Beautiful pillows can be made by Miss Goodban, of 9 Westbourne Terrace Road, Hyde Park of these same linens. She embroiders them all over in flax and edges them with Torchon, and if these cases are simply buttoned on like an ordinary pillowcase they can be washed in an hour and replaced. Liberty silk covers also wash splendidly if one has a careful maid. I have never sent mine to the ordinary wash; but washed at home they came out of the trial as good as new; a fact I do not think many people can know, or we should not see as many dirty covers as we do in the houses of folks who ought to know a great deal better. The window-seat cover should be of some hard-wearing material, such as ribbed and stamped Victoria cord, or a really good all-wool tapestry. It is never the least use to use one of the cheap tapestries provided so lavishly nowadays for this purpose, for if we do, we shall at once be terribly disappointed by the effect. For these seats in most rooms have a great deal of wear and in consequence if a cheap stuff is used it will not last any time. To ensure real and satisfactory length of days for any material, we must have one made of all wool, and not wool and cotton mixed. The actual expense of these seats, and indeed of any fitted seat, is the upholstress’s time and work, which costs as much if the material is only 1s. a yard, as it does if one pays a guinea for the same amount, besides which there is the continual worry of the British workman amongst us. Though why women should not be their own upholstresses I for one can’t think, and I should strongly advise any girl about to marry on limited means to learn to make up her own covers and cushions as well as how to cook the dinner. Then if the husband has a knowledge of carpentering and is handy about the house, the place can always look nice at one-third the expense it would cost were a workman or workwoman sent for when the smallest alterations were required.

