NOOKS AND CORNERS
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
[Illustration: A French Window]
NOOKS AND CORNERS
BEING THE COMPANION VOLUME TO
‘FROM KITCHEN TO GARRET’
BY
J. E. PANTON
AUTHOR OF
‘BY-PATHS AND CROSS-ROADS’ ‘THE CURATE’S WIFE’ ‘A TANGLED CHAIN’
‘COUNTRY SKETCHES IN BLACK AND WHITE’
ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
London
WARD & DOWNEY
12 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1889
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MOVING HOUSE 1
II. HALLS AND PASSAGES 23
III. NOOKS AND CORNERS 48
IV. THE BILLIARD-ROOM AND LIBRARY 84
V. SHALL WE DO AWAY WITH THE NURSERY? 99
VI. THE GIRLS’ ROOM 113
VII. COMING-OUT AND DRESS 133
VIII. CHRISTENINGS AND WEDDINGS 153
IX. ABOUT THE BOYS 172
X. SOME DOMESTIC DETAILS 190
XI. THE SICK ROOM 209
XII. WHERE SHALL WE GO FOR A CHANGE? 227
ILLUSTRATIONS
A FRENCH WINDOW _Frontispiece_
FIGS. PAGE
1. HALL ARRANGEMENT 25
2. OAK BUFFET 28
3. STAIRCASE WINDOW 40
4. A LONDON LANDING 41
5, 6. HALL WARDROBES 44, 45
7. A SUMMER CORNER 53
8. A WINTER CORNER 60
9. ARCHES FOR A DOUBLE ROOM 63
10. SIMPLE MANTEL DRAPING 66
11. A RECESS 69
12. A DRAPED PIANO 72
13. CONSERVATORY DOOR 74
14. FRILLED CHAIRS AND SOFA 81
15. AN EMPTY NURSERY 103
16. BOUDOIR-BEDROOM 121
17. AN IDEAL KITCHEN 205
NOOKS AND CORNERS.
CHAPTER I.
MOVING HOUSE.
I have been asked by a great many readers of ‘From Kitchen to Garret’ to
produce another book on the ever fascinating subject of household
management and house decoration; and I have been furthermore requested
to consider Edwin and Angelina from another standpoint, and to regard
them as having increased their borders in more ways than one, and,
having become richer and at the same time more numerous, as now
beginning to move from their small house, furnished so joyfully and
hopefully in the early flush of their married happiness, to one larger
in every way, and more suited to their present income and growing
family.
I confess that I begin my task with just a little diffidence, and a
little misgiving, too, and feel just a wee bit as sad over the beginning
of this little volume as I know my young couples must feel when, no
longer quite as young as they were, they turn their backs on that dear
little first home, and take up their abode in the newer, far more
convenient habitation, welcomed so joyfully by the children, who declare
that now, and now only, they will have room in which to breathe!
For, successful as ‘From Kitchen to Garret’ is, and many as are the
friends I have made through its pages, I am rather doubtful about
another book on the same lines; still, I can but do my best, and so,
without any more forewords on the matter, I will at once plunge into my
subject, and will trust that all those who have made their little houses
pretty by either following or improving on the hints given in my first
book will not disdain to follow me once more into those Nooks and
Corners of house-furnishing and house-keeping, which were deemed too
ambitious for my young couple, or were forgotten in the first essay on
the subject.
Besides which, as life goes on, I am thankful to say that decoration
becomes more and more a fine art.
Formerly people rather scorned the idea of being ‘house-proud’ in the
same manner in which all are nowadays. Their house-pride was merely
expressed in the amount of gilding compressed into a single room; in the
thickness of their carpets, the heaviness of their draperies, and the
general costliness of the plenishing, and the amount of money these
things had cost was far more often spoken of than anything else; while
the name of the upholsterer was mentioned, not as a guarantee that taste
and skill had been called into action, but as a proof that money in this
case had not been an object. Formerly, did I say? Alas! cases still
exist of this heavy and depressing style of thing! Money is poured out
like water on carpets that are nightmares, and on papers that are as
absolutely meaningless as they are ugly, and the despair of anyone who
is called in, as I am constantly, to mitigate the horrors of some
gigantic monument of bad taste and lavish expenditure.
And then, too, people are still, as a rule, far too timid, and act far
too much in a hurry; they believe far too much in the upholsterer, and
far too little in themselves; and above all they cannot get out of the
terrible English habit, carried through every single department in life,
of buying a thing because they admire it, and not because it suits what
they already possess, thus marring at every step their chances of having
a home which is always a pleasure to inhabit, and a restful refuge from
the cares and toils of life.
But it is to assist the timid and those who lack confidence in their own
tastes, and furthermore who may live in distant country places, where
nothing new penetrates even in these days of parcel-posts and
illustrated newspapers, that I am writing this book, and wrote ‘From
Kitchen to Garret,’ and therefore I must not scold but rather encourage
those who would add to the beauty of their surroundings, but do not
quite know how to set about it: and I am most anxious that there may
soon be no house anywhere in England that may not have some claim to be
considered beautiful or interesting or pretty; for indeed there is no
reason why the humblest among us may not have a charming home, as
certainly, if he or she have taste, money nowadays is not a barrier
between beauty and the public at large. Therefore when any among my
readers makes up her mind that it is absolutely necessary that a move
should be made, the first piece of advice I would give her is that she
should determine on her future locality, if not on the abode itself,
before she is driven from her first house by the lapsing of a lease or
the necessity of deciding immediately because a tenant is forthcoming
for house number one; for if not, she may find herself forced into an
uncongenial neighbourhood or into a house that has every unpleasant
quality under the sun. Above all she must be prepared for a certain
amount of acute misery, mental, at any rate, if not physical, for there
is something about one’s first married home that one can never really
replace, and that renders our fitting into our new locality only a
little less torturing than inhabiting a new skin would be, were we
suddenly forced into one.
