I think anyone who has ever owned a dolls’-house will admire my idea for a fixed one, because all who have ever possessed a similar abode must have occasionally pulled it down about the ears when engaged in an orthodox game with this most fascinating toy, at least it used to be fascinating in my day; judging from my two girls no one can care now for them, for the beauty we had has long since gone to a hospital, owing to the absolute indifference with which its many charms were treated by our children. But if there still exist any small maidens who treat their houses as we used to, I am sure this arrangement of cupboard shelves with a real house front and a flap to let down, properly painted of course like a hall door, with windows above, must commend itself to them. The flap makes a table for dolls’ meals and parties, and is very useful for house cleaning, which delightful occupation invariably occurred in my day every Saturday regularly; but then we used to cover up our furniture with dust-sheets when we went to the seaside, and, furthermore, always deposited our wills in the drawing-room bureau under the same adventurous and dangerous circumstances, sealing the house at one side with the device of a dove bearing an olive-branch in its mouth, so that we might be quite sure profane hands had not meddled with our house or our possessions during our absence. I do not know if in these grown-up days of ours, and of competitive examinations and women’s rights, there is time or inclination either for elaborate games, such as we used to play over the dolls’-house, but I hope there is, as nothing is more truly engaging than such a possession, for which netting new curtains, and making new furniture, even occupied the boys, while, of course, we were never tired of altering and arranging and making too. Little as I work or care for working, I am sure I should enjoy making a Berlin-wool carpet now for someone‘s dolls’-house, only, unfortunately, I don’t know anyone who has one. I should not require a pattern; I remember the black diamonds accurately, each diamond being filled with a different coloured wool, making a tout ensemble to be feared, indeed, in these æsthetic days of ours.
Many a wet afternoon has been happily passed in washing and ‘getting up’ our net curtains for the windows, in rearranging them and tying them up with ribands bought at Whiteley’s, when it was one wee shop served by the Universal Provider himself and two girls, for which we saved our money; and I sincerely believe my first love of decoration and adornment of the house was fostered, if it were not born, of the intense attachment I had for my dolls’-house, at the desk of which I wrote my first attempt at poetry—and very awful it was—and to whose sheltering care I confided many a packet of MSS., which I was always going to submit to a publisher, but which paucity of stamps kept safely in the dolls’-house until I was old enough to know what utter rubbish I had written, and how worthily it would have been rapidly entombed in the waste-paper basket.
Below the dolls’-house illustrated there is a drawer, which can hold any amount of odds and ends, and of course the whole side of the room could be dolls’-house if cupboard space were not required, but, as it may be, the cupboard is shown above the house, decorated with a spray of flowers, painted by someone who knows how to paint; not by any amateur dauber, for you must never allow bad art in your nursery, even if you know it will have to be done away with in a comparatively short time. The other side of the fireplace can be another cupboard; this should be treated exactly like the one shown, of course without the dolls’-house. This will give ample space for all the nursery belongings, for no one should be allowed to hoard, though a certain amount of rubbish should always be winked at, but broken toys and torn books should be mended and patched—capital work that for wet days—and should always be sent off to the omnivorous Sisters at Kilburn, who can use anything, it doesn’t matter what, and who will welcome as treasures what the children will no longer use; therefore nothing should be thrown away. Nurses and children alike all enjoy mending and making for the Kilburn orphans, if only they are told about them and asked to take an interest in the good work done there. I have looked about all over London, I think, since writing my first book to find a suitable floor-covering for the nursery, and have not satisfied myself quite that I have done it. I cannot like or in any way advise linoleum there. It is cold, ugly, and there is an undeniable odour about it that never leaves it, and therefore I do not like to see it in a room which should always be as pretty as we can make it. I think, therefore, it is best to buy a square carpet, with either a border or else a good woollen fringe round, and put this down over carpet felt. Wallace’s ‘blue anemone’ Brussels carpet, at 3s. 11d. a yard, would wear some years, or a cheaper carpet still might be had in the ‘blue lily,’ at 3s. 9d., wide width; but I should prefer the Brussels for really hard wear. The staining round the room should not be more than 12 inches wide, and should be done with Jackson’s varnish stains. When the stained boards begin to get shabby the nursemaid can paint them over herself with some stain, and they can be kept in order by a weekly polish from the stuff sold by Jackson for the purpose. Half a gallon of the stain is sufficient for a margin round a good-sized room. This would cost 6s., and proper directions for applying the stains are sent out with them. Personally, I prefer the dark oak or walnut stain to any of the others. There should never be a hearth-rug in any room; but I must again state this in connection with the nursery, it would only cause accidents, and would serve at least to conceal the depredations of a careless nursemaid, who cannot refrain from making that portion of the carpet filthy with carelessness when she is doing the grate if she should be provided with a rug with which to cover up her sins. The carpet can be turned round to ensure equal wear if the square is made as suggested, and should last quite ten years, which is as long as any carpet should be allowed to last, in my opinion; an older carpet being a repository of dirt and dust, and therefore cannot be healthy, a reason why I should never advocate very expensive carpets, as I much prefer to be able to have a new one without too much exertion on my part, especially in bedrooms, and in such rooms as nurseries and schoolrooms.
