Twentieth Century Culture and Deportment / Or the Lady and Gentleman at Home and Abroad; Containing Rules of Etiquette for All Occasions, Including Calls; Invitations; Parties; Weddings; Receptions; Dinners and Teas; Etiquette of the Street; Public Places, Etc., Etc. Forming a Complete Guide to Self-Culture; the Art of Dressing Well; Conversation; Courtship; Etiquette for Children; Letter-Writing; Artistic Home and Interior Decorations, Etc.

by Maud C. Cooke

Home of the Soul.

A mystic German writer calls a house, properly ordered, the “home of the soul,” carrying out the idea that the house in which an orderly soul lives, is only an expansion of the body built and adorned out of her passing experiences. “All sorts of delicate affinities establish themselves between her and the lights and shadows of her abode; the particular picture on the wall; the scent of flowers at a particular window until she seems incorporated into it.”

In other words, one’s environments, as one’s dress, must be in harmony with their individual type, or a permanent discord will result; for instance, Emma Moffett Tyng speaks of a “pond-lily type of woman, soft color, gray blue eyes, pale brown eyes,” appealing to her as to the “effect” of the gorgeous, redecorated interior of her home, with flames of color in hangings and rugs, and “her Egyptian gown with its glow and glint of purple and gold. All these things were artistic and beautiful, and perfect in their relations to each other,” but in their relation to her nothing could have been worse. The woman, herself, was eclipsed, obliterated. “A Cleopatra, dark and flashing, would make the picture complete. But such a colorless woman needs repose in her surroundings; the low tones of blue and gray, the palest flush of the sunset heavens.”