The House in Good Taste

by Elsie De Wolfe

I wonder if half the fathers and mothers in creation know just what it means later on to the boys and girls going out from their roof-tree to have the memory of such a living-room?

A living-room may be a simple place used for all the purposes of living, or it may be merely an official clearing-house for family moods, one of a dozen other living apartments. The living-room in the modern bungalow, for instance, is often dining-room, library, hall, music-room, filling all the needs of the family, while in a large country or city house there may be the central family room, and ever so many little rooms that grow out of the overflow needs—the writing-room, the tea room that is also sun and breakfast room, the music-room and the library. In more elaborate houses there are also the great hall, the formal drawing-room and music-room, and the intimate boudoir. To all these should be given a goodly measure of comfort.

Whether it be one or a dozen rooms, the spirit of it must be the same—it must offer comfort, order, and beauty to be worth living in.

Just as when a large family is to be considered I believe in one big meeting-room and a number of smaller rooms for special purposes, so I believe that when a family is very small there should be one great living-room and no other day room. Two young people who purpose to live in a small cottage or a bungalow will be wise to have this one big room that will serve for dining-room, living-room, and all. The same house divided into a number of tiny rooms would suffocate them: there would be no breathing-space. In furnishing such a room it is well to beware of sets of things: of six dining-room chairs, of the conventional dining-table, serving-table, and china closet. I advocate the use of a long table—four by seven feet is not too long—and a number of good chairs that are alike in style, but not exactly alike.

The chairs should not be the conventional dining-chairs. The idea that the only dining-room chair possible is a perfectly straight up and down stiff-backed chair is absurd. In a large house where there is a family dining-room the chairs should be alike, but in an informal living-room the chairs may be perfectly comfortable and useful between meals and serve the purposes of dining-room chairs when necessary. For instance, with a long oak table built on the lines of the old English refectory tables you might have a long bench of oak and cane; a large high back chair with arms of the Stuart order, that is, with graceful, turned legs, carved frame work, and cane insets; two Cromwellian chairs covered in some good stuff; and two or three straight oak-and-cane chairs of a simple type. These chairs may be used for various purposes between meals, and will not give the room the stiff and formal air that straight-backed chairs invariably produce. One could imagine this table drawn up to a window-seat, with bench and chairs beside it, and a dozen cheerful people around it. There will be little chance of stiffness at such a dining-table.

It should be remembered that when a part of the living-room is used for meals, the things that suggest dining should be kept out of sight between meals. All the china and so forth should be kept in the pantry or in kitchen cupboards. The table may be left bare between meals.

In a room of this kind the furniture should be kept close to the walls, leaving all the space possible for moving around in the center of the room. The book shelves should be flat against the wall; there should be a desk, not too clumsy in build near the book shelves or at right angles to some window; there should be a sofa of some kind near the fireplace with a small table at the head of it, which may be used for tea or books or what not. If there is a piano, it should be very carefully placed so that it will not dominate the room, and so that the people who will listen to the music may gather in the opposite corner of the room. Of course, a living-room of this kind is the jolliest place in the world when things go smoothly, but there are times when a little room is a very necessary place to retreat. This little room may be the study, library, or a tea room, but it is worth while sacrificing your smallest bedroom in order to have one small place of retreat.

If you can have a number of living-rooms, you can follow more definite schemes of decoration. If you have a little enclosed piazza you can make a breakfast room or a trellis room of it, or by bringing in many shelves and filling them with flowers you can make the place a delightful little flower box of a room for tea and talk.

Of course, if you live in the real country you will be able to use your garden and your verandas as additional living-rooms. With a big living-porch, the one indoor living-room may become a quiet library, for instance. But if you haven't a garden or a sun-room, you should do all in your power to bring the sunshine and gaiety into the living-room, and take your books and quiet elsewhere. A library eight by ten feet, with shelves all the way around and up and down, and two comfortable chairs, and one or two windows, will be a most satisfactory library. If the room is to be used for reading smallness doesn't matter, you see.

We Americans love books—popular books!—and we have had sense enough to bring them into our living-rooms, and enjoy them. But when you begin calling a room a library it should mean something more than a small mahogany bookcase with a hundred volumes hidden behind glass doors. I think there is nothing more amusing than the unused library of the nouveau riche, the pretentious room with its monumental bookcases and its slick area of glass doors and its thousands of unread volumes, caged eternally in their indecent newness.