HOUSES AND GARDENS 



visitor in the traditions of the mansion applied to the smaller house which has 



played such havoc with house planning, and which has led to the conception 



of the family rooms as reception-rooms, arranged primarily to impress the 



guest of the hour, and which has made the best sitting-room too fine for daily 



use, and has set apart the best bedroom as a spare room, perhaps hardly ever 



occupied. 



The average house should not be a place primarily for the reception of 

 visitors, but a dwelling for a family, and the only impression the unfortunate 

 visitor will receive segregated amidst forbidding furniture in an unaired and 

 obviously unused room will be mainly one of discomfort. The house should 

 then be designed essentially for its occupants, and should consist mainly of 

 one good sized apartment, with plenty of floor space and elbow room, and 

 with only such furniture as may be actually required. This room or house- 

 place, with its ample fireplace and broad spaces of floor, may, perhaps, be 

 carried up nearly twice the height of the other rooms, which may be 

 low and small. If, however, a gallery is introduced, it should be provided 

 with shutters to secure privacy and freedom from draughts. The dining- 

 room may either be a small separate room, or it may consist of a recess 

 arranged as shown in the plans illustrating these remarks, and described fully 

 later on. 



The other appendages to this central room, inasmuch as they are for the 

 occupation of separate members of the family, may be reduced considerably 

 in size. Those which demand an absolute privacy will be completely cut off 

 from the house place, while others in which privacy is not so essential may be 

 included in the central idea of the house, screened from the house place as 

 required by sliding doors or curtains only. 



There will thus be a ladies' room or boudoir, which will also be used for 

 the reception of those visitors who are not received in the house place itself, a 

 room for the children, and a man's room which may be devoted to the par- 

 ticular hobbies of the master of the house, and christened accordingly as a 

 " den " or " study." Many modifications of such a scheme may be made to 

 meet limitations of cost ; but the essential principle insisted on is that the 

 smaller kind of house, instead of being subdivided to the greatest possible 

 extent into tiny compartments, should at least contain one good-sized room, 

 which, by such devices as sliding-doors, can be made on occasion still larger. 

 The arguments advanced in favour of such a reform have designedly been 

 entirely practical ones ; but from the artistic point of view it may be urged 

 that success in planning can only be achieved by a conception which has a 

 focus. The house which merely consists of a series of separate compartments 

 conveys to the imagination no definite coherent expression. To the family 

 crowded into one of these rectangular cells, the house for the time being is 

 limited by the walls of the room they are occupying, and the remaining rooms, 

 some perhaps rarely inhabited, are each distinct and separate, bearing no 

 relation to the whole scheme. 



It is not alone necessary, however, that the apartments of the house should 

 be well designed and arranged in due relation to their functions. It is 

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