Then when these duties are fulfilled the next one is to discover of what manner of men is composed, and what is the record of, the new parish council or local board which may govern the special district; and another is to find if the ‘Infectious Diseases Notification Act’ has been adopted or not. These two things are most important, for given a good local authority one knows that while the rates don’t rise unduly, yet proper care is taken that all matters are up to date, which they can never be in a place where the ‘Infectious Diseases Act’ is not enforced; neither can health be found where jerry building reigns unchecked, bad meat is passed over casually as not too bad to eat (just as if all edibles should not resemble Caesar’s wife and be above the smallest suspicion), where the water is bitterly hard, and not either soft or softened, and where, in fact, everything is what ought not to be, and nothing is that should be to ensure a maximum of health with a careful regard to the spending of the ratepayers’ money. Then one very necessary hint to suburban residents is to see that in taking a new house the road by which it may stand, or by which it is reached, is properly ‘made up,’ and duly taken over by the authorities. Especially should this be the case if the house stands at a corner, albeit, for many reasons, a corner house should not be selected. Some feeble folk imagine such a situation means bad luck. Well! so it does in a measure; for being at a corner, one gets all the winds that blow on all sides, one’s front garden is filled with paper, straw and debris of all kinds, brought into it by these said eddying winds; the dust fills our rooms and makes our curtains black before their time, and one gets a double assortment of noises both of vehicles and people; while, if we all too late discover the road has not been ‘made up,’ and ‘taken over,’ we have not only the front but a side piece to pay for, and in consequence have three times the money to disburse that is expected of our neighbours. Besides which, should snow fall there are the side walks to clear as well as the front one; we have more wall or fence to keep in order, and, being less protected from the weather are less warm than we should have been had we had houses on both sides of us instead of only one house and a wide expanse of road, where often enough, school children play in a maddening manner, and where we get all the side noises as well as those which are to be found along the front. The soil of the suburb is again a thing to be thoroughly acquainted with before the tent is pitched finally and for all time thereon. I do not believe clay is or ever can be fit for anyone to reside upon, and nothing anyone can say will cause me to alter my opinion. True I know that London, the healthiest city in the world, is nearly all on clay, but then it has the advantage not only of perfect drainage, but of every other thing which can mitigate this fundamental drawback to perfect health; yet the fogs and the chill and the gloom which distinguish it might all be different, or, indeed, non-existent, were the soil of another character. Dearly as I loved Shortlands the clay there was always to be reckoned with, and made a long reckoning too, when all was told, for though roses flourished magnificently, children didn’t, and coughs and colds were ‘the only wear’ once autumn began to spread the leaves and winter came up to finish the little business, clad in the usual garments of fog and mist, changed at times to other more ‘seasonable’ ones of frost and snow. Chalk is to be avoided by all rheumatic souls, or by those to whom rheumatism may arrive by right of inheritance, water in which chalk exists largely being a great help to bringing such an inheritance within easy grasp of the heir; but gravel and, I think, a certain measure of sand, are all right, while many trees should be fled from. Trees bring rain and insects, and mean damp; albeit, if we can only find a suburb where the gracious pine tree flourishes, we can dwell there without alarm. The pine-tree spells health always, and should be sought for as carefully as a family of nouveaux riches searches for its coat of arms, or some one thing that will link it on to someone else’s noble ancestors in some way or another. Therefore should the seeker after a suburban residence arm himself with a geological map of the regions round London, and make many pilgrimages and inquiries before he finally chooses. He would be wise too if he could afford the time and money, to take rooms or a furnished house first in the locality which appeals to him most; but, if he can’t do that, he should take in the local newspaper, for at least a month, and see what manner of conduct is reported there; what are the doings of the local authorities, the species of ‘happenings’ in the way of amusements and entertainments, and if he is bent on church, he should attend one or two services; while, if golf attracts him, and tennis is his only joy, he should see that both are attainable, and that the clubs are get-into-able and are not either beyond his pocket or whatever may be his special social status.
Once these items are all satisfactorily settled, and the suburb really selected, the tug of war may be fairly considered to have begun. The suburb is found, but how about the special house? Of course ‘eligible residences’ will abound, albeit in any good and favoured places they are not as plentiful by half as one could wish, so that nothing should be done in a hurry.
The local tradespeople, as well as the house-agents (generally very broken reeds these last too) should be taken into one’s confidence, and if a specially good house is to be let in a month or two it should be stalked as carefully as one stalks a stag of price, and with as much cunning. Too great eagerness means a large premium, and all the last tenant’s awful fixtures; too little means someone else slipping in before one, and bearing off the coveted prize under one’s very eyes.
