Part 15

In this residence some of the best effects were produced by the extraordinary lustre of color and quality of surface in the stuffs used for curtains, furniture-covers, and upholstery. These are such as are not ordinarily manufactured, and can be procured in London only by searching for them. Manufacturers in this country, and no doubt in America also, are in the habit of bleaching their stuffs as white as possible, and the consequence is they will not take rich and warm dyes. The secret of those Oriental stuffs upon whose surface, as they appear in our exhibitions, English manufacturers are so often seen looking with despair, is that they never bleach to whiteness anything that is to be dyed. If the Eastern dyers should put their deep colors upon a surface bleached to ghastliness, their stuffs would be as ghastly as our ordinary goods speedily become. The Oriental dyer simply leaves the natural color of the wool or cotton creamy and delicate, and the hues never turn out crude and harsh, as do those of English stuffs. This bleaching, moreover, takes the life out of a natural material, and is the reason of the superior durability of colored Oriental fabrics.

Mr. Boughton has named the grand mansion built for him on Campden Hill, “West House,” in honor of Benjamin West, the first American artist who received in England honors similar to those which have been accorded himself. In this house he has had ample room to develop his ideas of decoration. It is Grove Lodge, as it were, in full flower. An excellent effect has been secured by giving to each of three large rooms, opening into each other through richly-draped door-ways, tints of their own; each is different, while harmonious with its neighbor. It would require a pamphlet to do justice to all the decorations of West House, and I must content myself with having already given an extended analysis of the ideas of ornamentation which our American Academician has done so much to diffuse. But one thing I must not omit to mention. In the removal to this house a large and magnificent old bevelled mirror was cracked irregularly across the entire surface. The eye of the artist detected in the misfortune an opportunity for a novel touch of decoration. He painted the blemish into a beauty. A beautiful vine in leaf and blossom now runs across the mirror, which, I hear, has been imitated by some who have seen it, in ignorance, perhaps, that the pretty device was suggested by a flaw. Boughton’s mirror might well have an inscription beneath it from Shakspeare: “Best men are moulded out of faults.”

Another American artist adorned his London residence in a way quite notable. The ancient mansion of the Lindsays (300 years old) on the northern bank of the Thames, at Chelsea, was divided up into six houses, and one of these was for some years occupied by Mr. Whistler. This gentleman’s enthusiasm for Japanese and Chinese art is well known; but that large number of people who are in the habit of holding up their china plates at dinner as texts from which to descant on the strange ignorance of drawing and perspective under which the Chinese and Japanese labor, would find good reason to check their laughter should they be fortunate enough to see Mr. Whistler’s rooms. The Chinese and Japanese have known for a good many centuries certain principles of art which Europeans are only beginning to recognize; one of these is, that a plate or pot is by no means the proper place for a realistic picture, but, on the contrary, that the only use of art on such an object is to give it spots of color. The chief object is not the picture, but the pot. No people know the laws of perspective better than the Chinese and the Japanese, or have greater realistic power. Mr. Whistler dots the walls and even the ceiling of his rooms with the brilliant Japanese fans which now constitute so large an element in the decoration of many beautiful rooms; but in his drawing-room there were fifteen large panels made of Japanese pictures, each about five feet by two. These pictures represent flowers of every hue, and birds of many varieties and of the richest plumage. The very lustre of nature is on every petal and on every feather; the eyes of the birds are as gems that emit light, and their tortuous necks are painted with a boldness which no European art can rival. The Japanese, when they aim at nature, have the rare courage to paint nature as it is; and, as a result, the tortuous necks of their birds tell the story of their reptilian relationship as clearly as it has been told by Professor Huxley. There are also in the room an ancient Chinese cabinet with a small pagoda designed on the top, an old Japanese cabinet of quaint construction, and several screens from the same region, altogether making one of the most beautiful rooms imaginable. Mr. Whistler did much to light up and beautify a somewhat dark staircase in his house by giving the walls a lemon tint above a dado of gold, on which he has painted butterflies such as adorn the frames of his pictures, and constitute the signature of his work. I have become convinced, however, by a visit to the beautiful house which Chambrey Townshend arranged at Wimbledon, that there can be nothing so suitable for somewhat dark corridors and staircases as a faint rose tint. In Mr. Townshend’s house, however cold and cheerless the day may be, there is always a glow of morning light. This gentleman has shown that a sage-gray paper with simple small squares (such as Messrs. Marshall & Morris make) furnishes a good dado to support the light tints upon walls not papered. Where the walls are papered several gentlemen of taste have substituted for the usual dado, made of somewhat darker paper, one of matting. If the matting has a dark red stripe the effect is good, but checker marks are not pleasant. Mr. Ionides, a Greek gentleman, of London, arranged a remarkably beautiful hall and stairway in his house at Notting Hill by using a plain straw-colored matting for the continuous dado, uniting it by an ebonized chairboarding with a light-colored Morris wall-paper. Of course tiles are sometimes used to make the dado, but either because of their common use in hotels and public buildings, or for some other reason, they appear with increasing rarity in private houses in any other capacity than that of adorning the fireplace. This remark does not include the use of tiles as plaques, to be hung as works of fine art--a use of them which is now frequent, and is the means of producing a great deal of beautiful work.

