The Champagne Standard Part 3

O Champagne Standard!

_American Wives and English Housekeeping_

The clever woman who wrote _American Wives and English Husbands_, put her Californian heroine in a position in which the one problem she was not required to solve was English housekeeping. She might break her heart over her English husband, but the author does not add to our pangs by relating how her American bride, having first studied the peculiarities of her Englishman, next varied her soul's trials by "wrestling" with the lower but equally irritating problems prepared for her by the English tradesmen. Under which general term are included all the male and female creatures who, having helped to set up a brand-new household, immediately proceed to hinder it from running.

The problem of English husbands I leave to more gifted pens, but I may perhaps be permitted to tell what the American woman experiences, who, having "pulled up stakes," plants herself on English soil. This era of international marriages is not at all confined to the daughters of American millionaires who can afford the luxury of English dukes. Nor, in giving my experiences, do I address the prospective Anglo-American d.u.c.h.ess, who would not be likely to spend several sleepless nights, trying to decide whether she should or should not take her carpets or the "ice-chest." However, it is well to give one little word of advice to the American girl proposing to turn herself into an Englishwoman; and that is, she must be very sure of her Englishman, because for him she gives up friends and country, and he has to be that and more to her.

America has a bad reputation for being a very expensive place in which to live. The large earnings are offset, it is said, by expenses out of proportion to the wages. Both facts are exaggerated; and, in contrasting English and American housekeeping, one of the first reasons, I have decided, why English living flies away with money is that the currency itself tends to expense.

To start with, the English unit of money value is a penny--the American a cent, but observe that a penny is _two_ cents in value. I am asked eightpence for a pound of tomatoes; I think "how cheap" until I make a mental calculation, "sixteen cents, that's dear." It is the guileless penny which, like the common soldier, does the mighty executions and swells the bill. One looks on the penny as a cent, and that is the keynote of the expense of living in London.

To go farther into the coinage: there is the miserable half-crown--it is more than half-a-dollar, and yet it only represents a half-dollar in importance. "What shall I give him?" I ask piteously of my Englishman when a fee is in question. "Oh, half-a-crown," is his reply. I obey, and mourn over twelve-and-a-half cents thrown away with no credit to myself.

Poor English people who have no dollar! Don't talk of four shillings!

Four shillings are a shabby excuse for two self-righteous half-crowns.

Oh, for a good simple dollar! Five dollars make a sovereign, roughly speaking--that wretched and delusive coin which is no sooner changed into shillings and half-crowns than it disappears like chaff before the wind. Now good dollars would repose in one's purse, either in silver or greenbacks (very dirty, but never mind!), and demand reflection before spending.

Think of the importance of a man's salary multiplied by dollars! The wealth of France is undoubtedly due to her coinage--francs are the money of a thrifty middle-cla.s.s--the English coinage is intended for peers of the realm and paupers. A hundred pounds a year is not a vast income, but how much better it sounds in dollars--five hundred dollars; if, however, you multiply it by francs, twenty-five hundred francs, why it sounds n.o.ble! Count an Englishman's income by hundreds, and it does seem shabby! Dollars, when you have four thousand to spend, represent a value quite out of proportion to the eight hundred pounds they really are.

Change your English coinage--don't have half-crowns or sovereigns, but nice simple dollars (call them by any other name if you are too proud to adopt dollars), and see the new prosperity that will dawn on the middle-cla.s.ses. A little tradesman struggling along on one hundred and fifty pounds a year will feel like a capitalist on seven hundred and fifty dollars. This is not straying from the subject, for it was my first observation in English economics.

On the other hand, the days have pa.s.sed in America for the making of sudden and great fortunes, nor are the streets paved with gold. The lady from County Cork does not step straight from the steerage into a Fifth Avenue drawing-room (unless by way of the kitchen), but there's work, and there are good wages; and if the lady from County Cork and her brothers and cousins would work as hard in Ireland as they do in the United States, that perplexing island would bloom like a rose. That their fences are always tumbling down, even over there, and their broken windows stuffed with rags, is only an amiable national trait to which the Irish are loyal even in America, just to remind them of home.

