Now, with the sensible short tweed skirt and tweed undergarments, which fortunate present-day damsels don unknown and unchecked, and a good plain, yet pretty waterproof, anyone is weather-tight; and if the parlour-maid pops the umbrella into the beaten iron ring for that purposeplaced behind the front door, and hangs the waterproof up in Wallace’s handy P. T. C. wardrobe in another corner; and if the boots are carefully wiped on the mat placed in the sunken place in front of the door, the visitor enters the room spotless and as dry as if she had just emerged from her own house or from Lady Gorgeous Midas’s brand new brougham. The tiled floor should have upon it a pretty thick rug lined with American leather: one can be bought for about 8s. 9d. at Treloar’s: an outlay that no one need mind, but that ensures once more a certain amount of comfort.
The front door should, of course, never be grained, and it ought in these days to be quite unnecessary for me even to hint at such a thing. But mighty is the ‘local decorator,’ beloved of the suburbs, and his counsels will undoubtedly prevail, unless we put down our foot very firmly indeed, and keep it resolutely in that special attitude. He will ‘grain’ the door if he can until doomsday, I am convinced, but my readers must be firm and dignified, and above all must they give their instructions in writing, and keep a duplicatesigned by the ‘decorator’ (save the mark!), else will they find he has gone his own sweet way after all, and they have no redress whatever. It is an axiom that whatever colour is chosen for the hall that colour alone shall be on the front door, but it may be in a darker shade, while the vestibule can often be treated differently to the hall itself, though of course it should lead up to and harmonise with it. Let me describe what I mean. The special vestibule I am thinking of has a couple of small, diamond-paned windows, one at the end, one opposite the front door, and below this latter is a wide panel painted with a tiger-lily, and then a wide wooden seat which lifts up and holds carriage rugs, and on which anyone could sit did he or she come with a message or a note and require to wait an answer. Both windows have wide ledges on which stand pots holding palms or aspidistras, and all the paint on the inside of the front door and on the vestibule side of the glass screen-doors included, is a special, beautiful soft grey-blue shade. The panelled walls are the same colour; the curtains are softyellow silk, and the ceiling proper is yellow and cream. On the floor are dull blue tiles and a Scinde rug, and in one corner is the umbrella-ring, which one can get at Shoolbred’s for about 18s. 9d., and that is all. There is no room for the P. T. C. here, and the waterproofs are taken at once into the servants’ room to be hung up and dried, but it would be much better were there a corner wardrobe, only, alas! one can’t make space where one doesn’t possess it.
The screen is made somewhat like this. The top and side panels are all of leaded glass, as far as the brackets which hold pots for palms. The tops of the doors are more leaded glass, and all the base is wood painted on the vestibule side, the soft grey-blue spoken of before, and on the other a specially soft and deep ‘real ivory.’ The dado is of ivory, gold, and black Japanese leather paper, and the paper above is one of Smee & Cobay’s, and is a cunning blend of green and red, managed in such a way that the whole effect is a pinky red, which harmonises with the grey-blue, and is as original as it is undoubtedly most pleasant to contemplate.The stairs and all doors are curtained off with yellow diamond serge, and the passage—i.e.hall—is covered with plain green cork carpet, on which are laid rugs in which the grey-blue colour aforesaid predominates. Of course the ceiling is papered in yellow and white, and equally, of course, all the paint is one even surface of colour. Nothing can excuse picked out or striped and embellished paint: nothing! Genius is better employed on better work, and even genius is out of place in making ornamental that which after all is only going to be part of a harmonious whole, and merely a background to ourselves and our possessions. Therefore must there be plain paint everywhere, and no cornice should be more than a moulded band, merely coloured a plain cream or ivory colour. If the front door and the doors in the vestibule screen are not above suspicion of draughts, they should be at once surrounded with Slater’s patent draught-excluders, which can be procured anywhere almost, but surely at Shoolbred’s or Whiteley’s; for nothing is more trying than a draught. Have as much air and proper ventilation aspossible. Have a vestibule window open for some time of the day in winter and all day long in summer, and have the staircase window open as well: a house that can’t have a thorough current of air cannot be a healthy one. But do not allow the insidious draught, and the cold and unwarmed halls and passages, which are ubiquitous save in a large house possessing a big, square hall, where one usually finds a good fireplace. However, one should manage somehow to make a fireplace there, ay, even if one can have nothing better than the small, round, moveable stove called the ‘Ideal,’ which burns patent fuel, and can be taken away at any moment. It should be placed on an iron corner bracket rather raised above the floor, and a guard should be round it, so that dresses could not come in contact with it. But one should never be tempted from the paths of virtue by the charms of oil stoves, for they always smell and are detestable, no matter what anyone says; for though they should not, of course, if properly cleaned and attended to, proper cleanliness and care mean personal attention in a small household, andI cannot think how anyone can touch oil, or whatever has held it without a shudder. There is a smell about paraffin that, let us ‘shatter the stove as we will,’ continues to cling about it and us in a way that is enough to make us and our friends very ill indeed. It’s an unnecessary smell, too. If we can’t depend on the maids, we must see to our own lamps, but we need not have stoves. They give a poor heat at best, and at worst—but there is no need to harrow our feelings by dwelling on that side of the picture. Be sure that whenever we can have real fires, we should have them, and that no house can be warm, and therefore healthy, if we have no fire in the passage. It need be only a wee one. It can be kept in for hours by using briquettes and small coal judiciously, and as it prevents colds and consequent suffering, and very probably doctors’ bills, it need not be omitted on the score of expense. Once see to the draught-excluder and the hall fire, we shall save in the sitting-room fires too, which are often twice as wasteful as they need be, because we pile them up to warm the bitter air thatrushes in when the door is opened, and because the ceaseless draughts from doors and windows drive the rushing heat up the chimney and make the coal burn out doubly as fast as it otherwise would. Then too there is no labour about the modern small tiled fireplace. It is cleaned and laid in less than five moments, and indeed were we sensible about our houses, we should not have half the bother with our maids that some of us have, because we would minimise the amount of work by labour-saving appliances, instead of making it double what it need be, as we all of us do, more especially in those suburban houses, where, after all, the labour question is one of the most burning problems that the female part of the population has to discuss at its weekly gatherings on its special afternoons at home.
