FROM KITCHEN TO GARRET
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
FROM KITCHEN TO GARRET
_HINTS FOR YOUNG HOUSEHOLDERS_
BY
J. E. PANTON
_SEVENTH EDITION_
London
WARD & DOWNEY
12 YORK STREET, CONVENT GARDEN
1890
TO
‘PRIMROSE’ ‘MOLLIE’ ‘FRÄULEIN’ ‘CHERRY BLOSSOM’
AND MANY OTHERS
WHO FROM CORRESPONDENTS HAVE BECOME FRIENDS
THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF
THESE HINTS TO YOUNG HOUSEHOLDS
This Work is Dedicated
BY THEIR ATTACHED MENTOR AND GUIDE
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE.
In presenting this book in a completed and augmented form to the public,
I think a few words of explanation are necessary, lest the way in which
the chapters are written may lay me open to a charge of egotism.
About two years ago I began writing a series of short articles in the
pages of the ‘Lady’s Pictorial’ on the absorbing subject of
housekeeping, meaning to confine myself strictly to the house and home
of the British matron who begins life with little money and less
experience, never thinking anything more would come of them than a mere
temporary access of work for a few weeks; but I had not begun them for
more than a month when, through the office of the paper, a regular and
increasing mass of correspondence began to reach me, asking questions on
every subject under the sun, from the proper management of a house and
the feeding of a baby to the fearful inquiry whether I thought a wife
should leave her husband or not when she discovered all too late she
liked somebody else better than she did her lord and master. Since then
I have become a species of ‘mother confessor’ to hundreds of unknown and
valued friends in all parts of the world. I have correspondents in New
Zealand, India, America, and in all parts of the Continent, and they
have demanded of me that I shall produce a book evolved from my articles
and from the pages of ‘Answers to Correspondents,’ which have been my
work and my great pleasure since the articles on the home began; and as
they persist in asking for my experience and my opinions I am obliged to
give them, though knowing and fearing I shall be accused of speaking
everlastingly about myself; still I have never mentioned a thing I have
not tried or experienced, nor spoken of a single chair, table, or, in
fact, anything that I have not honestly and truly tried myself.
From my correspondence I have evolved quite a new profession, which I
commend to any lady who has taste and may wish to earn her living, I go
to people’s houses and advise them about their decorations, and tell
them the best places to go to for different things; I buy things for
country ladies, and write them long letters on every subject under the
sun for a set fee, and have made some of the nicest friends possible
through this means; and I feel sure that any lady who cares to take up
the ‘profession,’ and is of _sufficient social status to be above the
suspicion of taking commission or bribes from tradespeople to advertise
their wares_, and who above all possesses a quick eye and a certain
amount of taste, can make a good and steady income in a remarkably
pleasant way, while a great future would be before any gentleman
possessed of the same qualifications, for he could see to estimates for
painting, repairing, &c., and could act as a buffer between the
purchaser and the workman, and, being thoroughly acquainted with his
business, would soon become the boon and benefactor, to the ordinary
person who requires his house done up and furnished, who is much wanted,
and that no lady can be, because of the necessary fighting powers and
technical knowledge.
In connection with my work, we have now started a society for the
employment of ladies who will either decorate a house entirely, make the
chair-covers and curtains I recommend, or work at ladies’ houses at
dressmaking and upholstering, so that I may justly pride myself on the
fact that at least my particular column in the ‘Lady’s Pictorial’ has
been of some small practical good already. The address of the ‘Workers’
Guild’ is 11 Kensington Square, W.
I may mention, in conclusion, that I have revised and rewritten the
whole of the articles which appeared in the ‘Lady’s Pictorial,’ and in
some cases entirely evolved new matter out of my inner consciousness;
and if only the public extends to my book half the sympathy and
appreciation I have received from my thousands of correspondents for my
articles, I shall never regret the day when, at my editor’s request, I
seized the sceptre and became the ruling genius of many and many an
unknown home.
