At that time I was not on such intimate terms with the climate as I have since become, and did not understand that it is humanly impossible to rise triumphant over fogs, smuts, and beetles. For my benefit, grim and dingy caretakers rose out of the bowels of the earth as out of a temporary tomb (always in bonnets), and showed us over awful houses in which every blessed thing had been carried away, even to the door knobs and the key-holes—that is of course the metal around the holes.
Awful, closetless houses, guiltless of comfort, with dreary grates promising a six months' shiver, and great gaunt windows rattling forebodingly. As for the plumbing—but it is well to drop a curtain over the indescribable. One does protest, however, against the people who live in these houses—houses whose discomfort an American artisan would not tolerate—looking with ineffable self-complacency on their methods, and sniffing at our American ingenuity and our determination to make life comfortable.
Of course we got a house, thanks to no estate agent, but as we could not rent it we had to buy it—or rather the thirty-eight years' remnant of a lease—a mysterious arrangement to an American. It was rather hard to feel that the house and all our little improvements would, after thirty-eight years, revert to the Bishop of London, to whom the estate belongs, but we thought that after thirty-eight years we might not be so very keen about it. So we disturbed an aged woman in a dusty crape bonnet, and some friendly beetles, and they left the premises simultaneously.
We took an architect on faith, who was to be our shield and protector against the contractor; then we folded our hands, as it were, and retired to an hotel and proceeded to recover from the horrors of house-hunting. This interval was taken by the tradesmen of our new neighbourhood to recommend themselves to me, whose address they discovered by some miracle. They grovelled before me, they haunted me with samples—eggs, cream, butter, bread, followed me to the ends of England, and I finally succumbed to the most energetic.
Gradually, one gets accustomed to "patronage" and "patron," rare words in America, where the "I am as good as you" feeling still obtains. I am becoming used to them as well as "tradesmen" and "class." I acquiesce in a distinct serving class, conscious that not to be aware of the dividing gulf would mean the profound scorn of those we have agreed to call our inferiors.
To return to the house. The architect and I looked it over—everything was wanting. The plumbing was new, but clumsy and inadequate. In an American house much less costly, there would be a hanging cupboard in each room, thus dispensing with the clumsy and expensive wardrobes. The plumbing would be pretty and nickel-plated, resisting the action of the air, and easily kept clean. Here it is always brass or copper, clumsy and easily tarnished.
The architect suggested only the obvious, and with unwarranted faith I hardly ventured to suggest anything; but when the summer brought an American friend, who looked over the house, then approaching completion, she sat on the solitary chair and shook her head.
"He hasn't thought of a single thing," she cried. "Think of not having a dumb-waiter (English: dinner-lift) in this unheated house. Stone walls and cold blasts—don't invite me to your lukewarm repasts! Besides you must have a hardwood floor" (parquet floor) "in your drawing-room" (being an American she really said parlor). "Think of all the dirty carpets it will save," she urged. "My dear, you don't mean to say that you will live in this Bunker Hill Monument of a house"—(she comes from Boston)—"without speaking tubes?" She was aghast.
"What an architect! Supposing you want to speak to the cook, why you'd have to run down four flights for a tête-à-tête; then supposing you want coals up four flights—must the maid climb up four flights to find out what you want before doing it? My dear, even an English servant has human legs, and she can't stand it."
I was convinced. I spoke to the architect, and he was politely acquiescent, and as all these very necessary suggestions came late they were doubly expensive, and now I have come to the conclusion that domestic architecture is the proper field for a woman with ideas—a mere man-architect does not know the meaning of comfort, ingenuity, resource, and economy.