Suburban Residences, and How to Circumvent Them

by J. E. Panton

If we wish to make a complete conquest of the special suburban residence we are about to circumvent, there is no doubt whatever that the first battle of all has to be fought and won on the very doorstep. Nay sometimes one has to commence the conflict before we reach as far as that, for have we not the ‘carriage sweep’ to tackle and the slamming gate to minister to before reaching the front door? If we are cursed with the ‘approach,’ all we can do is to make the gate as inoffensive as we can, for alas! we must keep it or we shall have our front garden a gathering ground for all the curs in the neighbourhood. But we must e’en remove the latch altogether, and line the place where it was with indiarubber, and put a couple of stout indiarubber springs on the house side of the gate, which should have an inner lining of wire-netting, and a head-trimming of barbed wire, or else of rough nails, to prevent the demon boy seating himself thereon. Then, if by firm refusals to allow tramps to come up, and by never giving them one farthing—or indeed anything save a bread ticket redeemable at the nearest baker’s shop, and which, ten to one, we shall find torn up in our ‘avenue,’—we can induce them to mark our gate with some secret sign, which means we are unspeakable brutes and not good even for a ‘little hot water,’ we shall have ensured ourselves a certain amount of quiet, and shall, at all events, have begun our campaign in the right way. Our gate we should paint some good solid colour, and Indian red is a good shade with green hedges and trees about us, as is also a special shade of dark olive green. Then the name of the house should be painted on in white, not gilded letters, and if we put as well ‘Please shut this gate quietly’ on both sides of the top bar, we shall find that we at least are no longer noise-makers in general, and, as far as our special gate is concerned, the great slamming question is replied to satisfactorily.

I may seem to dwell unduly on the matter of noise, but I can assure my readers that every preventable noise is both a sin against themselves and also against their neighbours. They may be in rude health and inclined to jeer at all I say, but the day will come when their heads will ache and their nerves bother them and when noise will torture them, and then they will wish devoutly that they had legislated at first for peace, for they certainly won’t get it when they have not the strength to insist on it. I say preventable noise, and most noises are that, for even the wretched piano in the schoolroom can be placed in such a position that it only worries those to whom it belongs; while the person who encourages barrel-organs or screaming children, should be at once sent to the wilds of America, no other place being large enough to hold such a barbarian.

We know, of course, all English folk think their homes are their castles; well, if so, the castle should have appropriate surroundings. There is nothing much of the castle about a suburban residence, and the sooner this fact is realised the better for those who dwell therein and on both sides. Now, the carriage gate being painted and settled with, and arranged to be fastened back should we have many callers from three to six in summer, from three to five in winter, we can turn our attention to the front door. I have had to circumvent for myself and for many many other folk the ordinary suburban residence, and I have only in one case found the front door treated in a manner that showed me that the man who planned the house had the very smallest idea of what he was about. As a rule, the front door opens straight on the narrow passage called hall by courtesy, with the ladder-like flight of stairs going straight up at one side. Then just opposite the front door, and about eighteen or twenty feet from it, is the door of the third room, which becomes library, smoking-room, or even day-nursery or schoolroom, according to the tastes and the age and number of the owner’s family, and nothing can be worse than this arrangement. But in the exception of which I speak, the hall ends at the front door portion in a wall, and the front door is placed opposite, as in the diagram on the next page, and thus the wind which enters when the front

