multi-millionaires setting the pace, and all the rest of the world
racing after, it must be agreed that the millennium is not yet. But when
it does come, there will be no more champagne standard, and each person
will be judged after his honest value and not his purse. If he has a
noble soul nobody will mind if he is a bit shabby, and if he is a man of
brains he may even live at the wrong end of the town. In that happy day
everybody will have the courage of his income, no matter how small, and
when one is shown hospitality it will not be according to the champagne
standard, but according to a standard of honest kindness; and no matter
how simple it is, if it is only a crust of bread, no one will criticise,
and no one will apologise. If in that blissful time Jones dines in a
cut-away, why not? And yet is it not true in these days that Jones's
fine character is often enough overlooked in a disapproving
contemplation of his coat?
However, the millennium has not arrived, and the simpler life, though
the fashion as a subject for sermons, is certainly not practised--as
yet.
Recently a king of finance gave a great musical function--the gambols of
the rich and great are always called functions. There were so many
billionaires present that a modest millionaire was quite out of it.
Everything was of the costliest, the lighting was entirely by radium,
and the music provided was of an expense supremely worthy of even the
consideration of billionaires. The very greatest violinist had been
induced, by the offer of a small fortune, to play, and indeed, while he
played, the host and another billionaire intimate amused themselves
calculating the money value of each tone at the rate the great artist
demanded for playing. Just as they finished, and he finished, and a
languid murmur signified the approval of the glittering audience, the
young daughter of the billionaire host, who had, apparently, not
received the last polish in the school of unutterable wealth, put an
entreating hand on her father's arm:
"Do please introduce me," and she mentioned a very famous name, "he does
play so divinely."
"My child," and the magnate, who had started life peddling tripe, spoke
with haughty disfavour and drew his eyebrows together in a frown, "we
pay such people, but we don't know them."
O Champagne Standard!
_American Wives and English Housekeeping_
The clever woman who wrote _American Wives and English Husbands_, put
her Californian heroine in a position in which the one problem she was
not required to solve was English housekeeping. She might break her
heart over her English husband, but the author does not add to our pangs
by relating how her American bride, having first studied the
peculiarities of her Englishman, next varied her soul's trials by
"wrestling" with the lower but equally irritating problems prepared for
her by the English tradesmen. Under which general term are included all
the male and female creatures who, having helped to set up a brand-new
household, immediately proceed to hinder it from running.
The problem of English husbands I leave to more gifted pens, but I may
perhaps be permitted to tell what the American woman experiences, who,
having "pulled up stakes," plants herself on English soil. This era of
international marriages is not at all confined to the daughters of
American millionaires who can afford the luxury of English dukes. Nor,
in giving my experiences, do I address the prospective Anglo-American
duchess, who would not be likely to spend several sleepless nights,
trying to decide whether she should or should not take her carpets or
the "ice-chest." However, it is well to give one little word of advice
to the American girl proposing to turn herself into an Englishwoman; and
that is, she must be very sure of her Englishman, because for him she
gives up friends and country, and he has to be that and more to her.
America has a bad reputation for being a very expensive place in which
to live. The large earnings are offset, it is said, by expenses out of
proportion to the wages. Both facts are exaggerated; and, in contrasting
English and American housekeeping, one of the first reasons, I have
decided, why English living flies away with money is that the currency
itself tends to expense.
To start with, the English unit of money value is a penny--the American
a cent, but observe that a penny is _two_ cents in value. I am asked
eightpence for a pound of tomatoes; I think "how cheap" until I make a
mental calculation, "sixteen cents, that's dear." It is the guileless
penny which, like the common soldier, does the mighty executions and
swells the bill. One looks on the penny as a cent, and that is the
keynote of the expense of living in London.
To go farther into the coinage: there is the miserable half-crown--it is
more than half-a-dollar, and yet it only represents a half-dollar in
importance. "What shall I give him?" I ask piteously of my Englishman
when a fee is in question. "Oh, half-a-crown," is his reply. I obey, and
mourn over twelve-and-a-half cents thrown away with no credit to myself.