The hall grate should be on the smallest scale possible, should have a plain wooden mantel and small over-mantel consisting of a wooden frame and a slip of bevelled looking-glass, and should have tiles for a hearth and a surround, and should be provided with a high guard similar tothose found in all nurseries, but in brass, not in common painted wire. On the mantel we could put one or two framed photographs and about four glasses for flowers, and also a small clock, should the hall not be sufficiently large to allow us to have the proper tall one there; but great care should be taken not to overdo the ornaments here especially, for a hall gathers dust in a dreadful manner, and too many ornaments mean dirt, and therefore should in no way be encouraged. The walls of the hall should have pictures on them; there is no doubt about that, and good autotypes and Burne-Jones’s photographs from Mr Hollyer of 9 Pembroke Square, W., are the best to have. They should be framed in the simple reeded frames sold by the Autotype Company, New Oxford Street, and should be hung judiciously. The lowest should just, and only just, escape the dado-rail, the highest should be only a couple of inches above it at the outside. There should, of course, be no pictures whatever in the vestibule portion of the hall, neither in the hall itself should there be any brackets for china, nor over-doors onwhich pots and vases can be placed, for the maid must always get the steps to dust these places and, in consequence, dusting, is, at the best very seldom, at the worst never done. But over every door in the halls and passages must be placedportièresof some kind or other. I have come to the conclusion that a couple of curtains is the best arrangement for this, if the doors open into the rooms, as they generally do in a small hall; if not, of course the rod, which opens and shuts with the door, and which Burnett sells for 4s. 6d. complete, must be used. The pair of curtains allows the servant to hold one back for the visitor’s entrance as she opens the door, but they must be crossed at the top by putting the last hook on each curtain in the ring that comes last on the one belonging to its fellow; this prevents them from gaping open, and always keeps them in place. Suppose each curtain has six hooks, one puts five belonging to the left-hand curtain on the left-hand set of rings; in the sixth, one puts hook No. 1 of the right-hand curtain; hook No. 6 of theleft-hand curtain goes into hook No. 1 of the right-hand one; the other five rings are filled by the remaining five hooks then on the right-hand curtain, and this ensures the curtains remaining always in their place in the most satisfactory way possible. The best material for hall curtains is undoubtedly Wallace’s diamond serge, and it should be lined with sateen the same colour as that chosen for the curtains, and should be edged with grip-cord. The glazed surface of the sateen resists the dust, and the curtains should always be unhooked once a week and shaken out of doors, and the poles and rings rubbed over with the new Selvyt cloths, which are admirable, and far surpass the ordinary duster, as they polish as well as remove extraneous matter and dirt. This is the work of the housemaid, who is responsible for all dusting in the hall, and also for all brushing and shaking; the washing of the steps, cork carpet, etc., being the duty of the kitchen-maid, should one be kept; or else of the ‘tweeny-maid,’ who takes, in a measure, the kitchen-maid’s place in the ordinary small-sized establishment.One word now about this said cork carpet, and the best way to treat it, for it really is a very important matter indeed. People should never allow themselves to be talked into buying the orthodox and hideous-patterned linoleum, which gives a hopelessly ‘bourgeois’ appearance to any house, and at once puts a stop to anything like artistic decoration. ‘The pattern going through to the back, as it does, ensures that it can never wear off,’ says one person; ‘have the beautiful linoleum which imitates parqueterie,’ remarks another, regardless of the fact that such imitation is as vulgar as it is ugly. Why! it would be an advantage to me that the pattern should wear off, a pattern being generally a mistake on any hall floor; and, therefore, should the hall be untiled, or not made of the silent wood blocks which are the ideal component parts of any floor, and which are not likely therefore to be found in any suburban residence, one should be resolute, and refuse flatly to have anything at all but the soft-coloured cork carpet, which we can supplement with rugs. I am aware that at first one feels as if one were going madover my pet material, for then every footmark shows, and every atom of dirt is visible, but I prefer to be able to see dirt, in order to ensure its speedy removal. Still if at first we give the cork carpet one thorough good rub with linseed oil and turpentine, and one only, all we need to do afterwards is to have it washed over with warm water, or milk and water. Soap should never be used on any account whatever, and then if once a week it has a real polish with beeswax and turpentine, it will wear for ever, and, after the first, will not unduly agitate us by bringing into prominence the erring footmarks of ourselves and our friends. But, of course, it must always be supplemented by rugs. Then we have an ideal hall covering, for the rugs can be taken up and shaken daily, and so is cleanliness ensured, and without that the house cannot possibly be habitable at all. On no account, not even in houses where ‘expense is no object,’ should a fitted carpet be allowed in the halls and passages, for it is utterly impossible to keep such an arrangement even decently clean. Think of the traffic in a hall! the muddy boots, the paws of thedear dogs (and everyone should have anunchained dog, it’s the chained-up victims that are the terrors of the suburbs), and the drippings from wet umbrellas and garments, and renounce carpets there for evermore. Besides which, we have to remember the fact that it is almost impossible to sweep out any corners in rooms or halls, and that should the housemaid attempt to do so, she only knocks great pieces off the paint in her endeavours, and finally has to resort to a damp duster to pick up the ‘fluff’ which congregates there. Damping woollen carpets is one of the easiest methods of procuring a visit from the fatal moth, so should not be resorted to unless we are quite at our wits’ end.
The ordinary suburban staircase is another of the things we have to approach with fear and trembling. As a rule, Jacob’s ladder has suggested its design, and it is so proud of its appearance that it thrusts itself on our notice the instant we enter the house. In this case we can only grin and bear it, the while we make its long expanse of open balustrade and wooden understructure as bearable as we can by coveringin the first with Eastern dhurries or Khelim curtains, and filling in any panels in the latter with Japanese leather paper, which is invaluable for this purpose. But should it be modestly stationed at one side, as has been the position of the three staircases which have been my portion in the suburban residences I have dwelt in most complainingly; then one can curtain them off better with the same arrangement of a fretwork arch I described when writing about the vestibule; or by a couple of stronger arches which one can get at Wallace’s, one of which encloses the stair, and the other leads to the back premises and lavatories and cloak places. These arches are of course, curtained, and so the ordinary visitor sees nothing save the sitting-room doors or door and the hall itself, and is spared those awe-striking glimpses into unsuitable spots, which are all too often exposed guilelessly to the unhappy and much-embarrassed guest, who neither wishes to see into the parlour-maid’s pantry, nor to view a vast line of old hats, waterproofs and tennis rackets, and who much prefers to remain ignorant of these and many other secret arrangementsof the innermost recesses of our home.
Now not only are the position and design of the staircase more annoying than I can say, but the stairs themselves are, as a rule, simply too painful for words. They generally consist of a series of short, sharp ascents, and are never by any chance low and broad, as a self-respecting stair should most undoubtedly be, and are moreover so extremely narrow and sharp at the edges that they are warranted to wear through any stair carpet in less than a twelvemonth, save perhaps a pile carpet, and that they will ruin in a couple of years at the outside. No one can alter either the steepness or narrowness of the stairway. Alas! they are both past praying for, but if the sharp edges are circumvented by carpet pads sold by any good upholsterer for a few pence or manufactured at home out of curled paper enclosed in linen covers, and made to resemble a very small, thick cushion, and if we put carpet felt under the carpet we shall find the carpet itself wear decently at anyrate, especially if we see it is carefully moved once a month in sucha way that the portion that was at the top one month lives at the bottom the next, reversing this same position once more when the time comes to move it again. I have often remarked that there is no such thing as a cheap stair carpet, and that the cheapest article at first is the dearest in the end, and I have seen no reason to alter my opinion. Pile with only a small design as pattern and no fidgety border, is the best thing in the world, and can be bought at from 4s. 11d. to 7s. 9d. a yard. Next to pile comes Brussels at about 4s. 6d. Then comes Wallace’s ‘Dunelm’ at about 4s., and, finally, a new, self-coloured, all-wool material called ‘Roysse,’ sold by the Abingdon Carpet Company at 2s. 3d. three-quarter width—the ordinary stair width—and at 2s. 11d. a yard wide. Lower than this I cannot for one moment advise even the most impecunious among us to go; neither can I advise the ‘bargains’ and ‘odd lengths’ of pile and Brussels that are often obtainable at really good shops. If they are bargains as far as material and make are concerned, they are absolutely hideous, and areonly got rid of because even the British taste has refused them; and if they are odd lengths we cannot ever match them, and that means replacing the whole carpet should an accident happen to one small part of it, which we could have replaced in one moment had we bought a proper carpet. Such an one as is always kept in stock by most of the best shops in London, the owners of which have learned that a good and pretty thing is a joy for ever, and that once it is pronounced such it can be always recommended and brought forward, not because it is the ‘last new thing,’ but because it is old, and has been well and truly tried and not found wanting.