A
		B

door is opened only circulates in the tiny vestibule, and is shut off from the hall and house by the inner door, beyond which is a small fireplace, so small as to be scarcely visible at all, yet large enough to ensure the equal temperature which means so much in this very evil-minded climate of ours. Now, it would not be an enormous expense, either to add the vestibule, or to make it by closing the ordinary entrance at A and opening one at B, while the vestibule could be shut off from the hall by curtains, should there be light enough to do without the extra window, or by a glazed screen, should light be otherwise an impossibility. In any case the gain to health would be enormous, while the comfort is of course at once ensured which is so absolutely necessary, and yet as a rule is so little understood. If one can have curtains, and expense is a great object, it is well to obtain from Oetzmann a fretwork arch, which is made for this purpose, and which is nailed on the wall and to the ceiling, and is at once simple and effective. The rod the simplest brass one which can be procured, should go behind the arch, which should face towards the end wall, and curtains of Wallace’s diamond serge should fall from the rod; there should be two full curtains, double, if possible, and edged with ‘grip cord,’ not ball-fringe. They will be constantly moved, and ball-fringe would soon spoil, while the cord is a hardy thing and capable of standing a certain amount of pulling about. As a rule the floor of the ordinary suburban hall is made from the roughest of boards which shrink apart coyly from each other as if they were youthful maidens at their first ball, but sometimes we are fortunate enough to come across tiles. And yet I don’t know whether I should quite say fortunate! For sometimes the tiles are more frightful than I can describe, and are often cracked and irregular, while one can manage the boarded floor if one resolutely tackles it and determines that it shall not conquer one instead of being conquered itself. If one has tiles one should place two or three rugs over them, the Abingdon Carpet Company’s charming ‘Arts and Crafts’ rugs for choice, made in the proper length and width for these places; but if one has not, the boards must first be stopped, planed and smoothed and ventilated, and then a plain cork carpet from Wallace, of Curtain Road, E.C. should be put down. This should be ventilated too, by piercing holes here and there with a gimlet, else dry-rot will ensue, a thing which once in possession is very difficult to get rid of, I can assure my readers. The cork carpet must be supplemented by rugs, and in any case the vestibule should be tiled with plain self-coloured tiles to harmonise with the decorations, for here would be shed the wet waterproofs and umbrellas of the way-worn traveller, who could then proceed towards the drawing-room undeterred by the despair that seizes one when one feels at a disadvantage owing to one’s raiment. This feeling often prevents people paying that kindest call of all, the call on a wet, dreary day, when we are dying with loneliness and boredom, and would give anything to see the friend who will not come because she would be ‘too wet for the pretty room,’ and ‘so dirty, she would really be ashamed to enter anyone’s house.’

Now, with the sensible short tweed skirt and tweed undergarments, which fortunate present-day damsels don unknown and unchecked, and a good plain, yet pretty waterproof, anyone is weather-tight; and if the parlour-maid pops the umbrella into the beaten iron ring for that purpose placed behind the front door, and hangs the waterproof up in Wallace’s handy P. T. C. wardrobe in another corner; and if the boots are carefully wiped on the mat placed in the sunken place in front of the door, the visitor enters the room spotless and as dry as if she had just emerged from her own house or from Lady Gorgeous Midas’s brand new brougham. The tiled floor should have upon it a pretty thick rug lined with American leather: one can be bought for about 8s. 9d. at Treloar’s: an outlay that no one need mind, but that ensures once more a certain amount of comfort.

The front door should, of course, never be grained, and it ought in these days to be quite unnecessary for me even to hint at such a thing. But mighty is the ‘local decorator,’ beloved of the suburbs, and his counsels will undoubtedly prevail, unless we put down our foot very firmly indeed, and keep it resolutely in that special attitude. He will ‘grain’ the door if he can until doomsday, I am convinced, but my readers must be firm and dignified, and above all must they give their instructions in writing, and keep a duplicate signed by the ‘decorator’ (save the mark!), else will they find he has gone his own sweet way after all, and they have no redress whatever. It is an axiom that whatever colour is chosen for the hall that colour alone shall be on the front door, but it may be in a darker shade, while the vestibule can often be treated differently to the hall itself, though of course it should lead up to and harmonise with it. Let me describe what I mean. The special vestibule I am thinking of has a couple of small, diamond-paned windows, one at the end, one opposite the front door, and below this latter is a wide panel painted with a tiger-lily, and then a wide wooden seat which lifts up and holds carriage rugs, and on which anyone could sit did he or she come with a message or a note and require to wait an answer. Both windows have wide ledges on which stand pots holding palms or aspidistras, and all the paint on the inside of the front door and on the vestibule side of the glass screen-doors included, is a special, beautiful soft grey-blue shade. The panelled walls are the same colour; the curtains are soft yellow silk, and the ceiling proper is yellow and cream. On the floor are dull blue tiles and a Scinde rug, and in one corner is the umbrella-ring, which one can get at Shoolbred’s for about 18s. 9d., and that is all. There is no room for the P. T. C. here, and the waterproofs are taken at once into the servants’ room to be hung up and dried, but it would be much better were there a corner wardrobe, only, alas! one can’t make space where one doesn’t possess it.