Personally I am not one bit sentimental; I never cried over a faded
flower, or lay awake weeping bitter tears over an unhappy love-affair: I
never had one, I am thankful to say. Neither have I hoarded first shoes,
snippings of baby curls, nor indeed anything save my wedding-dress,
which is a most valuable ‘property’ for characters and private
theatricals of all kinds; and therefore I am considered absolutely
lacking in ‘fine feelings,’ and unhampered by ‘nonsense’; but I have
never yet become reconciled to the moves we have had to make after our
first twelve years of married life, and I much doubt now if I ever
shall; I certainly shall not until I make move number three, and what is
perhaps the most curious point in the whole business is that I did not
like the house, nor the town, nor indeed anything much about it, and
yet I can never see certain looks in the sky, scent certain odours,
without being transported to dear dull Dorsetshire, and without longing
in a curious home-sick way for the marvellously lovely range of the
Purbeck hills, which haunts me like a dream, and for which I am
convinced I should positively pine, had I the smallest touch of
sentiment in my composition.
The house itself was most wretchedly inconvenient, the furniture of over
twenty years ago--aye, and some of it over fifty years ago--does not
bear thinking about in these æsthetic days. I endured dullness such as
only a London girl, plunged suddenly into an atmosphere she could not
comprehend, much less assimilate, could experience: we had three years
of unspeakable worries; and yet, with it all--with its hideous rooms and
its cold and ugly passages, its out-of-the-worldness, and its unpleasant
associations--there is something about it that no other house can ever
hold, and that causes me often and often to dream I am there again, or
that makes me hear sometimes on a quiet night the old sound of the
sudden clash of the china closet door, the opening of the door at the
top of the kitchen stairs--which, I believe, has been taken away now by
desecrating hands, and which had a sound all its own--or that causes me
to wake suddenly from sleep to wonder at the late return of phantom
waggons and ghostly horses over stones that are hundreds of miles away
from our present uncongenial abode, and which caused sounds inseparable
from thoughts of those dear dead days--days I would have back this
moment if I could, if only to live them over once more in a manner a
thousand times better than an inexperienced girl could ever do, and use
then the experience one buys at such an enormous cost because one will
not listen to words of wisdom from those who have lived so very much
longer in the world than we had then, and which is useless now, because
one sees all too late what one might have done for others.
These experiences and reminiscences of mine may seem out of place here,
but they really are not. I shall in this book, as in my last, speak only
of what I have experienced; and I am so convinced that when house-moving
is done heartbreak must ensue that I dwell upon this aspect of the case
in order that the first house may not be left capriciously, but only
because it is absolutely necessary to go elsewhere.
I have always felt myself, unsentimental creature though I am, that a
house absorbs some of one’s own personality: that the very walls we warm
with our breathing, living selves, and among which we spend our lives,
and allow ourselves to be ourselves without any company veneer, must in
some measure become impregnated by our vitality. You may, for example,
re-paper and re-furnish your room, but in a very short time that room
looks exactly like you once more, and becomes again in a week or two--a
month, at most--part and parcel of your own individuality. But leave
your house, and, if you can muster sufficient courage to do so, go and
call on the next inhabitant, and you will see in one moment what I mean.
The very room is altered. Your successors may have kept your
decorations, taken off your ‘fixtures,’ and gone on the very same lines
as regards furnishing and arrangement as you did, but it will not look
in the very least like you, and you will not believe you are in the same
room in which you have spent so many happy and unhappy hours. At first,
therefore, in any new house you have not only to adapt yourself and your
furniture to it, but you have by your individuality to imprint yourself
on the very fabric itself.
The last owner’s individuality fades at once; I have seen few empty
houses that do not look precisely like something dead: the body is
there, but the spirit is absent. And there is a blank awful chill about
such a house that penetrates one’s very soul and depresses one in an
extraordinary way; but it takes some time to reanimate the body, and,
indeed, in an unloved atmosphere I question if it is ever done. Some
folk the house won’t have at any price, and there are one or two places
I wot of that are blank still, because uncongenial people have them and
are incapable of living up to them properly; they put just the wrong
draperies in the windows, wrench the doors round into the wrong places,
and finally have hung the very worst colours on the walls, and, indeed,
have treated it in such an inconsiderate way that it never responds, and
remains silent, angular, unsatisfied, dead, as long as those people
remain within its shelter.
Angelina, when she really must move therefore, must remember to think
over all these details.
