room, whose whole air was so unlike that of a Roman apartment, that I
could scarcely believe I had not been transported to English or American
soil. In spite of its elegance, the room was as home-like and cozy as if
it nestled in the Berkshire hills or stood on Worcestershire meadows. The
windows were heavily curtained, and the furniture covered with gay chintz
of a white ground, with moss-rose buds thickly scattered over it between
broad stripes of rose-pink. The same chintz was fluted all around the
cornice of the room, making the walls look less high and stately; the
doorways, also, were curtained with it. Great wreaths and nodding masses
of pampas grass were above the doors; a white heron and a rose-colored
spoonbill stood together on a large bracket in one corner, and a huge gray
owl was perched on what looked like a simple old apple-tree bough, over an
inlaid writing-table which stood at an odd slant near one of the windows.
Books were everywhere--in low swinging shelves, suspended by large green
cords with heavy tassels; on low bracket shelves, in unexpected places,
with deep green fringes or flutings of the chintz; in piles on Moorish
stools or old Venice chests. Every corner looked as if somebody made it a
special haunt and had just gone out. On a round mosaic table stood an
exqusite black-and-gilt Etruscan patera filled with white anemones; on
another table near by stood a silver one filled with the same flowers,
pink and yellow. Each was circled round the edge with fringing masses of
maiden-hair fern. Every lounge and chair had a low, broad foot-stool
before it, ruffled with the chintz; and in one corner of the room were a
square pink and white and green Moorish rug, with ten or a dozen
chintz-covered pillows, piled up in a sort of chair-shaped bed upon it,
and a fantastic ebony box standing near, the lid thrown back, and
battledoors and shuttlecocks, and many other gay-colored games, tossed in
confusion. The walls were literally full of exquisite pictures; no very
large or rare ones, all good for every-day living; some fine old
etchings, exquisite water-colors, a swarthy Campagna herds-boy with a
peacock feather and a scarlet ribbon in his black hat, and for a
companion-picture, the herds-boy of the mountains, fair, rosy, standing
out on a opaline snow-peak, with a glistening Edelweiss in his hand;
opposite these a large picture of Haag's, a camel in the desert, the Arab
wife and baby in a fluttering mass of basket and fringe and shawl and
scarf, on his back; the Arab father walking a few steps in advance,
playing on musical pipes, his tasseled robe blowing back in the wind; on
one side of this a Venice front, and on another a crag of Norway pines;
here and there, small leaves of photographs from original drawings by the
old masters, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, and Luini; and everywhere, in all
possible and impossible places, flowers and vines. I never saw walls so
decorated. Yellow wall-flowers waved above the picture of the Norway
pines; great scarlet thistles branched out each side of the Venetian
palace; cool maiden-hair ferns seemed to be growing all around the glowing
crimson and yellow picture of the Arabs in the Desert. Afterward I learned
the secret of this beautiful effect; large, flat, wide-mouthed bottles,
filled with water, were hung on the backs of the picture frames, and in
these the vines and flowers were growing; only a worshipper of flowers
would have devised this simple method of at once enshrining them, and
adorning the pictures.
In one of the windows stood a superbly-carved gilt table, oblong, and with
curiously-twisted legs which bent inward and met a small central shelf
half-way between the top and the floor, then spread out again into four
strange claw-like vases, which bore each two golden lilies standing
upright. On this stood the most singular piece of wood-carving I ever saw.
It was of very light wood, almost yellow in tint; it looked like rough
vine trellises with vines clambering over them; its base was surrounded by
a thick bed of purple anemones; the smaller shelf below was also filled
with purple anemones, and each of the golden lilies held all the purple
anemones it could--not a shade of any other color but the purple and