A NEW TOPIC OF CONVERSATION.
There can be no doubt but what the increase of interest in the decorative arts has lightened the general tone of society in our cities. "I buy everything new that I can find," a lady remarked the other day when her bric-à-brac was praised: "not that I care anything in especial for this sort of thing, but because it is such a blessing to have something to talk about." One shudders now to remember the drawing-rooms of a generation ago—a colorless, cold, negative background for social life; rich sweeping curtains of damask satin and lace muffling the windows; impossible sofas and impracticable chairs gilded and elaborated into the most costly hideousness; an entire suite of rooms utterly barren of interest; a place given over to the taste of the upholsterer; nothing on any hand which contained a suggestion of life or emotion, thought or effort; every sign of occupation banished—nothing tolerated save the dullest uniformity, which depressed originality into inanity.
No wonder that this barrenness of household resource had its effect upon women, and that every one complained of the meagre results of ordinary social intercourse. Now-a-days, when tables are crowded with bric-à-brac, cabinets laden with porcelain and faïence, and richly-hung walls brightened with plaques and good pictures, the female mind has received a fresh impulse, almost an inspiration, which will show clear results before many years have passed.
Enthusiasm for bric-à-brac and pottery, for embroidery and general decorative art, is strongest among practical and unimaginative people—people who know little or nothing of the world of thought opened by books, and who have hitherto been somewhat disheartened by a conviction of their own dulness. To them the present mania is an undoubted lease of the finer uses of intellect, and their mental horizons have widened until the prose of their lives is brightened into poetry. Every one now-a-days feels the stirring of the artistic impulse, and is able in some way to gratify it.
The American mind is always extravagant, and is certain to aim at too much and leap too high, and in this renaissance of decorative art carry its admiration of the beautiful and rare entirely too far in one direction—in the matter of dress at least. The costly velvets and satins and silks, which outweigh and surpass in beauty those of the early centuries, are seen on every side cut up and tortured into intricate and perplexing fashions of toilette. In the olden times these fabrics were wisely considered too rich to be altered from one generation to another, but were passed from mother to daughter as an inheritance. So far as the ornamentation of her own person is concerned, the American woman is too expensive and prodigal in her ideas, and wastes on the fashion of the hour what ought to grace a lifetime.
But in turning her talent to the fitting-up of her house the American woman is apt to be thrifty, ingenious and economical; and since she has learned what decorative art really is, she works miracles of cleverness and beauty. And, as we began by saying, it is a real blessing to have a new topic of conversation. True, there can be nothing more fatiguing to those who are free from the mania for pottery and porcelain than a discussion between china-lovers and china-hunters concerning, for instance, the difference between porcelain from Lowestoft and porcelain from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed so easily? Far from it. "This is real crackle," the collector insists, with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his specimen; and then and there you have the history of crackle and the points of difference between the imitation and the real. And in glancing at his collection your tongue must not trip nor your eye confound styles. It requires a literal mind, besides a good memory and practised observation, to be an expert, and diffused and generalized knowledge amounts to little.
We have in mental view a lady who five years ago possessed apparently neither powers of thought nor capacity for expression, but who has, since she became a collector of china and antique furniture, developed into a tireless talker. Formerly she sat in her pale gray-and-blue rooms dressed faultlessly, "splendidly null," and you sought in vain for a topic which could warm her into interest or thaw out a sign of life from her. Now her rooms are studies, so picturesquely has she arranged her cabinets of china, her Oriental rugs and hangings, and her Queen Anne furniture; and she herself seems a new creature, so transfused is she by this fine fire of enthusiasm which illuminates her face and warms her tongue into eloquence. There is no dearth of subjects now. The briefest allusion to the Satsuma cup on the table beside you, and the lady, well equipped with matter, starts out on a tireless recapitulation of the delights and fatigues of collecting. She is a better woman and a much less dull one from this blossom of sympathy and interest with something outside of the old meaningless conditions of her life.
We all remember that it was a point of etiquette inculcated in our youth never to make allusion to the furniture and fittings of the houses where we paid visits. That rule is far more honored in the breach than in the observance now-a-days. It would show chilling coldness not to inquire if our fair friend herself embroidered the curtains of velvet and mummy-cloth which drape her doors and windows, and if that plaque were really painted by one of the Society of Decorative Art, and not imported from Doulton.
It would, in fact, seem as if this initiation in fresh ideas and aims—which, even if trivial, are higher than the old uncreative forms of occupation and interest—was an answer to the yearning of the feminine mind for something to sweep thoughts and impulses into a current which results in action. And certainly any action which lends interest, worth and beauty to domestic life, which draws out talent and promotes culture, is deserving of all encouragement.
L. W.