I have had twenty years’ experience of household management. I have had three cooks in the time, and have never had a maid give me ‘warning’; and though, no doubt, some day I shall find servants a ‘bother,’ because they will get married, and I cannot expect to keep mine all their lives, I think my twenty years of success entitle me to lay down the law on the subject of the management of one’s maids just a little. But, lest my readers should tire of the subject, I will pass on to the nurseries, which, after all, are much more interesting to the young housekeeper.
CHAPTER XV.
THE NURSERIES.
There are several things of course to be considered in the first choice of a nursery, and, unfortunately, in far too many cases economy has to be considered even before what is really and actually good for a child’s health. ‘Economy: how I dislike that word!’ remarked a plaintive friend, actually of the sterner sex, and how I agree with him only my own soul knows; but economy is a stern, a hard fact, and above all has it to be considered when expenses begin to advance by ‘leaps and bounds,’ and Edwin regards the future, across the berceaunette, most dolefully; and thinking over school bills and doctors’ bills, much in the distance yet, but steadily advancing towards him, begins to wonder how two hands are to do it all, and whether he had not better at once look up all the papers he can possess himself of that relate to State emigration. It is hard for me to keep the ‘juste milieu,’ for I am really possessed by the idea of good nurseries; and when I recollect how much money is wasted on keeping up appearances, and also in retaining that ‘spare room,’ I almost feel inclined to throw prudence to the winds, and declare that two good nurseries are as imperative for one child as I believe in my heart they are. And, really, even in the orthodox suburban villa, with its four or five bedrooms, this accommodation can be found, if only Angelina uses her senses, and really desires to do her best for her little ones. But this is not always the case, I am sorry to say, and there is no doubt that in most houses the position of the nurseries is a subject of very small interest. So long as it is tolerably out of the way, and, in fact, ‘far from humanity’s reach,’ most parents are quite satisfied, and ask little else than that their ears may not be assaulted by cries, and their china shaken to its very foundations by little feet rushing and jumping overhead in a way that is undoubtedly trying to the nerves, but is very delightful to those who see in such noises ample evidence of the health and good spirits of the small folk who are making them.
Perhaps, however, the ‘demon builder,’ the cause of so very many of our domestic woes and worries, is as much to blame as the people who take the houses he runs up for us. Still, demand creates supply, and I cannot help thinking that, if the British matron insisted on nurseries as well as the regulation ‘three reception-rooms’ of the house-agents’ lists, in time we should be provided with large airy chambers, as much a matter of course as the bath-room of recent years, that, once conspicuous by its absence, in now a sine quâ non in even tiny houses built for clerks, and rented at about 30l. a year.
I am very much divided in in my mind as to the manner in which to write this chapter, as I cannot determine whether to describe an ideal nursery—the nursery in which we were all brought up—or the orthodox nursery, made out of the worst bedroom in the house, the one farthest away from the sitting-rooms, and where nothing is considered save how to prevent any visitors’ ears being assailed with shouts, and their nerves tried by sudden bangs immediately overhead. I am not in the least exaggerating when I say that, especially in London, the very top rooms in a tall house are those set aside for the little ones, Pass along any of our most fashionable squares and thoroughfares, and look up at the windows. Where are the necessary bars placed that denote the nurseries? Why, at the highest windows of all. My readers can notice this for themselves, and can say whether I am right or wrong. And how often do we not find an excellent spare room in a house where two, or perhaps even more, children are stuffed into one room that is day and night nursery combined, while half the year the best chamber is kept empty, sacred to an occasional guest, whose presence should never be courted at all in a house not large enough to allow of there being two nurseries for the children’s own use. I am the very last person in the world to make children into miniature tyrants; I do not allow mine to engross the conversation or to be in evidence at all hours of the day. They do not behave as if they were grown up at an early age, neither do they go out to luncheon or tea perpetually, thus becoming blasé before their time. They are frankly children, and are treated as such, and I feel it rather necessary to say this at the outset, for fear my readers may feel constrained to write and tell me (after what I have said above) I have fallen into the prevailing error of the day, and make my children a nuisance to themselves and every one else by spoiling them; for, despite the usual position of the nursery, there is no doubt that children will soon cease to exist at all, and will become grown-up men and women before they have changed their teeth.
Despite the position of the nurseries, did I say? Nay, surely rather should I write because of the position of the nurseries, which are so far off that the mother scarcely ever climbs up to them, and in consequence has her children downstairs with her in and out of season, until they gradually absorb the grown-up atmosphere and become little prigs who care nothing for a romp, and object to going into the country for the summer because the country is so very dull, and have their own opinions, pretty freely expressed too, about their clothes and the cooking at their own or their friends’ houses.
I feel I may perhaps be accused of being hard on the child of the period, but I confess openly the child of the period is my pet detestation—poor little soul!—not because of its personality as a child, but because it is such a painful subject for contemplation. I cannot bear to see poor innocent babies dressed out to imitate old pictures, with long skirts sweeping the ground, because they are picturesque, with bare arms and wide lace collars, and manners to match; who go out perpetually to luncheon and tea-parties, and who, do they happen to be passably good-looking, are worshipped by a crowd of foolish women until the conversation is engrossed by the child, who very soon becomes an intolerable nuisance; who cannot play because of its absurd skirt, and will grow up the useless, affected, selfish, ball-loving girl that is the terror of every mother who recognises that life has duties as well as pleasures, and hopes that her daughters will do some good work in a world where the harvest is indeed plenteous and the labourers few.
To have good and healthy children it is positively necessary to have good and healthy nurseries, and as soon as Angelina becomes the proud possessor of her first baby she should seriously and soberly consider the great nursery question. Of course she will have thought of it before the tyrant arrives, but so much depends on different small things that she will not seriously and definitely determine what to do until she sees what her nurse is like, and whether she is to have the baby at night or to hand it over to somebody else.
I could write pages about people’s first babies, poor little things! What experiments are tried on them in the way of hygienic and stupid clothes, the patent foods, the ghastly tins of milk, and the fearful medicines! I do not believe one young mother exists who has not her own special theories about babies, and who does not scorn proudly the experience so freely offered her by her mother, who has brought up a family, and may therefore be supposed to know something of children, or by her numerous friends who have all made a more or less successful effort in the same direction. And, between ourselves, I have often wondered how any first child ever grows up, so wonderful are the trials it goes through, so marvellous are the plans tried, to insure that perfection that each Angelina in turn thinks lies latent in the small red squalling person that makes such a remarkable change in all the household arrangements all at once.