By Helen Mathers

The Beauty and Usefulness of Chintz - The Wisdom of our Grandmothers - On Screens - The Curative Influences of Needlework - Some Beautiful Drawing-rooms

Chintz, chintz, and always chintz - for your drawing-room! Old china, old colour prints, distinguished furniture, bowls of flowers of the right colour, a screen or two, a carpet of invisible green, are all good things; but it is chintz - French for preference - which must shade your hangings and petticoat your couches and deep easy-chairs. Chintz brings the country into the darkest, most shut-in room. It is rus in urbe, the town dweller's garden. Its glowing flowers are never dirty, and the rarest piece of inlaid wood can never give one-half the pleasure which does a chair of the right shape, covered with chintz of the right colour.

The Artistic Value Of Chintz

The very feel of it is a benediction on a hot day, rich stuffs are all very well for dining-rooms, but a drawing-room should suggest gaiety, light-heartedness. It is where my lady sits and plays, and her individual tastes tell. And how can she show to better advantage than with a delicate background of green that suggests a woodland, and growing in it the flowers that strike the particular note of colour she prefers ?

Our grandmothers knew the value of it well enough - it was its durability, possibly, that they bore in mind, knowing as they did, that the colours were produced by fresh strawberries, raspberries, and so on, so that the colours literally lasted a hundred years. When, in 1848, or thereabouts, the nasty aniline dyes came in, they turned up their noses at what only lasted twenty years, or thereabouts. And, as to cretonne, that lasts about a fourth of the life of chintz, they would not have suffered it near them.

Our Wise Grandmothers

There was not much our grandmothers did not know in matters of comfort, with screens to keep the fire from their faces, while their bodies remained warm [who makes screens now, and are not the old ones prohibitive in price?], with comfortable, elegant furniture, warming-pans, and rules of health for the children. Mites were not operated upon for appendicitis in those days - they were dosed with castor-oil and grew up sturdy rascals, or pretty girls.

Yes; we cannot improve on our grandmothers.

They loved fresh air, and took so much pride in the flower-garden, that they insured themselves against winter skies and dreary weather by bringing flowers into their drawing-room, in prim, clean, crystallised colours, knowing instinctively, perhaps, that nothing else went with Chippendale and Sheraton. Yet it goes equally well with Louis Quinze - or, indeed, any Louis.

In a delicious room I know the glass over the fireplace is Louis Quinze, and most of the furniture, and the carpet is of the same period. The colour of the paper is real old-fashioned rose colour, with water-colours and prints on it, the woodwork of the room is white, the chintz, which is French, like the paper, has a white ground with a trellis of green and vivid rose coloured roses, and a deep mauve flower. And the deep easy-chairs and couches show to perfection the delicate pattern colouring of the chintz. Even if you took away the bibelots, the flowers, all the belongings of a woman of taste, that room would still be charming for the sake of the colour scheme alone. You will never find a room of that sort crowded up with photographs.

One should be very careful of admitting any photograph to a beautiful room. The safest rule is to keep photographs for one's bedroom; though a place for a painting, a water-colour sketch, or a miniature can always be found in the drawing-room.

The Use Of Screens

In the room I have just described are a couple of Louis Quinze screens, quite indispensable, for no drawing-room is complete that has not its door masked; and, when it opens into another, a second is urgently called for, and while, of course, there is nothing to touch the exquisite French screens, it is possible to find, or even to have made, screens that do not interfere with the chintz that gives the colour-note of the room.

Another most beautiful drawing - or, rather, two rooms - that give me an intense feeling of pleasure whenever I enter them, have walls of the softest blue. And on the mantelpiece and a table at right angles, are banks of Madonna lilies - no other flowers in the room whatever - and the effect of those lilies, growing, and in vases against that misty blue is unforgettable; one carries it away with one, unconsciously soothed, as one is when looking at a blue sky. The great palms in the centre, reaching to the ceiling, the pictures in gold Venetian frames, the china and curios, the medals of my hostess's famous son, the blue brocade hangings, and the coverings of the chairs seem mere accessories to the lilies and the blue walls. And if I seem to insist unduly on this colour in decoration, it is because I find that it soothes, rests one to an extraordinary degree. I believe that it will come more and more into fashion.

A riverside drawing-room lingers in my mind, but then the outlook, and the shape and position of the windows had much to say to its charm. On either side of an old, richly carved, gilt glass reaching to the ceiling, and resting on a console table holding old china, were two smallish windows high up; these had short, tied-back curtains of chintz, with much green in it, and a vivid splash of cherry colour.

