BY SUSAN HAYES WARD.

CHAPTER IV.—THE BEDROOM.

It is impossible to treat of house furnishing and decoration without some allusion to what hygiene requires of the house builder. In the properly constructed house the bedroom will be light, airy, and if possible, sunny, like the pilgrim’s chamber. The bedroom windows should not be so heavily hung with curtains as to obstruct the free passage of air. Thin curtains of chintz or muslin are better for sleeping rooms than heavily lined damask or cretonne, as sunlight and pure air are bedroom essentials.

The cheapest and most convenient treatment for the wall is paper hanging; but Dr. Richardson, the well known English writer of house and health papers, inveighs against wall paper upon bedroom walls, and specially against the practice of papering one layer over another, on the ground that germs of disease are liable to be cased up behind wall paper, and to remain a source of danger in after years. No doubt a painted or washable surface is best from a hygienic point of view, but with proper care paper can be risked.

Light, airy patterns are preferable, of varying tints, but the same general color as the ground, for the bedroom should never be gloomy, and the less sunshine it gets from without the more sunny should be the paper that decks its walls. Violent contrasts in color, and spotty or staring designs are a source of irritating annoyance to the sick. Let the purchaser, in selecting wall paper, stand at a distance of a dozen feet or so and look with half closed eyes, and he will get much more of the general effect, and will see more as the invalid will who may occupy the room when the paper is hung.

Then, in the matter of drainage and plumbing, there has been a great overturning in the past few years. People began to discover, about ten years ago, that their modern improvements were followed by a long train of sore throats, diphtheria, and typhoid fevers, and the wise householder was led to study the various systems of pipes and drains. Thanks to our boards of health, and to the efforts and writings of such men as Col. Waring, much has been done to improve and perfect the drainage of city houses, but in spite of the advance that has been made in this direction, modern conveniences often prove in the end to be inconvenient, if not pernicious, and the fewer set washbowls and water closets with which our houses are furnished the safer we may feel. With faucets for hot and cold water on each floor from which to replenish the water jugs, no reasonable servant could complain of the extra drudgery, much less the sensible woman who “does her own work,” and all could sleep sounder at night without fear of being haunted by any of those frightful demons of the drain pipe which were represented in a number of Harper’s Weekly some years ago, as issuing from a set washbowl and hovering over the innocent slumberer.

Upon this point all the writers upon house decoration are as one, and Mr. Cook, in his “House Beautiful” says: “Seeing no certain way to prevent the evil so long as drain pipes are allowed in bedrooms, many people nowadays are giving up fixed washstands altogether, and substituting the old fashioned arrangement of a movable piece of furniture, with movable apparatus, the water brought in pitchers, and the slops carried away in their native slop jars.” Whether healthier or not, I think there can be no doubt that the old way is more comfortable by far.

Setting both health and comfort to one side for a moment, there can be no doubt that the movable washstand, with its paraphernalia of bowls and pitchers, is a more sightly and decorative object in the bedroom than any set washbowl arrangement that has yet been contrived. Of course I am referring to the introduction of waste pipes into the bedroom proper, not to toilet or bath-rooms outside its walls.

In cold weather the bedroom air should be a little cooler, perhaps, than that of the living rooms of the house, but not many degrees lower.

Our fathers and mothers, when boys and girls, slept in rooms freezing cold, and broke the ice in their water pitchers in the morning; but they lived in spite of this, not because of it. There is a deal of loose thinking on this subject. Cold air is no healthier than warm. It is impure air, warm or cold, that is unhealthy, the cold being specially pernicious; witness the church influenza, that most obstinate and unconquerable of all colds, because contracted by sitting in a chilling atmosphere after the body’s vitality has been reduced through breathing air that has not been renewed since the last service held in the room.

