From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

CHAPTER I.
CHOOSING A HOUSE.

In the following chapters I propose to give young housekeepers, just launching their bark on the troubled seas of domesticity, the benefit of the experience that has been bought by me, occasionally rather dearly, in the course of some eighteen or twenty years; for I have often been struck with amazement at discovering how few really practical guides there are that even profess to help newly married girls past those first shoals and quicksands that so often wreck the little vessel, or that spoil and waste so much that could have been usefully employed had knowledge stood at the helm, and experience served as a lighthouse to point out the rocks and narrows. Naturally, no one ever uses another’s experience entirely: to do so would make life too near perfection and too monotonous to be pleasant. Still, there are a hundred little hints that I have constantly been asked to give, a great many helps to household arrangement that I have bestowed on many of my young friends starting in life; and I trust I may not be considered unduly egotistical if I lay before my readers the result of some years of life, and a good deal of experience obtained by looking about me generally.

I shall propose in the first two or three chapters to sketch out some ‘notions,’ as our American cousins would say, about the questions of house-choosing and house-furnishing, I shall then pass on to the question of servants; then babies will have their turn; education, more especially of girls, will not be forgotten; and I shall endeavour to do my utmost to state plainly and describe accurately, not only how a house should be furnished, but how it should be managed and kept going, literally from garret to basement.

As very rich people can place themselves unreservedly in the hands of a professional decorator, and can moreover depend on their housekeepers afterwards for all details of domestic management, I shall begin by supposing the model couple who wish to choose a house and furnish it are not rich; if they were they need not come to me for hints, for they would be able to gratify every one of their own tastes, and need only discover the best and most expensive shops, where skilled assistants would be ready to hang expensive papers and brocades, and to fit up all the thousand and one things that fashion calls necessary, without any of my assistance. But neither are they very poor: they are young, happy, and have taste, and are rather disheartened at finding out what a very little way their money seems able to go. They have looked longingly at Persian and Turkey carpets, at beautifully designed paper and exquisite hangings, and have come home from a long day’s investigation of shop-windows that has almost made Edwin forswear matrimony altogether, and that has plunged Angelina into an abyss of despair that makes her snappish to her brothers and sisters, and brings a sad look into her mother’s eyes, who seems to see the first shadow ‘of the prison-house’ close in around her child, and yet is powerless to help her escape, because, poor dear soul, she has no means of doing so herself; being as she is the victim of the old régime of flock papers and moreen curtains and heavy mahogany, and being conscious, too, of the vast sums it cost her to start in housekeeping. However, I refuse to hear any grumblings at all, and demand calmly enough to know if I may see the house that our young folks mean to inhabit. Ten chances to one that they do not even know where it is likely to be: how then, I ask, can they possibly know what they will want, or what is likely to suit the house or the locality, or, indeed, any of the many things that are positively necessary to know, before as much as a roll of wall-paper can be bought or a chair or table purchased?

Here is hint number one. It is from not knowing and understanding the house in which one has to live, and through purchasing furniture simply because we like it, and not because it suits us or our domicile, that such mistakes are made. First know your house; then, and not until then, can you proceed to furnish it in a manner that will result in pleasure to you and your friends for as long as you live in it.

To young people like my couple, I would strongly recommend a house some little way out of London. Rents are less; smuts and blacks are conspicuous by their absence; a small garden, or even a tiny conservatory (the joys and management of which ought to have a chapter all to themselves), is not an impossibility; and if Edwin have to pay for his season-ticket, that is nothing in comparison with his being able to sleep in fresh air, to have a game of tennis in summer, or a friendly evening of music, chess, or games in the winter, without expense; and with Angelina’s absence from the temptations of shop-windows in town, where, if she does not know of anything she wants when she goes out for her aimless walk, she soon sees something that she cannot resist, which she buys just because she has the money in her pocket, and likes the look of an article she would never have thought of had she been outside the range of temptation.

Another reason for choosing the suburbs at the commencement of married life is that in this case the rival mothers-in-law and the rival families will not be running in and out perpetually; and neither will Angelina be always contrasting the old ease, plenty, and amusements in her sisters’ lives, and which used to be hers, with the somewhat straitened and monotonous existence that she must put up with until Edwin has made a mark in the world, and is able to keep his carriage and live in style. Granted, then, that the suburbs have been selected, the first few months of the engagement can be advantageously spent in running down on Saturday afternoons to divers ‘Parks’ to look at houses that sound so beautiful on paper, and are too often the very reverse in the reality, in sauntering in the neighbourhood of each ‘eligible residence’ and in endeavouring to discover what are the pros and cons of each, and in finding out the soil and the aspect, and if there are or are not any pretty walks to be found in the country round. Avoid clay; let no persuasions, no arguments, persuade you that clay—at all events suburban clay—can ever be anything save depressing and rheumatic. You may drain, you may dig, but clay is like a ghost that will not be laid, and that sooner or later asserts itself in the most unpleasant and decided manner possible.

One of the prettiest suburbs we know of is utterly spoiled by its clay soil. In warm days it depresses, in damp it chills; and in an east wind the soil looks so dreary, so parched, that the mere sight of it is wretched, while fog and mist hang over it all the winter, and sour the tempers and warp the minds of the inhabitants until there is a lack of hospitality and an amount of work for the doctors that is wonderful, if unpleasant to contemplate.

Of course, all the S. or S.W. and S.E. suburbs are the most fashionable and the most sought after; and although, to my mind, Penge and Dulwich are dreary and damp, they are evidently well supported and much lived in, but the higher parts of Sydenham are to be preferred; while Forest Hill, the higher parts of Lordship Lane, Elmer’s End—where there are some extremely pretty and convenient villas—and the best parts of Bromley, Kent, are all they should be. Still, to those who do not mind the north side of London, Finchley, Bush Hill Park—where the houses are nice to look at and excellently arranged—and Enfield are all worthy of consideration.

Edwin’s work and its locality must, after all give the casting vote, for, if it be at the West End, Liverpool Street Station is out of the question, and Victoria, is a sine quâ non, and, of course, he may choose to live in town. If he does, I should strongly persuade him not to be guided by fashion, and to prefer a good-sized, old, well-built house in an unfashionable locality, to a small, heated, stuffy, badly put together residence in one of the parts of town that are inhabited by those with whom he can never hope to associate.