From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

I always keep on my washing-stand one of Perry’s invaluable sixpenny sticks of ink-eraser. I sometimes ink my fingers dreadfully, but nothing is too bad for Perry, whose delightful stick comes into use, and cleans away the stains directly. This, too, must not be put into confinement, as it becomes soft and melts away rapidly if it is.

For the tooth-water and glass, I most thoroughly recommend the charming little sets we buy at Douglas’s glass-shop in Piccadilly. For 1s. 6d., 2s., and even less (I have bought a green set there for 9d.), one buys the prettiest possible glass jugs and glasses, and they are ever so much nicer than the old-fashioned glass water-bottles and tumblers; they are charming to look at, and far more easily kept clean. There are blue, red, green, and shades of opal; and the gas-globes should match. The best gas-globes are the tinted green globes, pinched in here and there in folds, which are 1s. 4½d. at Whiteley’s, and 3s. and 4s. at any other shop—why, I don’t know. The opal glasses are prettier, but then they are dearer. A dozen towels should be allowed to each washing-stand: four a week, or even three, are enough for most people. One big Turkish towel is indispensable for the bath, and a clean towel should be always on the second rail ready for the visitor, for whom we have already provided the hairbrush.

To every room should be apportioned a hot-water jug or can. There are none so good as the charming brass cans at 7s. 6d. The painted ones soon become shabby, and always smell of paint directly the hot water is put in; and not at all a bad plan is to have a brass label chained to the handle of the can, with the room’s name on to which the can belongs. Cheaper brass cans can be had, but they hold less water, and as they have no cover the water very soon becomes cold. A larger oak-painted can should be provided for the housemaid. This she should use for refilling the ewers, and to bring larger quantities of water if a foot-bath is required in one’s own room; but the foot-bath and also the slop-pails should be all of white china, and intense cleanliness should be insisted on, especially for the last-named articles, which never, even in the smallest establishment, should be made of anything save earthenware. These china ones cost 4s. 9d., and have a basket-work handle and a china cover. They should be scalded out every day with hot water and a little chloride of lime, chloride of lime being kept in any separate place, ready for use where there are any drains.

Before passing to the dressing-room, which should open, if possible, out of the bedroom, there are still one or two more trifles that can be mentioned in connection with it, as on trifles after all depend a great deal of our comfort, more especially in the upstairs department, and a sleepless night might often be prevented were some of the commonest precautions taken to insure rest.

One thing no dweller in the ordinary suburban residence should be without, and that is a wedge of wood attached to a brass chain to each window, ready to wedge the window closely together should a storm suddenly arise in the night. Who has not risen irate at the dismal rattling, and crammed in anything—toothbrush, comb, or what not—sacrificing often enough one or the other in one’s rage at not being able in a moment to put a stop to this intolerable nuisance? Now a wedge ready to hand, nailed to the window by its chain, so that it cannot be lost or mislaid, obviates all this, and the window is secured at once and rest is insured simply by a little precaution and forethought. I believe that Whiteley keeps these wedges, but I used to buy mine of a clergyman in Dorset, who made them beautifully, and sold them in bunches in aid of the fund for restoring his church, and so popular were they that he made quite a nice little sum by their sale; but then Dorset is a very windy county, and I think the windows there rattle more than anywhere else.

Another thing should be secured, and that is a matchbox nailed to the wall, close by the bed, and the servant should be strictly forbidden ever to take the matches from one room to another; there should be a match-box nailed on in each room and in the passages, and Angelina should see herself that matches are never lacking there. I buy Bryant and May’s boxes, but not their matches, as they are expensive, but I always have tiny boxes of Swedish matches at 5s. the gross, a gross lasting me considerably over a year; naturally I keep them locked in a store cupboard, in a room where there is sufficient warmth to keep them dry, and the maids have to ask me for them when they are required. When I used Bryant and May’s matches and had them in as wanted from the grocer, I never spent less than 6d. and sometimes 1s. a week upon them, so I consider my present plan worth mentioning, for the save is really great, and in these small items much can be economised, if only one has a little knowledge and keeps one’s eyes open. But the matchboxes and wedges must be nailed on, or else they will disappear in the same extraordinary way pins and hair-pins always contrive to do. Then, in bedrooms and sitting-rooms alike, I have the most delightful tiny brass hooks on which I hang a hearth-brush, for I have an immense dislike to an untidy and dirty hearth. As my old nurse used to say, ‘These sort of things don’t eat anything,’ and a brush lasts five times as long if it have not to migrate from one room to another, and can instead have its own especial hook. You can buy ugly black hearth-brushes at 1s. 3d., but I always buy brass ones at 4s. 11½d. They last for years and years, and then can have new bristles added at the cost of 1s.; they look nice too, and are always to hand when wanted.

One of the principal things to remember all through these household arrangements surely is this: a place for everything, and everything in its place; time, temper, wear and tear of nerves, and servants being saved a thousand times over by this simple remedy. If the brush be in its place there is no need for Angelina to ring up tired Mary Jane to make a tidy hearth. The hot-water cans on their shelves in the bath-room, or in the pantry if there be no bath-room, allow of Angelina getting her own hot water if the maid be busy or out of the way, and so on through all the details of domesticity, which will only dovetail in a little house if this principle of tidiness and thought animates the mistress. And here let me beg that Angelina will resist with her might getting into the bad habit of putting her boots on and buttoning them on her nice cretonne chair covers. I mean the habit of putting the foot up on the chairs while she fastens the buttons. I once had a visitor staying with me who cut out a whole set of chair cushions in the month or six weeks she was with me; and I discovered she had brass tips to her heels, and these had cut out tiny holes all over the cushions, spoiling them utterly; all because she had acquired this very bad habit. If Angelina cannot button her boots without this action, she should take care never to put her heel on the chair; to keep to one for the process; and, if possible, to put down something, if only a scrap of paper, under the toe of the boot, which must soil the cushion, even if it do nothing worse.

