I

It was an Irishman who advised, "If ye can't be aisy, be as aisy as ye can," and his advice was good.

Thus, if you cannot have an ideal house, have a home which is as nearly ideal as possible, so let us consider the house as we generally find it, and see what can be done to improve it.

Most houses built prior to the last ten years seem to have been planned with the express desire of providing an unnecessary amount of hard work for the unfortunate persons who inhabit them. Fifty years ago labour was cheap and plentiful, and ideas as to hygiene stranger even than many which still obtain. Now, however, we do know that fresh air and light are as necessary to our well-being as sound food. This fact is shown in an interesting fashion in Mrs. Pember Reeves' admirable book, "Round About a Pound a Week," in which she speaks eloquently of the way in which "basement families" deteriorate in health, although the children may have more food than those who live in higher, airier quarters.

Basement Houses.

Ignorance of the value of light and air, cheap labour and dear land were no doubt the causes of basement houses, and to this day, although labour is dear and the cost of feeding and keeping each servant has increased, it is no uncommon thing for a housekeeper to remark, "I have to keep an extra servant because of the basement," and perhaps another maid is employed because of the coals and stairs.

Where the income is ample, the extra labour bill is of little importance (speaking from the employer's point of view), but householders of moderate and small means are rapidly discovering that labour-making houses are not for them; that it is an economy to pay, if needs be, a rather higher rent and to live in a healthy, light, airy house, so planned that all unnecessary toil is abolished, and with it the cost of much cleaning material, chimney-sweeping, whitewashing, etc.

In many cases, landlords have found it impossible to let their gloomy, inconvenient dwellings to tenants of the desired kind, and what was a "good neighbourhood" has sunk by degrees until the houses are inhabited by members of that unfortunate class who are forced to take any rooms they can obtain, and only too often pay a high price for bad accommodation. I am not in a position to advise on the management of house property, but I cannot but think that in many cases it would pay the owners to modernise the houses they have to let rather than let them deteriorate.

As I write, I have in my mind's eye a certain neighbourhood in London, once fashionable, now inhabited by "nice" people, whose means make it impossible for them to pay high rents. But this neighbourhood is slowly but surely deteriorating, and rents are sinking, simply because the houses are of a kind that necessitate at least three servants being employed, in addition to a nurse if there are young children. With less than three servants these houses could not be kept clean or warm.

A Typical Labour-Making House.

The accommodation in most of these streets and squares consists of:

Basement (deep and rather dark).—Kitchen, pantry, servants' hall at back (generally very dark), lavatory, coal and wine cellars; front area (dustbin stands here), backyard; steep and dark stairs to ground floor.

Ground Floor.—Dining-room, smoking-room, and third small dark room, lavatory, narrow hall, and steep stairs leading to small half-landing.

First Floor.—Double drawing-room. Above, seven bedrooms, one lavatory, and one bathroom.

All coal for the house must be carried up one, two, or three, and possibly four, flights of steep stairs.

There is a large kitchen range, with flues to clean twice a week, as in order to keep up the hot-water supply much coal is burned, and the flues become very dirty.

The chimney must also be swept every two months. Other chimneys must be swept twice a year; if much used, three times a year. All food and table utensils must be carried up and downstairs three times a day, and when lunch and dinner are in progress a servant must run up and down with clean and dirty dishes, etc.

Washstands are used in each bedroom, and hot water taken to these rooms three or four times a day. There is but one bathroom and upstairs lavatory; therefore there is a good deal of stair work when doing the rooms. If there is a nursery, the nursery meals have to be carried up and down.

Each time the hall-door bell rings, a maid must run upstairs to answer it, and visitors and tea in the drawing-room necessitate more journeys up and down, and the carrying of a heavy tray.

Now, with a house of this description there are certainly two ways of converting it into a labour-saving dwelling.

A Labour-Making House Converted.

If the basement is deep and incurably dark, by far the best plan is to dispense with it altogether so far as living-rooms are concerned, using it merely for cellars and box-room.

"But," says the householder, "there will now be no back door. The tradesmen will all have to come to the front door." They will. But tradesmen call chiefly in the morning, and the few who come in the afternoon might be instructed to go to the area door, to which the dustman would also go, while the coals (if any are used) would be delivered through the pavement coal-shoot as before.

Arranging thus, the house proper begins on the ground floor. The large front room is the dining-room as before, and the double doors between it and the erstwhile smoking-room should be plastered up on the smoking-room side, for under the new arrangement the smoking-room becomes the kitchen, and the small third room the pantry. The kitchen will not be large, but neither a gas nor an electric cooker takes up much space.

Now comes the question whether the hot-water system shall be worked by a coke or a gas circulator. The latter gives even less trouble than the former, but it may prove too costly in use. A coke furnace needs to be stoked about three times a day, and is very easy to light. The furnace might be placed in the kitchen or in the basement, and in it can be burned practically all the rubbish, thus doing away with that otherwise nasty necessity the dustbin, which in many parts of London the authorities refuse to empty more than once a week.

Kitchen and pantry must be fitted with sinks, and there should be a little gas fire, work-table, and armchair in the pantry for the use of the house-parlourmaid.

II

Two servants can easily do the work of a house such as this will become, and the kitchen premises are only suitable for two servants. Extra help, however, can always be employed in times of stress. In order that two women may keep the house in thorough order, gas fires should be used in all rooms other than perhaps the drawing-room and the nursery, though now that gas fires have been brought to such a state of perfection I can see no reason why there should not be gas in the nurseries. The double drawing-room must be made into drawing-room and smoking-room, thus leaving seven bedrooms as before, or it may suit the family to keep the double drawing-room, and make an upstairs smoking-room.

