Chapter 13

Villa Trianon, like most French houses, is built directly on the street, leaving all the space possible for the garden. The façade of the villa is very simple, it reminds you of the square houses of the American Colonial period, except that there is no "front porch," as is inevitable with us in America. The entrance gate and the stone wall that surround the place give an interest that our detached and hastily built American houses lack. The wall is really a continuation of the façade of the villa, and is surmounted by a black iron railing. Vines and flowers that have flourished and died and flourished again for over a century climb over the wall and through the graceful railing, and give our home an air of permanence that is very satisfying. After all, that is the secret of Europe's fascination for us Americans--the ever-present suggestion of permanence. We feel that houses and gardens were planned and built for centuries, not for the passing pleasure of one brief lifetime. We people them with ghosts that please us, and make histories for them that are always romantic and full of happiness. The survival of an old house and its garden through centuries of use and misuse is always an impressive and dramatic discovery to us: it gives us courage to add our little bit to the ultimate beauty and history, it gives us excuse to dream of the fortunate people who will follow us in other centuries, and who will, in turn, bless us for our part in the remaking of one old house and garden.

There was much to do! We hardly knew where to begin, the house was in such wretched condition. The roof was falling in, and the debris of years was piled high inside, but the walls and the floors were still very beautiful and as sound as ever, structurally. We had the roof restored, the debris removed, and the underbrush weeded out of the garden, and then we were ready to begin the real business of restoration.

The house is very simply planned. There is a broad hall that runs straight through it, with dining-room and servants' hall on the right, and four connecting salons on the left. These salons are charming rooms, with beautiful panelings and over-doors, and great arches framed in delicate carvings. First comes the writing-room, then the library, then the large and small salons. The rooms opening on the back of the house have long French windows that open directly upon the terrace, where we have most of our meals. The note of the interior of the house is blue, and there are masses of blue flowers in the garden. The interior woodwork is cream, pointed with blue, and there are blues innumerable in the rugs and curtains and _objets d'art_. There must be a hundred different shades of blue on this living-floor, I think. We have tried to restore the rooms to a Louis XV scheme of decoration. The tables and cabinets are of the fine polished woods of the period. Some of the chairs are roomy affairs of carved and painted wooden frames and brocade coverings, but others are modern easychairs covered in new linens of old designs, linens that were designed for just such interiors when Oberkampf first began his designing at Jouy. The mirrors and lighting-fixtures are, of course, designed to harmonize with the carvings of the woodwork. Monsieur de Nolhac and Sardou were most helpful to us when such architectural problems had to be solved.

We have not used the extravagant lace curtains that seem to go with brocades and carvings, because we are modern enough not to believe in lace curtains. And we find that the thin white muslin ones give our brocades and tapestries a chance to assert their decorative importance. Somehow, lace curtains give a room such a dressed-up-for-company air that they quite spoil the effect of beautiful fabrics. We have a few fine old Savonnerie carpets that are very much at home in this house, and so many interesting Eighteenth Century prints we hardly know how to use them.

Our bedrooms are very simple, with their white panelings and chintz hangings. We have furnished them with graceful and feminine things, delicately carved mirror frames and inlaid tables, painted beds, and chests of drawers of rosewood or satinwood. We feel that the ghosts of the fair ladies who live in the Park would adore the bedrooms and rejoice in the strange magic of electric lights. If the ghosts should be confronted with the electric lights their surprise would not be greater than was the consternation of our builders when we demanded five bathrooms. They were astounded, and assured us it was not necessary, it was not possible. Indeed, it seemed that it was hardly legal to give one small French house five American bathrooms. We fought the matter out, and got them, however.

We determined to make the house seem a part of the garden, and so we built a broad terrace across the rear of the villa. You step directly from the long windows of the salon and dining-room upon the terrace, and before you is spread out our little garden, and back of that, through an opening in the trees, a view of the Château, our never-failing source of inspiration.

The terrace is built of tiles on a cement foundation. Vines are trained over square column-like frames of wire, erected at regular intervals. Between the edge of the terrace and the smooth green lawn there is a mass of blue flowers. We have a number of willow chairs and old stone tables here, and you can appreciate the joy of having breakfast and tea on the terrace with the birds singing in the boughs of the trees.

