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THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
earthen-ware service that has replaced old silver and
gold. Amorous alcoves lost their painted Loves and
took on gray and white decorations. The casinos of
little comediennes did not glitter any more. Eng-
lish sentiment began to bedim Gallic eyes, and so what
-we know as the Louis XVI style was born.
And so, at that moment, the idea of the modem house
came into its own, and it could advance-as an idea-
hardly any further. For with all the intrepidity and
passion of the later Eighteenth Century in its search for
beauty, for all the magic-making of convenience and in-
genuity of the Nineteenth Century, the fundamentals
have changed but little. And now we of the Twentieth
Century can only add material comforts and an expres-
sion of our personality. We raise the house beyond the
reach of squalor, we give it measured heat, we give it
water in abundance and perfect sanitation and light
everywhere, we give it ventilation less successfully than
we might, and finally we give it the human quality
that is so modern. There are no dungeons in the good
modern house, no disgraceful lairs for servants, no hor-
rors of humidity.
And so we women have achieved a house, luminous
with kind purpose throughout. It is finished-that
is our difficulty! We inherit it, all rounded in its per-
fection, consummate in its charms, but it is finished, and
what can we do about a thing that is finished?
Does n't it seem that we are back in the old position of
Isabella d'Este-eager, predatory, and "thingy"'?
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