University of Virginia Library

4. IV.
THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

TALKING to you in this way once a month, O
my confidential reader, there seems to be danger,
as in all intervals of friendship, that we shall not
readily be able to take up our strain of conversation
just where we left off. Suffer me, therefore, to remind
you that the month past left us seated at the fireside,
just as we had finished reading of what a home was,
and how to make one.

The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory
coals were winking dreamily at us from out their fluffy
coats of white ashes, — just as if some household
sprite there were opening now one eye and then the
other, and looking in a sleepy, comfortable way at us.

The close of my piece, about the good housemother,
had seemed to tell on my little audience.
Marianne had nestled close to her mother, and laid
her head on her knee; and though Jenny sat up
straight as a pin, yet her ever-busy knitting was
dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint of a tear in
her quick, sparkling eye, — yes, actually a little bright

bead fell upon her work; whereupon she started up
actively, and declared that the fire wanted just one
more stick to make a blaze before bedtime; and then
there was such a raking among the coals, such an
adjusting of the andirons, such vigorous arrangement
of the wood, and such a brisk whisking of the hearth-brush,
that it was evident Jenny had something on
her mind.

When all was done, she sat down again and looked
straight into the blaze, which went dancing and crackling
up, casting glances and flecks of light on our
pictures and books, and making all the old, familiar
furniture seem full of life and motion.

“I think that 's a good piece,” she said, decisively.
“I think those are things that should be thought
about.”

Now Jenny was the youngest of our flock, and
therefore, in a certain way, regarded by my wife and
me as perennially “the baby”; and these little, old-fashioned,
decisive ways of announcing her opinions
seemed so much a part of her nature, so peculiarly
“Jennyish,” as I used to say, that my wife and I only
exchanged amused glances over her head, when they
occurred.

In a general way, Jenny, standing in the full orb of
her feminine instincts like Diana in the moon, rather
looked down on all masculine views of women's matters

as “tolerabiles ineptiæ”; but towards her papa she
had gracious turns of being patronizing to the last
degree; and one of these turns was evidently at its
flood-tide, as she proceeded to say, —

“I think papa is right, — that keeping house and
having a home, and all that, is a very serious thing,
and that people go into it with very little thought
about it. I really think those things papa has been
saying there ought to be thought about.”

“Papa,” said Marianne, “I wish you would tell
me exactly how you would spend that money you
gave me for house-furnishing. I should like just your
views.”

“Precisely,” said Jenny, with eagerness; “because
it is just as papa says, — a sensible man, who has
thought, and had experience, can't help having some
ideas, even about women's affairs, that are worth
attending to. I think so, decidedly.”

I acknowledged the compliment for my sex and
myself with my best bow.

“But then, papa,” said Marianne, “I can't help
feeling sorry that one can't live in such a way as to
have beautiful things around one. I 'm sorry they
must cost so much, and take so much care, for I am
made so that I really want them. I do so like to see
pretty things! I do like rich carpets and elegant
carved furniture, and fine china and cut-glass and

silver. I can't bear mean, common-looking rooms.
I should so like to have my house look beautiful!”

“Your house ought not to look mean and common,
— your house ought to look beautiful,” I replied. “It
would be a sin and a shame to have it otherwise. No
house ought to be fitted up for a future home without
a strong and a leading reference to beauty in all its
arrangements. If I were a Greek, I should say that
the first household libation should be made to beauty;
but, being an old-fashioned Christian, I would say
that he who prepares a home with no eye to beauty
neglects the example of the great Father who has
filled our earth-home with such elaborate ornament.”

“But then, papa, there 's the money!” said Jenny,
shaking her little head wisely. “You men don't think
of that. You want us girls, for instance, to be patterns
of economy, but we must always be wearing
fresh, nice things; you abhor soiled gloves and worn
shoes: and yet how is all this to be done without
money? And it 's just so in housekeeping. You sit
in your arm-chairs and conjure up visions of all sorts
of impossible things to be done; but when mamma
there takes out that little account-book, and figures
away on the cost of things, where do the visions go?”

“You are mistaken, my little dear, and you talk
just like a woman,” — (this was my only way of
revenging myself,) — “that is to say, you jump to

conclusions, without sufficient knowledge. I maintain
that in house-furnishing, as well as woman-furnishing,
there 's nothing so economical as beauty.”