I have written at length in the other chapters of my ideas of house-furnishing, and in this one I want to give you my ideas of garden guilding. True, we had the old garden plan to work from, and trees two hundred years old, and old vine-covered walls. Who couldn't accomplish a perfect garden with such essentials, people said! Well, it wasn't so easy as it seems. You can select furnishings for a room with fair success, because you can see and feel textures, and colors, and the lines of the furniture and curtains. But gardens are different--you cannot make grass and flowers grow just so on short notice! You plant and dig and plant again, before things grow as you have visualized them.

There was a double ring of trees in one corner of our domain, enclosing the _salle de verdure_, or outdoor drawing-room. In the center of this enchanted circle there was a statue by Clodion, a joyous nymph, holding a baby faun in her arms. There were several old stone benches under the trees that must have known the secrets of the famous ladies of the Eighteenth Century courts. The _salle de verdure_ looked just as it did when the little daughters of Louis XV came here to have their afternoon cakes and tea, so we did not try to change this bit of our garden.

My idea of making over the place was to leave the part of the garden against the stone walls in the rear in its tangled, woodsy state, and to build against it a trellis that would be in line with the terrace. Between the trellis and the terrace there was to be a smooth expanse of greensward, bordered with flowers. It seemed very simple, but I hereby confess that I built and tore down the trellis three times before it pleased me! I had to make it worthy of the statue by Pradier that was given us by Sardou, and finally it was done to please me. Painted a soft green, with ivy growing over it, and a fountain flanked by white marbles outlined against it, this trellis represents (to me, at least) my best work.

The _tapis vert_ occupies the greater part of the garden, and it is bordered by gravel walks bordered in turn with white flowerbeds. Between the walks and the walls there are the groups of trees, the statues with green spaces about them, the masses of evergreen trees, and finally the great trees that follow the lines of the wall. Indeed, the _tapis vert_ is like the arena of an ample theater, with the ascending flowers and shrubs and trees representing the ascending tiers of seats. One feels that all the trees and flowers look down upon the central stretch of greensward, and perhaps there is a fairy ring here where plays take place by night. Nothing is impossible in this garden. Certainly the fairies play in the enchanted ring of the trees of the _salle de verdure_. We are convinced of that.

So formal is the _tapis vert_, with its blossoming borders of larkspur and daisies and its tall standard roses, you are surprised to find that that part of the garden outside this prim rectangle has mysteries. There are winding paths that terminate in marble seats. There is the _pavilion_, a little house built for outdoor musicales, with electric connections that make breakfast and tea possible here. There is the guest house, and the motor house--quite as interesting as any other part of the garden. And everywhere there are blue and white and rose-colored flowers, planted in great masses against the black-green evergreens.

We leave America early in June, tired out with the breathless business of living, and find ourselves in our old-world house and garden. We fall asleep to the accompaniment of the tiny piping of the little people in bur garden. We awake to the matins of the birds. We breakfast on the stone terrace, with boughs of trees and clouds for our roof, and as we look out over the masses of blue flowers and the smooth green _tapis vert_, over the arched trelliage with its fountains and its marbles, the great trees back of our domain frame the supremely beautiful towers of the Château le Magnificent, and we are far happier than anyone deserves to be in this wicked world!

XX

NOTES ON MANY THINGS

A LITTLE TALK ON CLOCKS.

The selection of proper clocks for one's house is always long-drawn-out, a pursuit of real pleasure. Clocks are such necessary things the thoughtless woman is apt to compromise, when she doesn't find exactly the right one. How much wiser and happier she would be if she decided to depend upon an ordinary alarm clock until the proper clock was discovered! If she made a hobby of her quest for clocks she would find much amusement, many other valuable objects by-the-way, and finally exactly the right clocks for her rooms.

Everyone knows the merits and demerits of the hundreds of clocks of commerce, and it isn't for me to go into the subject of grandfather-clocks, bracket clocks, and banjo clocks, when there are so many excellent books on the subject. I plead for the graceful clocks of old France, the _objets d'art_ so lovingly designed by the master sculptors of the Eighteenth Century. I plead particularly for the wall clocks that are so conspicuous in all good French houses, and so unusual in our own country.

Just as surely as our fine old English and American clocks have their proper niches, so the French clocks belong inevitably in certain rooms. You may never find just the proper clock for this room, but that is your fault. There are hundreds of lovely old models available. Why shouldn't some manufacturer have them reproduced?

I feel that if women generally knew how very decorative and distinguished a good wall clock may be, the demand would soon create a supply of these beautiful objects. It would be quite simple for the manufacturers to make them from the old models. The late Mr. Pierpont Morgan gave to the Metropolitan Museum the magnificent Hoentschel collection of _objets d'art_, hoping to stimulate the interest of American designers and artisans in the fine models of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. There are some very fine examples of wall clocks in this collection which might be copied in carved wood by the students of manual training schools, if the manufacturers refuse to be interested.

