FIRST SHOPPING.
In life, as in everything else, it is extremely difficult to draw the
line anywhere. I want both my young people to care about their house,
and know every detail of its management, but they must not become
domestic dummies, and think of nothing save how to make a shilling do
the work of two, and how to circumvent that terrible butcher, or that
still more awful laundry-woman. Once started, the details that seem so
ugly and wearisome on paper need never be gone into again, but it is
necessary to have some plan and stick to it, else the jarring of the
wheels of the domestic car will always be heard, and life will indeed be
stale, dull, and unprofitable. People provide their own poetry, my young
friends, and life is a very good thing if you do not expect too much
from it, or if you will not refuse to accept other folks’ experience,
for she has nothing new to give you, nothing to show you she has not
shown us all before you. You are not the only young people who have
started on a diet of roses and cream, and not the only ones either who
have found this disagree with them. So buckle too manfully, and work
your way onwards, being quite sure that every fresh home started and
kept going on excellent sound principles of health and beauty does a
work little known of, less understood about, perhaps, by those who
inhabit it, but none the less beneficial to all those who come within
its influence.
But I do not mean to preach a sermon, much as I should like to do so,
but only to preface my remarks on the subject of our first shopping and
how we should begin our scheme of decoration.
It is usual for the landlord to allow a certain sum for the decoration
of a house; but rarely, if ever, does that sum allow of anything like
really artistic papering and painting. Yet, I maintain, artistic
surroundings are far more important than handsome furniture or even an
elaborate wedding dress; and I think if we have common sense, and find a
good journeyman carpenter and painter, who will work himself with his
men under our directions, we shall manage very well indeed.
Could we afford it, of course, I would employ Morris, or Smee’s people,
or Collinson and Lock, with their delicious arrangement of ‘fittings’;
but we cannot, and our first business is to find some inexpensive man
who will do as he is told. Then we can buy our papers and set to work.
There is no saving like that we can make in this first work, if we can
only put our hand on our man. And when this is done our next step is to
describe the work we shall require to be done and to ask him to send in
a contract, which is to be for everything, and is not to be departed
from on any account whatever.
_The_ great advantage to me in employing our own man is that we buy our
own wall-papers &c. just wherever we like, and can, moreover, obtain a
large discount on them if we pay cash, and insinuate that we expect the
aforesaid discount as a matter of course. Then we can start on our
shopping and to enjoy ourselves, though I question much if shopping be
quite as charming an occupation as one expects it to be. Certainly,
unless one starts with a clear conception of one’s needs, a long day’s
shopping can result in nothing save great confusion of ideas, and a
fearful consciousness that one has bought the very things one ought not
to have purchased, and entirely forgotten the very articles of which we
were most in want.
To avoid this disagreeable termination to our day, we must never start
in a hurry, never be obliged to hasten over our purchases; and once our
minds are made up on the subject of colours, we must not allow a
‘sweetly pretty’ pattern or beautiful hue to tempt us. Having made up
our minds what we want, let us buy that, and nothing else.
Therefore, before going out really to purchase, we must settle
definitely what are our requirements; and after really making the
acquaintance of our house, the next thing to do is to find out what
pretty things can be bought, at which shops, and at the most reasonable
rate; and this is only to be done by a painstaking inspection of what
the different establishments have to offer us, and by not disdaining to
look in at shop windows, keeping both ears and eyes open, and using our
senses and, if possible, other people’s experiences, as much as we can.
This is a long and tedious process, but one worth going through, if we
really want our house to be a home, and the experience we purchase with
our furniture will go a long way towards helping us to solve the problem
set before so many of us: how to live pleasantly on small means. One
axiom we can undoubtedly lay to heart and remember, and that is that no
one establishment should be resorted to for everything. Long experience
teaches me that each shop has its specialties; it may supply everything
from beds to food, from saucepans to grand pianos, still there is always
some one thing that another shop has better and cheaper, and it is as
well to find this out before we start away to buy our furniture, for I
have often been made very angry by seeing exactly the same thing I gave
5_s._ for in one shop sold at 2_s._ 6_d._ in a less fashionable but
equally accessible neighbourhood, while nothing varies as much as the
price of wall-papers. I have known the self-same paper sold at 2_s._
6_d._, 3_s._ 6_d._, and 4_s._ a piece by three different firms, all
within a stone’s throw of each other; and, naturally, patterns alter
from year to year, and we can scarcely ever match a paper unless we
purchase one designed by some well-known designer, such as Morris,
Jeffreys, Shufferey, Collinson and Lock, and Mr. E. Pither, of Mortimer
Street, W., for whose cheap artistic papers I for one can never be too
profoundly grateful.