I envy everyone myself who has a really inherited house--a house which
has absorbed the family atmosphere for centuries, that has never been
passed from hand to hand and from family to family until it has no
recollection of who built it or what it was built for; a house for which
it is an intense and real pleasure to plan improvements, to deck as one
would deck a child of one’s own, knowing that what we spent on it or did
for it would benefit and please not only ourselves but those who are to
come after us. Yes; hopeless Radical as I am in everything else, I am
Conservative indeed in the house I would have if I could; but in these
days of progress, when most people grow rich, and many only use their
dwelling-place as a shelter, and don’t think of it as a home, I am
constantly being pained to see retired city men and lawyers--the two
classes which become really wealthy, taking over the delightful places
which once owned ‘county families,’ and ruining the society round with
their ostentation and the ridiculous airs only found in suburban places
where ‘society’ so-called consists of ‘twopence three-farthings looking
down on twopence,’ while the poor houses themselves are ruined too by
utterly inappropriate furnishing and by decorations suitable only for an
ordinary ‘mansion,’ furnished by giving _carte blanche_ to some
enterprising and advertising tradesman.
Should Angelina have made her first home in the family dwelling-place,
she will never have to learn what moving house really means. She can
allow her roots to sink as deeply as she likes into the kindly soil, and
she can make it all as charming as she will, because she will know that
all she does will only benefit her own; but as there are indeed few
nowadays who can contemplate this (for even the absorbers of the old
places round London never think of the generation behind them, and often
and often cut up the land for eligible building sites, with as little
compunction as one cuts up a cake at a school-feast: only taking care it
shall go as far as it can), we need not dwell on this aspect of the
case, but on the one that should be the motive of this chapter, namely,
moving house.
If you are tolerably happy in the neighbourhood you know, pray take my
advice and remain there; there are sure to be discomforts of some kind
or other in any locality. I have never yet come across anyone who was
perfectly satisfied with his or her belongings; certainly I have never
met anyone who had not bitter complaint to make about the special
locality he or she inhabited, and yet who did not ruffle up their
feathers the moment any stranger found fault with it. But a
neighbourhood is like a house, and requires locally knowing; and if we
are for ever changing our neighbourhood, we can never feel at home
anywhere.
No doubt it is an unfashionable idea nowadays, this clinging to one
place; but I think, if more consideration were given to the subject,
life would be much better than it is at present, for far more good can
be done by those who are able to help their poorer neighbours, should
they remain year after year in the same place; for they are thus enabled
to know them thoroughly, to sift the deserving from the hopeless, and
finally to interest themselves in such a way in the real life around
them that the place in which fate has placed them is in some measure
better for their having made their home there. And this cannot be done
satisfactorily by mere birds of passage, who have no ‘vested interests’
in the place, and are ready to be off at a minute’s notice, just because
they think a change would be nice.
And once having made up your minds that a change of house is imperative,
I advise you to ponder seriously and at great length over the pros and
cons of a residence in the same neighbourhood, before finally
determining to plant your roots elsewhere. I think what makes a
residence in the suburbs almost unendurable is this mania for change,
for we no sooner begin to know people there and like them than we find
they are becoming uneasy; they fancy the place is unhealthy, someone has
been rude, the nicest people have not called--as if the nicest people
ever did rush to call without introductions of some sort or other--and
they are off impatiently before they have entered into the life of a
place they condemn ruthlessly because they do not really know what it is
like.
How long does it take to know a place? Well, if you are lucky enough to
go there with really good introductions, I should think six months; if
you know no one, and are dependent on chance, or the vicar of the
parish, you may never know it at all; but, in ordinary cases, and where
people have had their edges clipped by really good society, you ought to
know quite as many people as you wish to in about three years.
Therefore, if you have begun your residence in the suburbs, and have a
nice church, a nice doctor, and nice friends, stay there; you don’t know
how deeply your roots are planted until you begin to drag them up. If
you are a Londoner, on no account be persuaded by artistic accounts of
country delights to leave your beloved pavements and the exquisite
freedom of a town life and surroundings: and if you are born and have
lived among cabbages and roses--if you love the country, and can
interest yourself mildly in the continual changes that are going on
around you in your neighbours’ houses and the cottages round
about--remain there; and be thankful for tastes which are innocent if
they are circumscribed, and often result in a far nobler life than that
made up mostly from excitement and dissipation; because anyone who can
and will live cheerfully in the country, making work for the labourer,
and employing folk in pure air, and in decent habitations, does much
more for the human race than he wots of, and should be encouraged to do
so in any manner that one possibly can.
I am often being told that the country is a far cheaper place to live in
than London; but I have tried both, and I know better. In the first
place, in London you can do precisely what you like, and, provided your
likes are not openly eccentric, no one will interfere with you. You can
have ten friends or ten thousand acquaintances. You may wear one dress
as long as it will hold together, and no one will doubt your
capabilities of being respectable because of your shabby attire. You may
get up when you like, go to bed when you like, need not give to any
charity if you are not charitably disposed, need not keep a carriage,
because you can at any moment hail any vehicle, and go anywhere you
like; and, above all, can be so easily amused, and at so cheap a rate,
that one need hardly put down ‘amusements’ in our schedule at all.