Wall clocks first came into France in the early part of the Seventeenth Century, and are a part of the furnishing of all the fine old French houses. A number of the most interesting clocks I have picked up were the wooden models which served for the fine bronze clocks of the Eighteenth Century. The master designer first worked out his idea in wood before making the clock in bronze, and the wooden models were sold for a song. I have one of these clocks in my dining-room. It is as much a part of the wall decoration as the lights or the mirrors.

The wall clocks I like best are fixed directly on the wall, the dial glass opening so that the clock may be wound with a key. You will notice such a clock in the photograph of one of my dining-rooms. This fine old clock is given the place of honor in the main panel of the wall, above the console table. I often use such a clock in a dining-room, just as I use the fine old French mantel clocks in my drawing-rooms. You will observe a very quaint example of the Empire period in the illustration of my drawing-room mantel. This clock is happily placed, for the marble of the mantel, the lighting-fixtures near by and the fine little bronze busts are all in key with the exquisite workmanship of the clock. In another room in my house, a bedroom, there is a beautiful little French clock that is the only object allowed on the mantel shelf. The beautiful carving of the mirror frame back of it seems a part of the clock, a deliberate background for it. This is one of the many wall clocks which were known as bracket clocks, the bracket being as carefully designed and carved as the clock itself. Most of the clocks we see nowadays grew out of the old bracket models.

The American clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are very much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland, and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long, exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine _bas reliefs_, and of even greater decorative importance.

Every room in my house has its clock, and to me these magic little instruments have an almost human interest. They seem always friendly to me, whether they mark off the hours that weigh so heavily and seem never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive, exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled "French" and sold at a great price in the shops. Somehow, one never expects a clock of this kind to keep time--it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it wheezes, or gasps, or makes a dreadful noise, and invariably stops at half-past three.

I am such a crank about good clocks that I take my own with me, even on a railway train. I think I have the smallest clock in the world which strikes the hours. There are many tiny clocks made which strike if one touches a spring, but my clock always strikes of itself. Cartier, who designed and made this extraordinary timepiece, assures me that he has never seen so small a clock which strikes. It is very pleasant to have this little clock with its friendly chime with me when I am in some desolate hotel or some strange house.

There are traveling clocks in small leather cases which can be bought very cheaply indeed now, and one of these clocks should be a part of everyone's traveling equipment. The humble nickeled watch with a leather case is infinitely better than the pretentious clocks, monstrosities of marble and brass and bad taste.

A CORNER FOR WRITING.

One of my greatest pleasures, when I am planning the furnishing of a house, is the selection and equipment of the necessary writing-tables. Every room in every house has its own suggestion for an original treatment, and I enjoy working out a plan for a writing-corner that will offer maximum of convenience, and beauty and charm, for in these busy days we need all these qualities for the inspiration of a pleasant note. You see, I believe in proper writing-tables, just as I believe in proper chairs. I have so many desks in my own house that are in constant use, perhaps I can give you my theory best by recording my actual practice of it.

I have spoken of the necessity of a desk in the hallway, and indeed, I have said much of desks in other rooms, but I have still to emphasize my belief in the importance of the equipment of desks.

Of course, one needs a desk in one's own room. Here there is infinite latitude, for there are dozens of delightful possibilities. I always place my desks near the windows. If the wall space is filled, I place an oblong table at right angles to a window, and there you are. In my own private sitting-room I have a long desk so placed, in my own house. In a guest-room I furnished recently, I used a common oblong table of no value, painting the legs a soft green and covering it with a piece of sage-green damask. This is one of the nicest writing-tables I know, and it could be copied for a song. The equipment of it is what counts. I used two lamps, dull green jars with mauve silk shades, a dark green leather rack for paper and envelopes, and a great blotter pad that will save the damask from ink-spots. The small things are of green pottery and crystal. In a young girl's bedroom I used a sweet little desk of painted wood, a desk that has the naïve charm of innocence. I do hope it inspires the proper love-letters.

I always make provision for writing in dressing-rooms--a sliding shelf in the dressing-table, and a shallow drawer for pencils and paper--and I have adequate writing facilities in the servants' quarters, so that there may be no excuse for forgetting orders or messages. This seems to me absolutely necessary in our modern domestic routine: it is part of the business principle we borrow from the efficient office routine of our men folk. The dining-room and the bathrooms are the only places where the writing-table, in one form or another, isn't required.

