Fig. 11.
There must always be plenty of room for the fire, and the actual grate should of course be so set as to throw all the warmth into the room. Then, though it is rather a digression,—only I want to finish off the picture which rises up before me,—I would have a couple of chairs something like this ([Fig. 12]), and just such a table for a book or one’s hair-brushes a little in front of these two chairs. And then what a gossip must needs ensue! Of course I would have a trivet on the fire, or before it. No bedroom can look really comfortable without a trivet and a kettle; a brass kettle for preference, as squat and fat and shining as it is possible to procure. There are charming kettles to be found, copied from Dutch designs.
Fig. 12.
Instead of the ordinary wide low mantelpiece one sees in bedrooms, I am very fond of two narrower shelves over such a fireplace as this. They are perhaps best plain oak, divided and supported by little turned pillars, and if the top shelf has a ledge half-way a few nice plates look especially well. But there are such pretty designs for mantelpieces now to be procured, that it would be a waste of time to describe any particular style, and most fireplaces are made on scientific principles of ventilation. Nor is it, I hope, necessary to reiterate the injunction about every part of the decoration and detail of a room, whether fixture or moveable, matching or suiting all the rest. In some instances contrast is the most harmonious arrangement one can arrive at, but this should not be a matter lightly taken in hand. A strong feeling is growing up in favour of the old-fashioned open fireplaces lined with tiles, and adapted to modern habits by a sort of iron basket on low feet in the centre, for coals. Excellent fires are made in this way, and I know many instances where the prettiest possible effect has been attained. In a country where wood is cheap and plentiful, the basket for coals may be done away with and the fuel kept in its place by sturdy “dogs,” for which many charming hints have been handed down to us by our grandfathers. Over the modern fireplace, even in a bedroom, a mirror is generally placed, but I would not advise it unless the room chanced to be so dingy that every speck of light must be procured by any means. Still less would I have recourse to the usual stereotyped gilt-framed bit of looking glass. In such a private den as we are talking about, all sorts of little eccentricities might be permitted to the decorator. I have seen a looking-glass with a flat, narrow frame, beyond which projected a sort of outer frame also flat, wherein were mounted a series of pretty little water-colour sketches, and another done in the same way with photographs—only these were much more difficult to manage artistically, and needed to be mounted with a background of greyish paper. For a thoroughly modern room, small oval mirrors are pretty, mounted on a wide margin of velvet with sundry diminutive brackets and knobs and hooks for the safe bestowal of pet little odds and ends of china and glass, with here and there a quaint old miniature or brooch among them. In old, real old rooms anything of this sort would, however, be an impossibility, for the mantelshelf would probably be carried up far over the owner’s head who might think herself lucky if she could ever reach, by standing on tip-toe, a candlestick off its narrow ledge. Our grandmothers seemed to make it their practice to hang their less choice portraits in the space above the mantelpiece, and to this spot seem generally to have been relegated the likenesses of disagreeable or disreputable, or, to say the least, uninteresting members of the family; the successful belles and heroes occupying a more prominent place downstairs. [Fig. 14] shows a pretty arrangement of picture, mirror and shelves for china.
Fig. 13.