J. E. Panton

“ She will, pocket-book in hand, note the differences in the paint, which always occur where Aspinall is not used, the bolt or knob forgotten there, the curtain placed in the wrong room, the portière that has been left out, and she will finally put the last touches which none but a woman can, and which in some mysterious manner turn a house into the home it can always be made by anyone who really and truly understands the science. But nothing must be passed over; no doubt it takes time and thought to obtain perfection, still both are to be had, ay, even in the shoddy villa of the suburbs. ”

“ KITCHEN AND BASEMENTS If the conquest of the hall be difficult, the siege of the kitchen and servants’ quarters generally is one that will carry dread even to the stoutest heart. For as a rule the suburban builder sinks to his lowest depths of villainy here, and either gives a damp and wandering basement wherein no servant will remain more than her month, or a regular cupboard where the stove leaves scarcely room for anything else, and where the heat from that, and the draughts from the doors and windows, are enough to ruin the constitution of any ordinary woman. ”

“ As a rule, no one likes another’s taste, and even if the taste be good, it may not suit the next tenant’s belongings, neither, should she be about to furnish, may she care to adapt her new possessions to the colours and styles she finds ready for her in the fresh house. Fancy the anguish of being forced to make and inhabit a green drawing-room, after one has longed for years for a yellow one; or pining for a blue hall to find a terra-cotta one one’s portion! That it is not ugly is its worst fault, it is only ‘inoffensive,’ ‘unnoticeable,’ too clean to touch. ”

“ Therefore let me insist that the would-be suburban resident recognise first his duty to himself in the selection of his suburb, and then, secondly, his duty towards his neighbour. If he is close enough to him to be a nuisance he should consider him as much as he considers himself, while he bears in mind that there must be a social head to whom he will loyally give help, should he himself be anxious to wear the ‘hall-mark’ that will give all, rich and poor alike, the right to be a members of society, where pleasantness and culture suffice to ensure a hearty welcome. ”

“ As a rule such a room has one rug straight along in front of the fireplace, another straight in front of the window or windows, while the rest are placed in the same painful positions by the door and by the wall opposite the fire, in a manner which makes me long, no matter where I may be, to oust the furniture on the instant, and to put those rugs myself in the manner in which they should most certainly go. ”

“ But I cannot breathe in any house where gas is allowed to warm the air. I know plants never last in such an atmosphere, as my plants do, and that, moreover, wherever gas stoves are employed largely, anyone in that special place is pale, wan and susceptible to cold. Indeed, the more I see of any attempt to heat our rooms otherwise than by open fires, the more I am convinced that such attempts are harmful and unsuccessful, and that, therefore, coal and wood fires should be ‘our only wear,’ at least until some genius invents something better and less costly. ”

“ Trees bring rain and insects, and mean damp; albeit, if we can only find a suburb where the gracious pine tree flourishes, we can dwell there without alarm. The pine-tree spells health always, and should be sought for as carefully as a family of nouveaux riches searches for its coat of arms, or some one thing that will link it on to someone else’s noble ancestors in some way or another. Therefore should the seeker after a suburban residence arm himself with a geological map of the regions round London, and make many pilgrimages and inquiries before he finally chooses. ”

“ THE NURSERIES Well may the heart of the ordinary mother of a family sink within her shoes when she sees the regulation rooms provided for the use of the children! Nay, one can hardly believe that they are meant for them at all, for nowhere are two rooms placed in such a manner as to make real day and night nurseries, and she is lucky indeed who has not to place one room on the first, and the other on the second floor, thus making it impossible for the nurse to look after the children or their garments in the manner she would be able to do were both rooms on the same storey. ”

“ Of course the ceiling is papered in yellow and white, and equally, of course, all the paint is one even surface of colour. Nothing can excuse picked out or striped and embellished paint: nothing! Genius is better employed on better work, and even genius is out of place in making ornamental that which after all is only going to be part of a harmonious whole, and merely a background to ourselves and our possessions. ”

“ The pipes and the kitchen itself once settled about, the next steps to take are towards proper ventilation and draught exclusion. One cannot ventilate with a draught, yet how few people realise this; if they did, colds would go quite out of fashion and everyone would be much happier than at the present moment. As a rule one door in the orthodox kitchen opens straight on the open air, and here the tradespeople come and linger while waiting about for the orders which should never be called for except under special stress of circumstances. ”

“ When, therefore, we have duly circumvented the draughts and dangers which await us in the ordinary suburban house, the next thing we have to consider is either how to paint and paper and furnish, or how to decorate to suit the goods we may already possess. If we have already got our furniture, the paint and paper must be bought with an eye to those. Yet as a rule it is so easy to re-cover dining-room furniture that no one should be debarred from having a pretty room because they have ugly seats to their chairs, or own perchance a set of frightful curtains. ”

“ But let me implore my suburban readers, when placing their pianos to do so with a kindly remembrance of their possible neighbours, to select an inside wall in preference to an outside one, and to practise whenever they can with the windows closed and carefully fastened. I have once been near enough to other folks to suffer the tortures of the lost from my neighbour’s piano. I cannot, therefore, impress too much upon my readers that a good deal of real pain may be inflicted on one’s neighbour simply because the question of the piano has never been duly and properly weighed and considered. ”

“ As a rule the floor of the ordinary suburban hall is made from the roughest of boards which shrink apart coyly from each other as if they were youthful maidens at their first ball, but sometimes we are fortunate enough to come across tiles. ”

