Fig. 10.
So the ingenious owner devised a sort of corner cupboard to fit into an angle of the room, and to match the rest of the woodwork in colour and style, having old brass handles and plates like those on the doors. It is a sort of double cupboard; that is to say, whilst the left-hand side is a hanging wardrobe which only projects away from the wall sufficiently to allow the dresses to be hung up properly, the right-hand division is a chest of drawers. Not a row of commonplace drawers, however. No; the front surface is broken by the introduction of little square doors and other arrangements, for bonnets, &c. We must bear in mind these drawers extend much higher than usual, and the cornice being nearly on a level with that of the wardrobe, there can be no possibility of putting boxes and so forth on the top; but then, on the other hand, a goodly range of drawers of differing depth is provided. It certainly seemed to me an excellent way of meeting the difficulty; and I also noticed in other bedrooms in the same house how odd nooks and uneven recesses were filled in by a judicious blending of cupboard and wardrobe which is evidently convenient in practice as well as exceedingly quaint yet correct in theory.
[1] See [Frontispiece].
CHAPTER V.
FIRE AND WATER.
PERHAPS the part of any room which is most often taken out of, or put beyond the decorative hands of its owner, is the fireplace. And yet, though it is one of the most salient features in any English dwelling, it is, nine cases out of ten, the most repulsively ugly. When one thinks either of the imitation marble mantelpiece, or its cotton velvet and of false-lace-bedizened shelves, the artistic soul cannot refrain from a shudder. The best which can be hoped from an ordinary modern builder is that he will put in harmless grates and mantelpieces, and abstain from showy designs. The fireplace in either bedroom or boudoir should not be too large, nor yet small enough to give an air of stinginess, out of proportion to everything else. Here are two ([Figs. 11] and [14]). The design of each is as simple as possible, of plainest lines, but with no pretence of elaborate sham splendour. [Fig. 11] is of course only suitable for a small unassuming room, but if the tiles were old Dutch ones and the rest of the bedroom ware quaint blue and white Delft, an effect of individuality and suitability would be at once attained. Such a fireplace would look best in a room with wall-paper of warm neutral tints of rather an old-fashioned design, and I should like a nice straight brass fender in front of it almost as flat as a kitchen fender with delightful possibilities of sociable toe-toasting about it. Such a one I came across lately that had been “picked up” in the far east of London. It was about eighteen inches high, of a most beautiful simple, flat, form with a handsome twist or scroll dividing the design into two parts. Although blackened to disguise by age and neglect at the time of its purchase, it shone when I saw it, with that peculiar brilliant and yet softened sheen which you never get except in real old brass; a hue seldom if ever attained in modern brazen work however beautiful the design may be. This fender stood firmly—a great and especial merit in fenders—on two large, somewhat projecting, feet, and its cheerful reflections gave an air of brightness to the room at once.