The Champagne Standard

by Mrs. John Lane

On the other hand, the days have passed in America for the making of sudden and great fortunes, nor are the streets paved with gold. The lady from County Cork does not step straight from the steerage into a Fifth Avenue drawing-room (unless by way of the kitchen), but there's work, and there are good wages; and if the lady from County Cork and her brothers and cousins would work as hard in Ireland as they do in the United States, that perplexing island would bloom like a rose. That their fences are always tumbling down, even over there, and their broken windows stuffed with rags, is only an amiable national trait to which the Irish are loyal even in America, just to remind them of home.

"Everything is cheaper in England," they all said when the decisive step whether to take or leave the contents of our large house had to be taken. "It won't be worth packing, taking, and storing. Send everything to auction."

That was the advice. I compromised, and one day half of the dear familiar household gods were trundled off to be sold—alas! and the elect were left to be packed. Every American house has a grass-grown, fenced-in space at the back of the house called a yard, for the drying and bleaching of the laundry. Ours was invaded by three decent men and piles of pine boards, and then the making of cases and the packing began.

The packing was contracted for. The chief of the firm came, looked through each room, estimated, and gave us the price of the whole work completed and placed on the freight steamer. One is told that the English are the best packers in the world, but I have had more damage done in two cases sent from Bristol to London than in eighty cases sent from Boston to Liverpool. The three men worked three weeks, and then took all the cases out of the house and put them on the freight steamer, and the price of all this wonderful packing was about forty pounds. What will surprise an English person is that not one of these men expected a fee. My one ceaseless regret is that I did not take everything, from the kitchen poker to the mouse-trap.

On the arrival of our eighty cases in London, they were received by the warehouse people, who sheltered them until the brand-new English house was ready, which was not for a year. The packing, sending, and storing of all this furniture was under one hundred pounds, which, with my English experience, I knew would have bought nothing. I did question the wisdom of bringing carpets, and I do not think it pays unless they are very good and large—the remaking and cleaning cost too much to waste on anything not very good. Having my furniture safely landed, the next step was to get a house.

One finds that the moderate rents asked for English houses is misleading, for in addition the tenant is expected to pay the rates and taxes, which add to the original rent one-third more, only somehow this fact is ignored. Get a house for one hundred and fifty pounds, and you can add fifty pounds to that by way of rates and taxes. Nor does that enable you to get anything very gorgeous in the shape of a house, but one obtainable for about the same price in New York or Boston, minus those comforts which Americans have come to consider as a matter of course, until they learn better in England. Only in flats are the rates and taxes included in the rent, and when flats are desirable they are expensive.

Now, living in flats is undoubtedly the result of worrying servants, and it is obtaining here as rapidly as the English ever accept a new idea—but being impelled by despair they are becoming popular. Small flats for "bachelor-maids" and childless couples are abundant and well enough, but for families who decline to be trodden on by their nearest and dearest these are nearly impossible, and when possible very dear.

The "flat" contrived for the "upper middle classes" is a terror, and is devoid of the comforts invented by American ingenuity and skill, and the good taste which makes American domestic architecture and decoration so infinitely superior to all. I do not wish to be misunderstood—if money is no object one can be as comfortable in London as in New York, but I am only addressing the "comfortably off."

In New York I was taken to see a very inexpensive flat, which proved to me that the average man can make himself thoroughly comfortable there. It was in an "apartment house" near Central Park. The street was broad and airy. To be sure the flat was up three flights, and there was no lift—but that is nothing. It consisted of four rooms, besides a kitchen and bathroom, and a servant's room. It was entirely finished in oak, and the plumbing was all nickel-plated and open, and it was furnished with speaking tubes. In the nice kitchen was an ice-box, and the kitchen range was of the best. This model flat cost six pounds a month, including heating, and could be given up at a month's notice.

No model flat turning up here, we were reduced to take a house, for which we were willing to give from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds. The agony of that search, and the horror of the various mansions offered! For the first time I recognised the wisdom of putting no clothes-closets in London houses, when I think of the repositories of dirt they would inevitably become.