Now in the country we must have some sort of a carriage if we wish to
get outside our own immediate neighbourhood and mix with our
fellow-creatures; from the humble ‘four-wheel’ of the farmer’s wife,
and the curate’s donkey-cart, to the landau, waggonette, or smart little
victoria of the other richer folk: all must have some other means of
progression than would be afforded by one’s own legs. Our incomes are
common property, and, should we have two new dresses in the course of
the year, are a prey for all those dear creatures who spend their time
in being charitable on other folk’s money. We must have a garden, and we
obtain a scant supply of worm-eaten fruit, inferior flowers, and
out-of-season vegetables, at a price for which we could have obtained
the very best stores of Covent Garden--for by out-of-season I don’t mean
that our pears and asparagus come before their time, but considerably
after the period when they have become cheap in the market in London;
and, finally, we cannot be amused without half ruining ourselves by
constant rushes to town, by subscribing largely to Mudie, and by taking
in every newspaper we can lay our hands on if we are readers, and if we
are fond of finery, by sending for constant new garments, not because we
want them, but because we really want to see what is being worn. Of
course rates, rents, and taxes are much less in the country; but rent in
London is less than it used to be, and in unfashionable neighbourhoods
is not too exorbitant; but even with the rent considered, I still
maintain one can live more cheaply in London than elsewhere, and can
most certainly live longer there and far more pleasantly.
So I do most strongly advise country mice to remain country mice, unless
they make the change very young; and I implore town mice to cling to
their pavements, for nothing short of a residence for generations in the
country can teach one how to live under the microscope which is put over
one the moment a stranger goes into the country to live, and nothing
save being born to it could ever reconcile one to having one’s most
intimate personal concerns discussed at the bar of every public house,
over every shop counter, in every parlour, as they are discussed in an
ordinary rural place, or to having one’s most innocent speeches repeated
until one would certainly not recognise them, did they return to us
after their last repetition.
I declare that twenty years of residence in and about the country have
never reconciled me to all this, or caused me to take the profound
interest in my turn in my neighbours, in the way that aborigines do to
reconcile and repay themselves for their own sojourn under the
microscope, and which a country born and bred individual takes as
naturally as he does his absence from the theatres, and his utter lack
of interest on any other topic than the ever-absorbing one of ‘who is
going to marry whom,’ or who is not, and what the curate’s last baby was
called, and why that special name was selected; and, therefore, I never
lose an opportunity of warning the ducks to remain in the pond, and the
hens in the farmyard where they were hatched, for I am quite sure my
experience is not a solitary one by any means, and has often been the
fate of those who went into the country because no one warned them that
the delights thereof were mere snares and delusions, and who would give
anything to return, only they cannot afford another move.
And I have no doubt that the country mice are as miserable in the town
in their turn: they miss the intimate conversations, the familiarity of
their friendships; they pine for fresh air, and weep over ‘smuts;’ the
noise and bustle we love so dearly bewilders and distresses them; they
object to putting on gloves and a bonnet whenever they go out, resent
being unable to ‘run in’ at any moment to their acquaintances, dread the
streets, see disease lurking at every corner, in every glass of milk, in
each vestment fresh from the laundress, and, pining away, become pale,
ill, and wretched, and put it down to London, when really the misery
lies entirely in themselves.
Have I said enough to show my readers that when they are contemplating a
move they should do their utmost to remain in the same neighbourhood, or
at all events in one with the main workings of which they are in a
measure familiar? I think so; and if at the same time I tell them to
remember the church where their children were christened, the doctor who
helped them over so many hours of pain and trouble, and finally the
friends they made--and old friends should never be given up on any
account whatever--I believe they will see that a change even for the
better has always its trials, and that a great many things should be
considered before up-rooting takes place, and a family is landed in an
entirely new locality, that, be it as nice as it may be, has its own
interests, in which the new-comer has neither part nor parcel, and its
unwritten laws and small rules of etiquette, which are as rigid as they
are incomprehensible to an outsider.
I think in every neighbourhood there should be also some agent to send
out lists of all the pros and cons, the ins and outs of a neighbourhood,
which should show you at once the number and styles of the different
churches, the state of society (it could be ‘young,’ ‘army,’ ‘lawyers,’
or anything almost), the schools, the advantages and disadvantages, and,
in fact, all the particulars one wants to know. They should truthfully
and in confidence give one all the required information, and then one
would not run the risk of making mistakes. But as this seems impossible,
a residence for a short time in a furnished house (one’s own house could
in turn be let to some one who wants to investigate our neighbourhood)
should be indulged in. A very few weeks would inform us of all we want
to know; for even if we did not become acquainted with one soul
personally, we should have looked at the people and taken stock of their
windows, from which I think one can always learn so much, and can
quietly make our own inquiries about schools, churches, and the rest of
the vital points of interest about a new residence, and come as quietly
to the conclusion as to whether the neighbourhood will suit us or not,
before going to the expense of moving and decorating to suit ourselves
and our belongings--an expense which once incurred often binds us hard
and fast to a place from which we would give our ears to remove.
Then comes the question of the house. This should be large enough to
take all the family and allow for any possible additions; but at the
same time Angelina will have to remember that when the boys are at
school there will always be a room for a friend, and therefore the
question of spare rooms is not such a vital one as it was. She will also
have to legislate for the girls’ own room--probably a room for a
governess, though a resident governess should be avoided unless the
house is a good size, and unless she is an absolute necessity. There is
the schoolroom to think of, and she must contemplate--perhaps
ruefully--the nurseries, with an eye to adapting them to another
purpose, when that saddest of all days comes when we cannot deceive
ourselves into believing a nursery is any longer necessary, and we have
to turn our backs on our youth and the dear small child-inhabitants at
the same time. A house without a nursery is never as joyous or lively as
one that possesses such a room, and it’s no use trying to believe this
to be the case. Still it is equally of no use to set apart the best room
in the house for that most pleasant of all chambers, if there is no
chance of nursery children, and if all are merged into the young
gentlemen and ladies, who are fast growing up and eagerly longing to
launch their boats on the sea of life for a cruise of their own.