I like the long flat tables or small desks much better than the huge roll-top affairs or the heavy desks built after the fashion of the old _armoire_. If the room is large enough, a secretary after an Eighteenth Century model will be a beautiful and distinguished piece of furniture. I have such a secretary in my own sitting-room, a chest of drawers surmounted by a cabinet of shelves with glass doors, but I do not use it as a desk. I use the shelves for my old china and porcelains, and the drawers for pamphlets and the thousand and one things that are too flimsily bound for bookshelves. Of course, if one has a large correspondence and uses one's home as an office, it is better to have a large desk with a top which closes. I prefer tables, and I have them made big enough to hold all my papers, big enough to spread out on.

There are dozens of enchanting small desks that are exactly right for guest-rooms, the extremely feminine desks that come from old France. One of the most fascinating ones is copied from a _bureau de toilette_ that belonged to Marie Antoinette. In those days the writing of letters and the making of a toilet went together. This old desk has a drawer filled with compartments for toilet things, powders and perfumes and patches, and above this vanity-drawer there is the usual shelf for writing, and compartments for paper and letters. The desk itself suggests brocade flounces and powdered hair, so exquisitely is it constructed of tulipwood and inlaid with other woods of many colors.

Then there are the small desks made by modern furniture-makers, just large enough to hold a blotting-pad, a paper rack, and a pair of candlesticks. There is always a shallow drawer for writing materials. Such a desk may be decorated to match the chintzes of any small bedroom.

If it isn't possible for you to have a desk in each guest-room, there should be a little writing-room somewhere apart from the family living-room. If you live in one of those old-fashioned houses intersected by great halls with much wasted space on the upper floors, you may make a little writing-room of one of the hall-ends, and screen it from the rest of the hall with a high standing screen. If you have a house of the other extreme type, a city house with little hall bedrooms, use one of these little rooms for a writing-room. You will require a desk well stocked with stationery, and all the things the writer will need; a shelf of address books and reference books--with a dictionary, of course; many pens and pencils and fresh blotters, and so forth. Of course, you may have ever so many more things, but it isn't necessary. Better a quiet corner with one chair and a desk, than the elaborate library with its superb fittings where people come and go.

Given the proper desk, the furnishing of it is most important. The blotting-pad should be heavy enough to keep its place, and the blotting-paper should be constantly renewed. I know of nothing more offensive than dusty, ink-splotched blotting-paper. There are very good sets to be had, now, made of brass, bronze, carved wood, porcelain, silver or crystal, and there are leather boxes for holding stationery and leather portfolios to be had in all colors. I always add to these furnishings a good pair of scissors, stationery marked with the house address or the monogram of the person to whom the desk especially belongs, an almanac, and a _pincushion!_ My pincushions are as much a part of the equipment of a desk as the writing things, and they aren't frilly, ugly things. They are covered with brocade or damask or some stuff used elsewhere in the room and I assure you they are most useful. I find that pins are almost as necessary as pens in my correspondence; they are much more expedient than pigeon-holes.

In country houses I think it shows forethought and adds greatly to the comfort of the guests to have a small framed card showing the arrival and departure of trains and of mails, especially if the house is a great distance from the railway-station. This saves much inquiry and time. In the paper rack there should be not only stamped paper bearing the address of the house, telephone number, and so forth, but also telegraph blanks, post cards, stamps, and so forth. Very often people who have beautiful places have post cards made showing various views of the house and garden.

Test the efficiency of your writing-tables occasionally by using them yourself. This is the only way to be sure of the success of anything in your house--try it yourself.

STOOLS AND BENCHES.

I often wonder, when I grope my way through drawing-rooms crowded and jammed with chairs and sofas, why more women do not realize the advantages of stools and benches. A well-made stool is doubly useful: it may be used to sit upon or it may be used to hold a tray, or whatever you please. It is really preferable to a small table because it is not always full of a nondescript collection of ornaments, which seems to be the fate of all small tables. It has also the advantage of being low enough to push under a large table, when need be, and it occupies much less space than a chair apparently (not actually) because it has no back. I have stools, or benches, or both in all my rooms, because I find them convenient and easily moved about, but I have noticed an amusing thing: Whenever a fat man comes to see me, he always sits on the smallest stool in the room. I have many fat friends, and many stools, but invariably the fattest man gravitates to the smallest stool.