Suburban Residences, and How to Circumvent Them

by J. E. Panton

Really it does seem a little late in the century to combat the vast disadvantages of wooden bedsteads! still, it must certainly be done, else once more shall we have to put up with them, to the great detriment of our health. Just think how impossible it would be to make a wooden bed absolutely safe should infectious disease seize the owner! Then too it encourages insects, and is open to all sorts of other objections which those who think can discover for themselves. Therefore stick to brass and iron and the excellent wire-woven mattresses, which only need supplementing with a really good hair mattress to make an ideal couch, particularly if we see the latter is turned every day, and moved from the head to the foot of the bed, to ensure an equal amount of wear.

The simpler the furniture in a bedroom, the better it will be for the owner thereof, and if she can visit Hewetson and have real old Chippendale toilet-tables and washing-stands and wardrobes she should certainly do so; if not she should buy new things made on similar lines, and these she can always find at Smee & Cobay’s, while for good plain furniture in a less expensive make, Wallace is always available, and should certainly be consulted on this ever-fascinating subject.

But I am indeed thankful to have to note that the brief reign of brightly-enamelled and coloured bedroom furniture is now at an end, as dead as the peacock’s feather and the Japanese fan, and the dreadful stuffed storks and chenille monkeys so dear to the heart of the would-be artistic woman. Enamel is most excellent and useful if we must have the plain deal furniture, which we used to have to buy grained and varnished, and of an awful sickly yellow brown that would have ruined any room. But in this case we must buy the furniture in the plain wood ‘primed for painting,’ and either ask the upholsterer to follow our directions implicitly, or else have it home in this state, and paint it ourselves or turn on the handy man, without whom no suburban residence can be made in the least degree habitable, unless we can afford reckless expenditure, in which case we should hardly take up our residence in a similar abode. If this style of furniture be gone in for, it should be recollected that there are only two shades of enamel which can be used in a would-be artistic house for this purpose, and those are ‘electric turquoise’ and ‘real ivory.’ Green pink and yellow are truly terrible, and cannot be excused. Plain brown stain is bearable but I do not advise it, while let no one attempt to use an amateur green stain on any account. It is a failure at once and makes any room abominable because of its pretentiousness, for as I have said before, the beautiful green stain made familiar to us by Liberty first, can only be obtained from a professional hand, an amateur cannot get it, try how he may to do so. Now there are about three ways of decorating a suburban bedroom, though of course the details as regards special papers and special furniture can be varied infinitely. At the same time no one should make the fatal mistake of treating such a house or such rooms either in the Moorish, Japanese or Old Empire style, or in any eccentric fashion at all. Neither way can be suitable for it. Indeed, I do not care for the jumble of styles made by having an eastern-looking hall, an Old English dining-room, a Queen Anne drawing-room and a Moorish landing, which is so inexpressively dear to the would-be artistic decorator, and I can but suggest that my readers will resist the temptation of similar eccentricities to the very utmost, contenting themselves with the simple furniture kept by my pet firms, and using this in connection with the papers and paint which are specially made and designed to go with the different styles. If a really good hand-made floral paper can be afforded, nothing can approach it for bedroom decoration; but the printed cheap imitations must not be looked at for one moment, for they cannot possibly be the success the others are. Where a floral bedroom fails to charm, it is always because the paper is just not quite right, because every detail has not been thought out and carried out to the very smallest item, or because a timid person has advised on the subject, or the advice has been given by someone who does not understand the subject. Now to obtain success, Jeffrey’s papers or Knowles’s or Haines’s must be used, and here let me name some which are always in stock, and which can always be procured. First of all is Haines’s ‘ragged robin,’ a French paper on a soft ground, which is perfect; then comes Jeffrey’s clematis in different shades and combinations of colour, my pet one being the mauve and green I have already mentioned, while Knowles’s ‘rose’ and dahlia papers are beautiful, as are Godfrey Giles’s, and although the cost is awful we must not forget Mr Smee’s magnificent ‘Hamilton,’ albeit that could only be used as a frieze, as it is something like 10s. or 12s. a piece. Having chosen the floral paper the dado should be either in cretonne which matches the paper exactly; or else a dado should be made like a deep flounce in some plain material. If we select the cretonne, it must be run round the room so that the pattern goes in a different way to that on the wall, and the window curtains must match precisely. But should we select what Godfrey Giles calls the ‘Muriel’ curtain dado, the curtains should be in plain linen and lace, as should the table-covers, mantel drapery, and any cushion covers we may have in the room. Unless we use Miss Goodban’s new linen and flax curtains, draperies, etc.; these, of course, are much more expensive, but then they are ideal, and the bedspreads at any rate should not be forgotten, for they wash and wear better than any others I have ever come across.

