FURNISHING 283 



green, red, or blue, and if the silk curtains inside are of 

 the same colour to match the paint. 



On first doing up a house, keep as many rooms as you 

 can plainly whitewashed (' white distemper ' it is call ed) , 

 but see that it is white, and not mixed with black, blue, or 

 yellow, such as painters delight in using. I think every- 

 thing looks well against a white wall. Covering a wall 

 with coarse canvas and then distempering it gives a 

 variety to the surface. Some people think white walls 

 unbecoming. I cannot agree with this. What suits the 

 rose and the tulip as a background ought to suit a 

 pretty woman in her pretty clothes. In a white room 

 dark furniture never looks heavy (not even the darkest 

 oak), and light furniture never looks poor. But white rooms 

 must be kept clean, as ceilings are. This necessity is a 

 great merit, and renewing is not expensive. [If staircases 

 or passages are white-washed, a dado, about a yard deep 

 up the side of the staircase and along the passage, of 

 frilled cretonne, twilled red calico, or anything cheap, is 

 an excellent way of protecting the wall from all the many 

 injuries that happen to it. If you like, you can have one 

 such dado for winter and one for summer, and they can 

 be washed or cleaned. They look best frilled onto a thin 

 lath of wood which pulls out. Rings are sewn on the 

 back for hanging the curtain onto nails or hooks screwed 

 into the wall at intervals.] If the wall is soft, another 

 thin lath of wood must be nailed to it to hold the screws. 



In a white room a small piece of good drapery or old 

 leather hung on the wall looks well, or even a few yards 

 of very superior paper may be put in one place between 

 windows, over a chimney-piece, behind a picture, above a 

 table, or under a bookcase. This form of decoration was 

 the common one in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 

 and was, in fact, the way in which tapestry came to be 

 used. In the old French chdteaux of Touraine the 



