Travels in South Kensington / with Notes on Decorative Art and Architecture in England

by Moncure Daniel Conway

“As she that is of allë floures flour,
Fulfilled of all virtue and honour,
And ever alike fair and fresh of hue.”

The burden of the daisy-song (in the “Legend of Good Women”)

“Si douce est la Margarete,”

is exquisitely blended with the pattern. The superb frieze shows, on a background of gold, the youthful God of Love holding Alcestis, the ideal wife, by the hand; next Diligence, with her spindle; Order, with hour-glass; Providence, with well-filled basket; and Hospitality, with her jar and extended cup. These figures support the roof as caryatides. Plants of alternate leaf and flower, in pots, stand between the figures and beneath the Chaucerian text: “To whom do ye owe your service? Which will you honour, tell me, I pray, this yere? The Leaf or the Flower?” In the dado are the types of purity and innocence—lilies and doves. Mr. Walter Crane’s services to decorative art are well appreciated by the little folk in some households, for he has designed papers representing the most fascinating of Cinderellas and Boy Blues, and as I write is bringing out an apotheosis of Humpty Dumpty and cognate classicisms. That this artist is ambitious of canonization among the young is farther suggested by the fact that he has actually turned his hand to designing valentines, thus tempting staid persons to indulge in that kind of thing—or, at any rate, to condone it—who have long eschewed such pinky frivolities. He has designed three or four valentines only, but they have been endlessly imitated. I must not omit to mention that a great deal of the best needle-work done in London has been after Mr. Crane’s designs, and also that he is at present engaged in making tiles which promise to surpass all other recent designs. These represent generally each some simple, graceful figure—classic, allegorical, or antique—with flowers surrounding them; but the charm is in the very pleasing expression this artist conveys in a few lines by his careful drawing, and also by his delicate sense of color. Whatever he does, however conventional the accessories may have to be (and they must often be such with the real artist, who will never dignify incidents with the same work as his main designs, any more than he will paint his picture-frame like his canvas), no one acquainted with his work can ever mistake the touch. When I first saw Walter Crane’s papers I felt a certain heaviness of heart that one could not have them all on the walls of some favorite room—all at the same time!

L. ALMA TADEMA.—[FROM A BUST BY J. DALOU.]

Perhaps the most complete rendering of the effects at which William Morris and Burne Jones have aimed in their efforts at beautifying London households is to be found at Townsend House, to which I have before alluded. Mr. L. Alma Tadema, the finest colorist, has of course been as one of the partners of the firm so far as his own home is concerned, and the touches of his art are met with at every step in it. Passing beneath the cheery “Salve” written over the front-door, we at once meet with a significant piece of art. On each side of the rather narrow hall is a door; one leads into a parlor, the other into a library, and, as they are just opposite each other, the doors are made to open outward, and, when open, meet. Now, when it is desirable, the two doors when open make a wall across the hall; this extemporized wall has its panels painted, and thus a pretty passage is made to connect the separate rooms. One thing in Townsend House is very peculiar: the ceilings are generally covered with the same paper as the walls. There is a dado of matting with touches of color in it, or else painted in some color related to the paper but of deeper shade, and above this a uniform paper, with but slight frieze (most of the rooms being comparatively small, a deep frieze would be out of place). I confess that I have some misgivings about this continuance upon the ceiling of the wall-paper. It would certainly answer very well in rooms that were of very high pitch, for the heavier the color on a ceiling the more it is depressed to the eye. But here the sense of comfort and snugness secured—important as they are in this moist, chill climate, which often makes one willing to be folded up in a warmly lined box—is paid for by a sense of confinement. A ceiling ought not to be white nor blue, which, not to speak of the quickness with which they become black from the chandeliers, convey the feeling of exposure to the open air, but there should be above one a lighter tint and shade, lest the effect should be that of being in a cellar. The underground effect nowhere occurs in Townsend House, because therein true artists have been at work, but one might not be so secure if the papering had been left to less judicious decorators. The corridors have the creamy pomegranate paper, which carries a cool light through them. A small back-room on the first floor has been Orientalized into a charming place by a skilful use of rugs, skins, etc., on the floor, and on the Persian divans fixed against the wall, which is covered with a silvery and pinkish paper. The chief bedroom in the house presents the novelty of walls entirely hung with a rich dark and reddish chintz, with wide stripes flowing from ceiling to floor, the effect being a grave Persian. The bed is hung and covered with the same stuff, and the lower part of each window is made into a cushioned seat of the same. The ceiling in this case is of a pearl-white, and there is plenty of light. This room appeared to me, though at first a surprise, one that was suggestive of every kind of warmth and comfort; it was, indeed, an entire room made into the appropriate environment of a bed. In another bedroom I observed how beautifully the light may be regulated by the use of double curtains, one of dark green, when darkness is desired, the other of a fine tracing-cloth, which is more snowy than the glass of an astral lamp, while it similarly softens and diffuses light.

CANDELABRA, TOWNSEND HOUSE.