And this brings me round to the question of giving the girls their own room in the house, where they can do just what they please, and where they can ask their own friends to tea should they desire to do so; not, however, in the American way, which empowers the young people to have festivals whenever they like, and to ask whom they like to them, but in a mitigated form, which compels them to ask permission to entertain, and furthermore to produce a list of names, so that full knowledge may be the mother’s portion, and that she may know exactly who is coming, and, moreover, what is going on. If the girls have their own sitting-room, they feel their residence under the paternal roof is meant to last as long as the roof itself, and they have not that hurried, disagreeable feeling some unfortunate girls must be given by the parents who make no provision for their permanent comfort, and who openly speak of what they shall do when So-and-so gets married; poor So-and-so, who has never had an offer in her life, and shrinks away from every man she sees, as she cannot help regarding him as the monster who carries off a damsel whether she wishes it or not, because the fetish of home has to be appeased, and the fabric kept together by the quick sacrifice of those who are old enough to be chained to the rock to await his advances.
The home--of the making and the decorating, the management, and the keeping together of which I feel I can never say too much--cannot possibly be made too happy, too pleasant for the younger members of it; but they in their turn must understand that they, too, have their part in the whole to perform. The grown-up daughter in such a home is a most precious possession; she can save her mother endless trouble, she can and does take the burden of most of the detail on her shoulders, and for her, therefore, should be arranged some place, no matter how small, that she can call her own, and where she can in some measure do much as she likes, for she is sure to have some pet occupation--friends to write to, work to do, all sorts of things to see about, and which she can only attend to in a room set apart for her and her belongings.
In many cases the schoolroom makes an admirable girls’ room, but should this room be occupied by the younger children when the elder daughter is ‘out’ and requires a room to herself, a capital arrangement could be made for her by copying the French fashion of a boudoir-bedroom, an arrangement for which is illustrated here, and which my artist has adapted from a room I used to have in my Dorsetshire house, where space was a great object, and where the downstairs rooms were so badly managed that it was impossible to have a morning-room in which I could sit, although there were two tiny rooms beside the dining-and drawing-rooms, which we turned into bachelors’ bedrooms, and which constituted our only spare rooms for some time. These rooms were larger than need be bestowed on the eldest girl of a house, and were made by removing the partition between a bed-and dressing-room; the bed and dressing-table, which also served as a washhand-stand, were completely screened off by a long and very tall Japanese screen; the cabinet, which stands by the side of the bed, held a quantity of linen, &c., and always looked very decorative, and not in the least like the humble chest of drawers that it undoubtedly was; while the couch in the first window served as a sofa, and, furthermore, held any quantity of dresses, supplemented as it was by the cupboard, the doors of which are panelled with Japanese leather, put in nearly twenty years ago, and verily, I do believe, the very first doors in England that were ever treated in this manner. I never saw any elsewhere, though, of course, now to find a door with undecorated panels is rather an impossibility,