My first adolescent attempts at interior decoration
had some highly opinionated tutelage. Old Mrs. Tarleton, a family friend
whose high style I much admired, left her lofty house for what was then a
new and terrifying concept -- the suburban town house. The ceilings were
low and the rooms small, and I suppose her children thought this would make
things manageable.
I grieved as cruel details of this transition reached me
by mail at school. Facing the eclipse of what once was perfect, I dreaded
our summer reunion. When the day came to breach the door of that poorly
stuccoed box, she swept me into her salon as if Marcel Proust had writ the
script.
The far wall was filled with a beloved, immense Knole
sofa covered in a rusty green mohair (I've searched for the fabric
ever since, without success). The tapestry behind it soared to the ceiling
-- who knew, or cared, how many yards lay crumpled on the floor? Now that I
think of it, the pier mirrors must have been cut to fit the diminished
spaces, and ashy gilt consoles overlapped the door frames.
She sensed the shock and awe she had inspired. My
stammered honest compliments made her forgive my youthful doubts, and she
relaxed into habitual grandeur. "Do you know what makes a
room?" she asked, her voice clearly indicating that all my answers
would be wrong. "Of course you don't, since you're as
ignorant as a fish. So I'll tell you before you say something dim
like 'color' -- any half-wit can think of color." In
fact, I had admired the caramel-colored walls and meekly hoped to have the
same one day. "Well, it's simple -- scale and balance,"
she continued, pausing for effect. "That's it. Scale with great
confidence, and balance with good sense. It's straight from the
ancients -- that's classic."
Today the word classicism has a faintly mildewed
aura. When it describes décor, imaginary whiffs of
grandmother's perfume cause most self-respecting moderns to feign
suffocation. And yet classicism seemed very modern in the past. Rome found
Greece an edgy model, and the Renaissance swooned for all things classical,
as did tastemakers in the 18th and 19th centuries. The influence of
classical style has held fast for centuries.
Edith Wharton quipped in her
1897 book, The Decoration of Houses, that the artistic tradition of the
last 2,000 years provided such an abundant vocabulary of style that even a
good architect would be hard-pressed to come up with so much as a design
for molding that was truly new. Despite her Olympian tone, Wharton may have
been onto something.
