CHARACTER IN FURNITURE
Mrs. Peattie Tells How Human Nature Crops Out in House Arrangements.
A Woman Can Be Told by Her Carpet or Her Curtains - A Dissertation for Faminine Readers.
You can tell a woman by her carpet.
That is to say, when you enter a house and see yourself in the drawing room-the room in which a person is apt to place whatever she has most carefully selected, you will be able to determine with comparative accuracy whether she is a person of culture, artistic tastes, loves of luxury, simple in taste, fond of color or a lover of form, gay or melancholy. inclined to letters or to society, and when you develop your sense of discrimination, you can even tell whether she is vivacious or reticent.
There are skillful canvassers of books who can so well prepare themselves by a hasty investigation of the furniture of a room, as to greet with absolute propriety of speech the lady of the house as she protestingly enters her invaded drawing room. And without doubt most of us women in making our "first calls" base our estimation of our new acquaintance to no little degree upon what we see about us and which we recognize as the selection of the lady, and as an expression of her taste.
The rule must not be made too general. For there are circumstances which interfere with the perfect application of it. And some unhappy women are forced to live in rooms which are in no way an expression of themselves and against which they consistently revoil But all things being equal, you know a woman by her carpet, as I said to begin with. Therefore, the interior of rooms furnish a study only second in interest to that of humanity itself, and I permit muself the luxury this week of describing certain Omaha drawing rooms, knowing that many will recognize them, and those who do not may find some amusement in reading of them.
This, then, is the drawing room of an elderly gentlewoman.
No matter from what province of the orient the rug comes which lies upon the polished floor It has a border as indicate, as splendid as the cashmere shawl. The center is a royal blue, like a neither heaven. The furniture is of mahogany old fashioned, with that air of repose that comes of age. Above the mantle hangs a circular mirror framed in gold. The prints on the wall are of the romantic type, before the truth seekers invented impressionism, or learned to obtrude the egoism of the artist above that of the subject. In the cabinet are some curious old trifles-a vase of wedgewood, a jar from Egypt some Bohemian glass, trifles in Dresden, Indian curios and a statnette or two. Above the cabinet are some bronzes. The curtains at the window are of point d'esprit and of silk with warm colors in them. On the table are a few books, a fan in red with which the mistress shades her face, a vase with the flower of the season, whatever it may be - violet, rose, chrysanthemum or holly. A little dish of bonbons, perhaps. The gentlewoman herself likes bonbins. She likes the flowers, the color of the rug, the chins, the soft cushions of the sofa. She likes the red fan which she holds up when the fire burns too brightly in the grate. Her hair is white, but her dimples still play. She talks about what is most amusing She had had trouble but she does not speak of it. She laughs like a girl. And she would rather make a joke than a sigh any day. She is vivacious and she always has something to show you. Or she has discovered a new genius, in music, or literature, or act, and makes you think you are in Paris instead of Omaha by the way she talks of them and of the accession they will be to artistic circles You always cave this drawing room with a feeling of gayety. There has been an informal elegance about it. You have been anxious to make yourself agreeable. And you have been entertained. This room is, perhaps, quainter in its way than almost any other room in Omaha. The lares seem to have been placed there so long ago. They are at once venerable and beautiful They did not drift into their places, they were put there. It is not an accidental arrangement. It is deliberate, yet gradualo; selected, yet unforced.
There is one room, however, which haunts me It is the drawing room of a genius, which sees so many viciasiudus of fortune, of emotion, and of famel. The floor is bare. There is a rented piano in one corner-sometimes there has not been bread, but there has always been a piano. The odd bay window has ragged. Nottingham curtains at it, not necessarily clean. The shades hang rather dejectedly. Some of them have lost the sticks out. There is an exquisite portrait of Angelica Kaufman, done by herself hanging over the drawing table one leg of which is gone, and he propped , up another article of furniture There is an old fashioned book case full of books as worn as a beggars coat. The books are the classics purchased in other days. The walls are dotted with sketches in pen and ink, water color, or in charcoal, done by the genius. Among these original sketches is the face of a woman old in sin-hideous-and wreatbed with roses. The genius is a Greek for contrasts such as these. There are cartoons showing her to be of the new faith the follower of the People in the industrial struggle. A populist, she calls herself. In reality she is anything which most appeals to the emotions A rosary hangs there. ico-symbol of a faith still passionately loved because it brings with it hours of spiritual ectasy. this room is never prim-no more than if the genius herself. As in her mind fragments of great emotions-ambition,love, eloquence, hate, hope, mystery, fear, devotion, lust of life, arrogance, vanity and vast white dreams of beautiful power lie scattered in hopeless confusion so about the room she inhabits is a confusion of papers, books, pictures, gloves, scarfs, flowers, music-whatever has for a moment appealed to her passionate and capricious fancy Now for prayer and now for coquetry now for poem and now for song, now for picture and now for conversation more full of art than all her other accomplishments, this young woman magnetic and peculiar, weaves the fabric of her life in warp and woof of startling contrast. Many sitting in that strange poor room leave found hours of rucher intellectual piquancy than ever they found in furnished and elegant parlor They have left the room wrapped in an atmosphere of mental intoxication,