When the house is positively and actually selected and the move
imminent, when the lease is signed and the decorations are in train, the
first step to take is to get several estimates from firms who are
accustomed to do nothing else save move furniture. In nothing does price
fluctuate so much as it does in these estimates, and when we moved from
Dorsetshire to Shortlands there was actually and positively a difference
of 100_l._ in the highest and lowest of the many estimates we had, the
person selected being just 100_l._ lower in his price than the man who
made us our first offer.
To move luxuriously we should have taken house number two for a quarter
before we are obliged to leave our own. Of course if we could persuade
the landlord to let us have it for six weeks it would be better; but not
many landlords are as accommodating as this, and unfortunately many of
us cannot afford a double rent even for such a short space of time.
Still an effort should be made, as undoubtedly much is wasted in a
hurried move--in an enforced turning out on quarter day into another
house on the same date.
It is only people in very straitened circumstances who accept in these
artistic days of ours the landlord’s scheme of decoration. Formerly
there were no ideas in the head of an ordinary paterfamilias on the
subject of paint and paper, and as long as all was clean and in good
condition he did not agitate himself in the least about his surroundings
as far as mere colour and ‘decoration’ were concerned, and he cheerfully
spread his Turkey carpet and placed his heavy sideboard and mahogany
table and chairs in position, regardless of the fact that the ‘good’
flock paper and vulgar graining made up a _tout ensemble_ as utterly
depressing as it was tasteless and absolutely without character.
But now, I am glad to think, what is already in one’s possession governs
in some measure what alterations are to be made, and as fate never yet
was so propitious as to put one down straight from one house into
another which was exactly decorated to our taste, we may be quite sure
that there are many things to do to any place to which we may
contemplate moving; therefore I say if possible let the two leases,
_i.e._ of your present and your future house, run side by side for six
weeks at least: so shall you move comfortably, and be able to make those
alterations that are perfectly sure to be necessary.
A new house should never by any chance be entered in the September
quarter; it is astonishing what an amount of coal and reckless
expenditure of gas is required to obtain even moderate warmth in a new
house; and furthermore most appalling discoveries are apt to be made, as
soon as the fires are lighted, of the manner in which floors, doors, and
window-frames are capable of shrinking the moment warmth penetrates the
place; these we can circumvent in summer, but the winter is not a time
to run any risks of discovering that the more we try to warm the house
the wider open gape the cracks in all the woodwork, and that nothing we
can do will really warm a place, more and more exposed as days go by to
the four winds of heaven. Therefore, if the future house has never been
lived in, enter it in June, or even in March; there will then be ample
time to find out all faults in the structure before the winter arrives
with all its concomitant miseries.
Delightful Mr. Aspinall, for whose existence I can never be sufficiently
thankful, has made house decoration mere child’s play compared to what
it used to be; and, armed with his paints and a written description of
what each room is to be like when done, the foreman can be left to his
own devices, and the old house can be returned to with a safe
conscience; for if careful selection has been made of each paper and its
own particular paint, no risks are run of finding, as I found when I
made my last move, that owing to the peculiar freaks of the painter
there were seven shades of blue in my hall, and another separate shade
of the same colour in a bed-room that was designed for a gem, and was
becoming under the wretch’s brush the exact shade of a butcher’s apron,
which was his own idea of a complete match to the ‘Berry’ paper--really
a good hedge-sparrow egg blue-green! If only he had had Aspinall’s neat
little tins, I should not have had to stand over him all the time he
mixed his paint, and most of the time he was applying it, and could not
see at the last that he was wrong and I was absolutely right. So if
those about to move will leave their decorators instructions to use
Aspinall and nothing else, they can be absolutely sure that their paint
will be right, and not a perpetual eyesore, as it almost invariably is
when left to the tender mercies of the ordinary decorator, who considers
he has an eye for colour, and is as obstinate as half-educated people
invariably are.
Briefly, then, the first thing we have to do when we contemplate moving
is to really make up our minds that such a step is absolutely necessary,
because no one who has never moved can understand the mental misery
caused by tearing up one’s roots even from an uncongenial soil;
secondly, to carefully select a house likely to be our home for the rest
of our lives; thirdly, to still more carefully choose and put in train a
scheme of decoration that will harmonise in some measure with our
cherished possessions; and fourthly, to endeavour not to be forced at
the last to move hurriedly or into a new house in the winter. Once these
details are remembered and enforced, the real process of moving may
begin, and be got over as soon as the new house is ready for the
inmates.
The mere move itself should be left entirely in the hands of the people
employed. Personally, I recommend for any one in the suburbs Bachelar,
of Croydon, who moved our furniture most successfully in the south of
England. Peace, of Bridgewater and Bournemouth, is equally to be
commended. Unfortunately, I know no one in the north, but I have no
doubt there are many firms there; but in any case all should be written
to, and estimates should be carefully considered before definitely
selecting any one from among their number; but all one’s belongings
should be in covered furniture vans: open vans or railway trucks are
ruination, and should never for one moment be used; and no estimate
which includes moving any of the ‘goods and chattels’ in open trucks
should be considered seriously, as even the roughest furniture suffers
considerably by being carted about in this primitive manner, and is
spoiled to a far greater extent than the mere difference between the two
kinds of conveyances would pay for.