Then too the ware should match the flowers employed in the decoration; and in all floral rooms, save where blue and yellow are employed together, the floor should have either one of Wallace’s square green carpets—the only green carpets on which one can absolutely rely to be always correct and always the same—or else plain cream matting or the green ‘Isis’ matting should fit the room as the old-fashioned carpets used to, supplemented of course with a certain amount of rugs judiciously arranged, and not put down in straight lines each side of the bed or in front of the toilet-table and washing-stand and fireplace, as they are all too often arranged by those who do not understand the matter. The paint should always be the exact shade of the ground of these floral papers, and this generally shades from pale ivory to still paler café-au-lait. Not that I mean for one moment that the paint in one room should be anything save one even surface of colour, but that as a rule the shade of the ground of these papers differs one from the other, and that whatever shade is chosen for the ground, that and that only must be taken as a guide for the paint for the room itself. Further, all cornices must be coloured cream and all ceilings, save those just written of, should be papered in some pretty and inexpensive ceiling paper, which, as a rule, in ‘floral rooms,’ should be Jeffrey’s ‘tie’ paper in pale green and white.

The best furniture for these rooms is Wallace’s set of green-stained furniture with tiles to match the shade selected in the wall paper; that is to say if we select pink and green, the tiles should be absolutely plain pale pink in the palest shade of coral pink, and if we have yellow and green, the tiles should be yellow; while if plain dados and curtains are used, the colour for these should be green as should the carpets. These rules should apply to any combination of colour we may select, the only exception being if we should have blue and yellow. Then blue must be our foundation, so to speak, while the tiles must be yellow and patternless, and the furniture in some good dark wood, such as walnut or Chippendale mahogany, my pet wood of all the woods one can buy.

If we select real Chippendale furniture, we should not have a floral room, although it would be correct to have one of the strange and to me hideous Chinese papers Knowles sells, and which were, I believe, the only correct wall papers at that special date, and which should be used with chintz, not cretonne, curtains. But then it would be still more correct to paint and panel the walls, and that would be singularly out of place in a suburban bedroom; unless we fell upon one of Mr Ernest Newton’s little houses, when we should probably find the panelling ready for us and have nothing to do but paint it. Still I never can bear a plain painted wall, or one that is colour-washed or plainly papered. Such a room can never look really furnished, and has a most depressing effect; and in consequence I always advise paper; for, after all one had better be comfortable than correct. If we were absolutely correct, by the way, and remorselessly turned our backs on all anachronisms, we should have bow windows with tiny panes, rush-strewn floors and all sorts of detestable things which have long since vanished along with the ‘bad old times’ which gave them birth. Therefore as we will not be severely correct, we should have either an ivory anaglypta dado, and above that a ‘sea-green’ paper from Knowles or Smee & Cobay: or we should have an anaglypta ceiling coloured real ivory, and all sea-green finishings-off, as suggested before. Also we can use a really beautiful old-world material called linen damask, which can be bought of Smee, and which is a washable imitation of the damasks used by our ancestors, only in really beautiful colours, and not in the crude and awful greens, blues and reds which were so dear to their hearts. If the bedroom is sunless this green idea must be most studiously avoided; and yellow must take its place, arranged either with a dado or frieze of the anaglypta, or else with nut-brown paint and a brown linen curtain dado and yellow printed damask curtains.

A dado is far more useful in a bedroom than a frieze, for it saves the base of the wall from the tender mercies of the housemaid, and allows the bed to be placed against the wall, which is by far the best position for any bed; for, placed with the head and one side against the wall, it cannot take up half the space it does when stuck out into the middle of the room, as so many beds all too often do. I would by the way, most strongly recommend the beds which are known as ‘twin bedsteads,’ and which allow two people occupying one room to sleep quite independently of each other’s movements, and which are therefore most invaluable in every way. There is no greater misery than for a restless person to have to control his or her every movement for fear of disturbing a bedfellow, no greater misery than for a quiet sleeper to be aroused every moment by some impatient gesture from a restless one: and all drawbacks are removed by having these twin bedsteads, which make each individual sleeper comfortable, and which also are very simple and well devised without any undue amount of embellishments.

