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. 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. 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.

If, however, the basement cannot be avoided, we must rise to the occasion and do the very best we can in the matter. And first of all we must see that it is really dry, and that its comfort is assured by the presence of a dry area and the proper amount of ventilation, and absence of damp. If this cannot be assured, the house must be given up. Far better put up with a small dining-room and a dull drawing-room, for both of these drawbacks can be easily remedied, but for a damp bad kitchen there can be no cure, and should we weakly give in to it, we can never be happy or comfortable in the least in our domestic arrangements, be very sure of that.

If, however, we find that the basement is capable of amendment, our first endeavours must be to make it as cheerful as possible, and to get as much light and air into it as possible too. I have only once had to ‘wrastle’ with one on my own account, and that I made as bearable as circumstances would permit, by enlarging a window and having one of Chappius’ reflectors so arranged that as much sunshine came in as was obtainable, while I had one of the three doors closed entirely, and made an enormous scullery and washhouse species of abode, into a nice little scullery and a rather decent room in which the maids could sit and have their meals and do their needlework. Oh, I do hope some day to hear of a real and bona-fide revolt against the regulation suburban accommodation for the unfortunate maids, for, until this takes place, I am quite sure the servant question will remain a very burning one.

I am writing now more especially for those householders who have from £500 to £1000 a year to spend, and who have two or four maids, according to their means and the size of their families, and who ought to be able to find the kitchen arrangements comprised in a square block, consisting of kitchen, scullery, parlour-maid’s pantry, with good, deep cupboards for glass and china, and a pretty little sitting-room where the domestics could have a few at least of the amenities of life. The bedrooms could be above, as could the sanitary arrangements, which are all too often placed either in the cellar part of the house or close to the larder, or, in fact, anywhere where they ought not to be. Now suppose we find the ordinary box of a pantry, slip of a kitchen and scullery and larder, how should we best circumvent this arrangement, I wonder? Well, first we can tackle the landlord, who, if he have money at all: and an impecunious landlord is a deadly and desperate thing to possess, and should be most carefully avoided: will be glad to do as we want for an extra rent at the rate of 5 per cent on whatever outlay he can make. We should get him to build out a servant’s sitting-room, and enlarge the pantry and scullery, and to put above the erection a servant’s bath and lavatory arrangement. This could be done for about £100 and the extra £5 on the rent would hardly be felt, while the comfort obtained thereby would far and away compensate for the outlay. If the landlord be obdurate, the only thing to do is to buy for ourselves one of Humphreys’ moveable iron buildings, and have it adapted for our purposes. In this case we can only, I fear, manage the servants’ sitting-room and extra accommodation for glass, china and washing-up, and we shall have to put the room door just apart from the house, though, of course, a very short passage could be erected. But before anything is done, care should be taken to ascertain the rules and regulations respecting the erecting of buildings in the special locality, as all seem to me to differ; and, indeed, in some there are none at all. Yet, in any case this is a thing to be ascertained definitely, for I have known a Local Board step in and formally order the removal of a beautiful and pet conservatory, because the builder had innocently infringed some bye-law in its construction, and had not obtained the sanction of the authorities to the plans of the structure before erection was commenced. If neither the landlord nor Humphreys can come to the rescue, I am going to advocate a step which will be nothing short of anarchy and revolution in the eyes of any old-fashioned person, for I am about to suggest that, in these desperate straits, the usual third room should be handed over to the maids to sit in, while we can keep it in a measure in our own hands too, by erecting our store-cupboards there, and extra shelves for glass and china. But if we do, we must not be always pouncing in and out on the maids, but must give out everything for the day’s use before ten o’clock, after which we should never go there unless actually obliged, for nothing is so detestable as a room into which anyone can go at any moment, and where the maids can never feel they are safe from eternal supervision. If the door of this third room opens straight on the hall, and if another can be made to open into the kitchen premises—and this is often the case—it would be well to permanently close the first and have the second made. The original door need be only bolted or locked inside, and covered with a curtain, while it is not either difficult or expensive to contrive another exit, for a hole is easily knocked in an ordinary suburban wall, and a door frame and door added. And I venture to prophesy if this is done, that there will be a reign of peace in the kitchen department unprecedented in the annals of most houses, because servants will usually stay where they are comfortable, and where they feel they are considered, and their health and happiness are both thought about. I know quite well that in their own homes and in the houses they come from, they have no real privacy at all; but I also know that most maids leave such homes at too early an age to recollect half, or, indeed, to realise half, of the miseries they are called upon to bear there, and they very easily forget the past, and only really comprehend the present and its possibilities; besides which, a maid goes away from her home to ‘better herself.’ Were she content with semi-starvation and over-crowding, she would remain there, or enter on the desperate existence of a factory hand or a home worker. The fact that she wishes for more comfort, for more human surroundings, sends her into domestic service; and if that comfort and those surroundings were forthcoming, servants would be far more plentiful than they are at present, and would likewise come of a far better and much more honourable and pleasant class. The first step then is, undoubtedly, to secure something in the shape of ‘the room,’ as the servants’ hall is called in more ambitious households, and the second is to see that it is decently arranged and is sacred to the maids for a certain portion of the day, and most certainly for all the evening. I say a certain portion of the day, because, in small establishments, it is possible that the mistress may have little jobs of finer cooking, of plate-cleaning, or even dressmaking to do that she cannot well manage in the one sitting-room which would be her portion when the third room is given up to the maids. If this be the case, the establishment will naturally be so small that the maids will be too much occupied all the mornings to be able to use it, so that until 12.30 it could remain in the mistress’s possession; but after that hour she must never enter it. Just as in a larger house and with more maids, the hour of ten must see her out of the kitchen, that part of her work being completed then for the rest of the day.