The books and pictures should be packed first, and unpacked last; the
carpets should be rolled up, after a good shaking, with camphor-bags
inside, even for the shortest transit; the straw, &c., used in packing
them in the most carefully supervised vans having been proved a most
comfortable home for small and teasing animals, which, discovering that
carpets, pillows, and beds are warmer and more comfortable on the whole
than straw, forsake their habitations for eligible residences among our
properties if we have not made them unbearable with camphor and a good
sprinkling of Keating’s insect powder before they leave our hands. Each
room-full of furniture should be placed ready to be again put down in
the special room for which it is intended. The carpets should remain
rolled until the last of the movers is departed; then after the floors
have been most thoroughly scrubbed with carbolic soap, the carpets
should be well beaten, and should be relaid if possible by the hands of
some ‘professional,’ for on the proper laying of a carpet depends far
more of the wear than we quite realise. The best furniture mover cannot
resist--please remember this!--the exquisite temptation to which he is
exposed to stuff up odd corners, and to prevent shaking by making
‘buffers’ out of our pillows, cushions, and odds and ends generally; and
as he furthermore has most excellent wrapping material in blankets,
small rugs, and other similar trifles, the amateur must come to the
rescue of her goods, or the professional packer will be much too strong
for her.
In really well-organised and well-managed households each bed pillow and
mattress should have its loose and washable cover sewn tightly over it
of whitey-brown crash; these covers should be washed every year--if
possible, every six months, and if these are arranged for they will in a
great measure protect our property from the dirt and certain amount of
almost indispensable damage, which would accrue to them were they left
to the tender mercies of the remover, who would at once use them as
mentioned above, and would not disdain to walk upon them cheerfully,
did they seem to require more pressing down than a mere arrangement with
the hands would effect; but if they are not so defended before the move
is actually in progress, these covers should be made, or else great
sheets of coarse crash, such as is used for packing purposes, should be
strongly sewn round them, or inevitably we shall have to send all the
bedding to the upholsterers to be ‘re-done’--_i.e._ picked over and
readjusted, and the ticks washed also. The blankets must be even more
carefully protected. I have seen them wrapped round iron bedsteads, and
large mirrors, and with boots and even knives inside their folds, and in
any case they are ruthlessly annexed for packing purposes. Now to
circumvent this I strongly advise that space should be left at the top
of the box of each person inhabiting each separate room, and into this
space the folded blankets should go, to be ready for use at once, and to
be out of the way of the ‘ravagers.’ The clothes that should have
occupied the space in the box can be most safely left in the chests of
drawers and wardrobes, for ‘personal property’ of all kinds is
invariably respected, and not the most ruthless of packers would dream
of enfolding grimy objects in body linen or even among the folds of
heavy winter dresses. These are invariably left exactly as one last
placed them, and are emphatically respected, while even new blankets
appear to have an irresistible attraction for them, and are annexed at
once, while venerable ones suffer in the most appalling way conceivable.
It is absolutely impossible to move in anything like comfort or peace
unless the juvenile members of the family and their nurses are ‘boarded
out.’
It is astonishing how very kind people are to each other when this
trying work is proceeding, and there are few among us, if indeed there
are any, who are not possessed of relatives, or at least dear friends,
who will stretch their houses to the extent of taking in some of the
children for the inside of a week; but if there are none on whom we can
rely, the children should be sent to an hotel, or lodgings should be
taken for them for a week; for if this is not done we should be quite
sure to be driven mad by them, by the utter helplessness of their
nurses, and by the certainty that we should have them all ill from the
draughts, the scrappy meals, the uncertain hours, and the thousand and
one absolutely unpreventable events that are familiar to every mother,
and therefore need not be detailed here.
Let us suppose, therefore, that our move is to commence on a Tuesday, an
excellent day, which leaves Monday for our private packings, for the men
to pack the books, china, and ornaments (the number of my possessions in
these several ways always eliciting most amusing comments), and for us
to clear out the children and nurses; these latter, by the way, should
have carefully packed all the children’s things the week before in boxes
marked ‘Nursery’ in large chalk letters, and should take with them to
their lodgings only what is absolutely necessary. We will then proceed
up-stairs, put all the blankets away as suggested just now, see our
garments are so bestowed that they are safe, the silver and jewellery in
the charge of the man-servant if there be one, in the charge of the
parlour-maid if there be none, and then we should see placards are up in
each room, inscribed with the name of the room into which the things are
to go; and our task at the other end will be much simplified if we also
attach labels to each very heavy piece of furniture, taking care similar
labels are already placed in a prominent position in the rooms they are
intended for.
The packing of a big house takes about two days, and on the evening of
the first day two of the servants and one of the household, the eldest
daughter if possible, should go on to the new house; if, however, there
is a long journey before them they should start almost as soon as the
vans come, as the first will arrive Wednesday morning at the new abode,
and someone should be there to receive it. The mistress and master
should remain until Wednesday night, when they too should go on to the
new abode, travelling by night if necessary, and the oldest and
trustworthiest servant should be left to see the house is cleaned down
by a couple of charwomen, and to hand the keys to a representative of
the landlord, who should go over the house with an agent on the side of
the remover to see all was left properly and undamaged by the out-going
tenant; then the maid or man could rest at a friend’s house or at the
local inn, and join the rest of the party on Thursday morning.
