'Decorators May be Compared to Doctors'

from Intumus: Interior Design Reader Edited by Mark Taylor and Juleanna Preston 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Emma Ferry

Academic scholar Emma Ferry champions advice literature as both narrative discourse and historical documentation on design and taste. In this essay she provides a feminist recovery of the Garrett cousins' life and work recognising them as England's first female interior decorators. Critical to this position is their link to women's suffrage and late nineteenth-century feminist activity, paralleling their struggle to train and practise as decorators. Ferry notes that in their writing the Garretts appropriate the discourse of Charles Eastlake and relegate it to the past, while promoting the 'Queen Anne' style as the way forward.

Subverting Separate Spheres

In House Decoration, domestic ideology is subverted in two ways. First, the Garretts invert the gender identities created by Eastlake in Hints on Household Taste. Second, they use the text to demonstrate their professional status as trained 'house decorators' rather than domestic 'home-makers.'

In many ways, House Decoration is clearly imitative of Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste, though thankfully less verbose. Despite advocating different styles, the similarities remain clear. Compare, for example, the following comments about the front door, first by Eastlake:

A good flat tint of olive green or chocolate colour will, however, answer all practical purposes, and besides being a more honest and artistic, is really a less expensive style of decoration. It is a great pity that the old-fashioned brass knocker has become obsolete … The present cast-iron knocker is a frightful invention … Good wrought-iron knockers of very fair design and manufacture, may be bought.¹

and then by the Garretts:

the bronzed front door and railing may be painted some good uniform shade of green or brown, and the cast-iron knocker and other door furniture exchanged for brass or wrought iron of simple design.²

110

Eastlake goes on to remark that 'Ladies are seldom called upon to choose between the merits of wrought and cast-iron for objects of domestic use,'³ but clearly the Garretts were more than able to make such judgements. There are countless other examples of similarity between the two texts. Moreover, Eastlake is one of the few nineteenth-century writer-designers to whom the Garretts make reference:

What is commonly sold as Gothic furniture, with gables and chamferings and gashes here and there to indicate carving, is for the most part a gross libel upon the sketches given by Mr. Eastlake, in his Hints on Household Taste, of a style of furniture which is simple and direct in its outline, and entirely free from those pretentious attempts at ornament with which even the simplest and cheapest furniture is now abundantly disfigured.⁴

While complimentary, it is notable that this comment, which appears in the chapter 'Houses As They Are,' links Eastlake with machine-made Gothic furniture.

Clearly the Garretts have appropriated the dominant discourse of Eastlake, but by reading between the lines it is possible to discern the muted discourse. Throughout, the reader of House Decoration, the aspiring purchaser of the services of a decorator or upholsterer is referred to as 'he' – a 'he' just as likely to be seduced by fashion as a 'she':

In the foregoing principles it is hoped that a general idea has been given for a basis of operations which would prevent an amateur going very far wrong in the colouring of his rooms or the structure of his furniture. They may also enable him to speak with more authority to the upholsterer or the paper-hanger whom he employs, and may save him from being compelled to purchase furniture or to hang paper, not that they suit his rooms or his requirements, but because 'they are very tasty,' or because 'we are selling a great number of them' [my italics].⁵

This can be read as an ironic inversion of flustered female consumers succumbing – rather more melodramatically – to the persuasions of the upholsterer in Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste (1868):

When Materfamilias enters an ordinary upholsterer's warehouse, how can she possibly decide on the pattern of her new carpet, when bale after bale of Brussels is unrolled by the indefatigable youth, who is equal in his praises of every piece in turn? … The shopman remarks of one piece of goods that it is 'elegant;' of another that it is 'striking;' of a third, that it is 'unique,' and so forth. The good lady looks from one carpet to another until her eyes are fairly dazzled by their hues. She is utterly unable to explain why she should, or why she should not like any of them.⁶

111

These inversions and gender references become more apparent when the Garretts consider the decoration and furnishing of the two most obviously gendered rooms in the house, the masculine Dining Room and the feminine Drawing Room.7 In 'Houses As They Are,' a small ten-page section, they present a room-by-room analysis, examining the Hall, the Dining Room, the Drawing Room and the Bedroom exposing the horrors of the interior of an ordinary modern London house, and criticizing many of the 'unprincipled' decorative practices of the period. Significantly, the Garretts comment on the gendered nature of the principal rooms, particularly the Dining Room:

the gloomy appearance of the rest of the room reminds one of the British boast that every Englishman's house is his castle, and that he wishes neither to observe nor to be observed when he retires into the dignified seclusion of this, the especially masculine department of the house-hold.8

In the feminine Drawing Room, the Garretts censure the work of 'some fashionable decorator and upholsterer'9 who has been employed by the anxious ladies of the house, and describe with irony the inharmonious decorative scheme of this 'lamentably commonplace apartment.'10 The following chapter, which also includes and refers to illustrations of their own furniture designs, is entitled 'Houses As They Might Be.' This is the most important section in House Decoration for appreciating the style the Garretts produced. Advocating neutral tones, harmonious drapery in soft velvets and simple, well-constructed furniture based on eighteenth century models, the Garretts return to the imaginary ordinary London house to redecorate it, creating a Utopian11 vision of the 'Queen Anne' – style home.

