On no account, by the way, allow your front door to be disfigured with the terrible ‘graining,’ against which I am always waging war. Painters always beg to be allowed to ‘embellish’ at least the front door with the hideous but orthodox arrangement of yellows and browns, scraped mysteriously and agonisedly with a comb, or some such instrument, in a faint and feeble attempt to deceive callers into believing that the door is made of some highly polished wood, veined by nature, in a way that could not deceive the veriest ignoramus; but I stoutly set my face against such an idea, and denounce graining as the hideous and palpable sham it undoubtedly is, advising all who come to me to have some good deep self-colour for their front door, and generally suggesting a very dark peacock-blue door for a ‘blue blossom’ hall, a very dark Indian red for the red berry, and a dark sage-green for the sage-green hall, adding brass handles and furniture; this stamps the house at once as an artistic one, and one in which ‘graining’ will not be allowed at any price.
And here I will pause for a moment to beg any one who may need these words of mine to refuse to allow any graining whatever in their houses; it is a barbarism that should be allowed to die out as quickly as may be; it is always ugly, always inartistic, and, being an undoubted attempt to seem what it is not, I set my face against it always. I would rather have deal, rubbed over with boiled oil, than the most ‘artistically’ imitated piece of walnut or mahogany ever produced by the grainer’s tools; the one is neat, the other a vulgar sham—vulgar because it is always vulgar to seem to be what one is not, and to pretend to be what can be contradicted by the tiniest scratch, rather than to be confessedly of a cheap material, and therefore graining cannot be too strongly condemned.
Many people cling to it who dislike it as much as I do, because they are told nothing can be done to it, unless all the paint is burned off; there never was a greater fallacy! To paint over graining all one has to do is to have the paint washed thoroughly with strong soda and water, and then rubbed down with glass-paper, then apply one coat of Aspinall’s water-paint and one coat of his enamel, and you can possess at once all the colour you require, without any trouble at all. Of course a perfect ‘job’ is only made by burning off the paint, but no one could ever tell this had not been done, and very particular people can themselves apply first of all Carson’s ‘detergent,’ sold at Carson’s paint works, La Belle Sauvage Yard, for 5s. a tin; this brings off the old paint in flakes, and leaves the bare wood ready for the painter’s brush. Still this is not necessary, and people who have kept to graining because they dread the burning-off process need do so no longer, unless they positively cannot afford the new paint required to cover it over.
A stone hall in the country looks much better if the stones are painted a good red or blue, instead of being whitened daily, and Treloar’s scarlet cocoanut matting is invaluable in back passages and on kitchen stairs; and above all we must recollect that the hall gives the first welcome to our guests, and that therefore the more it resembles a cosy, comfortable, artistic room, the more likely is the rest of the house to be a charming and successfully designed and furnished home.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DINING-ROOM.
In my first chapter I laid just a little stress on the word ‘suitable’; but in looking back at it, I find I did not say half what I intended to on the subject of making that most suggestive tri-syllable our guiding star, as it were, in our whole scheme of life, and it may not be out of place just to dwell upon it a little, before proceeding to lay out any money, because if we calmly and dispassionately regulate our desires by their appropriateness to our purse, and our standing in the social scale, we shall find our requirements diminish sensibly, and our purchasing powers increased in the most pleasing and comfortable way.
Therefore, in starting to buy the furniture for our modest dining-room, let us consider not what is handsome or effective or taking to the eye, but what is suitable to Edwin’s position, and what will be pleasant for Angelina to possess, without having unduly to agitate herself and worry herself to death in nervously protecting her goods and chattels from wear and tear, which often enough is reflected on her, and wears and tears her nerves, and takes up her time in a manner that would be pathetic, if it were not so ridiculous and so extremely unsuitable to her position as a British matron. Therefore, with a small income it is the reverse of suitable to make purchases that can never be replaced without months of anxious striving and saving; for though, of course, incomes may increase, they seldom increase in proportion to the wants of the household; and it is better to buy strong plain furniture, to purchase cheap and pretty carpets and draperies that can be replaced without a serious drain on our income, than to revel in expensive chairs and tables which, should they be scratched and broken, can never be matched without much more sacrifice than they are worth; and if we march along manfully, determined to act suitably, not fashionably, we shall enjoy life a thousand times better, and have at the same time the pleasing consciousness that we are doing good to our fellow-creatures, without knowing it perhaps, but most satisfactorily; for example is worth a thousand precepts, and practising is more than a million sermons, all the world over.