Upon this point all the writers upon house decoration are as one, and Mr. Cook, in his “House Beautiful” says: “Seeing no certain way to prevent the evil so long as drain pipes are allowed in bedrooms, many people nowadays are giving up fixed washstands altogether, and substituting the old fashioned arrangement of a movable piece of furniture, with movable apparatus, the water brought in pitchers, and the slops carried away in their native slop jars.” Whether healthier or not, I think there can be no doubt that the old way is more comfortable by far.
Setting both health and comfort to one side for a moment, there can be no doubt that the movable washstand, with its paraphernalia of bowls and pitchers, is a more sightly and decorative object in the bedroom than any set washbowl arrangement that has yet been contrived. Of course I am referring to the introduction of waste pipes into the bedroom proper, not to toilet or bath-rooms outside its walls.
In cold weather the bedroom air should be a little cooler, perhaps, than that of the living rooms of the house, but not many degrees lower.
Our fathers and mothers, when boys and girls, slept in rooms freezing cold, and broke the ice in their water pitchers in the morning; but they lived in spite of this, not because of it. There is a deal of loose thinking on this subject. Cold air is no healthier than warm. It is impure air, warm or cold, that is unhealthy, the cold being specially pernicious; witness the church influenza, that most obstinate and unconquerable of all colds, because contracted by sitting in a chilling atmosphere after the body’s vitality has been reduced through breathing air that has not been renewed since the last service held in the room.
There was a clever story called “Lizzie Wilson,” published in Littell’s Living Age, years ago, in which a clergyman’s poor widow is represented as bringing up satisfactorily, through many straits, a family of young children. As their bedrooms were not heated, they had a joint dressing room, where the boy of the household first lighted the fire, and then dressed himself, his mother and sisters occupying the room later, in turn. This indulgence in the way of comfort, which might have been deemed an extravagance by others as poor as themselves, was paid for by going without dessert three days of the week; and the children, when cosily warming their backs before the dressing room fire, were pleased to call it “taking a slice of pudding.” A wise household economy of this sort, less pudding and pie and more fires, would not be amiss in many American homes. To keep one room intolerably hot, and all others without any heat, is a wasteful retrenchment, which must be paid for in doctors’ bills and funerals.
The question of single or double beds is also one of some hygienic importance. When a room is to be occupied by more than one person, the European custom of placing two single beds side by side has great advantage over the English double bed fashion. I have known mothers to assert that they observed a marked improvement in the health and temper of nervous, irritable children, after the little ones had been removed to single beds, where they could rest without disturbance from a bedfellow; and no one doubts that sickly or delicate people should occupy single beds.
As to color, I confess to a stout prejudice against getting up rooms all in one hue. I would banish altogether the young-ladyish dainty pink or blue room, and confine the green room to the theater. It is very hard to so manage a symphony in blue, for example, that it shall be truly symphonious. The cretonne furniture covers are apt to contain some analine dyes that fade to forlorn and sickly hues in place of their original smartness. The blue of the wall paper will never agree with that of the carpet, and the cheap paper cambric or stouter jean that peeps through the muslin toilet cover grows paler with age, and each passing day increases the general discord.
White rooms with snowy and spotless walls, curtains and bedcovers, such as certain nun-like story-book young ladies affect, are chilling in the extreme. Their immaculate purity alone renders them endurable, and even then the obtrusiveness of their Dutch-like cleanliness is exasperating. A dingy white room is even more ugly than an ill-assorted blue one.
If the walls are plain, let the curtains be figured with various colors; if the walls are papered with figured polychrome hangings, let the curtains be plain, but harmonizing with some one color of the wall paper. That same color can be emphasized and repeated in carpet, rugs, and table or bureau cover, but no one color should be used to the exclusion of all others, as the eye wearies of neutral tints unrelieved by positive color without a large proportion of neutral tinted space.
A bedroom should look as if intended for the use of its occupants. Much millinery, quilled and ruffled muslin, and toilet tables in fine petticoats are only allowable in the room of a dainty young girl who has plenty of time to spend in renewing and freshening up her ephemeral finery, or in a guest chamber that is seldom used, and is thus made to look pretty at slight expense. Knick-knackeries of this sort provoke the righteous wrath of sturdy men, and they are quite out of taste in that most home-like of all gathering places, the mother’s room. For the name of that chamber should always be Peace and Comfort. It should be of all bedrooms the most commodious, the most convenient of access, with the largest of drawers, the roomiest of closets, the most restful of chairs, and a boundless welcome to all the household.