When all is said and done, we must come back to wax candles for the most beautiful light of all.  Electricity is the most efficient, but candlelight is the most satisfying.  For a drawing-room, or any formal room where a clear light is not required, wax candles are perfect.  There are still a few houses left where candlesticks are things of use and are not banished to the shelves as curiosities.  Certainly the clear, white light of electricity seems heaven-sent when one is dressing or working, but for between-hours, for the brief periods of rest, the only thing that rivals the comfort of candlelight is the glow of an open fire.

IX

HALLS AND STAIRCASES

In early days the hall was the large formal room in which the main business of the house was transacted.  It played the part of court-room, with the lord of the manor as judge.  It was used for dining, living, and for whatever entertainment the house afforded.  The stairs were not a part of it:  they found a place as best they could.  From the times of the primitive ladder of the adobe dwelling to the days of the spiral staircase carried up in the thickness of the wall, the stairway was always a primitive affair, born of necessity, with little claim to beauty.

With the Renaissance in Italy came the forerunner of the modern entrance hall, with its accompanying stair.  Considerations of comfort and beauty began to be observed.  The Italian staircase grew into a magnificent affair, “L’escalier d’honneur,” and often led only to the open galleries and salons de parade of the next floor.  I think the finest staircases in all the world are in the Genoese palaces.  The grand staircase of the Renaissance may still be seen in many fine Italian palaces, notably in the Bargello in Florence.  This staircase has been splendidly reproduced by Mrs. Gardner in Fenway Court, her Italian palace in Boston.  This house is, by the way, the finest thing of its kind in America.  Mrs. Gardner has the same far-seeing interest in the furtherance of an American appreciation of art as had the late Pierpont Morgan.  She has assembled a magnificent collection of objects of art, and she opens her house to the public occasionally and to artists and designers frequently, that they may have the advantage of studying the treasures.

To return to our staircases:  In France the intermural, or spiral, staircase was considered quite splendid enough for all human needs, and in the finest chateaux of the French Renaissance one finds these practical staircases.  Possibly in those troublous times the French architects planned for an aristocracy living under the influence of an inherited tradition of treachery and violence, they felt more secure in the isolation and ready command of a small, narrow staircase where one man well nigh single-handed could keep an army at bay.  A large wide staircase of easy ascent might have meant many uneasy moments, with plots without and treachery within.