From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

Here would, of course, come in once more the need of training, but why should children rise at early dawn, and make grown-up people’s lives a burden to them? They will not if properly trained, and this training becomes possible when the nurseries are on the same floor as their mother’s room, though a good big room can and should be had in our perfect house for tournaments, steeplechases, and theatrical performances when the elders begin to grow up and learn duly how to amuse themselves, while it is not necessary for Angelina to be always in and out of her nurseries, worrying her nurse to death, when our prize arrangement is possible, because she will be near enough to know nothing goes wrong; which, if she be sharp and acute, she will discover quite quickly enough for herself from the looks of the children and the general atmosphere without always ‘poking about,’ as the servants call it, to see how matters are. But all this must be begun at the beginning, and with No. 1, if she wishes to be really happy; therefore she should be quite sure of her monthly nurse, and be ready with her facts at her fingers’ ends for this worthy, who, like every one else nowadays, has so improved in her ways and manners as to be a real comfort and pleasure, and can teach Angelina lessons of patience, neatness, and excellent management that will be worth a Jew’s eye if she is lucky enough to get a good nurse; but forewarned is forearmed, and so let the berceaunette be ready, and let Angelina insist on this being used if she wishes to have peace in her nursery after the monthly nurse has departed, and the ordinary routine of life begins once more.

But, before I touch upon the subject of the monthly nurse, I want to impress upon my readers that, though the nursery is undoubtedly a kingdom, where the children can do pretty much as they like providing they do not get into mischief, and that they remember that, being ladies and gentlemen in embryo, they must behave as ‘sich,’ they yet must look upon the nursery as a lesson-ground, where good seed can be sown, and one of the first lessons to teach any one, child or small maid, is to be gentle and quiet. I never could understand why children cannot be happy without yelling at the top of their voices, and servants without stamping about in heavy boots, slamming doors, and shouting to each other; and one of the first things I always impress on all my household is that loud shrieks and strident voices are not allowed from any one. I have actually had my life rendered a burden to me sometimes by neighbours’ offspring, whose one end and aim in life seemed to me to see who could scream loudest (I don’t mean cry, by the way, but simply yell at the top of their voices, for the pleasure of hearing them, I suppose); and remembering that we as children never were allowed to indulge in a pastime that would have seriously impaired our father’s powers of working—that we were perfectly happy, although we were not permitted to shriek—I have had none of this elegant amusement in my nursery, and we have found ourselves extremely comfortable without it; and this same discipline of gentleness and quiet is also valuable in keeping a room nice and being able to have pretty things in it.

Why should children be destructive and untidy? A good nurse soon sees they are not, and by giving the dear things nice surroundings you do your best to insure nice tastes, though, of course, some untidy, tasteless ancestor may crop out suddenly and utterly confound all one’s theories, by giving us a child who will not learn the proper colours to harmonise with each other, the while he or she puts boots on the beds, and leaves a room looking as if hay had just been made therein.

But with children, as with everything else, one can but do one’s best and utmost for them, never relaxing one’s care and trouble—and one can do no more. They are sure to come right in the end somehow, although we cannot quite see how. And so, regardless of the ravages of boys and small maids, I go on making my house pretty, and hope by silent example to do yet more than I have already done towards humanising both of these riotous elements in one’s household; for boys should not be the tyrants they undoubtedly are, and should learn easily that things have a right to respect as well as people.

I am a great advocate for the silent teaching, too, of really good pictures on the nursery walls. I do not like the idea of any rubbish being good enough for there, any crudely coloured, badly designed Christmas number atrocity being pinned up with pins or small nails, and called ‘pretty, pretty’ to some baby, who, I am thankful to say, not unseldom pulls it down and soon reduces it to the end it so richly deserves. Often a good picture is full of teaching to a thoughtful child. Excellent photographs can now be bought very cheaply, and some etchings are not too dear, but all should be carefully selected, either for the lesson or pleasant story they tell, for no one knows how much early impressions do for children, save those who vividly remember the small things that influenced themselves in their extreme youth, and are thus enabled to use their experience for their own or other people’s children; a lovely photograph of moonlight on the sea, for example, having given me personally more pleasure as a child, than any amount of dolls ever did, although I was heartily attached to them, and loved them as few children do now in these highly educated days of ours.

Why, I remember we had quite a serious revolt in our schoolroom once, over this very picture subject. We as children were exceptionally lucky in our surroundings, and our schoolroom was hung with really good engravings of excellent pictures, many of them proofs of Sir Edwin Landseer’s, while many of our father’s works were there too, at which we were never tired of looking. I don’t think any one, save an artist’s children, could ever feel towards these said engravings quite as we did, for, being in a good many of them at all sorts of stages, we felt really the proprietorship in them that only the author is supposed to feel, while we were never tired of remembering the odds and ends of stories connected with the progress of each picture; and made other histories, too, for ourselves out of the motionless creatures that we were once, but out of whose knowledge we had so quickly grown: and then to hear that all these sources of our inspiration were to be torn from us, and what for? why, because in an educational frenzy maps were supposed to be better for us, and more in keeping in the schoolroom; and therefore our beloved pictures were to be put elsewhere to give place, forsooth, to glazed monstrosities, the very colours of which, crude greens and pinks and yellows, were enough to cause an æsthetic fever; although in those days æstheticism was a thing unknown, undescribed too, in any dictionary!