The upstairs passages should be treated to more cork carpet and rugs, and under no circumstances must a ‘walk’ of carpet be allowed, neither may the rugs be put down in a wearisome, unbroken line unless the passage is very narrow and allows of no deviating from the straight path. If there be a landing, as a rule two rugs are required, and in the passage the rugs can be put one after the other in a somewhat similar way,less, as I remarked before, the passage is very narrow. In that case a ‘vestibule rug’ must be procured either from Shoolbred, Hewetson or the Abingdon Carpet Company. These can be had in lengths of about 6 feet by 4 wide, and 9 feet by the same width, while there are both longer and wider rugs to be procured, but then the passage should be long enough to allow of there being two in use, if not more, when they can be placed in any position save in a long, straight line.
The doors of the upstairs rooms must always be securely curtained, and here one wide, full curtain should suffice. There is not the continual exit and entrance to these chambers there is to the downstairs rooms, so then one curtain upstairs will be enough. These should be kept in place by putting the end rings past the bracket on which the brass rod rests, then the last hooks on the curtain are put into them, thus ensuring that the curtains are always kept drawn. Anyone who has passed by a vista of open bedroom doors, left open when the owners have, at the sound of the gong, rushed downstairs to meals in too great ahurry to put their rooms tidy, will not need to have impressed upon them the fact that it is absolutely necessary to decency to haveportièreswhich fall into place behind the person who leaves his or her bedroom door open, and so discloses to all comers the ravages which getting up too often leaves in view. It is a good thing also to conceal the entrance to the bathroom and lavatories by a curtain, which should depend from a beaten iron arm which stretches straight out into the passage. This arm can be procured from Bartholomew & Fletcher for about 18s. 6d., while the curtain should be heavy; printed velveteen made double and fan-edged making an absolutely perfect if somewhat expensive curtain. Godfrey Giles has a charming velveteen, which is a mixture of blue and green. Wallace has a beautiful yellow and cream one, and Smee & Cobay have these velveteens in most colours, notably in a rich and exquisite red, which it is a pleasure to look at, and which also wears extremely well, even in windows where the sun has a certain amount of actual power, and is never really kept out at all.
Any cornice upstairs as well as down must be coloured ‘cream’ or ‘real ivory,’ and the ceilings here as elsewhere must be papered with some simple, inexpensive paper, in a colour which harmonises with the decorations. And now let me impress upon my readers that even if they have only taken their suburban villa on the usual tentative three years’ lease: which is so rarely renewed: it is always worth while to make their surroundings charming, even should they not remain in the house after the first term of the three, seven or twenty-one years’ lease is over. First because if the lessee and the owner combined would take trouble to ensure beauty and comfort, I am quite certain that moving would not be as continual as it is at present. The trouble taken over the house would endear it to the dwellers therein, while the comfort would cause them to think twice before they deprived themselves of it; for once let one’s roots really strike home, and no one who has not tried it can tell how difficult it is to drag them out of even an uncongenial soil. While from a congenial one! well, there is nothing on earth so hard to do andso fearfully difficult to bear, and no after-delights can cause these wounds really and truly to heal! Secondly, dear readers, it is always worth while to have beautiful and harmonious surroundings, ay, even for a few months and even if we have to leave them. For in this latter case, we shall have left them as an art legacy to our successor, who will not be very difficult to find if we leave behind us charming papers and appropriate decorations to mark where we have once made our home!
Of course each individual hall requires individual treatment, and it would be well-nigh impossible to lay down any hard and fast rules to be followed implicitly; but a dado, a real not a sham one, is an absolute necessity in any narrow hall, and no one should be afraid of one of coloured paper, bold in hue as in design, for a large, bold pattern makes a small place appear larger, and real colour must always be a pleasure, which a muddled, pale and timid tint can never be. A dado could be of wood, if the lease is long enough, and the purse too, to allow of it. In this case Godfrey Giles’s ‘gœhring’ material and ‘Glastonbury’ panelling will suit those who cannot afford oak. Arras cloth, with a pattern printed on it is beautiful, especially if hung like the old-fashioned arras used to be, to resemble a gathered curtain. Then I am devoted to the plain, string-coloured matting, sold on purpose for dados at 10½d. a yard; and there are of course, anaglypta and Japanese leather paper always with us, while the printed arras cloth paper is a strong and good material which is not to be despised by any manner of means at all. In all cases there must be a real dado-rail, and the paper above, as indeed every single thing in the hall, should harmonise. I am devoted to a blue hall myself: the one described in the first part of the chapter can well be absolutely copied, while it should be remembered that a dark hall calls for yellow and cream, or red and cream a real, bold, sealing-wax red: let there be no mistake about the colour: and nothing should authorise the employment of either a green or a terra-cotta hall. Green can never be a success there, while terra-cotta spells fear and shows artistic hankerings which the owner is unable, ornot bold enough to carry out. I am not devoted to any terra-cotta save some shades sold only by Liberty. I would never have even these, save in some bedrooms and an occasional, a very occasional, dining-room or library.
As a rule the lighting of the hall should be managed by placing first, in the vestibule, a gasalier in the very centre of the ceiling, where the gas should be enclosed in a bucket-shaped glass in a beaten-iron lantern frame; secondly, in the hall itself a similar treatment should be followed out, if the ceilings be high enough to allow of it: if not, side-brackets near the dining and drawing-room doors should be used. And finally more side-brackets should be upstairs, these again of beaten-iron, and with the same shaped glass. These can be bought very inexpensively of Shoolbred, while Messrs Strode & Company, of 48 Osnaburgh Street, Regent’s Park, make beautiful and more expensive brackets and lanterns and lamps on the same lines.
