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Title: The Bedroom and Boudoir

Author: Lady Barker

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEDROOM

AND BOUDOIR ***
THE BEDROOM AND BOUDOIR.
 THE
BEDROOM AND BOUDOIR.
BY
LADY BARKER.
 LONDON:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1878.

[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.]

FIFTH THOUSAND.

LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

 PREFACE.
OO much attention can scarcely be expended on our
sleeping rooms in order that we may have them
wholesome, convenient and cheerful. It is impossible to
over-estimate the value of refreshing sleep to busy
people, particularly to those who are obliged to do much
brainwork. In the following pages will, we hope, be found many
hints with regard to the sanitary as well as the ornamental
treatment of the bedroom.
W. J. Loftie.
 CONTENTS.
chapter page
I. An Ideal bedroom—its Walls 1
II. Carpets and Draperies 15
III. Beds and Bedding 26
IV. Wardrobes and Cupboards 44
V. Fire and Water 57
VI. The Toilet 70
VII. Odds and Ends of Decoration 80
VIII. The Sick Room 94
IX. The Spare Room 110
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
page
A Corner Wardrobe Frontispiece
Dutch Bedstead 27
Bedstead and Toilet Stand 30
Oak Bedstead 32
Children’s Bedsteads 37
An Indian Screen 41
Wardrobe 45
Antique Lock-up 48
Bureau 49
Travelling Chest of Drawers 51
Chinese Cabinet 55
Fire-place 58
Chair and Table 59
Bedside Table 62
Fire-place 63
Candlestick 65
French Washing-stand 66
Chinese Washing-stand 67
Corner-stand 68
Shrine “à la Duchesse” 71
Antique Toilet Table 72
Chest of Drawers 73
A Simple Toilet Table 76
Cane Arm-chair 81
Cane Sofa 82
Oak Settle 83
Large Arm-chair 84
Corner for Piano 85
Print-stand 88
South American Pitcher 91
Invalid Table 107
Desk 112
 THE
BEDROOM AND BOUDOIR.

CHAPTER I.
AN IDEAL BEDROOM.—ITS WALLS.

