If baths have to be taken in the boys’ rooms, or if they clean their rifles, skates, or other matters there, or if they have pet animals which share their abode, I strongly advise that the floor should be covered with a plain good linoleum without any pattern on, and then on the top of that a strong square of carpet should be laid. Wallace’s ‘Victor’ is a capital carpet, and so is Pearke’s Anglo-Indian square carpet. This should not be fastened down in any way, and should be most rigorously folded back by the housemaid during those hours when bathing or dirty work is being carried on. The linoleum can always be cleaned with soft warm water, and kept in order with boiled oil and turpentine, and the carpet can be put back in a moment, thus making the room tidy at once.
Rubbishy cheap furniture should never be bought for a boy’s room. Naturally by this I do not mean we should be unduly reckless over what we buy for the boys, but that we should go to some good man like Wallace, and tell him that we want good seasoned wood and handles which will not pull off, and drawers and doors which will not stick, and which will not tempt the lads by such conduct to undue violence in the matter. Boys are always in a hurry, always impatient. They can’t help it; it is a failing of the sex, and half the damage boys do is caused by the fact that we do not realise this and often give them rickety or common furniture, because ‘anything is good enough for the boys to knock about.’ There cannot be a greater mistake. Give strong ash furniture, made properly, a good plain brass and iron bedstead, and a good chain mattress, and we shall find it pay; yes, even if the boys play ship on the mattress, the necessary waves being well represented by the manner in which the mattress goes up and down when jumped upon by the intrepid sailors. Our mattresses have served as ships and as oceans too, but they are as good now as the day they were bought, simply because they were very expensive; but if they had not been dear I don’t think there would, have been anything left of them by now; therefore cheapness is no economy, as regards mattresses at any rate; of that I am quite convinced. A good suite of ash furniture containing wardrobe, washing stand, and toilet table can be had for about 10l., and I do not advise less being given. This should be supplemented by a chest of drawers to hold shirts, socks, &c., and the boots should be kept either downstairs in the cloak-room or else in a proper boot cupboard; and I strongly advise the toilet covers to be in art serge, simply trimmed by a species of edging in crewels composed of about nine stitches, one long, one shorter each side of the long stitch, and one each side shorter still, like this:
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This should be carried round the edges of the cover in a lighter shade than the serge itself, and would cost about 2s. a cover, or indeed less, as serge is double width. There would be no ball fringe to pull off by shutting it heedlessly in a drawer, and there would be nothing we could not easily replace, should blacking, paint, oil, or any of the thousand and one messes in which boys seem to revel be spilled upon it. White toilet covers are absolutely useless, and of course it would be really ridiculous to give them more elaborate covers, which could only be spoiled.
It would not be of much use here to give any special schemes of decoration for boys’ rooms, but I may say that the cheaper the wall paper is above the dado the better. Boys are continually adding to their stores of pictures and ornaments, and are as continually shooting at a mark on the wall with anything that comes handy, and are not above giving the flowers on the paper a nose, or a mouth from which a pipe proceeds, or ears which resemble those of a donkey; and though these decorations may be left a certain time it is best to have such a paper which, while being pretty, is one that we can replace without an undue struggle on our part; and I may mention Haines’s capital 7½d. blue and terra-cotta papers. The blue could have blue paint, and a blue matting dado, and a yellow and white ceiling paper; the terra-cotta might have ivory paint, a terra-cotta and green cretonne dado, and curtains of the same cretonne. Helbronner has a beauty, 604, at 1s. 8d. a yard, and the ceiling paper could be Land’s pale green and white ‘Watteau’ at 3s. the piece. Wallace’s dull green ‘lily carpet’ would make a capital square there, as would his red lily in the blue room, where the cretonne could be Oetzmann’s red and blue Westminster cretonne, which should be lined, as should all cretonnes which do duty for blinds as well as curtains; this all curtains should do, had I my way entirely in the matter. The walls and books and pictures should be the boys’ own choice, and so should be the ornaments on the mantel-piece, though a clock should be invariably provided, and this should be one the veracity of which should be unimpeachable—punctuality must be enforced and hours kept, and no excuses should be allowed on this score. If the youth declares he wishes to make up for his perforce straitened hours of repose at school, let him go to bed as early as he likes—never interfere with that, but do not weakly allow him to be late in the morning; it puts out the whole household, and for no reason at all, and should never be countenanced for a moment. Late hours in the morning mean more than I have space to dilate on here; but you may be quite sure that a household which is late in the morning is never a well-managed or prosperous one. Late hours then denote lazy, self-indulgent habits, and therefore should never be allowed.