"Everything is cheaper in England," they all said when the decisive step whether to take or leave the contents of our large house had to be taken. "It won't be worth packing, taking, and storing. Send everything to auction."

That was the advice. I compromised, and one day half of the dear familiar household G.o.ds were trundled off to be sold--alas! and the elect were left to be packed. Every American house has a gra.s.s-grown, fenced-in s.p.a.ce at the back of the house called a yard, for the drying and bleaching of the laundry. Ours was invaded by three decent men and piles of pine boards, and then the making of cases and the packing began.

The packing was contracted for. The chief of the firm came, looked through each room, estimated, and gave us the price of the whole work completed and placed on the freight steamer. One is told that the English are the best packers in the world, but I have had more damage done in two cases sent from Bristol to London than in eighty cases sent from Boston to Liverpool. The three men worked three weeks, and then took all the cases out of the house and put them on the freight steamer, and the price of all this wonderful packing was about forty pounds. What will surprise an English person is that not one of these men expected a fee. My one ceaseless regret is that I did not take everything, from the kitchen poker to the mouse-trap.

On the arrival of our eighty cases in London, they were received by the warehouse people, who sheltered them until the brand-new English house was ready, which was not for a year. The packing, sending, and storing of all this furniture was under one hundred pounds, which, with my English experience, I knew would have bought nothing. I did question the wisdom of bringing carpets, and I do not think it pays unless they are very good and large--the remaking and cleaning cost too much to waste on anything not very good. Having my furniture safely landed, the next step was to get a house.

One finds that the moderate rents asked for English houses is misleading, for in addition the tenant is expected to pay the rates and taxes, which add to the original rent one-third more, only somehow this fact is ignored. Get a house for one hundred and fifty pounds, and you can add fifty pounds to that by way of rates and taxes. Nor does that enable you to get anything very gorgeous in the shape of a house, but one obtainable for about the same price in New York or Boston, minus those comforts which Americans have come to consider as a matter of course, until they learn better in England. Only in flats are the rates and taxes included in the rent, and when flats are desirable they are expensive.

Now, living in flats is undoubtedly the result of worrying servants, and it is obtaining here as rapidly as the English ever accept a new idea--but being impelled by despair they are becoming popular. Small flats for "bachelor-maids" and childless couples are abundant and well enough, but for families who decline to be trodden on by their nearest and dearest these are nearly impossible, and when possible very dear.

The "flat" contrived for the "upper middle cla.s.ses" is a terror, and is devoid of the comforts invented by American ingenuity and skill, and the good taste which makes American domestic architecture and decoration so infinitely superior to all. I do not wish to be misunderstood--if money is no object one can be as comfortable in London as in New York, but I am only addressing the "comfortably off."

In New York I was taken to see a very inexpensive flat, which proved to me that the average man can make himself thoroughly comfortable there.

It was in an "apartment house" near Central Park. The street was broad and airy. To be sure the flat was up three flights, and there was no lift--but that is nothing. It consisted of four rooms, besides a kitchen and bathroom, and a servant's room. It was entirely finished in oak, and the plumbing was all nickel-plated and open, and it was furnished with speaking tubes. In the nice kitchen was an ice-box, and the kitchen range was of the best. This model flat cost six pounds a month, including heating, and could be given up at a month's notice.

No model flat turning up here, we were reduced to take a house, for which we were willing to give from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds. The agony of that search, and the horror of the various mansions offered! For the first time I recognised the wisdom of putting no clothes-closets in London houses, when I think of the repositories of dirt they would inevitably become.

At that time I was not on such intimate terms with the climate as I have since become, and did not understand that it is humanly impossible to rise triumphant over fogs, s.m.u.ts, and beetles. For my benefit, grim and dingy caretakers rose out of the bowels of the earth as out of a temporary tomb (always in bonnets), and showed us over awful houses in which every blessed thing had been carried away, even to the door k.n.o.bs and the key-holes--that is of course the metal around the holes.

Awful, closetless houses, guiltless of comfort, with dreary grates promising a six months' shiver, and great gaunt windows rattling forebodingly. As for the plumbing--but it is well to drop a curtain over the indescribable. One does protest, however, against the people who live in these houses--houses whose discomfort an American artisan would not tolerate--looking with ineffable self-complacency on their methods, and sniffing at our American ingenuity and our determination to make life comfortable.