Given the window-seat there should be no need for a sofa, and that is a decided consideration, but whatever chairs are had they should be comfortable ones, and none are better than the excellent wicker ones of which I have so often spoken. If expense be a great object one can frequently buy these chairs from travelling hawkers who go about the country with vans of chairs tables and baskets, and sell these special chairs for about 5s. or 6s. in wicker, simply stained a faint brown, which said staining I much prefer to paint or enamel, as it never becomes in the least shabby. A cushion must be made to fit the seat finished off with a 4 or 5 inch frill, not any deeper, and another cushion must be made to fit the back, while another must be placed round the sides of the chair, properly stuffed and ‘buttoned down.’ This said buttoning down can be done by an amateur if she purchases the proper needles for the purpose and secures the buttons with very strong packthread. And I consider such cushions should all be made in this style, as a plain surface wears out twice as soon as one that is arranged with buttons; while, if one is clean and careful, the buttons need not mean an accumulation of dust and dirt, both being got rid of perfectly well if the cushions are properly brushed and beaten and attended to by a housemaid who knows her work. By the way, it takes 2¼ yards of double-width material to make a cover for an ordinary wicker chair, or 4½ of single width material or of cretonne, but I cannot advise cretonne for the purpose, or for any real hard wear on any chairs, it so very soon becomes dirty, and is always in the wash-tub and in the hands of the upholstress. If the room is very tiny the window-seat can be furnished with three deep drawers in which we can keep any amount of odds and ends. Of course, the number of the drawers will depend on the length of the window-seat, but three should be the outside number. In any case they would come just under the seat and be hidden from observation either by the deep frill or a woollen fringe, and should open and shut very easily indeed. In a small house these drawers would be invaluable for one of the principal drawbacks to a suburban residence is the fact that there are no cupboards in them, neither are there many recesses which we can utilise as wardrobes should we require to do so. Let us suppose that this special room is given over to the mistress of the house and that she is content to have the ever-delightful shade of ‘Panton’ blue, than which nothing is better in every way to live with, she would then have the short curtains shown in the picture of some yellow material, Wallace’s diamond serge for choice, lined with sateen or plain serge, if there be many draughts or very much sun: then the material for the window-seat should be in golden brown or turquoise blue stamped Victoria cord, and the cushions should be in yellow, blue and pink linen, worked in very coarse and thick real flax by Miss Goodban. If the room has very much traffic, the floor should have a surround of plain brown cork carpet, with a good blue square of Wallace’s Dunelm carpet in the centre, just lightly fastened down in such a manner that it can be easily removed for shaking. Personally, I never like nails put in any carpet; they cannot help spoiling and tearing it, and it is far better to sew on the carpet itself a succession of tiny bits of tape, of course on the wrong side, and close to the edge. In these pieces of tape should the nails be placed. The tapes can always be renewed, and in this case the edge of the carpet is never touched, and cannot present the ‘worried’ appearance which characterises so many really good floor coverings. In this special room the carpet should be in a special shade of blue, which would harmonise with the paper. There are two or three different ways of treating the walls of such a room, and the one I prefer is to have electric turquoise Aspinall for all the paint, the Panton blue paper, and a floral frieze with a great deal of yellow in it; or, again, one can have the blue paper, but with real ivory paint, and an anaglypta dado painted in the same shade instead of the frieze; while a really useful and hard-wearing room may have a soft brown dado, and all soft brown paint, and a darker blue paper. In this case both paper and paint must be selected by someone who understands the science of colour. The brown should have a good deal of cream in it, and the blue should have a great deal of indigo and not any shade of green or turquoise at all. Here the window-seat cushion should be covered in brown stamped Victoria cord, and the curtains should be in blue serge or Tanjore cloth. I have never yet found a blue serge which would stand sun, and not fade in a couple of weeks in the most distressing manner, while almost any yellow serge stands the sunshine, and I can myself guarantee Wallace’s diamond serge in yellow, for that has proved itself absolutely fast. Shoolbred guarantees the Tanjore cloth, but personally I have had no experience of this material, having had neither opportunity nor occasion to try it. It is 4s. 9d. a yard, and is very pretty to look at; and is besides a most excellent width. Need I say that any cornice in this room must be simply coloured cream, and the ceiling papered in some inexpensive and pretty yellow and white paper? If blue should be objected to, or one is tired of it, a very pretty sitting-room can be made from any floral paper which is really good, and, I say, hand-made. I am devoted to a beautiful heliotrope and green clematis paper sold by Smee & Cobay, and also to the ‘ragged robin’ paper sold by Haines, and either of these papers should be used above a dado of some kind or other. A full green sateen curtain dado is the best, and in this case all the paint should be the same shade of green as that chosen for the dado, and that should be one of the tints in the leaves on the paper itself. Then the carpet and curtains should be green, and so should be the window-seat and the ceiling paper. The other shades in the paper should appear in the cushions and table-covers: although as regards the clematis paper I have never come across any good heliotrope materials, and have only found this colour in silk and in a capital cretonne sold by the Cavendish House Company, Cheltenham. I fancy that Warings, of Liverpool, have also a good ‘lilac’ cretonne. They certainly possess an admirable wall-paper with lilacs on a striped background, which should not be forgotten by anyone who thinks of using that always satisfactory decorative harmony of heliotrope and green. If there is not much wear in these rooms, I should advise the green ‘Isis’ matting as a background for rugs, but if there be a great deal of traffic, the soft green ‘Roman carpet’ sold by Shoolbred does excellently with some sort of a ‘surround’ which is easily cleaned, such as Jackson’s varnish stains, or plain cream matting, or plain cork carpet, according to the state of the floor and the particular tastes of the owner of the room, who should of course have one of Giles’s removable parqueterie surrounds if she can afford it. In any case she must never allow either a fitted carpet or a patterned surround to fidget the eye, avoiding as a real sin against the first principles of art, those terrible materials which imitate parqueterie or tiles, or pretend to be anything save what they are, and giving a wide berth to felt, an admirable material to look at, but a fearful and abominable dust-trap. So indeed are fluffy materials of any sort or kind if they cannot be cleaned without sweeping or by the friendly aid of a damp duster, which just passed over them once a day, keeps the stain or matting or cork carpet in order, and prevents the accumulation in corners that must ensue if we have not a washable material as a surround to whatever carpet we may select. If we have matting all over the floor, it is well to recollect that salt and water form an excellent mixture to use to cleanse it with, the salt in some way preserving and toughening the fibres of the matting as well as cleaning it in a most effectual style.

The principal things to recollect in this, and, indeed in any room are, first, that it must be made draught-proof and be properly ventilated, that we must so arrange that the door does not open right on the fire, that while the furniture may be as simple as we like, everything must be made to harmonise, being either bought for or adapted to the room itself and the special occupations of the room’s mistress. Fortunately if our purses are light, there is abundance of inexpensive furniture in these days which I cannot, I feel, praise too highly. I remember the dreadful struggles I had, to make my own first house pretty some six-and-twenty years ago, when there was nothing to be had but heavy wood and solid repps, and no one had whispered ‘Liberty,’ or mentioned serge, or bamboo and wicker furniture, or, if they had, had murmured it so gently that the murmur had not reached the ears of anyone at all. Now, scoff as one may at wicker work and bamboo, I venture to say that by them lies the way of salvation for the third room in an impecunious household. I have bought the most charming and beautiful little cupboard tables at Shoolbred’s, the most comfortable and excellent chairs at Smee & Cobay’s, at Heelas, of Reading, and at Wallace’s, which have all the delights of a real upholstered expensive arm-chair, if one has the cushions made at home, at as many shillings as the other costs pounds. While the most useful bookcase I ever came across is also matting and bamboo, and this can have a species of cupboard shelf made by hanging a curtain over the third receptacle for books, which said curtain is like charity: it covers a multitude of sins in the shape of rolls of wall paper, odds and ends of patterns, and old books which have seen better days, and yet are not good enough to re-bind, and yet are too good to throw away. Indeed, no book should ever be treated in such an ignominious fashion. At the worst it can be sent to a hospital, or be kept in our own special hospital box, which should be in every house, for how can we tell when infectious disease may not find us out? In that case we shall be thankful to be possessed of something to read which we can afterwards burn without any arrière pensée in the matter at all.