There was a clever story called “Lizzie Wilson,” published in Littell’s Living Age, years ago, in which a clergyman’s poor widow is represented as bringing up satisfactorily, through many straits, a family of young children. As their bedrooms were not heated, they had a joint dressing room, where the boy of the household first lighted the fire, and then dressed himself, his mother and sisters occupying the room later, in turn. This indulgence in the way of comfort, which might have been deemed an extravagance by others as poor as themselves, was paid for by going without dessert three days of the week; and the children, when cosily warming their backs before the dressing room fire, were pleased to call it “taking a slice of pudding.” A wise household economy of this sort, less pudding and pie and more fires, would not be amiss in many American homes. To keep one room intolerably hot, and all others without any heat, is a wasteful retrenchment, which must be paid for in doctors’ bills and funerals.

The question of single or double beds is also one of some hygienic importance. When a room is to be occupied by more than one person, the European custom of placing two single beds side by side has great advantage over the English double bed fashion. I have known mothers to assert that they observed a marked improvement in the health and temper of nervous, irritable children, after the little ones had been removed to single beds, where they could rest without disturbance from a bedfellow; and no one doubts that sickly or delicate people should occupy single beds.

As to color, I confess to a stout prejudice against getting up rooms all in one hue. I would banish altogether the young-ladyish dainty pink or blue room, and confine the green room to the theater. It is very hard to so manage a symphony in blue, for example, that it shall be truly symphonious. The cretonne furniture covers are apt to contain some analine dyes that fade to forlorn and sickly hues in place of their original smartness. The blue of the wall paper will never agree with that of the carpet, and the cheap paper cambric or stouter jean that peeps through the muslin toilet cover grows paler with age, and each passing day increases the general discord.

White rooms with snowy and spotless walls, curtains and bedcovers, such as certain nun-like story-book young ladies affect, are chilling in the extreme. Their immaculate purity alone renders them endurable, and even then the obtrusiveness of their Dutch-like cleanliness is exasperating. A dingy white room is even more ugly than an ill-assorted blue one.

If the walls are plain, let the curtains be figured with various colors; if the walls are papered with figured polychrome hangings, let the curtains be plain, but harmonizing with some one color of the wall paper. That same color can be emphasized and repeated in carpet, rugs, and table or bureau cover, but no one color should be used to the exclusion of all others, as the eye wearies of neutral tints unrelieved by positive color without a large proportion of neutral tinted space.

A bedroom should look as if intended for the use of its occupants. Much millinery, quilled and ruffled muslin, and toilet tables in fine petticoats are only allowable in the room of a dainty young girl who has plenty of time to spend in renewing and freshening up her ephemeral finery, or in a guest chamber that is seldom used, and is thus made to look pretty at slight expense. Knick-knackeries of this sort provoke the righteous wrath of sturdy men, and they are quite out of taste in that most home-like of all gathering places, the mother’s room. For the name of that chamber should always be Peace and Comfort. It should be of all bedrooms the most commodious, the most convenient of access, with the largest of drawers, the roomiest of closets, the most restful of chairs, and a boundless welcome to all the household.

Closet room should be struggled for in the building of a house. This is a point where the masculine intellect shows its weakness and the feminine its strength. A quick-witted woman will suggest to her architect, nook after nook of waste space to be utilized as closet room which would altogether escape his notice. No bedroom should be unfurnished in this regard. When closets are not built in, portable wardrobes should be supplied.

There is fallacy in the supposition that the most attractive portion of the house should be reserved as a “spare room” for the casual guest. The family should first be made comfortable; when that has been done, if one would use hospitality without grudging, it will be necessary to imitate the great woman of Shunem, and at least furnish a little chamber with the necessary bed, table, stool and candlestick. Moving out of one’s own room and doubling up with another for a night or two does very well in the holiday season, when the spirit of hospitality and good nature is in the air; but, ordinarily speaking, it is quite a task to empty the upper drawer of one’s bureau, and leave one’s own comfortable quarters.

