angles to the windows, so that the light may fall on the writer's left shoulder. There is a couch bed—over three feet wide, in this room, with frame and mattress and pillows covered in a dark brocaded stuff, and a fireside chair, a small chair at the head of the couch and a low stool all covered with the same fabric. It really isn't a large room, and yet it abundantly fills a dozen needs.

I think it unwise to try to work out a cut-and-dried color plan in a small apartment. If your floors and walls are neutral in tone you can introduce dozens of soft colors into your rooms.

Don't buy massive furniture for your apartment! Remember that a few good chairs of willow will be less expensive and more decorative than the heavy, stuffy chairs usually chosen by inexperienced people. Indeed, I think one big arm chair, preferably of the wing variety, is the only big chair you will require in the living-room. A fireside chair is like a grandfather's clock; it gives so much dignity to a room that it is worth a dozen inferior things. Suppose you have a wing chair covered with dull-toned corduroy, or linen, or chintz; a large willow chair with a basket pocket for magazines or your sewing things; a stool or so of wood, with rush or cane seats; and a straight chair or so—perhaps a painted Windsor chair, or a rush-bottomed mahogany chair, or a low-back chair of brown oak—depending on the main furniture of the room, of course. You won't need anything more, unless you have space for a comfortable couch.

If you have mahogany things, you will require a little mahogany table at the head of the couch to hold a reading-lamp—a sewing-table would be excellent. A pie-crust or turn top table for tea, or possibly a "nest" of three small mahogany tables. A writing table or book table built on very simple lines will be needed also. If you happen to have a conventional writing-desk, a gate-leg table would be charming for books and things.

The wing chair and willow chairs, and the hour-glass Chinese chairs, will go beautifully with mahogany things or with oak things. If most of your furniture is to be oak, be sure and select well-made pieces stained a soft brown and waxed. Oak furniture is delightful when it isn't too heavy. A large gate-leg table of dark brown oak is one of the most beautiful tables in the world. With it you would need a bench of oak, with cane or rush seat; a small octagonal, or butterfly oak table for your couch end, and one or two Windsor chairs. Oak demands simple, wholesome surroundings, just as mahogany permits a certain feminine elegance. Oak furniture invites printed linens and books and brass and copper and pewter and gay china. While mahogany may be successfully used with such things, it may also be used with brocade and fragile china and carved chairs.

Use chintzes in your apartment, if you wish, but do not risk the light ones in living-rooms. A chintz or printed linen of some good design on a ground of mauve, blue, gray or black will decorate your apartment adequately, if you make straight side curtains of it, and cover one chair and possibly a stool with it. Don't carry it too far. If your rooms are small, have your side curtains of coarse linen or raw silk in dull blue, orange, brown, or whatever color you choose as the key color of your room, and then select a dark chintz with your chosen color dominant in its design, and cover your one big chair with that.

The apartment hall is most difficult, usually long and narrow and uninteresting. Don't try to have furniture in a hall of this kind. A small table near the front door, a good tile for umbrellas, etc., a good mirror—that is all. Perhaps a place for coats and hats, but some halls are too narrow for a card table.

The apartment with a dining-room entirely separated from the living-room is very unusual, therefore I am hoping that you will apply all that I have said about the treatment of your living-room to your dining-room as well. People who live in apartments are very foolish if they cut off a room so little used as a dining-room and furnish it as if it belonged to a huge house. Why not make it a dining-and book-room, using the big table for reading, between meals, and having your bookshelves so built that they will be in harmony with your china shelves? Keep all your glass and silver and china in the kitchen, or butler's pantry, and display only the excellent things—the old china, the pewter tankard, the brass caddy, and so forth,—in the dining-room.

However, if you have a real dining-room in your apartment, do try to have chairs that will be comfortable, for you can't afford to have uncomfortable things in so small a space! Windsor chairs and rush bottom chairs are best of all for a simple dining-room, I think, though the revival of painted furniture has brought about a new interest in the old flare-back chairs, painted with dull, soft colored posies on a ground of dull green or gray or black. These chairs would be charming in a small cottage dining-room, but they might not "wear well" in a city apartment.



If your apartment has two small bedrooms, why not use one of them for two single beds, with a night stand between, and the other for a dressing-room? Apartment bedrooms are usually small, but charming furniture may be bought for small rooms. Single beds of mahogany with slender posts; beds of painted wood with inset panels of cane; white iron beds, wooden beds painted with quaint designs on a ground of some soft color—all these are excellent for small rooms. It goes without saying that a small bedroom should have plain walls, papered or painted in some soft color. Flowered papers, no matter how delightful they may be, make a small room seem smaller. Self-toned striped papers and the "gingham" papers are sometimes very good. The nicest thing about such modest walls is that you can use gay chintz with them successfully.

