Messalina of the suburbs

by E. M. Delafield

Mr. Lambe bought the largest corner house in Victoria Avenue.

It was, of course, wholly detached from its neighbours. There was a carriage-sweep in the front, and a long, wide garden at the back, and a high wall all round. There was a tennis-court, two greenhouses, and a vegetable garden beyond the flower-garden.

The inside of Melrose was even more magnificent than the outside, and far more interesting to Mrs. Lambe, who was not very fond of being out-of-doors, having had a great deal too much of it in her tram-journeying days. But she had many ideas as to comfort and elegance indoors, and Edgar was generous with money, and had a standard of his own—and one that secretly rather scared her—as to the way in which a house should be “run.”

This standard of Edgar’s was principally applied to lighting, heating, food and service. The house was fitted with electric light, of course, and Edgar had had a separate boiler put in for the three bathrooms, so that it was his favourite boast that if anyone wanted a bath in the middle of the night, the water would still come out of the tap almost boiling. There were radiators in all the rooms except the kitchen, offices and servants’ bedrooms, and hot pipes in the linen-cupboard.

It took Mrs. Lambe a little while to assimilate Edgar’s views as to meals. She quite understood that these must be served punctually, and that the plates must be hot—really hot—and that there must always be a relay of fresh toast towards the end of breakfast; and of course late dinner every night except Sunday, when it was cold supper. But she did find it a little bit difficult, just at first, to realise that Edgar disapproved strongly of twice-cooked meat. At her own home there had been a weekly joint, which was hot on Sunday, cold on Monday, hashed on Tuesday, and cottage-pie’d on Wednesday—and sometimes, if it had been a larger joint than usual, curried on Thursday and turned into rissoles on Friday.

At Melrose, after one, or at the most two, appearances in the dining-room, the beef disappeared into the kitchen and was finished there, while a new joint, or a pair of fowls, took its place on the upstairs menu.

The amount of “butcher’s meat” that came into the house amazed and disconcerted its mistress, until she found that her servants took it as a matter of course, and that her husband continually praised her to his friends as a good manager, and that the monthly bills—which at first had appalled her—by no means exceeded the sum which he had himself suggested that he should allow her for the housekeeping.

By the time that Mrs. Lambe had a nursery, with two little girls in it, and a nurse, and a nursery-maid to wait upon them, she took it quite as a matter of course that there should be yet a third list of items to consider in the ordering of meals—weekly chickens, and special dairy produce, and a regular supply of white fish, for the nursery. This question of food for the household was, of course, immensely important, and she gave a great deal of conscientious thought to it, thankful when the cook suggested a new variety of sweet for the dinner-parties to which Edgar so much enjoyed inviting his business friends and their families.

On these occasions he himself selected the wines with the utmost care, and instructed the two parlour-maids minutely and repeatedly in the proper formula to be employed with each course.

Mrs. Lambe was always relieved that this great responsibility did not in any way rest upon her. A mistake, she felt, would be altogether too terrible.