T is only too easy to shock some people, and at the risk

of shocking many of my readers at the outset, I must
declare that very few bedrooms are so built and
furnished as to remain thoroughly sweet, fresh, and airy
all through the night. This is not going so far as others
however. Emerson repeats an assertion he once heard
made by Thoreau, the American so-called “Stoic,”—
whose senses by the way seem to have been preternaturally acute—
that “by night every dwelling-house gives out a bad air, like a
slaughter-house.” As this need not be a necessary consequence of
sleeping in a room, it remains to be discovered why one’s first
impulse on entering a bedroom in the morning should either be to
open the windows, or to wish the windows were open. Every one
knows how often this is the case, not only in small, low, ill-contrived
houses in a town, but even in very spacious dwellings, standing too
amid all the fragrant possibilities of the open country. It is a very
easy solution of the difficulty to say that we ought always to sleep
with our windows wide open. The fact remains that many people
cannot do so; it is a risk—nay, a certainty—of illness to some very
young children, to many old people, and to nearly all invalids. In a
large room the risk is diminished, because there would be a greater
distance between the bed and window, or a space for a sheltering
screen. Now, in a small room, where fresh air is still more essential
and precious, the chances are that the window might open directly
on the bed, which would probably stand in a draught between door
and fireplace as well.
I take it for granted that every one understands the enormous
importance of having a fireplace in each sleeping-room in an English
house, for the sake of the ventilation afforded by the chimney. And
even then a sharp watch must be kept on the house-maid, who out
of pure “cussedness” (there is no other word for it) generally makes
it the serious business of her life to keep the iron flap of the register
stove shut down, and so to do away entirely with one of the uses of
the chimney. If it be impossible to have a fireplace in the sleeping-
room, then a ventilator of some sort should be introduced. There is,
I believe, a system in use in some of the wards of St. George’s
Hospital and in the schools under the control of the London School
Board, known as Tobin’s Patent. Ventilation is here secured by
means of a tube or pipe communicating directly with the outer air,
which can thus be brought from that side of the building on which
the atmosphere is freshest. If report can be trusted, this system
certainly appears to come nearer to what is wanted than any with
which we are yet acquainted, for it introduces fresh air without
producing a draught, and the supply of air can be regulated by a lid
at the mouth of the pipe. A sort of double-star is often introduced in
a pane of glass in the window, but this is somewhat costly, and it
would not be difficult to find other simpler and more primitive
methods, from a tin shaft or loosened brick in a wall, down to half a
dozen large holes bored by an auger in the panel of the door, six or
eight inches away from the top, though this is only advisable if the
door opens upon a tolerably airy landing or passage. If it does not,
then resort to some contrivance, as cheap as you please, in the
outer wall leading directly into the fresh air. In most private houses it
is generally possible to arrange for those to whom an open window
at night is a forbidden luxury, that they should sleep with their door
open. A curtain, or screen, or even the open door itself will ensure
the privacy in which we all like to do our sleeping, but there should
then be some window open on an upper landing, day and night, in
all weathers. Believe me, there are few nights, even in our rigorous
climate, where this would be an impossibility. Of course common
sense must be the guide in laying down such rules. No one would
willingly admit a fog or storm of driving wind and rain into their
house, but of a night when the atmosphere is so exceptionally
disturbed it is sure to force its way in at every cranny, and keep the
rooms fresh and sweet without the necessity of admitting a large
body of air by an open window.
Supposing then that the laws of ventilation are understood and
acted upon, and that certain other sanitary rules are carried out
which need not be insisted upon here,—such as that no soiled
clothes shall ever, upon any pretence, be kept in a bedroom,—then
we come to the next cause of want of freshness in a sleeping-room:
—Old walls. People do not half enough realise, though it must be
admitted they understand a great deal more than they once did,
how the emanations from the human body are attracted to the sides
of the room and stick there. It is not a pretty or poetical idea, but it
is unhappily a fact. So the only thing to be done is to provide
ourselves with walls which will either wash or clean in some way, or
are made originally of some material which neither attracts nor
retains these minute particles.
Nothing can be at once cleaner or more wholesome than the
beautiful wainscotted walls we sometimes see in the fine old country
houses built in Queen Anne’s reign. A bedroom of that date, if we
except the bed itself, and the probable absence of all bathing
conveniences, presented a nearly perfect combination of fresh air,
spotless cleanliness, and stately and harmonious beauty to the eyes
of an artist or the nose of a sanitary inspector. The lofty walls of
panelled oak, dark and lustrous from age and the rubbing of many
generations of strong-armed old-fashioned house-maids, were walls
which could neither attract nor retain objectionable atoms, and
ventilation was unconsciously secured by means of high narrow
windows, three in a row, looking probably due south, and an open