“There 's one of papa's paradoxes!” said Jenny.

“Yes,” said I, “that is my thesis, which I shall
nail up over the mantel-piece there, as Luther nailed
his to the church-door. It is time to rake up the fire
now; but to-morrow night I will give you a paper on
the Economy of the Beautiful.”

“Come, now we are to have papa's paradox,” said
Jenny, as soon as the tea-things had been carried out.

Entre nous, I must tell you that insensibly we had
fallen into the habit of taking our tea by my study-fire.
Tea, you know, is a mere nothing in itself, its
only merit being its social and poetic associations, its
warmth and fragrance, — and the more socially and
informally it can be dispensed, the more in keeping
with its airy and cheerful nature.

Our circle was enlightened this evening by the
cheery visage of Bob Stephens, seated, as of right,
close to Marianne's work-basket.

“You see, Bob,” said Jenny, “papa has undertaken
to prove that the most beautiful things are always the
cheapest.”

“I 'm glad to hear that,” said Bob, — “for there 's
a carved antique bookcase and study-table that I have

my eye on, and if this can in any way be made to
appear —”

“O, it won't be made to appear,” said Jenny, settling
herself at her knitting, “only in some transcendental,
poetic sense, such as papa can always make
out. Papa is more than half a poet, and his truths
turn out to be figures of rhetoric, when one comes to
apply them to matters of fact.”

“Now, Miss Jenny, please remember my subject
and thesis,” I replied, — “that in house-furnishing
there is nothing so economical as beauty; and I will
make it good against all comers, not by figures of
rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to
be very matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details,
and keep ever in view the addition-table. I will instance
a case which has occurred under my own observation.”

The Economy of the Beautiful.

Two of the houses lately built on the new land in
Boston were bought by two friends, Philip and John.
Philip had plenty of money, and paid the cash down
for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy
in his pocket. John, who was an active, rising young
man, just entering on a flourishing business, had expended
all his moderate savings for years in the

purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage
remaining, which he hoped to clear off by his future
successes. Philip begins the work of furnishing as
people do with whom money is abundant, and who
have simply to go from shop to shop and order all
that suits their fancy and is considered `the thing' in
good society. John begins to furnish with very little
money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he
wisely deems that to insure to them a well-built house,
in an open, airy situation, with conveniences for warming,
bathing, and healthy living, is a wise beginning in
life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond.

Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased,
going the rounds of shops and stores in fitting up
their new dwelling, and let us follow step by step.
To begin with the wall-paper. Imagine a front and
back parlor, with folding-doors, with two south windows
on the front, and two looking on a back court,
after the general manner of city houses. We will
suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper.
Philip buys the heaviest French velvet, with gildings
and traceries, at four dollars a roll. This, by the time
it has been put on, with gold mouldings, according to
the most established taste of the best paper-hangers,
will bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure
something like two hundred dollars. Now they proceed
to the carpet-stores, and there are thrown at

their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters,
with flowery convolutions and medallion-centres,
as if the flower-gardens of the tropics were whirling
in waltzes, with graceful lines of arabesque, — roses,
callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue and
crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color
and tracery. There is no restraint in price, — four or
six dollars a yard, it is all the same to them, — and
soon a magic flower-garden blooms on the floors, at a
cost of five hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs,
at fifty dollars apiece, complete the inventory, and
bring our rooms to the mark of eight hundred dollars
for papering and carpeting alone. Now come the
great mantel-mirrors for four hundred more, and our
rooms progress. Then comes the upholsterer, and
measures our four windows, that he may skilfully barricade
them from air and sunshine. The fortifications
against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of
damask, cord, tassels, shades, laces, and cornices,
about two hundred dollars per window. To be sure,
they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave;
but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the
sun would only reflect, he would see, himself, how
foolish it was for him to try to force himself into a
window guarded by his betters. If there is anything
cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air! Behold
us, then, with our two rooms papered, carpeted,
and curtained for two thousand dollars; and now are
to be put in them sofas, lounges, étagères, centre-tables,
screens, chairs of every pattern and device,
for which it is but moderate to allow a thousand more.
We have now two parlors furnished at an outlay of
three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a
single article of statuary, a single object of Art of any
kind, and without any light to see them by, if they
were there. We must say for our Boston upholsterers
and furniture-makers that such good taste generally
reigns in their establishments that rooms furnished at
hap-hazard from them cannot fail of a certain air of
good taste, so far as the individual things are concerned.
But the different articles we have supposed,
having been ordered without reference to one another
or the rooms, have, when brought together, no unity
of effect, and the general result is scattering and confused.
If asked how Philip's parlors look, your reply
is, “O, the usual way of such parlors, — everything
that such people usually get, — medallion-carpets,
carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze mantel-ornaments,
and so on.” The only impression a stranger
receives, while waiting in the dim twilight of these
rooms, is that their owner is rich, and able to get
good, handsome things, such as all other rich people
get.

