May, 19 21 
41 
there into Hungarian drama and 
Spanish drama and Scandinavian 
drama as nonchalantly as the bee 
sucks? These are topics every 
week-ender must know! 
You must always put a dash of 
romantic novels into the guest 
room, but it is evil to confess an 
ignorance of the realistic move¬ 
ment from Dostoievsky to “Main 
Street”; we “moderns” must apolo¬ 
gize for the left-over books from 
the last generation,—for Tennyson 
and Arnold and Morris suggest 
antagonism to Amy Lowell, and 
Sandburg, and Frost. We must be 
modern to the last degree in the 
week-end visit! 
I recently came across a letter 
written by Clyde Fitch to a friend, 
soon after her visit to his country 
place in Westchester. “0!M!!” 
he exclaimed, “I am just reading 
the book you read in your room 
here last winter!!!!! !0!-1 AM 
surprised! I must be more care¬ 
ful what books I put in your 
room!!! !0!!” Such panic sug¬ 
gests French Court scandals, the 
kind of small talk one finds in 
Madame de Sevigne, Madame de 
Genlis, and the other examples of 
feminism that flourished with the 
, Louis furniture. In such a mood 
Anne Bracegirdle, Nell Gwynne, 
Dora Jordan and others of their 
ilk might biographically assemble 
by the bedside. The pink curtains 
of the bed would hide our blushes. 
Perhaps one has had a brilliant 
evening, beginning at the dinner 
Chaucer’s plan oj plac¬ 
ing books at the bed’s 
head is a convenient 
scheme for the modern 
bed chamber. They 
can be placed on a shelf 
at the top or side 
Mills-Harting 
Book-shelves let into 
the walls on either side 
the bed and a night 
stand for books are 
convenient treatments. 
Book plate by Demp¬ 
ster Murphy 
table. The pair of gleaming shoul¬ 
ders next you have suggested a 
Herrick mood, the naive young 
girl opposite you has set you sing¬ 
ing inwardly, “Where is Sylvia”, 
mine host has volunteered that 
within healthy tramping distance 
there is a trout stream, and your 
mind is set thinking on artificial 
nature minnows. On your retire¬ 
ment you would welcome a range 
of books from the “Hesperides” to 
“The Compleat Angler”, and even 
Louis Rhead’s “Fisherman’s 
Lures” or Walter Eaton’s Berkshire 
sketches would not be out of place. 
Of course, any hostess to whom 
books are a necessary furniture in 
a room would scarcely omit from 
the book-shelf some sheaves of free 
verse; Amy Lowell’s volumes, deli¬ 
cately tinted boards, would match 
any coverlet of silk, and all these 
tendrils of verse afford you an op¬ 
portunity of discussing with the 
young poet — every neighborhood, 
even if the population consists of 
only two, contains a poet and a 
dramatist—the latest theories re¬ 
garding polyphonic prose or poly¬ 
chromatic verse, or any of the 
hybrids which have resulted in the 
helter-skelter marriage of the dac¬ 
tylic and anapestic families: a 
new-fashioned meeting of old-fash¬ 
ioned metre! 
The guest room book-shelf proves 
often an aid to week-end conversa¬ 
tion. In the morning you come to 
the breakfast-room glowing with a 
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