Of course we got a house, thanks to no estate agent, but as we could not rent it we had to buy it--or rather the thirty-eight years' remnant of a lease--a mysterious arrangement to an American. It was rather hard to feel that the house and all our little improvements would, after thirty-eight years, revert to the Bishop of London, to whom the estate belongs, but we thought that after thirty-eight years we might not be so very keen about it. So we disturbed an aged woman in a dusty c.r.a.pe bonnet, and some friendly beetles, and they left the premises simultaneously.

We took an architect on faith, who was to be our shield and protector against the contractor; then we folded our hands, as it were, and retired to an hotel and proceeded to recover from the horrors of house-hunting. This interval was taken by the tradesmen of our new neighbourhood to recommend themselves to me, whose address they discovered by some miracle. They grovelled before me, they haunted me with samples--eggs, cream, b.u.t.ter, bread, followed me to the ends of England, and I finally succ.u.mbed to the most energetic.

Gradually, one gets accustomed to "patronage" and "patron," rare words in America, where the "I am as good as you" feeling still obtains. I am becoming used to them as well as "tradesmen" and "cla.s.s." I acquiesce in a distinct serving cla.s.s, conscious that not to be aware of the dividing gulf would mean the profound scorn of those we have agreed to call our inferiors.

To return to the house. The architect and I looked it over--everything was wanting. The plumbing was new, but clumsy and inadequate. In an American house much less costly, there would be a hanging cupboard in each room, thus dispensing with the clumsy and expensive wardrobes. The plumbing would be pretty and nickel-plated, resisting the action of the air, and easily kept clean. Here it is always bra.s.s or copper, clumsy and easily tarnished.

The architect suggested only the obvious, and with unwarranted faith I hardly ventured to suggest anything; but when the summer brought an American friend, who looked over the house, then approaching completion, she sat on the solitary chair and shook her head.

"He hasn't thought of a single thing," she cried. "Think of not having a dumb-waiter (English: dinner-lift) in this unheated house. Stone walls and cold blasts--don't invite me to your lukewarm repasts! Besides you must have a hardwood floor" (parquet floor) "in your drawing-room"

(being an American she really said _parlor_). "Think of all the dirty carpets it will save," she urged. "My dear, you don't mean to say that you will live in this Bunker Hill Monument of a house"--(she comes from Boston)--"without speaking tubes?" She was aghast.

"What an architect! Supposing you want to speak to the cook, why you'd have to run down four flights for a _tete-a-tete_; then supposing you want coals up four flights--must the maid climb up four flights to find out what you want before doing it? My dear, even an English servant has human legs, and she can't stand it."

I was convinced. I spoke to the architect, and he was politely acquiescent, and as all these very necessary suggestions came late they were doubly expensive, and now I have come to the conclusion that domestic architecture is the proper field for a woman with ideas--a mere man-architect does not know the meaning of comfort, ingenuity, resource, and economy.

As the house declined to get done, I braved the architect, the contractor, and the workmen, and arrived one day in company with a bed, a table, and a chair (also a husband), and took possession.

I did have one treasure at the time--a caretaker. She saved my life, and she protected my innocent self from the British tradesman, whilst she gently taught me what the British servant will and will not do. She informed me when I was paying twice as much as right to the obsequious tradesman, and she regulated the (to me) perplexing fee. She was very religious, and I think she looked upon me as her mission and that she was to rescue me--which she did. Her wages were one pound a week including her food, and to be just I could not have got such a treasure in America at the price.

The most obvious defect we discovered in our house was that it was very cold--a universal English drawback--and the inadequate open fires seem to accentuate the chill.

Would that my feeble voice could do justice to the much-calumniated American methods of heating! It does pay to be less prejudiced and more comfortable! Possibly the furnace and steam heat may be a little overdone, but not with moderate care. No one can make me believe that it is healthy to sit shivering all over, or roasting on one side and freezing on the other. Neither do I consider a red nose and chilblains very ornamental. I admit that furnaces are not a crying need in England all through the winter, but from December to March it is a pretence to say you are comfortable, for you are not. There is no doubt but New England has bad throat and lung troubles, yet so has Old England and the hardening process does not save, if statistics are right. If I must take cold and die, at least I prefer to do so comfortably.