It is easy to understand that the house in which one resides must have a large share in determining the decorations which shall be placed in or upon it. An historic or semi-palatial mansion of the olden time will require to have its great halls and stairways and deep rooms illuminated with colors, and its large spaces intersected with pictorial screens. Mr. William B. Scott, of whose mural paintings I have already spoken, and whose occupation it is to study effects of ornamentation, has a happy field for his taste and task in his residence, Bellevue House, at Chelsea. This mansion merits particular attention, both on its own account architecturally, and for its decorations, added recently. These have been chiefly devised by the artist himself in carrying out the original plan, and add a suggestive and, properly speaking, imaginative character to the interiors. The house was built, it is said, by the Adamses, the architects of the Adelphi, in the Strand, where the Society of Arts holds its meetings (the approach to which is still called Adams Street). At that time, about a century ago, decorations in the way of carved mouldings running around door-ways, and passing all round the rooms on the surbase and dado, were in use. Previously to that time the entire walls were generally panelled, but then began the system of panelling or boarding flatly to the height of three feet only, at which height began the lath-and-plaster wall. Along the top edge of this dado--which, being just over the height of a chair or table, gives a very well-furnished and comfortable air to a room, and ought on that account to be again adopted--ran a more or less ornamental moulding. That mostly used in Bellevue House is carved in wood, and very good, closely resembling, indeed, those on the best specimens of Chippendale furniture, which belongs to the same date--about 1770. I may add here that the demand among artistic designers for a recurrence to the dado is shown by the increasing frequency with which a darker paper than that above, with paper cornice, is made to do duty for it.

A hundred years ago the hall of a mansion was a more important part of the plan, and more decoratively treated, than now. The entrance is here divided by folding-doors from the hall proper, which is ample enough in area to place the stair a good way back, and to give a correspondingly wide space above, on the drawing-room landing, filled in the olden time by a table, cabinet, eight-day standing clock, and other objects. The ends of the steps were carved, sometimes very elegantly. But the most ornamental feature then in use was the moulded ceiling, which was planned in ovals and spandrels, according to the shape of the room, sometimes with medallions of Cupids, and occasionally with a picture, representing an emblematic personage or some such matter, in the centre. A few of these are still to be seen in London. There is one in Knight-Rider Street, painted by Cipriani. In Bellevue House the two drawing-rooms possess very pretty arrangements of fan-shaped ornaments and delicate foliage. These are now “picked out” in colors--blue and white for the most part--producing an effect resembling that of Wedgwood ware.

The plan on which the rooms of large London houses were originally arranged was _en suite_, entering one through another, connected by double doors if the walls were thick enough, so that on great occasions they could be opened throughout. On either side of the drawing-rooms at Bellevue House are smaller rooms connected in this way, one of which is at present used as a library and evening sitting-room, and, I must also add, as a room on the walls of which the ever-bourgeoning studies of the idealist take shape and color. The wood-work--that is to say, the dado, doors, etc.--is painted Indian red, with black or light yellow edgings; above this the wall is covered by a green pattern, but the upper part of this surface is divided by painting into panels two feet deep by a foot and a half wide, the _stile_, or division, between being half a foot. The ceiling is, in the centre, a very faint blue, with a darker blue meeting the cornice (two feet wide); this darker blue--the blue of the sky--also fills the painted panels, which thus resemble the openings for ventilation in some Oriental countries. Across these openings a flight of vermilion birds--Virginian nightingales, plumed and winged by imagination, red being evidently chosen for bright effect against the blue--is represented. The birds reappear above the cornice, and stream in pretty migration round the ceiling, decreasing in size till they nearly disappear.