chimney-place, innocent of “register stoves” or any other contrivance
for blocking up its wide throat. Such a room rises up clearly before
the eyes of my mind, and I feel certain that I shall never forget the
deliciously quaint and hideous Dutch tiles in the fireplace, nor the
expressive tip of Ahasuerus’ nose in the tile representing his final
interview with Haman. How specially beautiful was the narrow
carved ledge, far above one’s head, which served as a mantelpiece,
over which simpered a faded lady with low, square-cut boddice, her
fat chin held well into the throat, and a rose in her pale, wan little
hand. A dado ran round this room about five feet from the floor, and
I used to be mean enough, constantly, to try if it was a dust-trap,
but I never could find a speck. That was because the house-maid
had been taught how to wipe dust off and carry it bodily away, not
merely, as Miss Nightingale complains, to disturb it from the place
where it had comfortably settled itself, and disperse it about the
room.
But what I remember more vividly in this room than even its old-
time beauty, was the thorough conscientiousness of every detail.
The cornice might fairly claim to rank as a work of art, not only from
its elaboration, but from its finish. The little square carved panels on
each side of the chimney, serving as supports to the mantelpiece,
held but one leaf or arabesque flourish apiece, yet each corner was
as sharply cut, each curve as smoothly rounded, as though it had
been intended for closest scrutiny. The wood of neither walls nor
floors had warped nor shrunk in all these years, and the low solid
doors hung as true, the windows opened as easily, as if it had all
been built yesterday. What do I say? built yesterday? Let any of us
begin to declare his experience of a new, modern house, and he will
find many to join in a doleful chorus of complaints about unseasoned
wood, ill-fitting joists, and hurried contrivances to meet domestic ills,
to say nothing of the uncomfortable effects of “scamped” work
generally. In spite of our improved tools, and our greater facilities for
studying and copying good designs, I am convinced that one reason
why we are going back in decorative taste to the days of our great
grandmothers is, that we are worn out and wearied with the
evanescent nature of modern carpenter’s and joiner’s work—to say
nothing of our aroused perceptions of its glaring faults of taste and
tone. Unhappily we cannot go back to those dear, clean, old oaken
walls. They would be quite out of the reach of the majority of
purses, and would be sure to be imitated by some wretched sham
planking which might afford a shelter and breeding-place for all
kinds of creeping things. No; let those who are fortunate enough to
possess or acquire these fine old walls treasure them and keep them
bright as their grandmothers did; not whitewash them, as actually
has been done more than once by way of “lightening” the room. And
who shall say, after that, that the Goths have ever been successfully
driven back?
I dwell on the walls of the bedroom because I believe them to be
the most important from a sanitary as well as from a decorative
point of view, and because there is really no excuse for not being
able to make them extremely pretty. You may tint them in distemper
of some delicate colour, with harmoniously contrasting lines at the
ceiling, and so be able to afford to have them fresh and clean as
often as you choose, or you may paint them in oils and have them
washed constantly. But there is a general feeling against this cold
treatment of a room which, above all others, should, in our
capricious climate, be essentially warm and comfortable. The tinted
walls are pretty when the curtains to go with them are made of
patternless cretonne of precisely the same shade, manufactured on
purpose, with exactly the same lines of colour for bordering. I am
not sure, however, that the walls I individually prefer for a bedroom
are not papered. There are papers made expressly, which do not
attract dirt, and which can be found of lovely design. A bedroom
paper ought never to have a distinct, spotted pattern on it, lest, if
you are ill, it should incite you to count the designs or should “make
faces at you.” Rather let it be all of one soft tint, a pearly gray, a
tender sea-shell pink, or a green which has no arsenic in it; but on
this point great care is requisite. You should also make it your
business to see, with your own eyes, that your new paper, whatever
its pattern or price, is not hung over the old one, and that the walls
have been thoroughly stripped, and washed, and dried again before
it is put on.
Bedroom walls, covered with chintz, stretched tightly in panels, are
exceedingly clean and pretty, but they must be arranged so as to
allow of being easily taken down and cleaned. The prettiest walls I
ever saw thus covered, were made of chintz, with a creamy
background and tendrils of ivy of half a dozen shades of green and
brown artfully blended, streaming down in graceful garlands and
sprays towards a dado about four feet from the ground. It was a
lofty room, and the curtains, screens, &c., were made to match, of
chintz, with sprays of ivy, and a similar border. I know other
bedroom walls where fluted white muslin is stretched over pink or
blue silk (prettiest of all over an apple-green batiste). I dislike
tapestry extremely for bedroom walls; the designs are generally of a
grim and ghostly nature, and even if they represent simpering
shepherds and shepherdesses, they are equally tiresome. There is a
Japanese paper, sometimes used for curtains, which really looks
more suitable and pretty when serving as wall-hangings in the
bedrooms of a country house. I know a whole wing of “bachelors’
quarters” papered by fluted Japanese curtains, and they are