It is absolutely necessary that a separate hamper of food ready cooked
and sufficient to supply the household for three days should be sent on
with the first batch of domestics, and the hamper should contain kettle,
cups and saucers, plates, and knives and forks, besides the actual food.
The cook will not be able to be spared from putting her belongings in
order to cook eatables, but an ample supply is necessary; for, as all
will be working hard, all will require sustenance. This hamper should be
at once put into the larder in the new house, the door locked, and the
key kept by the servant herself.
The contents of the servants’ bedrooms, the kitchen, and one
sitting-room, and, if possible, one bedroom besides, should be
despatched first, and as each article is brought in someone should seat
herself on a camp-stool in the hall and should call out ‘Dining-room,’
‘Servants’ bedroom,’ ‘Blue room,’ or otherwise name its destination; so
will the movers avoid the pleasing sight, that met my eyes when I moved
last, of the complete contents of three rooms placed higgledy-piggledy
in the centre of one chamber, heaped up like ‘leaves in Vallombrosa,’
where the wretched painters were dawdling over their work still; the
painters who had caused this chaos by insisting that none of the other
rooms were ready, though none were as absolutely unfinished as that in
which they had arranged this pleasing reception for me.
Thank goodness, my rage was so extreme that I turned them out neck and
crop, else, verily, I believe they would be here at this very moment;
but I always determined to use my own sufferings as a warning to others,
and I relate this experience in the hope that no one will attempt a move
until the painters are out, and unless they will manage it on the lines
here laid down for them.
The men who move are always supposed to lay carpets, hang pictures and
curtains, and replace the books in cases. Whenever money is a very great
object--and, in that case, no move should be contemplated unless it were
a matter of health or the bread-winner’s change of employment--I
strongly advise that they should do nothing of the kind.
In the first place, the carpets should not be placed until the last man
has departed; and in the second, it is infinitely better to have not
only a regular carpet-layer, but a man accustomed to hang pictures and
arrange brackets, mirrors, &c. I personally have a great many pictures
and odds and ends, and I have twice had a most excellent man from
Shoolbred’s on these occasions, who came properly provided with nails,
copper-wire, and all necessary tools, and who, for a little under 3_l._,
quietly, swiftly, and skilfully placed the pictures, &c., in their
places, with just a very little supervision from me; for, like all those
who have no regular art education, he had the usual mania for hanging
everything ever so much higher than it ought to be--a mania I most
successfully and promptly combated! But beyond this, and giving him a
few directions as to the placing of the pictures in due order, I left
matters to him; and in three days--for, like an angel, he remained his
Saturday half-holiday at my urgent request--all the walls were decorated
and finished properly, which they could not have been in double the time
had I been forced to rely on the help of those in the house.
The china and books should be the last things arranged, and this cannot
be completed, I fear, in the week; but, thanks to my plan of short
curtains and no blinds, any window can be arranged in exactly ten
minutes. For, of course, the slight brass rods should be in place before
the move begins; and the carpets being square are laid in about half an
hour each, the carpet-layer going swiftly from room to room, and the
maids replacing the furniture, with the help of a man, as he leaves the
room; and as once curtains are up and carpets down the worst of the
battle is over, we may, perhaps, even arrange the china and books before
Sunday, and so spend in truth a real day of rest.
I have all the decorative china arranged on a tiny folding-table we call
a choir-table, because it is brought into use for choir teas and other
similar festivities, and from this are picked out quickly and easily the
distinctive pieces devoted to each room: the book-shelves are up, and
then the books, being packed in something like order, are arranged, and,
in consequence, carefully done. A move need never take more than ten
days; and it would be simply indefensible were not the house absolutely
and completely straight in a fortnight; and, above all, let the
servants’ apartments and the nurseries be put in order first. Servants,
as a rule, are far less able, both by temperament and education, than
we are, to bear being ‘put out of their ways,’ and being over-worked and
over-tired resent, as no really trained and well-disciplined nature
resents, the small discomforts that we know will soon be entirely
forgotten, but that are apt at the time to cause friction, and, if not
properly legislated for, may even lose us a good and valuable servant.
And, inasmuch as we have had an education and advantages, and inherit in
some cases the disciplined nature of forefathers and mothers equally
disciplined and educated, we must show that we have profited by these
said advantages at such times as these; and whereas we know that our
maids have had none, we should consider them, and look after them much
as we should after children, being quite sure we shall be rewarded after
our struggles by cheerful faces and willing arms, that are twice as
cheerful and willing as they would be did we not remember to tell them
how tired they must be, and to see they have extra food, and a small
amount of coddling even, to carry them over the present stress of work.
The children should not return until one sees their rooms are dry and
warm and straight. This, like all the rest of the move, must be done by
organisation, and the rooms could be properly ready by Saturday night;
but each maid must be told off to the different rooms, and the mistress
and her daughter (and I do hope, for her sake, she may have that most
invaluable of all possessions--a grown-up daughter) must never relax
their supervision, else sundry gigglings and rompings about will hinder
work, and denote that, like most young feminine creatures, the maids are
disorganised by the presence of the opposite sex, and are endeavouring
to combine amusement and work in a most unsatisfactory and impossible
manner.
