June 6, 



Garden and Forest. 



171 



shade of a veranda. There are several months in the 

 year when the terrace could be occupied for one or two 

 hours of most days as a work-room for ladies or as an air- 

 ing place for an infant or a convalescent, when it would 

 be imprudent to sit in the shade out-of-doors, or to walk 

 on damp turf 



As to a common sense of propriety and respectability in 

 matters of the front and back of houses, let us consider 

 how what may pass for such a sense has probably origi- 

 nated. 



A feudal chief wishing to lodge a body of his vassals at 

 a particular point, before unsettled, of his domain, would 

 provide rows of huts set closely together on each side of 

 a common passage or street. They would have the char- 

 acteristics of such huts as are to be seen now by the score, 

 for example, at Paso del Norte on our southern frontier; a 

 single room for a family, a door on the street side, a door 

 on the other side, no windows, a little corral into which 

 goats, swine and fowls are driven through the hut at night- 

 fall. 



As civilization advanced the manorial lords would find 

 it to their profit to extend these villages, build larger dwell- 

 ings, and, after a long interval, give them a little window 

 on each side of the street door. Later, the roof would be 

 pitched steeper and a sleeping-loft added. Then, on the 

 street side, the walls would be built higher so that there 

 could be upper rooms, also with windows, the roof still 

 carried down to the first story on the opposite side. 



At this stage of the evolution certain landlords might come 

 to regard certain of their villages as a part of their lordly 

 array ; to conduct guests through their streets and to take 

 pride in their cottages as they would be seen from the 

 streets. It follows that new cottages would be built a 

 little set off from the street and would be given a street door- 

 yard; their street walls would be whitewashed and tenants 

 would be encouraged to decorate the street yards with 

 flowering plants and to line the ways from the street to the 

 street doors with rows of box or shells or white stones. 

 The other side of the house would still pireserve the ori- 

 ginal hovel character ; would have no windows, and the 

 door would open upon a dunghill and rough shelters for 

 the increasing personal wealth of the tenant in goats, pigs, 

 donkeys, geese and fowls. 



It can hardly be necessary to pursue the process of de- 

 velopment nearer to " the typical American house." 



Why is it that we so often see the family rooms of a 

 house in the country on the least valuable part of the site 

 of a homestead; the kitchen, wash room, drying yard and 

 out-houses on the best part of it ? Why is it that if one 

 asks at a Seaside Hotel, where he can see the ocean, he 

 is told to go out back of the stable ? The answer is that 

 it is because of a lingering superstition — a spurious semi- 

 religious sentiment — which had its origin when one side of 

 most houses — the side facing a public road — was the hu- 

 man side, the other the side of pigs and goats and geese, 

 filth, darkness and concealment. 



T/ie front, /he back, are terms no more applicable to a 

 well designed house in America than anywhere else. 

 Our Capitol and our White House have two fronts. Our 

 beloved house at Mt. Vernon has two fronts. The old 

 Hosack house at Hyde Park on the Hudson, the finest 

 country-seat in its natural elements in America, has four 

 fronts, as have most palaces and many other monumental 

 buildings, as those of our Interior and Post Office Depart- 

 ments. (But this is a plan hardly ever to be recommend- 

 ed except where there is to be a spacious interior court, as 

 in many French and Spanish country houses.) 



Generally with us a country house, and often a suburban 

 house, will best have three fronts. Except as regard for 

 winter shelter or summer breeze may overrule, one of these 

 will be on the side looking from which there is the most 

 pleasing natural scenery, and here will be the more im- 

 portant family rooms (as at ]\It. Vernon and at the White 

 House). If the outlook from them has a fine distant back- 

 ground (as at Mt. Vernon and the White House), then the 



nearer premises should be treated partly with a purpose to 

 provide a place of common, quiet, domestic occupation, to 

 be used in connection with the parlor or library, and partly 

 with the aim of fitting the landscape with a foreground nicely 

 conforming to, and helping the efiect of, the middle distance 

 and the background. It is desirable for neither of these 

 purposes that there should beasweep of gravel on that side 

 of the house upon which horses may be driven or be kept 

 standing, nor that there should be a public entrance to the 

 house there. Usually a lawn, framed and sparingly furnish- 

 ed with masses of shrubbery that will not grow so high as 

 to hide the distant view, will be best. But if the natural 

 surface of the ground is rapidly declining from the house,- 

 especially if it is in the form of a broken and one-sided de- 

 clivity, having a dislocating effect in connection with the 

 distant view, then a level platform before the house, its 

 further edge having a parapet, balustrade or hedge, will be 

 desirable, both in order to give an effect of security and 

 quiet to the immediate border of the house, and to make a 

 strong foreground line by which the distance will be soft- 

 ened and refined. 



Another side of the house will be its garden front, chosen 

 because (of the three remaining sides) it offers the best 

 conditioris for a garden, properly so called. Another will 

 be the entrance front, the treatment of which v^'ill be large 

 in scale and less fine than either of the others. But here, 

 if possible, there should be umbrageous trees. There will 

 remain that part of the house containing the kitchen and 

 laundry, from which will extend yards and sheds and 

 spaces where wagons can stand and turn when bringing 

 supplies or taking off wastes. Beyond them, perhaps, a 

 carriage-house, stable and smaller out-houses. This 

 should be the side on which the outlook is of the least 

 value, and on which the natural circumstances favor con- 

 venient but not conspicuous lines of approach. 



When such a complete arrangement, as has been thus sug- 

 gested, is impracticable, the same general principles may be 

 adopted as far as circumstances admit. It rarely occurs 

 in any interesting place that the principal entrance can be 

 best made on the more attractive side of a house. It often 

 occurs, as in the finest places at Newport and Long Branch, 

 that the best location for the stables, stable yard and laun- 

 dry yard is on the street side of the house, and that the ap- 

 proach to its principal entrance passes near these, bringing 

 them, exteriorly, under close view. 



Hrooldine, Mav .8th, 1SS8. f- L. OlmSlcd 



The Court-yard of Charlecote Hall. 



AS has been said on a previous page, the beauty of a 

 formal flov\'er bed depends upon the question 

 whether it is in the right place or in the wrong place. It 

 may be- more beautiful, because more appropriate, than 

 any other horticultural decoration ; and it may be more 

 ugly because more conspicuously inappropriate than any 

 other. Our own home-grounds, both large and small, 

 offer numberless instances of its improper use. Examples 

 of its proper use are not so easy to find in America ; and 

 even in Europe we more often deplore than welcome its 

 presence. When the natural or landscape style of garden- 

 ing came into favor, the reaction in taste carried artists 

 and owners alike into an excess of hatred for all formal 

 gardening arrangements. Many old gardens of the 

 architectural pattern were ruthlessly destroyed, although 

 they were appropriate and beautiful because closely con- 

 nected with works of architectural art. And the formal 

 beds of modern times are, as a rule, not much better em- 

 ployed in Europe than in America. But here and there in 

 all parts of Europe, and even in England, where the love 

 for natural arrangements long ruled more strongly than 

 elsewhere, old gardens of architectural design, or portions 

 of such gardens, may still be found. The illustration 

 given on page 173 is a good example of gardening 

 of this character, and gains a double interest from its con- 

 nection with the name of the greatest of English poets. 



