The Comforts of Home Part 3

Neglected by Art, disregarded by Romance, and unconsidered by the drama, these rich and entertaining expressions of life are as nothing when his presence is called for.

We may live without painters Or writers or mummers, But civilized man cannot Live without plumbers.

He, too, should have his statue, not of bronze, marble, or granite, but of honest lead, with two figures--the Plumber, holding aloft his torch, and the Plumber's Boy, strange, impa.s.sive, and holding in his pendant hands a monkey wrench and the coil of flexible tubing with which his master cunningly directs hot water into the hardened arteries of a suffering house. And on his pedestal I would carve the motto,--

'Did You Ever Know a Plumber Who Had Grown Rich?'

THE HOME OF THE PORCELAIN TUB

'I AM very glad,' wrote Lord Chesterfield to young Mr. Stanhope, July 30, 1749, 'that my letter, with Dr. Shaw's opinion, has lessened your bathing; for, since I was born, I never heard of bathing four hours a day.'

Lord Chesterfield's surprise at the duration of his son's bath still leaves us wondering how that daily ablution was performed in 1749. Young Mr. Stanhope lived a long, long time before our Bath-Room Era, when every well-to-do home has a bath-room, and the daily bath is as natural a topic of conversation in polite society as the daily weather. He might, twenty years later, have gone to Dominicetti for the famous medicated bath which led Dr. Johnson to say to a gentleman who believed in it, 'Well, sir, go to Dominicetti, and get thyself fumigated, but be sure that the steam be directed at thy _head_ for _that_ is the _peccant part_.' Probably he bathed at home: a tin tub was brought by a menial into his apartment, filled with hot and cold water, tested for temperature, and the young man left alone with it. But, although this was better than no bath at all, it had serious disadvantages. When the water cooled, Mr. Stanhope had perforce to summon the menial, and either retire to his closet or remain sitting in his tub while the bath was reheated. Conventionally, I suppose, he was considered invisible to the menial. If he splashed he splashed on the carpet; and when the tub was carried away, however carefully, it left a damp spot. He had to hang his towel on one chair, and his clothes on another. His soap must have embarra.s.sed him. According to all modern standards it was a makes.h.i.+ft kind of a bath.

We have changed all that. In every house is a bath-room, so much like the bath-room in every other house that a stranger guest feels more immediately at home there than anywhere else. We bathe daily, and talk about it in public: or, to be exact, many bathe, and even more talk. We have become skilled--I am referring, of course, to that important section of society whose members, often otherwise useless, all together establish the amenities of civilization--in leading conversation tactfully up to this topic. A few avoid it, but these are of a pa.s.sing generation, and regard even the porcelain tub with disfavor. It is, so they say, dangerous: a treacherous, slippery contraption that you have to be careful getting in and out of. The mid-Victorian bath-room, with its _painted tin_ tub built in by a carpenter, suits them better. If perchance their eyes fall on this essay, they will close the book hastily, perhaps destroy it, for _in their time_ nice people did not talk, nor essayists write, about baths and bath-rooms. It was as much as ever if an author hinted, by some guarded, casual reference to soap when his hero came down to breakfast, that the das.h.i.+ng, well-groomed fellow had but just risen from a tub. Only heroes admittedly took morning baths. Occasionally a heroine may have--but wild horses couldn't have dragged the information out of her; and the boldest novelist would have held back from admitting that _he_ knew anything about it. Indeed, how could he?

But a different point of view came in with the porcelain bath tub, which, as an advertis.e.m.e.nt so justly intimates, is less like a tub than like a great white china dish. One _had_ to talk about it. It dignified the bath-room; it added beauty to bathing (which had hitherto depended entirely on the bather), and at the same time struck peremptorily that keynote of simplicity which has since remained the bath-room's distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic. The white purity of the tub forbids the introduction of any jarring note of unnecessary decoration: one cannot imagine a bath-room with pictures on the walls, a well-chosen bit of statuary in the window, and photographs on the shelf under the necessary mirror--except sometimes the photograph of the gentleman who invented the talc.u.m powder. Even the rug that lies in front of the tub is always inscribed BATH, yet here, if anywhere, the home of the porcelain tub might be given a touch of originality. Another motto might be subst.i.tuted for BATH.--'Welcome, Bather.' 'Dine and the world dines with you; bathe, and you bathe alone.' 'I am always drier on the other side,'

etc. But the bath-room, after all, is n.o.body's single possession, and the motto that pleased one bather might seem a false note to another.