Poor English people who have no dollar! Don't talk of four shillings!
Four shillings are a shabby excuse for two self-righteous half-crowns.
Oh, for a good simple dollar! Five dollars make a sovereign, roughly
speaking--that wretched and delusive coin which is no sooner changed
into shillings and half-crowns than it disappears like chaff before the
wind. Now good dollars would repose in one's purse, either in silver or
greenbacks (very dirty, but never mind!), and demand reflection before
spending.
Think of the importance of a man's salary multiplied by dollars! The
wealth of France is undoubtedly due to her coinage--francs are the money
of a thrifty middle-class--the English coinage is intended for peers of
the realm and paupers. A hundred pounds a year is not a vast income, but
how much better it sounds in dollars--five hundred dollars; if, however,
you multiply it by francs, twenty-five hundred francs, why it sounds
noble! Count an Englishman's income by hundreds, and it does seem
shabby! Dollars, when you have four thousand to spend, represent a value
quite out of proportion to the eight hundred pounds they really are.
Change your English coinage--don't have half-crowns or sovereigns, but
nice simple dollars (call them by any other name if you are too proud to
adopt dollars), and see the new prosperity that will dawn on the
middle-classes. A little tradesman struggling along on one hundred and
fifty pounds a year will feel like a capitalist on seven hundred and
fifty dollars. This is not straying from the subject, for it was my
first observation in English economics.
On the other hand, the days have passed in America for the making of
sudden and great fortunes, nor are the streets paved with gold. The lady
from County Cork does not step straight from the steerage into a Fifth
Avenue drawing-room (unless by way of the kitchen), but there's work,
and there are good wages; and if the lady from County Cork and her
brothers and cousins would work as hard in Ireland as they do in the
United States, that perplexing island would bloom like a rose. That
their fences are always tumbling down, even over there, and their broken
windows stuffed with rags, is only an amiable national trait to which
the Irish are loyal even in America, just to remind them of home.
"Everything is cheaper in England," they all said when the decisive step
whether to take or leave the contents of our large house had to be
taken. "It won't be worth packing, taking, and storing. Send everything
to auction."
That was the advice. I compromised, and one day half of the dear
familiar household gods were trundled off to be sold--alas! and the
elect were left to be packed. Every American house has a grass-grown,
fenced-in space at the back of the house called a yard, for the drying
and bleaching of the laundry. Ours was invaded by three decent men and
piles of pine boards, and then the making of cases and the packing
began.
The packing was contracted for. The chief of the firm came, looked
through each room, estimated, and gave us the price of the whole work
completed and placed on the freight steamer. One is told that the
English are the best packers in the world, but I have had more damage
done in two cases sent from Bristol to London than in eighty cases sent
from Boston to Liverpool. The three men worked three weeks, and then
took all the cases out of the house and put them on the freight steamer,
and the price of all this wonderful packing was about forty pounds. What
will surprise an English person is that not one of these men expected a
fee. My one ceaseless regret is that I did not take everything, from the
kitchen poker to the mouse-trap.
On the arrival of our eighty cases in London, they were received by the
warehouse people, who sheltered them until the brand-new English house
was ready, which was not for a year. The packing, sending, and storing
of all this furniture was under one hundred pounds, which, with my
English experience, I knew would have bought nothing. I did question the
wisdom of bringing carpets, and I do not think it pays unless they are
very good and large--the remaking and cleaning cost too much to waste on
anything not very good. Having my furniture safely landed, the next step
was to get a house.
One finds that the moderate rents asked for English houses is
misleading, for in addition the tenant is expected to pay the rates and
taxes, which add to the original rent one-third more, only somehow this
fact is ignored. Get a house for one hundred and fifty pounds, and you
can add fifty pounds to that by way of rates and taxes. Nor does that
enable you to get anything very gorgeous in the shape of a house, but
one obtainable for about the same price in New York or Boston, minus
those comforts which Americans have come to consider as a matter of
course, until they learn better in England. Only in flats are the rates
and taxes included in the rent, and when flats are desirable they are
expensive.
