In the rooms set aside for the purposes of rest and sleep, I venture to remark that the ordinary builder, to say nothing of the ordinary decorator, rises to his very worst heights of villainy, and makes the task before us one of almost superhuman effort. I have had three of these houses to live in, and in all of them, when the doors did not face the only possible place to put the bed, they came exactly at the side of the fire, and left no space whatever to put a sofa, let alone a comfortable armchair should one be ill and have to remain in one’s room longer than the hours which are set apart for repose. And as illness is always possible, and moreover more than possible is it vain to ask when further ‘eligible sites’ are cut up for building, that the landlords of the future will kindly keep an eye on the

plans and ensure the houses being built in such a way that it is possible to live in them without an undue expenditure of money or resources? How I should love to design just for once the small ideal house with its square hall, capable of being used as an extra sitting-room or a billiard-room, we need not then have the ‘three reception-rooms’ which sound so grand and mean so little. Upstairs should be three good bedrooms and a dressing-room, bath and day nursery; the servants’ rooms and box-room in their turn above these, and whenever possible, reached by a separate staircase. I see no reason why such a house with reasonable and rational servants’ downstairs accommodation, as already described, should be out of the reach of the usual suburban resident with his £800 to £1000 a year.

If arranged in this compact and comfortable style, and if every labour-saving appliance that is obtainable is introduced, the number of servants required would be minimised. A great consideration in these days, when though we are always being badgered to help the unemployed no one seems able to get any servants, and, even if they are forthcoming, they have to be paid double the old prices, while they do half the amount of work. At least that is what I am always hearing. Personally, I have never found any difficulty in obtaining all the maids I myself require.

At the same time, if I were building ever so small a house, I should undoubtedly have hot and cold water taps and a waste pipe in every bedroom and dressing-room, and would even go as far as to have fixed washing-stands there too. I would put at least one cupboard in each room, also a window-seat, and, of course, the regulation tiled hearth and slow-combustion stove with its tiled surround and its simple black fender. The short curtains to the windows, the carefully-selected pictures and ornaments, and the matted floor should all help to make the work light, and to render it unnecessary to keep any superfluous number of maids.

But we have at present to do with the suburban residence as it is and not as it might be, and therefore it is not much use in dreaming about perfection, for if we do we shall most certainly be disappointed, and do no real good at all. We shall have to combat shrunken doors and ill-fitting windows, poor grates and bad floors, and therefore the sooner we set about remedying these faults the better it will be for us. I do most certainly advise that whatever else is put up with, the usual black wide-mouthed all-devouring grate may be altered and replaced with some kind of a very simple slow-combustion one. These grates can be bought for £3 or £4 at Shuffery’s in Welbeck Street, and will probably save their cost in coal in one month’s use. Besides which they will ensure the warmth and comfort which cannot possibly exist without them; for pile on coal as we may on the grate of the past, the heat goes mostly up the chimney, while the fuel is exactly as useful as regards keeping the fire in, as would be leaves or pieces of paper. Our sole occupation with such a grate is to jump up every five minutes and prevent the fire from going out altogether, by putting on more coal, and yet again more; until our patience, to say nothing of our coal supply, gives out most completely. I have recently spent some months in the company of such a grate, and I can assure my readers I have not had a pleasant time of it. I happened to be obliged to have a fire in all night, and I had no sooner gone comfortably to sleep than the cold roused me again to find that the wretched thing had gone out or almost out, notwithstanding that half an hour before I had not only fed it copiously with coal, but put briquettes in considerable numbers into its vast and hungry jaws. Briquettes which will as a rule keep in the fire for nearly twelve hours were useless here, and I have been therefore confirmed in my deadly hatred against these grates by my sufferings at their hands during a long and most exceptionally severe winter.

Once more, I can assure my readers as regards the grates, that it is absolutely no use to temporise; and that both the one in the day nursery and that in the best bedroom must go, even if it cannot be managed that the grates in the other upstairs rooms can be changed; while let nothing persuade anyone to have gas stoves erected. They are both cheerless and unhealthy, albeit I know they are a great saving in trouble, that they are now properly ventilated, and that they can be turned on and off at a moment’s notice, and can be so regulated that the proper temperature for all rooms—60 degrees—can be maintained either at night or day. 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. At the same time I don’t see why anyone need make such attempts—given the proper grates—for nothing can 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.