The master of the house, poor creature! will confine his energies in
most cases to paying for the move, or, if he be very exemplary, after
arranging the wine-cellar he will see to the books and help with the
pictures. I have even heard rumours of men who are most useful and
helpful at similar crises; but as I have never yet found any male rise
above the discomfort sufficiently to be of real use in the matter, I
must put down this as a mere rumour, only hoping that it may be true. He
is, however, invaluable when it comes to managing the men who come to
move, and should be considered angelic if he does not grumble over his
scrappy dinner, or resent the fact that, unless he can go to an hotel,
he is not likely to have any decent meals for at least three days--a
fact a woman rather enjoys than deplores, as she recognises that for
those three days at least there are no orders to give and no regular
planning of food to be done.
The first few days in a new house are replete with misery. On the
commencement of our tenancy we are literally besieged by the tradesmen
coming to endeavour to secure our custom; but we should be wise if from
some friend we were to obtain a list of those who are really reliable,
until we are able to send round to the butchers, and obtain lists of
prices from all for comparison, and have time to discover which of the
local grocers will serve us at co-operative prices for ready money. But
under no circumstances do I advise allowing a grocer’s man to call for
orders: a grocer’s bill being the one of all others that is liable to
swell to gigantic proportions. The moment a daily visit is permitted,
the maids appear to rack their brains to see what they can order, and I
have saved myself at least five shillings a week since I put a veto on
the daily call, which seemed a signal for them to discover that
hearthstones, vinegar, treacle, and similar ‘intangible’ objects were
required; and by ‘intangible’ I mean articles that might be wanted, as
it is impossible to regulate the supplies of these as one can other
goods; and as I have had far less of all since I send a written order to
either Shoolbred or Whiteley--whose men are not naturally in the least
likely to press for orders, and whose sole duties consist in bringing
the things, and receiving payment for the same--I strongly recommend all
housewives either to deal with them, or to go to the local grocers
themselves, and at once impress on them that no orders given in the
kitchen are to be attended to under any pretext whatever.
The tradesman difficulty is the first misery, and then come the miseries
of making acquaintance really with our house and surroundings. We are
sure to discover a thousand small vexatious omissions in the house
itself, and above all--‘_miserere mei!_’--will we see with dismay that
the furniture which looked quite beautiful in our old home has
suddenly, and in the most unprovoked manner, become absolutely shabby
and miserable.
This is an unanswerable problem, but it is a fact, and I can only
account for it by suggesting that the new paper and paint are to blame,
and that the sooner we get our furniture done up and rejuvenated the
sooner shall we become reconciled to our new house; but, of course, this
costs money--at a time, too, when money has been flowing away a little
too freely to be pleasant--and, no doubt, we may have to wait: another
reason why a move is trying, and why, like marriage, it should never be
undertaken lightly or unadvisedly; and at first we must make the best of
our surroundings, being duly thankful for the square carpets and the
light short curtains that save us so much piecing and planning, and
looking forward to new cretonne and tapestry as soon as we can afford
it.
Then comes the misery of making new friends; and here I would say a word
of warning to those who go to an entirely unknown place, and have
absolutely no introductions. The best and nicest folk do not rush to
call on new people unless they have some knowledge of them; therefore
wait a little and ‘gang warily’ before accepting as your _fidus Achates_
the first lady who enters your doors, for doubtless her call is caused
by curiosity, and because she has but few acquaintances and wishes
ardently to have more.
Of course, if you have an immense house and heaps of money, everyone
calls on the house and on your income, and you can soon discriminate for
yourselves who is likely to be desirable and who is not; but the
ordinary householder should be very cautious about the acquaintances she
makes until she feels her feet, and can find out somehow--it is from the
clergyman and his wife generally--who is who, taking care in her turn to
tell enough of herself and her forbears to show that she is respectable
at any rate, and obtaining in due course the same sort of information
about those with whom she is surrounded.
In London--dear, lovely, unsnobbish London--one can do absolutely as one
likes about everything, and nowhere is society as good as it is there.
In the country the very best society is dull. In London one can meet
with the only society worth having, in my opinion: the society of those
who either in art, literature, science, or politics have ‘done
something,’ and are making the history of the world. From this country
folk are absolutely debarred: another reason, dear readers, why I say
live in London, if you can in any way contrive to do so, and do not
leave it on any pretext whatever. But as man must associate with his
kind or perish, no doubt there are compensating elements in country
society that are evident to those who have lived among it all their
lives. At any rate, we can live more unselfishly in the country, and do
more good to those of our poorer brethren than we can in these crowded
streets, where they are nothing to us save a probable source of
infection, and a certain source of annoyance and dread.
To sum up this chapter briefly, then: let no move be made, unless such a
course is absolutely imperative; let it be done in order and with
regularity; and make no rushes into friendship in your new neighbourhood
until you have discovered who is who, and made due inquiries on this
subject; and, above all, under all circumstances, if fate has absolutely
obliged you to make that particular move, make the best of it, and don’t
always either mentally or openly contrast your present abode
unfavourably and bad-temperedly with your last location. You have to
live where you have pitched your tent: therefore, bad as the place may
appear to you, try and smother your feelings until use has made you
reconciled to your new surroundings, even if ‘home’ has not asserted its
charm and caused you to become fond of the place, because your best and
dearest are there with you. It will be an effort, I can assure you, to
do so, but if you are strong-minded enough to suffer in silence, you
will be repaid for so doing a thousand-fold.