IV. The Dining-Room

I entered the door, and started at first with my old astonishment with which I had woke up, so strange and beautiful did this interior seem to me, though it was but a pothouse parlour.

A quaintly carved sideboard held an array of bright pewter pots and dishes and wooden and earthen bowls; a stout oak table went up and down the room, and a carved oak chair stood by the chimney-corner, now filled by a very old man dim-eyed and white-bearded. That, except the rough stools and benches on which the company sat, was all the furniture. The walls were panelled roughly enough with oak boards to about six feet from the floor, and about three feet of plaster above that was wrought in a pattern of a rose stem running all round the room, freely and roughly done, but with (as it seemed to my unused eyes) wonderful skill and spirit. On the hood of the great chimney a huge rose was wrought in the plaster and brightly painted in its proper colours.

“A Dream of John Ball.” William Morris.

F we assume the case of a family who meet in the evenings in one large room with its comfortable fireside, and adjourn to a separate room for dinner, high tea, or supper, or whatever form the evening meal may assume, where a certain degree of economy in labour and fuel is necessary, it becomes undesirable to light a fire in the dining-room, which is only used for a short period. In many cases the difficulty is met by using the dining-room as a sitting-room in the evening, and for this purpose it is not always adapted. The dining-table is usually unnecessarily large, and the available floor space is reduced to a narrow strip round this table, and this, again, is further restricted by the sideboard and the chairs. And so a chain of circumstances may have driven the unfortunate owner of the suburban house to spend his evenings inexorably wedged between the dining-table and the fire. In the whole space covered by the roof and enclosed by the walls of his house there is room enough, if thoughtfully disposed, to afford him a more spacious setting for life than this. The thoughtless application of an obsolescent tradition has, in fact, ended in his being pushed into a corner by insistent and triumphant furniture; and there for the present we may leave him.

In the smaller types of house it may be, first of all, considered how far it is desirable to use the central hall as a dining-room, or, in other words, to make the dining-room large enough to serve as a hall or houseplace as well. This enlargement of the room will reduce considerably the main objection to such a scheme, and the lingering odours of the food will not be so much in evidence as in a small room.

By following an ancient usage, the table may be of the trestle or gate type, and may then be removed when not required and placed against the wall. But the arrangement which seems to meet the case most satisfactorily is the introduction as an appendage to the hall of a dining recess, of which several examples are given in the plans illustrated. When the dinner is being laid the curtains which screen the recess from the room may be drawn across the opening, the table being laid from the small serving-room adjoining the dining recess, and so it is not necessary for the servant to pass through the hall at all. When the dinner is ready one may imagine the curtains drawn, displaying the table bright with dainty glass and flowers, lighted by a central hanging lamp or candles against the dark background of the seats. And so, apart from the obvious practical advantages, the effect would be far more artistic than the ordinary arrangement of the dining-table, which lacks focus, and from any point of view hardly composes pictorially. There would be something also specially charming from the dimly lighted hall, in the effect of the suddenly parted curtains, and that suddenly revealed brightness of glass and silver. Not only is an internal effect gained in this way, which is more interesting than the ordinary arrangement of the dining-table, but everything may be worked with a minimum amount of labour and with that quiet orderliness which may have been felt to be an impossibility in the cramped conditions of the small house. The position of the recess would be such as to allow of ample ventilation, and the serving would be done from the front unoccupied side of the dining-table, while, if on special occasions the recess proved too small to accommodate the guests, it might be supplemented by an additional table in the hall.

In seeking so to satisfy the claims of the imagination as well as the practical needs, one is tempted to take a step further in the process, and to dream of a table thus arranged, further adorned with piles of luscious fruit and nuts, rather than with steaming joints.

Vegetarianism, in a meat-consuming world, is yet for most of us a counsel of perfection. It is only those cast in heroic mould who can accept what Mrs. Earle, in her fascinating book, describes as “servants’ cheese” as a substitute for tempting dishes. The non-meat eater at the board is in much the same position as the non-cannibal at a feast of “long pig;” but as it has been possible to wean the cannibal from preying on his fellow-man, so it may also be possible to wean the civilised man from devouring his fellow-animal, and the dining-table of the future household will no longer be disfigured by the family joint, or the streets of the future town by the butcher’s shop.

In the further development of the dining-room as a separate apartment, it may appear as a room adjoining the hall, and preferably connected with it by a wide doorway. It should be so placed that service can be effected from the kitchen without passage through the other parts of the house. If it is still occasionally used as a sitting-room, a recessed fireplace is a desirable feature, especially when the room is not very large. The fire will not then scorch the backs of those seated at the table, and an ample space will be provided for a fireside circle.

Professor Kerr has insisted that a dining-room should be of northward aspect, and he has characterised a dining-room with a southern aspect as “oven-like.” This dictum is largely due to the tradition of over-windowing rooms, which is still so much practised, for if the south dining-room is oven-like, all other southern rooms demand the same description. This matter will be pursued further when the windows of the house are specially considered; but this objection to the south dining-room is considerably modified in a house where the windows are of the horizontal rather than the vertical type, and where, while large enough to admit ample light, they are not so large as to make the room susceptible to every change in the external temperature. Modern science has shown that sunlight is the great health-giver and germ destroyer, and few rooms should be deprived of it.

A northward dining-room seems not unreasonable in large houses, where the number of other apartments confine its uses to luncheon and dinner merely.

The Dining Hatch

Many objections have reasonably been made to the ordinary type of hatch between a dining-room and the kitchen premises. It often affords a passage for sounds, smells, and draughts, and also demands the services of two servants for its use. These difficulties may, however, be got over by making it in the EiLLVATlOIi form of a good-sized cupboard, having doors opening into the dining-room, and a little side door opening into a passage adjoining the kitchen premises or a pantry. The plan sketched here shows how this may be arranged. In such a cupboard a great many of the table appointments would be permanently kept, while the whole of the dishes containing the food for a course would be placed in it from the side door. The servant would then enter the dining-room, and from the cupboard doors at the side of the fireplace the dishes, &c., would be removed and placed on the table. In many cases such an arrangement would involve a considerable saving of labour.

If the cupboard were made in two parts, as shown in the sketch, the lower part might then be devoted to the coal and wood for the dining-room fire, which would be put in from the side door.