Almost the first things a housemistress should ascertain about her house are the position and number of the pipes which are part and parcel of the water supply, as, unless this is ascertained, and she is able to possess herself of a species of sketch-map of them, she will not be able to know how to manage should the usual winter arrive in all its strength, and the water become frozen in the pipes in a manner that should never, for one moment even, be allowed. As a rule, our winters are not very long or very severe; if they were we should, no doubt, be readier for them than we are now. But we can always depend on a cold ‘snap’ or period during which our very unpreparedness lays us open to a thousand and one discomforts and dangers, none of which need have been ours if we had had the common sense to recollect that we should have looked out for and prepared against a state of things that is as inevitable as it is undoubtedly most detestable and disagreeable. The suburban builder, as a rule, has his ideas, and his only, on the subject of pipe laying. One idea is, so to imbed them in the walls of the house that we cannot get at them at all, and another is to place them outside the house in the most exposed position possible, where they are warranted to freeze on the first provocation, unless we can take the matter into our own hands at once, and either box them in, filling in the space between the pipes and the boxes with sawdust, which generally protects them for all time from the severest frost; or, at the approach of winter, so swathe them in flannel rags and hay bands, that frost cannot touch them, not forgetting to treat in a similar manner the pipes in the tank room. These should be our especial care, for they are often the first to freeze, and are the cause of many and many a detestable and untoward catastrophe.

The boiler in the suburban kitchen is generally one of two kinds, and is either of the low-pressure order, which has no system of circulating pipes, or the high-pressure species, which has and which requires more elaborate care than the former. If the low-pressure boiler is the one in use, and the frost is severe, it is better to completely empty all the pipes in the house, and to cut off the water supply to the house entirely, drawing the water from a supply-cock fixed just before the water enters the house, whence it can be obtained by hand as required. Of course this adds a great deal to the work, but it means safety, for when the boiler is kept well filled it cannot burst, neither can pipes freeze if there be no water in them to bring about this very disagreeable state of things. A low-pressure boiler having a lid that comes off, can always be hand-filled easily, while cans of water must be placed wherever one is accustomed to use water freely; and though baths may be curtailed and work increased, no damage or danger can ensue. Therefore the moment a frost sets in, cut off the water from the house, and rely entirely on the hand-filling of the boiler for all domestic purposes.

