Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/486

 WOMAN'S HOME 462 FURMI^HIHG No. 4. THE DININQ = ROOM By HELEN MATHERS Continued from pas:e 311, Part 3 The Beauty and Usefulness o£ Chintz— The Wisdom of our Grandmothers— On Screens— The Curative Influences of Needlework — Some Beautiful Drawing-rooms f^HiNTZ, chintz, and always chintz — for your ^ drawing-room ! Old china, old colour prints, distinguished furniture, bowls of flowers of the right colour, a screen or two, a carpet of invisible green, are all good things ; but it is chintz — French for preference — which must shade your hangings and petticoat your couches and deep easy-chairs. Chintz brings the country into the darkest, most shut-in room. It is rus in urbe, the town dweller's garden. Its glowing flowers are never dirty, and the rarest piece of inlaid wood can never give one- half the pleasure which does a chair of the right shape, covered with chintz of the right colour. The Artistic Value of Chintz The very feel of it is a benediction on a hot day, rich stuffs are all very well for dining- rooms, but a drawing-room should suggest gaiety, light-heartedness. It is where my lady sits and plays, and her individual tastes tell. And how can she show to better ad- vantage than with a delicate background of green that suggests a woodland, and growing in it the flowers that strike the particular note of colour she prefers ? Our grandmothers knew the value of it well enough — it was its durability, possibly, that they bore in mind, knowing as they did, that the colours were produced by fresh strawberries, raspberries, and so on. so that the colours literally lasted a hundred years. When, in 1848, or thereabouts, the nasty aniline dyes came in, they turned up their noses at what only lasted twenty years, or thereabouts. And, as to cretonne, that lasts about a fourth of the life of chintz, they would not have suffered it near them. Our Wise Grandmothers There was not much our grandmothers did not know in matters of comfort, with screens to keep the fire from their faces, while their bodies remained warm [who makes screens now, and are not the old ones prohibitive in price?], with comfortable, elegant furniture, warming-pans, and rules of health for the children. Mites were not operated upon for appendicitis in those days — they were dosed with castor-oil and grew up sturdy rascals, or pretty girls. Yes; we cannot improve on our grand- mothers. They loved fresh air, and took so much pride in the flower-garden, that they insured themselves against winter skies and dreary weather by bringing flowers into their drawing- room, in prim, clean, crystaUised colours, knowing instinctively, perhaps, that nothing else went with Chippendale and Sheraton. Yet it goes equally well with Louis Quinze or, indeed, any Louis. '^ In a delicious room I know the glass over the fireplace is Louis Quinze, and most of the furniture, and the carpet is of the same period. The colour of the paper is real old- fashioned rose colour, with water-colours and prints on it, the woodwork of the room is white, the chintz, which is French, like the paper, has a white ground with a trellis of green and vivid rose coloured roses, and a deep mauve flower. And the deep easy- chairs and couches show to perfection the delicate pattern colouring of the chintz. Even if you took away the bibelots, the flowers, all the belongings of a woman of taste, that room would still be charming for the sake of the colour scheme alone. You will never find a room of that sort crowded up with photographs. One should bo very careful of admitting any photograph to a beautiful room. The safest rule is to keep photographs for one's bedroom ; though a place for a painting, a water-colour sketch, or a miniature can always be found in the drawing-room. The Use of Screens In the room I have just described are a couple of Louis Quinze screens, quite in- dispensable, for no drawing-room is com- plete that has not its door masked ; and, when it opens into another, a second is urgently called for, and while, of course, there is nothing to touch the exquisite French screens, it is possible to find, or even to have made, screens that do not in- terfere with the chintz that gives the colour- note of the room. Another most beautiful drawing — or, rather, two rooms — that give me an intense feeling of pleasure whenever I enter them, have walls of the softest blue. And on the mantelpiece and a table at right angles, are banks of Madonna lilies — no other flowers in the room whatever — and the effect of those lilies, growing, and in vases against that misty blue is unforgettable ; one carries it away with one, unconsciously soothed, as one is when looking at a blue sky. The great palms in the centre, reaching to the ceiling, the pictures in gold Venetian frames, the china and curios, the medals of my hostess's famous son, the blue brocade