SOMETIMES 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, [Pg 45]
[Pg 46]
[Pg 47]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 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 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 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 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.