Use your bedrooms as sleeping-and dressing-rooms, and nothing more. Do not keep your sewing things there—a big sewing-basket will add to the homelike quality of your living-room. Keep the bedroom floor bare, except for a bedside rug, and possibly one or two other rugs. This, of course, does not apply to the large bedroom—I am prescribing for the usual small one. Place your bed against the side wall, so that the morning light will not be directly in your eyes. A folding screen covered with chintz or linen will prove a God-send.

Perhaps you will have a guest-room, but I doubt it. Most women find it more satisfactory and less expensive to send their guests to a nearby hotel than to keep an extra room for a guest. The guest room is impractical in a small apartment, but you can arrange to take care of an over-night guest by planning your living-room wisely.

As for the kitchen—that is another story. It is impossible to go into that subject. And anyway, you will find the essentials supplied for you by the landlord. You won't need my advice when you need a broom or a coffee pot or a saucepan—you'll go buy it!



XVII

REPRODUCTIONS OF ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF ART

One must have preserved many naive illusions if one may believe in all the "antiques" that are offered in the marketplaces of the world to-day. Even the greatest connoisseurs are caught napping sometimes, as in the case of the famous crown supposedly dating to the Fifth Century, B.C., which was for a brief period one of the treasures of the Louvre. Its origin was finally discovered, and great was the outcry! It had been traced to a Viennese artisan, a worker in the arts and crafts.



Surely, if the great men of the Louvre could be so deceived it is obvious that the amateur collector has little chance at the hands of the dealers in old furniture and other objects of art. Fortunately, the greatest dealers are quite honest. They tell you frankly if the old chair you covet is really old, if it has been partially restored, or if it is a copy, and they charge you accordingly. At these dealers a small table of the Louis XVI period, or a single chair covered in the original tapestry, may cost as much as a man in modest circumstances would spend on his whole house. Almost everything outside these princely shops (salons is a better word) is false, or atrociously restored. Please remember I am not referring to reputable dealers, but to the smaller fry, whose name is legion, in whose shops the unwary seeker after bargains is sure to be taken in.

Italy is, I think, the greatest workshop of fraudulent reproductions. It has an output that all Europe and America can never exhaust. Little children on the streets of Naples still find simpletons of ardent faith who will buy scraps of old plaster and bits of paving stones that are alleged to have been excavated in Pompeii.

In writing about antiques it is not easy to be consistent, and any general conclusion is impossible. Certain reproductions are objectionable, and yet they are certainly better than poor originals, after all. The simplest advice is the best and easiest to follow: The less a copy suggests an attempt at "artistic reproduction," the more literal and mechanical it is in its copy of the original, the better it is. A good photograph of a fine old painting is superior to the average copy in oils or watercolors. A chair honestly copied from a worm eaten original is better for domestic purpose than the original. The original, the moment its usefulness is past, belongs in a museum. A plaster cast of a great bust is better than the same object copied in marble or bronze by an average sculptor. And so it goes. Think it out for yourself.

It may be argued that the budding collector is as happy with a false object and a fake bauble as if he possessed the real thing, and therefore it were better to leave him to his illusions; that it is his own fault; that it is so much the worse for him if he is deceived. But—you can't leave the innocent lamb to the slaughter, if you can give him a helping hand. If he must be a collector, let him be first a collector of the many excellent books now published on old furniture, china, rugs, pewter, silver, prints, the things that will come his way. You can't begin collecting one thing without developing an enthusiasm for the contemporary things. Let him study the museum collections, visit the private collections, consult recognized experts. If he is serious, he will gradually acquire the intuition of knowing the genuine from the false, the worth-while from the worthless, and once he has that knowledge, instinct, call it what you will, he can never be satisfied with imitations.

The collection and association of antiques and reproductions should be determined by the collector's sense of fitness, it seems to me. Every man should depend on whatever instinct for rightness, for suitability, he may possess. If he finds that he dare not risk his individual opinion, then let him be content with the things he knows to be both beautiful and useful, and leave the subtler decisions for someone else. For instance, there are certain objects that are obviously the better for age, the objects that are softened and refined by a bloom that comes from usage.

An old rug has a softness that a new one cannot imitate. An old copper kettle has an uneven quality that has come from years of use. A new kettle may be quite as useful, but age has given the old one a certain quality that hanging and pounding cannot reproduce. A pewter platter that has been used for generations is dulled and softened to a glow that a new platter cannot rival.