Then the last thing at night it can be banked up and left, rather dull-looking perhaps and surly and sad; but when the early morning comes one poke of the judiciously-applied poker and out leaps the eager blaze; a few good knobs of coal are put on, and in less than five minutes back comes our cheery friend, making even a foggy morning bright and cheerful, and a wet or snowy one vivacious if nothing else, under its bright and charming influence. What stove, what emotionless gas glitter can be anything save prosaic in comparison? while I am certain health suffers where anything save a proper fire is ordinarily employed.

A careful tenant can keep the landlord’s grates and replace them when he leaves, but I never think this is worth the expense, the principal expense about changing the grates being the fixing them; at the same time, I cannot say too often that we shall not want to move in the insensate manner in which suburban residents do move nowadays, if we make ourselves comfortable at first, and do not sit down to discomfort, with that depressing sentence on our lips—‘After all, it’s only for three years, and therefore it is not worth while!’

Having begun our reform by putting in new and decent grates, we can turn our attention to the doors and windows and the floor. The draughts must be excluded by ‘Slater’s patent,’ and the floor properly stopped, and moreover planed if rough; while should the door show gaps, as I once knew one to do, in a manner which allowed the unfortunate owner to perceive, without opening it, whether the gas was burning in the hall outside or not, these gaps must be stopped, either by inserting slips of wood, or with putty, or some sort of stopping: the door, as usual, being covered inside and out by the ever-useful, ever-faithful and most decorative portiÈre. I cannot understand the firm and pugnacious way in which the ordinary householder clings to his bare and undraped doors, and will not avail himself of the shelter and warmth which can be obtained in no other way. It cannot be the expense. Wallace supplies the rods at 4½d. a foot, the brackets cost about 4½d. each, and as a yard and a quarter of double-width material suffices for the ordinary suburban door, though I advise an extra half width; and this costs, at the outside, 5s.; I see no reason why this should not be put over even the humblest suburban door in the world. As it cannot be the cost, I can but come to the conclusion that as usual paterfamilias has interfered, a thing no man should do in a house on the matter of decoration and management. He may give an opinion if he is asked for one: though he is most judicious who takes care that that opinion coincides with that of his wife, so if he has been hardy enough to veto the portiÈre, he must be gently, but firmly, shown that it is not stuffy—the thermometer will do that—and that neither is it a dust-trap. This can be demonstrated in a few minutes by taking it down before his eyes, and having it removed, shaken, and replaced all in less time than it takes to tell of it. If after this he objects to moving it on one side as he enters the door, he must be carefully trained to see how ridiculous such a notion is, the while it is casually mentioned that an entrance to a room is not to be effected in the same way one takes a five-barred gate. 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. For the rooms are so awkward and tiny that ‘combination’ furniture must be employed, or else one cannot have space to move.

No bed should ever be draped in any way. If the bedroom is properly arranged and ventilated, while all draughts are excluded, curtains cannot be required, and no bed need present a starved or undecorated appearance if pictures are properly arranged behind it, or a bookcase hung on the wall above it, and the pillows properly put into frilled cases, and placed during the day high up on under pillows. At night the look of the bed behind the sleepers cannot trouble them, but it will be all right if, as I said before, pictures are hung properly, just, and only just above the top rail of the plain and simple brass bed, the only kind which should ever be allowed in any house. If brass is too dear, then plain iron must replace it; the iron can be Aspinalled ‘real ivory,’ and so be made to look quite superior in every way, should the plain black iron be objected to.

I am quite shocked to see that a strenuous effort is being made to revive the beautiful, but unhealthy, wooden bedsteads of our ancestors, but I do hope someone will form an ‘anti-wooden bed league,’ and scotch the thing in its very earliest days, for there are people who will buy anything if assured by an enterprising tradesman that it is the newest thing out, and that a similar article was sold to a member of the aristocracy during the last week or so. Now, the very idea of the newness should warn off any wary buyer, for a new thing cannot have been really tried and found successful, while anyone can be fairly sure that a thing which has been sold, and sold largely for ten or more years, must be a success in one way or the other.

Really it does seem a little late in the century to combat the vast disadvantages of wooden bedsteads! still, it must certainly be done, else once more shall we have to put up with them, to the great detriment of our health. Just think how impossible it would be to make a wooden bed absolutely safe should infectious disease seize the owner! Then too it encourages insects, and is open to all sorts of other objections which those who think can discover for themselves. Therefore stick to brass and iron and the excellent wire-woven mattresses, which only need supplementing with a really good hair mattress to make an ideal couch, particularly if we see the latter is turned every day, and moved from the head to the foot of the bed, to ensure an equal amount of wear.