J. E. PANTON.
THE MANOR HOUSE, WATFORD, HERTS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CHOOSING A HOUSE 1
II. THE KITCHEN ARRANGEMENTS 9
III. MEALS AND MONEY 18
IV. THE HOUSEMAID’S CLOSET, AND GLASS AND CHINA 29
V. FIRST SHOPPING 36
VI. THE HALL 40
VII. THE DINING-ROOM 49
VIII. THE MORNING-ROOM 69
IX. THE DRAWING-ROOM 78
X. CURTAIN, CARPETS, AND LIGHTING 91
XI. BEDROOMS 103
XII. DRESSING-ROOM 135
XIII. SPARE ROOMS 139
XIV. THE SERVANTS’ ROOMS 151
XV. THE NURSERIES 160
XVI. IN RETIREMENT 180
XVII. THE SCHOOLROOM 192
XVIII. BOYS AND GIRLS 201
XIX. ENTERTAINING ONE’S FRIENDS 209
XX. THE SUMMING-UP 223
ILLUSTRATIONS.
FIGS. PAGES
1. SUGGESTION FOR DRAPING ARCH IN HALL 42
2. SUGGESTION FOR DRAPING DOOR IN HALL 43
3, 4. LAMPS 47
5-8. CHAIRS 50-53
9. SIDEBOARD 55
10. DINING-ROOM AT GABLE-END, SHORTLANDS 57
11, 12. WINDOW-SEAT 59, 60
13. CHAIR (WICKER) 63
14. BOOKCASE 72
15. DRAWING-ROOM AT GABLE-END, SHORTLANDS 79
16. MANOR HOUSE WINDOWS 95
17. A CORNER IN A BEDROOM, GABLE-END, SHORTLANDS 105
18. DRAPED ALCOVE FOR A BED 111
19. DRESSING-TABLE 117
20, 21. WASHING-STANDS 124, 125
FROM KITCHEN TO GARRET
CHAPTER I.
CHOOSING A HOUSE.
In the following chapters I propose to give young housekeepers, just
launching their bark on the troubled seas of domesticity, the benefit of
the experience that has been bought by me, occasionally rather dearly,
in the course of some eighteen or twenty years; for I have often been
struck with amazement at discovering how few really practical guides
there are that even profess to help newly married girls past those first
shoals and quicksands that so often wreck the little vessel, or that
spoil and waste so much that could have been usefully employed had
knowledge stood at the helm, and experience served as a lighthouse to
point out the rocks and narrows. Naturally, no one ever uses another’s
experience entirely: to do so would make life too near perfection and
too monotonous to be pleasant. Still, there are a hundred little hints
that I have constantly been asked to give, a great many helps to
household arrangement that I have bestowed on many of my young friends
starting in life; and I trust I may not be considered unduly egotistical
if I lay before my readers the result of some years of life, and a good
deal of experience obtained by looking about me generally.
I shall propose in the first two or three chapters to sketch out some
‘notions,’ as our American cousins would say, about the questions of
house-choosing and house-furnishing, I shall then pass on to the
question of servants; then babies will have their turn; education, more
especially of girls, will not be forgotten; and I shall endeavour to do
my utmost to state plainly and describe accurately, not only how a house
should be furnished, but how it should be managed and kept going,
literally from garret to basement.
As very rich people can place themselves unreservedly in the hands of a
professional decorator, and can moreover depend on their housekeepers
afterwards for all details of domestic management, I shall begin by
supposing the model couple who wish to choose a house and furnish it are
not rich; if they were they need not come to me for hints, for they
would be able to gratify every one of their own tastes, and need only
discover the best and most expensive shops, where skilled assistants
would be ready to hang expensive papers and brocades, and to fit up all
the thousand and one things that fashion calls necessary, without any of
my assistance. But neither are they very poor: they are young, happy,
and have taste, and are rather disheartened at finding out what a very
little way their money seems able to go. They have looked longingly at
Persian and Turkey carpets, at beautifully designed paper and exquisite
hangings, and have come home from a long day’s investigation of
shop-windows that has almost made Edwin forswear matrimony altogether,
and that has plunged Angelina into an abyss of despair that makes her
snappish to her brothers and sisters, and brings a sad look into her
mother’s eyes, who seems to see the first shadow ‘of the prison-house’
close in around her child, and yet is powerless to help her escape,
because, poor dear soul, she has no means of doing so herself; being as
she is the victim of the old _régime_ of flock papers and moreen
curtains and heavy mahogany, and being conscious, too, of the vast sums
it cost her to start in housekeeping. However, I refuse to hear any
grumblings at all, and demand calmly enough to know if I may see the
house that our young folks mean to inhabit. Ten chances to one that they
do not even know where it is likely to be: how then, I ask, can they
possibly know what they will want, or what is likely to suit the house
or the locality, or, indeed, any of the many things that are positively
necessary to know, before as much as a roll of wall-paper can be bought
or a chair or table purchased?
