University of Virginia Library

The Decoration of Houses. By Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1897.

One opens a new book on decoration with a weary anticipation, remembering how much has been lately written on the subject for Americans, and to how little purpose; but now the whole style and practice of decoration has changed, and the teaching of the last generation has become obsolete. 'The Decoration of Houses,' a handsome, interesting, and well-written book, not only is an example of the recent reversion to quasi-classic styles and methods, but signalizes the complete reaction that has thrown to the winds, even before the public discovered it, perhaps, the lately accepted doctrine of constructive virtue, sincerity, and the beauty of use. The authors take the new ground uncompromisingly, snap their fingers at sincerity, have no horror of shams, and stand simply on proportion, harmony of lines, and other architectural qualities. "Any trompe-d'oeil is permissible in decorative design," they say, "if it gives an impression of pleasure." To this have we already come; yet it seems not to have produced harmony between the outside and the inside of their volume.

The thread of their discussion is historical. Its fifty illustrations, taken from Italian, French, and English interiors, with a somewhat omnivorous appetite, are of various interest; but the book is the fruit of study, and of a larger knowledge of examples than has commonly been the case with its predecessors. It is aimed, not at professional readers, but at the public, whom it instructs with many intelligent criticisms and sensible directions, calling their attention to artistic aspects of decoration which have been neglected by writers of the last dispensation. It touches the root of present difficulty when it says, in the preface, that "the vulgarity of current decoration has its source in the indifference of the wealthy to architectural fitness." But, to the authors, architectural fitness means agreeable proportions and combination of lines, and no more.

The temptation of the literature that we have left behind was that any ready-witted writer could discourse magisterially about decoration; and, inasmuch as his material was pure theory, it called for neither experience nor knowledge, nor yet for artistic or technical acquirement; in truth, after the beginning, the writers were mainly literary men and amateurs. Nevertheless there were valuable truths in their writings, and principles which, under due limitation, should have infused freshness, vitality, and manliness into decorative work. If these have been forgotten before they have borne their due fruit, the fault may have been in the narrowness, vehemence, and want of technical enlightenment with which they were urged. But whether we are morally wise, or historically, the things we need for decorative work are taste and instinct for form—qualities which still wait their development among Americans. Till these are evolved, we must either intrust ourselves to professional hands, or be left to vibrate between the dicta of dilettanti on the one hand and doctrinaires on the other.