Page:The Relentless City.djvu/169

Rh you can make a hat-rack pretty, so make it plain. Half a dozen Chippendale chairs, and an old English steel fender with dogs. I will choose the rugs and stair carpet myself, but polish the whole of the staircase. Put a big vitrine for china in that corner. Cut a circular louvre window above the front-door, and copy the mouldings round it from the north door of the Erechtheum. You will find the drawings in Schultz's book. Big candelabra will stand at the bottom of the stairs. I will send them here. Fit them with electric light, but do not pierce them. There will be six lamps in each of eight

It was extremely characteristic of Mr. Palmer that he went thus into everything himself. Nothing escaped him; he grasped at once the difficulty of bringing the dining-room into directer communication with the kitchen, a problem that had puzzled his architect, and solved it in five minutes by a lift and shutter arrangement so simple that it seemed mere idiocy not to have thought of it. He went into every servant's bedroom, every bathroom, into the sculleries, the coal-hole, the wine-cellar, and knew immediately what was wanted. And the more he saw of the house the better it pleased him; the big oak staircase to the reception-rooms was admirable, and more than admirable was the circular dining-room, with its walls panelled in excellent Italian boiseries, and its cupola-shaped roof, with carved converging wreaths of fruit and flowers. With his amazing knowledge of furniture and decoration, he had in an hour's time chosen the scheme for every room in the house, and provided the dealers, the paperers, the painters, with a week's work in looking out and bringing for his inspection the kind of thing he wanted. But it was not his way to allow a week for a week's work, and these gentleman were appointed to meet him there again in three days' time to submit for his approval carpets,