there are possible steps, and easy ones too, leading from one to the
other. I began with the potatoes and know all their tricks and their
manners. The accompanying sketch is the nearest approach to
architecture yet attained. A long way off, you will say; but I insist
it is worthier of recognition than the plans of amateurs who begin
with the parlor and leave the kitchen out in the cold. It is not for
Mr. Fred; he must work out his own kitchen. If Mrs. Fred can't help
him, more's the pity. I give my notions of general principles; the
application of them I leave to you.
My kitchen is not merely a cook-room, nor yet the assembly and
business room of the entire household, as in the olden time. It is the
housekeeper's head-quarters, the mill to which all domestic grists are
brought to be ground,--ground but not consumed. I should never learn
to be heartily grateful for my daily bread if it must always be eaten
with the baking-pans at my elbow. Indeed, we seldom enjoy to the
utmost any good thing if the process of its manufacture has been
carried on before our eyes. Hence the dining-room is a necessity, but
it must be near at hand. If the kitchen cannot go to it, it must come
to the kitchen. If this goes to the basement, or to the attic, that
must follow, but always with impassable barriers between, protecting
each one of our five senses. The confusion usually attending the
dinner-hour should be out of sight; the hissing of buttered pans and
the sound of rattling dishes we do not wish to hear; our sharpened
appetites must not be dulled by spicy aromas that seem to settle on
our tongues; we do not like, in summer weather, to be broiled in the
same heat that roasts our beef; while, as for scents, wrath is cruel
and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand the smell of boiling
cabbage? Yes; the kitchen must be separated from the dining-room, and
the more perfect its appointments, the easier is this separation. The
library and the sitting-room are completely divided by a mere curtain,
because each is quiet and well disposed, not inclined to assert its
own rights or invade those of others; but the ordinary kitchen, like
ill-bred people, is constantly doing both. Thomas Beecher proposes to
locate his at the top of the church steeple. That is unnecessary; we
have only to elevate it morally and intellectually, make it orderly,
scientific, philosophical, and the front parlor itself cannot ask a
more amiable and interesting neighbor. As the chief workshop of the
house, the kitchen should be fitted up and furnished precisely as an
intelligent manufacturer would fit up his factory. Every possible
convenience for doing what must be done; a machine for each kind of
work and a place for every machine. Provision for the removal and
utilizing of all waste, for economizing to the utmost all labor and
material. Then if our housekeepers will go to school in earnest,--will
learn their most complicated and responsible profession half as
thoroughly as a mechanic learns a single and comparatively simple
trade,--we shall have a domestic reformation that will bring back
something of the Eden we have lost.
Respectfully yours,
SISTER JANE.
* * * * *
P.S.--Surreptitiously enclosed by Mrs. John.
DEAR MR. ARCHITECT: Jane has just read her letter to you aloud for
John's and my benefit. John listened to the end without moving a
muscle. When she wound up with the garden of Eden, he got up, took off
his hat (he will keep it on in the house), made a fearfully low bow
and said, "Perfectly magnificent, Jane! I begin to feel like old Adam,
already." Then he burst out laughing and took himself out of the room,
leaving the door wide open, of course, and kicking up the corner of
the door-mat. You see he's one of those men who think home isn't
home-like unless it's sort of free and easy. He'd be perfectly willing
to eat and sleep and live in the kitchen,--if I had the work to do;
and though he likes pretty things, and would feel dreadfully if I
didn't look about so, has a perfect horror of smart housekeepers, and
thinks women who care for nothing else the most disagreeable people in
the world.
The trouble with Jane's letter is that she doesn't go into
particulars enough, and that's why I want to add a postscript. I wish
I could describe the kitchen in the house where she has been living.
The people had so much confidence in her judgment, that they just
allowed her to fix things as she chose, and it's really quite a study.
It mightn't suit anybody else, but it shows what may be done.