In an inversion of Eastlake's flustered, novelty-driven Materfamilias, the Garretts present their readers with the Paterfamilias who is resistant to change:

In the dingy and dreary solemnity of the modern London Dining Room we have but a melancholy survival of the stately hospitable-looking rooms of the last century. Yet there is no other room in the house where innovations are more grudgingly permitted, and an Englishman would suspect you of every other revolutionary tendency, if you proposed any radical changes in the colour of the walls, or in the forms and arrangements of the furniture.12

Women – at least women like the Garretts who have acquired the 'faculty of distinguishing good from bad design in the familiar objects of domestic life'13 – are now positive agents of change and innovation. In spite of the glowering Paterfamilias – who seems to be their biggest problem, with perhaps the exception of the black marble chimneypiece – the Garretts redecorate the Dining Room and, having completed their refurbishment, 'leaving the master of the house to decide whether his digestion will be

112

able to assimilate the novel treatment just proposed,¹⁴ they return to the Drawing Room. Whereas in 'Houses As They Are,' 'the ladies of the family are told that it is now their turn to have their tastes consulted,'¹⁵ in 'Houses As They Might Be,' 'the ladies of the household demand the right of having their particular tastes consulted'¹⁶ [my italics]. It seems, however, that the taste of these ladies is largely inspired by the decorative schemes of:

Mrs A's beautiful Drawing Room 'in the dado style, I think they call it,' and Mrs B's charming idea of having flowers painted on the panels of the doors, 'so beautifully done they were exactly like real flowers.'¹⁷

Confident that the faults of these rooms can be explained, the Garretts go on to alter the Drawing Room 'in accordance with a more cultivated view of the principles of decorative art.'¹⁸ Consequently, the Drawing Room is transformed into an affordably 'Queen Anne' style 'shrine.'¹⁹ This section of 'Houses As They Might Be' concludes with a reminder of the need for aesthetic appreciation by the occupant of the re-decorated home. Here, like Eastlake, they argue that decorative art should be judged by the same standards applied to other forms of art; but, while Eastlake admonishes that 'class of young ladies who are in the habit of anticipating all differences of opinion in a picture-gallery or concert-room by saying that they "know what they like,"'²⁰ the Garretts advise people who claim to 'know what they like' to take care that their tastes 'are so far cultivated as to make it desirable to display them.'²¹

Perhaps the most intriguing chapter in House Decoration is devoted to draperies. Here the Garretts make their only explicit statement about the role of women:

We hear a great deal nowadays of women's work and women's sphere. Here at any rate there can be no difference of opinion. Whether the arrangements of an ordinary household be sufficient, even if ordered with the greatest nicety, to occupy the whole of the housewife's time and thought, may be a disputed question, but everyone will agree that when a woman undertakes to guide a household, all these things should be of interest to her, and that the refinement and beauty of a house will, in the main, depend upon the trouble which she is willing to bestow upon small and comparatively insignificant details.²²

One of these comparatively insignificant details seems to be household linen:

Since the days of our grandmothers,²³ who spun their own linen, it seems that housewives and spinsters (now, properly speaking spinsters no longer) have neglected that important part of housekeeping, the household linen.²⁴

113

Although a connection can be made between making and marking household linen and the Married Women's Property legislation of the period,²⁵ here the Garretts have returned to an idealized historical vision, seeing the home as a site of production rather than consumption:

Surely the work of marking, wherein the cleverness of the worker might devise some fresh conceit on each article, would be more interesting than half the busy idleness with which the daughters of England now beguile their time.²⁶

Considering the 'exhausting fight against the stream of prejudice, such as the Garretts had waged for many years,'²⁷ it is perhaps not surprising that they should express their impatience with the less politicised 'daughters of England' who waste their time in useless rather than 'useful and congenial' pursuits.²⁸

The Garretts are not engaged in busy idleness. Rather than naturally gifted amateurs, they are trained professionals working in a male-dominated world. The clearest demonstration of their professional status occurs throughout their Introduction, which begins with a reference to a paper given by J. J. Stevenson upon 'the Queen Anne Style of Architecture' in 1874.²⁹ By defending and defining the style 'to the study of which the Miss Garretts have devoted their attention,'³⁰ they place themselves immediately in the context of their professional life. Demonstrating knowledge and understanding of one of the recent heated debates³¹ of the architectural world, the merits of 'Queen Anne' style versus the Gothic Revival, they describe the rapid popularity of the new style and its suitability for new buildings:

all we would urge is that for ordinary English houses, the style of house which was built during the eighteenth century, whose walls were of brick, and whose staircases were of wood (the houses, that is, which are now designated 'Queen Anne'), are more suitable than the so-called Gothic house.³²

Clearly belonging to the 'Queen Anne' camp, the Garretts go on to explain the appeal of this style by comparing two London houses, one from Bloomsbury and one from South Kensington, 'each built originally for the same class.'³³ They invoke ideas of national identity, hoping that:

The fashionable world of London may one day return and live in the houses which were built in the solid and unpretentious style so much in accordance with the best characteristics of the English people.³⁴

Having thus established their stylistic approach, they return to the subject of their treatise, 'the internal fittings and decorations of houses.'³⁵ They begin by defining their profession, describing the skills of the consummate 'house decorator' who:

114

Should be able to design and arrange all the internal fittings of a house, the chimney-pieces, grates, and door-heads, as well as the wall-hangings, curtains, carpets, and furniture.³⁶

They perceive the 'house decorator' (i.e. R. & A. Garrett) as a professional able to judge both the total effect and the minute details of the decorative scheme, and who aims to create a 'harmonious whole.'³⁷ The Garretts also underline their professional status by dealing at length with the relationship between client and decorator, no doubt speaking from experience when they comment, 'A great [deal] of trouble and vexation would often be saved if people would make up their minds beforehand how much they wish to spend.'³⁸ (… p 29)

Notes

1 CL Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, Longmans, Green & Co (London), 1868, 1878, pp 43-4. 2 R & A Garrett, Suggestions for House Decoration in Painting, Woodwork and Furniture, Macmillan & Co (London), 1876, p 36. 3 Eastlake, Hints, p 44. 4 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 32. 5 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 21. 6 Eastlake, Hints, p 11. 7 See J Kinchin, 'The Gendered Interior: Nineteenth Century Essays on the "Masculine" And The "Feminine" Room', P Kirkham (ed), The Gendered Object, Manchester University Press (Manchester), 1996, pp 12-29. 8 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 28. 9 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, pp 28-9. 10 R & A Garrett, Suggestions. In another volume of the 'Art at Home' series, Mrs Orrinsmith opens with a description of a very similar room, which she identifies as the 'ordinary lower middle-class Drawing Room of the Victorian era'. See Mrs Orrinsmith, The Drawing-Room, Macmillan & Co (London), 1877, p 1. 11 The inversion is a classic technique of Utopian fiction. 12 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 43. 13 Eastlake, Hints, pp 8-9. 14 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 55. 15 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 28. 16 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 55. 17 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 56. 18 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 56. 19 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 67. 20 Eastlake, Hints, pp 14-15. 21 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 68. 22 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 84. 23 House Decoration contains many references to 'the days of our grandmothers', a time when foot-stools were much bigger and ladies had far fewer dresses. This can be partially explained by Girouard's analysis of the English Aesthete and the development of 'Queen Anne' style: 'As an antidote to the present they recreated the past as an ideal world of pre-industrial simplicity, at once homely and Arcadian'. See M Girouard, Sweetness and Light: The 'Queen Anne Movement' 1869-1900, Yale University Press (Yale), 1984, p 5. 24 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 81.

115

25 See L Holcombe, Wives & Property: Reform of the Married Women's Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England, Martin Robertson (Oxford), 1983. See Lynn Walker's discussion of this legislation in her essay 'Women Architects', J Attfield and P Kirkham (eds), A View from the Interior: Women and Design, The Women's Press Ltd (London), 1995, in which she identifies the legal restrictions imposed on married women as an obstruction to their gaining access to the architectural profession, and suggests that the 'removal of the legal, ideological and psychological impediments by the Married Women's Property Acts therefore had great significance for all women, and it had particular importance for the entry of women into the architectural profession', p 96. The Garretts, however, were financially independent, unmarried women.

26 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 75.

27 E Smyth, Impressions That Remained, Longmans, Green & Co (London), 2 Vols 1919, Vol II, p 12.

28 Englishwoman's Review, 15 December 1882, p 548.

29 Building News, 26 June 1874, pp 689-92; The Builder, 27 June 1874, pp 537-8.

30 Rev WJ Loftie, 'Advertisement', in R & A Garrett, Suggestions, notes that the next volume of this series would be JJ Stevenson's Domestic Architecture which 'will apply the same principles to the exterior that are here applied to the interior of our houses', JJ Stevenson's House Architecture, although part of Loftie's original scheme, was not issued as part of the 'Art at Home' series, being published separately in two volumes by Macmillan in 1880.

31 See Girouard, Sweetness and Light, pp 57-63.

32 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, pp 3-4. The Garretts acknowledge the importance of Pugin, but reject Gothic Revival architecture as a suitable style for ordinary modern housing on the grounds of the inappropriate sham materials used by builders: 'When a large house or cathedral is to be built … money will be forthcoming and the building will be of stone. But if a builder is "running up a street of Gothic houses", what happens? It is out of the question that he should use so costly a material as stone, and stucco therefore takes its place. It is we know, unreasonable to blame a pure and beautiful style for requiring a beautiful material.'

33 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 4.

34 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 5.

35 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 5.

36 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, pp 5-6.

37 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, p 6.

38 R & A Garrett, Suggestions, pp 88-9.

Emma Ferry, 'Decorators May be Compared to Doctors', An Analysis of Rhoda and Agnes Garrett's Suggestions for House Decoration in Painting, Woodwork and Furniture (1876), Journal of Design History, vol 16 no 1, 2003, pp 15-33.

(Excerpt pp 26-29)

116