The simpler the furniture in a bedroom, the better it will be for the owner thereof, and if she can visit Hewetson and have real old Chippendale toilet-tables and washing-stands and wardrobes she should certainly do so; if not she should buy new things made on similar lines, and these she can always find at Smee & Cobay’s, while for good plain furniture in a less expensive make, Wallace is always available, and should certainly be consulted on this ever-fascinating subject.

But I am indeed thankful to have to note that the brief reign of brightly-enamelled and coloured bedroom furniture is now at an end, as dead as the peacock’s feather and the Japanese fan, and the dreadful stuffed storks and chenille monkeys so dear to the heart of the would-be artistic woman. Enamel is most excellent and useful if we must have the plain deal furniture, which we used to have to buy grained and varnished, and of an awful sickly yellow brown that would have ruined any room. But in this case we must buy the furniture in the plain wood ‘primed for painting,’ and either ask the upholsterer to follow our directions implicitly, or else have it home in this state, and paint it ourselves or turn on the handy man, without whom no suburban residence can be made in the least degree habitable, unless we can afford reckless expenditure, in which case we should hardly take up our residence in a similar abode. If this style of furniture be gone in for, it should be recollected that there are only two shades of enamel which can be used in a would-be artistic house for this purpose, and those are ‘electric turquoise’ and ‘real ivory.’ Green pink and yellow are truly terrible, and cannot be excused. Plain brown stain is bearable but I do not advise it, while let no one attempt to use an amateur green stain on any account. It is a failure at once and makes any room abominable because of its pretentiousness, for as I have said before, the beautiful green stain made familiar to us by Liberty first, can only be obtained from a professional hand, an amateur cannot get it, try how he may to do so. Now there are about three ways of decorating a suburban bedroom, though of course the details as regards special papers and special furniture can be varied infinitely. At the same time no one should make the fatal mistake of treating such a house or such rooms either in the Moorish, Japanese or Old Empire style, or in any eccentric fashion at all. Neither way can be suitable for it. Indeed, I do not care for the jumble of styles made by having an eastern-looking hall, an Old English dining-room, a Queen Anne drawing-room and a Moorish landing, which is so inexpressively dear to the would-be artistic decorator, and I can but suggest that my readers will resist the temptation of similar eccentricities to the very utmost, contenting themselves with the simple furniture kept by my pet firms, and using this in connection with the papers and paint which are specially made and designed to go with the different styles. If a really good hand-made floral paper can be afforded, nothing can approach it for bedroom decoration; but the printed cheap imitations must not be looked at for one moment, for they cannot possibly be the success the others are. Where a floral bedroom fails to charm, it is always because the paper is just not quite right, because every detail has not been thought out and carried out to the very smallest item, or because a timid person has advised on the subject, or the advice has been given by someone who does not understand the subject. Now to obtain success, Jeffrey’s papers or Knowles’s or Haines’s must be used, and here let me name some which are always in stock, and which can always be procured. First of all is Haines’s ‘ragged robin,’ a French paper on a soft ground, which is perfect; then comes Jeffrey’s clematis in different shades and combinations of colour, my pet one being the mauve and green I have already mentioned, while Knowles’s ‘rose’ and dahlia papers are beautiful, as are Godfrey Giles’s, and although the cost is awful we must not forget Mr Smee’s magnificent ‘Hamilton,’ albeit that could only be used as a frieze, as it is something like 10s. or 12s. a piece. Having chosen the floral paper the dado should be either in cretonne which matches the paper exactly; or else a dado should be made like a deep flounce in some plain material. If we select the cretonne, it must be run round the room so that the pattern goes in a different way to that on the wall, and the window curtains must match precisely. But should we select what Godfrey Giles calls the ‘Muriel’ curtain dado, the curtains should be in plain linen and lace, as should the table-covers, mantel drapery, and any cushion covers we may have in the room. Unless we use Miss Goodban’s new linen and flax curtains, draperies, etc.; these, of course, are much more expensive, but then they are ideal, and the bedspreads at any rate should not be forgotten, for they wash and wear better than any others I have ever come across.

