Page:Burton's The Gentleman's Magazine 1840 volume 6.djvu/267

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

"," says Hegel, "is utterly useless and fruitless, and, for this very reason, is the sublimest of all pursuits, the most deserving of our attention, and the most worthy of our seal"—a somewhat Coleridegy assertion, with a rivulet of deep meaning in a meadow of words. It would be wasting time to disentangle the paradox—and the more so as no one will deny that Philosophy has its merits, and is applicable to an infinity of purposes. There is reason, it is said, in the roasting of eggs, and there is philosophy even in furniture—a philosophy nevertheless which seems to be more imperfectly understood by Americans than by any civilized nation upon the face of the earth.

In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture, of their residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little sentiment beyond marbles and colors. In France meliora probant, deteriora sequuntur—the people are too much a race of gad-abouts to study and maintain those household proprieties, of which indeed they have a delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The Chinese, and most of the Eastern races, have a warm but inappropriate fancy. The Scotch are poor decorists. The Dutch have merely a vague idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are all curtains—a nation of hangmen. The Russians no not furnish [sic]. The Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way—the Yankees alone are preposterous.

How this happens it is not difficult to see. We have no aristocracy of blood, and having, therefore, as a natural and, indeed, as an inevitable thing, fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the display of wealth has here to take the place, and perform the office, of the heraldic display in monarchical countries. By a transition readily understood, and which might have been easily foreseen, we have been brought to merge in simple show our notions of taste itself. To speak less abstractedly. In England, for example, no mere parade of costly appurtenances would be so likely as with us to create an impression of the beautiful in respect to the appurtenances themselves, or of taste as respects the proprietor—this for the reason, first, that wealth is not in English the loftiest object of ambition, as constituting a nobility; and, secondly, that there the true nobility of blood rather avoids than affects costliness, in which a parvenu rivalry may be successfully attempted, confining itself within the rigorous limits, and to the analytical investigation, of legitimate taste. The people naturally imitate the nobles, and the result is a thorough diffusion of a right feeling. But, in America, dollars being the supreme insignia of aristocracy, their display may be said, in general terms, to be the sole means of aristocratic distinction; and the populace, looking up for models, are insensibly led to confound the two entirely separate ideas of magnificence and beauty. In short, the cost of an article of furniture has, at length, come to be, with us, nearly the sole test of its merit in a decorative point of view. And this test, once established, has led the way to many analogous errors, readily traceable to the one primitive folly.

There could be scarcely any thing more directly offensive to the eye of an artist than the interior of what is termed, in the United States, a well furnished apartment. Its most usual defect is a preposterous want of keeping. We speak of the keeping of a room as we would of the keeping of a picture; for both the picture and the room are amenable to those undeviating principles which regulate all varieties of art; and very nearly the same laws by which we decide upon the higher merits of a painting, suffice for a decision upon the adjustment of a chamber. A want of keeping is observable sometimes in the character of the several pieces of furniture, but generally in their colors or modes of adaption to use. Very often the eye is offended by their inartistical arrangement. Straight lines are too prevalent, too uninterruptedly continued, or clumsily interrupted at right angles. If curved lines occur, they are repeated into unpleasant uniformity. Undue precision spoils the appearance of many a room.

Curtains are rarely well disposed, or well chosen, in respect to the other decoration. With formal furniture curtains are out of place, and an excessive volume of drapery of any kind is, under any circumstances, irreconcileable with good taste; the proper quantum, as well as the proper adjustment, depends on the character of the general effect.

Carpets are better understood of late than of ancient days, but we still very frequently err in their patterns and colors. A carpet is the soul of an apartment. From it are deduced not only the hues but the forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius. Yet I have heard fellows discourse of carpets with the visage of a sheep in a reverie—"d'un mouton qui rêve"—who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their own mustachios. Every one knows that a large floor should have a covering of large figures, and a small one of small; yet this is not all the knowledge in the world. As regards texture the Saxony is alone admissible. Brussels is the preterpluperfect tense of fashion, and Turkey is taste in its dying agencies. Touching pattern, a carpet should not be bedizzened out like a Ricaree Indian—all red chalk, yellow ochre and cock's feathers. In brief, distinct grounds and