I am the client of a "model" laundry which sends our linen back a delicate pearl-grey. We call it affectionately the "muddle" laundry, and it costs us one pound a week to keep up to the pearl-grey standard. I wish we could go back to the days of chain-armour! What remedy? There is none, except country laundries for the rich and great, and starch for the poor! The only result of soft coal and dire necessity is the excellence and cheapness of the cleansing establishments, without which the long-suffering householder would indeed sit in sackcloth and ashes!
The one aim in furnishing our little house has been to keep the rooms free from all unnecessary draperies, which are merely traps for dust. It is hard for me to curb my feminine taste, which runs to sofa cushions and Oriental nooks lighted by Venetian lamps, but the exigencies of the London climate make me strictly Colonial (New England Colonial), and I can look into every corner—blessed privilege. The laundry being an accepted evil, one institution I willingly proclaim cheap—the scrub-woman who gets half a crown a day. Why don't all English scrub-women emigrate to the States in a body? They would get from six to eight shillings a day, overtime overpay.
Coming to the details of housekeeping. The custom here is that tradesmen call for orders. That also obtains in America, but many ladies there go to the markets and select and order for themselves, which is distinctly more economical. Here, as the result of inadequate storage room, the expense of ice, and the by no means common use of the ice-box, there is not much food kept in the house. Now the laying-in of a good supply once or twice a week, if the mistress understands ordering and goes where she pleases, is undoubtedly cheaper than a daily ordering of driblets. It is the same with groceries, and these should be kept under lock and key! To the American that is not only an impossibility, it is nearly an insult, and I know of not a single American housekeeper who weighs out the groceries and other articles to be used week by week. It seems to start the mutual relationship of mistress and maid on a basis of suspicion.
A tabulated list of values is useless where prices fluctuate. I simply compare the differences as I have found them in my own little housekeeping. Meat, with the exception of fillet and sirloin, is dearer here, and so is poultry. Groceries average about the same, but coffee and flour are dearer. So are butter and eggs. Milk is the same, but tea, dear to the English heart, is so cheap that one can undermine one's nervous system at a very small expense. Vegetables are good and cheap, but there is little variety, while fruit is dear.
How one does miss the ordinary cheap, good fruits, the California grapes and the Concords with their clusters of deep blue berries, a five-pound basket of which only costs a shilling. These were first grown in the old New England town that Emerson made famous. As for apples, pears and peaches, they are among the cheap fruits over the sea, and I maintain their superiority to their English kin.
What oranges equal the Floridas? The "forbidden-fruit" and the "grape-fruit," are only just making their conquering way into the English shops. If, as it is claimed, the one is the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, Eve is nearly justified!
Yes, there are many good things in America and at reasonable prices. One has only to think of the divine "sweet corn" and "squash" and "sweet potatoes," and even the modest white bean from which all New England makes its national dish of "pork and beans."
Fish there is in great variety in London, but that also I find dear. How is it possible for me to live in a land where lobsters and oysters are a luxury and not a necessity? Only a housekeeper knows what a refuge they are in trouble—when an unexpected visitor turns up. Is not the "oyster stew" (a soup of milk and oysters) an American national dish? But it could only reach perfection in that blessed land where to eat oysters is not to suck a copper key, and where they exist in regal profusion. I look with scorn at the measly, little lobsters for each of which the fishmonger demands three ridiculous shillings instead of one shilling and three pence. My heart longs for lobster à la Newburg till I remember that it takes three of these poor creatures to make the dish—nine shillings! So I continue to yearn and keep my nine shillings.
I cannot, however, leave the subject without expressing my admiration for the beauty of the English fish shops and butcher shops. To see a fish shop in London is to see a trade haloed with poetry. If I were a fishmonger I would sit among my stock-in-trade and be inspired. The fishmonger is an artist, he constructs pictures of still-life which would have been revelations to the greatest of Dutch masters. In America our fish shops are devoid of poetry—the only compensation being to see the mountainous piles of oysters, ready to be opened, and innumerable great red lobsters.
To one item of American economy I wish to return with added stress; that is, the baking of bread in each house. This household-bread, if well made, is delicious, substantial, and economical. Usually the cook bakes twice a week, and besides that she is expected to have ready for breakfast either fresh baked "biscuits" (scones), "muffins," or "pop-overs." The yearly allowance of flour for each person is one barrel, and one reckons the expense to be about half what bread costs here. The English "double-decker" is a fearful and wonderful production that errs on the side of heaviness, just as the American baker's bread errs on the side of frivolous lightness, and nourishes like froth.