HOUSES AND GARDENS 



central apartment will more than compensate for any failure to meet the 



arbitrary conditions of conventional usage. 



In less formal gatherings, such as family re-unions at Christmas for 

 instance, the central hall with its great open fireplace will meet the occasion 

 much better than the house designed as a row of boxes connected by a 

 passage. In the average house the accommodation required for the resident 

 governess, or for that singular anomaly, the paying guest, known in circles 

 less polite as the lodger, or for the occasional visitor staying in the house, 

 will not suggest any further modification of the plan than the inclusion of 

 a bed-sitting-room. 



It is only in the larger houses where entertainment is practised on a 

 large scale that it necessarily modifies the plan. The central hall becomes 

 then the focus of a series of common rooms the guests may be ac- 

 commodated in separate suites containing bedrooms, sitting-rooms, bath- 

 rooms, &c. 



In some cases, the family may give up the whole house to the guests, 

 and so there may also be a private family suite. 



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 



THE SOUL OF THE HOUSE 



MALVOLIO. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion. 



Twelfth Nighi. 



HE greater part of the arguments used in support of the 

 reforms in house planning here suggested are designedly of a 

 somewhat utilitarian and practical nature. It is indeed doubt- 

 ful whether any other basis for an argument would be under- 

 stood in an age when the average man is radically though 

 perhaps unconsciously essentially utilitarian. But although it is held that 

 the house should be convenient and aptly fitted to its material functions, 

 it is but a mean thing if it does not express something of the aspirations 

 of the spirit of its builders, and indeed possess, as it were, a soul of its own. 

 It is a strange but incontrovertible fact that houses do so acquire a 

 personality. Some are so mean and sordid that while possessing all the 

 conveniences of modern life they seem to cast a blight over all around 

 them. To pass them unharmed it would seem necessary to " cut a pious cross 

 in the air ; " to live in them would be to one sensitive in such matters worse 

 than confinement in a prison cell. Others again are like mere husks, shallow 

 and empty, while some, and these chiefly old houses, survivals of the great 

 ages of building, thrill one at the first glance with a sense of their personal 

 charm. And as one enters and passes from room to room their deep and 

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