ROOMS FOR LIVING

Evening Star, Issue 22234, 11 January 1936, Page 2

ROOMS FOR LIVING

[Written by Alary Scott, for the ‘ Evening Star.’]

“ But why do we call it a drawing room. Mummy?” the clear voice persisted “ Nobody ever draws in it. We never do anything m it. You won’t even let mo go into it except when there’s visitors. What’s it for She was one of those plain, intelhgent children that are sent to try us, and my heart went out to her mother as she uttered that time-worn command of the harassed parent: “ Don’t ask so many questions, dear. Run away and play.” “ But I only want to know,” the darling little one began again. I watched her exit with satisfaction, albeit with a trifle of secret sympathy. For I, too. wanted to know. I very often feel like that when 1 look, round some immaculate drawing room. What are they for ? They appear to exist, like certain seaside resorts in the south of France, solely for the pleasure and accommodation of visitors. They have a lonely and deserted look, an air of unhappiness. I am sure they are as depressed and miserable as most other useless shams, and would gladly change places with some pretty, jolly living room where the furniture is a trifle worn, possibly even scratched, the carpet not over-new, but a .place where people live their full, interesting lives, are sad and happy, hopeful and depressed—are, in short, themselves, with no affectations, no pretences at all. Such is indeed a living room—it lives and enjoys itself. Is it very foolish to imagine that houses have a sentient life of their own ? I always fancy .that they grow actually to look like the people _ that live in them; not only upon the inside, for there naturally the rooms are but the expression of their inmates’ individuality, but their very exterior reveals something of the nature of their tenants. You know that sour, forbidding look of a house continually shut up, a garden where no children play, no flowers are casually picked to rejoice the heart of the gardenless. The house seems to frown gloomily at you, aware of all it has missed, but so long deprived of life and joy that it has ceased to desire them, has grown to disparage all the little, homely intimacies of the lived-in, hospitable house. They are not usually immaculate, these houses of the open door and the opfen heart waiting within them. They are often somewhat threadbare and a trifle untidy, like some charming woman who can’t be bothered with a permanent wave or lipstick. Their bright gardens are seldom show places; too many flowers are picked there to fill not that house alone, but the bare rooms of the flat dweller, the vases beside some hospital bed, the hands of little children. I have a friend who spends much time and money in her garden, and is always promising herself to save seed from some rare and expensive flower, some delicate vegetable. “ Yes, I meaht to save it,” she says in a harassed voice, “ but somehow when I came to get it it had all gone.” It will always go, and we know that it goes to the poor, to those who love flowers but cannot afford to buy them; her flowers are never left to droop fullblown upon theip stalks or her vegetable to run to seed in the garden.

As you would expect, this friend of mine has no drawing room, but she possesses one of the jolliest living rooms imaginable. It is not always immaculate ; men’s pipes are often to bo found upon a comer of the mantel, open books and periodicals on the tables, children’s toys upon the sofa. In fact, I there suffered a severe shock at the hands of the youngest granddaughter when she advanced upon me with a threatening air and the accusing words, ‘ 1 How could you sit on Dorothea? ” Now, used as I am to that happily casual household, I had certainly noticed that my chair was extraordinarily uncomfortable and rose guiltily, afraid of revealing perhaps the corpse of a crushed baby or at best of a mangled doll. To my relief, nothing emerged more terrible than a very shiny beer bottle .from that apace between the back and seat of a large chair that presents such splendid possibilities to the youthful hoarder. The child looked at me reproachfully as she murmured soothing endearments to Dorothea, and suddenly I felt all the pangs of a lost illusion, a vanished youth. How long is it since I was capable of endowing an empty bottle with all these acute feelings, these lovable qualities ?' What it is to grow up, once and for ever! Yet V am still not old to believe that some rooms possess personality. ‘You feel it as soon as you enter them. I know that my heart sinks lowly to my boot when I am ushered ceremoniously into a room obviously ticketed “for visitors only.” It is so tidy that at, once it strikes a chill; you seat yourself gingerly and wonder whether there is any dust on your shoes or your head is crushing that lovely cushion; your imagination proceeds to, envisage a dire accident by which you spill your tea upon the immaculate carpet—and you probably feel so shattered that you’drop some crumbs immediately There is no rest in this room, no glow of friendliness, no real happiness. It is strange that in the colonies any of us are foolish enough to own a room that is merely a white elephant. Perhaps it is comprehensible where there arc dozens of rooms, unlimited space; even then for a room to be pleasant it must be lived in. But there is usually so little space to spare in our houses; in those where there are children the inmates are often woefully cramped. Yet, although I know several such houses where there is a room set apart for ceremonial occasions, I know few nurseries—rooms given over to the children for their own use, to do as they please, keep as they be"st can, where they may live and develop in their own way. They wander about the rooms common to the grown-ups, always moved hither and thither to make room for mother’s sewing or father’s books—and all the time there is that ridiculous room going to waste, kept for the benefit of mere visitors who are surely far 'less important than the family, and would in any case far prefer to he admitted into the jolly intimacy of the home circle. Actually I know of several farmhouses where the family sit all the long winter evenings on hard chairs round a stove, while a pleasant open fireplace and easy chairs are going to waste in “ the front room.”

f This convention that keeps the best for visitors, that envisages them as hostile critics who must be given no loop-hole for finding joints in the armour of the perfect housekeeper, has always seemed incredible to me—possibly, however, because I am not a perfect housekeeper and don’t expect to be thought one. A house, it seems to me. is for the people that live in it to enjoy in their own way. Surely “ the best room ” is the most-lived-iu one, where people may be comfortable, happy, thoroughly at ease? The most beautiful room I know is in a village 0} oamls jo Xjnojd si e.ioip a.iou.u osnoq spare; yet it is the room where the whole family may congregate, talk, smoke, read, write letters.- sot their feet on the mantelpiece if they feel so

disposed. There are beautiful things in that room, for the woman of the bouse is an artist; and valuable things, for the master is a man of wealth. But they are put there to be seen, used, enjoyed; there is no thought of spoiling them, for, they are there for your pleasure. It is a drawing room in the true sense, for there we may withdraw from all that is petty and sordid and tiresome, and may truly and in the best sense live.