HOW I MODERNIZED MY OLD HOUSE
TI1HIS article is not written for millionaires, but there is no reason why they should not have something before they pass on to the next, .so I offer them, from my Mottoes for Millionaires : No. 1. "Charity and Personal Force are the only Investments worth anything."--Walt Whitman.
For persons of modest means, who cannot give carte blanche to a first-class architect, in conSultation with a hygienist, for a Californian bungalow, but who must perforce live in such houses as our country is crowded with—that is to saY, for any of some millions of our fellows, this record of. a practical achievement is here made. As we proceed, we shall sec how much more might have been done, in sonic directions, with an ample purse, but -the real value, as I believe it to be, of My efforts lies in their moderate cost and the transformation thus effected--- less in appearance than in reality.
The house is an entirely ordinary affair, nearly a hun- dred years old, and in a London suburb. When I in- herited it and had, in effect, to inhabit it, my problem was to make it consort as far as possible with my principles and teaching. Health, beauty and efficiency or labour- . saving were the three desiderata. This old semi-basement house dates from an age when our ideas of hygiene would - Wave been thought insane, and when the problem of domestic service was alninst non-existent,- there being plenty of room in the basement, and stairs being proVided for young legs to climb.
First, more air. A former tenant evidently had some feeling towards ventilation. He did introduce shafts and inlets from without into two living rooms. These were necessarily dirty, and the admission of air was ridiètiloüsl inadeqthite. That sort Of thing is not worth mentioning. One must have widely open windows, and not be content with admitting air, as if it were petrol or chloroform, through a tube of most doubtful eleanliness. Hence the first thing, the windows of the living rooms being • French, was to alter the lights above them and make them so that they could be opened. Then a simple possibility offered itself regarding a small upstairs bedroom, which looks west. A bow window had been built out beneath it, by some previous occupant, and thus there was an unused -roof, at which one could merely look through the one window of this bedroom. -I . had the bricks removed from below the window—they were promptly used in the garden—and converted it into a door. A railing was put round the unused roof. to which access was thus made for the. 78-year• old lady whose bedroom this is. Wooden gratings make a floor. She grows creepers and other plants here, and has a garden chair, and a screen for shelter. Her poor bedroom has become the best in the house because it has its own private garden balcony. Here She sits and gets the last of the sunlight on many evenings. This is really tianSforinatimi of a'inean robin and the total cost was' about .twelve pounds. There must be tens of thousands of instances where, an Unused piece of flat roof can thus be made into an aerial garden by little more than con- verting a window into a door. Encouraged by. .this Success, I knocked more bricks from beneath a kitchen window, and converted it into a door, thus giving easy deceS t6 the garden, *here a table and scat, a few -feet. away, serve for outdoor meals during many months in the year. As I passed the quarries of Carrara, in January,' coming home by road, I wished for some of their product ; but the truth must be told, that only the table is made of marble (and that sceond-hand).; its legs, and the seats, and much mare ,the garden, are of artificial stone, or reinforced-conerete: This is very cheap and serviceable: Let me add that, on the general principle that the open air beats any scheme for ventilating a closed apartment, I have roofed over the angle between two very high old walls at the bottom of the garden, made a stone floor, and thus converted a rubbish heap into a Haven, where we live during many hours, and whither, by a wire running along the wall from the house, we can lead everything that the ether now conveys of music and speech. There are worse places to hear Die Meistersinger or the Savoy Bands.' • • ' Second, more water. The house had a bath in a dressing room. Another had to be installed on the top or nursery floor ; and, after seeing the bath provided for the doniestie servant in any decent New York apartment, I could do no less than instal another in the basement. At various points running water was also provided ; but there are no arrangements for washing in any of the bedrooms. That is best done elsewhere in my view.
One cannot effectively wash the deposits of London smoke and the results of travel from off the skin by cold water. Hot water must be available, day and night, on every floor. The old kitchen range, besides being dirty, labour- making, and smoke-producing, was also totally inefficient. It was removed. I consulted an expert friend, and installed a "Sentry," always on unsleeping guard, who burns coke and gives us hot water in unlimited abundance, day and night, on all floors, at very small cost and with a minimum -of attention once a day. (They tell me that another make, called the " KOke," is as good, or perhaps • even better.) In this house, thus provided, no one carries water about, hot or cold, clean or dirty ; there are no slops to empty, and we are clean below stairs as well as above.
Third, more warmth. For continuous heating, which is required for water, gas is too expensive, like electricity, for my purse. But it serves perfectly for the heating of rooms, providing the radiant heat natural and necessary.
for our bodies, without making smoke. The types of stove have vastly improved since first I began to use them more than twenty years ago. The modern ones are clean and efficient and nice to look at. Of course they must be inspected, and of course the chimneys must be in order. Then there are no "fumes "—though there arc always noxious fumes at everybody else's end of a chimney where coal is burnt below—nor is there any _need for that absurd saucer of water offered in some mystic rite to certain gas fires I sometimes see. In this house, no young legs, nor old, carry coal or ashes, there are no fires to lay nor grates to empty and clean. Put this fact along. with the water supply system and consider what is left of the problem of domestic service. .
