COLOUR IN COMMON LIFE.
" Coxona," says Mr. Patterson, in a series of pleasant Essays,* marked rather by an educated fancifalness than very acute thought, "like its parent light, dies away towards the poles, and as the constitution of nations is ever in harmony with the region where they dwell, the susceptibility- of us hyperboreans to colour is far inferior to that of the race who produce the magic dyes of India, or the still nobler one who built the glowing walls of the Alhambra." That sentence embodies in an artistic form an idea always prevalent in England, that the Northern races really prefer subdued colours, but both popular im- pression and artistic theory seem to rest upon insufficient grounds. It is quite true that educated civilians in the North usually dress in black, and the lower classes in some shade of grey, brown, or subdued blue, but it is very doubtful if this arises from any source other than economy. Englishmen lived in the north in the days of chivalry just as much as they do now, and they then delighted in vivid colouring, in gold and silver and red, and violently contrasted draperies. The idea that black is not the dress of a gentleman has survived to our own time, and it still affects our court costume, our military service, and every dress devised with malice prepense to serve any particular end. No volunteer regiment has adopted black, and though many of the corps are clothed in hodden grey, that is only because grey is the least visible of colours. The volunteers would greatly have preferred red. Then Englishwomen are as much under the influence of hyper- borean climate as Englishmen, and they have always delighted • bright colours. The recent inventions, mauve, magenta, solfeind, and other shades of violet, are bright to offensiveness, and were adopted with a rapidity which certainly showed anything but "41 want of susceptibility to colour," and which gave the inventor a fortune in two years. It is Spanish women, born under a bright sun„ and amid a blaze of light, who have selected the black mantilla, the most graceful and the most sombre of garments. .Even quakeresses, though they wear drab, a colour which nature never shows us any- where, do not affect to like it. They wear it to crucify the flesh, not because they are insensible to the charm of colour. The Russians, certainly an hyperborean people, colour their buildings,"and delight in red to such a degree that they have no other word for beautiful. On the other hand again, the people of Bengal, a land where the sun is intolerably bright, where the sky is of sapphire and nature has that strange yellow tint which makes the trees, for example, look as if they had been dipped in a bath of light, dress exclusively in white. In Egypt, a country which, though less bright, is still far south of Western Europe, the women affect dark blue, and the indigenous popu- lation, the Copts, coal black. The Moors undoubtedly used bright colours in Cordova, but the "magic dyes" Of India are not arranged under a tropical sun 'at all, but in the temperate vale of Cashmere, where a man may have a snow-bath quite as readily as in England. The truth,-we believe, is, that all men love and revel in bright colour, that the Norwegian would feel the effect of the Eastern window in the church of St. Ouen— an acre, so to speak, of pure sapphire—as keenly as an Arab or a Hindoo, and that the apparent differences arise only from economical and social causes. We dress in black, firstly, because black wears best and does not show soils, and secondly, from a morbid fear of being "peculiar," the same fear which makes the high-class Englishwoman tone down her own exquisite taste, and, while recognizing, for example, the lively beauty of the red Opera- cloak, the brightest bit of costume ever invented, decline to wear it out of doors as "too conspicuous." Where both these influences are absent, where bright colour is not noticeable and expense is no object, as, for example, in uniform, the Northern races delight in brightness. It is not the Southern people who cultivate brilliant flowers, or who have invented coloured glass, or who have delighted to paint those exquisite alternations of colour which nature shows to perfection, indeed, in the tropics, but which are only fully appreciated in the North. Nothing on earth, nothing that poet ever dreamed, can equal the ethereal beauty of colour presented by a storm in the tropics, when, rising as it usually does in the north-west, the setting sun pours full on a black bank of clouds,
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and its rays are thrown back n masses of purple, gold, and salmon, such as would have made Turner sick with a sudden conviction of the impotence of art. But it is not the Hindoo who enjoys that glorious bit of colouring anymore than it was a Hindoo who painted that scene which alone, among written scenes, fills and satisfies that "susceptibility to colour" which Mr. Patterson must pardon us for urging, is so specially the nature of the Northern man that he and he alone is conscious of the beauty and variety which may exist even in nentrallints : " Bunt on the Lake, the waters were its floor,
And here its walls were water arched with fire, And here were fire with water vaulted o'er; And spires and pinnacles of fire Round watery cupolas aspire, And domes of rainbow rest on fiery towers, And roofs of flame are turreted around With cloud, and shafts of cloud with flame are bound."
