From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders

by J. E. Panton

And oh, what a contrast she was to the good old-fashioned nurse who came to me with No. 1! who had a routine and who kept to it, and who regarded all new ideas and thoughts as dangerous and ‘flying in the face of Providence,’ yet who was goodness and trustworthiness itself; but she was too old to learn that people differ, and what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and so made my life a burden to me because she could not understand that I was really and truly different in my tastes and likings to most of her other ladies, who loved to be fed constantly and be as constantly ‘waited on’ and looked after, while all I required was to be let alone in peace and quiet and fed rather less than most people. Still she was a dragon of watchfulness, and kept away all those small bothers which men can never refrain from bringing to their wives, regardless that at such times the smallest worry becomes gigantic, and assumes proportions that would be ludicrous, were they not really and truly very real; and have real effects too on the nerves and temper of the unfortunate invalid. And here let me say sternly, and as forcibly as I can, that the life of the ordinary house-mother has never been properly appreciated by the male sex; and, if at no other time can we obtain consideration and thought, it is imperative that for at least three weeks after the arrival of a baby the wife should have mental as well as bodily rest, and that she should be absolutely shielded from all domestic cares and worries. And every husband should be taught by the doctor and nurse combined that there is real and great need for the wife to be carefully kept from little worries and bothers, until she has regained her usual balance of health, and is able to hear with more equanimity of the death of some dear friend, maybe, than she was a few weeks before; to simply be told that cook had had a soldier to tea; and that there had been so much butter used in the kitchen that the Bankruptcy Court is in the near future.

Husbands are far too apt to say and think that the life of a woman is a mere giddy whirl of frocks and gaiety, that all the time he is ‘toiling in the City,’ or doing the equivalent of that in some other walk in life, she is airily fluttering from flower to flower, extracting all the sweetness she can out of it, and bitterly resents it should she be tired in the evening, or require a little lively talk, instead of hours of contemplation of a sleeping countenance, at which perchance she looks sadly, and wonders if she ever really did think it so good-looking, as she seems to remember she once did, in some far-off existence long since dead. But have men the smallest idea of what a never-ceasing, uninteresting work a woman’s far too often is? Men never can be acquainted with or realise—bless them!—the thousand worries a woman knows all too well; the abject fears for her children that always haunt her, the dread that Tommy’s whine may mean scarlet fever, or that Trixy’s temper indicates measles; the impatience with which she would fain greet the daily details of food and drink, and which she has to smother; the sordid arrangements with butcher and baker, and the endless trouble she has to keep the house nice, the children well, and the expenses down to the lowest sum she can possibly manage with, and all this is done within the walls of one house. A man’s work takes him far afield; he rubs his intellect against those of hundreds of other people daily. He goes to his ‘toil’ through amusing streets which always vary, and he has the grand excitement of being paid for his ‘toil,’ while the ordinary woman works on and on ceaselessly without pay, sometimes without thanks; and handicapped by indifferent health and nervous dread for her babies that no man—no man, I repeat, with a fine accent of scorn on the noun—can ever comprehend, much less appreciate in the least; gets through an amount of real positive labour, an account of which might astonish the husband, but which he would most certainly not believe in were it written out in plain words for his perusal, and placed before him. Of course, I am not writing about the ‘upper ten,’ about whose domestic arrangements I know nothing, and which, judging from the papers, are not always as successful as they might be. Here, no doubt, ladies spend their days in the ‘fluttering’ spoken of above, and may not earn their keep—to put the matter a little coarsely—but we ordinary folk cannot do much fluttering, even if we would; and I can but hope that men will realise what a woman’s work means for the future, and will take care she is really nursed and guarded, in a manner the husband alone can see is done, at a time when the brain should be allowed to rest, as well as the rest of the body.

A man cannot realise that a woman ever can have ambition—that she can sicken at the dusters and pudding-cloths that are supposed to be her proper occupation, that she does sometimes feel even a little bit better educated or cleverer than the clever creature who makes the money; and if only I can get one of the male sex to believe that we do sometimes want a little of his freedom, a little of his powers of money-making, a little of his ability to take a holiday unhaunted by never-ceasing dreads and fears of what awful ends the children are coming to at home in our absence, I shall not have lived in vain, particularly if at the same time he takes the double burden on his own shoulders, when his wife has presented him with a small son or daughter, and takes care that not even a whisper of the cook’s wickedness passes the bedroom door, until Materfamilias is able to bring her mind to bear upon a matter that can, no doubt, be explained as soon as the feminine intellect grapples with it.