There should be as little furniture as possible in the ordinary suburban hall or passage. The really necessary furniture has been described as placedin the vestibule; but, if we have room we should undoubtedly have a tall palm on a stand, a grandfather clock in one corner, a couple of chairs: tall, high-backed ones for choice: and, if possible, between the dining and drawing-room doors, which are often close together, or at anyrate close to the latter door, have a nice plain walnut table. This would hold the necessary bowl for cards left during the afternoon, and taken away every day, because keeping them seems like parading the amount and quality of one’s friends; and, if we visit much a book is of course kept in which visits and addresses are entered. Beside this, have only a small vase of flowers and maybe a couple of books placed across each other at one corner. These give an air of life even to the smallest hall somehow; and on little touches like these, absurd as it may seem to mention them, depend the artistic completeness of the whole house.
One word more, hats, cloaks and umbrellas must be put out of sight somewhere; while all should recollect that it is extremely easy to over-furnish any place, but especially so toover-furnish a hall, and that in a narrow passage and in small quarters, one had far better have too few impedimenta than too many. The former state of affairs can always be remedied as we come to understand the capabilities of our new abode; the latter can only draw down upon us the objurgations of our friends, the while we collect dirt and dust, and can’t comprehend why we are as uncomfortable as we most undoubtedly are.
Ifthe conquest of the hall be difficult, the siege of the kitchen and servants’ quarters generally is one that will carry dread even to the stoutest heart. For as a rule the suburban builder sinks to his lowest depths of villainy here, and either gives a damp and wandering basement wherein no servant will remain more than her month, or a regular cupboard where the stove leaves scarcely room for anything else, and where the heat from that, and the draughts from the doors and windows, are enough to ruin the constitution of any ordinary woman. The basement kitchen is the worst of all, because it marks a class of house that has seen better days, and is rapidly deteriorating. Therefore if one has to choose between two houses, one of which has no basement, and another which has, one should at once select the basementless one.There are sure to be cellars below the house, which will keep it dry. One doesn’t even in the suburbsoftencome across a house, the boards of which are pushed out of place by enterprising mushrooms growing in the soil beneath, and ambitious of appearing in fresh air and among the haunts of men.
If, however, the basement cannot be avoided, we must rise to the occasion and do the very best we can in the matter. And first of all we must see that it is really dry, and that its comfort is assured by the presence of a dry area and the proper amount of ventilation, and absence of damp. If this cannot be assured, the house must be given up. Far better put up with a small dining-room and a dull drawing-room, for both of these drawbacks can be easily remedied, but for a damp bad kitchen there can be no cure, and should we weakly give in to it, we can never be happy or comfortable in the least in our domestic arrangements, be very sure of that.
If, however, we find that the basement is capable of amendment, our first endeavours must be to make it as cheerful as possible, and to get as muchlight and air into it as possible too. I have only once had to ‘wrastle’ with one on my own account, and that I made as bearable as circumstances would permit, by enlarging a window and having one of Chappius’ reflectors so arranged that as much sunshine came in as was obtainable, while I had one of the three doors closed entirely, and made an enormous scullery and washhouse species of abode, into a nice little scullery and a rather decent room in which the maids could sit and have their meals and do their needlework. Oh, I do hope some day to hear of a real andbona-fiderevolt against the regulation suburban accommodation for the unfortunate maids, for, until this takes place, I am quite sure the servant question will remain a very burning one.
I am writing now more especially for those householders who have from £500 to £1000 a year to spend, and who have two or four maids, according to their means and the size of their families, and who ought to be able to find the kitchen arrangements comprised in a square block, consisting of kitchen, scullery, parlour-maid’s pantry, withgood, deep cupboards for glass and china, and a pretty little sitting-room where the domestics could have a few at least of the amenities of life. The bedrooms could be above, as could the sanitary arrangements, which are all too often placed either in the cellar part of the house or close to the larder, or, in fact, anywhere where they ought not to be. Now suppose we find the ordinary box of a pantry, slip of a kitchen and scullery and larder, how should we best circumvent this arrangement, I wonder? Well, first we can tackle the landlord, who, if he have money at all: and an impecunious landlord is a deadly and desperate thing to possess, and should be most carefully avoided: will be glad to do as we want for an extra rent at the rate of 5 per cent on whatever outlay he can make. We should get him to build out a servant’s sitting-room, and enlarge the pantry and scullery, and to put above the erection a servant’s bath and lavatory arrangement. This could be done for about £100 and the extra £5 on the rent would hardly be felt, while the comfort obtained thereby would far and away compensate for the outlay. If the landlord be obdurate, theonly thing to do is to buy for ourselves one of Humphreys’ moveable iron buildings, and have it adapted for our purposes. In this case we can only, I fear, manage the servants’ sitting-room and extra accommodation for glass, china and washing-up, and we shall have to put the room door just apart from the house, though, of course, a very short passage could be erected. But before anything is done, care should be taken to ascertain the rules and regulations respecting the erecting of buildings in the special locality, as all seem to me to differ; and, indeed, in some there are none at all. Yet, in any case this is a thing to be ascertained definitely, for I have known a Local Board step in and formally order the removal of a beautiful and pet conservatory, because the builder had innocently infringed some bye-law in its construction, and had not obtained the sanction of the authorities to the plans of the structure before erection was commenced. If neither the landlord nor Humphreys can come to the rescue, I am going to advocate a step which will be nothing short of anarchy and revolution in the eyes of any old-fashioned person,for I am about to suggest that, in these desperate straits, the usual third room should be handed over to the maids to sit in, while we can keep it in a measure in our own hands too, by erecting our store-cupboards there, and extra shelves for glass and china. But if we do, we must not be always pouncing in and out on the maids, but must give out everything for the day’s use before ten o’clock, after which we should never go there unless actually obliged, for nothing is so detestable as a room into which anyone can go at any moment, and where the maids can never feel they are safe from eternal supervision. If the door of this third room opens straight on the hall, and if another can be made to open into the kitchen premises—and this is often the case—it would be well to permanently close the first and have the second made. The original door need be only bolted or locked inside, and covered with a curtain, while it is not either difficult or expensive to contrive another exit, for a hole is easily knocked in an ordinary suburban wall, and a door frame and door added. And I venture to prophesy if this is done, that there will be a reign of peace in the kitchen departmentunprecedented in the annals of most houses, because servants will usually stay where they are comfortable, and where they feel they are considered, and their health and happiness are both thought about. I know quite well that in their own homes and in the houses they come from, they have no real privacy at all; but I also know that most maids leave such homes at too early an age to recollect half, or, indeed, to realise half, of the miseries they are called upon to bear there, and they very easily forget the past, and only really comprehend the present and its possibilities; besides which, a maid goes away from her home to ‘better herself.’ Were she content with semi-starvation and over-crowding, she would remain there, or enter on the desperate existence of a factory hand or a home worker. The fact that she wishes for more comfort, for more human surroundings, sends her into domestic service; and if that comfort and those surroundings were forthcoming, servants would be far more plentiful than they are at present, and would likewise come of a far better and much more honourable and pleasant class. The first step then is,undoubtedly, to secure something in the shape of ‘the room,’ as the servants’ hall is called in more ambitious households, and the second is to see that it is decently arranged and is sacred to the maids for a certain portion of the day, and most certainly for all the evening. I say a certain portion of the day, because, in small establishments, it is possible that the mistress may have little jobs of finer cooking, of plate-cleaning, or even dressmaking to do that she cannot well manage in the one sitting-room which would be her portion when the third room is given up to the maids. If this be the case, the establishment will naturally be so small that the maids will be too much occupied all the mornings to be able to use it, so that until 12.30 it could remain in the mistress’s possession; but after that hour she must never enter it. Just as in a larger house and with more maids, the hour of ten must see her out of the kitchen, that part of her work being completed then for the rest of the day.