“ A really good chair is a possession which lasts one’s lifetime, and one that is in the least degree uncomfortable should never be tolerated for one moment. A good reason that for refusing utterly to buy or countenance the detestable and out-of-date suite where none of the chairs are even decent, and where the sofa may be ornate but cannot be a place to rest upon try how we will. If we have this panelled room, we should try and find a Sherraton writing-table at Hewetson’s, which has no high back, a thing, by the way, to remember about all writing-tables, which have to stand in a window. ”

“ At the same time I don’t see why anyone need make such attempts—given the proper grates—for nothing can{230} take the place of a cheery blaze, which apart from its health-giving properties, always seems to greet us when we enter the room, is a delightful companion, and oftentimes provides us with a pleasant occupation should we be bored or tired. For nothing is more pleasing than to feed a good-tempered blaze until it laughs and chuckles at us as it goes rollicking up the chimney on its way to the outer air. ”

“ Of course each individual hall requires individual treatment, and it would be well-nigh impossible to lay down any hard and fast rules to be followed implicitly; but a dado, a real not a sham one, is an absolute necessity in any narrow hall, and no one should be afraid of one of coloured paper, bold in hue as in design, for a large, bold pattern makes a small place appear larger, and real colour must always be a pleasure, which a muddled, pale and timid tint can never be. ”

“ To sum up briefly the necessities of a healthy nursery, I should say that they include two easily-isolated rooms, plenty of sun and air as opposed to heat and draughts, and above all, spotless cleanliness and well-made, simply-designed furniture, which can be easily moved, which allows of no accumulations, and which finally can be kept by the nurse herself in a state of perfect dustlessness without an undue amount of labour. ”

“ PARLOURS Anything less like a parlour than the drawing-room of an ordinary suburban residence I can hardly imagine; but there is no earthly reason why it should not be turned into a semblance of one especially in those more favoured spots where the architect has artistic leanings, and where the speculative jerry-builder has not had everything his own sweet way. ”

“ HALLS AND PASSAGES If we wish to make a complete conquest of the special suburban residence we are about to circumvent, there is no doubt whatever that the first battle of all has to be fought and won on the very doorstep. Nay sometimes one has to commence the conflict before we reach as far as that, for have we not the ‘carriage sweep’ to tackle and the slamming gate to minister to before reaching the front door? ”

“ Boilers burst and kill and maim people freely, and the moment a thaw comes, the plumbers are besieged by those whose pipes are pouring torrents of water down the walls and the front staircase, while carpets and furniture are spoiled, and everyone’s health suffers because the smallest precautions have not been taken to ensure the house against an entirely preventible state of things. ”

“ Dearly as I loved Shortlands the clay there was always to be reckoned with, and made a long reckoning too, when all was told, for though roses flourished magnificently, children didn’t, and coughs and colds were ‘the only wear’ once autumn began to spread the leaves and winter came up to finish the little business, clad in the usual garments of fog and mist, changed at times to other more ‘seasonable’ ones of frost and snow. ”

“ Indeed the whole duty of a suburban resident is to treat his neighbour as himself in the matter of conduct, but not to know him personally if he can in any way and decently avoid doing so, for ‘beware to whom you give the key of your back door,’ says a wise old proverb, and one gives it away very freely when one is on the intimate terms one must be if one knows one’s real neighbour in the suburbs in the very smallest degree. ”

“ The basement kitchen is the worst of all, because it marks a class of house that has seen better days, and is rapidly deteriorating. Therefore if one has to choose between two houses, one of which has no basement, and another which has, one should at once select the basementless one.{65} There are sure to be cellars below the house, which will keep it dry. One doesn’t even in the suburbs often come across a house, the boards of which are pushed out of place by enterprising mushrooms growing in the soil beneath, and ambitious of appearing in fresh air and among the haunts of men. ”

“ This is a lesson all men can be taught just as many of them have been taught, thanks to me, that the hall need not be strewed with hats, gloves and brushes, and hung with coats and waterproofs in the last stages of dissolution, and that they can be quite as happy with their raiment out of sight as ever they were when they were allowed to strew it about in their entrances, at their own sweet wills. It is, however, usually impossible to live in an ordinary suburban house unless the furniture be made, in a measure for that special abode. ”

“ The young people of these households would have their boots blacked for them, their hot water and bath water carried up for them, and be waited on, before they went out to their shops or work, as one’s own children would never dream of being waited on, in a much much higher rank of life. In these households the servants have simply an awful time of it, and hence class prejudice is fostered terribly, while the unthrifty ways of the household leave their mark on all who pass through it, and help to build up a class that is in every way unsatisfactory. ”

“ I am not fond of a door opening into a hall, and of course the perfect door should not open, but slide into the wall, but perfection is a word never heard, and certainly not understood at all in the usual suburb.
If the room be blue, the portière should be of printed velveteen in shades of yellow. With a floral paper it may be pink or green, but in any case a plain material should not be employed as a portière. One should always have a figured stuff there, and if one can afford it one cannot improve on the aforesaid velveteen. ”

“ Here we may often come across quite delightful little picture houses, bearing the stamp of Mr Ernest Newton’s genius, and if the structure does not equal the design in merit, we can always circumvent any errors if we are clever, while the deep, charming windows and really lovely mantels over-mantels and grates provided for us, make our task of decoration a comparatively easy one from the first. ”

“ But now matters are entirely changed, and the Church has little or nothing to do with the social standing of Brown and Jones and Smith. So if the suburb is to be successful, it must possess someone who, by right of brains and an assured position, can bring together the real folk and leave alone the dull, stupid ones who love gossip, and hate books and art and pictures, and so ensure an intellectual centre, which, once formed, would make any suburb as delightful as Shortlands was, in the days when I knew it well, and no doubt still is. ”