ENGLISH HOMES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 711, 10 July 1929, Page 15

ENGLISH HOMES

MODEL FOR NEW ZEALAND TO FOLLOW WHERE AMERICANS FAIL “In fact there was but one thing wrong with the house: it was not a home.” In these words Sinclair Lewis, author of “Babbitt/' concluded his description of an American house. American homes are the last word in Modernity; they are, to use the land agent’s phrase, “replete with every modern convenience"; but in ) cr y many cases they are not homes, in the proper sense of that word. The following appreciation of English homes and gardens, by an American writing in the English magazine, "Homes and Gardens,” may give New Zealanders an idea of what to aim at —and what ,to avoid —in their houses. I wish (he says) I could make you see your English homes and gardens as we see them. There is an indescribable charm about an English home; a sense of rightness, homeliness, a sense of peace, and, best of all, a feeling of welcome to the stranger. It is a queer thing. Nine out of 10 American homes are more luxurious, are furnished more expensively, have greater comforts in plumbing and heating, and yet they miss something which you have over here. CHARM OF FIRES The furniture in the English home (seldom new—that’s one charm) looks as though it were meant for use and comfort; the books one sees lying about are not in gay, bright binding, but iu well-worn covers; the pictures are not arranged with geometric precision, and are, to be quite honest, often dusty and dim; but they all form a background for polished brass, bright bits of pottery and a cheerily glowing fire. It is this last that, figuratively as well as literally, warms the stranger’s heart. One may talk of central heating; it’s all very well as a means of keeping the frost out; but there’s not one “cliff dweller” (as the owners of apartments are sometimes called in New York) who would not give a good deal to be able to sit and warm his feet by his own open fire rather than by a radiator. A blazing hearth, a well-laid tea-table drawn up near it, and a pleasant-faced English hostess in charge—what more does one ask? And when summer comes (as it does eventually) and the lure of the fireside is forsaken for the greater lure of the garden, then. Indeed, the English home comes into its greatest glory. “UNCOPYABLE” Americans arrange their flowers artistically iu well-chosen receptacles; not too few, not too many; just a bloom here, a few sprays there, it is not like that in England. The house and the garden seem one. Indoors, great bowls of roses fill every available spot: outdoors, sweetsmelling, old-fashioned flowers add their fragrance from every corner. The truth is—real homes and real gardens are not made by builders ai d landscape artists; they are the expression of their owners; they are more characteristic than faces. I can imagine a bad man having a good face rather than having a good garden. This, of course, isn't true, otherwise England would be populated by saints. But the fact remains that your homes and your gardens are the envy and despair of most Americans. They go back and re-decorate or call in another landscape specialist in a hopeless attempt to reproduce that which is not “copyable”; that for which they cannot pay; that which lies behind all the fascination of the; homes and gardens of England—charm.