Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/24

 V¥OMAN'8 HOME To study colour, for hints in the varying tones of anv particular shade, we cannot do better than appeal to the Old Masters. Raffael's "Madonna" at Dresden is a striking example of the value of the repeti- tion of colour— the blue of Mary's eyes deepening into the blue of her wonderful robes, and the rose-colour in the mantle of the kneeling man is accentuated by the deeper note in the cloak of the other figure. Saidy the Old Masters, cultivate harmony, messieurs, mesdames. Choose the colours that blend one into the other (the rainbow is a pretty safe guide), and make the gazer happy ; think out before- hand every room you furnish, every detail that goes to the one central idea, and every- thing that does not fit in with that scheme banish to a part of the house where they will not affect you — or, better still, present them one by one to your tasteless friends. Above all things, wherever you go keep your eyes open to pick up new wrinkles ; there is something to learn in every house where the mistress melody, for they are all in harmony with Nature. But we can discount even Nature, and one great danger to guard against — it is one incurred dail}^ by those who pride them- selves justly on their taste — may be termed, grotesquely enough, the vulgarity of flowers. All flowers are beautiful — in due relation to other colours ; but to put red in a blue room, and blue in a red, is to commit a crime, and a crime which the poor flowers must feel acutely, for they understand the Furniture should never be crowded together. This Sheraton sideboard looks well because it is almost isolated business. It may represent a great deal of money, this house beautiful, or it may represent a very moderate sum. As pleasing results can be got with chintzes, cool white walls, as with rich ameublemenis, pictures, and bibelots. Choice of colour and arrangement is everything. It is necessary to know also what it is that constitutes real comfort. Simplicity, simplicity, and always sim- plicity, should be the rule of every woman in her wants, her tastes, her furnishings, and, above all, her manners. By the gate of simplicity she will come imperceptibly to the pastures of elegance, and a new and more gracious meaning will be given to her life and to those around her. For beauty is godliness, beauty is worship of God, and the man who thinks that, by eating an ill-cooked meal and surrounding himself by things that offend the eye, he is getting nearer to heaven, makes a terrible mistake. The more we satisfy that beauty- sense in our daily life, the more we are getting into touch with another world that is even more wonderful than this, and the less we shall have to learn when we get there. To vibrate to colour, to loveliness, in any form, is the same as to vibrate to a noble deed, a thriUing thought, an entrancing laws of harmony better, far better, than do we. For a white- walled room with chintzes in which a note of rose predominates, you may use any note of rose or red, but no pink ; for a red room, any shade of pink, but fjo red ; for a blue room, blue flowers, if obtainable (they are all too rare), but, failing them, all shades of mauve and purple ; for a pink room, very pale yellow and pink; while for a brown-walled room, all shades of orange alone are effectual. It is not a question of money, this taste. You may find it in the cottager's home when its inmates are simple, kind, and of pure life ; and this sense of harmony (or comfort) and colour can be so cultivated that by degrees it comes under the head of moral order, and everything falls naturally into place. Without arguing about it, instinc- tively whatever you buy, whatever you touch, blends into the right colour-scheme, and at last it becomes as natural to a woman to sort out the contents of a tray of flowers into their proper sequence of colour, as it is to another to cram red, white, blue, and orange into one vase, and stand it on a cabinet or table that does not want it, being complete already by what is upon it. For it is not the colour onlv that matters.