What charm is to a woman, the vague thing called quality is to an object of art. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it. An old Etruscan jar may be reproduced in form, but it would be silly to attempt the reproduction of the crudenesses that gave the old jar its real beauty. In short, objects that depend on form and fine workmanship for their beauty may be successfully reproduced, but objects that depend on imperfections of workmanship, on the crudeness of primitive fabrics, on the fading of vegetable dyes, on the bloom that age alone can give, should not be imitated. We may introduce a reproduction of a fine bust into our rooms, but an imitation of a Persian tile or a Venetian vase is absurd on the face of it.

The antiques the average American householder is interested in are the old mahogany, oak and walnut things that stand for the oldest period of our own particular history. It is only the wealthy collector who goes abroad and buys masses of old European furniture, real or sham, who is concerned with the merits and demerits of French and Italian furniture. The native problem is the so-called Colonial mahogany that is always alleged to be Chippendale or Heppelwhite, or Sheraton, regardless! There must be thousands of these alleged antiques in New York shops alone!

It goes without saying that only a very small part of it can be really old. As for it having been made by the men whose names it bears, that is something no reputable dealer would affirm. The Chippendales, father, son and grandson, published books of designs which were used by all the furniture-makers of their day.

No one can swear to a piece of furniture having been made in the workshops of the Chippendales. Even the pieces in the Metropolitan Museum are marked "Chippendale Style" or "In the Sheraton manner," or some such way. If the furniture is in the style of these makers, and if it is really old, you will pay a small fortune for it. But even then you cannot hope to get more than you pay for, and you would be very silly to pay for a name! After all, Chippendale is a sort of god among amateur collectors of American furniture, but among more seasoned collectors he is not by any means placed first. He adapted and borrowed and produced some wonderful things, but he also produced some monstrosities, as you will see if you visit the English museums.

Why then lend yourself to possible deception? Why pay for names when museums are unable to buy them? If your object is to furnish your home suitably, what need have you of antiques?

The serious amateur will fight shy of miracles. If he admires the beauty of line of a fine old Heppelwhite bed or Sheraton sideboard, he will have reproductions made by an expert cabinet-maker. The new piece will not have the soft darkness of the old, but the owner will be planning that soft darkness for his grandchildren, and in the meantime he will have a beautiful thing to live with. The age of a piece of furniture is of great value to a museum, but for domestic purposes, use and beauty will do. How fine your home will be if all the things within it have those qualities!

Look through the photographs shown on these pages: there are many old chairs and tables, but there are more new ones. I am not one of these decorators who insist on originals. I believe good reproductions are more valuable than feeble originals, unless you are buying your furniture as a speculation. You can buy a reproduction of a Chippendale ladder back chair for about twenty-five dollars, but an original chair would cost at least a hundred and fifty, and then it would be "in the style and period of Chippendale." It might amuse you to ask the curator of one of the British museums the price of one of the Chippendales by Chippendale. It would buy you a tidy little acreage. Stuart and Cromwellian chairs are being more and more reproduced. These chairs are made of oak, the Stuart ones with seats and backs of cane, the Cromwellian ones with seats and backs of tapestry, needlework, corded velvet, or some such handsome fabric. These reproductions may be had at from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars each. Of course, the cost of the Cromwellian chairs might be greatly increased by expensive coverings.

There is a graceful Louis XV sofa in the Petit Trianon that I have copied many times. The copy is as beautiful as the original, because this sort of furniture depends upon exquisite design and perfect workmanship for its beauty. It is possible that a modern craftsman might not have achieved so graceful a design, but the perfection of his workmanship cannot be gainsaid. The frame of the sofa must be carved and then painted and guilded many times before it is ready for the brocade covering, and the cost of three hundred dollars for the finished sofa is not too much. The original could not be purchased at any price.

Then there is the Chinese lacquer furniture of the Chippendale period that we are using so much now. The process of lacquering is as tedious to-day as it ever was, and the reproductions sell for goodly sums. A tall secretary of black and gold lacquer may cost six hundred dollars. You can imagine what an Eighteenth Century piece would cost!

The person who said that a taste for old furniture and bibelots was "worse than a passion, it was a vice," was certainly near the truth! It is an absorbing pursuit, an obsession, and it grows with what it feeds on. As in objects of art, so in old furniture, the supply will always equal the demand of the unwary. The serious amateur will fight shy of all miracles and content himself with excellent reproductions. Nothing later than the furniture of the Eighteenth Century is included in the term, "old furniture." There are many fine cabinet makers in the early Nineteenth Century, but from them until the last decade the horrors that were perpetrated have never been equaled in the history of household decorations.

