When Home is... the Dining Room

Recently I went to an open house with a friend; a grand old house out of both our price ranges. It was grand for many reasons – hugely proportioned rooms, wrap around veranda, a butler’s pantry – but it was perhaps the dining room with its table for 12that made the house feel most grown-up. People don’t really dine in ‘dining rooms’ anymore, do they? Formal rooms are rarely a selling point these days and while, for me, the most exciting part of our recent renovation was creating a ‘dining nook’ I never envisaged us dining in a separate room to the kitchen.

I didn’t really think much about these thoughts... until I read House Thinking by Winifred Gallagher today. This book is all about the psychology of home; how home not only ‘reflects but also affects who you are.’

So, I was interested to realise how conflicted I truly am. My dining nook says more about me as a person than I ever realised.

‘Today when we ask ourselves, “What kind of people are we, and what kind of home do we want?” our different answers are often reflected in our dining space. If we think of ourselves and homes along the lines of “practical, friendly and casual”, we may decide that it’s silly to waste space on a dining room when most meals are eaten informally in kitchens. If we see ourselves as the kind of people who do things the right way, we may prefer to eat in a handsome formal dining room gleaming with silver...’

Ok, I get that. I would like to be considered as ‘practical, friendly and casual’ AND my new nook reflects this too. BUT, then Gallagher writes:

‘The idea that we may be judged by our dining room or even our wineglasses, or that we care about such judgments, is discomfiting. Yet at mealtime, most of us take some trouble – setting the table, pouring wine, making conversation, lighting candles – to remind ourselves and others that if we’re not to the manor born, we weren’t born in a barn either.’

Hmmm. On Saturday night we had friends over on the spur of the moment. We cooked pasta to watch in front of the rugby; a practical, friendly and casual meal to reflect our practical, friendly and casual selves.

Except we didn’t sit on the lounge to eat or gather around the island bench in a practical, friendly and casual manner; we sat in our dining nook using the ‘good’ cutlery and the ‘good’ plates, drinking red wine out of – albeit Ikea – wineglasses and looking over and around the vase of flowers in the middle of the table to see the game on the television.

Oh, and the children also came downstairs a couple of times to complain that we were talking and laughing too loudly.

Confusion abounds and perhaps it’s time to stop reading books about house psychology.

When Home is... a book inscription

“To Sybil & Geoff,
With best wishes for future happiness.
From Tom & Claire”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Sybil & Geoff as well as Tom & Claire for the last couple of months. It’s a bit odd really as I don’t know either couple at all.

All I do know is that Tom & Claire gave Sybil & Geoff a 1954 edition of the book The American woman’s new encyclopedia of home decorating and somehow it turned up in my sister’s vintage store Retrospections. My sister sells a lot of second hand books, but most don’t have inscriptions inside. If only all second-hand books did have inscriptions though. I doubt I’d ever buy a new book again.

Today, what would be a funny read about being a 1950s housewife is so much more with that inscription inside. Who were Sybil and Geoff? Was this an engagement or wedding present? How did Sybil feel about being given a book about home decorating? And poor Geoff. I can’t imagine that was an exciting present for him back in 1954. Or 2011 either.

Fifty-six years have passed since Tom and Claire bought that book. Did it sit on Sybil and Geoff’s bookshelves for the duration of a long marriage or a very short one? Who made the decision to give it away? Perhaps they are no longer here and all their books were boxed up and given away by one of their children. I wonder if their marriage even produced children.

Did they emigrate to Australia? I’m guessing they were American given the title of the book. I think the Australian women of the 1950s had their own home decorating guides. Or perhaps the book was found at an American market long ago and brought to Australia by another owner...

And as for Tom and Claire, were they close friends of Sybil and Geoff? I do find it interesting that Claire has written Sybil’s name first while signing her own after her husband’s. I’m guessing they were already married and that Tom definitely didn’t go shopping for Sybil and Geoff’s present, let alone write the inscription.

Perhaps they weren't that close - Claire's signoff is a bit cold really. Not 'love' or even 'best wishes'. 'From' is close to 'Yours sincerely'. Perhaps Tom and Geoff were work colleagues and the wives didn't really know each other? Or perhaps Claire was just a tad formal and thought Sybil's house could do with an injection of style.

It’s a mystery and I’ve never even read the book. Unfortunately my sister sold it quite quickly. I’m guessing Sybil & Geoff and Tom & Claire had a lot to do with its appeal. And I hope for their sake it has ended up in a happy home.

When Home is... Emily Post

This past week I have come across a couple of references to the early 1900s American author of etiquette, Emily Post, in disparate books: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Marjorie Garber’s Sex and Real Estate. I had never heard of her before and it got me thinking. Who was Emily Post and what was her house like?

Well, thanks to Google, she was a leading authority on socially correct behaviour for decades in America. After her Etiquette—The Blue Book of Social Usage, first published in 1922, became a bestseller, she also became a newspaper columnist (answering etiquette questions that appeared in 150 newspapers) and had her own radio program for eight years. Oh, and her summer house at Martha’s Vineyard looked pretty good too...



So anyway – enough house envy – how did this etiquette book come about? Firstly, Emily was born into a wealthy family, the daughter of an architect, in 1873. She was home-schooled before attending a finishing school in New York. Marrying a banker in 1892, they had two sons before his philandering ended their union 13 years later.

BUT, because she married such a man, Emily found herself a career. To support herself and her sons (her husband lost nearly everything in a stock market crash) Emily began writing short stories and novels, all successfully published. Her publisher then suggested she write a book on etiquette (given her social standing) and this book remains today what she is most famous for.

Emily originally wrote the book for ‘the newly rich who wanted to live, entertain, and speak like the wealthy’, according to the website notablebiographies.com. This website goes on to say that the later editions of the book focussed on ‘the character of "Mrs. Three-In-One," a wonder woman who acted as cook, waitress, and charming hostess at small dinner parties.’

Her book was obviously well-received as it is apparently ‘second only to the Bible as the book most often stolen from libraries’.

Emily spent much of her later life at her summer house in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Here she wrote the book The Personality of a House (1930), supposedly based on her experiences of rebuilding and remodeling it. She was happy here, according to Vogue magazine in 1933 where she described it as ‘the haven of delectable tranquility that all my life I have been searching for.’

She was quirky too, it seems. Living until the age of 86 she would always wake early although never make ‘her first appearance of the day until lunch, which was served promptly at one o'clock.’

She also loved red shoes and liked wallpapering her bedroom walls in ‘dark crimson damask’. Yet, she couldn’t stand seeing a red flower in her garden. 'I am drawn to a window – and there is a red flower standing out like a gash! Then out I go and pull it up', quotes Laura Claridge in her biography Emily Post.

I think it's hard not to like a woman who loved red shoes.

Image of Emily Post taken from notablebiographies.com
Image of Emily Post's garden taken from Martha's Vineyard Magazine