The cause of a vulgar taste in colour, that is, not a liking for neutral tints, but an inability to blend bright ones, is a very different question. Even here, however, the popular idea on the subject is based on error. Hindoos have no instinctive ideas in the combination of colour. The shawl dealers of Cashmere, and the jewellers all over the country, have inherited from some man or other of real genius who originally commenced the manufacture, a few "cram" rules about colour, -which produce wonderful effects, but from which they never depart. They cannot produce new combinations, and a new colourintroduced into the manufacture would throw them all out of gear. They show no particular instinctive aptitude, though, like other races, they appreciate beautiful combinations. A Belgian flower-girl would make a bouquet no gardener in Cashmere could rival—their dislike of green in a bunch of flowers always impairing their judgment—and the colours of native silk handkerchiefs are not ,any means well imagined. They can be taught easily, and so can clish people, and the only differences are produced by the presence or absence of good models. In both countries some few have an instinct for colour, which has the effect of a scientific knowledge of its laws, and where their tastes rule, or even their rules prevail, the combinations of colour will be good. The great difference is, that the English are so much more susceptible of colour that they cannot endure a false harmony, and, rather than risk it, stifle their natural taste and suppress colour alto- gether. A little more knowledge of the laws which regulate the effect of colour, diffused among dressmakers, and among that anomalous class who "set the fashions," would soon give them confidence, and Mr. Patterson deserves the thanks of the whole sex for his endeavour to popularize the principle:which ought to regulate the choice of carpets and bonnets. His two main rules on the former point are really good "cram" rules, and, like their Indian rivals, would in most eases supply the place of taste. -When the furniture shows vivid colours, the carpet should be simple in colour and pattern, green and black for example. If, on the other hand, the furniture is of one colour, or many tones of one colour—(and that colour not red a gold, a point Mr. Patterson omits)—a carpet of brilliant co- butt is not detrimental. Taste in this matter has been a little injurel by the wretched quality of most brightly-tinted carpets, which wear out too fast for moderate pockets, and, as good housekeeiers say, fade in the sun. Cost, too, is a reason why the really macellous effect of white and cream-coloured carpets, in " throwing-ip" the furniture placed on them, is not appreciated in England, st)d why yellow carpets, the effect of which is to neu- tralize dinginei& of atmosphere, are never employed. On another point, Mr. Patterson has, we think, been a little deceived by his own words : "It is evident," he sUs, "that we must assort rose or red-coloured
woods, such as mahogany, with green-stuffs; yellow woods, such as citron, ash-root, maple, satin-wood, &c., with violet or blue stuffs ; while red woods likewise do well with blue-greys, and yellow woods with green-greys." Quite true, if red woods were ever red, but they are not, and the dark brown woods. give to green that air of dinginess which is the specialty of green furniture. Gold and white bear green best, and the absence of pure white is a want in our furniture woods. Expense being set aside, ebony and gold on a white or cream-coloured carpet would probably produce the highest effect of splendour with- out vulgarity. As a matter of fact, though it has, of course, no- thing to do with the law, greens and blues never suit the curious haze which Londoners are apt, by a perversion of language, to call and consider daylight.
As to the bonnets, we suppose we tread upon dangerous ground, but we have Mr. Patterson at our back, and he has M. Chevreul, who probably consulted a painter instead of a modiste, for he de- precates—hear it, all women of taste—pink bonnets. Rose red, lie says, takes away the freshness of the complexion, while "a delicate green" is "favourable to all complexions which are deficient in rose." One would like to hear the opinion of the Countess who edits Le Folkt upon those heresies before committing oneself. If they are truths, the whole sex has at various times been guilty of a blunder only to be explained on the theory that every woman believes she has colour which requires only to be toned down. The objection to yellow bonnets for blondes they will admit, though a straw hat makes nobody plain, but itt. Chevreul advocates, and Mr. Patterson en- dorses, "reserve in the use of violet," which will draw exclamations from those who believe Mr. Perkins's notion of colour much supe- rior to any idea visible in nature. We question, too, if the dicta that yellow bonnets suit brunettes, that a green bonnet suits fair complexions, and that white feathers "accord well" with a "red bonnet" will he very highly appreciated. Yet if the only law for bonnets is to secure the colour which will reflect on the face the shade the lady wants, green is the only shadf she ought to choose, for "Green tends to diffuse Red
Orange Blue Blue Orange
Greenish-yellow Violet
Violet Greenish-yellow
Indigo Orange-yellow."
And a "tinge of red" is, we imagine, the effect desired. We sus- pect that all these rides depend as much on the texture as the colour of the material, for the Quaker lady who puts her head in an opaque coal-scuttle lined with white always seems to have a tinge of red reflected from the interior.
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