If the boys begin them in the holidays be sure they will be continued after school is left, and therefore be firm on this point, although I know all too well how difficult it is to be stern and inflexible towards the boys who are only at home for the holidays, and naturally are in consequence just a wee bit spoiled by their indulgent parents. Now if a sitting-room can be given to the boys and the tutor, I advise it being furnished as prettily as may be as regards the walls, but the floor must not have a carpet, and room must be found there for the lathe, carpenter’s tools, and odds and ends so dear to the heart of the boy; and here let me beg and implore parents to aid and abet their children in any hobby they have, if they can do so reasonably and comfortably, and without undue expense; and let me also beg of them to keep and treat with scrupulous reverence any drawings, efforts of literary genius, or of mechanical genius, which their children produce and present to them; at the same time I do not advise their being exhibited to the world at large, while I should carefully explain to children, that the thing was kept, not because of its present intrinsic merits, nor because it was a distinct effort of genius, but because it was their doing, and because we should like to compare it with future efforts, in order that we may see how they have improved.
Without going the lengths that ‘Misunderstood’ does (a book, by the way, which has made more prigs than any other under the sun, in my belief), I think parents often make their children miserable without in the least meaning to do so, by reason of the manner in which they refuse to interest themselves in their pursuits. It is not pleasant to partake of sticky black cakes baked in the dolls’-house pans, to sit on the cold stairs in the dark looking on at a spirited representation of a magic-lantern, the slides of which we know by heart, and we may endure agonies over the hundredth representation of the usual charade, neither may we feel profound interest in the School Magazine; but at the same time we are bound to think we do, and we ought to be more than thankful that our children care for these things and go in for them, rather than for the usual hanging about, reading those dreadful Rider Haggard books, which have done more harm than anything else, I verily believe, to the youth of the present day, and have vitiated their tastes, until nothing pleases them which is not written in gore and bound up in a mixture of pistols and swords, which is as odious as it is unnecessary.
The boys’ books ought to form a very distinct feature in their sitting-room, and, if possible, we should endeavour to keep out all Haggardish stories. But this is almost impossible in these days of independence and fourpence-halfpenny literature. I know I can’t, and glorious detective stories and other works of art are to be found all over the house; but we must do our best to improve the standard, by placing other better books in the authorised bookcases, and by ridiculing and, if necessary, confiscating whenever we can all we so highly disapprove of. At the same time I honestly confess this is mere advice: I cannot stem the torrent myself, but hope there are other more strong-minded parents than I am, who may be able to do so, though I have done my best in the matter, and have tried everything I can think of to eliminate these books, for which I have the most hearty contempt and dislike.
It would be no use, I think, to say more about the arrangement of the room which should be set apart for the boys; but I cannot say too much about the necessity of the dear things having a place where they can do absolutely what they like, for half the friction which seems to me inevitable in other people’s households, when the boys are at home, is undoubtedly caused by the fact that the boys are in the way, and have no place that they can call their own. Under these circumstances they worry their sisters, spoil the furniture, and upset the servants; and more especially does this happen in London, where there is nowhere for them to disport themselves, and nothing that they can do except promenade the streets and go to theatres and such-like places of amusement.
Of course, little boys can be managed well. They have their nurseries first, and then their governess and schoolrooms. It is when they begin to go to school that the trouble begins. The governess does not care about them preparing their lessons in her room; and if they are day boarders, which they certainly ought to be until they are twelve or thirteen, and, indeed, until they go into the big school, where they should be when they are fourteen and not a day before, the lessons must be prepared at home, and this work should doubtless go on under the superintendence of someone in authority. Parents often can and do help immensely, but there are very few men who do not find their classics decidedly rusty by the time they are required to superintend their children’s preparation; besides which they are, as a rule, tired with their own day’s work, and are not in the least inclined for extra labour, and often do not possess the necessary stock of patience required for this kind of employment.