Here is hint number one. It is from not knowing and understanding the
house in which one has to live, and through purchasing furniture simply
because we like it, and not because it suits us or our domicile, that
such mistakes are made. First know your house; then, and not until then,
can you proceed to furnish it in a manner that will result in pleasure
to you and your friends for as long as you live in it.
To young people like my couple, I would strongly recommend a house some
little way out of London. Rents are less; smuts and blacks are
conspicuous by their absence; a small garden, or even a tiny
conservatory (the joys and management of which ought to have a chapter
all to themselves), is not an impossibility; and if Edwin have to pay
for his season-ticket, that is nothing in comparison with his being able
to sleep in fresh air, to have a game of tennis in summer, or a friendly
evening of music, chess, or games in the winter, without expense; and
with Angelina’s absence from the temptations of shop-windows in town,
where, if she does not know of anything she wants when she goes out for
her aimless walk, she soon sees something that she cannot resist, which
she buys just because she has the money in her pocket, and likes the
look of an article she would never have thought of had she been outside
the range of temptation.
Another reason for choosing the suburbs at the commencement of married
life is that in this case the rival mothers-in-law and the rival
families will not be running in and out perpetually; and neither will
Angelina be always contrasting the old ease, plenty, and amusements in
her sisters’ lives, and which used to be hers, with the somewhat
straitened and monotonous existence that she must put up with until
Edwin has made a mark in the world, and is able to keep his carriage and
live in style. Granted, then, that the suburbs have been selected, the
first few months of the engagement can be advantageously spent in
running down on Saturday afternoons to divers ‘Parks’ to look at houses
that sound so beautiful on paper, and are too often the very reverse in
the reality, in sauntering in the neighbourhood of each ‘eligible
residence’ and in endeavouring to discover what are the _pros_ and
_cons_ of each, and in finding out the soil and the aspect, and if there
are or are not any pretty walks to be found in the country round. Avoid
clay; let no persuasions, no arguments, persuade you that clay--at all
events suburban clay--can ever be anything save depressing and
rheumatic. You may drain, you may dig, but clay is like a ghost that
will not be laid, and that sooner or later asserts itself in the most
unpleasant and decided manner possible.
One of the prettiest suburbs we know of is utterly spoiled by its clay
soil. In warm days it depresses, in damp it chills; and in an east wind
the soil looks so dreary, so parched, that the mere sight of it is
wretched, while fog and mist hang over it all the winter, and sour the
tempers and warp the minds of the inhabitants until there is a lack of
hospitality and an amount of work for the doctors that is wonderful, if
unpleasant to contemplate.
Of course, all the S. or S.W. and S.E. suburbs are the most fashionable
and the most sought after; and although, to my mind, Penge and Dulwich
are dreary and damp, they are evidently well supported and much lived
in, but the higher parts of Sydenham are to be preferred; while Forest
Hill, the higher parts of Lordship Lane, Elmer’s End--where there are
some extremely pretty and convenient villas--and the best parts of
Bromley, Kent, are all they should be. Still, to those who do not mind
the north side of London, Finchley, Bush Hill Park--where the houses are
nice to look at and excellently arranged--and Enfield are all worthy of
consideration.
Edwin’s work and its locality must, after all give the casting vote,
for, if it be at the West End, Liverpool Street Station is out of the
question, and Victoria, is a _sine quâ non_, and, of course, he may
choose to live in town. If he does, I should strongly persuade him not
to be guided by fashion, and to prefer a good-sized, old, well-built
house in an unfashionable locality, to a small, heated, stuffy, badly
put together residence in one of the parts of town that are inhabited by
those with whom he can never hope to associate.
