The Bedroom and Boudoir Part 3

Awkwardly-placed doors and windows produce unsuspected draughts; the too close proximity of an ill-arranged staircase or housemaid's closet becomes a serious trouble, and a low pitched ceiling prevents proper ventilation. It is more difficult than one imagines to find in a badly proportioned room a single convenient place for the patient's bed. It must be either close to the door, or touching the fireplace, or under a window or in some situation where it distinctly ought _not_ to be. I have known such faults--faults which occasioned discomfort every moment, and had to be remedied by a thousand make-shift contrivances, occur in splendid rooms in magnificent houses; and I have known poor little modern dwellings in a colony to be perfectly free from them. When I am told, "such or such a room or house is a very comfortable one _to be ill in_" then I know that the construction and arrangement of that abode, however simple it may appear, must needs be up to a very high mark indeed. Of course a great deal can be done to modify existing evils, by a judicious arrangement of screens and curtains, by taking out useless furniture, by subst.i.tuting a comfortable low bed, easy to get at, for a c.u.mbrous couch where the unhappy patient's nose seems as if it was intended to rub against the ceiling, and various other improvements. But what can remedy a smoky chimney, or a grate where all the heat goes up the chimney, or windows that rattle, and doors that open in every direction except the right one? How can an outside landing or lobby be created at a moment's notice, or a staircase moved a yard further off?

Of course if an illness gave notice before it seized its victim, if people ever realised that a house should be so constructed as to reduce the chances of illness to a minimum, and raise its possible comforts to a maximum if it did come, then everything would go on quite smoothly and we should certainly live, and probably die, happy. But this is exactly what we do not do, and this chapter would never have been written if I had not seen with my own eyes innumerable instances where neither want of money, nor s.p.a.ce, nor opportunity for improvement were the causes of a wretchedly uncomfortable sick-room.

I have known bed-rooms which looked nests of rosy, luxurious comfort until their owner fell ill, and then turned suddenly, as it seemed, into miserable comfortless abodes of frippery and useless, tasteless finery--where a candle could scarcely be placed anywhere without risk of fire, and where the patient has deeply complained of the way the decorations of the room "worried" her. As a rule, in a severe illness, sick people detest anything like a confusion or profusion of ornaments or furniture. If I am in authority in such a case, I turn all gimcracks bodily out, subst.i.tuting the plainest articles of furniture to be found in the house. Very few ornaments are allowable in a sick-room, and I only encourage those which are of a simple, correct form. I have known the greatest relief expressed by a patient, who seemed too ill to notice any such change, at the subst.i.tution of one single, simple cla.s.sical vase for a whole shelf-full of tawdry French china ornaments, and I date the recovery of another from the moment of the removal out of his sight of an exceedingly smart modern dressing-table, with many bows of ribbon and flounces of lace and muslin. I do not mean to say that the furniture of a sick-room need be ugly--only that it should be simple and not too much of it. Nothing confuses and worries a person who is ill like seeing his attendants threading their way through mazes of chairs and sofas and tables; but he will gladly look and find relief and even a weary kind of pleasure in gazing at a table of a beautiful, simple form, placed where it is no fatigue for him to look at it, with a gla.s.s of flowers, a terra-cotta vase, a casket, anything which is so intrinsically beautiful in form as to afford repose to the eye.

I have often observed that when people begin to take pleasure in _colour_, it is a sure sign of convalescence--for in severe illness, unless indeed it be of such a nature as to preclude all power of observation, form is of more importance to the patient than colour. One learns a great deal from what people tell one _after_ they are well enough to talk of such things as past, distempered fancies. For instance, I was once nursing a typhoid fever patient, who lay for some days in an agony of weakness. He had been deaf as well as speechless, and all his senses appeared to have faded away to the very brink of extinction. Yet afterwards when he became able to talk of his sensations at different stages of his illness, he mentioned that particular time, and I found he had been keenly conscious of the _forms_ of the objects around. He spoke of the pleasure which the folds of a curtain had afforded him, of the "comfort" of the shape of the old-fashioned arm-chair in which I used to sit, and of how grateful he had felt when he observed that divers gimcracks had been removed from his sight.

Later, as he grew better, and the weary eyes craved for colour, I found it necessary to pretend to be busy dressing dolls or making pincushions, to afford myself an excuse for a little heap of brightest coloured silks and fragments of ribbon placed where he could see them, and the daily fresh bunches of flowers were a perpetual delight to his eyes.

An ideal sick-room then should first of all possess walls which will not weary or worry the sick person, and no _good_ pattern will do this. The low bed should be so placed that whilst it would be sheltered from draught (the aid of one or two screens will be useful here) the light would not fall disagreeably on the patient's eyes. No rule can be given about light. In some cases the sick person loves to look out of the window all day, whilst in others a ray of light _on_ the face is agony.

