Suburban Residences, and How to Circumvent Them

by J. E. Panton

If we arrange our nursery on these lines, and have the dressing-room also, we should require the simple bed for the nurse only to be brought into the room for use at night, and the dressing-room should be entirely kept for dressing purposes.

Our nursery needs a good cupboard. Wallace sells a good deal ‘linen cupboard,’ which, painted ‘real ivory,’ or electric turquoise enamel, makes a capital nursery wardrobe, and here the child’s clothes should be kept, while the nurse should have one of Wallace’s indispensable corner wardrobes for her dresses, which costs by the way the ridiculous sum of 28s. All that is required besides is a combination piece of furniture with drawers—toilet-table and washing-stand combined—and which would give her ample space for all the linen she possesses. One of Shoolbred’s small bamboo cupboard-tables would hold boots and shoes and bonnets quite well, and no accumulations of any kind should be allowed. The nurse’s box must never be kept in either room, but be relegated at once to the box-room; and directly a child’s garment is outgrown, or the worse for wear, let it be given away. The only good I have ever been able to see in a small house is, that no one can possibly hoard there. If hoarding is begun it cannot be carried on, because if it were, there would speedily be no room to turn round.

Now, if one room only can be given up for a nursery, it must have fitments which can be removable at will in case we stay there not longer than the ordinary three years; or they can be on the lines of a ‘workers’ room,’ I designed for Messrs Wallace & Co., and which said fitments are part and parcel of the chamber. In the first place the bed must fold up by day into a species of ‘combined bedstead and bookcase arrangement,’ which is a bed by night, and looks like a bookcase-sideboard by day; and in the second, another cupboard must be furnished with a shelf to draw out from above, resting on brackets: on which shelf are to stand the basin ewer, etc., when in use. The brushes and combs must be shut away, while the looking-glass should be an ornamental one over the mantelpiece.

With a room such as this the nurse must take the child to its mother when she herself is dressed, and she must throw up the window and open the door while she breakfasts with the other maid or maids. She must then ‘do’ her nursery thoroughly, and after that wash and dress the infant. While the child is quite small this should not be done later than 9 a.m; after it is a year old it must be dressed before breakfast, and go to its mother while the nurse has her meal. Indeed, no meals must be allowed in the nursery under these circumstances; and the fact of there being only one nurse means that the mother must act as upper nurse herself.

Such a situation I cannot recommend to any girl who has had but little acquaintance with the ways and manners of an infant. If she undertakes it, she will always be sending for a doctor; and, much as I love the profession, I would rather recommend the payment of a good nurse, for, if she is good, she knows far more about a baby than any doctor can do. He has most excellent theories, she a great amount of experience to aid her in wrestling with infantile complaints, which are generally treated far more satisfactorily by strict attention to diet, exercise and air, than by any amount of the newest and most wonderful drugs in the world.

If there are a couple of deep recesses, one each side of the fireplace, it would be quite possible to treat the room on the principles of the worker’s room and at no great expense. In one recess should be a folding bed, closed up in a cupboard during the day time, exactly on the same lines as the Harrow boys’ beds, and into this cupboard all the bedding can be shut. The second recess should have four or five shelves fitted in, and these should be covered by doors in three divisions. The upper and lower doors should be shorter than the centre one, and they should all shut and open quite independently of each other. The top cupboard should be used for garments; the second one should enclose two shelves, the lower one of which should be double width and hinged half way, so that when in use, it could open out and be brought forward and be supported on folding brackets. This shelf must be painted with Aspinall’s bath enamel or else covered with white American leather to resist the action of water; and on this the washing apparatus must be arranged. Above, on the first shelf, all brushes and combs may be placed, while the glass over the mantelpiece can be used as a dressing-glass, or we can have one fixed inside the cupboard door that faces the light. On the other door should be fixed a brass rod for towels, then all would be complete. The cupboard under this shelf could be used on one side for the slop-pail, etc., and on the other for boots and shoes. These fitments could be made out of deal by any decent amateur carpenter. The wood could either be ‘goehring,’ which cannot warp or crack, or else well-seasoned deal, ‘primed for painting.’ It should receive a coat of Aspinall’s enamel, and after two days have elapsed and allowed that coat to harden thoroughly, a second should be applied. Paint is saved and a good decorative effect is obtained by filling in the panels with Japanese leather paper or else with anaglypta, while carved panels can be bought very cheaply in the material ‘goehring,’ which of course would require the same amount of paint as would the rest of the cupboard fitments. Then the window-seat can either be the box-ottoman one already suggested, sold by Story & Triggs for about £6, 6s., and called the ‘Desideratum,’ or it can be made at home from more deal or more ‘goehring.’ In this case the simplest way to proceed is to put a straight piece of wood right across the bow or Caldecott window, hiding it by a flounce of cretonne. The back of the window would form the back of the ottoman, while the bottom could be made of brown holland, tacked in on the inside all round. The hinges of the top should be fixed to the back of the window, and the sides should rest on wooden bars nailed on the sides of the window, and the top should be composed of a stout deal frame, supplemented by straps of webbing, and on these straps a cushion should be laid stuffed with flock. This box should be made very strongly indeed and need cost very little; but although it holds a great deal, and can be most useful to supplement the cupboards, it can never be half as serviceable as the real box-ottoman with the ends and sides of which I have already spoken.

The decoration of such a room as this must depend on the aspect. If this be very sunny, as indeed it should be, green or blue should be used, the latter for choice. I do not think anyone who has not tried it can have the smallest idea how delightful this colour is to live with, or the use of it would be far more universal than it is even now. Of course people get the wrong blue, and then rave against it, and rightly too, for a drab or dull shade is simply awful. There are some shades which go black or grey at night, but no difficulty is found where Aspinall’s ‘electric turquoise’ or ‘hedge sparrow egg’ blue is taken as one’s guiding star. An old turquoise, or a rather dark-coloured duck’s egg are also very useful as guides to colour, should Aspinall be unprocurable, and the rather prohibitive price (4s. 6d. a piece) puts Smee’s Panton blue paper entirely out of the market, as far as a small suburban nursery is concerned. The cupboards and all the paint can also be of a soft brown shade, and then the dado should either be in anaglypta painted the same colour, or else in a blue and brown cretonne, which can be found sometimes at Colbourne’s, or at Liberty’s or at Oetzmann’s. Above that should be hung one of Knowles’s less expensive blue papers, if one can get it the right shade and he generally keeps it now, or the ever-faithful blue ‘Olive-leaf’ on which we cannot improve for a small room. The furniture should be as advised before, though, if the room be tiny, and there is only one child, Derry & Toms’ folding-table at 4s. 11d. is quite large enough for all purposes, and leaves us far more space in the centre of the room than we should otherwise possess.

If the room is sunless: well, I should like to say that this is impossible: but, alas! I know that it is not: the room should be done in yellows and browns, and have blue curtains and carpet. But a sunless room is a crime, and should never be allowed. Neither should a tree-shaded house be chosen. Trees mean damp and flies and all sorts of misery; and if the trees which luxuriate in some suburbs cannot be cut down these suburbs must be avoided, for trees are all very well in their way, and lovely and pleasant enough in a big park, but they always come much too close to a small house, and I personally have been almost crippled with rheumatism and obliged to make two or three expensive moves, because I did not understand how very much the nearness of trees to a house had to do with the damp which caused me so much unnecessary suffering. Besides they keep out sunshine and light, and moreover harbour insects and dirt; and I think flies are among those miseries of suburban or country life which are never properly taken into account when folks think and speak of the delights of either existence.