THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 



COLOUR IN, THE HOUSE. 



The Love of Colour Inextinguishable Nature a Storehouse, rather than a Guide The Colouring of Wall and 

 Ceiling The Influence of Aspect and Lighting The Sterility of Undue Caution in Choice of Colours 



IT is said that &quot; truth will out even in an affidavit,&quot; and the love of colour seems as inextinguishable. 

 In spite of its being treated as an indulgence, at which the virtuous hands of academic authority 

 are lifted in grave reproof, and its being guarded in anxious privacy lest its owners reputation should 

 be sent tottering from its polished base, the joy in colour breaks out every now and then in defiance 

 of the austerity &quot;of our education. Love of colour is an emotional matter, like the love of melody 

 and the magical rhythm of some literature and poetry ; it is a gift independent of race or clime. Other 

 passions there are, weightier, more moral, more self-conscious, where the intellect has been tampering 

 with the emotions and deflecting them in various deliberately dug channels to fertilise some theorv or 

 philosophy of life where the artist calls on man to probe with him into the storm and stress, the problems 

 of existence. When such big issues are afoot colour shrinks for shelterinto the unobtrusive security 

 of low tones and prudent selection of tincture, or else takes on a special poignancy akin to the broken 

 searching melodies of Beethoven s later works. But these agitations of the heart are private not for 

 our sleeves, still less for our walls. And yet our walls reflect ourselves, our care and our indifference ; 

 their harmonies are of our own making, and so are the discords. True, there are houses built whose walls 

 are for ever incapable of being resolved or modulated into the beauty of fair proportion. If the first 

 function of the house is to be a shelter, its second is to be a bower. Driven beyond the pale of Eden, tossed 

 into the blind forces and destructions of that grim epitome of inhumanity Nature man s first work- 

 was to shield himself and his from the violence of her methods, and then next to turn some of her activities 

 to account on his behalf. For we must remember always that Nature is man s mortal enemy untiring, 

 unsleeping ; not actively vindictive, but having established, after aeons of tentative effort, a working 

 equilibrium of blind forces, she resents any interference with her delicately adjusted balance. She is 

 man s antagonist, but also his nurse. All that he knows of beauty of form and of colour he has got from 

 her ; his ideals of power, grandeur and spaciousness he has learnt from her ; the joy of life and the tragedy 

 of death are ever before his eyes ; the beating of the infinitely old winds and the infinitely old sea upon 

 this infinitely old world, and the tranquil swinging of the watchful stars around the pole, showed him 

 influences so immeasurably beyond his own that they became for him his religion, his apprehension of good 

 and evil. Armed with these convictions, he defies her ; defies her ideals. With Nature, motion is the 

 prime fact of the universe ; friction is so much interference, and her activities are bent to lessen and 

 eliminate friction. Man sets himself to oppose these aims ; he had, at the outset, to fight foNiis existence ; 

 and that, by a system of compact social vigilance, being to some degree assured, he creates, as his standard 

 of good, the qualities of permanence, rest and completion. In this conflict of ideals, he has to use weapons 

 other than those employed by Nature ; his whole life is one unending interference with her processes, 

 and in the matter of vigilance he is no match for her. She never sleeps ; never rests. Based on his 

 observations of her method, her expansions and her results, he has to achieve his ends by quite other means. 

 He sets himself to secure in some definite form her wayward, fluctuating charm and beauty ; he has to 

 synthesise her lavish profusion, endless resources, variety of detail, gradations of light and colour, com 

 plexity of forms, graces of movement and so forth, and, like the drawing of a flickering flame of fire, has 

 to evolve forms and colours that shall be symbols, and yet give the delight that the actualities themselves 

 afford. 



Nature, then, is a storehouse, but except in a. very limited sense no guide. We move in a 

 smaller circle, with fewer resources, speaking another language. Her invocation to Spring, her farewell 

 to Summer, are not to be caught and reproduced in distemper, and yet, somehow, we have got to colour 

 our walls. Have we ? It wants considering. By colouring I include also the use of panelling, unpainted 

 and painted. The first condition to seize upon is the aspect of the house and the nature of the windows 

 and sources of light. The walls of a room that looks to the south may be almost colourless, whereas in 

 the rooms facing the north you should pile on as much colour as you can. It is in such aspects that the 

 rich warm brown of oak panelling tells so effectively, giving the comfort and friendliness of colour. 

 Windows should count as pictures stained-glass pictures and all hopes of making the walls compete 

 with them in colour must be dismissed. Even the use of patterns becomes a difficulty such incident, 

 and disturbance of the big, wide wall spaces as may be needed can often best be provided by means of 



