CHAPTER IX.
THE SPARE ROOM.
ERHAPS the kindliest and wisest
advice with regard to a spare room,
would be the same as Punch's
famous counsel to young people
about to marry—a short and
emphatic "Don't." In a large country house,
perhaps even in a small country house, the case is
different, for the spare room too often represents
all the social variety which the owners can hope
for, from year's end to year's end—and the only
change from town life possible to half the bees
in the great hive. It is scarcely possible to
imagine an English country house, be it ever so
humble, without its spare room, or the warm
cordial welcome which would be sure to greet
its succeeding inhabitants. How fresh and sweet
and dainty do its simple appointments look to
jaded eyes! how grateful its deep stillness to
world-deafened ears! How impossible, in a brief summer week, to believe that life can ever be found dull
or monotonous amid such delicious calm! A
walk in the gloaming in a country lane,—always
supposing it is not too muddy—a cup of milk
fresh from the cow, a crust off the home-baked loaf,
are all treats of the first order to the tired cockney.
I have often noticed the sort of half-pitying,
half-contemptuous amazement with which my country
hostess has beheld my delight at being installed
in her spare room, my rapture at the sight of
meadows and trees, or the sound of cawing rooks
and the whirr of mowing machines. And how
fresh and clean ought this country spare room to
look! How inexcusable would be stain or spot,
or evil odour amid such fragrant surroundings!
Why should not the sheets always smell of lavender
(as a matter of fact, they do not, I regret to state)?
why should not there be always a jar of dried
rose-leaves somewhere "around," as our dear,
epigrammatic, Yankee cousins say?
I do not think I really like silks and satins
anywhere; I acknowledge that they fill me
with a respectful admiration and awe for a
short space, but that soon wears off, and my
accidental splendour bores me all the rest of the
time I have to dwell with it. No, the sort of
guest-chamber which I love to occupy in the
country is as simple as simple can be, and not so crowded with furniture, but that a little space is
left here and there where a box can be placed
without its intruding itself as a nuisance for which
one feels constantly impelled to apologise. If I
am so fortunate as to find in a corner of my room
a little frame, about two feet high made by the
Fig. 31.
village carpenter, or the big boys of the
household, for this box to stand on, then, indeed, I
know what luxury means. You have your box
so much more under your control if it is raised
a little from the floor, and it is ever so much
easier to pack and unpack. The taste and
characteristics of the owners of the house, which you may
be sure is to be found in all their surroundings, is never more apparent than in the spare room.
Sometimes your hostess tries to make you happy
with looking-glasses, and I have shudderingly
dwelt in a room with five large mirrors and sundry
smaller ones; or else you are abashed to find
how many gowns there is space for, and how
few you have brought. But this extreme is better
than the other: I have had to keep my draperies
on all the available chairs in the room because
I was afraid to open and shut the diminutive
drawers of an exquisite, aged coffre which was
provided for their reception. Beautiful as was
this article of furniture, I would gladly have
changed it for the commonest deal chest of
drawers, long before the week was out. In spare
rooms, as in all other rooms, money is not
everything. It will not always buy taste, nor even
comfort. Doubtless many of my readers who
may happen to have led as varied a life as mine
has been, will agree with me in the assertion, that
as far as actual comfort goes, they have often
possessed it in a greater degree under a very
humble roof-tree, than beneath many a more
splendid shelter. Everybody has their "little
ways" (some of them very tiresome and odd, I
admit), and there are splendid spare-rooms in which
apparently no margin has been left, no indulgence
shown, for any little individualities.
I should not be an Englishwoman writing to other Englishwomen if I did not take it for granted that we all desire most ardently that our guests should be thoroughly comfortable in their own rooms as well as happy in our society, and so I venture to suggest that visitors should not be fettered by too many rules, that, however homely the plenishing of the guest-chamber must needs be, it should never lack a few fresh flowers, a place to write (Fig. 31), pen and ink, a tiny table which can be moved about at pleasure, a dark blind for the window, and such trifles which often make the difference between comfort and discomfort, between a homelike feeling directly one arrives, and the incessant consciousness of being "on a visit."
But with regard to spare rooms in a town house, what advice can be given beyond and except that horrid "don't"? Especially true is this in London. No one has the least idea how many affectionate relations he possesses until he has an empty bedroom in a London house. It would almost appear as if such things as hotels and lodgings had ceased to exist, so incessant, so importunate are the entreaties to be "put up" for a couple of nights. And let me say here that visitors will prove much more of a tax in London than they ever are in the country. For rural visitors scarcely ever seem to realise or comprehend how methodically mapped out is the life of a professional man living in London, how precious are to him the quiet early hours which they insist upon leaving behind them in the solitude of the country. Speaking as a London hostess, I may conscientiously assert that the guests who have kept me up latest at night, who have voted breakfast at 9.30 unreasonably early (without considering it was a whole hour later than our usual time) have been those people who ordinarily led the quietest and most clock-work existence in their country home. I will say nothing here of the impossibility of inducing them to regard distance or cab-hire as presenting any objection worth consideration in their incessant hunt after the bargains erroneously supposed by them to be obtainable in every shop. I have been scolded roundly by country visitors for keeping early hours and leading a quiet life in London, and I have never succeeded in impressing on them that in order to get through a great deal of hard work, both my husband and I found it necessary to do both.
To a professional man, with a small income, the institution of a spare room may be regarded as an income tax of several shillings in the pound It is even worse than that; it means being forced to take in a succession of lodgers who don't pay, who are generally amazingly inconsiderate and exigeante, and who expect to be amused and advised, chaperoned and married, and even nursed and buried. It is inconceivable upon what slender grounds, or for what far-fetched reasons, your distant acquaintance, or your—compared to yourself—rich relation, will unhesitatingly demand your hospitality. And oh, my unknown friends, how often are we tempted to say yes to the well-to-do relation who asks the question of us, and to find an excuse to shut out the poor one who really needs it? Ah how often?
It is really a trial to be unable to receive one's nearest kith and kin, one's sailor brother or sister home from India, because "we have no spare room," yet that very beginning, natural and delightful as it is, cheerfully and laughingly borne as the little privations it entails may be, is often the beginning of a stream of self-invited guests who literally worry us, if they don't exactly "eat us," out of house and home.
THE END
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL.