One word more. In frosty weather gas and fires should not be stinted. The gas should be burned steadily in the scullery, pantry and lavatories, to prevent any chance of the water therein freezing. This may save a great deal; but, of course, if the pipes have frozen, one can only accept the situation and wait for a thaw. But that they need never do this, I trust I have demonstrated in a manner that should be patent to the least imaginative housewife in the world.
CHAPTER IV
DINING-ROOMS
The suburban rooms I myself have personally encountered and conquered have been so truly terrible that, when I look back upon my struggles with them, I can only wonder that I have survived them in the least degree. For not only were they either unduly hideous or over-ornamented in a manner that would strike awe into the boldest soul, but every window and door gaped wide apart, and were with the fireplaces, put just where they ought not to be, while in one or two cases the floors had to be relaid and the doors bodily moved round before the rooms were even habitable. I could only wonder whether the folks who had lived in some of them before (two or three were quite new, and these were, save in one instance, the worst of the lot) had escaped with their lives, or whether they had all gone away crippled in health and in temper, on a voyage of discovery to some better and more suitably-designed, eligible villa residence.
The first room I ever approached with an eye to decoration appeared to be everything it ought to be, and seemed simply perfect. It was large and lofty, had two wide and beautiful windows, and a good, deep fireplace and an excellent floor; but alas! I was not as wise then as I am now, for my only acquaintance with houses was confined to two family houses, in which I had lived all my life, and which were properly built, whatever their other faults might have been: and, in consequence, my sufferings during the first month in that special dining-room were so acute that I have never forgotten one of the numerous pangs and torments I endured: silently, it is true, because then I thought them inevitable, and it is never any use grumbling against things which must be borne! But presently sense awoke in my brain, and I saw that nothing which had caused me such woe need be put up with any longer, and I verily believe the knowledge I have since developed on the score of house-furnishing and decoration first became mine in that special house, for I was roused to the fight with cold and discomfort inseparable from a quiescent residence in a suburban house, and soon discovered cold could be expelled did one rise to the occasion and determine that, somehow or other, one would conquer, and no longer play the ignoramus or the very painful rôle of the conquered.
In the first place, the door opened straight on the fireplace, and as the front door—a frail thing of boards and sham stained glass—was about 6 feet away from it, the cold air rushed in the instant it was opened, and the heat of the fire flew mainly up the chimney, insuring that the rest of the room should be more like Siberia than any other spot. And in the second, the windows need not have been glazed at all so little did they keep out the outside atmosphere, notwithstanding the curtains which liberally adorned them, and which used to wave right out into the room at the very smallest approach of a breeze. When there was any amount of real wind, the room wasn’t a room any longer, it was one and the same thing as being in the garden, and anyone can easily understand how pleasant it was to come down to breakfast there with a roaring fire going up the chimney and a north or east wind playfully careering around the table, which, place it how we might, could never be in anything save a thorough draught.
The first thing to do was to transpose the door, and make it open with its back to the grate. Then it had to be surrounded with the ever-useful ‘Slater’s patent’; and, as it opened into the room, a species of shelter was arranged behind it, while a curtain was hung on it—on one of the rods which open and shut with the door—and a pair of curtains put outside it. These hung straight down in good heavy folds when we were alone and there was not very much going in and out; and, as we had a ‘hatch’ into the kitchen, there never was much; but on ‘dinner-party nights’ the curtains were tied back, and so did not interfere with the coming and going, as a single undraped curtain always must interfere either more or less. Then attention was turned to the windows, and these were surrounded by more ‘Slater’s patent,’ which was liberally supplemented by putty, because the frames began to shrink away from the glass in a truly hideous manner, and, in consequence, there were two gaps, one there, and one where the frames were supposed to fit into the woodwork round the walls. The woodwork, in its turn, shrank from the brickwork, and the space had to be filled in with mortar and then painted over.
Now this special house was not a regulation £60-a-year villa, but was rented £160, and had a fair garden and good stabling, and was altogether what may be termed a ‘residence for a gentleman’s family;’ nay, even by some house-agents, ‘a mansion,’ because it had a second staircase; yet such is the material used in the suburbs! I repeat, this special house was a good specimen of the kind, and was not, as might be imagined, a ‘fearful example’ or an isolated case, so I leave my readers to imagine what the less-expensive buildings can be like, even when they can truly be advertised as possessing tiled hearths, electric bells and all the latest improvements, including a fixed bath, hot and cold water laid on; and other items familiar to those who have gone on heart-breaking journeys in search of a house, liberally supplied with a sheaf of pink and fallacious orders from a house agent. In fact, before the dining-room was livable in, we had to almost reconstruct the windows and doors; and I only regret that my improvements did not then rise to putting in a proper grate, for I am sure, if I had done so, the conquest of the room would have been complete. But unfortunately I did not realise the horrors of it until all the decorations were done and we had settled in, and then expense barred the way; not only the expense of the new grate: that would have been saved in the difference in our winter’s consumption of coal: but the cost of replacing the Japanese leather dado, which could not be matched, and, in consequence, would have had to be renewed entirely, because the grate and mantelpiece could not have been moved without spoiling at least a yard of it on each side of the fireplace. A new grate without a new mantel was also impossible, because the moulded mantelpiece, being round above the grate, was not available for the slow-combustion stoves, which are always made square. Everyone should refuse to own a round mantelpiece, because of the impossibility of adapting such a possession to the proper and only really useful grate. If, by the way, Japanese leather paper is used for the dining-room dado, or indeed anywhere for any dado or frieze, an extra piece should always be purchased at the same time, and kept carefully in some dry place, and indeed an extra piece of all wall papers should be secured. Japanese paper particularly can never be matched. I do not think, in all my large experience, I have ever come across a second consignment of a pattern I have seen before; therefore it is easy to see how necessary it is to secure more than one requires at first, else, should an accident occur, or as in my own case, an improvement be contemplated, one either has to leave the accident unrepaired or the improvement undone, because one cannot afford to replace perhaps 24 yards, when a couple at most is all that one really requires.
I have remarked before that in a new house it is absolutely imperative to have large fires going before we begin our decorations, but it is such a necessary thing to do that I must repeat the hint once more, for only after a succession of fires can we see whether the boards and window frames mean to shrink, and if they do we must apply our means of alleviation before we begin to paper and paint. At the same time, we may take it for granted that, try how we may to ascertain them, we shall not find out the real faults and real virtues of a house until we have lived in it, just as we never know our friends really until we have stayed with them or they have stayed with us. But for all that, Slater’s patent putty, and curtains will help us immensely, and more especially if we adapt ourselves to the house a little, and realise, for example, that the head of the table can be just where we like to make it, and need not be exactly between the door and window with the fire at the back, because the orthodox dinner-table seems able to stand in no other position.
Now I maintain that no one should ever buy the regulation long dinner-table, and that happiness and comfort, to say nothing of beauty, are much more likely to be found at one that is round or oval than at one that has the usual British head and foot. If it be round, the master of the house sits naturally where his place is put for him, but if not he as naturally gravitates towards the head, regardless of the fact that his back is scorched and he feels ill and uncomfortable, the while his feet and hands are in Siberia, and an icy blast plays about his head because the door opens straight on him, and in consequence he cannot get out of the range of the bitter wind from the passage or hall, try how he may to exclude it from the room. Talk about heredity how one will, and disguise if we dare its dreadful tyranny if we are sufficiently ignorant on the subject to do so with proper complacency, still I venture to remark that the dogma is proved to the hilt every day. An ordinary English family takes possession of the miserable hulks most of our houses are, and settles down without a struggle against them, to patiently endure the preventable miseries inseparable therefrom. There is no real need for any man to sit at the head of a dining-table, generally twice too long, too, for everyday needs. The side would be far more comfortable, far more common-sense in every way, but because the male of the house has always taken his seat in that special position, perhaps at the commencement of the family in a castle the walls of which were 3 feet thick, the present day man does the same and remains there, although he grumbles all the time and ‘wishes to goodness’ some way might be found by which he could be insured from being starved with cold or fried to death, or indeed often enough both at the same time. Therefore is it well to have a round table, for anywhere there can be the head or the foot, and the man at once accepts the new position, without demur; but given the ordinary table, nothing will move him, argue as we will and demonstrate as we may how infinitely better, in every possible manner, another seat would be for him.
Of course, if the house be accepted as it is, nothing can ever make it nice, be sure of that. If it be wind and water-tight, and that is a rare experience, the so-called decorations will either be terrible, or else will ‘swear’ continually at the belongings we bring to put amidst them. Lucky is the woman who finds dirty paint and torn and smudged papers and who does not come across an obstinate landlord and a ‘newly-decorated house.’ If she does and she possesses an ordinary husband who thinks anything does so long as it is clean and tidy, she should flatly refuse to enter it, for if she has artistic taste her life henceforward will be nothing but misery; for, absurd as it may seem, real pain and discomfort are given by ugly or incongruous belongings; and I venture to state boldly that people would be much happier did they own and realise this fact, and give over priding themselves on ‘rising above their surroundings,’ a thing no one possessed of the smallest eye for colour or form was ever really able to do. Superior folk always tell us we can, just as they say we ought not to be influenced by the weather, yet ‘ought’ doesn’t come into the matter at all. Maybe we ought not, but then we ought not to be ill or grow old, or be irritable, or anything but severely virtuous and good in every rôle we have to play during life, but all these things are or are not. What they and we ought to be or to do is quite another matter, as anyone with a grain of sense will, I think, admit.