But Mrs. Cæsar’s drawing-room, in her new house on Belport Avenue, has been furnished from a very different point of view than her first one, which shows how rapidly tastes change in a progressive society. Mrs. Cæsar and Julius chose everything themselves this time as they did before, but they had learned from experience, and from the new work of the contemporary decorator. There is plenty of unoccupied space now to show her possessions to advantage, and there are not too many possessions visible for the size of the parlor; there is neither so much uniformity of color and design as to weary the eye, nor so much variety or eccentricity as to irritate it; consequently, the effect on the visitor is not that he is in a room intended for luxurious display, but in an exquisitely furnished room adapted for daily use. In other words, the controlling idea at present, of those who seek to make their houses charming, seems to be to combine comfort with elegance so skilfully that while one may realize the latter, one is conscious only of the former. Though decorators are still experimenting, as probably they always will be, to attain novel effects, they are disposed to make use of queer or attenuated hues, Moorish blazonry, stamped leather, peacock feathers, elephant tusks, stained-glass windows, and Japanese lacquer-work with much more discretion than a few years ago. Virgin-white instead of dirt-brown lights up our halls and stair-cases, and the vast chandeliers which used to dazzle the eye no longer dangle from the ceiling. Indeed, it seems as though it would be difficult to make the interior of the homes of our well-to-do class more comfortable and attractive than they are at present. It may be that some of our very rich people are disposed to waste their energies in devising and striving for more consummate elegance, thereby exposing us all to the charge that we are becoming too luxurious for our spiritual good. But there can be little question that the ambition to surround one’s self with as much beauty, consistent with comfort, as one can afford is desirable, even from the ethical standpoint.
Undeniably our point of view has changed extraordinarily in the last thirty years in regard to house-furnishing, as in regard to so many other matters of our material welfare, and there certainly is some ground for fearing that the pendulum is swinging just at present too far in the direction opposite to that of high thinking and low living; but, after all, though the reaction from ugliness has been and continues to be exuberant, it is as yet by no means wide-embracing. In fact, our cultivated well-to-do class—though it is well abreast of the rest of the civilized world in aspiration and not far behind it in accomplishment, with certain vivifying traits of its own which the old world societies do not possess or have lost—is still comparatively small; and there is still so much Stygian darkness outside it in respect to house-furnishing and home comfort in general, that we can afford to have the exuberance continue for the present; for there is some reason to believe that most of the descendants of our old high thinkers have become high livers, or at least, if low livers, have ceased to be high thinkers. Mutton-soup for breakfast and unattractive domestic surroundings seem to comport nowadays with ignoble aims, if nothing worse; moreover, it must not be forgotten that the plain people of the present is no longer the plain people of forty years ago, but is largely the seed of the influx of foreign peasants, chiefly inferior and often scum, which the sacredness of our institutions has obliged us to receive.
House-Furnishing and the Commissariat.
II.
If we have become cosmopolitan in the matter of domestic comfort and elegance as regards our drawing-rooms, the same is certainly true of our dining-rooms, and dinner-tables. But here it seems to me that we are more justly open to criticism on the score of over-exuberance. That is, the fairly well-to-do class, for the plain people of foreign blood, and the low liver of native blood, eat almost as indigestible food, and quite as rapidly and unceremoniously, as the pie and doughnut nurtured yeoman of original Yankee stock, who thrived in spite of his diet, and left to his grandchildren the heritage of dyspepsia which has become nervous prostration in the present generation. It seems as though our instincts of hospitality have grown in direct ratio with our familiarity with and adoption of civilized creature comforts, and any charge of exuberance may doubtless be fairly ascribed to the national trait of generosity, the abuse of which is after all a noble blemish. But, on the other hand, facts remain, even after one has given a pleasing excuse for their existence, and it may be doubted if a spendthrift is long consoled by the reflection that his impecuniosity is due to his own disinclination to stint. May it not truthfully be charged against the reasonably well-to-do American citizen that he has a prejudice against thrift, especially where the entertainment of his fellow man or woman is concerned? The rapid growth of wealth and the comparative facility of becoming rich during the last half century of our development, has operated against the practice of small economies, so that we find ourselves now beset by extravagant traditions which we hesitate to deviate from for fear of seeming mean. Many a man to-day pays his quarter of a dollar ruefully and begrudgingly to the colored Pullman car porter at the end of his journey, when he is “brushed off,” because he cannot bring himself to break the custom which fixed the fee. It would be interesting to estimate what the grand total of saving to the American travelling public would have been if ten instead of twenty-five cents a head had been paid to the tyrant in question since he first darkened the situation. If not enough to maintain free schools for the negro, at least sufficient to compel railroad managements to give their employees suitable wages instead of letting the easy-going traveller, who has already paid for the privilege of a reserved seat, pay a premium on that. The exorbitant fees bestowed on waiters is but another instance of a tendency to be over-generous, which, once reduced to custom, becomes the severest kind of tax, in that it is likely to affect the warmest-hearted people.
This tendency to be needlessly lavish in expenditure is most conspicuous when we are offering hospitality in our own homes. Among the viands which we have added to the bills of fare of humanity, roast turkey and cranberry-sauce, Indian meal, and probably baked beans, are entitled to conspicuous and honorable mention, but is it not true, notwithstanding champagne is a foreign wine, that the most prodigious discovery in the line of food or drink yet made by the well-to-do people of this country, is the discovery of champagne? Does it not flow in one golden effervescing stream, varied only by the pops caused by the drawing of fresh corks, from the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World to the Golden Gate? And the circumstance that every pop costs the entertainer between three and four dollars, seems in no wise to interrupt the cheery explosions. There are some people who do not drink champagne or any other wine, from principle, and there are some with whom it does not agree, but the average individual finds that the interest of festive occasions is heightened by its presence in reasonable abundance, and is apt to deplore its total absence with internal groans. But surely ninety-nine men in our large cities out of one hundred, who are accustomed to entertain and be entertained, must be weary of the sight of this expensive tempter at the feast, which it is so difficult to refuse when set before one, and which is so often quaffed against better judgment or inclination. The champagne breakfast, the champagne luncheon, the champagne dinner, and the champagne supper, with a champagne cocktail tossed in as a stop-gap, hound the social favorite from January to December, until he is fain to dream of the Old Oaken Bucket, and sooner or later to drink Lithia water only.
With perpetual and unremitting champagne as the key-note of social gatherings, no wonder that the table ornaments and the comestibles become more splendid. A little dinner of eight or ten is no longer a simple matter of a cordial invitation and an extra course. The hostess who bids her contemporaries to dine with her most informally ten days hence, uses a figure of speech which is innocuous from the fact that it is known to be a deliberate falsehood. She begins generally by engaging a cook from outside to prepare the dinner, which must surely wound the sensibilities of any self-respecting couple the first time, however hardened to the situation they may become later.