Almost the first things a housemistress should ascertain about her house are the position and number of the pipes which are part and parcelof the water supply, as, unless this is ascertained, and she is able to possess herself of a species of sketch-map of them, she will not be able to know how to manage should the usual winter arrive in all its strength, and the water become frozen in the pipes in a manner that should never, for one moment even, be allowed. As a rule, our winters are not very long or very severe; if they were we should, no doubt, be readier for them than we are now. But we can always depend on a cold ‘snap’ or period during which our very unpreparedness lays us open to a thousand and one discomforts and dangers, none of which need have been ours if we had had the common sense to recollect that we should have looked out for and prepared against a state of things that is as inevitable as it is undoubtedly most detestable and disagreeable. The suburban builder, as a rule, has his ideas, and his only, on the subject of pipe laying. One idea is, so to imbed them in the walls of the house that we cannot get at them at all, and another is to place them outside the house in the most exposed position possible,where they are warranted to freeze on the first provocation, unless we can take the matter into our own hands at once, and either box them in, filling in the space between the pipes and the boxes with sawdust, which generally protects them for all time from the severest frost; or, at the approach of winter, so swathe them in flannel rags and hay bands, that frost cannot touch them, not forgetting to treat in a similar manner the pipes in the tank room. These should be our especial care, for they are often the first to freeze, and are the cause of many and many a detestable and untoward catastrophe.
The boiler in the suburban kitchen is generally one of two kinds, and is either of the low-pressure order, which has no system of circulating pipes, or the high-pressure species, which has and which requires more elaborate care than the former. If the low-pressure boiler is the one in use, and the frost is severe, it is better to completely empty all the pipes in the house, and to cut off the water supply to the house entirely, drawing the water froma supply-cock fixed just before the water enters the house, whence it can be obtained by hand as required. Of course this adds a great deal to the work, but it means safety, for when the boiler is kept well filled it cannot burst, neither can pipes freeze if there be no water in them to bring about this very disagreeable state of things. A low-pressure boiler having a lid that comes off, can always be hand-filled easily, while cans of water must be placed wherever one is accustomed to use water freely; and though baths may be curtailed and work increased, no damage or danger can ensue. Therefore the moment a frost sets in, cut off the water from the house, and rely entirely on the hand-filling of the boiler for all domestic purposes.
If the boiler is a high-pressure one, we must be very vigilant from the first moment a frost appears, while we must be ready for it long before it really arrives. The first thing to see is that this boiler is supplied with a safety-valve and a supply-cock; and the second thing to do is to have the principles on which the safety-valve isconstructed so explained to us by the man who supplies it, that we shall always be able to ascertain in a moment if it is in working order, or if it is not. For safety-valves are possessed of a demon habit of being out of order when they are least expected to be, and we may be priding ourselves on the fact that we have one, and are therefore quite safe, when the wretched thing may be refusing to work, and we may be on the very brink of the catastrophe we have intended it to avoid for us. Safety-valves differ so very much that it would be impossible to describe here how a house-mistress can ascertain if her own special valve is all right or all wrong. The only thing she can do is to have written instructions from the man who supplies it. These instructions, the plan of the pipes and special rules about what to do in a severe frost, should be in a small book kept among the housekeeping books, and easily get-at-able in case the frost should occur when the mistress was away from home, or if she were ill or in any way unable to attend to it herself. If the supply pipes cannot be got atand protected from the frost as a whole, it is best, once the tanks in the roof are full, to cut off the supply entirely from the main. In this case the local authorities must be communicated with, and the tanks filled by the Local Board by means of a stand-pipe, and great care must be taken both to see the tanks are kept full, and that the pipe between the hot and cold water tanks is kept free from frost. If by any chance the worst comes to the worst, and danger is ahead, the safety-valve will show it by blowing off steam; then out with your fire at once, dear reader; you are done for, and must remain kitchen-fireless until a beneficent thaw sets in.
In the meantime a second stove in the scullery will prevent you from being foodless, and though hot water may be scarce and comfort little, you will at anyrate be safe, and as the maids have their little sitting-room they won’t be frozen in the kitchen or thawed in the scullery, as they most undoubtedly would otherwise have been. Of course, if we have our pipes properly protected, and there is no warning from the safety-valve, and water flows freely from the boiler-taps,we are all right. In this case it is best never to allow the kitchen fire to go out, but last thing at night to bank it up with ashes and briquettes, and so ensure its burning without stopping. Of course it should be protected by a guard, and no kindling wood must on any account be placed to dry either in the ovens or on the hot plates by the side. In the morning the fire should be thoroughly raked out, and set going again in the usual way. Unless this is done, the fire will not be good enough for cooking: it will be a caked mass, which will not ensure the cook’s manufactures being the success they should be; therefore, in giving our instructions, great stress should be laid on the real necessity that undoubtedly exists for a rebuilding and relighting of the fire for the new day.
Sometimes there are odd lengths of pipes that we cannot protect, and which only supply certain single taps. In this case stop-cocks should be fixed in them in such a way as to prevent the water entering them, and these should be used in the frost. Then these special pipes canbe kept waterless without disturbing the whole internal economy of the house as regards the water supply. Of course I am not writing in any measure about the proper arrangements of the water pipes. I am only advising the ordinary suburban residents how to save misfortune, and a ruinous plumbers’, and very likely a decorators’, bill too, should the winter be as one usually finds it in England, where the spells of frost—undoubtedly short as they are—undoubtedly make people indifferent and happy-go-lucky about their preparations for hard weather.
But given the unexpected in the shape of real cold, and what occurs? Boilers burst and kill and maim people freely, and the moment a thaw comes, the plumbers are besieged by those whose pipes are pouring torrents of water down the walls and the front staircase, while carpets and furniture are spoiled, and everyone’s health suffers because the smallest precautions have not been taken to ensure the house against an entirely preventible state of things. Then there is one great thing to recollect, and that is, that aftera frost one must flush most lavishly all the drains and sinks, and, moreover, during the frost we must keep ample disinfectants ready and in use in every place where they can possibly be needed. I always put Sanitas down the bath and the housemaid’s sink too, because soapy water decays and causes very unpleasant smells, while, of course, Sanitas should be liberally poured down every other place in use. Then when the thaw comes, let the water run freely for at least an hour a day for the first three days down each drain, flushing first with hot water and a liberal supply of disinfectants; for if these precautions are taken, we shall not want the doctor, a gentleman whose visits too often follow a thaw with a regularity far more pleasing to him, maybe, than they can be to us, even if we are as fond of him as people usually manage to become of the family doctor.
