A n gust, 1923 
35 
The 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
BULLETIN BOARD 
,'^E’VE just been playing Mah Jongg, or 
VV Pung Chow, or whatever it is called. It’s 
like editing a magazine, this Chinese game; 
you can “dog” your hand, which is easy, or you 
can play for suites, which is hard. You can 
dump the contributors’ mail into the press, there¬ 
by dogging your magazine, or you can select and 
play skilfully until the right articles are as¬ 
sembled for the right issue. We pride ourselves 
on having played for suites in the forthcoming 
September issue. 
It is the Autumn Furnishing Number and the 
three big suites are decoration, gardening and 
building, with two of a kind represented by 
household equipment and the shop pages. Thus, 
if you are interested in the Decoration Suite 
you choose the following: an article on cottage 
furniture, the photographs of a Long Island 
farmhouse decorated by Elsie Sloane Farley, the 
page of cornices, the three pages of enclosed 
porches and breakfast rooms, the article on how 
to put the Italian spirit into an interior, the 
page of new fabrics, the three pages of the Port¬ 
folio showing the rooms in a remarkable Cali¬ 
fornia bungalow, the page of color definitions, 
of china as decoration, and the garden aspect of 
tapestries. If you play the Gardening Suite you 
will select the article on lilies and how to make 
a lily garden, the page of designs for well heads, 
the suggestions for the care and pruning of grape 
vines, and the plans for tulip arrangement in the 
garden. If your choice is Building, then you turn 
to the questionnaire on what you should know 
and decide before you start to build, to the two 
remarkable houses by Frank Forster and to the 
article on decorative woods. In the two of a 
kind, Miss Peyser writes on beds and bedding, and 
the House & Garden Shoppers select an inviting 
array of new and tempting articles from the 
shops. 
W HILE we do not believe much in mottoes 
indoors, in saying tender sentiments along 
a fireplace mantel, every once in a while 
a poem comes to hand that appeals mightily. 
In an old issue of the Spectator we found the 
following verse. Decently lettered and framed, 
it might find a place on the guest room wall: 
The Perfect Guest 
She answered by return of post 
The invitation of her host. 
She caught the train she said she Vv'ould 
And changed at stations as she should. 
She brought a small and lightish bo.x 
And keys belonging to the locks. 
Food rich and rare she did not beg 
But ate the boiled and scrambled egg. 
When offered lukewarm tea she drank it, 
And did not crave an extra blanket. 
Nor extra pillow for her head. 
She seemed to like the spare room bed. 
She brought her own self-filling pen, 
And always went to bed at ten. 
She left no little things behind 
But stories new and gossip kind. 
T hose to whom the glory of the narcissus 
is part of spring may well remember that, 
unless the powers behind Quarantine 37 
change their minds, this innocent bulb is to be 
forbidden in three years. You can’t imagine 
spring without its hosts of daffodils dancing in 
the breeze? The pest hounds at Washington 
can. If they could, they would forbid the breeze 
because it carries spores of plant diseases! Per¬ 
haps they would also forbid spring because that 
is a season when pests awaken to their nefarious 
work! However, this is the cloud—no bigger 
than a pest hound’s hand—that presages the 
coming storm. In these three years we must 
stock our gardens. After that the narcissus will 
join whiskey and be forbidden these shores. 
Perhaps the day will come when bulb-leggers 
from Holland will anchor outside the three-mile 
limit and garden lovers in small boats will sneak 
out under cover of night to buy their share of 
spring glory. 
nAiiiiiq 
I®! 
immii 
POR the gardener August is essentially a 
lazy month. By this time the annuals are 
flowering abundantly, the perennial seedlings 
growing along and the biennials fattening 
into healthy clumps for next year’s bloom. In 
-August the gardener hasn’t much else to do than 
water occasionally, scratch the soil to make a 
dust mulch, powder the phlox to keep down 
mildew and read the bulb catalogs. To these 
he can add the enjoyment of contemplating his 
handiwork—of lying lazily in the shade and be¬ 
holding the flowers his efforts have brought to 
blossom. Too few gardeners do this. So en¬ 
grossed are they in their work, so busy at this 
and that, so rushed to finish before sundown, 
that they do not behold their garden with an 
eye seeking for beauty. Some part of every day 
should be given to that quiet enjoyment. Some 
month of every year. Dusk is the ideal time 
of day and .August is the ideal month. After 
that comes September and the heavy work of 
autumn gardening begins. August is the garden’s 
lull before the storm. 
