Just so inviting was the entrance to my wise woman’s house when I last visited her. It was a house with a door in the middle, the hall running through the entire depth. Midway, an arch curtained with Mexican blankets half screened the back hall, which served for the family music room. Facing the piano was a long, old-fashioned sofa, where the weary head of the house could lie and be rested by music from his daughter’s fingers or the voices of his children. This happy man, who had his quiver full of them, had one of those charming houses that grows with the household. Near the side entrance, what used to be a dining-room is now known as the coat room. I saw one side of the room literally lined with coats and wraps, hats and bonnets, depending from some hat rack arrangement of domestic manufacture. Boots, shoes, and galoches of all shapes and sizes stood in a suitable rack beneath. Guns and hunting gear, fishing rods and tackles, bows and arrows, grace hoops, battle-doors and shuttle-cocks, tennis rackets and croquet mallets and balls all found their appointed places here. Water and towels awaited the convenience of those who must make a partial toilet in haste. Even the shoe-blacking had its own corner. A book case on the wall held well thumbed grammars and geographies side by side with dictionaries, college text-books and a cook book or two; while before the fireplace that “filled the room on one side,” you might see a young Nimrod greasing his boots or polishing his gun; and later, the little folks popping corn, making caramels, or boiling taffy. When the wise woman, after looking well to the ways of her household, devises such liberal things as these in their behalf, no wonder her children rise up and call her blessed.
The room on which the average American housekeeper expends the most thought and pains is the parlor, as she calls it. The word parlor means, primarily, a room for conversation. Properly speaking, the room where members of the family gather that they may talk together, is the parlor (from the French parler), but somehow the word has been applied to “the best room of a house, kept for receiving company, as distinguished from the sitting room of the family.” We have an English word for that—drawing room—contracted from withdrawing room—a room appropriated for the reception of guests “to which a company withdraws from the dining room.” Since the household is more important than the house, the best of the house should be at the service of the household; hence whatever is most comfortable and cheerful should be in the parlor where the family congregate. If aside from the dining room and kitchen there is but one other room on the first floor, let that be the parlor for family use, the “living room,” unless there be a family sitting room on the second floor.
For people who entertain many guests the reception or withdrawing room is a necessity, and it is often convenient in city houses to have, in addition, a smaller room near the door, where the lady of the house can receive visitors without disturbing the family party or the friends whom she may be entertaining in the drawing room.
There is never need of saying to an American housewife, let the room where you receive your friends be as handsome as may be. I would rather say let it be as comfortable as you know how to make it. Do not keep it dark and unwholesome, stuffy and shut up. If your economical soul refuses to expose its treasures always to the light of day, at least do your best to make the room look habitable, and as if it were put into daily use. What can be more embarrassing to a guest than to be ushered into a dark room, cold and repellent in winter, close and stifling in summer, there to wait drearily till the mistress of the house has donned her good clothes and is ready to push back the shutter or raise the curtain that she may have light enough to recognize her guest?
Our English sisters set us a good example in this respect. Their drawing rooms are made comfortable, with easy chairs strong enough to hold a man’s weight, with tables conveniently placed, with books here and an embroidery frame there, and a lady’s work basket near at hand, not at all too fine for daily use. I have seen an American lady hustle her work basket out of the room when the door-bell rang, hide her thimble in her pocket, and assume an air of elegant idleness and leisure, as if she were ashamed to be caught needle in hand. Her English sister, better bred, would lay down her work to welcome her guest, and resume it again, as a matter of course, to set her visitor at ease.
A marble-topped center table is not essential to a drawing room; nor are a photograph album and illustrated books essential ornaments of the center table. The morning papers, the last number of The Century, and a readable book are more attractive ornaments than the most costly album, though filled with pictures of all the celebrities you have ever seen. I would have a book case, at least a book-shelf, in every room in the house—I have three in my hall, even—and the reception room surely is no exception to the rule. Let there be books at hand for the entertainment of guests, and let there be every facility possible for rendering the room light enough to read or to sew. In a large room there should be more than one table, and student lamps in abundance where there is no gas. Where gas is burned there should still be lamps or drop-lights on the tables. Parsimony in lamp-light is as bad as parsimony in fuel or in bedding, and results in serious injury to the eyes. As to the matter of heating our houses, there have been so many funny things done in the attempt to affect a compromise between the fire place and the furnace that almost every house has in it something incongruous in this line. The old-fashioned fireplace for burning wood was healthful and artistic, but it often smoked, and in the depth of winter seldom gave out sufficient heat. The grate in which anthracite coal is burned, or soft coal, was good, but the care of the coal fire, though not so continuous as of the wood, was still a heavy burden. There is a price to pay for every comfort, and we can not rightly enjoy the comfort without paying its full price. But that seemed a hard doctrine, and so the inventors went to work. They gave up that abomination, the air-tight stove, which rose in grim blackness an offense to the eye, and parched all the air for us before we had breathed it in. Then the furnace came in and there was an era of real rejoicing. Fireplaces were walled up and holes cut in all the floors, but with hot air furnaces there were new complications. Water pans which should be replenished daily were as often as not left empty, and the air was no better to breathe than that baked dry by an air-tight stove, and the fire, as a rule, required a man’s hand. Beside, holes in the floor were not inviting to have around. But the furnace, whether hot air or steam, did warm the house. Thermometers stood at from seventy to eighty instead of being kept where they belonged, down in the sixties, and throat and lung diseases multiplied. Then some one who had not forgotten the cheer of the fireplace introduced the hot air from a chimney register, giving out heat, with no sign of fire, from the old spot, and then came the make-believe iron logs with an internal gas arrangement which was lighted when guests came, and burned in a pathetic, appealing way, provoking the beholder now to laughter and now to tears.
It was left to the æsthetic craze to bring in the last and worst affront of all to comfort and common sense, a fireplace with highly glazed tiles and elaborate wrought iron back, with choice and costly fenders, tongs, and andirons of brass and steel, with all the appointments of the fireplace of the most luxurious stamp, but all too fine for possible use, with absolutely nothing intended for use. The poor, foolish, iron logs never deceived any one, but they burned; nevertheless, these beautifully tiled fireplaces, with their spick and span hearths are mere husks, and are as loathsome and cluttersome as are the “air castles” and wax fruit, which these æsthetics would banish in contempt from their homes. The height of luxury is to have the sharpness of winter’s cold subdued by a good furnace in the cellar, which modifies the air all over the house, and then to have open fires here and there to give cheer as well as additional warmth and good ventilation, and a fireplace finished with plain brick, without a tile, the brick work, freshened up occasionally by painting it with Indian red mixed with milk, after the fashion of fifty years ago, or a plain iron grate for coal, used as occasion calls, is in better taste for a drawing room than the most elaborate combination of tiles, brass and steel kept for mere show. When any object, not alone a fireplace, but any object designed primarily for use is so excessively ornamented as to fail of its mission of utility, this very excess of decoration becomes an offense and renders the object neither useful nor beautiful.
Wm. Morris’s stringent rule, “Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” applies with full force to the drawing room; and when the housekeeper has striven first of all to supply her drawing room with comfortable, useful pieces of furniture, she may look around her with surprise to find that almost without her thought the place has grown beautiful as well.
[A] Powder—a technical term used in heraldry—a figure is powdered on a coat of arms, when it is repeated at uniform intervals over its surface.