Indeed, when I have seen the tiny hovels in Mayfair where ladies and
gentlemen crowd together, and where their servants herd under tiles or
in the damp, dark cellars, I have thought that Fashion and Folly were
two names for one thing, and have had but a small opinion of those who
could condemn themselves and their poor domestics to such an unhealthy
and miserable existence, just because Park Lane is close by and it is
fashionable!
Doubtless the great thing that strikes us when we are house-hunting is
that if women architects could get employment houses would be far better
planned than they are now. In each bedroom, it seems to me, that I have
inspected--and their name is legion--the male mind that designed the
rooms never took into consideration that a bed should not stand between
the windows and the door; which, by the way, is always put so that the
moment it opens the occupant of the bed has a full view of the passage
or landing; he has given us no recesses in which we can put shelves, and
by a judicious curtain arrangement do away with the necessity of buying
large and expensive wardrobes; he puts the fireplaces where, if we are
ill, we could not possibly enjoy ourselves with sitting over the fire
and warming ourselves; and he gives us far too many windows as a rule,
and almost ruins us in blinds and curtains, to prevent the neighbours
from gazing at us when we are dressing.
He forgets cupboards, and in fact insists on producing month after month
an excellent shell, but one that requires altering considerably by a
lady before it really can be lived in at all; and I would strongly
suggest that female architects for domestic architecture solely would be
a great help to all who have to live in houses planned and executed by
men who have no idea of comfort, and but small appreciation for the
trifles light as air that make all the difference between that and great
discomfort.
If Edwin be at all handy at carpentering he could do a great deal to
make even a builder’s design much better--he could rehang doors and
extemporise screens; but I look forward to a time when it shall be
necessary for houses to be passed by a sanitary commission before they
are allowed to be let at all; when all these discomforts will be
minimised, and when dust-bin refuse and bad drainage shall be penal if
used for foundations and put into houses; when the lesser evils of badly
placed doors, windows, and fireplaces will be looked after, as making
parts of what should be a perfect whole.
Before taking his house in the suburbs, Edwin must see he holds it on a
lease that does not include structural repairs. He must give a properly
authorised inspector, _from a distance_, a fee to inspect all the
drains; he must examine the foundations and look to soil, see that the
doors and windows really fit, and that the skirting board has not shrunk
away from the flooring. He must look to the roof and the chimneys, and,
if possible, get a character for it from the last tenant; and then, and
then only, need he and Angelina come to me and say, ‘We have settled on
our Paradise; now please come and see it and tell us what we had better
buy first, and what we must do to furnish it and make it look as pretty
as we intend it to do.’
And yet, even when Edwin and Angelina have at last settled on their
house, and have sensibly inspected it from top to bottom, I should, long
before buying any furniture, decide definitely which room was to be
dining-room, which bedroom, and which drawing-room, and, being guided by
the sunshine obtainable in each, rather than the builder’s plan, utterly
refuse to enter a shop until I had made up my mind how the rooms are to
be appropriated.
Sunshine is the very first necessary of life; without it sickness comes,
low spirits are one’s portion, and a thousand and one tiny ailments hang
about us, until we sum up a tremendous doctor’s bill, utterly ignorant
that we could have cured ourselves comfortably had we had any sense, and
dispensed with our blinds, regardless of the fading of our carpets and
curtains; or moved our morning-room into the sacred precincts of the
drawing-room, which obtains all the early sunshine, and has none at all
during the hours when we should be sitting there. But the possession of
a large and hideous, white marble mantelpiece and a tiled hearth to the
ugly, wasteful grate says ‘drawing-room’ too plainly for the ordinary
mind to rise above the builder’s dictum; and so a cheerful breakfast
table is sacrificed, for conventionalities that I, for one, never see
without longing to disregard, simply because of their family likeness to
every one else’s possessions, and gloom and low spirits seize their
victim, and work their wicked will, sending off the husband to town with
an aching head, and causing the wife a long, laborious morning of
snapping at servants and children, simply because she had not begun her
day with a proper amount of sunshine. I could fill a whole chapter with
praises of the life-giver, the mighty, beautiful sun; and whenever I see
blinds hardly raised, or carefully adjusted to save the furniture, I
know that I shall find inside those guarded windows faded cheeks, even
if the chairs are fresh, and weary, tired people, who are hardly aware
what sort of a day it is outside, and who are shivering over a fire
that would not be wanted were the fire nature has given us allowed to do
its work. Therefore, do not be guided in your choice of rooms by the
fact that the builder has made a sunless, dark-looking room the
dining-room, and a cheerful, light, and pretty chamber the drawing-room.
