White Nights

In this plan a small house is shown which in many respects resembles the last. It is adapted for a fifty-foot frontage to the north. Here, however, the building-line has been ignored, and the house brought right up to the road. This allows of a little high-walled square court, with the front entrance through an arched gateway, and with the back entrance through an entry, as in the previous plans.

As one approaches the front entrance of this little dwelling, and, looking through the bars of the entrance gate, as one begins to realise the character which the house obtains from this treatment, the Dutch primness and cleanliness of the paving and cobble-stones, with a few tubs of flowers and some central ornament—a little lead figure, perhaps, on a well-designed pedestal—one may, perhaps, be excused for preferring it to the inevitable “drive” and shrubs of suburbia. Such a little grey court, with its indefinable hint of romance, is worth a dozen front gardens and sweeping drives, which are the pretentious preludes to such mean habitations. In the plan of the house it will be noticed that the hall, with its appendages ot bower and dining-recess, occupy the whole of the garden frontage to the south, while the kitchen premises, as in the previous example, are placed towards the road. On the upper floor the plan shows the arrangements of the bedrooms, while the attic accommodation is a variable quantity, and may include additional rooms for the family as well as the usual servants’ bedroom, boxroom and cistern-room. The plan of the garden is not shown in this example, but the central position of the bay-window, as well as the position of the window in the boudoir, will be sufficient to indicate that its main lines have already been determined.

The coloured sketch gives a suggestion of the general character of the interior. In the dining-recess here it is proposed to stencil the walls with a pattern of trailing vine, with grey-green leaves and purple grapes; and this vine motif will perhaps suggest an appropriate selection from the “Pubaiyat” on the beam above.

Ah fill the cup:—what boots it to repeat / How time is slipping underneath our feet; / Unborn to-morrow and dead yesterday. / Why fret about them if to-day be sweet.

Such a sentiment may not commend itself to all, but except in its opening phrase it seems but another way of repeating the canonical command to take no thought for the morrow.

It will be noticed that this little space of vine adornment is the only superficial decoration made in this apartment, which almost constitutes the house. All the rest is grey-brown timber, red bricks, and whitewash. It may also be noted that there is only one picture in the room and but few ornaments; and if one examines the materials which go to make up this interior, it will be found that there is little but has its definite structural function. It is no histrionic reproduction of a farm-house kitchen, such as the modern furnishing firm will construct for you, where beams and joists are arranged for effect, and where the whole is as much like real building as a piece of street scenery cn the stage,