Now, living in flats is undoubtedly the result of worrying servants, and
it is obtaining here as rapidly as the English ever accept a new
idea--but being impelled by despair they are becoming popular. Small
flats for "bachelor-maids" and childless couples are abundant and well
enough, but for families who decline to be trodden on by their nearest
and dearest these are nearly impossible, and when possible very dear.
The "flat" contrived for the "upper middle classes" is a terror, and is
devoid of the comforts invented by American ingenuity and skill, and the
good taste which makes American domestic architecture and decoration so
infinitely superior to all. I do not wish to be misunderstood--if money
is no object one can be as comfortable in London as in New York, but I
am only addressing the "comfortably off."
In New York I was taken to see a very inexpensive flat, which proved to
me that the average man can make himself thoroughly comfortable there.
It was in an "apartment house" near Central Park. The street was broad
and airy. To be sure the flat was up three flights, and there was no
lift--but that is nothing. It consisted of four rooms, besides a kitchen
and bathroom, and a servant's room. It was entirely finished in oak, and
the plumbing was all nickel-plated and open, and it was furnished with
speaking tubes. In the nice kitchen was an ice-box, and the kitchen
range was of the best. This model flat cost six pounds a month,
including heating, and could be given up at a month's notice.
No model flat turning up here, we were reduced to take a house, for
which we were willing to give from one hundred and fifty to two hundred
pounds. The agony of that search, and the horror of the various mansions
offered! For the first time I recognised the wisdom of putting no
clothes-closets in London houses, when I think of the repositories of
dirt they would inevitably become.
At that time I was not on such intimate terms with the climate as I have
since become, and did not understand that it is humanly impossible to
rise triumphant over fogs, smuts, and beetles. For my benefit, grim and
dingy caretakers rose out of the bowels of the earth as out of a
temporary tomb (always in bonnets), and showed us over awful houses in
which every blessed thing had been carried away, even to the door knobs
and the key-holes--that is of course the metal around the holes.
Awful, closetless houses, guiltless of comfort, with dreary grates
promising a six months' shiver, and great gaunt windows rattling
forebodingly. As for the plumbing--but it is well to drop a curtain over
the indescribable. One does protest, however, against the people who
live in these houses--houses whose discomfort an American artisan would
not tolerate--looking with ineffable self-complacency on their methods,
and sniffing at our American ingenuity and our determination to make
life comfortable.
Of course we got a house, thanks to no estate agent, but as we could not
rent it we had to buy it--or rather the thirty-eight years' remnant of a
lease--a mysterious arrangement to an American. It was rather hard to
feel that the house and all our little improvements would, after
thirty-eight years, revert to the Bishop of London, to whom the estate
belongs, but we thought that after thirty-eight years we might not be so
very keen about it. So we disturbed an aged woman in a dusty crape
bonnet, and some friendly beetles, and they left the premises
simultaneously.
We took an architect on faith, who was to be our shield and protector
against the contractor; then we folded our hands, as it were, and
retired to an hotel and proceeded to recover from the horrors of
house-hunting. This interval was taken by the tradesmen of our new
neighbourhood to recommend themselves to me, whose address they
discovered by some miracle. They grovelled before me, they haunted me
with samples--eggs, cream, butter, bread, followed me to the ends of
England, and I finally succumbed to the most energetic.
Gradually, one gets accustomed to "patronage" and "patron," rare words
in America, where the "I am as good as you" feeling still obtains. I am
becoming used to them as well as "tradesmen" and "class." I acquiesce in
a distinct serving class, conscious that not to be aware of the dividing
gulf would mean the profound scorn of those we have agreed to call our
inferiors.
To return to the house. The architect and I looked it over--everything
was wanting. The plumbing was new, but clumsy and inadequate. In an
American house much less costly, there would be a hanging cupboard in
each room, thus dispensing with the clumsy and expensive wardrobes. The
plumbing would be pretty and nickel-plated, resisting the action of the
air, and easily kept clean. Here it is always brass or copper, clumsy
and easily tarnished.