I may seem to have dwelt unduly on the great pipe question, but the long frost of the early part of 1895 showed me most emphaticallythat there was great need to instruct the ordinary householder in the suburbs and in small town houses about this unpoetical but most necessary subject. No less than three boilers burst in one week in the place where I was then staying; one resulted in the death of the servant and total blindness for the only child of the house; one in the death of three children, while the third maimed the cook for life. Of the destruction to property I need say nothing; but when we reflect that all these accidents were absolutely preventable, and were entirely due to crass ignorance on the part of both mistresses and maids, we will, I think, come to the conclusion that the first duty of woman is to know her pipes, the position thereof, and the manner of her water supply; while the second is to be ready to act for the best the moment frost appears, and so render bursting boilers and pipes the impossibilities they both can be made in the most faultily-constructed suburban residences, if only the dwellers therein have their heads screwed on the right way, and are prepared for any real emergency.In any case, it is well always to have some means of cooking, which shall be available should we be, for one cause or the other, unable to use the range, which, by the way, should, if we can in any way afford it, be the ‘Eagle,’ for at present, at all events, no better one has been invented. If possible, there should be a small open grate and the little side low-pressure boiler which can always be hand-filled; in the scullery or even in the maid’s sitting-room; but if either is impossible, we must be possessed of means of cooking by gas, so that we shall not be left entirely helpless should the frost seize on our pipes before we are ready, or should it be necessary to sweep the kitchen chimney or repair the kitchen range.
If, however, we have a gas stove, the supply of gas should not be left to the discretion of the maids, but should only be get-at-able when it is legitimate to use it. Unless the mistress herself can turn on and off the gas, and keep it off when it should not be used, the waste and expense will be enormous. There are certain things ‘the very best’ maids are always reckless with,e.g., gas, potatoes, bread; and kindling wood and matches; small items to fuss about, no doubt, but small things are what add up and become terrors. One expects the big ones somehow, but the tiny odds and ends, that seem nothing separately, are what swell the weekly bills when they are added up, and therefore should be more thought about than they are in the usual suburban household.
The pipes and the kitchen itself once settled about, the next steps to take are towards proper ventilation and draught exclusion. One cannot ventilate with a draught, yet how few people realise this; if they did, colds would go quite out of fashion and everyone would be much happier than at the present moment. As a rule one door in the orthodox kitchen opens straight on the open air, and here the tradespeople come and linger while waiting about for the orders which should never be called for except under special stress of circumstances. If this be the case, what would it cost to add a simple porch and side-door? not much above £20, yet what a difference would it make in thecomfort of the kitchen. If, however, this outlay is impossible, a large, oil-cloth-covered screen should be placed round the door in such a way that one side of it is put by the side of the door which opens, and the door is reached from the other side of the screen, which is only pushed on one side to answer the bell, and replaced as soon as possible. This breaks the draught even if it can’t exclude it, while the maids’ health and the consumption of coals both considerably benefit by such an arrangement. More Slater’s patent draught-excluder should be put round doors and all windows, and ventilation should be secured by a round ventilator put in the top part of the window, and another in the top part of an outer wall; these ventilators can always be closed, but when cooking is in progress or gas is burning, and for at least an hour after the meals are cooked, they should remain open and so ensure that the air in the kitchen should be always pure and fresh.
The larder should be ventilated in the same way, and any windows should be covered with very fine wire-netting on the side they do notopen—outside, if they are the ordinary small sash windows, inside, should they push outwards on an iron support—to prevent cats, dogs and small animals of any kind from entering, while great care should be taken to see that the larder is damp-proof. Nothing keeps in a damp larder, and, therefore if it should be damp it is utterly useless to try and put meat, bread and butter there. In any case if one has not tiles, and I never yet met with the suburban larder that had, the walls should be painted from top to bottom, first with Chambers’s damp-resisting fluid, and then with a couple of coats of Aspinall’s enamel paint in a shade of ivory white. No one should permit the decorator to talk him or her out of using this most invaluable preparation, for nothing I can assure my readers, can take its place. I have had eight years’ constant experience of it. I have had many years’ experience of the ordinary paint, and I confidently say that it and Aspinall are not to be mentioned together in any shape or form, therefore everyone should insist on its use. The decorator I fancy does not get quite asmuch profit on it as on the ordinary paint, and it is more trouble to apply I know, and these perhaps are his reasons for his undoubted dislike to it; but if my readers are wise, they will insist on Aspinall, especially where damp has to be considered, and where a good surface and uniform colouring are in request.
The larder should have one wide shelf, and in one corner should be a safe for meat, and poultry, with very fine wire-netting all round. This should be able to be moved and hung out in a shady corner in the garden in the summer if the larder should be warm at all, or else hung in the cellar if there be no garden. Here too should be placed the refrigerator, without which no house is complete, and which soon saves its own cost, in the manner it allows one to keep one’s provisions sweet, and one’s milk right, and one’s butter from running away, as it otherwise does at the smallest amount of heat. The larder floor should be tiled, if not it must be ‘gone over’ every day with a mop dipped in Sanitas and water to take up the dust and make it fresh and clean; then the food shouldbe nicely arranged for the mistress’s visit of inspection, while once a week the larder must be thoroughly scrubbed out, shelf and all, the shelf being washed over with a damp duster daily, when the floor is done over with the ever-useful mop. The same treatment should be given to the scullery, where the sinks should be flushed daily, and which should never be without their big lump of soda in one corner to prevent the grease accumulating.
The kitchen floor should be simply boarded; if only used to cook in, it should have merely one or two large squares of oilcloth or cocoa-nut matting by the stove, kitchen table, or where the cook and kitchen-maid stand to work, and the furniture should resolve itself into a couple of good tables, one the ordinary kitchen table, the other much on the same lines but smaller, and placed close to the window, to be used for pastry making and the finer parts of cooking, and which should both be scrubbed daily, and on which grease should never be allowed to remain for one minute. A couple of ordinary kitchen chairs and the dresser should complete the plenishing.The dresser drawers should be inspected once a week, to see there are no accumulations of rubbish there, and that all is in order. The dresser must never be used as private property by the maids, else will it become a species of glory hole, filled to the brim with unmended stockings, old dusters, paper and string, and odds and ends, which ought not to be tolerated there, or, indeed anywhere else for five minutes by anyone. If the furniture is as severely simple as I have described above, the kitchen resolves itself into what it should undoubtedly be, merely a place to cook in, and in which to prepare the meals. In this case the walls should be painted from ceiling to floor with a shade of electric turquoise enamel, or else in one shade of the blue to about 4 feet from the floor, the rest of the wall being painted a soft shade of brown. This should include the doors and window-sashes, and the one paint should be divided from the other by a wide band of brown stenciling on the blue surface of the wall. The ceiling should be whitewashed, as should be the ceilings in all kitchen premises, and the kitchen should belighted with a good centre gaslight with a couple of burners. A bracket arm for gas should be on one side of the fire, to use while cooking was going on on very dark days, or when special cooking was going forward; and there should be one gas light in the larder. These lights should be protected with the proper wire-globes sold by most ironmongers. Gas globes are soon smashed in the kitchen, and they are not really safe when they are on moveable brackets or pendants, as they all too often are in these parts of a house.
