A ROOM TO LET

Evening Star, Issue 21624, 20 January 1934, Page 2

A ROOM TO LET

[Written by Panache, for the ‘ Evening Star.’]

After plums and custard for three days in succession 1 thought of a room of my own, and with a rustle that a deaf landlady of good conscience would have quaked to hear, I turned ostentatiously to the advertisements. It was difficult, among so many pictured delights, for a man to remember that he desired only a room, and not a radio or a squirrel coat. Lissom ladies in cutty sarks held me with their glittering legs, cigarettes pointed at me; but, undeterred by children gorged and purged, rampant in summer prints; unsoduced by ladies’ displays, I threaded my single way through a thousand ingenious delights 'until I leached the bare rooms that were my quest.

I read the long list. After the intimacies of underclothing and the alimentary canals, what a lack of frankness! No pictures, and only bare prosaic details, in which the colourless words “ conveniences ” and “ gas cooker ” predominated. The classconscious spoke of their refinement, of the good locality; they confessed to being exclusive, commodious, self-con-tained, occasionally, superior. One or two admitted the sun or a good view, but most sounded frosty and without vision. The rooms appeared characterless, vacant, conscious of the shadow cast by a card in the front window. Theirs was not the pathos of the “ lost ” column— they were nobody’s keepsake; they had not the knack of the sewing machine which can purr in twelve words, nor yet the appeal of the dog that can yelp wistfully in two lines. Not for vacant rooms are the more glorious hazards ot the “ for sale ” columns. In their economic stringency empty rooms must look for a first-class tenant, a careful tenant, a refined tenant. They lose their individuality because it is essential that they be immediately possessed.

Some who have rooms to let are inclined, like savages, to account mere size a virtue, though small rooms, like small people, may have more vitality. It must be as rare to fall in love with a room because of its size as to fall in love with a girl because she weighs twelve stone. But one might fall in love with a girl because or the way her hair grows on her forehead. If the owners of rooms would mention individual touches, a tenant might be so bewitched that he would put up stubbornly with countless drawbacks because of some little endearing twist. If you read of a room to let with a long window, a pansy and chives in the window box would you not take the conveniences for granted, and run, as you were, in your slippers, with a week’s rent in advance? Would care about a separate meter if there were a pear tree outside the bathI'ooiii window?

Jf candour were made a feature of the “ To Let ” columns advertisements would be more entertaining, and rooms would be spared the visits of unsympathetic tenants. “ Charmingly proportioned room, but really revolting tiles,” would attract inquirers who owned firescreens or wanted an excuse to buy a piece of Egyptian embroidery. “ Bedsitting room, immaculate, furnishings a symphony, bagpipes next door ” might have to be inserted several times, blit the tenant who eventually moved in would stay’. I

Colourless advertisements, with the emphasis on the convenience of the tenant, do the vacant room scant justice. There are two sides to the bargain, and those people who are always moving on have not tried to please the. room. If you are not considerate to your room you will have no peace. There is not a ghost or a ghoulie for each flat as in the feudal days, but there are corners where long-leggetty beasties may lurk, and it is a poor-spirited room that cannot hoard up squeaking boards or rattling frames to torment those that have tormented it with casual screws and temporary wardrobes. He who is offered plums and custard once too often will do well to seek a house with the kind of tree he likes growing near the gate, and a vermil lion box not too far away. ( He will satisfy himself by casual observation that the landlady is reasonably sellcontained without being too commodious. He must approach the room, i) he would be welcomed, discreetly and without self-assertion. He must no! loudly disparage the wallpaper, nor jerk up the blinds, nor bang open the window. The room may like quiet, and be clinging desperately to an old perfume that the newcomer is inviting the wind to whirl away. He should disturb the dust lightly, for if it is a gracious room his predecessor will have left with re luctant feet. He should be kind to the room, for, longer-lived than a man, it is sentenced to longer memories. When the tenant moves on, let him leave, if he will, the scratches of his shoes on the tiles; let him burn, if he must, his initials into the imitation marble of the mantelpece; but let him make a clean exit. For the room’s integrity, and for his own honour, if not for the sake of the unreasonable, incommodious landlady, let him leave none of his personal possessions, not so much as a stud. And out of consideration for the qncasiness of the stomachs that come after him, stomachs already tried by the monotony of plums and custard, let him not leave a bracelet ot his dusty hair about a broken comb.