The architect suggested only the obvious, and with unwarranted faith I
hardly ventured to suggest anything; but when the summer brought an
American friend, who looked over the house, then approaching
completion, she sat on the solitary chair and shook her head.
"He hasn't thought of a single thing," she cried. "Think of not having a
dumb-waiter (English: dinner-lift) in this unheated house. Stone walls
and cold blasts--don't invite me to your lukewarm repasts! Besides you
must have a hardwood floor" (parquet floor) "in your drawing-room"
(being an American she really said _parlor_). "Think of all the dirty
carpets it will save," she urged. "My dear, you don't mean to say that
you will live in this Bunker Hill Monument of a house"--(she comes from
Boston)--"without speaking tubes?" She was aghast.
"What an architect! Supposing you want to speak to the cook, why you'd
have to run down four flights for a _tête-à-tête_; then supposing you
want coals up four flights--must the maid climb up four flights to find
out what you want before doing it? My dear, even an English servant has
human legs, and she can't stand it."
I was convinced. I spoke to the architect, and he was politely
acquiescent, and as all these very necessary suggestions came late they
were doubly expensive, and now I have come to the conclusion that
domestic architecture is the proper field for a woman with ideas--a mere
man-architect does not know the meaning of comfort, ingenuity, resource,
and economy.
As the house declined to get done, I braved the architect, the
contractor, and the workmen, and arrived one day in company with a bed,
a table, and a chair (also a husband), and took possession.
I did have one treasure at the time--a caretaker. She saved my life, and
she protected my innocent self from the British tradesman, whilst she
gently taught me what the British servant will and will not do. She
informed me when I was paying twice as much as right to the obsequious
tradesman, and she regulated the (to me) perplexing fee. She was very
religious, and I think she looked upon me as her mission and that she
was to rescue me--which she did. Her wages were one pound a week
including her food, and to be just I could not have got such a treasure
in America at the price.
The most obvious defect we discovered in our house was that it was very
cold--a universal English drawback--and the inadequate open fires seem
to accentuate the chill.
Would that my feeble voice could do justice to the much-calumniated
American methods of heating! It does pay to be less prejudiced and more
comfortable! Possibly the furnace and steam heat may be a little
overdone, but not with moderate care. No one can make me believe that it
is healthy to sit shivering all over, or roasting on one side and
freezing on the other. Neither do I consider a red nose and chilblains
very ornamental. I admit that furnaces are not a crying need in England
all through the winter, but from December to March it is a pretence to
say you are comfortable, for you are not. There is no doubt but New
England has bad throat and lung troubles, yet so has Old England and the
hardening process does not save, if statistics are right. If I must take
cold and die, at least I prefer to do so comfortably.
If there were a furnace I should not need gas-stoves (which are
certainly no more poetic than a register or a radiator, besides being
distinctly sham), nor would there be a perpetual procession of
coal-scuttles going upstairs, unless an open fire is desired for
additional warmth and cheerfulness.
This brings one to the relative costs of coal, water, and gas. London
coal is greasy, soft, and dear. Where the hard coal is burned in the
States, it leaves white cinders and ashes. It burns slowly and is
therefore very profitable, and the price averages about twenty-four
shillings a ton. Must the cheek of English beauty always be adorned with
"blacks"?
The water-rates here are just double those of Boston, where, O rapture!
we had two bathrooms, and where the "sidewalk" (American for pavement)
was thoroughly washed every morning. In Boston gas was charged for at
the rate of four shillings for one thousand cubic feet; here we pay
three shillings for the same, and yet for infinitely less gas used our
bills here are mysteriously larger. Our London electricity is both
expensive and poor; consumers are at the mercy of the companies, and a
little wholesome competition is very imperative.
The English are reckoned a nation of grumblers, but one finds that the
grumbler ends in grumbling, though in moments of supreme anguish he
writes to _The Times_, which permits, with the impartiality of Divine
Providence, both the just and the unjust to disport in its columns.