In such circ.u.mstances the bed should, if possible, be so arranged as to allow the light to come from behind, for it is only in rare and exceptional cases that sunshine as well as outer air may not be admitted daily into a sick-room. We are fast getting beyond the ignorance of a north aspect for a bed-room, and most of us know that sunshine is quite as necessary to a bed-room as to a garden. No children will ever thrive unless they have plenty of sunshine, as well as air in the rooms in which they sleep, and a sick-room should also have both in abundance. If the weather be hot, it is easy, in England, to modify the temperature by means of outer blinds, _persiennes_, open doors, and other means. Few people understand what I have learnt in tropical countries, and that is, how to exclude the outer air during the hot hours of the day. The windows of the nursery or sick-room (for we all need to be treated like children when we are ill) should be opened wide during the early cool, morning-tide, and the room flooded with sun and outer air. Then, by nine or ten o'clock, shut up rigorously every window, darkening those on which the sun would beat, _out-side_ the gla.s.s--by means of blinds or outer shutters--until the evening, when they may all be set wide open again. All woollen draperies, curtains and valences should be done away with in a sick-room. If the windows are unsightly without curtains, and the illness is likely to be a long one, then subst.i.tute soft, patternless muslin or chintz, or, prettiest of all, white dimity with a gay border, but let there be no places of concealment in a sick-room.

Every thing unsightly or inodorous should be kept out of it, and herein is found the convenience of a well-planned and well-arranged house, where clothes-baskets, and things of that sort, can be so bestowed as to be at the same time handy and yet out of the way.

If it were not for the unconceivable untidiness and want of observation which exists in the human race, such cautions as not to leave about the room the clothes the sick person has last worn, hanging up or huddled on a chair in a corner, would seem superfluous. But I have actually seen a girl stricken down by a sudden fever, lying at death's door, on her little white bed, whilst the wreath she wore at the ball where she took the fatal chill, still hung on her toilette gla.s.s, and her poor little satin shoes were scattered about the room.

She had been ill for days; there were two ladies'-maids in the house, besides anxious sisters, parents, and nurses, and yet no one had thought of putting these things out of sight. The first rule, therefore, to be observed in nursing even bad colds, where the sufferer may have to stay in bed a few days, is to send all the linen he has been wearing to the wash _at once_, and to put away everything else in its proper place.

Boots should never be allowed in a sick-room, for the leather and blacking is apt to smell disagreeably and they ought immediately to be removed to another place.

Then there should be if possible _outside_ the door of the sick-room, either on a landing or in another room, a convenient table, covered with a clean, white cloth, on which should be ranged spare spoons, tumblers, gla.s.ses, and so forth, and whatever cooling drinks are wanted, all so managed that dust shall be an impossibility. Inside the room, on another small table, or shelf, or top of chest of drawers, according to circ.u.mstances, should be kept also on a snowy cloth, just whatever is actually needed at a moment's notice--medicines and their proper gla.s.ses, &c., and a spoon or two, but the instant anything is used, it should be an established rule that the nurse puts the spoon or gla.s.s _outside_, and supplies its place with a clean one. In most cases, a servant need only renew the supply outside twice a day.

As for keeping trays with nourishment in the room, it is a sign of such careless nursing that I should hardly dare to mention it, if I had not more than once gone to relieve guard in a friend's splendid sick-room at daylight, and seen the nurse's supper-tray of the night before _on the floor_ whilst the room, in spite of all its beautiful decorations, smelt sickly and disgusting with the odour of stale beer and pickles. It is incredible that such things should happen, but in the confusion caused by a sudden and severe illness, untidy and careless habits are apt to come to the surface, and loom largely as aggressive faults. Sickness is not only a great test of the sufferer's own character and disposition, but of those of the people around him, and as a general rule, I have discovered more beautiful qualities in sick people, and those about them, who dwell in cottages or even hovels, than in more splendid homes.

Everyone knows how really kind poor people are to each other, and never more so than when the angel of disease or death is hovering over the humble roof-tree.

Food, or nourishment as it is called in sick-room phraseology, would not so often be refused by the patient if it were properly managed. Who does not know the wearisomeness of being asked, probably in the morning, when the very thought of food is an untold aggravation to one's sufferings what one could "fancy"? And this is probably followed by a discussion on the merits or possibilities of divers condiments, to each of which as it is canva.s.sed before him the wretched patient is sure to declare a deep-rooted repugnance. A sick person, until he reaches that happy stage of convalescence when it is an amus.e.m.e.nt to him, should never be allowed to hear the slightest discussion on the subject of his nourishment. Whatever the doctor orders should be prepared with as wide a range of variety as can be managed, and offered to him in the smallest permissible quant.i.ties, exactly cold or hot enough to take, and served as prettily and daintily as possible, at exactly the right moment. The chances are a hundred to one that, if it is within the range of possibilities that he can swallow at all, he will take it. If he does not, there should be no argument, no attempt at forcing it on him; it should at once be taken quite away and something different brought as soon afterwards as is prudent. Few people realise how extraordinarily keen the sense of smell becomes in illness, and how the faint ghost of a possible appet.i.te may be turned into absolute loathing by the smell of a cup of beef-tea, cooling by the bed-side for ten minutes before it is offered.

