Thought is inclined to wander amid the freedom of a large room. But though the study should not be a vast apartment, it should be sufficiently spacious for comfort and to avoid overcrowding. Sufficiently large it should also be and the ceiling sufficiently high to insure a pure atmosphere. On account of ventilation, a fire-place is of great advantage in the room where one is engaged in sedentary pursuits. It is the next thing to the walk and the elixir of the open air. De Quincey worked in a room seventeen by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high. The low ceilings must have oppressed him; and the vitiated air and sense of suffocation, it is not unlikely, led him to yield to the dangerous stimulus that inspired the Confessions.
Most wisely has Leigh Hunt discoursed upon the study and its surroundings in that ever-pleasing essay, My Books. “I do not like this fine large study. I like elegance. I like room to breathe in, and even walk about, when I want to breathe and walk about. I like a great library next my study; but for the study itself give me a small, snug place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window in it looking on trees.... I dislike a grand library to study in. I mean an immense apartment with books all in museum order, especially wire-safed. I say nothing against the museum itself, or public libraries.... A grand private library, which the master of the house also makes his study, never looks to me like a real place of books, much less of authorship. I can not take kindly to it. It is certainly not out of envy; for three parts of the books are generally trash, and I can seldom think of the rest and the proprietor together.”
To be attractive and cozy, the study need not be extravagantly furnished. As in other apartments of the house, light is one of its first requisites; with color, ease, quiet, and, if possible, a pleasant prospect. In the study, above all, no discordant elements should intrude. The general tone of the walls, decorations, and furnishings, while rich, should yet be subdued and restful. A glaring placque, a staring figure in the wall or carpet pattern, or any subject unpleasing in its nature or sentiment, whether in paintings, pictures, or ornaments, has no place in an apartment which, by its very atmosphere, should conduce to reverie and a contemplative frame of mind. Let dreamful landscapes, rather than figures in action, adorn and complement the rich slate or sage of its walls and hangings; and I picture my ideal study, when my second ship comes in, hung round about solely with Daubigny’s tender twilights and peaceful river-reaches on his calm and slowly gliding Oise.
For the closer concentration of thought, the working-chair would be placed in the most attractive corner of the apartment, back of the spacious writing-desk, with its amplitude of drawers and pigeon-holes; its topmost shelf and other convenient places so arranged with pictures and portraits of favorite authors and dear or absent friends as to create and constantly diffuse an atmosphere of congenial companionship.
A carved book-rest should hold the dictionary in place close to the working-chair, and a revolving case within arm’s reach should bring to it desired works of reference and such especially treasured volumes from which ideas may be collected—another name for inspiration. I would mention some of these—each worthy of crushed levant covers, the handicraft of a Padeloup or Payne—but for the fact that every one should choose such inspirations for himself. One may not be guided by another’s choice in a face or book that charms.
Once during the day, but always unperceived, save for an added freshness pervading the apartment, my study should respond to the touch of gentle fingers. Then, as I mount the secret staircase when I would be alone—a lingering aroma of violets and the vanishing rustle of a silken robe.
