HOUSES OF THE NOVELISTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21136, 19 March 1932, Page 6 (Supplement)

HOUSES OF THE NOVELISTS

THE VICTORIAN ERA. STEEPED IN DETAIL. FY NINA KING CO ME WATTY. Inveterate readers of novels as women *re, how many find their ideals of house and home mirrored in the pages of their favourite writers of fiction ? Novels, particularly of the Victorian ■era, are steeped in colourful detail of .homes and houses. The outer form of architectural design; the interior arrangements from the cellar to the attic; room .•and wall decorations, furnishings and drapings, the arrangement of pictures, provide the domestic environments of the stately and precise human figures who jnove through the pages of the Victorian novel. Even our modern fiction, while concerning itself more notably with the jninds and souls of men and women, and .with the housing and garnishing of their complexes and reactions, does not wholly ignore the habitations in which they must .eat and sleep.

But the town residence has given place to the week-end bungalow. The courftry manor has been ousted by the modern flat. The descent from the dignified mansion of the Victorians to the glorified tenement of our time, has been made in these hideous suburban villas which architecturally and socially dominated the pages oil fiction during the last generation. In this we • have more than a commentary on social changes. The novel, from Thackeray to Bennett, is, as it should be, the mirrored history of- an ever-moving order. Its pages reveal the • gradations from "the stately regulated life of a past age to the hurried, casual improvisations of our own. Yet always there arc homes and houses in -which the human characters of fiction live and move and have their being. Ibis, then, should be of intense fascination to all women. How many of us, in our reading ot novels, find houses, room s and gardens as rich in interest as the lives of persons . An Intriguing Question. It is an intriguing question. To what novelist, of all those we have read, would we entrust the designing of our house. Of them all, in whose hands would we feel safa with our interior decorations? To what .writer would Ave turn for the ordering of out gardens ? If you were a tavern-keeper (which heaven forbid), or the owner of a Manor Farm, then Dickens would be the choice inevitable. llis inns and farms aie lectolent of radiant comfort, crackling logs and inviting hearths. But lie, of course, was a .specialist in thesi) things. For eeneral-purposes his usefulness would bo strictly limited. Trollope fills the bill more adequately. He, I think, slfcnds alone in his trustworthiness—able to nndersta.nd family needs, and certain to combine knowledge of design and plan with unimpeachable good taste. Midi Victorian as he was, he lifted his head above the architectural tawdrihess of lus time, -and saw clearly the best of other days. Any house he designed would reveal his Hair for mass, and proportion, and material, and above all a sense of the adecuate in creature comforts Doors would be noble, windows dignified, rooms (spacious but not vast. The stndy would be a pla.ee of infinite quiet, the drawing room would open through long windows on to a lovely garden, restful and sweet. 'And he could be trusted, too, with the 'dining room. ...For all-round worth m this matter of homes, we may surely select Trollope. Just a Middling House.

Even for Horace Walpole's " just a middling house " one could get wonderful service from the novelists, particularly for special' rooms. Galsworthy could design wbh infinite charm the loveliest chamber., a " little whitewashed withdrawing room,- of a thatched whitewashed cottage .... a log, dropping, row and then, . turned up its glowing undersid'3, and the lamplight so to have into the white walls:, tnat a new warmth exuded . . . and there was s scent, as ever, in that old thatcheu cottage, of wood-smoke, flowers and sweet briar." i . . , Thomas Hardy, was, I think, trained as an architect, but his houses leave one unmoved. Hut John Buchan s Full Circle " is a place of bewitching loveliness and charm.

Furnishings are the sphere of the expert. Here we might safely seek the cooperation of Henry J?iines with his suio eye for the things of worthy and valuable age. But there are two things which we must not ever trust exclusively to any novelist. For windows and gardens we must look to the poets. Sound a guide as Troll ope is. we should like him to consult Keats about the windows. Then, indeed, we could expect " magic casements " looking out on the " foam of perilous seas." lennyson should lay out lawns and trees but under no ciicumstances should he be permitted in the -house. Despite "Maud's" little oak room, and his gorgeous " Palace of Art," Tennyson is not to be trusted within. But he would be surely "peerless among grassy lawns and spreading trees. The garden proper he must not touch. It is [William Morris we call in to plan and to tend our " little garden, close set thick ;with lily and red rose." In closing, I claim one vital iconoclastic ♦word for myself and for myself alone. ;Other women may agree or dissent. Though Trollope may design my house; though Henry James may furnish it; though Keats may fashion its magic windows; though Tennyson may glorify its lawns and spaces; though the sweet witchery of William Morris may throw enchantment'over my dear dream garden •—thorp is one thing 1 will not trust either to novelist or poet. I shall design the kitchen myself!