The pantry should be treated in the same way as the kitchen as regards decoration, and should only have mats on the floor, and no fixed covering there at all. Only the china, glass and silver in use should be kept in this room, the latter, if valuable, only in the day time, and even then in a small locked safe. If the pantry should be large, the extra glass and china can be kept there in locked cupboards, accessible to none but the mistress. Here in the ordinary ship’s cabin provided by the suburban builder, the ‘fitment’ style of cupboard is most useful. As a rule themaid only wants room enough to stand or sit by her sink to wash up and clean the daily silver, and so the tiny space can be almost filled with cupboards; and here is an excellent place for the stores and jam-closet: the ordinary suburban resident if wise, getting in her stores once a week from Shoolbred, and not dealing with the local grocer, who, all too often extracts orders from the maids when none should be forthcoming. If there really is no room here for them, cupboards must be erected in the maid’s room, whether it be that vexed third room or another. Somewhere there must be a store-cupboard, properly regulated and properly looked after by the mistress herself, and no one else at all; otherwise, that way most undoubtedly lie bankruptcy and disorganisation, often enough one and the same thing.
The maids’ sitting-room should be papered with some pretty, light paper, and should have either a dado of cupboards and shelves in the fitment style, or else a real dado of plain, self-coloured oilcloth, which can be wiped over with a damp duster daily. This and the paint could once morebe brown, as could the dado-rail. The ceiling must be whitewashed. There should be a nice table for meals and work, six ordinary Windsor chairs, and a couple of comfortable basket chairs, with hard-wearing, tapestry-covered cushions. These should be considered the property of the elder servants, if four are kept; but, of course, if the housemaid is of ‘staid’ age, and careful she could have a nice chair too. I think the ordinary kitchen chair a cruel thing, except for use at meals, and see no reason why the maids should be condemned to its use and nothing else, when, surely their backs must ache sometimes as well as the backs of other far less employed women undoubtedly do.
The grate must be a slow-combustion one, and, unless the mistress uses the room need not be lighted, save in very severe weather, before one o’clock, when it should be lighted from the top and allowed to burn slowly down, and kept going with briquettes and small coal judiciously mingled with a little larger coal. The curtains should be of the dark blue and white butterfly cretonne Liberty sells, and which should be in universal use wherever much washing is to be expected, for itwashes splendidly, and never seems to wear out. I have still a couple of cretonne covers I had quite thirteen years ago. The floors should either be stained or else covered with plain cork carpet, supplemented with small rugs here and there, or else with a square of cocoa-nut matting. But I like rugs best; they are so easily taken up and shaken, and dust is kept at bay as long as this is done. I am very much inclined to say, do not have gas here, yet I fear unless we have plenty of help we must, or the lamps, inevitable in the sitting-room, will become too numerous for our staff. At the same time, I do very strongly recommend a good duplex lamp from the centre of the ceiling if it can be managed. Servants are reckless of gas. They are not so fond of lighting the lamps as they are of setting a light to the gas. In the first place, it is more trouble; in the second, they know that if they light them too soon they will have to re-trim and re-fill them before the evening is out. But if a lamp is procured, it must be a good one. It must have a metal receiver, and it must have a clear glass shade. Silk or stuff shades are outof place, and very dark always I think; in such a room as this they would be ridiculous, and most likely dangerous. This room is in the care of the kitchen-maid too, though, if there are books, pictures and ornaments, as there should be, the housemaid should take a pride in dusting them and keeping them in order, and should see that the rougher parts of the cleaning are properly performed. As the mistress will use this room for a short while in any case, she can always see that ruin has not begun among the furniture and decorations; for whether it is provided by the builder, or whether she supplement the accommodation of the house herself as advised before, she should always have one store-cupboard here, whence she could give out the things for the day’s use. She can then supervise without spying; for once tacitly allow that a room in one’s own house cannot be entered save on sufferance (mind, I don’t say frequented!) it is easier to storm an enemy’s citadel successfully than gain an entry into that special chamber without more friction than anyone who has not tried a similar situation could well believe.
One word more. In frosty weather gas and firesshould not be stinted. The gas should be burned steadily in the scullery, pantry and lavatories, to prevent any chance of the water therein freezing. This may save a great deal; but, of course, if the pipes have frozen, one can only accept the situation and wait for a thaw. But that they need never do this, I trust I have demonstrated in a manner that should be patent to the least imaginative housewife in the world.
Thesuburban rooms I myself have personally encountered and conquered have been so truly terrible that, when I look back upon my struggles with them, I can only wonder that I have survived them in the least degree. For not only were they either unduly hideous or over-ornamented in a manner that would strike awe into the boldest soul, but every window and door gaped wide apart, and were with the fireplaces, put just where they ought not to be, while in one or two cases the floors had to be relaid and the doors bodily moved round before the rooms were even habitable. I could only wonder whether the folks who had lived in some of them before (two or three were quite new, and these were, save in one instance, the worst of the lot) had escaped with their lives, orwhether they had all gone away crippled in health and in temper, on a voyage of discovery to some better and more suitably-designed, eligible villa residence.
The first room I ever approached with an eye to decoration appeared to be everything it ought to be, and seemed simply perfect. It was large and lofty, had two wide and beautiful windows, and a good, deep fireplace and an excellent floor; but alas! I was not as wise then as I am now, for my only acquaintance with houses was confined to two family houses, in which I had lived all my life, and which were properly built, whatever their other faults might have been: and, in consequence, my sufferings during the first month in that special dining-room were so acute that I have never forgotten one of the numerous pangs and torments I endured: silently, it is true, because then I thought them inevitable, and it is never any use grumbling against things which must be borne! But presently sense awoke in my brain, and I saw that nothing which had caused me such woe need be put up with any longer, and I verily believe the knowledge Ihave since developed on the score of house-furnishing and decoration first became mine in that special house, for I was roused to the fight with cold and discomfort inseparable from a quiescent residence in a suburban house, and soon discovered cold could be expelled did one rise to the occasion and determine that, somehow or other, one would conquer, and no longer play the ignoramus or the very painfulrôleof the conquered.
In the first place, the door opened straight on the fireplace, and as the front door—a frail thing of boards and sham stained glass—was about 6 feet away from it, the cold air rushed in the instant it was opened, and the heat of the fire flew mainly up the chimney, insuring that the rest of the room should be more like Siberia than any other spot. And in the second, the windows need not have been glazed at all so little did they keep out the outside atmosphere, notwithstanding the curtains which liberally adorned them, and which used to wave right out into the room at the very smallest approach of a breeze. When there was any amount ofreal wind, the room wasn’t a room any longer, it was one and the same thing as being in the garden, and anyone can easily understand how pleasant it was to come down to breakfast there with a roaring fire going up the chimney and a north or east wind playfully careering around the table, which, place it how we might, could never be in anything save a thorough draught.