One thing should be in every morning-room, or third room, or library, call this little chamber by what name we will; and that is an invaluable small closing-table I have discovered in Kensington High Street. It costs about 4s. 11d., simply stained dark brown, can be folded up and put against a wall, or laid under a sofa when not in use, and is altogether most unobtrusive and excellent, for it can be set up in one second, and is admirable for a thousand purposes. I think it is large enough to ‘cut out’ upon, although I am not an authority on the subject of work. I know it is extremely handy for tea, and that one can make scrapbooks upon it, and write upon it too, while as it can be folded and put on one side at any moment, it does not get over-crowded with books and ornaments, and is therefore always available. The ordinary small occasional table never can be that, for it is usually clad in a nice square table-cover and has flowers or a plant in the centre, and has moreover, every available corner filled with books and ‘twos and threes,’ while the modest and retiring folding-table only comes out for use, and is never ornamental, and will not be used otherwise than for the purpose for which it is made. Of course the walnut Sutherland table is much nicer in every way, but is not to be had under 30s., is often of most inferior wood liable to scratches and spots, and is also all too often opened out clad in its tablecloth and ornamented to death. But we have no qualms about the little cheap folding-table. If it is scratched and spotted it can be scrubbed clean and given a new coat of Jackson’s varnish stain and be in a moment as good as new if not better. Just one word en parenthése, as it were, about stains. Do not let anything anyone can say induce you to attempt the beautiful green staining we all so much admire at home, for if you do, it can be nothing but a most ghastly failure. True, the particular piece of furniture will be green, but such a green! for the proper effect can only be obtained in the same way really good French polish is procured, and that, as everyone knows, can never be got save by a professional hand who knows the work, and has never yet been known to divulge the secret of success. No; the green stain is not for the amateur, be sure of that, while the ‘oak,’ and ‘dark oak,’ and ‘walnut’ varnish stains are exactly all that they ought to be.

In this room a screen by the door is often a most blessed possession, and as screens can be bought so cheaply nowadays everyone can avail herself of the comfort procured by a judicious use of them. Liberty first, and Shoolbred next, should be searched for an inexpensive screen, for sometimes Liberty has none, and then Shoolbred may come to the rescue, or our experience of both shops may be reversed; it all depends on which place has had the last consignment from Japan. I bought a beautiful screen at Liberty’s one year, about a month before Christmas, for 18s. 9d., but on applying for another in the following March, found all were sold out, and I had to go farther afield, discovering the one I wanted in a shop in High Street, Kensington, the name of which I have forgotten. True both Liberty and Shoolbred had plenty of screens but neither had an inexpensive one, with a back warranted to resist the frequent and uncalled-for assaults of the British housemaid. By the way, a screen should always be placed behind the door, which should in most cases open from left to right into a room if the room is in the least degree like the one illustrated. I am not fond of a door opening into a hall, and of course the perfect door should not open, but slide into the wall, but perfection is a word never heard, and certainly not understood at all in the usual suburb.