If there were a furnace I should not need gas-stoves (which are certainly no more poetic than a register or a radiator, besides being distinctly sham), nor would there be a perpetual procession of coal-scuttles going upstairs, unless an open fire is desired for additional warmth and cheerfulness.

This brings one to the relative costs of coal, water, and gas. London coal is greasy, soft, and dear. Where the hard coal is burned in the States, it leaves white cinders and ashes. It burns slowly and is therefore very profitable, and the price averages about twenty-four shillings a ton. Must the cheek of English beauty always be adorned with "blacks"?

The water-rates here are just double those of Boston, where, O rapture!

we had two bathrooms, and where the "sidewalk" (American for pavement) was thoroughly washed every morning. In Boston gas was charged for at the rate of four shillings for one thousand cubic feet; here we pay three shillings for the same, and yet for infinitely less gas used our bills here are mysteriously larger. Our London electricity is both expensive and poor; consumers are at the mercy of the companies, and a little wholesome compet.i.tion is very imperative.

The English are reckoned a nation of grumblers, but one finds that the grumbler ends in grumbling, though in moments of supreme anguish he writes to _The Times_, which permits, with the impartiality of Divine Providence, both the just and the unjust to disport in its columns.

Considering the papering and painting of the house done--the painting done very roughly from our point of view. Then the kitchen needed a new range and so we got the most expensive of its kind--expensive for America even--but the acknowledged solidity of English workmanship (which sometimes becomes clumsiness) is well in place here. The dinner-lift had been constructed for one flight, and was surprisingly dear, while the parquet floor in the drawing-room cost twenty-seven pounds where it would have cost fifteen pounds in America.

This brings me to a point on which I wish to lay great stress: the remarkable progress in America in all the applied and domestic arts within the last ten years, which leaves England far behind. Our English house was just old enough to be surprisingly ugly--it belongs to the early Victorian period. Without wishing to spend too much money in its decoration, we did feel that we ought to put away the funereal mantel-pieces and set up something more aesthetic.

Our architect--always obliging and never suggestive--took us to see wooden mantel-pieces, and we found them expensive and clumsy. In this strait my Englishman had an inspiration. "Buy them in New York"--we were just going over--"and you will find them prettier, better, and cheaper even if the freightage has to be added to the price."

I would not believe him because I also was still labouring under the delusion that England was cheap and America dear. However, we went to New York and there we bought three wooden mantels--six feet high and six feet wide--of the best quartered oak, of so simple and graceful a design that they are always noticed and admired. These three were packed, sent, and landed at our front door in London, and the price, all included, was not much more than we should have paid for the only one in London of which I approved. I feel convinced that there is a great market here for American wood-work as well as leather, iron, and gla.s.s, for with English excellence of workmanship they combine a taste which adapts the best to its own uses. It would revolutionise the decoration of English houses.

The American has the advantage that he is not conservative where that stands between him and progress. That something was good enough for his ancestors is no reason why it should satisfy him. Because they chose to freeze is no reason why he should. Somehow, one always comes back to the inadequate heating, for as I write, my face is flaming while a lively icicle penetrates my spine.

The carpets being now down, I sent to the warehouse for the eighty cases, and after a year again looked at my household goods. They were very skilfully unpacked, but (here is the difference between the English and the American workman) each one of the men expected a fee every time he moved a box for me. Every time I went to the warehouse to open a trunk one or two men had to be fee'd, and at the end it came to quite a little sum. In America, this would not have been expected, even for harder work done, and quite rightly, for the men were receiving proper wages, and I was paying the Storage Company liberally.

Our American furniture being cosmopolitan it was speedily at home in our English rooms; only these high studded rooms have such a way of devouring furniture! I thought piteously of that which I had rashly flung into the Boston auction-room, and when it came to replacing it, what did I find? That American furniture is much better and much cheaper. My soul yearned even for the big black chest of drawers which I had left behind, and it loathed the brand-new "art furniture," sticky with paste and varnish.