The Bedroom and Boudoir Part 1

The Bedroom and Boudoir.

by Lady Barker.

PREFACE.

Too 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 bed-room.

W. J. LOFTIE.

CHAPTER I.

AN IDEAL BED-ROOM.--ITS WALLS.

It 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 bed-rooms 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 a.s.sertion he once heard made by Th.o.r.eau, 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 bed-room 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 s.p.a.cious 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 s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage. 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 bed-room,--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 bed-room 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 l.u.s.trous 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 bed-room 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 bed-room are not papered. There are papers made expressly, which do not attract dirt, and which can be found of lovely design. A bed-room 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-sh.e.l.l pink, or a green which has no a.r.s.enic 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.

Bed-room 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 bed-room 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 bed-room 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 j.a.panese paper, sometimes used for curtains, which really looks more suitable and pretty when serving as wall-hangings in the bed-rooms of a country house. I know a whole wing of "bachelors'

quarters" papered by fluted j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 bed-room 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 bed-room 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 bed-room. If it be low, then let the paper be suitable--something which will not dwarf the room. I know a rural bed-room 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 bed-room. 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 bed-room 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 bed-rooms as pretty and original as possible. Boys might be encouraged to so arrange their collections of eggs, b.u.t.terflies, 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.

In 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 bed-room, and the modern Persian rugs are too gaudy to harmonise well with the sober tone of a wainscotted bed-room, 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 bed-rooms 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 bed-room floor being carpeted in the same way--landings, pa.s.sages, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 bed-room, 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 gra.s.s-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 bed-rooms, 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 bed-rooms, 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 bed-room. 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 bed-rooms, is a fresh, inexpensive carpet of un.o.btrusive 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 bed-room 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 "gra.s.s-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 a.s.sert from my own experience--which after all is the only true standpoint of a.s.sertion--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 bed-room, 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 bed-room, 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 bed-room, 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 pa.s.sing 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 bed-rooms. 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 coa.r.s.e 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 bed-rooms 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 bed-room 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 _applique_-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 bed-rooms 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 gay beau-pot full of poppies, or even a spinning-wheel with its creamy bundle of flax or wool bound by a scarlet ribbon, in the unregarded corner of a dingy pa.s.sage, and I think we do not bear in mind enough how bright and gay the costumes of those days used to be. To a new house, furnished according to the present rage for old-fashioned decoration, our modern sombre apparel is no help. We do not lighten up our rooms a bit now by our dress, except perhaps in summer, but generally we sit, clad in dingiest tints of woollen material, or in very inartistic black silk, amid furniture which was originally designed as a sort of background to much gay and gallant clothing, to flowered sacques and powdered heads, to bright steel b.u.t.tons and buckles and a thousand points of colour and light. Let us follow their old good example thoroughly, if we do it at all, and do our best to brighten the dull nooks and corners which will creep into all dwellings, by our attire, as well as in all other ways.

CHAPTER III.

BEDS AND BEDDING.

When we discuss a bed-room, the bed ought certainly to be the first thing considered. Here at least, is a great improvement within even the last forty or fifty years. Where are now those awful four-posters, so often surmounted by huge wooden k.n.o.bs or plumes of feathers, or which even offered hideously carved griffin's heads to superintend your slumbers? Gone, "quite gone," as children say. At first we ran as usual into the opposite extreme, and bestowed ourselves at night in frightful and vulgar frames of cast iron, ornamented with tawdry gilt or bronze scroll-work, but such things are seldom seen now, and even the cheap common iron or bra.s.s bedstead of the present day has at least the merit of simplicity. Its plain rails at foot and head are a vast improvement on the fantastic patterns of even twenty years ago, and the bedsteads of the present day will long continue in general use in modern houses.

Their extreme cheapness and cleanliness are great points in their favour, and when they are made low, and have a spring frame with one rather thick mattress at the top, they are perfectly comfortable to sleep in besides being harmless to look at.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.]

But in many rooms where the style of both decoration and furniture has been carried back for a century and a half, and all the severe and artistic lines of the tastes of those days must needs be preserved, then indeed an ordinary iron or bra.s.s bedstead, of ever so un.o.btrusive a pattern would be ludicrously out of place. Still, if our minds revolt from anything like a return to the old nightmare-haunted huge Beds of Ware, we can find something to sleep on which will be in harmony with the rest of the surroundings, and yet combine the modern needs of air and light with the old-fashioned strictness of form and beauty of detail. Here is a drawing (Fig. 1) made from an old Dutch bedstead by Mr. Lathrop. The sides are of beautifully and conscientiously inlaid work, whilst the slight outward slope of both the head and foot-board insures the perfection of comfort. To avoid a too great austerity of form, the upper cap of the foot-board has been cut in curves, and the solidity of the legs modified ever so slightly. The bedding of this bedstead must by no means project beyond its sides, but must fit into the box-like cavity intended to receive it. In this bedstead (Fig. 2), which was made from a design by Mr. Sandier, more lat.i.tude is allowed in this respect, and its perfect simplicity can only be equalled by its beauty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2.]

The form of wooden bedstead (Fig. 3), which could easily be copied at all events in its general idea, by any village carpenter, would be exceedingly pretty and original for a young girl's bed-room. It is intended to be of oak with side rails which are to pa.s.s through carved posts, and be held by wooden pins, as are also the end rails. For durability as well as simplicity this design leaves nothing to be desired, and it can be made in almost any hard wood, whilst every year would only add to its intrinsic worth. How many of us mothers have taken special delight in preparing a room for our daughters when they return from school "for good"--when they leave off learning lessons out of books, and try, with varied success, to learn and apply those harder lessons, which have to be learned without either books or teachers.

What sumptuous room in after years ever affords the deep delight of the sense of ownership which attends the first awakening of a girl in a room of her very own? and it is a vivid recollection of this pure delight of one's own bygone girl-days which prompts us to do our best to furbish up ever so homely a room for our eldest daughter. If a pretty, fresh carpet is unattainable, then let us have bare boards, with rugs, or skins, or whatever is available. Necessity developes ingenuity, and ingenuity goes a long way. I never learned the meaning of either word until I found myself very far removed from shops, and forced to invent or subst.i.tute the materials wherewith to carry out my own little decorative ideas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3.]