So far as health, neatness and style are concerned, brass bedsteads are the best. They are very simple in form and construction, and so are some of the iron bedsteads, which can be kept absolutely nice and clean in any climate, and are, unlike brass, quite inexpensive. The most objectionable of all bedsteads is that

which is only to be tolerated where a parlor must serve temporarily as sleeping room. A well made bed is the essential piece of bedroom furniture, which may be hidden from view by a screen or curtains, but should not be slammed up and boxed in against the wall, or made to stand upon anything but its own merits.

Wire net springs are probably as good as can be got, and a feather bed under the mattress is an improvement to the best modern bed, if properly aired, turned and shaken daily. Mattresses should be remade and their contents pulled lightly apart before they grow matted or ridgy. Curled hair mattresses are, of course, the best, but English flock, excelsior, and straw, all make respectable beds, and can be made easier by covering them with thick comfortables or blankets, under the sheet. It is quite worth while to make slip covers for mattresses.

Sheets should have an allowance of at least three quarters of a yard for tucking in. Three yards will not be found too long for comfortable home sheets. Blankets are apt to be too short. It is better to tear a pair of blankets apart, and finish the edge with a buttonhole stitch in worsted. The old fashioned “blanket stitch,” as it was called, a long and short stitch alternating, is very pretty. This finish is better than binding, which is apt to shrink and tear off.

It seems a waste of time to make cotton patchwork when pretty quilts can be bought so cheap. In the days when cotton cloth was costly, every scrap was worth saving, but now patchwork seems only serviceable in teaching little girls to sew overhand seams.

Hand-wrought spreads look well when pulled up over the pillows, covering the whole bed, and should be treated with respect and carefully folded and laid away at night.

Pillow shams are troublesome to keep in place, and can be discarded without regret, when a pretty covering of this sort conceals the whole bed. Of my own choice I would never make use of anything with so disreputable a name.

The fault of crazy quilts is their craziness. To be really pleasing they should have some design, like a Turkish rug which, though very irregular in detail, has yet a general plan, a distinct centerpiece, and a plainly defined border. One of the most objectionable features of the ordinary “crazy” quilt is the huddling together in the same piece of work of painting upon silk and embroidery, two widely differing sorts of decoration, which will not bear being brought heedlessly in juxtaposition.

Very pretty comfortables, to be folded like a silk quilt, and thrown over the foot of the bed, can be made of paper muslin, in dainty colors, or of cheese-cloth, lightly filled with cotton batting, and knotted with bright colored wools. Cotton comfortables are not so serviceable as blankets, but they are much cheaper, and it is well to keep a supply on hand for use in cold winter weather, or to make up an extra bed with in case of emergency. They can be folded under the sheet to soften a hard mattress, or white palliases filled with cotton can be made for the same purpose, but great care should be taken to air bedding of this sort very thoroughly.

A roomy lounge in a bed chamber is a great convenience. It affords an opportunity for an afternoon nap without disarranging the well made bed, and many a careworn woman would lie down for a few minutes upon a lounge in her bedroom who would not think of resting in the daytime upon the bed. A long, broad, pine box, with wooden castors attached, makes an admirable lounge frame, or a narrow cot bedstead could be cut down to be of suitable height for a lounge frame. This should be supplied with a good mattress, or a covering of chintz or cretonne could be drawn over it, with a frill falling nearly to the floor. From one to three square pillows, similarly covered, would perfect this lounge, which could serve readily for a bed in time of need.

Bed hangings and canopies are pretty and unnecessary, except in mosquito countries, where lace net, gathered full upon a hoop suspended horizontally from the ceiling, and falling in ample folds to the floor, will serve to keep many out, and one or two teasing marauders in, the long night through. Bed hangings proper are prettiest when made in the form of a canopy over the bed head, and should be of a material that will bear washing.

An ample supply of choice bed linen and towels, all handsomely marked, is no less a subject of pride with housekeepers than dainty table damask, and people of wealth in these days spend lavishly upon hemstitched linen or silk sheets, elegant towels, and elaborately embroidered letterings.