I have in my time suffered so much from careless and inconsiderate visitors that I cannot help giving these little hints on which any newly married girl can act if she will. Example speaks louder than precept, and if Angelina scouts such actions herself, she influences her servants, and suggests to her visitors tidy habits, that may benefit her later on, if not on the first visit. I shall never forget one dreadful visitor I had—a visitor who was possessed of the damp, unpleasant hobby of searching in ditches and hedge-bottoms for clammy and awful things which she insisted on bringing home and investigating by the aid of a microscope. I should not have minded this one bit, if she had done it in a room we had, where the boys made messes, and that nothing could hurt; but I had just had my spare room done up, and the effect was so terrible I have never forgotten it to this day. It was such a pretty flowery room, too, that it deserves a word of description. The effect was purple and green, and the paper was guelder-roses and heliotrope—not at all a bad mixture of colour, remember, and one that lights up well; the paint was all the dull Japanese green varnished that is not arsenical; and that is very artistic, and by great good luck I found a charming French cretonne of the same style and almost the same pattern as the paper, and this I used as dado fixed with a dull green rail of ‘scantling,’ and as panels in the shutters and doors. I had a nice little brass bedstead, with a gold and white embroidered Liberty quilt trimmed round with ball fringe, and furniture, with gold, green, and blue and red tapestry covers on toilet, chest of drawers, and a new pincushion box covered with the same, and all trimmed with ball fringe. There was a nice new box-ottoman for hats and bonnets, a most useful possession for any one, especially if it be divided in two layers with a cheap tray, also covered with cretonne, new matting, and nice Liberty rugs on the floor, and several newly framed photographs on the walls; besides this there was a pretty table covered with plush, for a writing-table, duly furnished with blotter, inkstand, and wastepaper basket, &c.; a charming basket-chair, and two other chairs in pretty cretonnes, and odds and ends in the shape of ornaments. There were two gas brackets, so I did not have any candles in the room. I never have if I can help it; the servants are apt to light them and drop the grease about, so unless specially desired I never put candles anywhere, and I am more than thankful that in this case of which I am writing I did nothing of the kind, for my excellent housemaid came to me one morning when my friend was out ‘bog-trotting’—or whatever the word for the occupation is—and, with a face of horror, begged me to come into the spare room before Mrs. W. returned, as she really did not know how she was going to get it straight again.

Shall I ever forget my anguish! On the bed, on the top of the new quilt, were spread specimens of all the nastinesses she had collected; on the brass rail and hanging on the dado, on nails stuck in for the purpose, and from most of the picture-nails, were mounted ghastlinesses on sheets of paper that were drying in a fine breeze coming straight into the room, laden with any amount of September damp and mist; the oil from the microscope lamp was on every chair and every table, and a perfect regiment of muddy boots and bedraggled skirts, cast about everywhere, spoke volumes of the extent of Mrs. W.’s wardrobe, and her ingenuity in filling up every hole and corner of that new and once pretty room.

And all this was caused just by a little lack of thought and care for other people’s things, for, as I said before, we had, and generally have, a large unfurnished room, sacred to boys, where she could have done her worst and injured no one, for she might have nailed her nails and hung up specimens to her heart’s content, and only pleased the legitimate owners of that chamber. I also forgot to mention that on the newly painted mantelpiece was a row of bottles full of dirty water, all of which either leaked or else had been put down there, wet from the ditches from which they had been filled, and to find room for them all my ornaments had been dislodged and were missing. We found them afterwards in bits, more or less, at the bottom of the ottoman, the top of which was spoiled by being used as a ‘boot-rest’ for Mrs. W. when she either wished to button or unbutton those articles of attire. When she had left me I simply had to do that room at the cost of 5l. or 6l., which I did not want, naturally, to spend, but my friend has never been to stay with me again, and she never will. I have told this long story, which I did not mean to go in for when I began my chapter, to point out to Angelina another caution. When ‘things’ are once nice and in order they require incessant care, if Angelina has been carelessly brought up, and if she has not acquired really nice habits; but if she avoids messing and is duly careful, her possessions will last her years, and give very little trouble. One more thing to remember is that, unless the door be provided with a curtain suspended from one of Maple’s invaluable 7s. 9d. rods, nothing should induce Angelina to depend her dresses from crooks fixed into the doors. It spoils them, as they are exposed both to sun and dust, and the look of it is so unpleasantly suggestive of Bluebeard’s wives that this is a habit that cannot, I think, be too strongly condemned. Besides, I remember dresses being torn and spoiled by being shut into doors and then taken down without seeing they are shut in; which is an argument against hanging them there at all, even covered with a curtain. Still, in a small house and with a large amount of clothing, a door is sometimes very ‘handy’ as an overflow wardrobe, and then a curtain arranged as suggested above is a sine quâ non.