But even more important than to find where to get the cheapest things is
it to consult the house itself on what will suit it best in the way of
furniture, and we should never allow ourselves to buy a single thing
until we have taken our house into our confidence, and discovered all
about its likes and dislikes. This sounds ridiculous, I know; but I am
convinced a house is a sentient thing, and becomes part and parcel of
those who live in it in a most mysterious way. Anyhow, to put it on the
most prosaic grounds, what would be the use of buying a corner cupboard
that would not fit into any corner, or in purchasing a sofa for which
there was no place to be found once it was bought?
It is, therefore, far better to know our house thoroughly before we
really begin to furnish; and I cannot too strongly advise all ladies to
buy merely the bare necessaries of life before they go into their houses
to live, reserving the rest of their money until they are quite sure
what the house really wants most. But here let me whisper a little hint
to our bride: a man before he is married is apt to be far more
generously minded than he is once he has his prize safe; therefore,
there should be a clear understanding that so much is to be spent really
and positively; otherwise the bridegroom may think, as many men do,
that, as things have ‘done’ for a while, they can ‘do’ for ever, and he
may button up his pockets and refuse to buy anything more than he has
already done. I have known more than one man do this; and even the best
man that ever lived--by which every woman means her own husband, of
course--never can understand either that things wear out or women
require any money to spend.
When starting out on our shopping, we should put down first of all what
we wish to buy, and then what we wish to spend, and we should never be
persuaded to spend more on one thing than the outside price we have put
down for it in our own schedule. If we do, something will have to go
short, and that may be something very important both for health and
comfort.
You know individually what you can afford, so make a note of that, and
keep to it firmly, never allowing yourself to spend any more on that
particular thing, thinking you can save elsewhere, for your list should
be so exact that you cannot possibly spare anything you have set down in
it.
And now another axiom to be remembered when shopping: never allow an
upholsterer to direct your taste or to tell you what to buy, neither
allow him to talk you out of anything on which you have settled after
mature consideration.
The best of upholsterers has only an upholsterer’s notions, and
naturally rather wishes to sell what he has, rather more than he desires
to procure you what you want. He spots an _ingénue_ the moment she
enters his shop, and he cannot help remembering that here is the person
likely to buy his venerable ‘shop-keepers,’ and he brings them forward
until, bewildered by the quantity and ashamed not to buy after all the
trouble she thinks she has given, Miss Innocence spends her money, and
regrets her stupidity for the rest of her life.
All young people starting in life are so very certain that they are
going to do better than any one else, that they invariably scoff at the
idea of an upholsterer being able to direct them, but let them start
prepared for this by my hint, and let them keep their eyes open; and if
they do not see things that have not been brought to the light of day
for ages at first, and before the man has realised he has a forewarned
damsel and no _ingénue_ to deal with, they need never believe a word I
say for the future. But I have seen and watched this little comedy too
often not to know I am really stating a fact.
Start on your shopping armed with this caution, your list, and a
determination to be content with what you can afford, and a
determination to get the prettiest things you can for your money, and
you will do well; and above all remember that your lines have fallen on
days when beauty and cheapness go hand in hand, and don’t hanker after
Turkey carpets, when the price of one would go far indeed to furnish the
whole of the room for which you would so like it, regardless of the
fact that if you purchase such an expensive luxury you will have nothing
whatever left with which to buy suitable chairs, tables, and plenishing
to match a carpet which is only fit to go where expense is no object.
And please mark carefully the word ‘suitable,’ for there is no word so
absolutely set on one side in our English language. Do not be guided by
fashion, or by what some one else has done or means to do, or by
anything at all, save the length of your purse and the house where you
are to live; and recollect cheap things are easily replaced, while
expensive ones wear one to death in taking care of them, and in marking
sorrowfully how much sooner they fade or go into holes than we can
afford to replace them.
If all this is remembered, laid to heart, and well thought over, the
first shopping can be commenced at any time, and should consist of a
careful selection of wall-papers and paints for at least the hall,
dining-room, and staircase.