If the room be blue, the portière should be of printed velveteen in shades of yellow. With a floral paper it may be pink or green, but in any case a plain material should not be employed as a portière. One should always have a figured stuff there, and if one can afford it one cannot improve on the aforesaid velveteen. Portières should be made up by a really competent hand and should be lined, and edged with either ‘grip-cord’ or fan-edging, as ball fringe is apt to come to grief in this situation, the portière being often caught in the door, or as often grasped either by the parlour-maid as she announces a visitor or by any small child who may have to open or close the door. I may seem to speak unduly on the subject both of portières and screens but unless they are employed freely, I can assure my readers they will never circumvent the ordinary suburban residence, but that if both are used, any house, even the most jerry-built one which ever disgraced a ‘Park,’ or blotted the erst-while fair appearance of a ‘Grove,’ can be made habitable. Without these aids to health, to say nothing of decoration, such a house would be an impossible home for anyone not born and bred in the Arctic regions; while outside blinds, if they can only be just nailed up pro tem., and be mere grass mats bought for a few shillings at Treloar’s, can circumvent extreme heat, which often is as bad to bear in these terrible houses as the excessive cold and draughts which characterise them. I know that as a rule three years sets the suburban tenant on the prowl, and, as I said before, the mere idea that such can be the case prevents many a woman from making her house either pretty to look at or even weather-tight. But three years’ experience of untoward weather in a jerry-built structure can undermine the health of any woman, whereas she probably would not move and would certainly keep much better in health if not entirely well, did she do her utmost to get over the drawbacks at once. At the same time the hall must be warmed by using the small, portable stove sold by Wolff & Sons, 119 New Bond Street, if it is out of the question to obtain warmth from a real fire-place, and very great care must be given to ventilation by wide-open windows whenever it is possible, and it is always possible during some part of the day: and by ventilators, as suggested before, which should always be open at night, especially when lamps are lighted and fires kept up. For an unventilated room means a sleepy head, and dulness and stupidity instead of the liveliness which should characterise a gathering of the family when the work of the day is safely over and done.

CHAPTER VII
THE NURSERIES

Well may the heart of the ordinary mother of a family sink within her shoes when she sees the regulation rooms provided for the use of the children! Nay, one can hardly believe that they are meant for them at all, for nowhere are two rooms placed in such a manner as to make real day and night nurseries, and she is lucky indeed who has not to place one room on the first, and the other on the second floor, thus making it impossible for the nurse to look after the children or their garments in the manner she would be able to do were both rooms on the same storey. But it is always possible to have them on the same storey if convention is defied, and the ‘spare room’ is relegated to the attics, or the nurseries themselves are placed there; and moreover no considerations of any ‘spare room’ should prevent there being a couple of nurseries in any house. It is odious never to be able to entertain one’s friends even for the usual Saturday to Monday visit so dear to the heart of the ordinary suburban resident; but it is far worse to keep the children in one room only, alike for day and night use, and I sincerely hope that this unhealthy and disagreeable practice may soon cease entirely to exist. If in a tiny house and with one baby only, a second room cannot possibly be had, the only way to arrange matters is to proceed on the lines of a Harrow boy’s room, and to have either a system of ‘fitments,’ or to shut all the washing and dressing apparatus into a cupboard sort of arrangement, and to have one of the small folding iron beds, with a wire mattress complete, which cost about 16s. 6d., and which can be put under another bed in another room during the daytime, the mattress and other bedding being folded up and disposed of in a similar way. Yet in such a wee house as this, the baby would usually be in the mother’s room, and the nurse could share a room with another maid, having her meals in the servants’ sitting-room or the kitchen, while the mother herself looked after the infant. But I fancy where this would be the case, decoration would not be a study, all the energies of the mistress being spent, and very properly too, on making both ends of the income meet if that be possible. At the same time, I can never see why a cottage need not be pretty and comfortable, and I hope that no one will be debarred from attempting to possess a pretty house because she is poor. Pretty things are nowadays as cheap, nay often cheaper, than ugly ones, and it only requires common-sense and the possession of a certain amount of taste to ensure that a house shall be both artistic and comfortable. Let us take first the unfortunate who really can only have one nursery, and who has to allow the child to sleep there at night with the nurse, for I always think it is unwise for the parents to have an infant in their bedroom even when it is very small. A man’s rest broken, means bad work during the day, while a woman is unfit for anything and certainly cannot do her work if she has had no sleep during the orthodox hours of repose. In this case the best room in the upper part of the house should be taken for the nursery; it should be as near the mother’s room as possible, and if there be a dressing-room attached, so much the better in every way, for out of that can be constructed the very necessary nursery pantry. Therein can be kept everything which is in any way unsightly, and it is possible that all signs of the nursery itself being used for a double purpose can be concealed, if one has at one’s service just an ordinary bedroom and dressing-room. We will therefore suppose that, in the first place, the suburban villa contains a bed and a dressing-room, and another bedroom and a bathroom on the same floor. In this case, I should propose that the so-called ‘best room,’ with the dressing-room, should be given over to the nurse and child, the master of the house having the bathroom entirely for his own use as dressing-room. If this arrangement is made, the bedroom which I trust may face south or south-east, can be treated entirely as a day-room, and be properly and prettily painted and papered. Under no circumstances should one of those fearsome ‘nursery’ papers be allowed, neither must a cheap and vulgar flower paper be