exceedingly pretty. The curtains of these rooms are of workhouse
sheeting lined and bordered with Turkey red, and leave nothing to
be desired for quaint simplicity and brightness. I must ease my mind
by declaring here that I have a strong prejudice against Japanese
paper except when used in this way for wall-decoration. The curtains
made of it are not only a sham, pretending to be something which
they are not—a heinous crime in my eyes—but they are generally of
very ugly patterns, and hang in stiff, ungraceful folds, crackling and
rustling with every breath of air, besides being exceedingly
inflammable.
Of course the first rule in bedroom decoration, as in all other, is that
it should be suitable to the style of the house, and even to the
situation in which the house finds itself. The great point in the wall-
decoration of a town bedroom is that you should be able to replace
it easily when it gets dirty, as it is sure to do very soon if your
windows are kept sufficiently open. I have known people who kept
the windows of both bed and sitting-rooms always shut for fear of
soiling the walls. I prefer walls, under such conditions, which can be
cheaply made clean again perpetually. There are wall-papers by the
score, artistically simple enough to please a correct taste, and
sufficiently cheap not to perceptibly shrink the shallowest purse.
But in the country it is every one’s own fault if they have not a lovely
bedroom. If it be low, then let the paper be suitable—something
which will not dwarf the room. I know a rural bedroom with a paper
representing a trellis and Noisette roses climbing over it; the carpet
is shades of green without any pattern, and has only a narrow
border of Noisette roses; the bouquets, powdered on the chintzes,
match, and outside the window a spreading bush of the same dear
old-fashioned rose blooms three parts of the year. That is a bower
indeed, as well as a bedroom. Noisette roses and rosebuds half
smothered in leaves have been painted by the skilful fingers of the
owner of this room on the door-handles and the tiles of the fireplace
as well as embroidered on the white quilt and the green cover of the
writing-table. But then I acknowledge it is an exceptionally pretty
room to begin with, for the dressing-table stands in a deep bay
window, to which you ascend by a couple of steps. Belinda herself
could not have desired a fairer shrine whereat to worship her own
beauty.
The memory of other walls rises up before me; even of one with
plain white satiny paper bordered by shaded pink ribbon, not merely
the stiff paper-hanger’s design, but cut out and fixed in its place by a
pair of clever hands. This border of course looked different to
anything else of the kind I had ever seen; but according to strict
rules of modern taste it was not “correct.” Yet a great deal depends
on the way a thing is done. I see the Misses Garrett frowning as I go
on to say that here and there a deep shadow was painted under it,
and its bows and ends drooped down at the corners of the room,
whilst over the fireplace they made the bright, circling border for a
chalk drawing of a rosy child’s head. But it was a pretty room,
notwithstanding its original faulty design, and I describe it more as
an illustration of the supremacy of a real genius for decoration over
any hard and fast rule than as an example to be copied. Rules are
made for people who cannot design for themselves, and original
designs may be above rules, though they should never be above
taste.
I might go on for ever describing bedroom walls instead of only
insisting on their possessing the cardinal virtues of cleanliness and
appropriateness. Whether of satin or silk, of muslin or chintz, or of
cheapest paper, nothing can be really pretty and tasteful in wall-
decoration which is not scrupulously clean, without being cold and
glaring, and it should be in harmony with even the view from the
windows. Every room should possess an air of individuality—some
distinctive features in decoration which would afford a clue to the
designer’s and owner’s special tastes and fancies. How easy it is to
people old rooms with the imaged likeness of those who have dwelt
in them, and how difficult it would be to do as much for a modern
bower!
If I had my own way, I would accustom boys as well as girls to take
a pride in making and keeping their bedrooms as pretty and original
as possible. Boys might be encouraged to so arrange their
collections of eggs, butterflies, beetles, and miscellaneous rubbish,
as to combine some sort of decorative principle with this sort of
portable property. And I would always take care that a boy’s room
was so furnished and fitted that he might feel free, there at least,
from the trammels of good furniture. He should have bare boards
with only a rug to stand on at the bed-side and fireplace, but he
should be encouraged to make with his own hands picture-frames,
bookcases, brackets, anything he liked, to adorn his room, and this
room should be kept sacred to his sole use wherever and whenever
it was possible to do so. Girls might also be helped to make and
collect tasteful little odds and ends of ornamental work for their own
rooms, and shown the difference between what is and is not
artistically and intrinsically valuable, either for form or colour. It is
also an excellent rule to establish that girls should keep their rooms
neat and clean, dust their little treasures themselves, and tidy up
their rooms before leaving them of a morning, so that the servant
need only do the rougher work. Such habits are valuable in any
condition of life. An eye so trained that disorder or dirt is hideous to
it, and a pair of hands capable of making such conditions an
impossibility in their immediate neighbourhood, need be no
unworthy addition to the dowry of a princess.
 CHAPTER II.
CARPETS AND DRAPERIES.

