Suburban Residences, and How to Circumvent Them

by J. E. Panton

When, therefore, we have duly circumvented the draughts and dangers which await us in the ordinary suburban house, the next thing we have to consider is either how to paint and paper and furnish, or how to decorate to suit the goods we may already possess. If we have already got our furniture, the paint and paper must be bought with an eye to those. Yet as a rule it is so easy to re-cover dining-room furniture that no one should be debarred from having a pretty room because they have ugly seats to their chairs, or own perchance a set of frightful curtains. I am no advocate for cheap materials, which appeal to a ‘threepenny public,’ and scarcely last until they are made up, such fleeting joys are they: but I unhesitatingly say that, given the choice between ruby velvet and Wallace’s old gold diamond serge, or pale blue ‘Tanjore cloth’ from Shoolbred, the ruby velvet may depart as far as I am concerned, and I should put up the other colour in the cheap material, knowing full well that the beautiful colour would always delight me, while the velvet would disgust me every time that I entered the room. The same remark applies to the carpet. If it be ‘handsome,’ generally another word for something too hideous for words, put it into the next sale that is handy. Somehow ‘handsome carpets,’ always fetch splendid prices at sales, where even good furniture is almost given away. Then buy one of the many charming carpets Smee & Cobay, or Wallace, or Hewetson sell, according to taste and means; remembering that all carpets are merely backgrounds to the furniture, and should never attract attention to themselves in any way. One very soon tires of a pattern, an obtrusive pattern that is to say, while one never can tire of soft shades of the same colour, or else of the excellent ‘drawing-room’ Turkey carpets or Bokhara carpets, sold by Bartholomew & Fletcher and Shoolbred, which suit almost any room, and fit in with any style of decoration. If, in removing to a new house, the mistress has to consider her furniture and curtains and carpet, she must look at them carefully before she begins her instructions to the decorator. Suppose for example she has a big sideboard, ten or twelve walnut or oak chairs, with shabby leather seats, an orthodox table, and perhaps a writing-table, she will, as a rule, come to the end of her impedimenta. Her first endeavour should be to get whoever may be coming into her house to take curtains and carpets at a valuation; her second to put them in a sale; then she can proceed joyfully, spending the proceeds on new ones, which may be much simpler, but will be much more artistic, and so much more satisfactory to live with in every way. If however she has a pretty carpet and curtains, and they will not quite adapt themselves to the room, what is she to do? In the first place if the carpet is too large it is best to return it, if possible, to the shop where it was bought to be re-made into a square, and edged with a nice woollen fringe, if, indeed it was not born square as all carpets should be, and furnished with a good border. The worn parts are thus eliminated but should be carefully kept for mending purposes. In the second place, if it is too small and cannot be matched, it should be surrounded by matting, staining, or plain brown cork carpet according to the state of the boards, and should be supplemented by a large Eastern rug in the windows or by the fire unless the carpet is too small or too frankly British for such treatment. In that case it must be sold or relegated to another room. Unless this is done the result of any manœuvres which may be made with it can only result in abject and total failure. If the carpet be available and be of the new kind of Turkey carpet, it is well to have a good yellow and brown scheme for one’s decoration; and, in any case we must have some kind of a dado and that must be sought after very carefully, for sometimes one can come across a real bargain in oak panelling, to be sought for with most chances of success at Hewetson’s and at Bartholomew & Fletcher’s; while Godfrey Giles’ ‘goehring’ and ‘Glastonbury’ dados are inexpensive and really good and what they are meant to be. Personally I am devoted still to Japanese leather paper, and these are all the materials I really care about for a dining-room dado, though anaglypta is not to be despised. At the same time it is generally 1s. a yard unpainted and one can get for the same price a good Japanese leather which does not require painting, so there is no reason for choosing the one in preference to the other. A gold and brown leather paper dado should be the first thing to procure, either at Liberty’s or Knowles’. Sometimes one has it, sometimes the other; it’s all a matter of ‘consignments’ after all, and knowing where to search for what one requires. Then all the paint everywhere must be ‘tea-pot’ or ‘earth-brown,’ while above the dado should be either a vivid yellow paper, an orange, or a soft brown, according to the aspect of the room itself. Orange and yellow look best in a sunless chamber, and a really soft brown, something like the palest shade of chocolate, or the deepest of café-au-lait, harmonises best with sunshine that pours into the room from the first thing in the morning until late in the afternoon.

Then attention should be turned to the chairs, and if expense bars them from being re-covered in soft brown leather, and take my word for it, there’s ‘nothing like leather’ where dining-room chairs are concerned, we can either fall back on ‘Pantasote,’ a species of crocodile-looking material sold by any upholsterer, or we can use stamped and ribbed velveteen from Shoolbred, or Wallace’s frisé velvet in golden brown, which will transform the chairs at once, and bring them into harmony with their surroundings, the while new yellow diamond serge curtains are hung, and a diamond serge tablecloth, with a darker velveteen or frisé velvet border laid on is placed on the table. If the awful sideboard must be kept, we must make it as bearable as we can by placing a coarse linen and Greek lace cloth on it which exactly fits the top, and just, and only just, hangs over the edge. We can keep three plants there when the sideboard is not in use at meal-times, but should, as a matter of course, allow nothing whatever in the way of plate and dinner-table accessories to spoil the appearance of the room. Such a room would be quite simple, quite inexpensive, yet always a joy to live in, especially if the rules of plain paint, ivory-coloured cornice and papered ceilings are adhered to here as elsewhere. Trifles these things may be, but on trifles depend success in furnishing, which never can be perfect if the smallest matter is passed over which is not quite what it ought to be merely because it is too ‘trivial to matter.’

There are about three different styles of windows in suburban residences, and these are the bow, the ordinary sash, and what I call the ‘Randolph Caldecott’ window; and all these can be most successfully treated without using the abominable and expensive roller blind to which Britons are so deeply, so almost irrevocably attached. We have less sunshine than almost any other nation under heaven, yet we of all people cling to the useless and truly ugly window blind with a devotion worthy of a nobler cause. Still I have hopes that constant preaching may do something, and that in time we may realise the fact that nothing but outside blinds are of the smallest use in really hot weather, and that curtains are meant to draw, and that should they fail to be anything save melancholy wisps at the end of an expanse of glass, they are not only useless but absolutely ridiculous in the eyes of any artistic person. The ordinary bow window, if small has been so often written about that I really cannot think it necessary to dwell upon it again; and is it not illustrated not only in From Kitchen to Garret, now a respectable classic nine years old, but in Wallace’s catalogue, and Smee & Cobay’s, and doubtless in others too? But a larger one has not been illustrated that I know of, and while the fundamental lines to go on should be those of the small window, the material curtains should be long, there should be no window-seat in the dining-room—unless there are a couple of windows and no third sitting-room—and the muslin curtains, which are fixed on the window frames and take the place of blinds, should be supplemented by four long muslin curtains, frilled each side, to go under the material curtains in the centre of the bow, and two, frilled one side only, to go one each side at the end of the bow. These curtains should be crossed at the top, and held back high up with wide frilled bands of muslin similar to that used for the curtains. As a rule H. Gorringe’s spotted muslin sold ready frilled is the best material for this purpose, but I am very fond of Wallace’s ‘Guipure vitrage’ for the curtains on the window. If this be used, the long curtains should be of Guipure too, taking care to have a double edge to the centre curtains, and a single one to those which go at the end of the bow.

The ordinary sash window, if short, should be treated like the centre window of the small bow window, but if it reaches from floor to ceiling it should have the double set of muslin curtains which I have just been writing about. Then we have only the Caldecott windows to