Personally I should use the first floor front room as drawing-room, and open the doors into the smoking-room when more space was needed, thus leaving best bed and dressing-room, two nurseries, one servants' room, and one spare room, and a small room to be used as linen and dress room. (Boxes could be stored in the empty basement.) Add to the house a second bathroom and lavatory, telephone bells; use the bathroom basins rather than the bedroom washstands (and when a bathroom can be set apart for Monsieur and Madame, and another for nursery and maids, this is scarcely a hardship), and you now have a house which, provided it is not crammed with furniture, stuffy carpets, and draperies, can be perfectly kept by two good servants, always supposing that the nurse does not demand too much waiting on.

Nurse and Nursery.

If this important person has a bathroom conveniently situated, gas fires, a gas ring for heating kettles, irons, etc., and a cupboard containing her own stock of crockery, she should give very little trouble to the house-parlourmaid. If advisable, a charwoman one day a week could turn out the nurseries, tidy the front area and backyard, clean the stairs and bathrooms.

Arranging the house thus, the following work is saved: Cleaning of kitchen range and flues, carrying of coal all over house, running up and downstairs to answer front door, especially in morning, when the cook is busy, carrying of trays from basement, cleaning and filling coal scuttles, cleaning grates and fireirons, much carrying of hot water and bedroom work, entire cleaning of basement.

If a coke furnace is used, coke is light to carry and clean to handle, and should a buttery hatch be arranged between dining-room and kitchen, one maid (if well trained) can wait on six or eight persons quite satisfactorily. Then when a little dinner is given, a charwoman, at one shilling and her supper, to help wash up, is the only outside help which is necessary.

Now I cannot but think that a house such as I have described would let at £120 a year, where now many of them are let at £90, and as time goes on will fetch less and attract a less desirable style of tenant. Considering the saving in upkeep of a basement, labour, food and keep of one maid, and the shrinkage of general expense which occurs when two maids are kept rather than three, it would pay the tenant well to expend the extra £30 a year. Even were the saving of expense no object, the additional comfort of a labour-saving house is worth the extra rent.

With the cost of heating by gas rather than coal I will deal later, but it must always be borne in mind that with coal range and coal fires in, say, three or four rooms in such a house the labour is made far greater, and also the rooms become far dirtier.

In my own dining-room, where there is a gas fire, the dirt and dust is most noticeably less than in the drawing-room, where we burn coal.

I said at the beginning of this chapter that there were at least two methods of turning labour-making into labour-saving houses. Let us now suppose that we have to deal with another basement house, but that in this case the basement is neither deep nor dark.

A Second Suggestion for a Labour-Saving House.

The front room is quite light and cheerful, with a good view of the street. The back room is rather dark, and has a narrow area facing into a strip of garden. The house contains but five bedrooms, so that the basement cannot well be spared. Here I would use the front room (made very light and gay with paper and paint) as a combination servants' sitting-room, pantry, and store-room. The kitchen should be tiled if feasible—if not, papered with a white-tiled paper—and floored with black-and-white linoleum in order to make it as light as possible. The back area must be enlarged so as to give more light and air, and some steps should lead into the garden, where the maids can sit in hot weather. At present the basement consists of a front room and kitchen, coal cellars under the pavement, a lavatory, and a little piece at the end of the passage leading to the back area, which can be arranged for a knife- and boot-cleaning place. But there is no larder. This must be built. A door is cut to lead out of the kitchen into a tiny lobby, out of this lobby one door opens into the white-tiled, well-ventilated larder, and the other into the area.

The basement is now as light and airy as any basement can be. There is no scullery, but that apartment is unnecessary in most houses and certainly unnecessary in a small house where two, or at most three, servants are employed, and which contains a pleasant room in which they can sit and have their meals. The kitchen should be fitted with a gas or electric cooker and a gas or coke hot-water furnace. The front room is warmed by a gas stove, and in order to make up for the extra work entailed by the basement, a service lift is installed, with double hatches opening from kitchen and pantry, and from dining-room and smoking-room, which are directly over the kitchen and pantry.

This house is completed by a ground floor cloakroom and two bathrooms, gas fires everywhere but in the drawing-room, telephone bells, and in each room a tiny gas ring, so that in case of illness or other emergency hot water or hot food can be obtained without troubling the maids. With all these labour-saving arrangements two servants are able to do the work with ease, and to do it in such a way as is required by English gentlepeople, who entertain more than do their compeers in continental countries.

III

But in addition to structural labour-saving arrangements, these rearranged houses are furnished in a labour-saving manner.

Except in the drawing-room, there is as little furniture as possible, for crowded rooms are difficult to clean and take a long time to keep in order.

Wherever it is seemly, the floors are fitted with linoleum, for no other floor covering is so cleanly or so easy to keep in good condition. When there are rugs, they are sufficiently light to be easily shaken. Fitted carpets are taboo. Had money been no object the floors of the sitting-rooms would have been of polished wood, but in these two cases the surrounds were of linoleum and the carpets square, tightly strained and not of too thick a pile. These can be quickly swept with a Bissel sweeper and cleaned from time to time with a suction cleaner, while of course long-handled mops are used for the linoleum.

In kitchen and pantry the supply of pots and pans, china, etc., is limited to what is necessary, and but little silver is used. Most of the food is cooked and served in casseroles, and so the washing up is lessened. The knives are of stainless steel and merely need washing.

In the two cases quoted the people who inhabited the houses were of the class who are accustomed to luxury, and a considerable amount of door opening, telephone answering, and informal entertaining had to be allowed for.

Without labour-saving arrangements, four servants, or three with a charwoman twice a week, would have been needed to do the work really well in the larger house, while three would have been required in the smaller house.

But supposing that the family was small and a simpler style of living needed, and that little or no entertaining took place, the mistress of the house and one good servant could have done the work of either house without undue strain and allowing each an ample amount of free time.