If the boiler is a high-pressure one, we must be very vigilant from the first moment a frost appears, while we must be ready for it long before it really arrives. The first thing to see is that this boiler is supplied with a safety-valve and a supply-cock; and the second thing to do is to have the principles on which the safety-valve is constructed so explained to us by the man who supplies it, that we shall always be able to ascertain in a moment if it is in working order, or if it is not. For safety-valves are possessed of a demon habit of being out of order when they are least expected to be, and we may be priding ourselves on the fact that we have one, and are therefore quite safe, when the wretched thing may be refusing to work, and we may be on the very brink of the catastrophe we have intended it to avoid for us. Safety-valves differ so very much that it would be impossible to describe here how a house-mistress can ascertain if her own special valve is all right or all wrong. The only thing she can do is to have written instructions from the man who supplies it. These instructions, the plan of the pipes and special rules about what to do in a severe frost, should be in a small book kept among the housekeeping books, and easily get-at-able in case the frost should occur when the mistress was away from home, or if she were ill or in any way unable to attend to it herself. If the supply pipes cannot be got at and protected from the frost as a whole, it is best, once the tanks in the roof are full, to cut off the supply entirely from the main. In this case the local authorities must be communicated with, and the tanks filled by the Local Board by means of a stand-pipe, and great care must be taken both to see the tanks are kept full, and that the pipe between the hot and cold water tanks is kept free from frost. If by any chance the worst comes to the worst, and danger is ahead, the safety-valve will show it by blowing off steam; then out with your fire at once, dear reader; you are done for, and must remain kitchen-fireless until a beneficent thaw sets in.

In the meantime a second stove in the scullery will prevent you from being foodless, and though hot water may be scarce and comfort little, you will at anyrate be safe, and as the maids have their little sitting-room they won’t be frozen in the kitchen or thawed in the scullery, as they most undoubtedly would otherwise have been. Of course, if we have our pipes properly protected, and there is no warning from the safety-valve, and water flows freely from the boiler-taps, we are all right. In this case it is best never to allow the kitchen fire to go out, but last thing at night to bank it up with ashes and briquettes, and so ensure its burning without stopping. Of course it should be protected by a guard, and no kindling wood must on any account be placed to dry either in the ovens or on the hot plates by the side. In the morning the fire should be thoroughly raked out, and set going again in the usual way. Unless this is done, the fire will not be good enough for cooking: it will be a caked mass, which will not ensure the cook’s manufactures being the success they should be; therefore, in giving our instructions, great stress should be laid on the real necessity that undoubtedly exists for a rebuilding and relighting of the fire for the new day.

Sometimes there are odd lengths of pipes that we cannot protect, and which only supply certain single taps. In this case stop-cocks should be fixed in them in such a way as to prevent the water entering them, and these should be used in the frost. Then these special pipes can be kept waterless without disturbing the whole internal economy of the house as regards the water supply. Of course I am not writing in any measure about the proper arrangements of the water pipes. I am only advising the ordinary suburban residents how to save misfortune, and a ruinous plumbers’, and very likely a decorators’, bill too, should the winter be as one usually finds it in England, where the spells of frost—undoubtedly short as they are—undoubtedly make people indifferent and happy-go-lucky about their preparations for hard weather.

But given the unexpected in the shape of real cold, and what occurs? 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. Then there is one great thing to recollect, and that is, that after a frost one must flush most lavishly all the drains and sinks, and, moreover, during the frost we must keep ample disinfectants ready and in use in every place where they can possibly be needed. I always put Sanitas down the bath and the housemaid’s sink too, because soapy water decays and causes very unpleasant smells, while, of course, Sanitas should be liberally poured down every other place in use. Then when the thaw comes, let the water run freely for at least an hour a day for the first three days down each drain, flushing first with hot water and a liberal supply of disinfectants; for if these precautions are taken, we shall not want the doctor, a gentleman whose visits too often follow a thaw with a regularity far more pleasing to him, maybe, than they can be to us, even if we are as fond of him as people usually manage to become of the family doctor.