/^F THE contributors to this issue—Estelle 
H. Reis is a widely-published writer on 
subjects appertaining to the house; E. P. 
Felt is the New York State Entomologist; Elsie 
Cobb Wilson is a well-known New York deco¬ 
rator; Darragh Aldrich is an architect in Min¬ 
neapolis much sought after as a designer of 
cabins and camps; Norman Collart and Burton 
Elliot are authorities on the uses of paints and 
stains; Mott B. Schmitt is a New York architect; 
Murphy & Hastings, California architects, and 
Mellor, Meigs & Howe, and Soule & Edwards, 
Philadelphia architects. 
F rom time to time readers of House & Gar¬ 
den ask why this magazine does not sell 
plans and why, in publishing a house, we 
do not give its cost. Both of these we have never 
done and there is ample reason. 
We do not sell plans because the making of 
plans and the designing of houses is the business 
of an architect, whereas the business of a pub¬ 
lisher is to issue magazines and books. A maga¬ 
zine of the standing of House & Garden must 
respect the work and ideals of the architectural 
profession. To sell plans would be working di¬ 
rectly against those whose creations are shown 
in these pages. 
The architectural profession is- sustained by- 
high ideals and its code of practice is well de¬ 
fined. Working with such a profession is the 
only way the architectural standards of this coun¬ 
try can be raised. Working against it would 
lessen our value to readers of taste and destroy 
the architectural ideals and prestige' which for 
years have given House & Garden its standing 
in the magazine world. 
We do not publish prices of houses for two 
distinct reasons: if the house has already been 
built and the owner is occupying it, would it not 
be bad taste to publish to the world what it 
cost him? That is one reason. The other is 
that any such figures are approximate, and as 
such are undependable and misleading. 
Except in rare instances we do not show de¬ 
signs of projected houses, that is, pretty draw¬ 
ings of houses which haven’t been built. These 
also are misleading. And when approximate costs 
accompany them, they are doubly so. Imaginary 
houses may be entertaining to look at, but the 
photograph of the completed house carries con¬ 
viction. 
The standard of architectural taste in this coun¬ 
try is gradually being raised, but despite that 
effort at education, monstrosities are erected on 
all sides. In this warfare against ugliness, against 
shoddy building, against cheap, perishable work¬ 
manship those alone who maintain their ideals 
of taste and honest work will survive. 
F ashions in furniture and interior decora¬ 
tion come slowly and change slowly. This 
is not surprising, in view of the length of 
time it takes to design, make and distribute fur¬ 
niture, and the length of time it takes to es¬ 
tablish new ideas over an area as large and as 
sectional as these United States. 
For some time there has been a popular de¬ 
mand in Florida and on the Pacific coast for 
Spanish furniture and for Spanish interiors, and 
this popularity is only just beginning to show 
itself in isolated instances in New York and 
elsewhere. It may or may not be a significant 
fact that the first prize in the Annual New York 
Flower Show this spring was won by a Spanish 
patio. And four 3-ears ago, the architects Warren 
& Wetmore designed and furnished the main 
lobby of the Hotel Commodore in New York 
to resemble a Spanish patio. The revival and 
wide acceptance and adaptation of the decorative 
style of Renaissance Italy began with isolated 
instances and grew to be a formidable rival, if 
not a victor over the Georgian English style, 
with its attendant chinoiserie that was popular¬ 
ized by the decoration and furnishing of the 
Ritz Hotels and the Hotel Vanderbilt. 
Renaissance Italian and Georgian English had, 
in turn, displaced the earlier modern French dec¬ 
orative ideal of voluptuous detail, of mirrors, 
gilded plaster and potted palms. So it goes, and 
when (or if) general appreciation and acquain¬ 
tanceship with the interesting possibilities of the 
style of the Spanish Renaissance gather unto it¬ 
self enough momentum, we may find ourselves, 
with seeming suddenness, in the midst of a new 
phase of decorative adaptation. 
