The Bedroom and Boudoir/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
WARDROBES AND CUPBOARDS.
OMETIMES a room has to play
the part of both bedroom and
boudoir, and then it is of
importance what form the "garde-robes"
shall assume. Fortunately there
are few articles of furniture on which more lavish
pains have been bestowed, and in which it is
possible to find scope for a wider range of taste and
choice. Recesses may be fitted up, if the room be
a large one, and have deep depressions here and
there in the masonry with doors to match the
rest of the woodwork, panelled, grained, and
painted exactly alike, and very commodious
hanging cupboards may thus be formed. But however
useful these may be to the lady's maid, they are
scarcely æsthetic enough to be entitled to notice
among descriptions of art furniture. Rather let
us turn to this little wardrobe (Fig. 6), too narrow.
Fig. 6.
perhaps, for aught but a single gown of the present
day to hang in, yet exquisitely artistic and pleasant
to look upon. Its corner columns are mounted
with brass, and every detail of its construction is
finished as though by the hand of a jeweller. The
lower drawers are probably intended for lace or fur,
or some other necessary of a fine lady's toilette.
It is very evident from the accommodation provided
in the distant days when such wardrobes were
designed, that "little and good" used to be the
advice given to our grandmothers with their
pin-money, and that even in their wildest dreams they
never beheld the countless array of skirts and
polonaises and mantles and Heaven knows what
beside, that furnish forth a modern belle's
equipment. Yet these moderate-minded dames and
damsels must have loved the garments they did
possess very dearly, for the heroine of every poem
or romance of the last century is represented as
depending quite as much on her clothes in the
battle of life as any knight on his suit of Milan
mail. Clarissa Harlowe mingles tragic accounts of
Lovelace's villanies with her grievances about mismatched ruffles and tuckers, and even the
excellent Miss Byron has by no means a soul above
court suits or French heels. Still these lovely
ladies had not much space assigned to them
wherein to bestow their finery when it was not on their backs, and we must expect to find all the
wardrobe designs of former times of somewhat
skimpy proportions. Here is an antique lock-up
(Fig. 7) of French make (most of the best designs
for furniture came from France in those days) of a
Fig. 7.
very practical and good form to copy in a humbler
material. This is made of a costly wood, probably
rosewood, with beautifully engraved brass fittings
all over it. The door of the upper half seems rather cumbrous, being only a flap which opens
out all in one piece, but a modern and less
expensive copy might be improved by dividing this large
lid into a couple of doors to open in the middle
Fig. 8.
in the usual way, without at all departing from
the original lines.
Fig. 8, again, is more of a bureau, and affords but scanty room for the ample stores of a lady's lingerie. It is, however, of a very good design in its way, its chief value being the workmanship of its fine brass ornaments. The handles of the drawers are peculiarly beautiful, and represent the necks and heads of swans issuing from a wreath of leaves. It would look particularly well in a bedroom in a large old-fashioned country house, where the rest of the furniture is perhaps rather cumbrous as well as convenient, and the glitter of the metal mounting would help to brighten a dingy corner. It cannot, however, be depended upon to hold much, and is chiefly valuable in a decorative sense, or as a stand for a toilette glass.
In strong contrast to these two designs is Fig. 9
of modern Japanese manufacture. It is easy to see
that the original idea must have been taken from a
common portable chest of drawers, such as officers
use. The slight alteration in its arrangement is
owing to Japanese common sense and observation,
for it would have required more strength of character
than a cockney upholsterer possesses, to divide one
of the parts so unequally as in this illustration.
But the male heart will be sure to delight specially
in that one deep drawer for shirts, and the shallow
one at the top for collars, pockethandkerchiefs,
neckties, and so forth. The lower drawers would
hold a moderate supply of clothes, and the little
closet contains three small drawers, besides a secret place for money and valuables. When the two boxes,
for they are really little else, are placed side by
side they measure only three feet one inch long,
three feet four high, and one foot five deep. They
Fig. 9.
hardly appear, from the prominence of the sliding
handles, intended to be packed in outer wooden
cases as portable chests of drawers usually are;
but it must be remembered that in Japan they would be carried from place to place slung on poles
carried on men's shoulders. There is a good deal
of iron used in the construction, which must be
intended to give strength, but it does not add to the
weight in any excessive degree, for it is very thin.