The chimney-piece of this little room is exquisite, and is much like one designed by Sir E. Landseer, which I saw among his sketches, except that the jambs were caryatides. The white marble jambs and architraves in Mr. Scott’s design are diapered with leaves--laurel and ivy--of Indian red color, and above the chimney-shelf is a second chimney-piece and shelf, thus giving double accommodation for objects of ornament or use. The artist’s collection of old china, majolica, and other objects of similar kind serves to render his chimney-pieces particularly beautiful. I have not seen a more attractive work of this kind than the chimney-piece in his principal drawing-room. The jambs here are panelled, the panels being filled with mirrors, and divided half-way, two feet nine from the floor, by a shelf large enough to accommodate a lamp or candle, with a teacup or other object. The arrangement is admirable both for utility and beauty. A supplementary chimney-shelf is added here, also, to the marble one; and rising nearly to the ceiling is a surface of black wood, with brackets, for the exhibition of some very fine old Hispano-Moresque ware, the golden, metallic lustre of which is favorably seen against the black. The centre is filled by Mr. Scott’s own most beautiful picture of Eve, which, with a large screen covered with classical figures, sheds a glory of color through this unique room, which has, besides, the good fortune to command from its windows the finest views of the Thames.

Entirely different from either of these residences is that of Mr. George W. Smalley, the distinguished correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, in Chester Place. Birket Foster, George Boughton, W. B. Scott, and J. McNeil Whistler have naturally decorated their houses with an eye to picturesque effect; theirs are the homes of men whose daily life is consecrated to art, and a use of colors seems appropriate to their environment which might not so well accord with persons differently occupied. Those who have experienced some of the wear and tear of this busy London existence can hardly enter the door of this American gentleman without finding a sufficient justification for the growing desire of families to surround themselves with household beauty, against all the charges of the puritanical. “Thus I tread on the pride of Plato,” said Socrates, as he stepped on the carpet of his famous friend. “With a pride of thy own,” answered Plato, who is supposed to have got the better in this little encounter. Nature is not nowadays in such discredit as formerly for having blended beauties with utilities, making even her pease and potatoes bear graceful blossoms. And there would appear to be some reason in the tendency of her yet higher product, a home, to wear a fitting bloom as the sign of its reality. Such a suggestion is made by the subdued and delicate tints and tones which here meet the eye. One may have stepped from other houses of this fashionable neighborhood to find here a sweet surprise. There is, then, no absolute and eternal law making it compulsory to select ugly things instead of pretty things. Tinsel is not intrenched in the decalogue. Here is a hall in which gray and brown shades prevail in dado and paper, where a soft light prevails, and the garish light and the noise of the street can hardly be remembered. One may enter the nursery and find the children at play or study amid walls that bring no shams around their simplicity, no finery, but sage-gray and straw-color, setting off well their bright faces and those panels in the bookcase which tell the story of Cinderella.

