It is a mistake to clutter, as even the most cadavre of amateurs is aware. A touch here; a touch there—and for the rest, no cluttering! I have always considered the Metropolitan Museum a dismaying example of cluttering. One work of art is enough for one room. When I remodelled the Rockford collection of Chinoiseries I selected just one antique absinthe-colored jade Buddha, which was exactly an inch and three sixteenths in height, half an inch wide and three eighths of an inch in thickness. I then decided upon one of the gallery exhibition rooms, seventeen feet in height with a floor space sixty-four feet by twenty-six, admirable proportions for my purpose. I had the floor and walls lacquered a neutral mauve, and then placed the jade Buddha in the exact centre of the floor and without a pedestal. Not even a chair or a settee was permitted within the room; the walls were without any adornment whatever, and the attention of spectators was thus concentrated upon the one work of art present, the jade Buddha. The effect, though slightly Dada and austere, was considered serene and redolent of that allure of restfulness which is distinctive.
Almost precisely similar to this was my treatment of a pair of signed Louis Seize candle-snuffers of chased silver, formerly the property of Judge Bunting Palliphet, of Peterborough, Virginia, whose ancestors entertained Rochambeau. A well-authenticated family legend had it that the snuffers were in the Count’s portmanteau, which he was unable to find at the moment of his departure from Palliphet Manor; and thus it became an heirloom of the Palliphet family. The snuffers are now in the possession of Mrs. George Woll Potter, of Jersey City, who visited the Manor in 1899, during the absence of the Palliphet family, and it was in doing over the Potter house that I perceived the proper decorative value of these historic snuffers. I had a simple bit of neutral-toned rope hung between two posts outside the library windows; and suspended the snuffers therefrom, forming a vista of approach to them with two perfectly symmetrical rows of arborvitae in black-and-white tubs. The effect was harmonious and yet did not lack that touch of originality which gives the right note at the right moment.
How few people understand what may be done with a simple pair of brass candlesticks! Does not one weary of seeing them eternally upon a mantel? Upon a top bookshelf? Upon the gate-leg table? Upon a set-in window-sill? There we find them invariably, driving us mad with their monotony, when only a slight exertion of the imagination would give them the touch that is different, the charm that is permanent. I have found that it is only necessary to place one such candlestick in the front yard and the other in the back yard to give them a setting that is in keeping. Thus they can be seen from the windows, their sheen rich against the out-of-doors, except at night; and then, if it seems desirable, they may be lighted. It is not necessary to bring them in when it rains. A light water-proof canopy, easily removable, may be placed over them and will be found to give complete protection, and even to add a note of color, if glazed with silver-gilt, the right shade of apricot and just touched with cerise.
Now a word of confession: it is not always the easiest thing in the world to go into a house and give it the right decorative note. The owners may have their own ideas and one must move tactfully. Let me give an instance, though the gentleman in question shall be nameless and designated merely as General X. He was a delightful man, elderly, a retired army officer, a manly and gallant widower, notwithstanding the fact that he possessed strong convictions that his own taste was excellent.
He had gathered about him from all parts of the world a valuable assembly of antiques, bibelots, paintings, stuffed animals, sculptures, seashells, wood-carvings, miniatures, and petiteries, but had so misplaced them in his halls and living-room and even in his master’s rooms that one saw nothing but a heterogeneity of clutter.
I began with his master’s rooms. I went through one after another of these, ordering everything—absolutely everything—removed to the garrets and cellars. Then, when all was clear, I had my assistants place one old Tutu Japanese print in each of his master’s rooms—nothing more—and awaited the General’s return, for he was out at the time.
He was not at first able to comprehend that the new arrangement was intended to be permanent.
“Well,” he remarked, smiling pleasantly, “I see you have made a beginning, Madame Thomas.”
“No,” I smiled. “I have made a conclusion. Your master’s rooms are finished. They now have that restfulness, that air intime which your master’s rooms lacked until I retouched them. This is how they are to remain, General.”
He was dumbfounded. “But I miss everything to which I have been heretofore accustomed!” he cried, with charming naïvete. “In my master’s rooms were my favorite claw and ball feet, my inlaid knees, my carved knees, all my knees of curly maple and walnut! Here were my bottle drawers, my swell fronts, my double-swell fronts, my Jacob’s-ladder fronts, my serpentine fronts—all the fronts I had! I wish my fronts and knees put back the way they were. I won’t have my master’s rooms as empty as this!”