Now our friend John, as often happens in America,

is moving in the same social circle with Philip, visiting
the same people, — his house is the twin of the one
Philip has been furnishing, and how shall he, with a
few hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable
beside those which Philip has fitted up elegantly at
three thousand?

Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must
make his prayer to the Graces, — for, if they cannot
save him, nobody can. One thing John has to begin
with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic
cestus of Venus, — not around her waist, but, if such
a thing could be, in her finger-ends. All that she
touches falls at once into harmony and proportion.
Her eye for color and form is intuitive: let her arrange
a garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off
furniture in it, and ten to one she makes it seem the
most attractive place in the house. It is a veritable
“gift of good faërie,” this tact of beautifying and arranging,
that some women have, — and, on the present
occasion, it has a real, material value, that can be
estimated in dollars and cents. Come with us and
you can see the pair taking their survey of the yet
unfurnished parlors, as busy and happy as a couple
of bluebirds picking up the first sticks and straws for
their nest.

“There are two sunny windows to begin with,” says
the good fairy, with an appreciative glance. “That
insures flowers all winter.”

“Yes,” says John; “I never would look at a house
without a good sunny exposure. Sunshine is the best
ornament of a house, and worth an extra thousand a
year.”

“Now for our wall-paper,” says she. “Have you
looked at wall-papers, John?”

“Yes; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven
cents a roll; all you want of a paper, you know, is
to make a ground-tint to throw out your pictures and
other matters, and to reflect a pleasant tone of light.”

“Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a
stone-color is the best, — but I can't bear those cold
blue grays.”

“Nor I,” says John. “If we must have gray, let
it at least be a gray suffused with gold or rose-color,
such as you see at evening in the clouds.”

“So I think,” responds she; “but, better, I should
like a paper with a tone of buff, — something that
produces warm yellowish reflections, and will almost
make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weather;
and then there is nothing that lights up so cheerfully
in the evening. In short, John, I think the color
of a zafferano rose will be just about the shade we
want.”

“Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as
I said before, at from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll.
Then, our bordering: there 's an important question,

for that must determine the carpet, the chairs, and
everything else. Now what shall be the ground-tint
of our rooms?”

“There are only two to choose between,” says the
lady, — “green and marroon: which is the best for the
picture?”

“I think,” says John, looking above the mantel-piece,
as if he saw a picture there, — “I think a
border of marroon velvet, with marroon furniture, is
the best for the picture.”

“I think so too,” said she; “and then we will have
that lovely marroon and crimson carpet that I saw at
Lowe's; — it is an ingrain, to be sure, but has a Brussels
pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades
of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and
when I come to cover the lounges and our two old
arm-chairs with marroon rep, it will make such a pretty
effect.”

“Yes,” said John; “and then, you know, our picture
is so bright, it will light up the whole. Everything
depends on the picture.”

Now as to “the picture,” it has a story must be
told. John, having been all his life a worshipper
and adorer of beauty and beautiful things, had never
passed to or from his business without stopping at the
print-shop windows, and seeing a little of what was
there.

On one of these occasions he was smitten to the
heart with the beauty of an autumn landscape, where
the red maples and sumachs, the purple and crimson
oaks, all stood swathed and harmonized together in
the hazy Indian-summer atmosphere. There was a
great yellow chestnut-tree, on a distant hill, which
stood out so naturally that John instinctively felt his
fingers tingling for a basket, and his heels alive with
a desire to bound over on to the rustling hillside and
pick up the glossy brown nuts. Everything was there
of autumn, even to the golden-rod and purple asters
and scarlet creepers in the foreground.

