26 
House & Garden 
S HE was a delectable bit of Dresden come to life. A pink-and- 
white creature with a penchant for furbelows and panniers and 
the daintiest of laces. The jewels sparkled on her rose-tipped fingers 
like dew at dawn, and her powdered wig made you think it a fluffy 
cloud that rested lightly there above her face. She was learned in 
the ways of men and the ways of women. Her chatter veered about 
with each new face—grand dame, ecclesiastic, litterateur, ingenue 
and worldling. For her men made great sacrifices and great asses 
of themselves. Of her women said sweetly catty things. 
She was the symbol of the France of her day, and she left us a 
strange heritage. Hers was the day when conversation was an art, 
and men would rather talk with her than work. Remnants of her 
heritage still remain. For the place of her conversation is what she 
left us. 
From her chatter came the place to talk— parler —the parlor. 
T HEN a great darkness fell upon the land. Men took to singing 
Gospel hymns. Skies were heavy and talk more so. Women 
worried over the pomps and vanities of this wicked world and all the 
sinful lusts of the flesh. In those days they dressed accordingly. The 
art of conversation died, but the parlor remained. 
Y OU can remember that parlor. Its blinds were always drawn and 
the air there was musty and chill. The carpet was a vivid red 
with cabbage roses tied in garlands of pale blue ribbon. A suite of 
horsehair furniture ranged stiffly against the walls. It held pillows of 
vari-colored and brilliant tufted silk. In the corner stood a whatnot 
with mementoes from trips to Altoona, 
Pittsburg, and points west, and ornaments 
grandmother made for grandfather from her 
own locks and his when they were young. 
Grandfather and grandmother also hung 
above the bricked-up fireplace—kindly old 
souls done in crayon and with a cheerful 
disregard for perspective. In the center 
of the room stood a marble-topped table 
with a red plush cover on it, and on that the 
large octavo family bible. A hassock or 
two rested by either side of the fireplace. 
The curtains were lace—immaculate lace— 
and very stiff. 
Rare were the times when anyone went 
into that parlor—except to clean it. Once 
in a great while the parlor slumber was 
disturbed when some poor bit of human 
clay formed a mourning center for distant 
relatives and friends, or when someone was 
married or the minister called and talked 
loftily about church activities and small 
congregations and then said a fifteen min¬ 
ute prayer. 
T ODAY the parlor is an excrescence on 
the American home, and those who 
love life and laughter and sunlight have 
flung wide the windows and doors, thrown 
away the horse-hair furniture and the 
crayon portraits and the whatnot, opened 
up the fireplace and made a living-room 
out of a tomb. 
Why? 
Because we are living more sincere 
lives than ever were lived in France of old 
or in the parlor of the ’80s. 
A place merely for conversation was a 
pose, even in the heyday of conversational 
art. A parlor was a rank affectation in the 
day when no one conversed brilliantly, and 
life centered in the kitchen around a red cotton covered table. In neither 
time was it a part of the real life of the home. The name has nothing to 
do with it. Change in habits, in the ways of living has taught house¬ 
holders that there should be no part of the home that does not con¬ 
tribute daily to the joy and comfort and efficiency of living. 
Run your eye over any set of plans in this magazine and read the 
story written there. In the modern domestic nomenclature we find 
epitomized the habits and customs of an age that is bent on getting 
the most out of the house and the most out of life, and it is a better 
house and a better life because of it. 
The living room connotes a formal-informal apartment where family 
and friends can mingle happily and comfortably. The dining room 
represents the chamber for formal meals, and the breakfast room, the 
informal. Neglige is quite out of place in the one and quite suitable 
for the other. The living porch represents an all-year life out of doors 
in a maximum of sunlight. The dressing room means that the bed¬ 
room—open to thorough ventilation—is for sleeping alone, and a 
room in which to dress and undress comfortably is provided. 
These are only a handful of the many factors in the modern house. 
They present a much more varied life than used to be lived when the 
sepulchral parlor dominated the front of the house or even in the days 
when the salon was a necessity in the more pretentious homes of 
F ranee. 
W E pack more into twenty-four hours than our forefathers did; 
we sleep less, eat less, but live more intensely. For us life is 
constantly beginning tomorrow, and our houses show it. We have a 
reverent affection for the past and for the 
way things were done in those days, but we 
will not permit it to dominate our lives. 
Fashions change in furniture and in archi¬ 
tecture just as they change in clothes. The 
eternal flux of life demands that we be will¬ 
ing to lay aside the old and take on the new 
when new life and new times demand. 
Each room must be a background for 
some phase of our changing, varied life. It 
must be an environment that we vitalize the 
moment we come to dwell in it. No room 
has a right to exist save it exist for people 
to live in it every day or any day. 
T HERE is no place in the modern home 
for rooms that are not used, just as there 
is no place in the modern room for furniture 
which does not serve to increase the comfort 
and convenience of the body or quicken the 
pulse at the sight of good line and color. The 
house today is 100% complete, fulfilling, 
sufficient. Every part exists because it plays 
a definite role in daily life. When it ceases 
to serve that end it will pass, even as the 
parlor has passed out of existence. 
Here is the answer to those good souls who 
ask why the modern interior decorator is so 
ruthless with some of the furniture and objects 
she finds in the house. It is not that she 
disregards sentiment, or that she veers with 
each new fad. The good decorator is never 
a faddist. She is a psychologist. She knows 
men and women and the times, and she works 
to create for them an environment that is 
livable and harmonious. It is the decorator 
who has made the chair that grandfather used 
to sit in, like the old-fashioned parlor that 
he never sat in, come up to the standards of 
today. It is the decorator in co-operation with 
the architect who makes the modern home. 
In this small house our mastiff, Jebb, 
Lies dozing, heedless of his sins: 
He sees the shadows creep and ebb 
And dreams of burglars’ burly shins. 
But sometimes, like a bursting bomb, 
You hear him furiously cry— 
He thinks the moon’s an old white tom 
And yearns to hunt him from the sky! 