I may seem to have dwelt unduly on the great pipe question, but the long frost of the early part of 1895 showed me most emphatically that there was great need to instruct the ordinary householder in the suburbs and in small town houses about this unpoetical but most necessary subject. No less than three boilers burst in one week in the place where I was then staying; one resulted in the death of the servant and total blindness for the only child of the house; one in the death of three children, while the third maimed the cook for life. Of the destruction to property I need say nothing; but when we reflect that all these accidents were absolutely preventable, and were entirely due to crass ignorance on the part of both mistresses and maids, we will, I think, come to the conclusion that the first duty of woman is to know her pipes, the position thereof, and the manner of her water supply; while the second is to be ready to act for the best the moment frost appears, and so render bursting boilers and pipes the impossibilities they both can be made in the most faultily-constructed suburban residences, if only the dwellers therein have their heads screwed on the right way, and are prepared for any real emergency. In any case, it is well always to have some means of cooking, which shall be available should we be, for one cause or the other, unable to use the range, which, by the way, should, if we can in any way afford it, be the ‘Eagle,’ for at present, at all events, no better one has been invented. If possible, there should be a small open grate and the little side low-pressure boiler which can always be hand-filled; in the scullery or even in the maid’s sitting-room; but if either is impossible, we must be possessed of means of cooking by gas, so that we shall not be left entirely helpless should the frost seize on our pipes before we are ready, or should it be necessary to sweep the kitchen chimney or repair the kitchen range.

If, however, we have a gas stove, the supply of gas should not be left to the discretion of the maids, but should only be get-at-able when it is legitimate to use it. Unless the mistress herself can turn on and off the gas, and keep it off when it should not be used, the waste and expense will be enormous. There are certain things ‘the very best’ maids are always reckless with, e.g., gas, potatoes, bread; and kindling wood and matches; small items to fuss about, no doubt, but small things are what add up and become terrors. One expects the big ones somehow, but the tiny odds and ends, that seem nothing separately, are what swell the weekly bills when they are added up, and therefore should be more thought about than they are in the usual suburban household.

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. If this be the case, what would it cost to add a simple porch and side-door? not much above £20, yet what a difference would it make in the comfort of the kitchen. If, however, this outlay is impossible, a large, oil-cloth-covered screen should be placed round the door in such a way that one side of it is put by the side of the door which opens, and the door is reached from the other side of the screen, which is only pushed on one side to answer the bell, and replaced as soon as possible. This breaks the draught even if it can’t exclude it, while the maids’ health and the consumption of coals both considerably benefit by such an arrangement. More Slater’s patent draught-excluder should be put round doors and all windows, and ventilation should be secured by a round ventilator put in the top part of the window, and another in the top part of an outer wall; these ventilators can always be closed, but when cooking is in progress or gas is burning, and for at least an hour after the meals are cooked, they should remain open and so ensure that the air in the kitchen should be always pure and fresh.