I am, however, again describing a nursery, and this instead of calmly discussing how best to do away with it; but I will make a confession here, and then I fear I shall show how bad an advocate I should prove were I called in to advise how best to do away with this room, which in all real homes is the very heart of the household. For be it known to my readers, that, as my youngest child was eight years old, I determined, Spartan-like, to do away with the nursery, and converted the room into a sitting and sleeping room for my nurse, who was henceforth to act as maid; the young person, who was as her own baby, being taken from her and sent to share her sister’s rooms, one of which was to be part school, part sitting room; but we were all so uncomfortable I had no heart to continue the arrangement. When small friends came to tea there was nowhere for them to go; wet days were things to be dreaded because the child had no real place of her own for her things, and, after struggling on for nearly a year, we have returned to the nursery, although we try our hardest to call it school-room, and are now so much happier in consequence.
Another problem—should we do away with the nursery—is, What is to become of the nurse? You may call her a maid and give her your garments to look after, and tell her she must now take on her the work of a maid, but she will never do this properly; she will miss her room and her occupation, and she will move about miserably, missing the children and yet not knowing what she misses, and will neither be useful nor pleasant. But leave her her nursery, and one child if possible, and she will be quite happy; and, much as we may hanker after a maid, the ideal creature who shall never have to be told that buttons are off or skirts torn, who shall make our every-day dresses and retrim our bonnets, we owe something to the nurse who has looked after the children at the worst and most critical time of their lives, and are bound, if we cannot afford the two luxuries, to sacrifice the maid and cling to the nurse. And be quite sure if we do we shall be rewarded; the children may be grown up, but even grown-up folks have colds and headaches, and sometimes worse ailments than these, and who so fit to keep watch over these ailments as the nurse, who has gallantly steered us through measles, whooping-cough, and the thousand ailments other people’s selfishness is always handing on from generation to generation?—no one, surely; and if she and the nursery are retained together, there is always someone who knows what to do in an emergency, and a place to go to to be petted and quieted and made much of, as only a nurse can do who has had her nurslings from the first and loves them as only their mother and nurse know how to love. We have two such nurses in our family: I one, my sister the other, and I can never advise doing away with any nursery when I remember all that this may probably mean to others beside the householders themselves.
In a large house, therefore—a house where, let us hope, people mean to stay some years—this is an extra reason for making the nursery as pretty as possible. One cannot be very sentimental over a schoolroom; there is always a suspicion of ogre’s castle about that room, and it can invariably be turned into the girls’ sitting-room or into a billiard-room at the earliest opportunity, but all the sentiment of the home is to be found in the nursery, where the children are without a care or a trouble, and where they are gaining strength and health for the battle of life; therefore, let us never grudge any money we can afford being spent upon the nursery. As I said before, I always consider blue by far the pleasantest colour to live with, which is one reason why I advocate blue in the nursery; but of course endless combinations of colour could be had which would be equally pleasing and successful, but not as nice to live with always. However, I will give one or two which might perhaps be liked better by people who are not as fully convinced as I am on the merits of blue.
