THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 73 



FLOOR COVERINGS. 



Cur [&amp;gt;ets nut/ Their Hisiorv Influence nf Oriental Rugs at the 1851 Exhibition Morris Hires AYu 1. iie to 

 ( drf&amp;gt;et Design Floor-staining and Its Difficulties Parquetry and Its Historv Xotes on 7/.s Laving 



Linoleum. 



CARPETS, so far as England is concerned, are a comparatively modern luxury. Tin- rush-strewn 

 floor of the Norman hall remaiiu d for many a year, and carpets, if any, and these only of the 

 most homely sort, were for the. ladies chamber. So much was this the case that they became 

 an attribute of luxury and effeminacy, and in the sixteenth century it was still the reverse 

 of polite to call a man a knight of the carpet. In the seventeenth century, though, they became 

 a necessary article of furniture lor the wealthy; but Macaulay has an interesting note on the subject, 

 when he refers in his History to the state of lodging-houses of Hath when &quot; the floors of the dining-room 

 were uncarpeted. and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer, in order to hide the 

 dirt.&quot; This, of course, was the city before the Woods took it in hand and turned it into something very 

 much like the Hath of to-day, tit background for the smart eighteenth century folk of Sheridan and his 

 contemporaries. If the fan 1 was good in those days, the accommodation could hardly have been described 

 as cleanly, tor Pepys, who was on his way to Hath, tells us in his Diary that on [line i_Mh, iM&amp;gt;.\ Maying 

 at an inn, he got up one morning, &quot; finding our beds good but lousy ; which made us merry.&quot; Clearly 

 he was a philosopher. Dryden. a lew years later, was to talk ol &quot; Persian carpels spread the imperial 

 way,&quot; and the relerence is interesting as showing a knowledge ol these beautiful tabrics. 



Carpets remained, though, the luxuries of the wealthy, and there may have been beside the very 

 practical reason that uncarpeted rooms, stone (lagged or oak Hanked, were more readily cleansed of the 

 mini and dirt which was ever present in those days. When Prince (ieorge of Denmark visited Petworth 

 in the winter, he was six hours in going nine miles, with body-guards of peasants on each side of his coach 

 to prop it up. And if the country roads were like this in the seventeenth century, in the towns they were, 

 m addition, open sewers, and there was some point in giving or taking the wall, so that one might be as far 

 removed as possible from the splashing of the road traffic. After Pepys confession of mirth, one is a little 

 doubtful whether it can be urged that cleanliness prevented the housewives of the times carpeting their 

 rooms ; but it is certain that had they done so they would have soon been caked with liberal layers of mud. 

 So that it is probable that they were used only for the parlours, as in the farmhouses of to-day, and the 

 outer rooms, being brick or stone paved, could easily be swilled down with a pail of water. 



It should be borne in mind that in very early times the Monkish Latin word &quot; Carpita &quot; meant a 

 kind of thickish cloth, or a garment made of the same. Murray gives a note of the Carmelites at the 

 end of the thirteenth century, who wore &quot; a carpet which is the distinctive dress of our order, not sowed 

 together of pieces (or patches) but woven together &quot; ; and in another inventory, taken in 1527, of Sir 

 W. Guildford s goods, there was included &quot; a carpet of green cloth for a lytill foulding table.&quot; It is as 

 well to remember that carpets were not always what we now understand them to be. 



Early in the nineteenth century carpets were imported from Flanders and France, and were as 

 well, of course, largely manufactured at home. An interesting sidelight on this subject is given in a 

 letter written to The Times in 1845, in which the writer points out that &quot; There are many kinds of carpets 

 made of cotton in India stout, serviceable, handsome things ; generally they are termed serrigee.&quot; and 

 goes on to say that he wonders they are not imported to England. This state of things was remedied at 

 the 51 Exhibition, where many Indian carpets were shown, which probably started the trade with which 

 we are now familiar. Talking of Eastern carpets shown at the Exhibition, a paper of the day waves 

 the good old flag, still possessed by the halfpenny Press of to-day, and shouts of progress. They say 

 that they view these carpets with much interest, &quot; Yet they evidence no progress ; whilst those in the 

 English portion of the Exhibition show that the day is not far distant when the far North will supply 

 the East.&quot; Which, being very tall talk, makes one turn up with great interest the English exhibits in this 

 section, only to find illustrations of the sort of thing one was familiar with in one s bedroom as a boy, 

 after it had served a hard apprenticeship on the lower floors, slowly yielding place, room by room, through 

 successive spring cleanings. This train of thought hardly agrees with present-day ideas, when the 

 Persian rug reigns nearly supreme. One carpet shown at the Exhibition, a French one, by the way, 

 had the Royal arms as a centre, surrounded by devices of typical and emblematical character. In the 

 corners were representations of Europe, Asia, Africa and America ; in the borders, Poetrv and Sculpture, 