Then too the ware should match the flowers employed in the decoration; and in all floral rooms, save where blue and yellow are employed together, the floor should have either one of Wallace’s square green carpets—the only green carpets on which one can absolutely rely to be always correct and always the same—or else plain cream matting or the green ‘Isis’ matting should fit the room as the old-fashioned carpets used to, supplemented of course with a certain amount of rugs judiciously arranged, and not put down in straight lines each side of the bed or in front of the toilet-table and washing-stand and fireplace, as they are all too often arranged by those who do not understand the matter. The paint should always be the exact shade of the ground of these floral papers, and this generally shades from pale ivory to still paler cafÉ-au-lait. Not that I mean for one moment that the paint in one room should be anything save one even surface of colour, but that as a rule the shade of the ground of these papers differs one from the other, and that whatever shade is chosen for the ground, that and that only must be taken as a guide for the paint for the room itself. Further, all cornices must be coloured cream and all ceilings, save those just written of, should be papered in some pretty and inexpensive ceiling paper, which, as a rule, in ‘floral rooms,’ should be Jeffrey’s ‘tie’ paper in pale green and white.

The best furniture for these rooms is Wallace’s set of green-stained furniture with tiles to match the shade selected in the wall paper; that is to say if we select pink and green, the tiles should be absolutely plain pale pink in the palest shade of coral pink, and if we have yellow and green, the tiles should be yellow; while if plain dados and curtains are used, the colour for these should be green as should the carpets. These rules should apply to any combination of colour we may select, the only exception being if we should have blue and yellow. Then blue must be our foundation, so to speak, while the tiles must be yellow and patternless, and the furniture in some good dark wood, such as walnut or Chippendale mahogany, my pet wood of all the woods one can buy.

If we select real Chippendale furniture, we should not have a floral room, although it would be correct to have one of the strange and to me hideous Chinese papers Knowles sells, and which were, I believe, the only correct wall papers at that special date, and which should be used with chintz, not cretonne, curtains. But then it would be still more correct to paint and panel the walls, and that would be singularly out of place in a suburban bedroom; unless we fell upon one of Mr Ernest Newton’s little houses, when we should probably find the panelling ready for us and have nothing to do but paint it. Still I never can bear a plain painted wall, or one that is colour-washed or plainly papered. Such a room can never look really furnished, and has a most depressing effect; and in consequence I always advise paper; for, after all one had better be comfortable than correct. If we were absolutely correct, by the way, and remorselessly turned our backs on all anachronisms, we should have bow windows with tiny panes, rush-strewn floors and all sorts of detestable things which have long since vanished along with the ‘bad old times’ which gave them birth. Therefore as we will not be severely correct, we should have either an ivory anaglypta dado, and above that a ‘sea-green’ paper from Knowles or Smee & Cobay: or we should have an anaglypta ceiling coloured real ivory, and all sea-green finishings-off, as suggested before. Also we can use a really beautiful old-world material called linen damask, which can be bought of Smee, and which is a washable imitation of the damasks used by our ancestors, only in really beautiful colours, and not in the crude and awful greens, blues and reds which were so dear to their hearts. If the bedroom is sunless this green idea must be most studiously avoided; and yellow must take its place, arranged either with a dado or frieze of the anaglypta, or else with nut-brown paint and a brown linen curtain dado and yellow printed damask curtains.

A dado is far more useful in a bedroom than a frieze, for it saves the base of the wall from the tender mercies of the housemaid, and allows the bed to be placed against the wall, which is by far the best position for any bed; for, placed with the head and one side against the wall, it cannot take up half the space it does when stuck out into the middle of the room, as so many beds all too often do. I would by the way, most strongly recommend the beds which are known as ‘twin bedsteads,’ and which allow two people occupying one room to sleep quite independently of each other’s movements, and which are therefore most invaluable in every way. There is no greater misery than for a restless person to have to control his or her every movement for fear of disturbing a bedfellow, no greater misery than for a quiet sleeper to be aroused every moment by some impatient gesture from a restless one: and all drawbacks are removed by having these twin bedsteads, which make each individual sleeper comfortable, and which also are very simple and well devised without any undue amount of embellishments.

