The Lesser Pains of War-time
How We Lived Then. By Mrs. C. S. Peel. (John Lane. 15s.) ONE of the most interesting chapters in Mrs. Peel's " Sketch of Social and. Domestic Life in England during the War" deals with pre-War. conditions. Young people cannot remember, and their elders are beginning to forget, the days when ".the middle-class housewife fed her household plentifully and, if she was a clever manager, attractively at a cost of ten or eleven shillings per head per week," when the entire cost for food and wages of a well-trained and presentable maid was usually reckoned at £50 a year, and no one possessing an income running into hundreds needed to live in a part of someone else's house. Mrs. Peel gives us some pre-War and post-War budgets likely to produce many regrets. The family budgeted for consists of a husband and wife and three young children, living in a suburb on £800 a year. Fifteen years ago such a family lived " amply and appetizingly ". and kept- a young servant ; now they must live sparsely and " no domestic help can be afforded." Comparative figures relating. to rather larger incomes bring us to this conclusion : that £500 a year now goes about as far as £284 before the War. Nevertheless it is very doubtful if life on a small income is less happy than it was. The motor omnibus and wireless have greatly relieved that tedium which was at least one cause of the overcrowding 'of towns.
The bulk of the book deals, however, not with comparisons, but with the positive facts of War conditions, the dark streets, the doubled Income Tax, rationed food, raid scares and night clubs. Mrs. Peel tells of the women who worked—and some- times drank—like men in the days when wild frivolity and bitter grief took simultaneous hold of a half-nourished, over- worked, and fear-racked community.
Mrs. Peel manages her material cleverly, and there is a good deal of pleasure to be got from this skilful reminder of the lesser pains of the near past. The collection of War-time cooking recipes put together on the last pages are singularly unappetizing. Did we really use " dish rinsings " to make soup ? The present writer has no recollection of such straits. After a list of ingredients including " remains of suet and sour milk " we are assured that the mixture is " both delicious, nourishing and above all cheap " 1 Surely some soldier on leave concocted the recipe
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