Perhaps it is wiser to stick to BATH, and rest content with providing at their best those commonplaces which would have seemed such luxuries to Mr. Stanhope--the soap (imagine his delight) _that floats_, and the shower (imagine his astonishment) that simulates the fall of rain from heaven. I am surprised, however, that no manufacturer of porcelain bath-tubs has yet thought to embellish his product with the legend in golden letters: 'One for All--and All for One.'

I am speaking, you understand, of the bath-room _ordinaire_. There are, I believe, bath-rooms _de luxe_, in which the bather, soap and sponge in hand, gravely descends white marble steps into the bath. I have never done this myself; but I can see that gravely descending marble steps has more personal dignity about it than the commoner method of entering the bath by climbing over the side of the tub. It is like a low white wall: and only a little imagination is necessary to feel that there may be a sign somewhere,--

No Bathing in This Tub.

Police Take Notice.

But the gain is temporary. Sooner or later, in either case, the bather must sit down--and where then is his personal dignity? I have read also of bath-tubs _made of gla.s.s_: but here the effort to attain distinction is too transparent. And then there is a patent combination kitchen-and-bath-room: quite rare: I hardly know how to describe it: perhaps an excerpt from the unpublished novel 'Mary Brogan':--

'Mary felt tired, too tired to go out to the movies. The "words" that had pa.s.sed between her and Mrs. Montgomery that morning, justified as Mary felt in her unwillingness to have another woman's child messing about in _her_ kitchen--although smacking little Albert had perhaps been a too objective way of expressing this natural disinclination--had distressed a native refinement which it would have surprised haughty Mrs. Montgomery to be told was greater in her cook than in herself.

Albert had been properly smacked, and there should have been an end of it. Nevertheless Mary Brogan felt tired. Was this all of life--smacking Albert and "rowing" with his mother? She finished was.h.i.+ng and wiping the dishes slowly, put them away in the pantry, and sat down by the stove. It seemed as if there was really nothing left in the world that a girl could do to amuse herself.

'All at once, as if the friendly stove had suggested it, Mary remembered that this was her night to take a bath.

'Mary Brogan's kitchen was provided with a remarkable invention to economize s.p.a.ce and encourage a hygienic habit. Most of the time it was a sink for Mary to wash the dishes, Monday it was a couple of convenient laundry tubs for Mary to wash the clothes, and once a week it was a fine large porcelain bath-tub for Mary to wash herself. Mary called it the "Three in Wan." She locked the doors and pulled down the window shades, so that she could neither be interrupted from within the house nor observed from without. And then, going to the sink, she turned the cosy kitchen into a laundry, and the laundry into a bath-room.'

Such bath-rooms, fortunately, remain exceptions to a desirable rule of uniformity. The bath-room _de luxe_ is rare: it is possible that you, gentle reader, may gravely descend those marble steps, but it is very unlikely. Mary Brogan's bath-room (which, by the way, revives the colonial custom of bathing in the wash-tub) is a _tour de force_ of invention that is obviously inconvenient for general family use. The _gla.s.s tub_ is more dangerous. It appeals to the fancy with its indirect suggestion of Cinderella's slipper. Here and there already a householder has installed one; and the stranger guest feels stranger than ever when he takes a bath in it. One might get used to it, much as one would at first feel like a goldfish without room enough to swim; but there should be no rivalry between gla.s.s and porcelain. The tin tub pa.s.ses: let the bath-tubs of the future be _all of porcelain_ or _all of gla.s.s_.

Let us then tacitly agree to preserve the fine and simple integrity of the bath-room, with its slight, almost unnoticeable variations in wall-paper and the choice and arrangement of its normal impedimenta.

Surely we do not want the home of the porcelain tub to express any single, compelling, individual personality: to say, in effect, 'I am H.

t.i.therington Lee's bath-room,' or 'Betty Martin's,' rather than, as now, 'I am _the_ Bath-Room.' Let Mr. Lee, if he will, have his initials, H.

T. L., in gold on his tooth-brush: but let him not have them lettered on the white porcelain of the tub, or woven, instead of BATH, into the rug in front of it.

Uniformity, indeed, might comfortably be carried a little further, so that all bath-rooms should be equally warm and sunny of a winter's morning. One might think, sometimes, that people who build houses had considered the bath-room after everything else. The plans _seem_ complete, and yet there is a vague conviction that something important has been left out. They go over them again and again, room by room: surely everything is as it should be--but the vague conviction still haunts them, and they have to put it out of their minds by force. The house is built: they move in, and somebody decides to take a bath. He starts for the bath-room. Presently his voice is heard, annoyed, astonished, and finally alarmed, anxiously shouting for the rest of the family. Together they go over the house from top to bottom. There _is_ no bath-room! Luckily, on the coldest side of the house and far away from the furnace, there is a small hall bedroom intended for an emergency. The emergency has arrived: the hall bedroom is called for. In the shortest possible time the nearest plumber and carpenter make it over into a home for the tub.