I am always guided in a great degree about nourishment by the instincts of my patient, and I never force stimulants, or anything equally distasteful on a sick person who is at all reasonable upon such matters.

I once had a patient to nurse, whose desperate illness had brought him very near the shadowy land. It had left him, and the doctors a.s.sured me that his life depended on how much brandy I could get down his throat during the night. I told him this, for he was quite sensible, when he refused the first teaspoonful, and he whispered in gasps, "I'll take as much milk as you like; that stuff kills me." So I gave him teaspoonfuls of pure milk all through the night every five minutes, and not a drop of brandy. The doctor's first reproachful glance in the morning was at the untouched brandy bottle, and he shook his head, but when he had felt the sick man's pulse his countenance brightened, and he graciously gave me permission to go on with the milk. Of course there are cases when the patient never expresses an opinion one way or other, and then the only safe rule is to obey the doctor's orders, but I never fly in the face of any strong instinct of a sick person rationally expressed. So now I hope we have some glimmering idea of what a sick-room should be: cool in summer, warm in winter, but deliciously sweet and fresh and fragrant always. Simple in its furniture, but the few needful articles, of as agreeable shapes and as convenient as possible--a room which can be looked back upon with a sort of affection as a place of calm, of discipline, and of organization, as well as of the mere kindness and willingness to help, which is seldom, if ever, absent from a sick-room, but which is not the beginning and end of what is necessary within its walls.

There are bed-rests and bed-tables to be hired for a sick person's use in almost any town in England; or, if it is preferred, any village carpenter could make a table with legs six or eight inches high, and a top of a couple of smooth light planks, about two feet six long, scooped out in the middle. This is very convenient when the patient is well enough to sit up in bed and employ himself. The bed-rests are equally simple, the upper half of a chair, padded, and made to lower at convenience, while a loose jacket or wrapper, easy to slip on, of flannel, should also be provided to throw over the patient's shoulders when he uses chair and table. When the patient can sit up and occupy himself this sort of table will be found a great comfort. It might just as well be used when lying on a sofa.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 30.]

One word more, like a postscript, for it has no real business to intrude itself here. It is only an entreaty to all nurses or those in authority in a sick-room, to wear the prettiest clothes they possess. Not the smartest, far from it; the simplest cottons, cambrics, what you will, but nice and fresh and pleasant to look at. If it is only a dressing-gown it may be a charming one. No hanging sleeves, or dangling chains, or streaming ribbons, but sufficient colour for weary eyes to rest on with pleasure. An ideal toilette for sick-room nursing would be a plain holland or cambric gown, made with absolute simplicity--long enough to be graceful without possessing a useless train--rather tight sleeves, and no frills or furbelows; a knot of colour at the throat and in the hair, or on the cap--only let your ribbons be exquisitely fresh and clean--and a nice large ap.r.o.n, or rather bib, with one big pocket in front. This ap.r.o.n may be tied back--not too tightly, please--with the same coloured ribbons, and a little change of hue now and then is a great rest and refreshment in a sick room. There are charming linen ap.r.o.ns now embroidered in School of Art designs of the shape I allude to, but they can be made equally well in print, or plain holland, or linen.

No garment that rustles or creaks, or makes its presence audible should ever cross the threshold, but the toilette of the nurse should always be exquisitely clean and neat, and yet as bright and pretty as possible. No sitting up at night, no anxiety or unhappiness should be an excuse for a dirty, dishevelled attendant in a sick-room. It is _always_ possible to steal half an hour morning and evening to wash and change, and do one's hair neatly, and the gain and comfort to the patient as well as to the nurse, is incalculable. This also would not be touched upon if my own recollections did not supply me with so many instances, where all this sort of care was considered to be absolutely worthless, and yet sick people have remarked afterwards how perfectly conscious they had been of all such shortcomings, and how such and such a tumbled cap, or shawl pinned on awry had been like a nightmare to them. Beauty itself is never more valuable than in a sick-room, and if laws could be pa.s.sed on the subject, I should like to oblige all the pretty girls of my acquaintance to take it in turn to do a little nursing. I venture to say that no ball-room triumphs would ever compare with the delight their possession of G.o.d's greatest and best gift would afford to His sick and suffering creatures. But a nurse may always make herself look pleasant and agreeable, and if she have the true nursing instinct, the ready tact and sympathy which a sick-bed needs, she may come to be regarded as "better than pretty" by her grateful patient.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SPARE ROOM.

Perhaps 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 c.o.c.kney. 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?

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 31.]

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 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-gla.s.ses, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sertion, 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 bed-room 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 a.s.sert 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 inst.i.tution 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.