From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

I think it is a most excellent plan to have the bedrooms on one floor of a house furnished as much as possible alike; that is to say, if economy be an object, and also if, as in several houses I know, the rooms open out either on a square landing or into a corridor that leads past them all.

Of course, the papers need not be alike, neither need they all have cretonne dados; but the paint should harmonise, and so should the wall-coverings, while the curtains and carpets should be identically the same; as if one have to move, or the cretonnes shrink in the wash, and the carpets become worn in patches, one thing can be made to supplement the other, and so a large outlay to replace old things—always the most worrying kind of outlay, I think—is avoided.

I have been constantly much entertained at seeing the shifts people have been put to to prevent things wearing out, but perhaps quite the most hideous thing seen in this way was a succession of extra bits of carpet edged all round with woolly black fringe to simulate mats, which were arranged on every spot on the carpet where especial wear could be expected, and these monstrosities were carefully put by each side of the bed, and in front of the looking-glass, washing-stand, and fireplace, with an especial tiny dab by the door. The consequence was that, when one was dressed for dinner in a long garment, all these mats were neatly rolled up in different corners of the room, and not only looked hideous, but were positively useless.

Now I see no use in preparing these species of save-alls in a room that is not always in use. If a thing be worn, then cover it; but I can’t bear anything to be covered over to be saved. Better let all fade decently together, and do your patching out of a second carpet or a second material that has already done duty in another room. It is useless, I think, to cover handsome things; much better rub down the gorgeousness and subdue the splendour altogether, for nothing looks worse or, in my eyes, more atrociously vulgar than a room utterly unlike one’s usual chamber, grandly prepared for the reception of ‘company.’ Once one’s acquaintances and friends are given satin chairs to sit on, instead of the usual cretonne, they become bores to me at least, and, unless they can be satisfied to see me as I always am, I would rather they stayed away. There is always a stiffness and uncomfortableness in any gathering to entertain which we have felt it necessary to uncover our chairs.

In the same way let us in our upper chambers wear our things out equally. Splashers have become almost unknown since the invention of the high tiled-backed washing-stands, and so in another way mats have ceased to exist because bath-rooms are now almost universal possessions, and as most people—I will not say all—know how to behave themselves in one’s house, there is no need even to put down the conventional square by the washing-stand that really was necessary when a washing-stand was one’s only chance of properly performing one’s ablutions.

Now most people have bath-rooms; but, if they have not, the bath can be prepared in the same way in the bedroom as described in our last chapter for the dressing-room.

I think every one who possibly can should possess something in the shape of a spare room, although, as I remarked in one of my former chapters, I have suffered so much from my visitors that I approach the subject feeling as if I at least could not have very much sympathy with it. And in no case will I advise any one to set apart for the use of the occasional visitor one of the best rooms in the house, as is far too often the case in those houses where the spare room should be either the nursery itself or a room for some of the children of the house! I have once or twice been literally so horrified at finding the room I should have at once given for the children set apart for visitors as a matter of course, and quite without a second thought, that I am compelled to speak rather more emphatically, perhaps, on this subject than I otherwise should do; but, after all, the house is the children’s home, and for their sake I must beg attention from those who, as a matter of course, take the best rooms themselves, the second and third best for visitors, and then any rooms that may be over for the little ones, keeping the worst of all for ‘the boys,’ as if boys were raging beasts, to be put out of sight and hearing as far as ever the limits of the house would allow. Whilst recognising that a spare room is a necessary and pleasant thing, at once, so as to disarm criticism, I must ask my kind, good readers to ponder for a moment on what putting aside the very best room for one’s friends means in an ordinary building where there are at the most three or four rooms on the floor above the ‘reception’ rooms, to use a house-agent’s term, which said term means a great deal more than perhaps meets the eye at first.

It means keeping empty, perhaps, three parts of the year the brightest and most cheerful apartments, and it means relegating the children to inferior rooms, which, with a little taste and common-sense, can be made pretty, comfortable, and charming for your friends, who come presumably to see you, and not to spend the best part of their time in their bedrooms, for if they do they may just as well have stopped at home.

Now there is a great deal, to my mind, that can be written about the ethics of visiting that insensibly calls for attention, when we ponder over that problem of a spare room, and that may perhaps not be out of place, so I dwell for a few moments upon them before going into the decorative details of this particular chamber. One of the latest fads of social life is to do away with introductions at parties, and another is to ask people to stay with us, and, from the moment they enter our doors to the moment they leave them, to go on with our own occupations and engagements, exactly as if we had no friends staying with us; or rather as if we kept an hotel, and the comings in and goings out of our guests had no more to do with us than have those of the people staying in an inn to the people who keep it.

Perhaps the position and the luxurious comfort of the chamber prepared for their reception—half sitting-room, half bedroom as it is—suggests to the guest more than it is meant to do, and therefore should be altered before hospitality has ceased from the face of the earth and become a mere empty mockery.