THE SPARE ROOM.
Perhaps the kindliest and wisest advice with regard to a spare room,
would be the same as _Punch's_ famous counsel to young people about to
marry--a short and emphatic "Don't." In a large country house, perhaps
even in a small country house, the case is different, for the spare room
too often represents all the social variety which the owners can hope
for, from year's end to year's end--and the only change from town life
possible to half the bees in the great hive. It is scarcely possible to
imagine an English country house, be it ever so humble, without its
spare room, or the warm cordial welcome which would be sure to greet its
succeeding inhabitants. How fresh and sweet and dainty do its simple
appointments look to jaded eyes! how grateful its deep stillness to
world-deafened ears! How impossible, in a brief summer week, to believe
that life can ever be found dull or monotonous amid such delicious calm!
A walk in the gloaming in a country lane,--always supposing it is not
too muddy--a cup of milk fresh from the cow, a crust off the home-baked
loaf, are all treats of the first order to the tired cockney. I have
often noticed the sort of half-pitying, half-contemptuous amazement with
which my country hostess has beheld my delight at being installed in her
spare room, my rapture at the sight of meadows and trees, or the sound
of cawing rooks and the whirr of mowing machines. And how fresh and
clean ought this country spare room to look! How inexcusable would be
stain or spot, or evil odour amid such fragrant surroundings! Why should
not the sheets _always_ smell of lavender (as a matter of fact, they do
not, I regret to state)? why should not there be _always_ a jar of dried
rose-leaves somewhere "around," as our dear, epigrammatic, Yankee
cousins say?
[Illustration: FIG. 31.]
I do not think I really like silks and satins anywhere; I acknowledge
that they fill me with a respectful admiration and awe for a short
space, but that soon wears off, and my accidental splendour bores me all
the rest of the time I have to dwell with it. No, the sort of
guest-chamber which I love to occupy in the country is as simple as
simple can be, and not so crowded with furniture, but that a little
space is left here and there where a box can be placed without its
intruding itself as a nuisance for which one feels constantly impelled
to apologise. If I am so fortunate as to find in a corner of my room a
little frame, about two feet high made by the village carpenter, or the
big boys of the household, for this box to stand on, then, indeed, I
know what luxury means. You have your box so much more under your
control if it is raised a little from the floor, and it is ever so much
easier to pack and unpack. The taste and characteristics of the owners
of the house, which you may be sure is to be found in all their
surroundings, is never more apparent than in the spare room. Sometimes
your hostess tries to make you happy with looking-glasses, and I have
shudderingly dwelt in a room with five large mirrors and sundry smaller
ones; or else you are abashed to find how many gowns there is space for,
and how few you have brought. But this extreme is better than the other:
I have had to keep my draperies on all the available chairs in the room
because I was afraid to open and shut the diminutive drawers of an
exquisite, aged coffre which was provided for their reception. Beautiful
as was this article of furniture, I would gladly have changed it for the
commonest deal chest of drawers, long before the week was out. In spare
rooms, as in all other rooms, money is not everything. It will not
always buy taste, nor even comfort. Doubtless many of my readers who may
happen to have led as varied a life as mine has been, will agree with me
in the assertion, that as far as actual _comfort_ goes, they have often
possessed it in a greater degree under a very humble roof-tree, than
beneath many a more splendid shelter. Everybody has their "little ways"
(some of them very tiresome and odd, I admit), and there are splendid
spare rooms in which apparently no margin has been left, no indulgence
shown, for any little individualities.
I should not be an Englishwoman writing to other Englishwomen if I did
not take it for granted that we all desire most ardently that our guests
should be thoroughly comfortable in their own rooms as well as happy in
our society, and so I venture to suggest that visitors should not be
fettered by too many rules, that, however homely the plenishing of the
guest-chamber must needs be, it should never lack a few fresh flowers, a
place to write (Fig. 31), pen and ink, a tiny table which can be moved
about at pleasure, a dark blind for the window, and such trifles which
often make the difference between comfort and discomfort, between a
homelike feeling directly one arrives, and the incessant consciousness
of being "on a visit."
But with regard to spare rooms in a town house, what advice can be given
beyond and except that horrid "don't"? Especially true is this in
London. No one has the least idea how many affectionate relations he
possesses until he has an empty bed-room in a London house. It would
almost appear as if such things as hotels and lodgings had ceased to
exist, so incessant, so importunate are the entreaties to be "put up"
for a couple of nights. And let me say here that visitors will prove
much more of a tax in London than they ever are in the country. For
rural visitors scarcely ever seem to realise or comprehend how
methodically mapped out is the life of a professional man living in
London, how precious are to him the quiet early hours which they insist
upon leaving behind them in the solitude of the country. Speaking as a
London hostess, I may conscientiously assert that the guests who have
kept me up latest at night, who have voted breakfast at 9.30
unreasonably early (without considering it was a whole hour later than
our usual time) have been those people who ordinarily led the quietest
and most clock-work existence in their country home. I will say nothing
here of the impossibility of inducing them to regard distance or
cab-hire as presenting any objection worth consideration in their
incessant hunt after the bargains erroneously supposed by them to be
obtainable in every shop. I have been scolded roundly by country
visitors for keeping early hours and leading a quiet life in London, and
I have never succeeded in impressing on them that in order to get
through a great deal of hard work, both my husband and I found it
necessary to do both.
To a professional man, with a small income, the institution of a spare
room may be regarded as an income tax of several shillings in the pound.
It is even worse than that; it means being forced to take in a
succession of lodgers who don't pay, who are generally amazingly
inconsiderate and _exigeante_, and who expect to be amused and advised,
chaperoned and married, and even nursed and buried. It is inconceivable
upon what slender grounds, or for what far-fetched reasons, your distant
acquaintance, or your--compared to yourself--rich relation, will
unhesitatingly demand your hospitality. And oh, my unknown friends, how
often are we tempted to say yes to the well-to-do relation who asks the
question of us, and to find an excuse to shut out the poor one who
really needs it? Ah how often?
It is really a trial to be unable to receive one's nearest kith and kin,
one's sailor brother or sister home from India, because "we have no
spare room," yet that very beginning, natural and delightful as it is,
cheerfully and laughingly borne as the little privations it entails may
be, is often the beginning of a stream of self-invited guests who
literally worry us, if they don't exactly "eat us," out of house and
home.
THE END.
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL.
[Illustration:
DESIGNER IN PORCELAIN & GLASS
JOHN MORTLOCK
ESTAB^D. 1746
POTTERY GALLERIES
203 & 204 OXFORD STREET.
31 ORCHARD STREET.
LONDON, W.]
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MINTON'S CHINA.
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TRANSCRIBER NOTES:
Missing punctuation has been added and obvious punctuation errors
have been corrected.
Archaic words, mis-spellings and printer errors have been retained.
Footnote has been moved closer to its reference point.
Illustrations have been moved to accommodate the flow of text.