But an appeal to a higher power brought the pictures back, and the maps were rolled up above them, and only allowed to fall over them at such times as they were required to show their ugly faces to us in a geography lesson; a subject I have detested, I am sorry to say, simply because, I verily believe, of the rage we were in when we heard our dear pictures were to be taken from us!

I cannot help digressing, dear readers, when I think how happy children may be, and how miserable they are too often made by their over-kind, very foolish parents. We were let alone a great deal as children, mercifully, and taught that if we wanted amusement we must find it in ourselves; and I can never be too thankful for an education that has enabled me, with only a small cessation, to be happy always in my own company, without the everlasting craving for information as to ‘What shall I do?’ If we used to make this most aggravating inquiry, we did not do it twice, and soon discovered that we could make occupations for ourselves without driving our elders nearly mad in the process. Children cannot too early learn to amuse themselves, and therefore great care should be taken by parents that they have the means for this, the while the children do not know much care is taken, and are shown—what children are so seldom shown nowadays—that they are not the head and front of the household, and that something is due to the bread-winners and managers of the establishment, as well as to themselves.

I am sure good pictures are, therefore, or ought to be, indispensable in all nurseries, while the moment a child is old enough to inhabit a separate room, he or she should be encouraged to the utmost to begin to care for the surroundings, and to carefully collect pretty things around them, for in after life each thing so collected will be as a link to a precious past, and serve to remind them of happy times, that may influence their whole life if properly remembered and looked back upon. This is another hint for parents, especially for young parents. A child’s mind is a curious thing (or at least mine was, and I am speaking, as I always speak, from actual experience), and receives certain memories in the shape of pictures. My memory always seems to me like a room hung round with paintings, and I recollect each incident of my life as one remembers a picture one has once seen and never forgotten. I have but to think for a moment, and I see—don’t faint, please, I was only three; I am not quite a Methuselah, though it will sound like it—I see the Duke of Wellington riding along with bowed shoulders, and putting his hand, or rather his fingers, up to his hat every few seconds in answer to every one’s respectful bows. I see flash by from our play-place on ‘the leads’—the best play-place in the world; now, alas! no more—the royal carriage with four grey horses and the scarlet-jacketed riders, and I see the Queen in a hideous plaid-flounced frock and large bonnet, and the Prince Consort, and two big boys, drive by to look at some one’s pictures in our neighbourhood; and I remember seeing two ‘Bloomers,’ followed by jeering boys, turn round the corner by our house, and remember quite well how sorry I felt for the stupid women, although I had profound contempt for their louder assertions of women’s rights. Now I remember a great deal more than this, of course, but I mention these three things to illustrate what I mean about the pictures memory can paint; and to show that it is a parent’s duty to provide the children with such mental pictures as shall always be a pleasure and, if possible, a profit to contemplate. Let the children see in reason all they possibly can. You can influence a child’s present, but, once it is grown up, you cannot touch its future. You can see your children have a pleasant series of pictures connected with their childhood at any rate, and by making your child observe, and by showing it pleasant things, you will give it a richer store of wealth than anything else could do. Whenever we went out with our mother she always did this. ‘Remember,’ she said to me, ‘that you have seen the Duke of Wellington,’ and, though I was three only, I have never forgotten him. Look at that beautiful colour; see yonder field of wheat; look at the sea. No preaching here—but somehow the words stay by one, and insensibly one learns to notice, and from this pass to the possession of mental treasures nothing takes from us.

But we must have a certain amount of enterprise, and never, never neglect an opportunity, and we must see all we can, either as children or grown-up people. Why, I have known people go to the seaside for six weeks, and sit on the beach, morning after morning, because every one else did, regardless of the fact that all round the place itself lay lovely scenery and marvellously interesting country, into which they actually had not the energy to penetrate. Think of the opportunities wasted by them—the opportunities we all waste if we allow a day to pass by while we shut our eyes and will not see for ourselves the new things that come every morning for the observant ones among us! And do not let your children exist ignorant of the thousand and one throbbing historical events by which they are surrounded. Better spend your money on showing them good pictures, beautiful scenery, celebrated men and places, than on aimless gaiety, idiotic balls, and smart clothes and expensive food; and above all let them have a bright, happy childhood among charming surroundings. Believe me, you will give them a better inheritance than if you had fed them and dressed them luxuriously, and had laid up a large fortune for them.