John went in and inquired. It was by an unknown
French artist, without name or patrons, who had just
come to our shores to study our scenery, and this was
the first picture he had exposed for sale. John had
just been paid a quarter's salary; he bethought him
of board-bill and washerwoman, sighed, and faintly
offered fifty dollars.

To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the
picture became his. John thought himself dreaming.
He examined his treasure over and over, and felt sure
that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a
trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his
way to the studio of the stranger, and apologized for
having got such a gem for so much less than its worth.
“It was all I could give, though,” he said; “and one

who paid four times as much could not value it more.”
And so John took one and another of his friends, with
longer purses than his own, to the studio of the modest
stranger; and now his pieces command their full
worth in the market, and he works with orders far
ahead of his ability to execute, giving to the canvas
the traits of American scenery as appreciated and felt
by the subtile delicacy of the French mind, — our
rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the
dreamy, misty delicacy of our snowy winter landscapes.
Whoso would know the truth of the same,
let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier,
at Malden, scarce a bow-shot from our Boston.

This picture had always been the ruling star of
John's house, his main dependence for brightening up
his bachelor-apartments; and when he came to the
task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occupant,
the picture was still his mine of gold. For a
picture, painted by a real artist, who studies Nature
minutely and conscientiously, has something of the
charm of the good Mother herself, — something of her
faculty of putting on different aspects under different
lights. John and his wife had studied their picture at
all hours of the day: they had seen how it looked
when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples
and made a golden shimmer over the blue mountains,
how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of afternoon,

and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died
off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when
larger parlors were to be furnished, the picture was
still the tower of strength, the rallying-point of their
hopes.

“Do you know, John,” said the wife, hesitating, “I
am really in doubt whether we shall not have to get
at least a few new chairs and a sofa for our parlors?
They are putting in such splendid things at the other
door that I am positively ashamed of ours; the fact
is, they look almost disreputable, — like a heap of
rubbish.”

“Well,” said John, laughing, “I don't suppose all
together sent to an auction-room would bring us fifty
dollars, and yet, such as they are, they answer the
place of better things for us; and the fact is, Mary,
the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there
really is no money to get any more.”

“Ah, well, then, if there is n't, we must see what
we can do with these, and summon all the good fairies
to our aid,” said Mary. “There 's your little cabinet-maker,
John, will look over the things, and furbish
them up; there 's that broken arm of the chair must
be mended, and everything revarnished; then I have
found such a lovely rep, of just the richest shade of
marroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to
cover the lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and ottomans

all alike, you know they will be quite another
thing.”

“Trust you for that, Mary! By the by, I 've found
a nice little woman, who has worked on upholstery,
who will come in by the day, and be the hands that
shall execute the decrees of your taste.”

“Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you
know that I 'm almost glad we can't get new things?
it 's a sort of enterprise to see what we can do with
old ones.”

“Now, you see, Mary,” said John, seating himself
on a lime-cask which the plasterers had left, and taking
out his memorandum-book, “you see, I 've calculated
this thing all over; I 've found a way by which
I can make our rooms beautiful and attractive without
a cent expended on new furniture.”

“Well, let 's hear.”

“Well, my way is short and simple. We must put
things into our rooms that people will look at, so that
they will forget to look at the furniture, and never
once trouble their heads about it. People never look
at furniture so long as there is anything else to look
at; just as Napoleon, when away on one of his expeditions,
being told that the French populace were
getting disaffected, wrote back, `Gild the dome des
Invalides,' and so they gilded it, and the people, looking
at that, forgot everything else.”

“But I 'm not clear yet,” said Mary, “what is coming
of this rhetoric.”

“Well, then, Mary, I 'll tell you. A suit of new
carved black-walnut furniture, severe in taste and
perfect in style, such as I should choose at David
and Saul's, could not be got under three hundred dollars,
and I have n't the three hundred to give. What,
then, shall we do? We must fall back on our resources;
we must look over our treasures. We have
our proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus
di Milo; we have those six beautiful photographs of
Rome, that Brown brought to us; we have the great
German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child,
and we have the two angel-heads, from the same; we
have that lovely golden twilight sketch of Heade's;
we have some sea-photographs of Bradford's; we have
an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings; and then,
as before, we have `our picture.' What has been the
use of our watching at the gates and waiting at the
doors of Beauty all our lives, if she has n't thrown us
out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for
time of need? Now, you see, Mary, we must make
the toilet of our rooms just as a pretty woman makes
hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens
her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes,
and, with a bow here, and a bit of fringe there, and a
button somewhere else, dazzles us into thinking that

