The perfect câche-feu has yet to be invented, but until some clever genius has done this, either of the above ideas answers quite well; but I do solemnly warn my readers against fashionable trellis-work with paper ivy and grapes wandering over it, fans outstretched in plush with senseless photographs let in—as if photographs could be in place on the hearth!—and all the thousand and one freaks of fashion that are brought out by those who ought to know better, and who have filled many houses to overflowing with terrible plush frames, soiled satin bags, useless odds and ends, and ghastly painted tables, brackets, and stands, which are costly to begin with, and so we do not like to dispose of them too hastily, and which should never be seen in the houses of those who really want to have an artistic and pretty home; with which solemn warning we will pass on to sterner subjects, and will consider in another chapter how to treat the more ‘manly’ portion of the house, where work or pleasure may be gone in for.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BILLIARD-ROOM AND LIBRARY.
‘There must be nothing frivolous, light, or airy in the aspect of either of these rooms; all must be sombre and steady, if not dark;’ and though I do not go so far as this—the ordinary dictum of the upholsterer—I am quite willing to allow that in the billiard-room at least lightness and frivolity are out of place, albeit I cannot allow that even this room need be sombre and dreary, while certainly it ought to light up well, as it is a room which is generally used merely at night.
Wherever it can be afforded, and wherever there are young men or lads in the house, there should always be a billiard-table, and the girls should be encouraged to play with their brothers and their brothers’ friends as long as their mother or father can remain in the room as some sort of guard and guide; the pleasanter home is made the less inclination will young men have to go elsewhere for their amusements, and if they are accustomed to be made happy and feel that their friends are welcome too, they will not keep outside home for the pleasure that is to be found without crossing the threshold. A billiard-room in winter, a couple of good tennis-courts in summer, and the hours of leisure will pass comfortably along, and leave neither time nor opportunities for less desirable pleasures.
Example is everything in a house: a thousand sermons will not speak as loudly against betting, and gambling, and drink—the horrors of my existence—as will the example of a house where such things are never allowed, and yet where amusements of all kinds are not frowned upon and refused, where games are encouraged for their own sakes, and where a healthy outdoor life replaces the bar-frequenting, loafing hours, which are all too often the portion of those who have been accustomed to ‘nipping’ and loafing, because they have seen these two habits allowed as a matter of course from their earliest days.
And before I speak of the mere walls and furniture of a billiard-room let me impress upon my readers not to allow this room to be turned into a base imitation of a tap-room. I am not a teetotaler, and have small patience with those intolerant individuals whose language and statements are all too often as bad and violent as they are absolutely unreliable and untrue, and I do not believe in the possibility of living our present eager and artificial existence without the aid of alcohol in some shape or the other, certainly not after we have borne the heat and stress of the day, and we require something stronger than water to sustain us, but I do absolutely condemn the insane and insensate habit in which so many indulge nowadays of continually drinking between meals. Were stimulants taken at meals only, were spirits, with the exception of brandy (which should be kept entirely as a most valuable medicine), abolished, we should have no drunkards, and the teetotalers would lose all excuse for their most unpleasant and untruthful existences; and as we now seldom see a drunkard in our streets, and never contemplate the pleasing scenes which after dinner, in our great-grandmothers’ times, were visible in many dining-rooms, from which no gentleman ever issued to join the ladies, because he was generally under the table or else fast asleep with both arms on it, I am in great hopes that we are learning to be a sober nation, though I hope sincerely never to see it an absolutely teetotal one, for beer and wine are necessary, I am convinced, in our climate, and we should be miserable indeed were we debarred, as the fanatics would debar us, from the use of all fermented or alcoholic drinks.
But we must be moderate and we must not drink between meals, and we must avoid the constant sodas-and-brandies which appear inseparable from some billiard-rooms, and to which is due, no doubt, the pious horror many good folks have of this chamber in a house; and I should like it to be firmly understood that the room was for the game merely, and that anything like ‘nipping’ would be at once and sternly discouraged. This being satisfactorily settled, we may proceed to plan and decorate our billiard-room with a clear conscience, secure in the fact that we are simply providing a place for innocent amusement, that will be of invaluable service at night and on wet Saturday afternoons, and that will not prove a snare and stumbling-block to any, more especially if we as sternly refuse to allow gambling as we refuse to allow imbibing at odd moments of the day or night.
I am always astonished that no crusade has been raised against the national sin of gambling. Drink ruins the homes of poor men, but not more certainly or rapidly than gambling ruins the homes of rich men, and of men far from rich. Drink may kill a man, but it takes a great many drunkards to imbibe an estate, while one night’s gambling may scatter the savings of a lifetime and turn all the wretched children of a selfish gambler into the streets to starve. I have been horrified sometimes to see ladies and gentlemen hot, eager, excited, gambling in private houses, the host actually bent on winning from those who are enjoying his hospitality, the hostess almost insulting her guests in her awful anxiety to gain the contents of their purses; and I am convinced that the only way to escape this demon is to refuse to pander to it at all, to never allow one single penny to be staked at cards in one’s own house, and to make this such a rule that it would be impossible to break it on any consideration whatever. I have seen pennies played for which begat the taste for gambling for much larger sums; and I have never seen a house where gambling was allowed truly prosper, or be anything save the residence of those whose ideas and hopes were centred in this world only, and never rose above the mere ‘society’ existence, than which nothing can be more despicable and awful.
This book is not a tract, and therefore I do not say one half I should like to on this subject; but as I remember the ruined homes—one family especially, where all are scattered and most are dead, where gambling went on in the schoolroom and drawing-room alike, at every moment which could be snatched for the purpose; the broken hearts, the miserably wrecked careers, entirely due to this vice; when one can hardly take up a paper without seeing the dreary fate of some wretched youth, whose tendencies to betting and gaming have caused him to rob his master’s till and landed him in penal servitude, I must say I cannot help feeling astonished that the eager teetotalers do not try their hands at putting down gaming, especially as they have the law on their side—the kind, good, well-devised law which snaps up little boys who play pitch-and-toss at the corners of the streets, that winks at Tattersall’s and the big races, and finally is utterly powerless to punish the high-class gamester, who spends his nights at gaming-hells and ruins his home and his wretched constitution at the same time.