HOUSES AND GARDENS 



economical lines is not only a source of pleasure and comfort to its possessor 

 but also a wise investment. 



In considering the cost of a house designed on the principles I have 

 endeavoured to explain principles which are claimed to be both rational and 

 artistic it is necessary to think of the house with its furniture and decoration 

 ready for occupation, and to compare the total outlay required with the ordinary 

 house, built, furnished and decorated in the usual way. And then, again, 

 the cost of maintenance must be compared, the wear and tear of furnishings, 

 and fabrics which perish in the using and which have to be replaced. 



If one recalls to mind the ordinary house to let unfurnished, what a 

 chilling and depressing vision is invoked ! Think of its dreary wall surfaces, 

 covered, perhaps, with three or four layers of dirty papers, its gas-fittings, its 

 glaring windows with their broken Venetian blinds, its mantelpieces and grates, 

 and its floors with their borders of battered staining. To make all this 

 endurable there must be curtains and carpets and drapings of all kinds ; ;md 

 in the furnishing it is often considered necessary to introduce a multitude of 

 unnecessary things to distract and confuse the eye, and so to screen and 

 palliate the original ugliness of the unfurnished room. 



But in the house where the building itself has been the subject of 

 careful study, beauty does not depend on furnishing or decoration. Un- 

 furnished, it is still inviting and homely, and nothing but essential 

 furniture is required for its habitation. The perishable fabrics, which form 

 so large a part of the ordinary house, are here reduced to a minimum. 



Its floors do not demand carpets nor its windows curtains, and the less 

 furnishings and trappings put into it the better it will look. Where only a 

 limited sum of money is available for the making of a home, it will be the best 

 wisdom to spend as much as we can afford in securing a thoughtfully designed 

 and well-built house, and as little as may be required for essential furnishings, 

 and nothing at all in decoration. 



If, later on, circumstances admit of further outlay, decoration can be 

 added as a result of careful consideration, or cheap and temporary furnishings 

 may be replaced by better, but the structure of the house cannot be so easily 

 modified. Custom and habit are the tyrants who have settled for the non- 

 reflecting majority the expenditure required for the furnishing of a house. It 

 is usual to spend, say, ^500 in furnishing a certain type of house, and the 

 family is therefore invited to consider a scheme showing how to furnish for 

 ^500. The expense may be grudged, but it is paid because it is usual and 

 customary so to do. And so the furniture arrives, and probably includes the 

 very pictures for the walls. Given a certain station in life such surroundings 

 are correct and usual. It is not merely that such furnishings are badly made 

 and vulgar in design. They are for the most part quite unnecessary and 

 merely a source of labour and an obstruction of floor spaces. The demand 

 for such things is the creation of their manufacturers, for, it may be observed, 

 that by continuously and patiently telling a man that he wants a thing, he will 

 end by believing you, and whether it is an encyclopaedia or a drawing-room 

 cabinet he offers himself a willing victim to the enterprising advertiser. And 



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