The white marble mantelpiece does not matter one bit.
I can soon alter that, and a tiled hearth is not such a dear or precious
luxury that one cannot afford to put in another in the drawing-room, and
it is extremely nice to have a hearth where we can put down our plates
and dishes to keep hot should any one be late; and the other details are
generally so small in their differences that I am sure there is no
reason why we should not have strength of mind to be different to our
next-door neighbour, who most probably has taken things as she found
them, and in consequence is rarely, if ever, without a headache.
Even in the smallest houses in these days there is generally a third
room, and this I should advise being kept entirely to sit in. I cannot
imagine anything nastier than to sit in a room in which one has one’s
meals; the mere worry of seeing them laid would annoy me so that I don’t
think I should be able to enjoy them afterwards; and then nothing seems
to me to quite clear away the terrible sensation, and smell of meals,
that appear to saturate the walls of any room where food is constantly
served, while the additional fire that seems the only reason that
compels people to remain all day in one atmosphere is paid for over and
over again by the extra warmth of the house itself, and the satisfactory
manner in which damps and draughts are exorcised, while no one can tell
the advantage it is to health to have a change of rooms, and to sit in a
place where food and the evil odours attending meals never can come.
And here let me impress upon you, my readers, always to be guided by
common sense, not by fashion and conventionalities; to do a thing
because it is healthy and sensible, not because Mrs. Jones next door and
Mrs. Smith over the way do it; to buy a thing because it is required,
because it is pretty and suitable to your house and your means, not
because it is ‘so very expensive,’ and so can never become ‘common,’ or
because it is the ‘very last thing out’; and, above all, do not mind
taking advice and using your eyes, being quite sure that older folks,
even if they are stupid and slow-going, have probably seen more and know
more than you do, simply because their lives have been longer by a great
many years than yours are at present. And do not be above letting other
people have the use of your talents, for the world would be much nicer
and happier altogether if we were not all so profoundly selfish and
exclusive, and were not so desperately afraid of soiling ourselves and
our garments by rubbing shoulders against anything or any one to whom we
can apply the word ‘common.’
I myself should like to see every beautiful thing common. I should love
to know that all the world saw, possessed, and cared for art colours and
art furniture, and had nice tastes, and I look forward to a time when
even our poor brethren will appreciate all the inexpensive lovelinesses
that are to be had now by those who know where to get them, and I trust
that some day free art exhibitions and lectures may teach them what real
beauty is, and so enlighten and enliven lives that at present are of the
dullest and most sober description.
In stating that life itself may be changed by sunshine and by cheerful
surroundings, and that even the bitter lot of the poor would be bettered
by art, I am aware I lay myself open to the same jeers that greeted the
Kyrle Society--that blessed society that, regardless of cold water, goes
on its way, giving of its talents to the sick and needy; but I maintain
my position for all that, and regardless of the ridicule levelled at
them, anent sunflowers and dadoes taking the place of bread and clothes,
I point to the hospital wards, transformed from bare whitewashed prisons
into artistic, charming, home-like rooms, and I should like to have the
statistics given me of all who have recovered there, and the time they
took to recover in, in the two different aspects of the walls, being
perfectly certain that there would be more and quicker recoveries in the
reign of the Kyrle Society than when the wearied, suffering creatures
had nothing to look at or think about save their own painful, cruel lot.