Much as one likes the idea of a real new, clean house, where no one has ever died, or had scarlet fever, small-pox, or diphtheria, and where virgin walls and untouched rooms leave one a free hand as regards decoration and furniture, it is better, if possible, to take some place out of which a ‘good family’ has been obliged to move for some true and reasonable cause, such as a loss or increase of income, or an increase in the requirements of the family. If a new house is chosen, it is absolutely necessary that some honest and tried sanitary authority should be called in from a distance: a local man cannot possibly give an unbiassed opinion; and he should thoroughly examine the system of drains; all pipes should be disconnected from the soil-pipes, and all sanitary arrangements should be placed on the outside of the house. I do not mean apart from the house itself, but built on at one side, so that drainage is simplified immensely and reduced to one area. One where the soil-pipe can be thoroughly ventilated and easily got at should it be necessary to examine the drains, to repair them, or to discover that they are all in good and working order. They should also be capable of being constantly and copiously flushed with a good stream of water, while all pipes connected with the water supply should be protected from the weather, and also easily reached, else will they burst at the least provocation, and cause frost and cold to be doubly cursed, because of their untoward action upon one’s domestic arrangements. If the house has been lived in, confidential relations should be established with the outgoing tenant unless he has any interest in getting the house off his hands; in that case human nature being weak, one can but recollect he wants to part with it. But if he have ended his lease and be genuinely anxious to remain yet cannot for a reasonable cause, it were well to ask him frankly about the wants, requirements, and moods of the special abode, for houses want humouring just as do human beings, and very often one only finds out the virtues when the vices have caused one to throw up the sponge, and once more set out on our nomadic passing through this life.
If we select and take a new house before we attempt our decorations let us instal a caretaker. Ay! even with her grimy self and her still more grimy goods and bronchial family, heavy with the continual colds inseparable from living in empty houses and never anywhere else; and let us see by ocular demonstration that she keeps going the large and splendid fires which should be in all the rooms even before we contemplate how we are going to treat them. For until the house has been exposed to the ordeal by warmth we cannot possibly tell whether we shall have to begin by relaying shrunken floors; putting the ever useful ‘Slater’s Patent’ round every door and window, and whether it were not well to transfer certain doors from left to right or vice versa, because of the position of fire and window, which can only be really determined when we see how the fire burns, and from which side comes most of the almost certain draught. Thus too are tested the young and untried chimneys, which, should they smoke, are to be examined by a practical man before anything else can be done. They may smoke through faulty construction. In this case new grates must be had from Haines & Co., 83 Queen Victoria Street, who have a grate that can easily deal with this desperate strait. Or they may require tall chimney-pots, or a mere ‘blower,’ which is best when made of a clear thick sheet of glass. In any case, they must be treated at once. A smoky chimney is death to one’s decorations, spoils one’s temper, and one’s white curtains and new cretonnes, and gives the maids cause for dissatisfaction, the while we take a hatred at once to the house and always remember its unkind reception of us, however well it may behave to us when we find ourselves better acquainted with its little ways. It would not be an auspicious manner of beginning an acquaintance should some would-be friend receive us with sulks and a turned-away countenance, which might be shyness, and is certainly bad mannered: I question much if we should ever reach friendship should our advances be met in a similar way! In such a manner does a smoky chimney make one feel towards the house it is a part of, and once we are received with smoke in our own domain, we can never really forget or forgive a reception we should not have had, had we kept up good fires before we entered into possession thereof. When the house is warmed, we can proceed to deal with each portion thereof as our tastes and our purses permit; but we must never allow anything which really offends our own special taste to remain; neither must we be talked into taking anything we don’t like. If we don’t know our own minds in these days, there are advisers to be had on whom reliance can be placed. But if we have the least idea of what we want, let us get it. It is our own house after all, and it is right it should represent us, and not other folk. At the same time many people who can recognise beauty and comfort when they see it, get bewildered by quantities; and unable to select between them cannot secure loveliness, and are equally unable somehow to recognise how comfort can be obtained.
‘How do you keep this room up to 60 degrees?’ once said a doctor to me, when I was inhabiting, pro tem., a so-called furnished house in the depth of the winter. ‘I had a child dying here of bronchitis last winter, and, try how they would, his people couldn’t raise the temperature to above 50 degrees, although his life depended on it.’
‘Ah,’ said I, ‘they doubtless left it as they found it. I didn’t. I have covered the gaping stained "surround" with felt. I have hung curtains inside and outside the rickety door and instead of feeble wisps of muslin to the windows I have four good thick curtains besides long thin ones. That’s all the secret; and I never burn gas as you see, while my fires last twice as long as they did before the alterations.’
‘Oh, I wish I had known all that before,’ said the doctor, ‘for neither I nor the parents could find out the cause of the cold.’
A little thing which will illustrate better than any amount of further description what I mean by saying that people don’t always know how to obtain comfort though they can appreciate it when found.