I fancy the furniture of the mid-Victorian era will never be coveted by collectors, unless someone should build a museum for the freakish objects of house furnishing. America could contribute much to such a collection, for surely the black walnut era of the Nineteenth Century will never be surpassed in ugliness and bad taste, unless—rare fortune—there should be a sudden epidemic of appreciation among cabinet-makers, which would result in their taking the beautiful wood in the black walnut beds and wardrobes and such and make it over into worth-while things. It would be a fine thing to release the mistreated, velvety wood from its grotesqueries, and give it a renaissance in graceful cabinets, small tables, footstools, and the many small things that could be so easily made from huge unwieldy wardrobes and beds and bureaux.

The workmen of to-day have their eyes opened. They have no excuse for producing unworthy things, when the greatest private collections are loaned or given outright to the museums. The new wing of the Metropolitan Museum in New York houses several fine old collections of furniture, the Hoentschel collection, for which the wing was really planned, having been given to the people of New York by Mr. Pierpont Morgan. This collection is an education in the French decorative arts. Then, too, there is the Bolles collection of American furniture presented to the museum by Mrs. Russell Sage.

I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies. There is no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers of the Eighteenth Century: we give them respect for their masterly workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity to the masterpieces they reproduce.

Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture shop. He paid for it—you may be sure of that!—and he could hardly wait for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors. Within a few months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered on the inside of the frame the maker's name and address. Imagine his chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture factory in his own country. You can't be sorry for him, you feel that it served him right.



This is an excellent example of the vain collector who cannot judge for himself, but will not admit it. He has not developed his sense of beauty, his instinct for excellence of workmanship. He thinks that because he has the money to pay for the treasure, the treasure must be genuine—hasn't he chosen it?

I can quite understand the pleasure that goes with furnishing a really old house with objects of the period in which the house was built. A New England farmhouse, for instance, may be an inspiration to the owner, and you can understand her quest of old fashioned rush bottomed chairs and painted settles and quaint mirrors and blue homespun coverlets. You can understand the man who falls heir to a good, square old Colonial house who wishes to keep his furnishings true to the period, but you cannot understand the crying need for Eighteenth Century furniture in a modern shingle house, or the desire for old spinning wheels and battered kitchen utensils in a Spanish stucco house, or Chippendale furniture in a forest bungalow.

I wish people generally would study the oak and walnut furniture of old England, and use more reproductions of these honest, solid pieces of furniture in their houses. Its beauty is that it is "at home" in simple American houses, and yet by virtue of its very usefulness and sturdiness it is not out of place in a room where beautiful objects of other periods are used. The long oak table that is so comfortably ample for books and magazines and flowers in your living-room may be copied from an old refectory table—but what of it? It fulfils its new mission just as frankly as the original table served the monks who used it.

The soft brown of oak is a pleasure after the over-polished mahogany of a thousand rooms. I do not wish to condemn Colonial mahogany furniture, you understand. I simply wish to remind you that there are other woods and models available. French furniture of the best type represents the supreme art of the cabinet-maker, and is incomparable for formal rooms, but I am afraid the time will never come when French furniture will be interchangeable with the oak and mahogany of England and America.

In short, the whole thing should be a matter of taste and suitability. If you have a few fine old things that have come to you from your ancestors—a grandfather's clock, an old portrait or two—you are quite justified in bringing good reproductions of similar things into your home. The effect is the thing you are after, isn't it? Then, too, you will escape the awful fever that makes any antique seem desirable, and in buying reproductions you can select really comfortable furniture. You will be independent of the dreadful vases and candelabra and steel engravings "of the period," and will feel free to use modern prints and Chinese porcelains and willow chairs and anything that fits into your home. I can think of no slavery more deadly to one's sense of humor than collecting antiques indiscriminately!



XVIII

THE ART OF TRELLIAGE

When I planned the trellis room of the Colony Club in New York I had hard work finding workmen who could appreciate the importance of crossing and recrossing little strips of green wood, of arranging them to form a mural decoration architectural in treatment. This trellis room was, I believe, the first in America to be so considered, though the use of trellis is as old as architecture in Japan, China, Arabia, Egypt, Italy, France and Spain.

The earliest examples of trellis work shown are in certain Roman frescoes. In Pompeii the mural paintings give us a very good idea of what some of the Roman gardens were like. In the entrance hall of the house of Sallust is represented a garden with trellised niches and bubbling fountains. Representations that have come down to us in documents show that China and Japan both employed the trellis in their decorative schemes. You will find a most daring example on your old blue willow plate, if you will look closely enough. The bridge over which the flying princess goes to her lover is a good model, and could be built in many gardens. Even a tiny modern garden, yours or mine, might hold this fairy bridge.