A pink and cream nursery would be pretty and bright, and could be managed by using Pither’s cream and pink bay-tree paper, all cream paint, and a dado; the dado of Haines’ anaglypta, painted cream, the ceiling paper should be J. & H. Land’s green and white ‘Watteau’ ceiling, at 3s., the carpet should be either the green ‘lily,’ or ‘Stella,’ or ‘anemone,’ from Wallace, and the cretonne should be Oetzmann’s sage-green ‘algæ’ cretonne, at 1s. 3½d., the muslin curtains being, if possible, of Helbronner’s pink and green ‘lily’ muslin, an expensive muslin but a very lovely one, which would complete the room nicely. The furniture should be ash and as simple as possible, and the flowers on the cupboard should be the pink flowering rush with slender reeds, and a few pale Marguerites. Yet another decoration could be made by using a high dado of Liberty’s nut-brown arras cloth, at 9¾d. a yard; this would be sufficiently high to allow of the toy-shelf being used instead of a dado-rail; above this the paper should be Pither’s ‘Buttercup, C,’ at 2s. 6d., a dull yellow-brown paper; all the paint should be ‘golden-brown,’ the ceiling paper should be yellow and white, the curtains yellow ‘Venetian’ cretonne, reversible, at 1s. 1d., clear Indian muslin underneath, and the carpet should be Pither’s golden-brown cottage carpet. This scheme sounds dull, but were anyone so unfortunate as to be condemned to use a sunless room as a nursery, she would find this arrangement would bring the sunshine into the room in a remarkable manner; while dark-blue curtains, carpet, and coverings would make the room less severe and be equally satisfactory, more especially if Colbourne’s Hawthorne muslin in yellow and white were placed next the window. Still, in a sunless room, one cannot have too much yellow; yellow serge would be found useful here for curtains should the windows be large, or a draught come in which would be too much for the cretonne to keep out, though cretonne should always be lined with Burnett’s sateen at 7d. a yard, and for a nursery should be edged with frills; the ball-fringe is really too tempting for small children, who cannot resist the delights of pulling off the little tufts wherever they are within reach of their fingers.
A most successful decoration, if rather a dainty one, was carried out under my directions the other day, and may be mentioned here, as variety is always pleasing to some minds, and it may be liked by those who approve of bright colours; it consisted in staining all the woodwork with Jackson’s malachite green stain and papering the walls with Pither’s admirable red and cream ‘buttercup’ paper, the ceiling being papered with a pale green and white paper; the floor was covered with a green drugget from Barr & Elliott’s, at 2s. a yard, wide width, which is wearing admirably, and all the furniture was in quaint stained wood from Mr. Armitage, examples of which are illustrated in the chapter on kitchens; the settle, table, and chairs, being all made by him, as were the mantel and over-mantel; in the centre of this latter piece of furniture was placed a square of looking-glass, though I personally should have preferred a good autotype in the red tints. The tiles in the grate were red, and there was the orthodox high fender with brass rails, which should never be wanting in any room where there are children; the table-cloth and curtains were of green serge, the exact shade of the staining, and the room altogether was far prettier than I had expected it to be, although I must confess my expectations were very high.
Out of one of these schemes of decoration—and I am glad to say that all are possible, for Pither, among others, will always keep in stock any paper that has really found favour with the public; therefore I am not recommending what will be out of anyone’s power to possess almost before these words are in type, as was the case a very few years ago—it will be quite easy to evolve a nursery in the new house which will be so pretty and appealing to the inhabitants, that when the last baby is a tall young person, either rejoicing in knickerbockers or a frock, or in being in the schoolroom as a matter of course, and who goes for walks and has meals in company with the elders—and we are forced to consider the problem with which I headed this chapter—we may reply unanimously, No; not as long as nurse lives, nor as long as there is the very smallest chance of illness or of our having to entertain small visitors. For these even the cots and high chairs should be retained; they do not eat anything, as one of our old nurses used to say when I wanted to give away some of the treasures, and they may even come in for the grandchildren, who will appreciate, as no one else can, the fact that they are having just what their parents had, and sitting and sleeping in the very beds and chairs they used to patronise. It is from the mistakes of others we learn most, and I have never forgotten the lamentations among old servants at home, when the nurseries being done away with and every cot scattered to the four winds of heaven, my mother had to borrow cots and turn the house almost upside down to take in her grandchildren, who were suddenly sent to her to be looked after during a sudden stress of illness, an inconvenience that caused endless worry and bustle, but would have been nothing at all had the old nurseries still been as they were, and which, as a rule, can be easily managed in a big house where the nurseries have been properly arranged for.
Then, too, the position of the two rooms close together, and generally a little way removed from the rest of the house, though not at the top, I beg, makes them a most admirable place for an invalid to retire to; there is always a chance of illness—aye, even serious illness—as one gets on in life, and all sorts of disagreeable things remind one that one is not immortal; and though, as a rule, houses are built emphatically to live in, and neither to be ill nor die in—though, despite the architects, both these unpleasant matters are possible—one can generally in a large house manage that the nurseries shall be close together and quiet; therefore, they should be kept apart for our own use. We could be ill most comfortably in the night nursery, and convalescent in the day nursery, which could, however, be used for our nurse did we require one, and the cheerful pretty papers and the thoughts that would be inseparable from these rooms would alike help us to bear our woes, while we could have nurse to talk to and to ‘do for us’ as no one else could—no one who did not know us thoroughly, and, having seen us in sickness and in health, in adversity and prosperity, knows exactly what we can bear and how to manage us best.