The wood is soft and light, and rather over-polished,
but the Japanese artist would have delighted in
varnishing it still more, and covering it with grotesque
gilt designs in lacquer, if he had been allowed.
On page 55 will be found a roomy Chinese
cupboard with drawers and nicely-carved panels.
Many of our most beautiful old Indian chests of drawers and cabinets have this black ground with quaintest bronze or brazen clamps and hinges, locks and handles, to give relief to the sombre groundwork. Except that the drawers seldom open well, and are nearly always inconveniently small, they are the most beautiful things in the world for keeping clothes in, but it would certainly be as well to have, out of the room in a passage, some more commodious and commonplace receptacles. I have seen a corridor leading to bedrooms, lined on each side with wardrobes, about six or seven feet high, consisting merely of a plain deal top with divisions at intervals of some five feet from top to bottom. A series of hanging cupboards was thus formed, which had been lined with stretched brown holland, furnished with innumerable pegs, and closed in by doors of a neat framework of varnished deal with panels of fluted chintz. Besides these doors to each compartment, an ample curtain hung within of brown holland, suspended by rings on a slender iron rod; and this curtain effectually kept out all dust and dirt, and preserved intact the delicate fabrics within. Such an arrangement must have been, I fear, far more satisfactory to the soul of the lady's maid than the most beautiful old Indian or French chest of drawers.
For rooms which are not old-fashioned in style,
and in which it is yet not possible to indulge in
French consoles or Indian cabinets as places to
keep clothes in, then I would recommend the
essentially modern simple style of wardrobe and
chest of drawers. I would eschew "gothic," or
"mediæval," or any other style, and I would avoid
painted lines as I would the plague. But there
are perfectly simple, inoffensive wardrobes to
be procured of varnished pine or even deal (and
the former wears the best) which, if it can only
be kept free from scratches, is at least in good
taste and harmony in a modern, commonplace
bedroom. It is quite possible, however by the
exercise of a little ingenuity to dispense with modern,
bought wardrobes, and to invent something which
will hold clothes, and yet be out of the beaten track.
I happened only the other day, to come across so good an example of what I mean,[1] that I feel it
ought to be described. First of all, it must be
understood that the bedroom in question was a
small one, in a London house recently decorated
and fitted up in the style which prevailed in Queen
Anne's reign, and to which there is now such a
decided return of the public taste. The other
portions of the furniture were in accordance with
the original intention of the room and consisted
of a very beautiful, though simple, carved oaken
bedstead, and a plain spindle-legged toilette
table and washstand, also old in design. The
chairs were especially fine, having been bought
in a cottage in Suffolk, and yet they matched
the bedstead perfectly. They had substantial
rush-bottomed seats, but the frame was of fine
dark oak, and the front feet spread out in a firm,
satisfactory fashion giving an idea of solidity
and strength. The fireplace was tiled after the old
style, and the mantelpiece consisted of a couple of
narrow oak shelves, about a dozen inches apart,
connected by small pillars. These ledges afforded a
stand for a few curious little odds and ends, and on
the top shelf stood some specimens of old china.
But the difficulty remained about the wardrobe, for
the room was too small to admit old bureaus which
would only hold half a dozen articles of clothing. So the ingenious owner devised a sort of corner
cupboard to fit into an angle of the room, and to
match the rest of the woodwork in colour and style,
having old brass handles and plates like those on
Fig. 10.the doors. It is a sort of double cupboard; that
is to say, whilst the left-hand side is a hanging
wardrobe which only projects away from the wall
sufficiently to allow the dresses to be hung up
properly, the right-hand division is a chest of drawers. Not a row of commonplace drawers,
however. No; the front surface is broken by the
introduction of little square doors and other
arrangements, for bonnets, &c. We must bear in
mind these drawers extend much, higher than
usual, and the cornice being nearly on a level
with that of the wardrobe, there can be no
possibility of putting boxes and so forth on the
top; but then, on the other hand, a goodly range
of drawers of differing depth is provided. It
certainly seemed to me an excellent way of
meeting the difficulty; and I also noticed in other
bedrooms in the same house how odd nooks and
uneven recesses were filled in by a judicious
blending of cupboard and wardrobe which is
evidently convenient in practice as well as exceedingly
quaint yet correct in theory.
- ↑ See Frontispiece.