The Spectator at war: A room of one’s own

From ‘Flat-hunting’, The Spectator, 29 May 1915:

ECONOMY is just now a fashion set by necessity. The professional class are eagerly reducing their outlay, and the most obvious thing to save on is the rent. The immediate result of this determination to live at less cost is that all the cheap flats and small houses have gone up in price, the explanation of course being that there is a run upon them. Dear flats and large houses have come down to a corresponding extent. Flat-hunting is at the moment a very exciting sport; but it should be undertaken, if possible, only by the physically and mentally hardy. The fortunate hunter may in the end “bring down” a flat to suit his own requirements, and well worth all his fatigues, but he will have a good deal to go through first. Clambering up to the tops of buildings is a strain even upon the youngest legs and hearts; and it is marvelous how many quite good flats have no lifts. Disappointment usually awaits the climber upon the last landing. The difficulty of imagining dirty and dismantled rooms as they will look when clean and furnished is great, and seldom successfully undertaken by the leg-weary, who are feign to pause and gaze out of the blindless windows, vainly striving to refresh themselves with the view of roofs and slums and “backs” and railways.

But the most depressing part of cheap-house hunting is not, after all, the physical fatigue; it is the sense of rebellion against his own comparative poverty which comes over the hunter. Perhaps the hunter is a man, or possibly a woman, who halt constantly said to himself or herself; “What a virtue is financial contentment! and in what a remarkable degree is that virtue mine! How foolish are those who, having abundance of food and raiment, desire a larger income! Why do they not imitate my more dignified attitude?” In such a state of mind a fall is bound to come, and it will come very quickly to the house-hunter who ventures upon what old-fashioned Scots people call “a common stair.” His weary tramp will bring the hunter home not only with a headache and a leg-ache, but, if we may coin a complaint, with a pocket-ache also. Everything which is desirable in a flat must be paid for, first of all the sun.