who at one time or another have had a great deal to do with furnished apartments. My experiences are of a somewhat chequered, and, on the whole, of a gloomy nature. If I were disposed to generalize and attempt a broad classification, I should say that when people are very clean and particular they are not over honest, and when they are very honest, as a rule, they are rather

VOL. VIII.-NO. XLVIII.

particular, who would send me up stairs stray waifs of tea and sugar after I had been absent for months, but whose apartments were rendered uninhabitable by those noxious creatures now generally known as Norfolk Howards. I have known, too, clean and pretty landladies, but there was a metallic twinkle in their smile, and the pleasant voice surprisingly changed its key if any

2 I

inaccuracy was pointed out in the accounts. Once or twice I have met with landladies, so thoroughly ladylike and good, that when my personal interest in them has caused me to inquire into their history, I have found that some reverse of fortune has induced them to adopt their line of life as means for adding to their scanty resources. I remember descanting with some eloquence on this subject to an experienced friend, speaking of a charming landlady in whom and in whose family I felt greatly interested. He admitted all I said, but added with a depth of wisdom which, at the time, I failed to appreciate, Nevertheless landladies are landladies.' What he meant was, that the nicest people, in a surprisingly short time, adapt themselves to the circumstances in which they find themselves placed, and lose that refinement of feeling and acting for which they find little scope in their new sphere.

It

would be very easy to adopt the Mrs. Lirriper side of the argument, and represent the landladies in a very pleasing, and the lodgers in a very vexatious light; but there is a per contra to be stated; and here, as elsewhere, we must arbitrate between the contending interests.

I myself have run through the whole gamut of the question of furnished apartments. There was one big London house, to which, in my bachelor days, I was greatly attached. I have occupied every portion of that house from drawingroom floor to attic. I liked the second floor best; they were pleasant and moderate. But if I found them engaged, when I made a flying visit to town, I took the drawingroom set; and if the whole house was full, I would ask for a shakedown somewhere, and take refuge in an attic. The sympathising reader will understand how useful it was to have a regular crib in town, whither you might alight however suddenly and unexpectedly, and be sure of a greeting and a bed. I found that I liked the best rooms a great deal the best, and did not at all philosophically betake myself to the attic. I discovered

two things. First, the way in which you were lodged made a great difference in your own self-esteem. You talked, or lounged, or wrote your letters, or received your friends with a great deal more ease and pleasure when you did so in state than when you did so in the rough. Secondly, it made a great difference in the esteem in which others held you. I do not simply mean servants and tradespeople, who, of course, would form their notions from such circumstances. But even the landlady's own people, although you chivalrously declined to alter your payment with the altered accommodation, gave you more respect in the drawing-room than when you were up amongst the skylights. Consequently the topmost regions became abhorred localities; when I came in by a late train and found them the only places vacant, I would hurl myself into a Hansom and dash down to Covent Garden. I am afraid this change of location somewhat injured my credit with my aunt, and certainly did not improve my substance. In this way, gradually and repeatedly, I severed my connection with one of the few really good lodging-houses I have ever known.

and

I remember visiting a distinguished friend who occupied uncommonly seedy apartments under somewhat unusual and remarkable circumstances. He had fallen in love at the theatre with a very pretty and a very promising young actress. The infatuation grew upon him. He would be found every night at a certain stall whenever this young woman had some minor part to sustain, where her good looks and pleasant manners would effectually tell. She was a very good girl, I subsequently discovered, belonging to a family which for generations had trod the boards as a profession, and helping to support an invalid father out of her scanty earnings. Molesworth-only the name was not Molesworth-was as modest and sincere a lover as a good girl could deserve. He contrived to find out that the young lady and her sister occupied furnished apartments in Lower Bel

gravia, that is, some back street in Pimlico. A brilliant thought occurred to Molesworth. He would go and take rooms at the same house. There was a difficulty, however. The only decent rooms were the Lilliputian drawing-room floor, and these were occupied by our histrionic young friend and her sister at sixteen shillings a week. There was, however, a bedroom to be obtained for five shillings a week. Molesworth took the room, and it was in this poetic seclusion that he wrote his five act tragedy, which was subsequently declined, with perfect unanimity, by all the London managers. Molesworth, however, was one of those good fellows who are always on brotherly intimacy with a great number of other good fellows. From some of these he was quite unable to keep the secret of his real address. These men, perhaps happily for Molesworth, completely ruined these deep-laid plans. He and Miss Carstairs were beginning to be good friends. She smiled when she met him on the staircase; and one afternoon they actually had some confabulation in the little drawing-room. But men in broughams came rattling up to the door of the little lodgings to inquire after the occupant of the back bedroom. Officers of the army, with clinking sabres, knocked him up at unearthly hours of the night. Cases of wine and parcels of books would come in for him. Soon the whole of the little household became fully aware that there was some mystery in the wind, and that the obscure lodger was other than he seemed. The Misses Carstairs took the alarm. An extensive acquaintance with dramatic villains caused them to entertain all kinds of melodramatic ideas of intended wickedness. The pleasant little intercourse, in which Molesworth was beginning to declare himself in the character of an ardent lover, was peremptorily cut short by the elder sister. Then Molesworth sat down, and with consummate eloquence, made a formal offer of himself. These honest proposals were treated as only a further progression in his unhallowed plot. There was no

notice taken of it beyond the intimation that either they or he must leave the house. Under these circumstances, Molesworth returned to his beaten path in life, and confessed that his five shilling lodging had given him a new zest for the luxuries of civilization. He soon afterwards encountered that titled lady who subsequently became the Honourable Mrs. Molesworth. Lucy Carstairs lost for the present that chance of a brilliant settlement, which, in all probability, her beauty and talents will yet secure for her.