To the suite of drawing-rooms every excellence must be ascribed. They consist of two large rooms and a large recess, all continuous, whose decorations adapt them to any domestic or social purpose whatever. It is an apartment in which the finest company would feel itself in an atmosphere of refinement and taste, and it is a place to lose one’s self in a good book; it is a place where the mind can equally well find invitation to society or solitude. Perhaps it is the rich Persian carpet that gives such grace. It is after a pattern more than a thousand years old, but which in all that time has never repeated itself, each carpet coming forth with its own tints and shades, and in which every color is surrounded by a line which mediates between it and the next. It is not stretched up to the walls and nailed, as if its business were to conceal something, or as if it were too flimsy to lie still except by force of iron: it is as a large rug laid for comfort on the waxed parquet, which is ready to display more of its own beauty when the proper season arrives. Beginning with this rich carpet, with its sober tints, the eye ascends to the dado, to the walls, to frieze, cornice, and ceiling, and finds variation at every stage, but no break in the harmony of all. The golden tints in the carpet are more fully represented in the dado, which is of an olive-golden color, with a small turquoise line on its cornice leading to the main papering. This paper is of a French tapestry pattern, in which the golden thread, which is its basis, weaves in colors that are rich but always subdued, and of every shade. There is no pattern to rivet the eye; it has no certain relation to the vegetal, or floral, or animal kingdom. This paper rises to a Moresque frieze of about one foot in depth, which holds hexagonal medallions containing the ghosts of plants. There is next a cornice of three mouldings--arabesque, Egyptian, and floral--leading to the ceiling, which is covered with paper of a rich creamy color, with very light cross-bands passing between figures in which a fertile fancy may trace the decorative symbols of earth, air, and water in an orb, a butterfly, and certain waving lines. It may be remarked here that it is only on a ceiling that any forms, even in such abstract shapes as these, are admissible. Here they are noticeable only if one is lying flat on one’s back and gazing upward, in which case, especially if invalidism be the cause, some outlines of a dreamy kind are not without their value. Moreover, any designs, when raised to the ceiling, require to be larger than similar ones on the floor or line of the eye, in order that they may be at all similar in effect. The plan of covering or coloring the ceiling has a good foundation in the fact that a mere white wall overhead conveys the sorry impression that the house is left naked in every corner and spot not likely to be gazed at. The ceiling in Mr. Smalley’s drawing-room exemplifies, however, one important fact: although a mere color placed on a ceiling depresses it, a good pattern has just the contrary effect. By good pattern I mean one that shows a double ground--the lower one being open work, through which a farther ground is seen. Mrs. Smalley, whose taste has been the life of the ornamentation of her house, told me that when this ceiling was being painted the decorated part appeared to rise more than a foot higher than the blank part.

The wood used in the drawing-room is ebonized, and of it are several cabinets--one displaying some fine specimens of china--bracket-shelves, and two remarkably beautiful chimney-pieces, supporting bevelled mirrors, framed with shelves which display porcelain and other ornaments. The recess which has been mentioned is what might be better understood, perhaps, if described as a bay-window. Its chief object is to hold a large window, in five contiguous sections, which admit a toned light, and have each a cluster of sunflowers at the centre. This little room has a broad divan, covered with stamped green (Utrecht) velvet, running around, and its wall is decorated with gold-tinted leather, on which are two bright tile ornaments. The large opening into this recess is adorned by two antique bronze reliefs of great beauty, and the whole is related to the drawing-rooms by an open drapery of greenish-golden curtains--a velvet of changeable lustre--uniform with the other hangings of these beautiful rooms.

It is remarkable, indeed, how much may be accomplished with rooms inferior in size to those we have been visiting by the skilful use of curtains. If a gentleman in London enters a house with the intention of decorating it in accordance with principles of art, his first work, probably, will be either to tear away doors that divide the drawing-room, and substitute a draping, or else frame it round with looped and corded drapery, which, having in itself an artistic effect, shall change the barrier into beauty. Nothing is better understood than that no square angles should divide a drawing-room, and the curtain is more graceful than any arch or architraves for that purpose. The following sketch may convey some idea of an effect which has been secured in Townsend House, Titchfield Terrace, residence of the distinguished artist Mr. Alma Tadema; though the impression can be but feeble, on account of the exquisite use he has made of the colors, which must be left to the reader’s imagination, with a warning that they are as quiet as they are rich.

The question as to the best color for a wall, one of whose chief objects is to show off framed pictures, is a vexed one. Messrs. Christie & Co., the famous art auctioneers, have their rooms hung with dark green baize from floor to sky-light, and certainly the result justifies their experience; but I think any one who enters the hall of Sir F. Leighton, P.R.A., will see that there may be a more effective wall-color to set off pictures than green, not to speak of certain other effects of the latter which really put it out of the question. It is difficult to say just what the color in Sir Frederick Leighton’s hall is. It is a sombre red, which at one moment seems to be toned in the direction of maroon, and at another in the direction of brown. It has been made by a very fine mingling of pigments; but the general result has been to convince me that there can be no better wall for showing off pictures, especially in a hall with a good deal of light, than this unobtrusive reddish-brown. I remember that when the Boston Theatre was first opened a wall of somewhat similar color added greatly to the brilliancy of the scenery. But there are many eyes to which this would not be a pleasing color or shade even for a hall--it would hardly be beautiful in a purely domestic room--and such will do well to try some of the many beautiful shades of olive or sage-gray. Mr. W. J. Hennessy, the eminent American artist, made his house in Douro Place, before he left it for the old château in Calvados, remarkably charming by a careful use of such shades throughout. His quiet rooms were restful as they were pervaded by refinement, and each frame on the walls had a perfect relief, each picture a full glow.