The larder should be ventilated in the same way, and any windows should be covered with very fine wire-netting on the side they do not open—outside, if they are the ordinary small sash windows, inside, should they push outwards on an iron support—to prevent cats, dogs and small animals of any kind from entering, while great care should be taken to see that the larder is damp-proof. Nothing keeps in a damp larder, and, therefore if it should be damp it is utterly useless to try and put meat, bread and butter there. In any case if one has not tiles, and I never yet met with the suburban larder that had, the walls should be painted from top to bottom, first with Chambers’s damp-resisting fluid, and then with a couple of coats of Aspinall’s enamel paint in a shade of ivory white. No one should permit the decorator to talk him or her out of using this most invaluable preparation, for nothing I can assure my readers, can take its place. I have had eight years’ constant experience of it. I have had many years’ experience of the ordinary paint, and I confidently say that it and Aspinall are not to be mentioned together in any shape or form, therefore everyone should insist on its use. The decorator I fancy does not get quite as much profit on it as on the ordinary paint, and it is more trouble to apply I know, and these perhaps are his reasons for his undoubted dislike to it; but if my readers are wise, they will insist on Aspinall, especially where damp has to be considered, and where a good surface and uniform colouring are in request.

The larder should have one wide shelf, and in one corner should be a safe for meat, and poultry, with very fine wire-netting all round. This should be able to be moved and hung out in a shady corner in the garden in the summer if the larder should be warm at all, or else hung in the cellar if there be no garden. Here too should be placed the refrigerator, without which no house is complete, and which soon saves its own cost, in the manner it allows one to keep one’s provisions sweet, and one’s milk right, and one’s butter from running away, as it otherwise does at the smallest amount of heat. The larder floor should be tiled, if not it must be ‘gone over’ every day with a mop dipped in Sanitas and water to take up the dust and make it fresh and clean; then the food should be nicely arranged for the mistress’s visit of inspection, while once a week the larder must be thoroughly scrubbed out, shelf and all, the shelf being washed over with a damp duster daily, when the floor is done over with the ever-useful mop. The same treatment should be given to the scullery, where the sinks should be flushed daily, and which should never be without their big lump of soda in one corner to prevent the grease accumulating.

The kitchen floor should be simply boarded; if only used to cook in, it should have merely one or two large squares of oilcloth or cocoa-nut matting by the stove, kitchen table, or where the cook and kitchen-maid stand to work, and the furniture should resolve itself into a couple of good tables, one the ordinary kitchen table, the other much on the same lines but smaller, and placed close to the window, to be used for pastry making and the finer parts of cooking, and which should both be scrubbed daily, and on which grease should never be allowed to remain for one minute. A couple of ordinary kitchen chairs and the dresser should complete the plenishing. The dresser drawers should be inspected once a week, to see there are no accumulations of rubbish there, and that all is in order. The dresser must never be used as private property by the maids, else will it become a species of glory hole, filled to the brim with unmended stockings, old dusters, paper and string, and odds and ends, which ought not to be tolerated there, or, indeed anywhere else for five minutes by anyone. If the furniture is as severely simple as I have described above, the kitchen resolves itself into what it should undoubtedly be, merely a place to cook in, and in which to prepare the meals. In this case the walls should be painted from ceiling to floor with a shade of electric turquoise enamel, or else in one shade of the blue to about 4 feet from the floor, the rest of the wall being painted a soft shade of brown. This should include the doors and window-sashes, and the one paint should be divided from the other by a wide band of brown stenciling on the blue surface of the wall. The ceiling should be whitewashed, as should be the ceilings in all kitchen premises, and the kitchen should be lighted with a good centre gaslight with a couple of burners. A bracket arm for gas should be on one side of the fire, to use while cooking was going on on very dark days, or when special cooking was going forward; and there should be one gas light in the larder. These lights should be protected with the proper wire-globes sold by most ironmongers. Gas globes are soon smashed in the kitchen, and they are not really safe when they are on moveable brackets or pendants, as they all too often are in these parts of a house.