My reader, are you in search of furnished apartments? If so, before you set out, I can predicate, to a considerable extent, a great deal of what is going to happen to you. There are two classes of people for whom lodging-house keepers have a great and natural preference. These are for bachelors and for married people with large families; provided always, that is to say, that they are well off in the world. The great horror of the lodging-house people is the smart City man who wants to compound for board and an airy bedroom for a guinea a week. Their great liking is for such a case as I am about to adduce. Young Osborne has some really noble rooms in one of the central squares, not far from the British Museum. For these he pays three guineas a week. I have never yet been able to discover the benefit he derives from the very superior accommodation which belongs to him. His avocations keep him busy the whole of the day. He belongs to one or two clubs. He enters very largely into society, where he is as amiable as he is eligible. I have never yet heard of his spending an hour in his rooms. The landlady and her family have the free run of them, and entertain their friends there. I am sure Osborne, a very good sort of fellow, would make no objection. You see they have let off the whole of their house, except a little room on the basement next to the kitchen, which they have turned into a sort of parlour. The poor things are all the better for the better rooms in which the goodnatured Osborne allows them to

disport themselves. 'Bless your soul, my dear fellow,' said a bachelor friend of mine to me the other day, 'that old landlady of mine, with whom I have been staying for the last dozen years, fondly imagines that she lets furnished apartments, and of course I pay for them as such. There is not a stick in the place that belongs to her. I have run up my own bookcases, and there are all my old favourite dogs and beauties on the walls, and I have laid down a new carpet, and have gradually extirpated, bit by bit, all her old furniture for what I like better.' Certainly bachelors of this kind are deservedly popular.

If you are in very easy circumstances, and have a large family, and have heavy and expensive dinners, this also renders you a very desirable inmate of furnished apartments. But then it is necessary to wink at a good deal of waste and extravagance, or rather waste and extravagance are hardly the proper terms, for your goods are not squandered, but carefully sequestrated' into alien uses. Lodging-house keepers will gladly lower their rent if they see that the expenditure will be liberal, and the supervision not too strict. But I know a case in which a lady kept her accounts with much accuracy, and perhaps economy, and the justly offended landlady declared that they could only stay by paying a higher rent. I remember occupying some lodgings at Oxford with a friend. Our landlady sent up a fine piece of hot roast beef, of which we took as many ounces as there were pounds. We were asked for orders for next day's dinner, and named cold roast beef. Our landlady confiscated the first joint as a perquisite, and ordered for us a second large joint, which she gave us cold next day, and in due course confiscated that also. I merely give this as a specimen of proceedings which have come under my own observation. One such harpy—it was at Hastings-received a measure of poetic justice. She served one of her lodgers in a ludicrously bad way. The lodger was one of the most illustrious contributors to 'Punch.' He retaliated

on his victimiser by a faithful portraiture in Punch' of all that he was obliged to undergo at his landlady's remorseless hands. The knowledge of the joke spread, and covered her with as much shame and confusion as her rhinoceros-hided nature was susceptible of feeling.

Some time back I had a good Ideal to do with furnished apartments; and in the course of a few weeks I must have visited a hundred different sets. The dialogues with the landladies were generally exceedingly brief. To find exactly what one wants is always a very difficult thing; so a disappointment was the general rule. 'What apartments do you please to require, sir?' -'Two sitting-rooms and two bedrooms.' 'We have only one sittingroom,' or 'only one bedroom.' 'Thank you; good morning.' The dialogue only lasted a few seconds. To some, it was a great objection that we brought servants. To others, the presence of children was a decisive objection. Sometimes the terms were too high; sometimes they were too low. There was the suspicion, which I am told is often a very valid one, that lodging-house keepers will receive lodgers for the sake of a little ready money, when they are about to disappoint their own landlord, or become insolvent. Sometimes we asked for references, and the very request was looked upon as insulting. Let me say it is of no use to be a 'wandering Christian,' and say you will call again; no use to waste other people's time and your own by unmeaning inquiries. I should say that two minutes and a half is almost enough time to settle the question, at least primâ facie. If you intend to stay some time, you cannot be too par ticular about the solvency and respectability of the householder whose rooms you propose to occupy. Many of us could tell some rather queer stories under this head. Some landladies only look for money from their tenants, and are regardless of other considerations. You may have taken your lodgings, which may seem very nice, but a little confidential conversation with a policeman may reveal some very curious