The morning times. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1895-1897, 1895-11-17
Famous Women
As Housekeepers
ECCENTRIC IDEAS In SCHEMES
OF DOMESTIC DECORATION.
Miss Grace Dodge Stocks Her
Ho me With Bibles-Terry's
Fondness for Photographs.

The home OF Miss Grace Dodge, phil
antiropist, is chiefly remarkable for its
Bibles. 1t is q comfortable big house on
Madison avenue, kept up in good enough
style, but very ugly in its heavy furnish
ings, and bad, very bad, anonymous oil
paintings. But it is rich III Bibles. There
is one on an onyx stand in the reception
room, and Miss Dodge's own rooms over
flow with them of assorted sizes and sorts.
Bibles and writing desks are her notable
fads in furnishing.
Ellen Terry's pet decoration for any
room she occupies twenty-four hours,
ships state room or her own boudOir is
case of family photographs. II is
leather and it folds up, and it unfO!ds
also 10 a great size and reveals all her
kith and KIN. She is very fond OF pho
to2raphs and OF being photographed,
though She says with Ter own inlmitable
frankness that she doesn't care to expose
herself to the deadly camera as freely
as she did when she was younger. She
takes it out now in having her daughter
pictured and different presentment of
Miss Hiisa Craig appears IN her mOther's
travelling case every few weeks. Miss
Craig" she is TO the public, but the
young actress is always called "Edie"
in the home circle.
A PICTURE LOVER.
Edith Thomas has fancy for decorat'
ing her own most private den with the
rustic handiwOrk she knew in her early
Ohio home. She braided a rug for her
| self last year. Then she paints, and
though she does not take much interest in
her poetry, she is devoted to her pictures
| and hangs ner walls with oil sketches OF
| scenes she has known and loved.
Mrs. Edith Wharton is the one Ameri.
| can poet and romancer who is rich enough
to carry out in actual material any dream
/ -,t,rx
| that her fads in furnishing are light and
| air. In her Newport home tit is the last
| house on the Cliff walk her Tea-roOm is
| her pet pride; it is inclosed altogether In
| glass. and your hostess points out to you
| that when you turn your faces sea ward
| there is nothing except possibly ship
between you and Ireland. Mrs. Wharton's
drawing-room is pure eighteenth century
and she was year getting together real
eighteenth century hinges for the doors
VERY FEMININE APARTMENTS
Mrs. Lille Deveraux Blake has a flat
| furnished in a manner remarkable for its
| pristine innocence OF aesthetic reform. II
| is highly comfortable place, but the dra w
| ing-room makes a sensitive eye vince. il is
| as full OF varied brilliant cOlors as Christ
\ mas tree thanks 70 innumerdble Tides and
bows and fancy table covers and worked
| footstools 1t looks as far from strong
minded as a milliner's window. and Mrs
Blake's pride in its chief work or art
adds to tine general impression or prevail
| ing woman yness: this masterpiece Is por-
trait of the lady in her girihood, and 1t Is
| undeniably beautiful
Octave Thanet-Miss Alice French-is a
very cultivated BOstOncse kind Of house
| furnisher. Her Arkansas home is gotten
up in a style to provoke the admiration OF
artists Fine photographs, plaster casts,
| engravinss. are the forms OF art she most
INDUCES in. Bayres and TanaSra fiSurlnes
! are especially prominent.
~ NEW YORK.
Rich women in New York indulge in SIN
| gularly few personal idicsyncrasies in their
rooms. Their apartments are apt to
show little except the notions OF the pro
fessional decorator. There is nobody left
who is as individual in this field as was the
late Mrs Hicks-Lord. Her bedroom was
of a Spartan simplicity that would have
suited the Duke of wellington. small
iron bedstead, wicker chairs white mat
| ting and scrim window curtains, were its
main features, and not piece OF feminine
fluuimery disturbed the asceuc atmosphere.
Mrs. Theodore Lutro INDUCES in but one
poetic fancy OF her own. She keeps can
dies burning under a Cabanal portrait OF
| her pretty self, as If it were shrine oil
| perpetual devotion. Whatever else is diIu
in her drawing room, that portrait is ~
ways visible.