N the very old-fashioned, stately rooms of Queen Anne’s

reign the carpeting was doled out in small proportions,
and a somewhat comfortless air must have prevailed
where an expanse of floor was covered here and there by
what we should now characterise as a shabby bit of
carpeting. In fact a suitable floor-covering or appropriate draperies
for these old rooms is rather a difficult point. Modern tastes demand
comfort and brightness, and yet there is always the dread of too
glaring contrasts, and an inharmonious groundwork. Quite lately I
saw a fine old-time wainscotted room, whose walls and floor had
taken a rich dark gloss from age, brightened immensely and
harmoniously by four or five of those large Indian cotton rugs in
dark blue and white, to be bought now-a-days cheaply enough in
Regent Street. The china in this room was of Delft ware, also blue
and white, and it had short full curtains of a bright French stuff,
wherein blue lines alternated with a rich red, hanging in the deep
windows, whilst colour was given in a dusky corner by a silken
screen of embroidered peonies. A Turkish carpet is of course
inadmissible in a bedroom, and the modern Persian rugs are too
gaudy to harmonise well with the sober tone of a wainscotted
bedroom, but it is quite possible to find delicious rugs and strips of
carpeting in greenish blue copied from Eastern designs. The
difficulty is perhaps most simply met by a carpet of a very dark red,
with the smallest possible wave or suggestion of black in it, either in
strips or in a square, stopping short within two feet or so of the
walls. I know a suite of old-fashioned bedrooms where the floor is
covered with quite an ecclesiastical-looking carpet, and it looks very
suitable, warm and bright, and thoroughly in keeping. In a house of
moderate size there is nothing I like so much as the whole of a
bedroom floor being carpeted in the same way—landings, passages,
dressing-rooms, and all—and on the whole, taking our dingy climate
into consideration, a well-toned red carpet or nondescript blue will
generally be found the most suitable.

