And no stairs—no attic. My conviction increases that this man was an atticless child, without grandparents himself, and without thought of his own possible grandchildren. Or is the stairless, servantless, atticless cottage—'truly the little house is the house of the future'—meant also to be childless? An examination of the plan shows a so-called bedroom marked 'guest or children,' which indicates that the happy housewife must exercise her own judgment. There are accommodations for one guest or two children, but it seems fairly evident that guest and children exclude each other. Milord and milady must decide between hospitality and race-suicide, or two children and no week-end visitor. Some will choose guest; some will choose children. Personally I hope they will all choose children; for, even without an attic, there is plenty of playground. 'People with tiny incomes' must always be careful not to purchase too small a lot; and so we find that the servantless cottage has paths, and a lawn, and flowers, and shrubbery, and a sun-dial, and an American elm, and a 'toadstool canopy' between the poplars and the white birches, and an ivy-covered 'cache' to store the trunks in. I am glad there is going to be such a domestic convenience as a sun-dial; and perhaps, when there is a guest, the trunks can be taken out on the lawn and the children put to bed in the 'cache.'
But I guess that, after all, stairs will survive, and attics, and the servant-problem. Innumerable families are already living in servantless houses, with stairs, and it doesn't even occur to them that they are solving any problem whatsoever. Innumerable housewives are about as happy under these conditions as most of us get to be under any conditions. The servant-problem itself is not the young and tender problem that many of us imagine. An examination of old newspapers will show anybody who is sufficiently patient and curious that a hundred years ago there was much indignant wonder that young women, visibly suited for domestic service, preferred to be seamstresses! What is more modern is the grave enthusiasm with which so many persons are trying to decide how the rest of us shall live with the maximum amount of comfort and culture for the minimum expenditure. And one interesting similarity between many of these suggestions is their passive opposition to another important group of critics.
'Have large families or perish as a nation!' shriek our advisers on one hand. 'Have small families or perish as individuals!' proclaim our advisers on the other.
For this servantless cottage is typical of a good many other housing suggestions in which the essential element is the small family; and even the possibility that the children may live to grow up seems to have been left out of consideration. Milord and milady, I imagine, have chosen children instead of a guest. These children (a boy and girl, as I like to picture them) grow up; marry; settle in their own servantless cottages, and have two children apiece. There are now a grandfather and a grandmother, a son and a daughter, a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren. In each servantless cottage there is that one bedroom marked 'guest or children.' Granting all the possibilities of the ivy-covered 'cache,'—and now the trunks will simply have to be taken out and stood on the lawn even if the snow does fall on them,—milord and milady, come Christmas or other anniversary, can entertain a visit from all their children and grandchildren, one family taking the 'guest or children' bedroom, and the other the 'cache.' Later, as the children grow older, each family will come back to the old home on alternate Christmases: and by utilizing the 'cache,' a son or daughter can receive a short visit from the aged parents, not too long, of course, or it would ruin the trunks. As for any of the hearty, old-fashioned, up-and-down-stairs hospitality—I may be an old fogey myself, but the servantless cottage shocks me.
'Our bedroom resembles a cosy state-room on board ship.' Oh! la-la-la-la-la! Why doesn't somebody solve the problem of domestic living by suggesting that we all live in house-boats?
CONCERNING KITCHENS
MANY a man, I am sure, who never in his mature life thinks emotionally of his own kitchen, still keeps a tender memory of some kitchen of his early youth. It may have been his mother's, his grandmother's, or his Aunt Susan's; and not often, but once in a great while, something reminds him of it. His thoughts hark back, and he touches, in his own degree, the emotion of Uncle Felix (whom you will remember if you have ever read 'The Extra Day') alone at night in Mrs. Horton's kitchen.
'And Uncle Felix traveled backwards against the machinery of Time that cheats the majority so easily with its convention of moving hands and ticking voice and bullying, staring visage. He slid swiftly down the long banister-descent of years, and reached in a flash that old sombre Yorkshire kitchen, and stood, four-foot nothing, face smudged and fingers sticky, beside the big deal table with the dying embers of the grate upon his right. His heart was beating. He could just reach the juicy cake without standing on a chair. He ate the very slice that he had eaten forty years ago. It was possible to have your cake and eat it too!'
For my own part,—and no doubt each backward traveler has his particular kitchen memory,—I ate the crisp brown beans off the top of the bean-pot. It was a sort of ceremonial; a Saturday-night function, irrespective of whatever menial might at the time be in official charge of our kitchendom. The baking of the beans was never altogether trusted to a menial. My mother, last thing before bed, would go out to the kitchen, lighting her way with a kerosene lamp; and I with her. We put the lamp on the table; we opened the oven door—and all over the kitchen spread the delectable, mouth-watering aroma of the baking bean. We took out the bean-pot. Then we scraped off the crisp top layer of the beans into a saucer. And these we ate!
My mother wore a bustle, and at that historic period there were no kitchenettes; nor had the Spirit of Efficiency inspired the thought of planning your kitchen with a route for food-preparation which makes a flying start at the ice-chest, takes in the meat, fish, and vegetable shelves, touches at the cabinet for dough-mixing, skirts the pan cabinet, and so (as Master Pepys would say) to the stove. There were no scientifically determined routes for food-serving and dish-washing. Each menial, and my mother herself between menials, followed a kind of cow path. My mother had never had it figured out for her that the lowest estimate of time spent at the sink alone is two hours daily, and that these two hours a day count up to five days of twelve hours each in the course of a month, or sixty twelve-hour days at the sink every year. And when, as the expert modern kitchen-planner points out, it is realized that these sixty days are spent in useless stooping, and that, to this strain, is added the fatigue of miles of unnecessary steps, one gets an idea of the kitchen which I am glad to think never occurred to her.