she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms are
new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint
of the paper, and the rich coloring of the border,
corresponding with the furniture and carpets, will
make them seem prettier. And now for arrangement.
Take this front-room. I propose to fill those two
recesses each side of the fireplace with my books, in
their plain pine cases, just breast-high from the floor:
they are stained a good dark color, and nobody need
stick a pin in them to find out that they are not rosewood.
The top of these shelves on either side to be
covered with the same stuff as the furniture, finished
with a crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one
side of the fireplace I shall set our noble Venus di
Milo, and I shall buy at Cicci's the lovely Clytie, and
put it the other side. Then I shall get of Williams
and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which
give you all the style and charm of the best English
water-color school. I will have the lovely Bay of
Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from those
suns and skies of Southern Italy, and I will hang
Lake Como over my Clytie. Then, in the middle,
over the fireplace, shall be `our picture.' Over each
door shall hang one of the lithographed angel-heads
of the San Sisto, to watch our going-out and coming-in;
and the glorious Mother and Child shall hang
opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how Greek and
Christian unite in giving the noblest type to womanhood.
And then, when we have all our sketches and
lithographs framed and hung here and there, and your
flowers blooming as they always do, and your ivies
wandering and rambling as they used to, and hanging
in the most graceful ways and places, and all those
little shells and ferns and vases, which you are always
conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I 'll venture to say
that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful,
and that people will oftener say, `How beautiful!'
when they enter, than if we spent three times the
money on new furniture.”

In the course of a year after this conversation, one
and another of my acquaintances were often heard
speaking of John Merton's house. “Such beautiful
rooms, — so charmingly furnished, — you must go and
see them. What does make them so much pleasanter
than those rooms in the other house, which have
everything in them that money can buy?” So said
the folk, — for nine people out of ten only feel the
effect of a room, and never analyze the causes from
which it flows: they know that certain rooms seem
dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know
why; that certain others seem cheerful, airy, and
beautiful, but they know not why. The first exclamation,
on entering John's parlors, was so often,
“How beautiful!” that it became rather a byword

in the family. Estimated by their mere money-value,
the articles in the rooms were of very trifling worth;
but as they stood arranged and combined, they had
all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary
was only plaster, and the photographs and lithographs
such as were all within the compass of limited
means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its
own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest
works of Art. A good plaster cast is a daguerrotype,
so to speak, of a great statue, though it may be bought
for five or six dollars, while its original is not to be
had for any namable sum. A chromo-lithograph of
the best sort gives all the style and manner and effect
of Turner or Stanfield, or any of the best of modern
artists, though you buy it for five or ten dollars, and
though the original would command a thousand guineas.
The lithographs from Raphael's immortal picture
give you the results of a whole age of artistic
culture, in a form within the compass of very humble
means. There is now selling for five dollars at Williams
and Everett's a photograph of Cheney's crayon
drawing of the San Sisto Madonna and Child, which
has the very spirit of the glorious original. Such a
picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would
train its eye from infancy; and yet how many will
freely spend five dollars in embroidery on its dress,
that say they cannot afford works of Art!

There was one advantage which John and his wife
found in the way in which they furnished their house,
that I have hinted at before: it gave freedom to their
children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was
not with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail
knick-knacks. Pictures hung against the wall, and
statuary safely lodged on brackets, speak constantly
to the childish eye, but are out of the reach of childish
fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They
are not like china and crystal, liable to be used and
abused by servants; they do not wear out; they are
not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The
beauty once there is always there; though the mother
be ill and in her chamber, she has no fears that she
shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And this style
of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious
furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child
is ever stimulated to draw or to read by an Axminster
carpet or a carved centre-table; but a room surrounded
with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests
a thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand.
The child is found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks
for a book on Venice, or wants to hear the history of
the Roman Forum.

But I have made my article too long. I will write
another on the moral and intellectual effects of house-furnishing.

“I have proved my point, Miss Jenny, have I not?
In house-furnishing, nothing is more economical than
beauty.”

“Yes, papa,” said Jenny; “I give it up.”