And one more very serious word for the last on this subject: let Edwin bear in mind that much more care is needed with No. 5 or No. 6 than was ever bestowed at the time when No. 1 put the house in a stir, and altered all the domestic arrangements. Angelina is not so young as she was, dear soul; she is very tired. She is quite sure such a numerous family must bring her to the workhouse, and unless Edwin is goodness itself he may so depress and harass his wife by his depression that she may slip out of his fingers altogether, and leave him to himself, that most utterly to be pitied person on earth, a widower with young children, to find out what he has lost, and to realise all too late what he might have saved, had he remembered how desperately hard women do work, and how unending and never-ceasing is their toil; which has dulness as a background and utter sameness as a rule, as a drawback to its being satisfactorily performed.

Once let the nurse be secured for as early a date as one can conveniently do with her, there are the small garments to be seen to. These consist of very fine lawn shirts (12), long flannels (6 for day, of fine Welsh flannel; 4 for night, of rather a thicker quality), fine long-cloth petticoats (6), monthly gowns of cambric and trimmed with muslin embroideries on the bodices only (8), and nightgowns (8); besides this 4 head-flannels will be required, and a large flannel shawl to wrap the child in as it is taken from room to room; about six dozen large Russian diapers and six good flannel pilches. Three or four pairs of tiny woollen shoes complete the outfit, which may furthermore have added to it four good robes; but these I strongly advise no one to buy until it is time to talk about the christening, for relatives often present the baby with smart frocks; and as they are really worn very little, and cost a great deal of money, are not necessary, especially in the country, where really nice monthly gowns are good enough for any baby; and the smart robes tempt young mothers to adopt the pernicious custom of low necks and short sleeves, making these even shorter by tying them up on the small shoulders with gay ribbons, that soon find their way into the little mouths. Even in smart low-necked frocks I always had a species of long-sleeved, extra high bodice tacked; for, apart from the appearance of the small skinny arms and necks of most young babies, I consider it suicidal of any mother to condemn her children to a style of dress that is about as unsuitable to our climate as anything well can be. I should put even a tiny baby into a high fine flannel vest. I always make the long flannel barra-coats with three pleats in the bodices back and front, and line the stay bodices with flannel, thus reducing the chance of colds greatly; and I live in hopes of seeing in a very short time the total disappearance of low dresses everywhere; for to my mind this is a custom as foolish and indecent as any we still retain from our savage ancestors. Besides the clothes enumerated above, four or five strips of flannel about six inches wide, herring-boned each side, and about eighteen inches long, will be required, and six swathes to roll round the infant and give support to the back; this, new-fashioned doctors try to dispense with, but from long experience I am convinced these binders are a most important portion of a young baby’s attire.

The basket should contain a complete set of baby’s things ready aired, and furthermore a skein of whitey-brown thread, a new pair of scissors, a pot of cold cream, pins, safety pins, and some old pieces of linen; and the young mother will do wisely if she has the long pieces of Russian diaper used as hand-towels for some three or four months before taking them for the baby, as this softens them and makes them much better for the nurse’s use. All these things should be in readiness quite two months before they are required, and should be placed, with a large mackintosh sheet, two old blankets, and three coarse ‘blanket-sheets,’ where, should they be required in a hurry, they can be found at once. Attention to these particulars and directions saves fuss and worry and often prevents danger.

These matters seen to, the young wife may now turn her mind to the arrangement of her own chamber, which she should do her very best to make as pretty as she can; or she should carefully look at the rooms at her disposal and see which will be the nicest and most cheerful for her to occupy; for there is really no need, unless we like, for the event to take place in the room usually occupied, and, if preferred, a pretty room might be got ready beforehand; but, if this be impossible, at least all the washing and toilet apparatus might depart, and some tables and low pretty chairs and a sofa, books and plants, replace the washing-stand and toilet-table, that can be relegated to another room until Angelina is herself again. Taking into consideration that, as an enterprising advertiser remarks, one half one’s time is spent in one’s bedroom, we cannot possibly take too much care about them to have them nice and pretty; for I am convinced one comes down to one‘s day’s work far better tempered from a pretty and convenient room, than one does from an ugly, inconvenient place, where we have worn ourselves out in hunting for our properties, or been worried by contemplating hideous papers and draperies, and ugly conventional walls without pictures or decoration of any kind; while if one has to be ill, and, what is more, has to contemplate a long period of convalescence in one spot, one cannot too carefully select one’s surroundings, for there is no doubt that one’s mind acts insensibly on one’s body, and that one’s convalescence is a great deal more advanced or retarded, as the case may be, than we think for by our surroundings; therefore, I am sure we shall not be wasting our time if we think a good deal about the arrangement of a room where the young mother will have to spend at least three weeks, and where she will remain a much more willing prisoner, if she is not harassed and worried by a bedroom where she cannot have any of her usual surroundings, and where the bedroom aspect of the chamber predominates over everything else, so preventing any visitors to her, save of the most intimate and personal kind possible. I do hope that the queer notion that nurse ought to sleep in the room with her patient has almost, if not quite, died out. I never could make out why this was considered necessary, unless in very severe cases, where sitting up is thought of consequence; and even then (though it sounds Irish I can’t help saying it) the nurse could take her rest in another room, leaving some one else to sit up in turn; for I know nothing more truly irritating than to see a second bed in the room, and to feel the eternal presence of a stranger, who might just as well be snugly resting in the adjacent dressing-room, where she could be reached quite as well by ringing a small bell, that could stand on the table by the side of the bed, as she is by a call from the patient, whose voice is sure to be none of the strongest.