Beds, by the way, should always be thoroughly dusted once a week, the entire bedding being removed for that purpose; while twice or three times a year the ironwork should be taken apart and well washed with Sanitas or carbolic soap, not because there is any chance of strange visitors having taken up their abode there, but because in no other way can one ensure the spotless dustlessness, to coin a word, that makes a house as healthy as it should most undoubtedly be. The third manner of decorating a bedroom, and the least expensive, is to take some definite colour—such as blue, yellow or pink—and ‘live up’ to that, and that only in that special room, taking care to choose an inexpensive paper in the right shade, and not deviating from it in the smallest degree. For example, the blue should be ‘electric turquoise,’ and none other. Knowles has always inexpensive papers the right shade, and if we avoid the detestable ‘feather’ which is dreadful, we shall be all right. Then the paint should be ‘electric turquoise.’ We should have a yellow and white ceiling paper, and should have Wallace’s blue ‘lily’ or ‘iris’ square carpet, taking care to have a woollen fringe round it and a stained surround; using as always, Jackson’s invaluable varnish stains. If the room be light, we can use Burnett’s Bolton sheeting in the same blue, with a ‘turned-over’ top of the new-patterned sheeting to harmonise; but if it is dark and sunless the curtains should be yellow, in a similar material, although nothing should induce anyone to have coloured muslin curtains should the windows require a second set. All muslin curtains should be white, or at most only a faint shade of cream, and muslin curtains should be in all windows; upstairs and down; edged with very-softly-falling frills; unless the windows are ‘Caldecott’ ones, and therefore only require the one short set of material ones, which can be easily drawn and undrawn as required. In the blue room I am very fond of ash furniture and this can be bought at Wallace’s quite well, but avoid here as elsewhere the ordinary chests of drawers, or my pet abomination, a chest of drawers to be used as toilet-table too; neither, under any circumstances, must a toilet-table be placed in the window; neither must ‘half blinds’ be indulged in. These two things look more vulgar than I can say, and are to be studiously avoided by anyone who cares about the outside appearance of her house.

If yellow be fixed on, we can have a real orange damasque paper, and ivory or brown paint, green carpet, curtains and furniture, or we can have ‘buttercup’ yellow, with ‘earth brown’ paint, matting and rugs, or else a brown square ‘Dunelm’ carpet from Wallace, Liberty’s brown and yellow Java cretonne, and walnut or mahogany furniture. Or yet again the paint can be real ivory, the carpet and curtains blue, and the furniture ‘real ivory’ too, in fact a little taste and common-sense will provide an artistic room for any furniture that my readers may already possess.

If pink is chosen, there is only one paper I can really recommend as to colour, and that is a very old one: Pither’s bay tree: which could be used with ivory paint, a deep frieze of Knowles’s ‘rose-garland,’ and cretonne curtains to match, and here without any doubt at all we should have a green carpet and Chippendale mahogany furniture. I am very often asked by young girls about to get married what they can be working for their future homes, and I always say, ‘very little,’ unless they have already made up their minds what furniture they are to have, and how their rooms are to be decorated; because if they have a large stock of pretty things, pretty in themselves, they may find themselves either unable to use them at all or obliged to do so in rooms in which they become frightful at once, because they are utterly out of place. A room cannot be a success unless every detail dovetails and harmonises, and where the bedspreads, cushions and toilet-covers live in harmony with their neighbours; the curtains, paper and paint. However it is always safe to choose certain papers, such as those I have mentioned, and to work bedspreads to match, while, if we select pink as our leading colour, or yellow or blue, the flax and linen cushions and covers I have spoken of as prepared for work or worked by Miss Goodban can always provide occupation. Neither must it be forgotten that initials must be embroidered on the house linen, and that sets of sheets and towels must be kept for each room, and duly embellished with monograms in appropriate shades of Duncan’s excellent washing silks.