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