The Chintz Drawing-Room

These curtains were repeated - six pairs - in a very large bay-window looking out on a lawn, and a dainty Louis Quatorze writing-table and chair sufficiently furnished the recess. The rest of the room consisted mainly of deep easy-chairs and couches, flounced to the ground with chintz, and lovely old "bits" of furniture sparingly arranged so that none of their beauties were lost. The mantelpiece, covered with chintz, had the fellow-glass to the one between the windows; and I confess to a tenderness for those rich gilt frames. In this instance they gave a note of sumptuousness to the room that in no way discounted the clean chintz freshness, in which one seemed to catch the very scent of the flowers that bloomed on every side.

In every drawmg-room I look round for a work-basket of some sort, perferably one of those work-tables that our grandmothers loved, with its silk bag - of the right colour - below, containing the bit of work to take up at odd times.

Books are all very well, but you are all the while at the back of what you are reading. When you sew you watch the stitches, and the burden of self recedes. I have always thought that it is to their love and steady practice of needlework that the women of the middle-classes owe their content and "poise," their sane way of taking life, and no woman who has once tried it as a panacea against mental pain is likely to abandon it.

A very simple and elegant receptacle for work can be made by having three strong circular wires fixed to what is really a small pedestal, with a round of wood at the top, and a larger one at the bottom, both to be covered with silk of the desired colour, the top edged with fringe, and three deep pockets of silk frilled on to the wires, drawn in below something in the shape of a fool's cap. It is a reminder to you when a fit of worry is toward, that a remedy is at hand.

Some Beautiful Drawing-Rooms

But there are drawing-rooms and drawing-rooms, some so splendid that chintz would be out of place. I well remember one of which the walls were apparently of brocade - a rich, glorious red - the white ceiling heavily barred with oak beams, and tall cabinets of fragile china either side of satin-hung windows, that looked out on woods and a glorious sea; while another and larger window commanded a different view. There were many pictures, mostly portraits, on the walls, the huge, deep chairs were in palest notes of satin and fringe; trees of azalea - white and rose - stood out from the dark splendour of furniture finely spaced and isolated; beyond showed another room, lined to the ceiling with books, with one glorious oil-painting over the fireplace.

Chintz and old furniture

It is as impossible to cover all sorts and conditions of drawing-rooms in this article, as it was in that of "halls" to sing the praises of a corridor in a great house, made beautiful by carved chairs, cabinets of china, medals and curios, of tapestries on the walls, and pictures.

Good Results can be Obtained Inexpensively

The possessors of really beautiful old houses want no help from me; their ancestors have done it for them long ago, with their own tastes added. It is rather to that very large class of women who have taste, and only moderate means for gratifying the same, that I address myself; and I confidently assert that quite as good results in the way of comfort and pleasure can be got out of simple, inexpensive surroundings, as if they were free to spend a great deal of money. For instance, you might furnish a white-walled drawing-room with chintz that is shaded from mauve to violet - that is, if you have

* ml blue eyes, not if they are green - and put a writing bureau, and any dark bits of furniture you may have in it, and every blue crock you can find fill with green boughs, if no blue or purple flowers are available.

A white room, with chintz that has a lot of green and a vivid splash of rose colour in it, is even more charming. And when couches, chairs, and curtains are all of the same cheery complexion, the few pieces of furniture necessary really matter very little, so long as they are unobtrusive.

I cannot insist sufficiently on a drawing-room carpet being kept as dark as possible; a light one spells ruin to harmony. Aubussons are all very well when matched by furniture of that period, but an imitation one, with, say, Chippendale or Sheraton, or, indeed, any good English furniture, demoralises the whole colour scheme. There must be a table to hold books. A Chippendale oval glass looks best over the fireplace, but I have seen charming results from placing a Venetian mirror on the shelf, and hanging a portrait in a gilt frame above it, flanked by tortoiseshell plaques or pieces of Crown Derby, with ivory figures below; anything, in short, that is good, and spaced out properly.

I must own to a weakness for a chintz overmantel and curtains to match the curtains and chairs. When drawn, they hide the yawning grate and inadequate fern or screen - unsuitable since neither ferns nor screens grow naturally in a place built for coal and warmth - and sometimes make all the difference that a mere detail often does.

The Beauty of a Lacquer room

Have you ever dreamed of or seen a lacquer room ? There was such a one at Carlton House, and the picture of it makes one gasp with sheer delight. The room was panelled in lacquer, the carpet was blue with smudges of lacquer brown on it, the shelf above the door and the one above the mantelpiece held china worth a king's ransom. Were I millionaire, I would build such a room to-morrow for the boundless enjoyment of the beauty lovers who understand it.