This fondness for well stocked linen presses is a womanly and pardonable weakness, inherited from our far away ancestresses, who strewed stalks of lavender between the sheets in their chests and presses, a custom that has not gone altogether out of date among old fashioned European housekeepers.

Other comforts of the sleeping room where bath-rooms are not attached are plenty of water and bath towels, a washstand for each occupant of the room, generous bowls, a well filled pail with which to replenish the pitchers, foot tub, a portable bath tub, capacious slop jars, a rubber or enameled leather cloth to spread upon the floor, a screen for seclusion’s sake, and room to splash. If the bedroom china, pails and jars be pretty in shape and color, so much the better, but at any rate, let them be large enough.

A wooden topped washstand should be protected with a piece of enameled leather, over which a plain towel can be spread for look’s sake. Fanciful fringed and colored mats are out of place on the washstand, where water should be free to spatter.

Where “splashers” are used to protect the wall, they should be simple of design and easy to wash, and mottoes, if introduced, should be appropriate to the place. “Sweet Rest in Heaven,” which I have known used for this purpose, can hardly be considered suitable; nor yet the prophet’s command to the leprous Syrian captain, “Wash and be clean,” a too suggestive motto, wholly subversive of the theory that bathing is a luxury indulged in for refreshment’s sake; nor yet again a representation of birds dipping into a stream, with the scriptural allusion to the Good Samaritan’s washing and binding up of wounds, “Go and do thou likewise.” These sentences might be appropriate in the accident ward of a charity hospital, but hardly suit the wall decoration of a lady’s dainty bed-chamber.

Something more suggestive of the sparkling, limpid purity of the crystal spring would be in better taste—such as:

There can be no lack of good mottoes to those who look for them.

A roomy, deep drawered bureau is best for a woman’s use, a dressing table or bureau with small and large drawers for a man. There should be looking glasses suited to the needs of each, but for a lady it is convenient to have a glass so placed as to reflect her full figure, so that she may judge of the “hang” of a skirt or the looping of dress drapery.

A candle-stand by the bed, with candlestick and matches, a table or desk for writing purposes, chairs low enough for sewing or lounging in, and a big, old-fashioned stuffed chair for the solace of the sick, these are all bedroom comforts.

I have said nothing of servants’ rooms, though much might be written on the thoughtless neglect which generally makes such rooms unpresentable. I can recall to memory but one house containing a model room for servants’ use. That bed-chamber was as exquisitely nice in its appointments as the room of the mistress herself, though its furnishing was, of course, much less costly.

Boys’ rooms, also, especially in country homes, are apt to be cheerless, neglected spots, wholly unattractive to their occupants. Boys ought not to be burdened in their rooms with the care of those little prettinesses in which their sisters delight; still they should be educated to enjoy what is truly refined and beautiful. Their bedrooms should be tasteful and comfortable, and they should be taught to keep them in order, to hang clothes tidily in the press, to lay away neckties carefully in the drawer, and to take pride and pleasure in making their rooms attractive to themselves and their young friends. They should be encouraged to feel at home in their rooms, and if no attic or shed room can be given up for their boyish gatherings, for whittling, tinkering, kitemaking, and other important youthful manufactures, to say nothing of choice collections of sticks and stones, then banish the carpet, retaining only a warm rug before the bed, and let them make whatever clutter their legitimate pursuits involve, so long as they are rigidly required to right all disorder when the work is done. Free permission to carry on such innocent occupations within his own domain, with a kindly winking of the maternal eye at an occasional pillow fight, would tell more as a means of grace on the boy who now slips out of the house to find doubtful recreation elsewhere, than a whole barrelful of Sunday sermons. The boy who has once learned to take pleasure and pride in the appointments of his own room will want some time for enjoying them, other than the hours spent in bed, and as he of choice lives more within the walls of home, and enters more and more into the spirit of home he will be so much the more likely in his turn to be one day the master and joint possessor of a homelike house.