She began by taking one of the pleasantest rooms in the house,
although 'twas in the basement, and had windows cut to bring them on
the south and east sides. Then she had an outside door at the south
with a wide piazza over it, which made the room actually just so much
larger. Across one side of the room is a wide stationary table,--I
suppose men would call it a work-bench,--with a fall-leaf, in front of
one of the windows, especially for an ironing-table. Of course it can
be used for anything else. One part of it is about eight inches lower
than the common height, where ever so many kinds of table-work can be
done sitting. Underneath the higher part are drawers and places for
all the things that are useful about the laundry-work. Her sink is in
the midst of a perfect cabinet of conveniences. There's a hook or a
shelf for every identical rag, stick, dish, or spoon that can be used
or thought of; shelves at each side, and drawers that never by any
possibility will hold what doesn't belong in them. One thing she won't
have; and that's a cupboard under the sink for pots and kettles. She
says it's impossible to keep such a place clean and sweet. Things are
shoved into it sooty and steaming to get them out of the way, and it
soon gets damp and crocky beyond all hope of purification. Hot and
cold water run to the boilers and kettles, and there's a funny
contrivance for sprinkling clothes. The washing almost does itself.
The tubs are of soapstone, at the opposite side of the room from the
ironing-table. Over the entire stove--she might have had a range, but
didn't want one--there's a sort of movable cover with a flue running
into the chimney that carries off every breath of steam and smoke from
the cooking. One would never guess at the dinner by any stray odors.
It is made of tin; the kettles boil quicker under it, and it makes the
room a great deal cooler in summer by carrying the extra heat off up
the chimney. She has a place for the bread to rise, and a cupboard
close by for all the ironmongery belonging to the stove, zinc-cloth
and blacking-brush included.
[Illustration: SISTER JANE'S KITCHEN.]
Her pantry I won't undertake to describe. It adjoins both dining-room
and kitchen. John says she never does anything in getting dinner but
just sit down in an easy-chair and turn a crank. That's one of John's
stories, but she certainly will prepare a meal the quickest and with
the fewest steps of any person I ever knew. The funniest thing about
it is, that I've known eight people at work in the room all at once
without being in each other's way one bit. But that's no closer than
men work in their shops.
Jane intends to stay with us this winter, and I expect we shall have
jolly times, for we're going to board the schoolmaster. If he calls to
see you, as I think he will, I want you should read Jane's letter to
him. She would take my head off if she knew I mentioned it, but I
think he ought to know what's before him.
Respectfully,
MRS. JOHN.
P.S. No. 2.--Unnecessarily appended by John.
MY DEAR ARCHITECT: If we've got to go through the whole establishment
on transcendental principles, I shall send in my resignation straight.
Sister Jane's a regular trump; Penelope and queen of Sheba rolled into
one. But when the women-folks begin to preach, I always find it best
to keep still and consider my sins. I haven't had a chance to say much
lately, but I've kept up a tremendous thinking, and when I do get the
floor look out for me. How do you happen to know so much about the
millennium?
Yours patiently,
JOHN.
LETTER XXXI.
From the Architect.
DOMESTIC-SERVICE REFORM.
Dear Miss Jane: Your very kind letter was received and gratefully
appreciated. As the world grows less ignorant and wicked, we should
naturally expect missionaries and reformers to find their occupation
going, if not quite gone; that modern reforms would be mere play
compared with the stern and mighty movements that in former times have
blessed mankind and balked the Evil One. But somehow the need for
missionary work seems greater every year. We are not even permitted to
go to the heathen. They come to us without waiting for an invitation;
if not as pupils in the lessons of civilization, they come as
teachers. Sometimes they are aliens, sometimes our own kith and kin.
To keep what we have won and gain the next height requires new zeal,
and ever greater efforts,--requires the very work you are doing; for a
well-ordered home, though it consist of but two members, is a
tremendous missionary society. The light streaming from its windows is
an ever-burning beacon of safety to our most cherished social
institutions.