I have often marvelled at the way people bear these small worries, and never turn their minds towards relieving themselves of them. I suppose we are most of us too conventional, and cannot get out of our grooves easily, but I am quite sure from experience that no one requires a nurse during the night in an ordinary case, and that one’s comfort is mightily increased by seeing her depart into the dressing-room, with or without the baby, as fires or other matters are arranged, and to know she will not return until the next morning unless she has been rung for; and then her departure leaves room for far more decoration than would otherwise be possible, for, if the house is conveniently built, and the dressing-rooms or nurseries are near enough to be available, I should turn out all the bedroomy furniture into other rooms, and replace this with some of the sitting-room furniture, only retaining the bed, which in its turn can retire behind a screen when the sofa, is taken to, and convalescence has really and truly begun.

To do this satisfactorily, the bed must be specially thought about, and should be provided with an extra lot of frilled and monogramed pillow-cases; these are removed at night, and their presence, and that of a nice piece of linen, frilled and worked too, and fashioned in such a way that it appears like a frilled sheet, in the morning, is almost as good as a complete change of linen, without any bustle. The eider-down should be removed, and placed in another room to be aired, and the bed should be covered with one of the beautiful embroidered quilts which should be in every one’s possession.

These quilts are copies of old work done by our grandmothers; or else are embroidered in the red and blue ‘Russian-work,’ and are lined with a coloured sateen or Bolton sheeting; they can be edged with lace, worked with coloured threads to match, or by a band of the sateen over which a coarse lace is turned; these quilts make any couch ornamental at once. Of course the toilet-covers must correspond, and the towels should be marked in similar colours, and should in some measure repeat the prevailing tints of the bedroom itself, which is not complete without both books and growing plants in pots, nor without some convenient light. A good lamp can be placed on a bracket, if gas is disliked; or a good bracket lamp in beaten iron can be fixed in the wall just above the bed, or to one side thereof; and great comfort is found from either a wall-pocket made from a Japanese fan and plush, or a big bag of plush strung from the brass end of the bed, to contain one’s handkerchief, keys, pencil, letters from the post, and the odds and ends that will accumulate, and, furthermore, will lose themselves in a most peculiar and aggravating manner, unless one has a distinct place to put them in from whence they cannot possibly stray; while I again repeat that no ‘bedroomy’ atmosphere must be allowed, and that every medicine bottle, towel, basin, sponge, &c., must be taken away out of the room the moment they are done with, and that the sick-room must be looked upon for the time being as much as possible in the light of a sitting-room, where friends can come, and where life can go on smoothly and pleasantly, without being reminded every five minutes that one is laid aside, and unable to feel or look pleasant and like oneself. I wonder, too, if other people know how useful a good heliotrope shade is for one’s dressing-gown, and the short flannel jacket that should be one’s day attire until the dressing-gown can be put on and one can lie on the sofa? These dressing-jackets, or more properly ‘bed-gowns,’ are simply invaluable—in winter especially, when one’s arms do get so cold in the ordinary nightdress, and when the dressing-gown proper is a distinct nuisance; and they should be wadded, and of fine heliotrope cashmere with a soft fall, and frill of either torchon or yak lace, and are most becoming to any one. The arms should be lined with wadding too; and, in fact, they are just what one requires before one gets up, as they save the dressing-gown from the inevitable crushing that is its portion if we wear it in bed, while we have the required warmth over the chest, which would not otherwise be ours, for reading or writing or using one’s arms at all always disturbs the bedclothes in a most tiresome manner, which does not trouble us when we are possessed of the proper short jacket.