130 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



April, 1913 



ured but made to serve all present 

 needs most effectively as well. For- 

 tunately for the appointment of 

 "Wye" there was a goodly heritage 

 of all things imaginable from the 

 two old houses at Oyster Bay, al- 

 ready alluded to, belonging to the 

 family. During more than two cen- 

 turies of occupancy very little had 

 been dispersed from either estab- 

 lishment. Notwithstanding all this 

 enviable abundance, however, there 

 is no suggestion of a museum in the 

 arrangement and no overcrowding 

 to the detriment of the individual 

 pieces. Each piece is given plenty 

 of room to appear to the best ad- A comer of 



vantage and a blessed Japanese spirit of moderation and 

 restraint has been observed. True, some very choice things 

 have to go into occasional periods of retirement in the attic 

 or the upper rooms while their places are taken by others 

 that have been stored away, but when they do come down 

 they are the fresher for it and the more enjoyed by their 

 possessors and besides, by their change, the house thereby 

 escapes from that dreadful stereotyped sameness of ar- 

 rangement — all too common — as though the precise spot 

 to be occupied by each chair and table had been irrevocably 

 foreordained by the laws of the Medes and Persians so 

 that it would be nothing short of desecration, however 

 delightful and refreshing, to change them about. Conse- 

 quently "Wye House" bears an air of spaciousness and 

 amplitude quite independent of the actual dimensions of 

 the rooms and, at the same time, the dignity and simplicity 

 of good taste make themselves felt. To this general sense 

 of easy repose the harmonious and unobtrusive tones of 

 wall-paper and rugs contribute not a little. 



On the left side of the wide hallway that passes through 



the center of the house is a great 

 room that you may call "drawing- 

 room" or "parlor" as you please. 

 If you are ultra modern and have 

 a weakness for being formal and 

 always quite au fait, you will prob- 

 ably choose "drawing-room." If 

 you are a bit old-fashioned you will 

 cling to "parlor." Really, of the 

 two, except in large and designedly 

 formal houses — show places — with 

 ranges of rooms that can be devoted 

 to specialized uses, "parlor" is pre- 

 ferable, that is to say, "parlour" in 

 the good old English sense meaning 

 a place to be constantly used for 

 the dining-room z \\ manner of social intercourse and 



all the manifold intimate activities of family life from the 

 embroidering or knitting of the ladies of the household to 

 the entertainment of friends and acquaintances who may 

 chance to drop in of an afternoon for a dish of tea and 

 gossip. 



A "parlor" in this sense is a good general utility room 

 and the name is also more dignified, becoming and of 

 broader application than the lately coined and hackneyed 

 designation "living-room" calling up its converse, a "dying- 

 room" by way of contrast — unpleasant as it may be — and 

 always suggesting, anyhow, a laborer's cottage redolent of 

 grease, fried potatoes and soapsuds. Most of us have 

 distressing memories of the formal parlors of our child- 

 hood's days but we have surely had time to live down such 

 recollections so let us have back the good old name and 

 banish all visions of a starched and deadly chamber of 

 mid-Victorian furniture horrors enveloped in an atmosphere 

 of foolish mid-Victorian artificiality and priggishness, a 

 place where the tables and chairs had "elegies" and 

 "limbs" — heaven knows some of them had little enough 



The rooms open into one another in a manner that makes for spaciousness 