Considering the papering and painting of the house done--the painting
done very roughly from our point of view. Then the kitchen needed a new
range and so we got the most expensive of its kind--expensive for
America even--but the acknowledged solidity of English workmanship
(which sometimes becomes clumsiness) is well in place here. The
dinner-lift had been constructed for one flight, and was surprisingly
dear, while the parquet floor in the drawing-room cost twenty-seven
pounds where it would have cost fifteen pounds in America.
This brings me to a point on which I wish to lay great stress: the
remarkable progress in America in all the applied and domestic arts
within the last ten years, which leaves England far behind. Our English
house was just old enough to be surprisingly ugly--it belongs to the
early Victorian period. Without wishing to spend too much money in its
decoration, we did feel that we ought to put away the funereal
mantel-pieces and set up something more æsthetic.
Our architect--always obliging and never suggestive--took us to see
wooden mantel-pieces, and we found them expensive and clumsy. In this
strait my Englishman had an inspiration. "Buy them in New York"--we were
just going over--"and you will find them prettier, better, and cheaper
even if the freightage has to be added to the price."
I would not believe him because I also was still labouring under the
delusion that England was cheap and America dear. However, we went to
New York and there we bought three wooden mantels--six feet high and six
feet wide--of the best quartered oak, of so simple and graceful a design
that they are always noticed and admired. These three were packed, sent,
and landed at our front door in London, and the price, all included, was
not much more than we should have paid for the only one in London of
which I approved. I feel convinced that there is a great market here
for American wood-work as well as leather, iron, and glass, for with
English excellence of workmanship they combine a taste which adapts the
best to its own uses. It would revolutionise the decoration of English
houses.
The American has the advantage that he is not conservative where that
stands between him and progress. That something was good enough for his
ancestors is no reason why it should satisfy him. Because they chose to
freeze is no reason why he should. Somehow, one always comes back to the
inadequate heating, for as I write, my face is flaming while a lively
icicle penetrates my spine.
The carpets being now down, I sent to the warehouse for the eighty
cases, and after a year again looked at my household goods. They were
very skilfully unpacked, but (here is the difference between the English
and the American workman) each one of the men expected a fee every time
he moved a box for me. Every time I went to the warehouse to open a
trunk one or two men had to be fee'd, and at the end it came to quite a
little sum. In America, this would not have been expected, even for
harder work done, and quite rightly, for the men were receiving proper
wages, and I was paying the Storage Company liberally.
Our American furniture being cosmopolitan it was speedily at home in our
English rooms; only these high studded rooms have such a way of
devouring furniture! I thought piteously of that which I had rashly
flung into the Boston auction-room, and when it came to replacing it,
what did I find? That American furniture is much better and much
cheaper. My soul yearned even for the big black chest of drawers which I
had left behind, and it loathed the brand-new "art furniture," sticky
with paste and varnish.
I demanded Chippendale and such--but, alas! their day is over, except
for millionaires! Praed Street, Brompton Road, Great Portland Street,
and Wardour Street should blush for the faked-up antiquities that ogle
the passerby. I have no prejudice against modern furniture if it is
good; nor do I love old furniture simply because it is old, but
undoubtedly the old taste was artistic and simple, and workmen had
plenty of leisure and used their hands. But when it comes to American or
English machine-made furniture I prefer the American because, it is in
better taste, is made of better wood, and is cheaper.
I paid twenty-four shillings apiece for painted pine chests of drawers
for the servants. In New York I saw a pretty one, all of oak with brass
handles, for thirteen shillings. That is only a sample. Perhaps it is
ungenerous urging the importation of American wares that can, because of
English free trade, undersell the English manufacturer, but it remains
true that it can be done, and ought to be done, and competition will
improve the home produce, and there is room for improvement.
Well, having finally got my dwelling into some kind of order, I and my
new British and old American household goods proceeded to keep house
together.
This brings me to the question of English and American domestic service.
It is an article of faith that America being the home of the free (and
independent) will before long have no servants, but only "mississes."
It is not quite so bad, by any means. To be sure wages are much higher,
but the American servant does twice the work of an English servant.