Beds, by the way, should always be thoroughly dusted once a week, the entire bedding being removed for that purpose; while twice or three times a year the ironwork should be taken apart and well washed with Sanitas or carbolic soap, not because there is any chance of strange visitors having taken up their abode there, but because in no other way can one ensure the spotless dustlessness, to coin a word, that makes a house as healthy as it should most undoubtedly be. The third manner of decorating a bedroom, and the least expensive, is to take some definite colour—such as blue, yellow or pink—and ‘live up’ to that, and that only in that special room, taking care to choose an inexpensive paper in the right shade, and not deviating from it in the smallest degree. For example, the blue should be ‘electric turquoise,’ and none other. Knowles has always inexpensive papers the right shade, and if we avoid the detestable ‘feather’ which is dreadful, we shall be all right. Then the paint should be ‘electric turquoise.’ We should have a yellow and white ceiling paper, and should have Wallace’s blue ‘lily’ or ‘iris’ square carpet, taking care to have a woollen fringe round it and a stained surround; using as always, Jackson’s invaluable varnish stains. If the room be light, we can use Burnett’s Bolton sheeting in the same blue, with a ‘turned-over’ top of the new-patterned sheeting to harmonise; but if it is dark and sunless the curtains should be yellow, in a similar material, although nothing should induce anyone to have coloured muslin curtains should the windows require a second set. All muslin curtains should be white, or at most only a faint shade of cream, and muslin curtains should be in all windows; upstairs and down; edged with very-softly-falling frills; unless the windows are ‘Caldecott’ ones, and therefore only require the one short set of material ones, which can be easily drawn and undrawn as required. In the blue room I am very fond of ash furniture and this can be bought at Wallace’s quite well, but avoid here as elsewhere the ordinary chests of drawers, or my pet abomination, a chest of drawers to be used as toilet-table too; neither, under any circumstances, must a toilet-table be placed in the window; neither must ‘half blinds’ be indulged in. These two things look more vulgar than I can say, and are to be studiously avoided by anyone who cares about the outside appearance of her house.

If yellow be fixed on, we can have a real orange damasque paper, and ivory or brown paint, green carpet, curtains and furniture, or we can have ‘buttercup’ yellow, with ‘earth brown’ paint, matting and rugs, or else a brown square ‘Dunelm’ carpet from Wallace, Liberty’s brown and yellow Java cretonne, and walnut or mahogany furniture. Or yet again the paint can be real ivory, the carpet and curtains blue, and the furniture ‘real ivory’ too, in fact a little taste and common-sense will provide an artistic room for any furniture that my readers may already possess.

If pink is chosen, there is only one paper I can really recommend as to colour, and that is a very old one: Pither’s bay tree: which could be used with ivory paint, a deep frieze of Knowles’s ‘rose-garland,’ and cretonne curtains to match, and here without any doubt at all we should have a green carpet and Chippendale mahogany furniture. I am very often asked by young girls about to get married what they can be working for their future homes, and I always say, ‘very little,’ unless they have already made up their minds what furniture they are to have, and how their rooms are to be decorated; because if they have a large stock of pretty things, pretty in themselves, they may find themselves either unable to use them at all or obliged to do so in rooms in which they become frightful at once, because they are utterly out of place. A room cannot be a success unless every detail dovetails and harmonises, and where the bedspreads, cushions and toilet-covers live in harmony with their neighbours; the curtains, paper and paint. However it is always safe to choose certain papers, such as those I have mentioned, and to work bedspreads to match, while, if we select pink as our leading colour, or yellow or blue, the flax and linen cushions and covers I have spoken of as prepared for work or worked by Miss Goodban can always provide occupation. Neither must it be forgotten that initials must be embroidered on the house linen, and that sets of sheets and towels must be kept for each room, and duly embellished with monograms in appropriate shades of Duncan’s excellent washing silks.

Where a house fails to be a real success, be sure it is because some detail has been forgotten, and under these circumstances let no one rest until it is remembered and carried out. And here I am sure, is a great opening for an artistic woman with a keen eye for effect—if only she could persuade some of our larger upholsterers to employ her—for such a woman is badly wanted to go round every newly-furnished house, and note down as she goes the small things which will invariably escape the best male eye in the world, and even the eye of the best decorator. 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. But there must be no temporising, no ‘it doesn’t matter, it’s only for a short time.’ Neither must draughty doors and windows be allowed to remain; if so, pneumonia will come to stay, chronic colds will be our portion, and we shall be miserable from the moment we enter the house until we pass out of it in search of another, where we shall only once more meet with a similar fate; for the ‘move on, please!’ of the policeman is not worse or more constant than the silent hint given by the suburban villa that it is not in any way a suitable place of residence for us and ours, if we have not really circumvented its idiosyncrasies and made the very best of an absolutely bad job. Remember too, the great help a screen is in every bedroom which is big enough to have one without over-crowding, that one can easily have too many pictures and ornaments which encourage dust and enrage the housemaid, and that even the soiled linen basket should be chosen carefully. In these happy days, cheap things are quite as prettily designed as expensive ones, and if we take our time, know our shops and our own minds, and set to work carefully, there is nothing to prevent us nowadays from having a quite perfect house, and that without any undue expenditure of money or time.