The screen is made somewhat like this. The top and side panels are all of leaded glass, as far as the brackets which hold pots for palms. The tops of the doors are more leaded glass, and all the base is wood painted on the vestibule side, the soft grey-blue spoken of before, and on the other a specially soft and deep ‘real ivory.’ The dado is of ivory, gold, and black Japanese leather paper, and the paper above is one of Smee & Cobay’s, and is a cunning blend of green and red, managed in such a way that the whole effect is a pinky red, which harmonises with the grey-blue, and is as original as it is undoubtedly most pleasant to contemplate. The stairs and all doors are curtained off with yellow diamond serge, and the passage—i.e. hall—is covered with plain green cork carpet, on which are laid rugs in which the grey-blue colour aforesaid predominates. Of course the ceiling is papered in yellow and white, and equally, of course, all the paint is one even surface of colour. Nothing can excuse picked out or striped and embellished paint: nothing! Genius is better employed on better work, and even genius is out of place in making ornamental that which after all is only going to be part of a harmonious whole, and merely a background to ourselves and our possessions. Therefore must there be plain paint everywhere, and no cornice should be more than a moulded band, merely coloured a plain cream or ivory colour. If the front door and the doors in the vestibule screen are not above suspicion of draughts, they should be at once surrounded with Slater’s patent draught-excluders, which can be procured anywhere almost, but surely at Shoolbred’s or Whiteley’s; for nothing is more trying than a draught. Have as much air and proper ventilation as possible. Have a vestibule window open for some time of the day in winter and all day long in summer, and have the staircase window open as well: a house that can’t have a thorough current of air cannot be a healthy one. But do not allow the insidious draught, and the cold and unwarmed halls and passages, which are ubiquitous save in a large house possessing a big, square hall, where one usually finds a good fireplace. However, one should manage somehow to make a fireplace there, ay, even if one can have nothing better than the small, round, moveable stove called the ‘Ideal,’ which burns patent fuel, and can be taken away at any moment. It should be placed on an iron corner bracket rather raised above the floor, and a guard should be round it, so that dresses could not come in contact with it. But one should never be tempted from the paths of virtue by the charms of oil stoves, for they always smell and are detestable, no matter what anyone says; for though they should not, of course, if properly cleaned and attended to, proper cleanliness and care mean personal attention in a small household, and I cannot think how anyone can touch oil, or whatever has held it without a shudder. There is a smell about paraffin that, let us ‘shatter the stove as we will,’ continues to cling about it and us in a way that is enough to make us and our friends very ill indeed. It’s an unnecessary smell, too. If we can’t depend on the maids, we must see to our own lamps, but we need not have stoves. They give a poor heat at best, and at worst—but there is no need to harrow our feelings by dwelling on that side of the picture. Be sure that whenever we can have real fires, we should have them, and that no house can be warm, and therefore healthy, if we have no fire in the passage. It need be only a wee one. It can be kept in for hours by using briquettes and small coal judiciously, and as it prevents colds and consequent suffering, and very probably doctors’ bills, it need not be omitted on the score of expense. Once see to the draught-excluder and the hall fire, we shall save in the sitting-room fires too, which are often twice as wasteful as they need be, because we pile them up to warm the bitter air that rushes in when the door is opened, and because the ceaseless draughts from doors and windows drive the rushing heat up the chimney and make the coal burn out doubly as fast as it otherwise would. Then too there is no labour about the modern small tiled fireplace. It is cleaned and laid in less than five moments, and indeed were we sensible about our houses, we should not have half the bother with our maids that some of us have, because we would minimise the amount of work by labour-saving appliances, instead of making it double what it need be, as we all of us do, more especially in those suburban houses, where, after all, the labour question is one of the most burning problems that the female part of the population has to discuss at its weekly gatherings on its special afternoons at home.