First and chiefly, this essential home work needs to be taken from the
hands of indifferent, careless servants and confided to those who
realize the nobleness of the responsibility, and will strive to meet
it faithfully. Ultimately, the ignorant, careless ones must be taught,
but that will never be till culture is a manifest necessity and finds
a fit reward. When a man undertakes the charge of a new business, he
learns, not only its general principles, but as far as possible, its
minutest details, otherwise he fails inevitably, and the place is
given to his well-qualified competitor. If our prospective
housekeepers were amenable to similar rules, the competent mistresses
of this most useful art would find plenty of apprentices glad to serve
them long and well for their tuition, and if those who have now the
care of households will patiently instruct their help, they will find
abundant recompense in a more faithful and efficient service.
Doubtless we must wait a little longer for our lost Eden to be
restored by the angels of the household; but, in the hastening of that
good time, such examples, permit me to say, as your own will be worth
far more than any multiplying of conveniences and labor-saving
machines for the benefit of those who do not know or care to learn
how to use them,--examples of the nobleness, the gentility if you
please, of all useful labor. Until that everlasting truth is
understood and applied, there will be more need of your teaching than
of my plans. If you will teach your neighbors what a fully equipped
home building should contain, I will try to show them how their wants
can be supplied. Teach them, at the same time, what it need not
contain. As certain folks do not understand how heaven can be
enjoyable without a Tartarean attachment to which all disagreeable
people and performances are consigned, so a common notion of home,
that earthly epitome of heaven, appears to be that it should also
contain an abridgment of the same direful institution; that there must
be somewhere in the house a place of torment, the angels who abide
therein, giving us our daily bread and doughnuts, being of a totally
different type from the glorious creatures singing songs of praise
and operatic melodies in the upper stories. That the genius of the
kitchen and the parlor can be one and the same is a conception too
stupendous for the average understanding.
This, too, I hope you will insist upon. Every man who would build
himself a house shall first sit down and--not count the cost, that
comes into my department, but--ask himself solemnly what the house is
for. To live in, of course. But living is a complex affair; it is
constant growth or gradual death; there can be no standing still. Is
the house to be an end, or a means; a help to make the life-work
larger and better, or an added burden? Shall it lift, or crush him?
When this solemn questioning is honestly done, we shall have a new
order of domestic architecture. It may not be classic, neither Grecian
nor Roman, Gothic nor French, but the best of all that has gone before
and the last best thing thrown in. We shall have more cheap houses,
more small ones, I think; more comfort and less show, more content and
fewer mortgages.
LETTER XXXII.
From Fred.
GO TO; LET US BUILD A TOWER.
MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I've been hearing a variety of suggestions from
Miss Jane, the substance of which she has already forwarded you in a
letter. Her ideas are excellent. They ought to be adopted in every
household. I wish to have them carried out as far as possible in mine,
when the time comes. She favors a basement kitchen, which I had always
thought objectionable. If adopted it would change my arrangement
considerably. What do you think of it? How high shall I have the
different stories, and will you give me some hints for exterior? I
intended to have a tower or a cupola, but after so much change I
hardly know where I am coming out. There is something very imposing
about a tower, and a cupola seems to finish the house handsomely,
besides affording fine views. I feel decidedly partial to French
roofs, but have seen some very awkward ones that I should be sorry to
imitate. They give excellent chambers and have a modern look. The
latter point I suppose you will not think important.
Truly,
FRED.
LETTER XXXIII.
From the Architect.
BASEMENTS AND BALCONIES.
Dear Fred: Of course Miss Jane's ideas are good. When a woman honestly
tries to understand her work and do it well, she is sure to succeed,
especially in this matter of the equipments of home.
The basement arrangement depends mainly on the location. When this is
favorable it is undoubtedly economical, nor is it necessarily
inconvenient or unpleasant in any way, but quite the reverse. You are
fortunate if your site will allow it, for it adds enormously to the
capacity of the establishment. At least two sides of this lower
story, "basement" you call it, should be above ground to insure
dryness and plenty of light. Then all the heavier work of the house,
including the eating and drinking, can be done on this floor, leaving
the upper stories intact for loftier purposes. The old-fashioned
cellar as a storehouse for a half-year's stock of provisions--bins,
and barrels by the dozen, of potatoes, apples and cider, corned beef,
pork, vegetables, vinegar, and apple-sauce--is extinct. Hence the
space once thus occupied is almost a clear gain if made into finished
apartments,--an economy that will commonly allow a family room on the
next floor, whereby the going up and down stairs is no more serious
than if both are one story higher. The sketch is an illustration of
what the basement adds. The capacity of the little house is more than
doubled by it, while in point of style the augmentation is even
greater than in room.