Almost all Arabian decorations have their basis in trellis design or arabesques filled in with the intricate tracery that covers all their buildings. If we examine the details of the most famous of the old Moorish buildings that remain to us, the mosque at Cordova and the Alhambra at Granada, we shall find them full of endless trellis suggestions. Indeed, there are many documents still extant showing how admirably trellis decoration lends itself to the decoration of gardens and interiors. There are dozens of examples of niches built to hold fine busts. Pavilions and summer houses, the quaint gazebos of old England, the graceful screens of trellis that terminate a long garden path, the arching gateways crowned with vines—all these may be reproduced quite easily in American gardens.

The first trellis work in France was inspired by Italy, but the French gave it a perfection of architectural character not found in other countries. The manuscript of the "Romance of the Rose," dating back to the Fifteenth Century, contains the finest possible example of trellis in a medieval garden. Most of the old French gardens that remain to us have important trellis construction. At Blois one still sees the remains of a fine trellis covering the walls of the kitchen gardens. Wonderful and elaborate trellis pavillons, each containing a statue, often formed the centers of very old gardens. These garden houses were called gazebos in England, and Temples d'Amour (Temples of Love) in France, and the statue most often seen was the god of Love. In the Trianon gardens at Versailles there is a charming Temple d'Amour standing on a tiny island, with four small canals leading to it.

A knowledge of the history of trelliage and an appreciation of its practical application to modern needs is a conjurer's wand—you can wave it and create all sorts of ephemeral constructions that will last your time and pleasure. You may give your trellis any poetic shape your vision may take. You may dream and realize enchanting gardens, with clipped hedges and trellis walls. You may transform a commonplace porch into a gay garden room, with a few screens of trellis and many flower boxes of shrubs and vines. Here indeed is a delightful medium for your fancy!

Trelliage and lattice work are often used as interchangeable terms, but mistakenly, for any carpenter who has the gift of precision can build a good lattice, but a trellis must have architectural character. Trellis work is not necessarily flimsy construction; the light chestnut laths that were used by the old Frenchmen and still remain to us prove that.

Always in a garden I think one must feel one has not come to the end, one must go on and on in search of new beauties and the hidden delights we feel sure must be behind the clipped hedges or the trellis walls. Even when we come to the end we are not quite sure it is the end, and we steep ourselves in seclusion and quiet, knowing full well that to-morrow or to-night perhaps when the moon is up and we come back as we promise ourselves to do, surely we shall see that ideal corner that is the last word of the perfection of our dream garden—that delectable spot for which we forever seek!

We can bring back much of the charm of the old-time gardens by a judicious use of trellis. It is suitable for every form of outdoor construction. A new garden can be subdivided and made livable in a few months with trellis screens, where hedges, even of the quick growing privet, would take years to grow. The entrance to the famous maze at Versailles, now, alas, utterly destroyed, was in trellis, and I have reproduced in our own garden at Villa Trianon, in Versailles, the entrance arch and doors, all in trellis. Our high garden fence with its curving gate is also in trellis, and you can imagine the joy with which we watched the vines grow, climbing over the gatetop as gracefully as if they too felt the charm of the curving tracery of green strips, and cheerfully added the decoration of their leaves and tendrils.



Our outdoor trellis is at the end of the Villa Trianon garden, in line with the terrace where we take our meals. This trellis was rebuilt many times before it satisfied me, but now it is my greatest joy. The niches are planned to hold two old statues and several prim box trees. I used very much the same constructive design on one of the walls of the Colony Club trellis room, but there a fountain has the place of honor. Formal pedestals surmounted by gracefully curved urns, box trees, statues, marble benches, fountains—all these belong to the formal outdoor trellis.

The trellis is primarily suitable for garden architecture, but it may be fitted to interior uses most skilfully. Pictures of the trellis room in the Colony Club have been shown so often it is not necessary to repeat more than one of them. The room is long and high, with a floor of large red tiles. The walls and ceiling are covered with rough gray plaster, on which the green strips of wood are laid. The wall space is entirely covered with the trellis design broken into ovals which hold lighting-fixtures—grapes and leaves in cloudy glass and green enamel. The long room leads up to the ivy-covered trellis of the fountain wall, a perfect background for the fountain, a bowl on the brim of which is poised a youthful figure, upheld by two dolphins. The water spills over into a little pool, banked with evergreens. Ivy has been planted in long boxes along the wall, and climbs to the ceiling, where the plaster is left bare, save for the trellised cornice and the central trellis medallion, from which is suspended an enchanting lantern made up of green wires and ivy leaves and little white flames of electric light.