But the ideal bath-room will have a southeasterly exposure, and the new-risen sun, that saw young Adam bathing in the Garden of Eden, will look cheerily in and add a sun bath. Place it not too near the guest chamber, for your guest is not sorry to be met on his way thither, clad in that gorgeous and becoming robe in which otherwise you will never see him. And do not clutter it, as some do, with extraneous objects. I remember a bath-room in which stood incongruously a child's rocking-horse. It gave the tub a kind of instability: and every time I looked at the rocking-horse, it _seemed to rock_.

AT HOME IN THE GUEST CHAMBER

ABOUT twenty-five years ago the late F. Marion Crawford came to lecture in a New England city: he was entertained in one of the most charming houses, given an afternoon reception, and led to the guest chamber, where he was left alone to rest until it should be time to appear at the lecture hall. It was an impressive guest chamber, furnished in rare colonial mahogany; but the day after, the family looked at it and suddenly wondered, with misgivings, how Mr. Crawford had managed his resting. He was an unusually tall, large man. Had he, they asked each other, rested on the dignified four-poster bed?--and if so, how considerately he had removed all traces of his little holiday! Or had he rested on either of the rare old colonial chairs--or both together, using one for his feet? They were a joy to look at, but hard, straight-backed, and unpromising resting places for a large literary man storing energy to deliver a lecture. Had he rested on the floor? It was a refulgently polished floor, but Mr. Crawford might have softened it by putting two of the rugs together and rolling up a third for a pillow. If so, how courteously he had restored the rugs to their normal positions!

The final conclusion was that he had rested sitting bolt upright on one rare old colonial chair until he could bear it no longer, and then sitting bolt upright on the other. He never came back; but it was decided in the family that the next distinguished person left alone to rest in the guest chamber should at least have a rocking-chair.

At that period guests were not expected to stay in a guest chamber longer than was necessary to sleep, wash their faces and hands, brush their hair, and change their clothes. It was, literally, a spare room.

If you came to visit, you were supposed to come because you wished to be with the family as much as possible, and only the most needful provision was made for your separate existence. If you were a lady, you _might_ retire for a while in the daytime, and lie down on the bed. But no gentleman had this privilege: only at bedtime could he go to bed, unless unexpectedly taken so ill that he had to be put there, and the doctor sent for. The guest who left behind a suspicion of tobacco smoke in the lace curtains left also the suspicion that this was no gentleman--still more, no lady! Stern neatness and tidy utilitarianism characterized the guest chamber: its double bed must be comfortable, its bureau commodious, its wash-stand provided with fresh towels and a new cake of pleasingly scented soap. As for pictures and bric-a-brac--it was a fine place to store a present without offending the kind-hearted giver.

But this period is pa.s.sing away: a new thought has come in, that the guest should feel at home, day _or_ night, in the guest chamber, and human ingenuity is making the place so comfortable that it may soon be difficult to tempt guests out of it except at meal-times. Already, in some cases, it has become necessary to serve breakfast in the guest chamber. It is a home within a home, an apartment (with breakfast) of one or more rooms and bath, in which the temporary tenant pays no rent, lunches and dines with the family, and is expected (following the apartment hotel custom) to tip the house servants. There is, to use a shocking but expressive figure, one fly in his ointment--the extra and superfluous twin bed. He cannot escape from it. In the daytime it is a constant reminder that he is, after all, a stranger in a strange place; nor can he deceive himself with the idea that he keeps this extra cot for company. He _is_ the company. In the night, if he happens to awake and turn on that side, it surprises and startles him with its suggestion of a ward in a hospital.

_But do not try to eliminate the extra bed by rolling the twins together. Sleeping, you will forget. And when, instinctively, you seek the middle of your luxurious couch, the twins (unless you have thought to bind them leg to leg with a couple of neckties) will separate, and you will be rather emphatically reminded of what you have done, by falling out of bed between them_.

I remember a guest chamber of the earlier regime in which the literary interests of the guest were catered to by an engraving of the desk at which d.i.c.kens wrote as it looked after d.i.c.kens was dead. Nowadays this is not sufficient. Books there must be, as well as a desk for the guest to write at while he is still alive, with plenty of stamps and stationery, ink, pens, pencils, rubbers, calendar, blotters, a bottle of mucilage, sealing-wax, candle, seal, dictionary, Thesaurus, and Mr.

Bartlett's Book of Quotations. Here, indeed, is a little library in itself; but the books unfortunately are not such as the average guest is likely to pick up, with an exclamation of delight, and take to the fireside. Nor, if we confess the truth, does the guest often take much pleasure in the _cla.s.sical_ literature which his host often provides for him: he prefers his own meditations to those of Marcus Aurelius.