[Illustration: WHAT THE BASEMENT ADDS.]
As to height of stories, you are quite as liable to make them too
high as too low. For rooms within the common limits of size, ten to
eleven feet in the clear is enough. Even nine is by no means
dangerous. If too high for their area, they seem like large closets,
giving a feeling of being walled in, hardly less unpleasant than the
low-hanging ceilings of the last century. I know the argument of
better ventilation. But that depends. The old, seven-foot rooms, with
their huge fireplaces, big enough to hold a load of wood, ox-team and
all, undoubtedly held purer air than is found in the hermetically
sealed apartments of the present time, whose ceilings are out of
sight.
As you say, a tower is often very imposing. It is not always certain
who feels the imposition most heavily, the man who pays for it or the
man who looks at it. They are not only imposing, but they contain six
or seven stories, one above another, of eight-foot square rooms,
deducting a Jacob's-ladder stairway at one side, whereon people climb
to the topmost room for the sake of looking out in the wrong direction
through a round dormer-window, scratching their heads in the mean time
on the nails that come through the roof! Cupolas too are
lovely,--especially on a barn,--and top off a house in the daintiest
fashion possible; just as, to set forth great things by small, the
"knob" on the sugar-bowl cover finishes the sugar-bowl. Many houses do
appear unfinished without a cupola, and I'm sorry for them, because
when the cupola is built it looks so much like the handle on a big
cover that I half expect some giant to come along and lift it off to
take a peep at the curious animals underneath. For, truly, they are
curious animals, and build some curious nests. I like, as well as you,
to get up above my neighbors now and then, and look down upon them. I
never see a tall chimney or church spire without wishing there was a
spiral staircase around the outside of it, from which to view the
landscape o'er. In fact, to be candid, if I had happened to live a few
thousand years ago, I am afraid I should have taken stock in the Babel
enterprise, not really expecting to leave this terrestrial ball in
that way, but just to see how high we could go. The audacious tower of
the Centennial I shall certainly patronize. But on domestic buildings,
unless for better adaptation to the site, or for some special use,
there are other things more to be desired than these lofty appendages.
An open balcony, hanging from the highest point of the main roof, just
below the scuttle, or the flat, if there is one, on the top of the
whole, surrounded by a protecting balustrade, affords a better place
for observation and costs less than those laborious affairs whose use
and beauty often neutralize each other.
[Illustration: OUTLOOK FROM THE ROOF.]
How dare you think anything claiming to be a French roof ugly to look
at? People who are fond of that style admire them from a sense of
duty, because they are French roofs. Perhaps if I was a Frenchman I
should like French roofs, too; being an American, I like American
roofs better. You do, however, give one reason for your
preference,--the complete chambers,--which is merely another way of
saying you like three stories better than two,--a good argument, by
the way, for the basement, which is surely more convenient than an
attic. I enclose a sketch, intimating an outline and style that will
suit your location. The roof, which is not French, either in form or
_costliness_, will contain all the dormitories and store-rooms you can
use, unless you propose keeping a three-story boarding-house.
LETTER XXXIV.
From the Schoolmaster.
FOUR ROOMS ENOUGH.