The pantry should be treated in the same way as the kitchen as regards decoration, and should only have mats on the floor, and no fixed covering there at all. Only the china, glass and silver in use should be kept in this room, the latter, if valuable, only in the day time, and even then in a small locked safe. If the pantry should be large, the extra glass and china can be kept there in locked cupboards, accessible to none but the mistress. Here in the ordinary ship’s cabin provided by the suburban builder, the ‘fitment’ style of cupboard is most useful. As a rule the maid only wants room enough to stand or sit by her sink to wash up and clean the daily silver, and so the tiny space can be almost filled with cupboards; and here is an excellent place for the stores and jam-closet: the ordinary suburban resident if wise, getting in her stores once a week from Shoolbred, and not dealing with the local grocer, who, all too often extracts orders from the maids when none should be forthcoming. If there really is no room here for them, cupboards must be erected in the maid’s room, whether it be that vexed third room or another. Somewhere there must be a store-cupboard, properly regulated and properly looked after by the mistress herself, and no one else at all; otherwise, that way most undoubtedly lie bankruptcy and disorganisation, often enough one and the same thing.

The maids’ sitting-room should be papered with some pretty, light paper, and should have either a dado of cupboards and shelves in the fitment style, or else a real dado of plain, self-coloured oilcloth, which can be wiped over with a damp duster daily. This and the paint could once more be brown, as could the dado-rail. The ceiling must be whitewashed. There should be a nice table for meals and work, six ordinary Windsor chairs, and a couple of comfortable basket chairs, with hard-wearing, tapestry-covered cushions. These should be considered the property of the elder servants, if four are kept; but, of course, if the housemaid is of ‘staid’ age, and careful she could have a nice chair too. I think the ordinary kitchen chair a cruel thing, except for use at meals, and see no reason why the maids should be condemned to its use and nothing else, when, surely their backs must ache sometimes as well as the backs of other far less employed women undoubtedly do.

The grate must be a slow-combustion one, and, unless the mistress uses the room need not be lighted, save in very severe weather, before one o’clock, when it should be lighted from the top and allowed to burn slowly down, and kept going with briquettes and small coal judiciously mingled with a little larger coal. The curtains should be of the dark blue and white butterfly cretonne Liberty sells, and which should be in universal use wherever much washing is to be expected, for it washes splendidly, and never seems to wear out. I have still a couple of cretonne covers I had quite thirteen years ago. The floors should either be stained or else covered with plain cork carpet, supplemented with small rugs here and there, or else with a square of cocoa-nut matting. But I like rugs best; they are so easily taken up and shaken, and dust is kept at bay as long as this is done. I am very much inclined to say, do not have gas here, yet I fear unless we have plenty of help we must, or the lamps, inevitable in the sitting-room, will become too numerous for our staff. At the same time, I do very strongly recommend a good duplex lamp from the centre of the ceiling if it can be managed. Servants are reckless of gas. They are not so fond of lighting the lamps as they are of setting a light to the gas. In the first place, it is more trouble; in the second, they know that if they light them too soon they will have to re-trim and re-fill them before the evening is out. But if a lamp is procured, it must be a good one. It must have a metal receiver, and it must have a clear glass shade. Silk or stuff shades are out of place, and very dark always I think; in such a room as this they would be ridiculous, and most likely dangerous. This room is in the care of the kitchen-maid too, though, if there are books, pictures and ornaments, as there should be, the housemaid should take a pride in dusting them and keeping them in order, and should see that the rougher parts of the cleaning are properly performed. As the mistress will use this room for a short while in any case, she can always see that ruin has not begun among the furniture and decorations; for whether it is provided by the builder, or whether she supplement the accommodation of the house herself as advised before, she should always have one store-cupboard here, whence she could give out the things for the day’s use. She can then supervise without spying; for once tacitly allow that a room in one’s own house cannot be entered save on sufferance (mind, I don’t say frequented!) it is easier to storm an enemy’s citadel successfully than gain an entry into that special chamber without more friction than anyone who has not tried a similar situation could well believe.

One word more. In frosty weather gas and fires should not be stinted. The gas should be burned steadily in the scullery, pantry and lavatories, to prevent any chance of the water therein freezing. This may save a great deal; but, of course, if the pipes have frozen, one can only accept the situation and wait for a thaw. But that they need never do this, I trust I have demonstrated in a manner that should be patent to the least imaginative housewife in the world.