I was more than interested in the article "About Bathrooms" which
appeared in the columns of _Punch_ of March 31st last, because I
too always smoke a pipe in a hot bath, to which I add the habit of
reading, not books--they are too sacred to risk--but newspapers. I
also frequently indulge in a further luxury at this time, a cup of
coffee, which rests on the sponge and soap bridge between sips.
Of course the soap sometimes falls into the coffee, and if this is
undetected in time a slight frothing at the mouth occurs, but no
really serious harm ensues.
I tried the effect of pictures round the bath--pictures with a shiver
in them that made me pull the water up closer round my neck. But I
found that they were being ruined by the steam, so I removed them and
am now looking for some undraped but respectable statuettes that will
give the same result.
I have not tried the rich rug stunt. The only rug we possess which
might be so described is a Persian one, and is on our cat at present.
When she has done with it I intend to spread it over the only part
of the bathroom floor which is permanently dry. And, suffering as our
bathroom does from that lack of space which the writer on bathrooms so
justly laments, the "profound chair" is out of the question.
While his views on bathrooms are sound it seems evident to me that the
writer of the _Punch_ article lives in pre-war style--with servants.
We don't. Our last maid left us to be a Waac and has not been seen
since in the precincts of domestic servitude. I did hear something
about her approaching marriage to a Colonel of Hussars, but don't know
whether it came off or not.
It seems to me that what is chiefly wrong with houses, at any rate
with our house, is the scullery. It is smaller than most bathrooms,
and, though it is anything but bare, the furnishings of it are not
intriguing to one who, like myself, spends therein such an undue
proportion of the twenty-four hours.
Our present char comes three days a week, about eleven o'clock, has
a look round with a duster in one hand till thirteen o'clock, then
lunches and (probably) has a cigarette. She leaves at fifteen o'clock.
This means that I help with the washing-up of the breakfast, tea and
dinner things on char days, and of luncheon things as well on non-char
days. My share of the task is generally the wiping. This is not
such an engrossing occupation as to prevent one from thinking great
thoughts at the same time, thoughts worthy to be committed to paper
afterwards. Now, as a song-writer, I ask how can one get inspiration
while gazing at a row of saucepans, a cullender, a bottle of metal
paste, one ditto knife polish and a plate-rack?
If any room in the house should be luxuriously furnished it is the
scullery. But what is even more important, I think, is that the whole
game of scullerying should be revolutionised. The implements still in
use are worthy of the Stone Age. The rules should be so framed that
there should be little or no washing-up, in the ordinary acceptation
of the term.
Let me put before you a pen-picture of the scullery of my dreams.
A cosy pleasant room, the whole length of the house in fact, with
a south aspect, full advantage of which is secured by a long window
filled with leaded lights of opalescent glass (in order that the
Hilary-Tompkins next door, who have two servants, may not grow too
ribald). On the western wall is a rich mosaic depicting Hercules
cleansing the Augean stable, and below this a fountain of clear limpid
water, warmed to at least twenty over grease-proof, gushes forth and
flows in a pellucid stream, between banks of marble, to the eastern
end of the chamber. At the fountain head reclines Euphemia, my wife,
arrayed and fructed proper, who leisurely drops the crockery into the
stream. At the other end of the room, seated in a "profound chair" by
the estuary, where the waters of the River Plate fall into the Sink
Basin, behold me lazily watching the cups and platters as they glide
gently down the rippling flood towards me, dexterously fishing
out each fresh arrival and depositing it in a hot-air receptacle
conveniently placed for its accommodation.
Such, I say, is the scullery of my dreams, in which the washing up of
a nine-hole-course dinner would be as pleasant as a round of golf.
No unsightly pots, pans, brooms, tins or other junk pollute the
apartment; they are in the dream ante-chamber, to be hereinafter
described or not, if the Editor sees fit. [ED.--He does not see fit.]
* * * * *
Shakspeare and Mr. Charles Chaplin.
Mr. CHARLES CHAPLIN writes from Los Angeles protesting against the
allegation, made in our issue of March 31st, that "he does not like
SHAKSPEARE." Mr. Punch cannot accept responsibility for a statement
quoted from the report of an interview, but he has no hesitation in
expressing his profound regret for any wrong that he has inadvertently
done both to Mr. CHAPLIN and SHAKSPEARE.
* * * * *