I
It was an Irishman who advised, "If ye can't be aisy, be as aisy as ye can," and his advice was good.
Thus, if you cannot have an ideal house, have a home which is as nearly ideal as possible, so let us consider the house as we generally find it, and see what can be done to improve it.
Most houses built prior to the last ten years seem to have been planned with the express desire of providing an unnecessary amount of hard work for the unfortunate persons who inhabit them. Fifty years ago labour was cheap and plentiful, and ideas as to hygiene stranger even than many which still obtain. Now, however, we do know that fresh air and light are as necessary to our well-being as sound food. This fact is shown in an interesting fashion in Mrs. Pember Reeves' admirable book, "Round About a Pound a Week," in which she speaks eloquently of the way in which "basement families" deteriorate in health, although the children may have more food than those who live in higher, airier quarters.
Basement Houses.
Ignorance of the value of light and air, cheap labour and dear land were no doubt the causes of basement houses, and to this day, although labour is dear and the cost of feeding and keeping each servant has increased, it is no uncommon thing for a housekeeper to remark, "I have to keep an extra servant because of the basement," and perhaps another maid is employed because of the coals and stairs.
Where the income is ample, the extra labour bill is of little importance (speaking from the employer's point of view), but householders of moderate and small means are rapidly discovering that labour-making houses are not for them; that it is an economy to pay, if needs be, a rather higher rent and to live in a healthy, light, airy house, so planned that all unnecessary toil is abolished, and with it the cost of much cleaning material, chimney-sweeping, whitewashing, etc.
In many cases, landlords have found it impossible to let their gloomy, inconvenient dwellings to tenants of the desired kind, and what was a "good neighbourhood" has sunk by degrees until the houses are inhabited by members of that unfortunate class who are forced to take any rooms they can obtain, and only too often pay a high price for bad accommodation. I am not in a position to advise on the management of house property, but I cannot but think that in many cases it would pay the owners to modernise the houses they have to let rather than let them deteriorate.
As I write, I have in my mind's eye a certain neighbourhood in London, once fashionable, now inhabited by "nice" people, whose means make it impossible for them to pay high rents. But this neighbourhood is slowly but surely deteriorating, and rents are sinking, simply because the houses are of a kind that necessitate at least three servants being employed, in addition to a nurse if there are young children. With less than three servants these houses could not be kept clean or warm.
A Typical Labour-Making House.
The accommodation in most of these streets and squares consists of:
Basement (deep and rather dark).—Kitchen, pantry, servants' hall at back (generally very dark), lavatory, coal and wine cellars; front area (dustbin stands here), backyard; steep and dark stairs to ground floor.
Ground Floor.—Dining-room, smoking-room, and third small dark room, lavatory, narrow hall, and steep stairs leading to small half-landing.
First Floor.—Double drawing-room. Above, seven bedrooms, one lavatory, and one bathroom.
All coal for the house must be carried up one, two, or three, and possibly four, flights of steep stairs.
There is a large kitchen range, with flues to clean twice a week, as in order to keep up the hot-water supply much coal is burned, and the flues become very dirty.
The chimney must also be swept every two months. Other chimneys must be swept twice a year; if much used, three times a year. All food and table utensils must be carried up and downstairs three times a day, and when lunch and dinner are in progress a servant must run up and down with clean and dirty dishes, etc.
Washstands are used in each bedroom, and hot water taken to these rooms three or four times a day. There is but one bathroom and upstairs lavatory; therefore there is a good deal of stair work when doing the rooms. If there is a nursery, the nursery meals have to be carried up and down.
Each time the hall-door bell rings, a maid must run upstairs to answer it, and visitors and tea in the drawing-room necessitate more journeys up and down, and the carrying of a heavy tray.
Now, with a house of this description there are certainly two ways of converting it into a labour-saving dwelling.
A Labour-Making House Converted.
If the basement is deep and incurably dark, by far the best plan is to dispense with it altogether so far as living-rooms are concerned, using it merely for cellars and box-room.
"But," says the householder, "there will now be no back door. The tradesmen will all have to come to the front door." They will. But tradesmen call chiefly in the morning, and the few who come in the afternoon might be instructed to go to the area door, to which the dustman would also go, while the coals (if any are used) would be delivered through the pavement coal-shoot as before.
Arranging thus, the house proper begins on the ground floor. The large front room is the dining-room as before, and the double doors between it and the erstwhile smoking-room should be plastered up on the smoking-room side, for under the new arrangement the smoking-room becomes the kitchen, and the small third room the pantry. The kitchen will not be large, but neither a gas nor an electric cooker takes up much space.
Now comes the question whether the hot-water system shall be worked by a coke or a gas circulator. The latter gives even less trouble than the former, but it may prove too costly in use. A coke furnace needs to be stoked about three times a day, and is very easy to light. The furnace might be placed in the kitchen or in the basement, and in it can be burned practically all the rubbish, thus doing away with that otherwise nasty necessity the dustbin, which in many parts of London the authorities refuse to empty more than once a week.
Kitchen and pantry must be fitted with sinks, and there should be a little gas fire, work-table, and armchair in the pantry for the use of the house-parlourmaid.
Make your head save your hands.
This has been said millions of times, but there is still need to go on saying it.