LITMIR.BIZ

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      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"?

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