From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

It may be terribly bad for such a thing to happen in our new sweet room, but, however horrid it is for us, let us all recollect it is just one thousand times worse for the unfortunate ‘sick and ill,’ as the children say; for, in addition to his or her own pain and sufferings, he has the mental agony of knowing he has committed the one unpardonable sin, and that he has dared to fall sick in some one else’s house, that he is some miles from his own doctor (and who believes, I should like to know, in any one’s doctor except one’s very own?), and that servants, hostess, and host are all vowing vengeance on him for his untoward behaviour.

But it is on such occasions as this that the hostess rises to the occasion, shows her real self, and demonstrates the true lengths to which a hospitable soul will go. She laughs his apologies to scorn, declares she loves nursing, and so manages that the convalescent blesses the hour when he fell ill under such tender handling, and in consequence improves twice as soon as he otherwise would have done, had he fretted and worried over the bother he was giving, and had he been shown plainly he was as great a nuisance as he undoubtedly is.

I am not writing on this subject ‘without book,’ as the saying is. Naturally we should all exclaim indignantly, We should all do our very best for any one who falls ill under our care; and you, most of you, smile at me, doubtless, for daring to insinuate you would not; but I know cases where, especially to relatives, the hostess’s conduct was so chillingly all it ought to be, so freezingly polite, so intent on perpetually telling the unfortunate he was no trouble at all, in a martyr’s voice, that disclosed all her words sought to conceal, that I must be forgiven if I say it needs real Christian charity, and the heart and temper of a saint, to show real hospitality when sickness happens; and it will not do any harm for any of us to contemplate circumstances in which we may all of us some day be placed.

One other special thing to remember as regards the spare room is that it must always be in such order that, if necessary, it can be ready for occupation in half an hour. I knew a most excellent housekeeper who, scarcely before the last box of her friend had been carried downstairs, had put her room into ‘curl-papers’ as it were, carefully banishing everything from the light of day until such times as it was necessary to prepare the chamber once more, with much ceremony, for a new-comer.

Now I much object to this sort of thing. When I have brought a pleasant visit to an end in a friend’s house, it gives me a positive pang to see the pillows bereft of their cases and the bed of its sheets, and all covered over with a species of holland pinafore. I hate to see the toilet-covers taken off and folded up; and though this may be done when I am not there to see, it gives me such an unpleasant feeling that I never have the courage to put my spare room to bed; a room shrouded, gloomy, and unoccupied in a house always seeming to me like the unpleasant corpse of bygone pleasure, and as such to be strenuously avoided.

Then another reason, besides the mere sentimental one of disliking to see that one’s visit is really over and done with, is that such a dismantling of the room often puts it out of one’s power to entertain a sudden or unexpected guest, who comes down perhaps to dinner, and would be glad to spend the night, that may have turned out wet or cold, or that pleasantest of all pleasant visits, the Saturday to Monday sojourn, becomes impossible too, for it is not worth while to get the room ready for such a short time, when so much of Saturday would be taken up in airing the beds, and unpinning and putting up curtains, and shaking out toilet-covers, &c.

Now if the room be always straight, and requires nothing but the sheets on the bed, there is no trouble in the matter, and we are neither flurried ourselves nor allow our guests to be uncomfortably conscious that their arrival has made any difference to our domestic arrangements at all. I am quite sure, too, that it is a most excellent thing for most people to have some one staying in the house with them occasionally; much, secretly, as I dislike it myself, excusing myself to myself for my boorishness by saying my work prevents me being really able to entertain my visitors, still I never part with a guest without quite as secretly acknowledging that it has done us all an immense amount of good to be shaken out of our grooves—ay, even if our own special chair has been taken, and the newspapers read and the magazines cut before I have looked at them, another fad of mine, for, entre nous, nothing tries my otherwise angelic temper more than for some one to read out choice bits of news before I have seen them myself, or to read all the magazines before I have carefully gone over them, peeping at the pictures, and reading here and there a scrap, before settling down to them regularly one after the other.

One cannot help recognising these evil habits even in one’s own self, and knowing that nothing makes a person more selfish, and therefore more unendurable, than to have no one to interfere with one’s puerile little fancies and equally puerile little rules and regulations! In a small household rules and regulations that touch the servants, of course, must be simply ‘Median and Persian,’ or the house would never get along at all; but it puts no one out except ourselves, should we have to take the left side of the fireplace instead of the right, and it does us more good than I can say to have to control our small irritations at having our routine of life broken into, and to be shown that the world will not stop if we do go out in the morning instead of the afternoon, and that nothing appalling will happen should we be obliged to talk at breakfast, instead of, as usual, burying ourselves in our letters and our papers generally.

A constant supply of guests for the night, or on the Saturday-to-Monday principle, insures a constant change in our ideas and thoughts, and does away with that ‘Englishman’s house is his castle’ notion that is so very pernicious, and that puts a stop to so much inexpensive and common-sense hospitality; while a new, cheerful face at the dinner-table relieves the strain of domesticity between husband and wife, and often insures a game of chess, or music, instead of the books and silence which would otherwise, perhaps, have been the order of the day.

Another thing also to recollect about the spare room, too, is, not to get into the habit of using the shelves and drawers in the wardrobe as a species of store-place. I know nothing more enraging than to be shown into a charming-looking room, with a beautiful great cupboard, and a gallant chest of drawers, that seem to promise us ample breathing-room for one’s things, and to discover half the space we were so very gleefully looking forward to appropriating is already taken up by all sorts and conditions of household plenishing, or of last year’s garments, or even the garments of the year before. I remember quite well once having such a receptacle turned out for me; and I saw carried away, the hostess’s wedding dress and veil of some ten years back, all the long clothes and short clothes of the babies, small and great, several venerable opera-cloaks and fans, and, finally, a store of old linen put by against emergencies. You can all of you imagine what I endured. Not that I should have asked for this to be done, by the way, but the maid came in to take my boxes, and I was obliged to say I could not part with them, because if I did I should have nowhere to put my belongings. Of course this insured the shelves being cleared, with the uncomfortable result to me described above. I never dared ask what had become of all I had turned out, but I cut my visit short and went on somewhere else, I felt so unhappy at thinking of all the unfortunate garments bereft of their usual resting-place.