Many persons can not read cla.s.sical literature; and there is no little truth in the conclusion of the poet (first published in 'The Mother's a.s.sistant, The Young Lady's Friend, and Family Manual,' Boston, 1852),--

When Caesar was a conqueror the Giraffe first was tamed, And for processions long and gay this creature then was famed; But no domestication kind could make him fit for use, And Nature's laws for us to thwart is manifest abuse.

Sooner or later some enterprising publisher will bring out the Guest-Chamber Book-Shelf, or Twenty-five Best Books for the Best Bedroom. Such a list would, of course, begin with the Bible and Shakespeare, and could then conscientiously settle down to business with twenty-three places left. A book of home exercises, ill.u.s.trated with photographs of the same persistent gentleman in forty or fifty more or less ridiculous and amusing positions, is always interesting. A book of nature essays will hit some guests, and miss others. A book of poems to digest will sometimes entertain a guest. There should be several books of short stories by authors who appeal to different publics. And (I should say) the book you are now reading. Humor and novels might wisely be omitted. In the one case the guest may yield to a natural temptation, and retell at dinner, in his own words, the humorous narrative he has just been reading; and in the other there is a possibility that the visit will end before the novel. It becomes more difficult than ever to get the guest out of the guest chamber. As for magazines, they are desirable--but not too many of them, or the first glimpse of your guest chamber may unhappily remind the newcomer of the waiting room at his doctor's or dentist's.

'My chamber,' wrote Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, describing in the 'Sketch Book' a contemporary English home, 'was in an old part of the house, the ponderous furniture of which might have been fabricated in the days of the giants. The room was panelled, with cornices of heavily carved work, in which flowers and grotesque faces were strangely intermingled, and a row of black-looking portraits stared mournfully at me from the walls.

The bed was of rich, though faded damask, with a lofty tester, and stood in a niche opposite the bow-window.... The moonbeams fell through the upper part of the cas.e.m.e.nt, partially lighting up the antiquated apartment.'

It is an odd thing about the guest chamber of the past, as we enter it by the door of literature, that it was so often gloomy: it is almost as if there has been a historic sequence of guest chambers: (1) those in which the guest was afraid to sleep; (2) those in which he was willing to sleep; (3) those in which he was delighted to sleep. If there was a ghost on the premises, it was always likely to b.u.t.t in (as we say nowadays) in the guest chamber. If there had been a particularly undesirable ancestor in the family, they always hung his portrait (probably to get rid of it) over the guest-chamber fireplace, where the moon could light it, and his sinister eye, _too natural to be painted_, could watch the guest trying to count himself to sleep. The guest-chamber chimney was peculiarly constructed: always the wind, carefully imitating its idea of a lost soul, sighed and wailed and shrieked in it. The floor was laid with a board that creaked aloud if but a mouse stepped on it; and the ivy was trained to tap-tap-tap like a finger on the window-pane. Often the guest chamber was the ghost chamber: and I, for one, am glad that it is not so any longer. For in proportion as the guest feels at home in the guest chamber, the ghost doesn't. And the complete _at-homeyness_--except for that one fly in the ointment, the extra twin bed--of our modern guest chamber makes the guest ghost-proof. He goes to bed and sleeps without a thought of ghosts, just as an English lady visiting an American family put her shoes outside the guest-chamber door, slept, and took them in again, with never a thought of her kind host polis.h.i.+ng them in the cellar. He is haunted only by the thought that every minute brings him nearer the end of his visit.

_For go he must!_ The hour was set, the train selected, even before his arrival; and, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, another guest was probably invited. Truly I spoke without thinking when I said there was but one fly in his ointment: this Inexorable Fact is another and bigger one.

Formerly the length of the visit took care of itself. The guest, always with the family except when asleep or dressing, reached the human limit of visiting at about the same time that the family reached the human limit of having him visit. Now and then an exception caused pain and embarra.s.sment; but ordinarily they all reached their human limits with reasonable unanimity. A day came when the guest said he 'must go'

to-morrow: the family said 'must he go' to-morrow--and to-morrow he went.

It is not so nowadays. The guest being settled in the guest chamber,--with its private bath and probably, sooner or later, its kitchenette,--he and the family are merely pleasantly conscious of each other: he might stay on and on, in a kind of informal and happy adoption, until death or matrimony intervened and took him away. But the family, unless they kept on adding to the house, would have no guest chamber: and other things being equal, constant building is an annoyance. And so, wisely, the host or hostess specifies in advance the length of the visit; and the extra little twin bed is a useful symbol and reminder of its impermanency.