Strange to say, next to red carpets white ones wear the best, but
they make such a false and glaring effect, that they cannot be
considered appropriate even for a pretty bowery bedroom, half
dressing-room, half boudoir. With ordinarily fair wear white carpets
only take a creamy tint as they get older, and then their bouquets
and borders, have a chance of fading into better harmony. But most
of the designs of these carpets are so radically wrong, so utterly
objectionable from the beginning, that the best which can be hoped
from time is that it will obliterate them altogether. It is true we
flatter ourselves that we have grown beyond the days of enormous
boughs and branches of exaggerated leaves and blossoms daubed
on a crude ground, but have we escaped from the dominion of
patterns, more minute it is true, but quite as much outside the pale
of good taste? What is to be said in defence of a design which, when
its colours are fresh, is so shaded as to represent some billowy and
uneven surface, fastened at intervals by yellow nails? or spots of
white flowers or stars on a grass-green ground? The only carpet of
that sort of white and green which I ever liked had tiny sprays of
white heather on a soft green ground, in the miniature drawing-
room of a Scotch shooting-box. There, it was so appropriate, so
thoroughly in keeping with even the view out of the windows, with
the heathery chintz, the roe-deer’s heads on the panels of the wall,
that it looked better on the floor than anything else could possibly
have done. Morris has Kidderminster carpets for bedrooms, in pale
pink, buff, and blue, &c., which are simply perfect in harmony of
colour and design.
People who consider themselves good managers are very apt to turn
the half worn-out drawing-room carpet into one of the bedrooms,
but this is not a good plan, for it seldom matches the draperies, and
is also apt to become frowsy and fusty. I am not so extravagant as
to recommend that a good carpet with plenty of possibilities of wear
yet in it should be thrown away because it is not suitable for a
bedroom. There are many ways and means of disposing of such
things, and even the threadbare remains of an originally good and
costly carpet can find a market of its own. What I should like to see,
especially in all London bedrooms, is a fresh, inexpensive carpet of
unobtrusive colours, which can be constantly taken away and
cleaned or renewed, rather than a more costly, rich-looking floor-
covering, which will surely in time become and remain more or less
dirty. But light carpets are seldom soft in tone, and I should be
inclined to suggest felt as a groundwork, if the bare boards are
inadmissible, with large rugs thrown down before the fireplace,
dressing and writing-tables, &c. These should of course contrast
harmoniously with the walls. If you have a room of which the style is
a little too sombre, then lighten it and brighten it by all the means in
your power. If it be inclined to be garish and glaring, then subdue it.
People cannot always create, as it were, the place in which they are
obliged to live. One may find oneself placed in a habitation perfectly
contrary to every principle of correct taste as well as opposed to
one’s individual preferences. But that is such an opportunity! out of
unpromising materials and surroundings you have to make a room,
whether bedroom or boudoir, which will take the impression of your
own state. As long as a woman possesses a pair of hands and her
work-basket, a little hammer and a few tin-tacks, it is hard if she
need live in a room which is actually ugly. I don’t suppose any
human being except a gipsy has ever dwelt in so many widely-apart
lands as I have. Some of these homes have been in the infancy of
civilisation, and yet I have never found it necessary to endure, for
more than the first few days of my sojourn, anything in the least
ugly or uncomfortable. Especially pretty has my sleeping-room
always been, though it has sometimes looked out over the snowy
peaks of the Himalayas, at others, up a lovely New Zealand valley,
or, in still earlier days, over a waving West Indian “grass-piece.” But I
may as well get out the map of the world at once, and try to
remember the various places to which my wandering destiny has led
me. All the moral I want to draw from this geographical digression is
that I can assert from my own experience—which after all is the only
true standpoint of assertion—that it is possible to have really pretty,
as well as thoroughly comfortable dwelling-places even though they
may lie thousands of miles away from the heart of civilisation, and
hundreds of leagues distant from a shop or store of any kind. I
mean this as an encouragement—not a boast.
Chintz is what naturally suggests itself to the inquirer’s mind as most
suitable for the drapery of a bedroom, and there is a great deal to
be said in its favour. First of all, its comparative cheapness and the
immense variety of its designs. Cretonnes are comely too, if care be
taken to avoid the very gaudy ones. If there is no objection on the
score of difficulty of keeping clean, I am fond, in a modern bedroom,
of curtains all of one colour, some soft, delicate tint of blue or rose,
with a great deal of patternless white muslin either over it or
beneath it as drapery to the window. This leaves you more free for
bright, effective bits of colour for sofa, table-cover, &c., and the
feeling of the window curtains can be carried out again in the
screen. A bedroom, to be really comfortable, should always have one
or even two screens, if it be large enough. They give a great air of
comfort to a room, and are exceedingly convenient as well as pretty.
The fashion of draped toilet-tables is passing away so rapidly that
they cannot be depended upon for colour in a room, though we get
the advantage in other ways. So we must fall back upon the old idea
of embroidered quilts once more to help with colour and tone in our
bedrooms. They are made in a hundred different and almost equally
pretty designs. Essentially modern quilts for summer can be made of
lace or muslin over pink or blue batiste or silk to match the tints of
the room; quilts of linen embroidered with deliciously artistic
bunches of fruit or flowers at the edge and corners; quilts of eider-
down covered with silk, for preference, or if our means will not
permit so costly a material, then of one colour, such as Turkey red,
in twilled cotton. I have never liked those gay imitation Indian quilts.
They generally “swear” at everything else in the room.
But there are still more beautiful quilts of an older style and date. I
have seen some made of coarse linen, with a pattern running in
parallel strips four or six inches wide, formed by pulling out the
threads to make the groundwork of an insertion. The same idea
looks well also when carried out in squares or a diamond-shaped
pattern. Then there are lovely quilts of muslin embroidered in
delicate neutral tints, which look as if they came straight from Cairo
or Bagdad, but which have never been out of England, and owe
their lightness and beauty to the looms of Manchester.
One of the prettiest and simplest bedrooms I know had its walls
covered with lining paper of the very tenderest tint of green, on
which were hung some pretty pastel sketches, all in the same style.
The chintzes, or rather cretonnes, were of a creamy white ground
with bunches of lilacs powdered on them, and the carpet, of a soft
green, had also a narrow border with bouquets of lilacs at each
corner. The screens were of muslin over lilac batiste, and the quilt of
the simple bedstead had been worked by the owner’s own fingers,
of linen drawn out in threads. The very tiles of the fireplace—for this
pretty room had an open hearth with a sort of basket for a coal fire
in the middle—and the china of the basin-stand as well as the door-
handles and plates, were all decorated with the same flower, and
although essentially a modern room in a modern house, it was
exquisitely fresh and uncommon. This was partly owing to the liberal
use of the leaves of the lilac, which are in form so exceedingly
pretty.
In an old-fashioned house if I wanted the draperies and quilt of my
bedroom to be thoroughly harmonious I should certainly go to the
Royal School of Art Needlework in the Exhibition Road for designs,
as they possess extraordinary facilities for getting at specimens of
the best early English and French needlework, and they can imitate
even the materials to perfection. I saw some curtains the other day
in a modern boudoir from this Royal School of Art Needlework. They
were of a delicate greenish blue silk-rep, which hung in delicious
round folds and had a bold and simple design of conventionalised
lilies in a material like Tussore silk appliqué-d with a needlework
edge. Of course they were intended for a purely modern room, but
there were also some copies of draperies which went beautifully with
Chippendale chairs and lovely old straight up and down cupboards
and settees.
There is rather a tendency in the present day to make both
bedrooms and boudoirs gloomy; a horrible vision of a room with
walls the colour of a robin’s egg (dots and all) and black furniture,
rises up before me, and the owner of this apartment could not be
induced to brighten up her gloom by so much as a gay pincushion.
Now our grandmothers understood much better, though probably no
one ever said a word to them about it, how necessary it was to light
up dark recesses by contrasts. You would generally have found an
exquisite old blue and white Delft jar full of scented rose-leaves, a
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