The first thing to do was to transpose the door, and make it open with its back to the grate. Then it had to be surrounded with the ever-useful ‘Slater’s patent’; and, as it opened into the room, a species of shelter was arranged behind it, while a curtain was hung on it—on one of the rods which open and shut with the door—and a pair of curtains put outside it. These hung straight down in good heavy folds when we were alone and there was not very much going in and out; and, as we had a ‘hatch’ into the kitchen, there never was much; but on ‘dinner-party nights’ the curtains were tied back, and so did not interfere with the coming and going, as a single undraped curtain always must interfere either more or less. Then attention was turnedto the windows, and these were surrounded by more ‘Slater’s patent,’ which was liberally supplemented by putty, because the frames began to shrink away from the glass in a truly hideous manner, and, in consequence, there were two gaps, one there, and one where the frames were supposed to fit into the woodwork round the walls. The woodwork, in its turn, shrank from the brickwork, and the space had to be filled in with mortar and then painted over.
Now this special house was not a regulation £60-a-year villa, but was rented £160, and had a fair garden and good stabling, and was altogether what may be termed a ‘residence for a gentleman’s family;’ nay, even by some house-agents, ‘a mansion,’ because it had a second staircase; yet such is the material used in the suburbs! I repeat, this special house was a good specimen of the kind, and was not, as might be imagined, a ‘fearful example’ or an isolated case, so I leave my readers to imagine what the less-expensive buildings can be like, even when they can truly be advertised as possessing tiled hearths, electric bells and all the latest improvements, including a fixed bath, hot and cold water laid on;and other items familiar to those who have gone on heart-breaking journeys in search of a house, liberally supplied with a sheaf of pink and fallacious orders from a house agent. In fact, before the dining-room was livable in, we had to almost reconstruct the windows and doors; and I only regret that my improvements did not then rise to putting in a proper grate, for I am sure, if I had done so, the conquest of the room would have been complete. But unfortunately I did not realise the horrors of it until all the decorations were done and we had settled in, and then expense barred the way; not only the expense of the new grate: that would have been saved in the difference in our winter’s consumption of coal: but the cost of replacing the Japanese leather dado, which could not be matched, and, in consequence, would have had to be renewed entirely, because the grate and mantelpiece could not have been moved without spoiling at least a yard of it on each side of the fireplace. A new grate without a new mantel was also impossible, because the moulded mantelpiece, being round above the grate, was not available for theslow-combustion stoves, which are always made square. Everyone should refuse to own a round mantelpiece, because of the impossibility of adapting such a possession to the proper and only really useful grate. If, by the way, Japanese leather paper is used for the dining-room dado, or indeed anywhere for any dado or frieze, an extra piece should always be purchased at the same time, and kept carefully in some dry place, and indeed an extra piece of all wall papers should be secured. Japanese paper particularly can never be matched. I do not think, in all my large experience, I have ever come across a second consignment of a pattern I have seen before; therefore it is easy to see how necessary it is to secure more than one requires at first, else, should an accident occur, or as in my own case, an improvement be contemplated, one either has to leave the accident unrepaired or the improvement undone, because one cannot afford to replace perhaps 24 yards, when a couple at most is all that one really requires.
I have remarked before that in a new house it is absolutely imperative to have large fires goingbefore we begin our decorations, but it is such a necessary thing to do that I must repeat the hint once more, for only after a succession of fires can we see whether the boards and window frames mean to shrink, and if they do we must apply our means of alleviation before we begin to paper and paint. At the same time, we may take it for granted that, try how we may to ascertain them, we shall not find out the real faults and real virtues of a house until we have lived in it, just as we never know our friends really until we have stayed with them or they have stayed with us. But for all that, Slater’s patent putty, and curtains will help us immensely, and more especially if we adapt ourselves to the house a little, and realise, for example, that the head of the table can be just where we like to make it, and need not be exactly between the door and window with the fire at the back, because the orthodox dinner-table seems able to stand in no other position.
Now I maintain that no one should ever buy the regulation long dinner-table, and that happiness and comfort, to say nothing of beauty, are much more likely to be found at one that isround or oval than at one that has the usual British head and foot. If it be round, the master of the house sits naturally where his place is put for him, but if not he as naturally gravitates towards the head, regardless of the fact that his back is scorched and he feels ill and uncomfortable, the while his feet and hands are in Siberia, and an icy blast plays about his head because the door opens straight on him, and in consequence he cannot get out of the range of the bitter wind from the passage or hall, try how he may to exclude it from the room. Talk about heredity how one will, and disguise if we dare its dreadful tyranny if we are sufficiently ignorant on the subject to do so with proper complacency, still I venture to remark that the dogma is proved to the hilt every day. An ordinary English family takes possession of the miserable hulks most of our houses are, and settles down without a struggle against them, to patiently endure the preventable miseries inseparable therefrom. There is no real need for any man to sit at the head of a dining-table, generally twice too long, too, for everyday needs. The side would be farmore comfortable, far more common-sense in every way, but because the male of the house has always taken his seat in that special position, perhaps at the commencement of the family in a castle the walls of which were 3 feet thick, the present day man does the same and remains there, although he grumbles all the time and ‘wishes to goodness’ some way might be found by which he could be insured from being starved with cold or fried to death, or indeed often enough both at the same time. Therefore is it well to have a round table, for anywhere there can be the head or the foot, and the man at once accepts the new position, without demur; but given the ordinary table, nothing will move him, argue as we will and demonstrate as we may how infinitely better, in every possible manner, another seat would be for him.
Of course, if the house be accepted as it is, nothing can ever make it nice, be sure of that. If it be wind and water-tight, and that is a rare experience, the so-called decorations will either be terrible, or else will ‘swear’ continually at the belongings we bring to put amidst them. Lucky is the woman who finds dirty paint andtorn and smudged papers and who does not come across an obstinate landlord and a ‘newly-decorated house.’ If she does and she possesses an ordinary husband who thinks anything does so long as it is clean and tidy, she should flatly refuse to enter it, for if she has artistic taste her life henceforward will be nothing but misery; for, absurd as it may seem, real pain and discomfort are given by ugly or incongruous belongings; and I venture to state boldly that people would be much happier did they own and realise this fact, and give over priding themselves on ‘rising above their surroundings,’ a thing no one possessed of the smallest eye for colour or form was ever really able to do. Superior folk always tell us we can, just as they say we ought not to be influenced by the weather, yet ‘ought’ doesn’t come into the matter at all. Maybe we ought not, but then we ought not to be ill or grow old, or be irritable, or anything but severely virtuous and good in everyrôlewe have to play during life, but all these thingsareorarenot. What they and weoughtto be or to do is quite another matter, as anyone with a grain of sense will, I think, admit.