Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/333

 311 WOMAN'S HOME No. 3.— THE DINING-ROOM By HELEN MATHERS Contimied from fage 1S7, Part a Colour in the Dining-room — Pictures and their Value — A Panelled Room I A DINING-ROOM should give the impression '*~*^ of good cheer and comfort. If on entering the room, therefore, your palate is tickled or your sensitive eyes are irritated by light flashed full in them, there is something very wrong with that room, and the sooner you alter the disposition of its light the better. The ideal way of lighting a dining-table is from the wall by electric light clusters with flat shades of pale pink against them, placed rather high, and for the table itself there is nothing better than silver candle- sticks, with thick pink silk shades, edged with bead fringe to give weight, or an old high silver candelabra as in our illustration. It is upon the table and its light- ing that attention should be concen- trated. The fur- nishing, even, is of secondary import- ance, and the colour of the carpet becomes negligible, at any rate at night. The object of a dining-room is to allow folks to eat their food in peace, in a diffused light which is sooth- ing to their feelings and complexions, and just as every skilled hostess for- bids the discussion of politics or religion at her dinner parties, so she should banish the discordant element of light in the wrong place. Of course, there is always some idiot who hunts for snails in his salad, and protests that he likes to see what he is eating, and once when I had a cook with a glass eye, a man told me he would always expect to find it in the soup. Well, I don't advocate a light in which you would fail to see that eye, but I would rather risk that accident than sit at a charming table with a lamp suspended above it whose pink or rose-coloured petti- coat is just two inches too short, so that the naked electric bulbs positively smite me full in the eye, and seem to gloat over my naughty temper and discomfort. In this, as in other cases, it is the inside of the matter that is neglected. Those bulbs should be covered with silk of the colour of the shade, and though the effect will not be so good as that of the wall lights and the silk-shaded candlesticks, it will still be possible to eat without malice and hatred ruining our digestions. If in addition to this mercy you get the flowers on the table of the light shades, arranged in silver, you may count yourself happy. Gold plate is only bearable when wedded to pink flowers — with blue, red, or white it is hopelessly vulgar. In one instance, where I saw stands, epergnes, dishes, vases. This room is in a house three hundred years old, full of old, beautiful things bought lovingly bit by bit all filled with pink begonias, the effect was the feast of colour which, perhaps, gold and pink combined alone are able to furnish. Granted, then, that the all-important problem of successful lighting is solved, how should a dining-room be furnished ? A soft, thick carpet, Turkey for preference, is desirable, and whatever is the dominant note of colour in the room, that colour should appear positively in the carpet, and, of course, the hangings, while almost any furniture that is good of its kind may go with it. There are, however, dining-rooms and dining-rooms. There is the soundless room where the rich man eats, sunk deep in luxury, where soft-footed men serve food like priests conducting a ceremony, and