MR. ARCHITECT: Dear Sir,--Once, in conversation with you, I made some
inquiries as to the feasibility of building houses, especially of
brick, with reference to future enlargement. My present ambition is
bounded by a house of four rooms. One in which all the household work
shall be done, including the eating. It shall contain the
cooking-stove, the dining-table, laundry conveniences, etc., and may
be called kitchen, dining-room, laboratory, or simply work-room. An
apartment to be used solely on account of its facilities for doing
house-work. It should be of good size, and a pleasant outlook is
desirable, but not necessary. A second room for ordinary and
extraordinary use; to sit in, to talk in, to read and write and visit
in; the books are kept in it, and the sewing-machine, the piano and
the flower-stand, the birdcage and the pictures; a large, pleasant
room, where the sunlight loves to shine in upon us and we love to look
out upon the sunshine. It is parlor, library, drawing-room, living
room; in fact, it is the house itself, to which everything else is
accessory. A family sleeping-room, sunny, simple, and airy, and a
guest-room of similar character, complete the establishment. More than
these four principal rooms would be a burden, less would hardly
suffice for comfortable living. The problem is to arrange a plan that
shall be convenient and complete before it begins to grow, and to
which future additions may be made without serious loss. I also want
counsel concerning ventilation, both on general principles and with
reference to the unfortunate box in which I am daily compelled to
breathe my own breath over and over, variously flavored with the
commingled exhalations of sixty pupils, with whom I grow cross,
restless, or stupid, according to the state of the school-room
atmosphere. I believe it is just as wicked to allow children to
breathe impure air in their school-rooms or their bedrooms as it would
be to put poison in their dinner-pails and require them to swallow it.
My friend, Mrs. John, takes a kindly interest in my quadruple plan,
and assures me it will be quite sufficient for a sensible housekeeper.
Do you suppose such a one can be found?
If convenient, I will call upon you in a few days.
Truly yours,
SCHOOLMASTER.
LETTER XXXV.
From Mrs. John.
CONVENIENCES AND CONJECTURES.
Dear Mr. Architect: The building-fever seems to be contagious in our
neighborhood. The teacher who boards with us is the latest subject. He
pretends it's all for fun, but has been studying plans for weeks, and
now, after getting the advice of the entire household, is going to
throw it all away and apply to you, as he should have done in the
first place. I overheard him explaining to Jane how the cooking-stove
is to be in a sort of recess by the chimney, with tin-lined doors to
shut it out of sight; the wash-boiler at the opposite side, enclosed
in the same way, and having a contrivance overhead to carry off the
steam; how there are to be cupboards at each side of the wide window,
making it a sort of bay, with a wood-box window-seat; how the sink is
to be converted into an elegant sideboard by an ornamental cover, and
everything else in the room contrived so it can be shut up or folded
up out of sight when not in use. Of course Jane assists, and the
combined wisdom of the two is something appalling to ordinary
mortals. I should certainly think the affair was getting serious if
anything of the kind ever did turn out as other folks think it ought.
They are wonderfully harmonious now, but I don't believe Jane will
ever be satisfied without a separate dining-room.
[Illustration: THE OLD, OLD STORY.]
John wishes me to ask what he shall do about warming his house. Says
he has not decided whether to have fireplaces or stoves, grates or a
hot-air furnace, steam, hot water, solar heat, or depend on a scolding
wife to keep things warm.
Yours truly,
MRS. JOHN.
LETTER XXXVI.
From the Architect.
THE LESSON OF THE ICE-HOUSE.
MRS. JOHN: Dear Madam,--Without doubt the affair is getting serious,
but do not give yourself any uneasiness as to the issue. The Divinity
that shapes our matrimonial ends is, happily, a wiser power than that
which designs our houses, however it may appear to outsiders. Your
friend talks like a gentleman and a scholar. I admonished him
discreetly, promised to study his interesting problem and give him a
chapter on ventilation; which, by the way, is so intimately connected
with warming, that I may be obliged to make a sort of company letter
in answering your husband's inquiry on that subject. Tell him, in
brief, to use fireplaces if he has a hundred acres of wood-land to
clear up; stoves, if he can live without air; grates, if he doesn't
mind the trouble and the ashes; furnace, if he can set it directly
under each room and can find one that won't strangle him some windy
night with poison gases; and steam or hot water, if he can run a
machine-shop and keep a competent engineer. Solar heat may be more
available than he thinks, but his doubt as to the last-named mode
proves that he has no experimental knowledge of it. Neither have I.