Or if you wish another example still, take the well-known famous
description of the sour tempers and hard days possessed and lived by
Thomas Carlyle and his wife, and then go and inspect the house in which
they lived together for some thirty-eight years. The house itself is
delightful--an old-world place, full of beautiful corners--and could be
made charming with a little money and taste, but the hideous paper and
paint still lingering behind them, the dark windows, in some cases
half-filled with ground glass to keep out the view of a building that
looks singularly like a workhouse--all accounted to me for a great deal
of Mrs. Carlyle’s ill-health and low spirits, and for a vast quantity of
Mr. Carlyle’s dyspepsia and ill-tempered behaviour; for he could be
nothing else in sunless rooms and with walls papered in the ugly,
depressing manner in which he doubtless considered them satisfactory,
or, still more likely, thought that any paper did as long as the walls
were covered.
Therefore, in selecting house and furniture, and choosing your rooms and
appropriating them, remember the first thing is to be cheerful. Dark
days will come in life to us all, but they will not be hopeless and too
dreadful to be endured if we cultivate a cheerful, contented spirit, and
insist on having cheerful surroundings.
Do you recollect, I wonder, the orthodox dining-rooms of twenty-five
years ago?--the heavy, thick curtains of red or green cloth or moreen
damask; the tremendous mahogany sideboard, generally with a cellarette
underneath it, which, I recollect, made an admirable tomb in which to
bury one’s dolls or obnoxious books, generally triumphantly taken from
the schoolroom; the chairs that required two people to lift them; the
carpet that seemed immovable, and that was too heavy to be shaken more
than once a year; and the woolly-bear hearthrug that always smelt of
dust, and that was a receptacle for all sorts of cinders, toy-bricks,
leaden soldiers, and bones dragged in and buried there by a delinquent
dog or cat? Why, the mere shaking of that rug once a week resulted in
the discovery of all sorts of treasures that had been lost, and the dust
that came out was enough to choke the neighbourhood, and doubtless would
have done so had the other inhabitants not all been engaged with their
own. Ah! if you do not all of you remember the dining-room of the past,
I do; but never without a shudder, or a wonder how we managed to live in
such a dark and dusty atmosphere, where work, reading, drawing, and
writing all had to be hustled out of sight and out of the way of the
parlour-maid, who came to ‘lay the cloth,’ and renew the foul odours,
which had only just been exorcised, which breakfast had left behind it
to poison the morning with. I should think that domestic furniture was
at its very lowest depths of despair then; but that is thirty years ago,
or perhaps forty, and nothing turned the tide for quite twenty years!
In the beginning of those evil days the graceful furniture of
Chippendale and Sheraton was pushed away and consigned to attics, or
sold cheaply at country auctions to fit up inn parlours or rooms behind
shops; and the heavy ‘handsome’ furniture of mahogany and damask bore
down upon us, and made us for a time the most depressed of people, heavy
with our ugly furnishings, and the mock of all nations that had better
taste and lighter hearts than we were possessed of.
It would take too long to trace the gradual development of taste and
cheerfulness since then, neither do I know to whom is due our present
state of emancipation and love of pretty things, but even sixteen years
ago light was only just beginning to be vouchsafed to us. Now it is
impossible to buy an ugly thing in good shops, and each person’s house
is no longer the reflection of one particular upholsterer’s shop or of
one particular style; but it is a carefully arranged shrine, cared for
and looked after, and judiciously managed by the owner, who, if she have
not taste herself, is now shamed into using some one else’s, by the
contrast she cannot help seeing her home presents to all the others into
which she enters; and one of the most hopeless people I know, who began
life with gilt legs to her chairs and a collection of family plate
(plated) on her sideboard, has become unobtrusive, even if she can
never be tasteful, simply by seeing how different her own notions were
to those of the cleverer people with whom circumstances brought her into
contact!
However, this chapter will become too long if I relate any more ‘fearful
examples,’ and, impressing on my readers the great necessity of sunshine
and cheerfulness in their scheme of furnishing, I will pass on to the
subject of the house itself, which must be most carefully chosen after
long and deliberate inspection thereof, as I remarked before; one of the
most necessary of all mottoes to be recollected in starting in life
being, ‘Do nothing in a hurry. More haste, less speed.’