The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (1 of 89)

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THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE – VOLUME V

IN FIVE VOLUMES


PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE.

In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture of
their residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little
sentiment beyond marbles and colours. In France, meliora probant,
deteriora sequuntur - the people are too much a race of gadabouts to
maintain those household proprieties of which, indeed, they have a
delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The
Chinese and most of the eastern races have a warm but inappropriate fancy.
The Scotch are poor decorists. The Dutch have, perhaps, an indeterminate
idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are all curtains - a
nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The Hottentots and
Kickapoos are very well in their way. The Yankees alone are preposterous.

How this happens, it is not difficult to see. We have no aristocracy
of blood, and having therefore as a natural, and indeed as an inevitable
thing, fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the display of
wealth has here to take the place and perform the office of the heraldic
display in monarchical countries. By a transition readily understood, and
which might have been as readily foreseen, we have been brought to merge
in simple show our notions of taste itself

To speak less abstractly. In England, for example, no mere parade of
costly appurtenances would be so likely as with us, to create an
impression of the beautiful in respect to the appurtenances themselves -
or of taste as regards the proprietor: - this for the reason, first, that
wealth is not, in England, the loftiest object of ambition as constituting
a nobility; and secondly, that there, the true nobility of blood,
confining itself within the strict limits of legitimate taste, rather
avoids than affects that mere costliness in which a parvenu rivalry may
at any time be successfully attempted.

The people will imitate the nobles, and the result is a thorough
diffusion of the proper feeling. But in America, the coins current being
the sole arms of the aristocracy, their display may be said, in general,
to be the sole means of the aristocratic distinction; and the populace,
looking always upward for models,,are insensibly led to confound the two
entirely separate ideas of magnificence and beauty. In short, the cost of
an article of furniture has at length come to be, with us, nearly the sole
test of its merit in a decorative point of view - and this test, once
established, has led the way to many analogous errors, readily traceable
to the one primitive folly.

There could be nothing more directly offensive to the eye of an artist
than the interior of what is termed in the United States - that is to say,
in Appallachia - a well-furnished apartment. Its most usual defect is a
want of keeping. We speak of the keeping of a room as we would of the
keeping of a picture - for both the picture and the room are amenable to
those undeviating principles which regulate all varieties of art; and very
nearly the same laws by which we decide on the higher merits of a
painting, suffice for decision on the adjustment of a chamber.

A want of keeping is observable sometimes in the character of the
several pieces of furniture, but generally in their colours or modes of
adaptation to use Very often the eye is offended by their inartistic
arrangement. Straight lines are too prevalent - too uninterruptedly
continued - or clumsily interrupted at right angles. If curved lines
occur, they are repeated into unpleasant uniformity. By undue precision,
the appearance of many a fine apartment is utterly spoiled.

Curtains are rarely well disposed, or well chosen in respect to other
decorations. With formal furniture, curtains are out of place; and an
extensive volume of drapery of any kind is, under any circumstance,
irreconcilable with good taste - the proper quantum, as well as the proper
adjustment, depending upon the character of the general effect.

Carpets are better understood of late than of ancient days, but we
still very frequently err in their patterns and colours. The soul of the
apartment is the carpet. From it are deduced not only the hues but the
forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary
man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius. Yet we have heard
discoursing of carpets, with the air "d'un mouton qui reve," fellows who
should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their own
moustaches. Every one knows that a large floor may have a covering of
large figures, and that a small one must have a covering of small - yet
this is not all the knowledge in the world. As regards texture, the Saxony
is alone admissible. Brussels is the preterpluperfect tense of fashion,
and Turkey is taste in its dying agonies. Touching pattern - a carpet
should not be bedizzened out like a Riccaree Indian - all red chalk,
yellow ochre, and cock's feathers. In brief - distinct grounds, and vivid
circular or cycloid figures, of no meaning, are here Median laws. The
abomination of flowers, or representations of well-known objects of any
kind, should not be endured within the limits of Christendom. Indeed,
whether on carpets, or curtains, or tapestry, or ottoman coverings, all
upholstery of this nature should be rigidly Arabesque. As for those
antique floor-cloth & still occasionally seen in the dwellings of the
rabble - cloths of huge, sprawling, and radiating devises,
stripe-interspersed, and glorious with all hues, among which no ground is
intelligible-these are but the wicked invention of a race of time-servers
and money-lovers - children of Baal and worshippers of Mammon - Benthams,
who, to spare thought and economize fancy, first cruelly invented the
Kaleidoscope, and then established joint-stock companies to twirl it by
steam.

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