During the Domestic Service Inquiry, when I was describing some of these arrangements as a witness, I was asked my opinion of a lady- who only allowed her servant to take an occasional bath in the water which she had herself used ; and could but reply that such a mistress ought to empty :grates in Hades for ever.
The form Of heat needed for cooking is supplied by .a gas cooker in the kitehen and a .mall one on the nursery floor. "gas ring is attached to the stove in the library and When I return from a lecture out of town at midnight' or so, I can heat a saucepan containing soup and supply myself with all I need long after everyone else has gone to bed..
Third, more light. We live not only by the visible octave, but by precious rays half an octave or so beyond the violet. Very few of these vital ultra-violet rays reach London, though we get more here on the urban' edge of Hampstead than are -recorded- in Kingsway; where the smoke is denser. Making no smOke myself,- must try to- receive the ultra-violet- that can- struggle through my neighbours'. smoke. _Windows on the south are , therefore glazed with the Vitaglass, which was referred to in a recent article in this journal as now provided in the Experimental Monkey House at the Zoo. In. May. of last year I sent out an S.O.S. in the columns of Nature for a substitute for quartz, which is prohibitively expensive. This vitaglass is :what I asked for, and I was proud . to show it lately at international meetings in Heidelberg and Geneva as a British invention. It has been devised by Mr. F. E. Lamplough, of King's Norton, Birmingham., (Please do not write to me about .it,.) It costs only little more than ordinary glass, and the spectrum: shows clearly that it transmits the ultra-violet rays we need. There are many days when windows must be shut and yet the precious rays can reach the 'occupant of a .southward bedroom, and a real sunbath can be obtained.. When, by this and other, means, much ultra- violet light enters a room, we have to consider the quality of our dyes.: :Old Persian rugs, .made to look the sun in the face. without blenching, .as is fitting in the land of Zoroaster, serve very well ; but, in any case, colour is worth more to- the eye of- the. beholder, and for the life of the wearer, in one's cheeks than in one's carpets. Too often there is no ultra-violet to be had from Heaven, unless one conld.11y up in an aeroplane above the pestilent ,congregation of vapours made by-our obsolete_ and bar- baric methods of converting our national wealth into national illth, as Ruskin-would have said. Then recourse must be had to artificial light. That by which we see is useless for- hygiene ; - no ultra-violet passes the atoms of lead, -ete,i in the glass .bulbs of our electric lights. Many lamps-- are available'; mine is safe for an old lady or small child to turn on and use, for it does not splutter nor - need . adjustment..- It is a mercury vapour quartz lamp; of the kind proved through many years in the United States and. on the Continent. • It is run from the electric light circuit and stands beside my beds and is used at convenient times by everyone.. A few minutes suffice. One must wear goggles, as the ultra-violet light is strong and would otherwise cause conjunctivitis, like the snow blindness feared near the Poles or on Mount Everest. The ilamp is expensive, but very cheap. to run. .The cost is largely- due to the quartz which holds, the mercury, just as in the case of the bulb used for the monkeys at the Zoo, but I do not see why vitaglass should not replace this very expensive item in future. Here, of course, I have no present space .to discuss the use-of artificial light baths for hygiene; but to include provision for them is aa essential- part of the real modernization of an otherwise obsolete old house: .
Fourth, less dirt. The house- is, of course, less dirty than ever before in its history, because of certain-arrange- ments:. already nained:. "We use a vacuum- cleaner. Loose rugS can- jbe dealt- with -in many ways. The old boards- should have been -covered with parquet, of course, but for reasons unknown to me, the cost in this country of what one sees in the most modest rooms on the Continent or in America is almost prohibitive, -so that • my new parquet is confined to the hall-, and Liberty's " tiloleum !' serves elsewhere. This -.is Jcleaned. Plate glass covers- -dressing tables,- chests of drawers and so-forth in bedrooint,; cleanly again. -We- really have a minimum 'of dust, which is an-enemy--to life: "Little comes from the garden,where crazy paving (for which one toiled and saved, for its cost is most mysteriously monstrous) covers the paths and the space where weeat. Without it,' on many -days now feasible, the garden- would be uninhabitable. Paint is :another cleanly thing; and -of .course- one has - tile a:bathroom: - I:Ara-writing this in -my gaiderii latein October, and- opposite lily eyes,- when I 'raise them,-, are a bird bath, a -bog and-two-rock-plant beds, -all composed of old sinks from the house. We do our washing bettei without them and they serve excellently out here. ' Fifth, more music. Having a high aerial and being near to 2L0 I find that a cheap crystal set serves for twro pairs of headphones in the nursery, two in the music room, two in the Haven at the end of the garden and two in the domestics' living room downstairs. It is a boon. Loud speakers I bar ; one in the garden might annoy neighbours, and in the house would often interfere with work. Headphones are private and annoy nobody. if you cannot sleep you can listen late at night and disturb no slumbers elsewhere.. . . The place was an ugly old house of bricks; it has become, alike for its' human, canine and feline inhabitants, a
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