The Honeywood Files (24 page)

I am putting up a temporary shed of larch slabs as garage, which will look quite inoffensive pushed back among the trees.

With many thanks and best wishes,

Yours very sincerely,

Spinlove seems in fine fettle. His recent holiday has done him good. He has evidently carried Brash quite off the ground upon which he had taken so formidable a position and won his surrender.

SPINLOVE TO GRIGBLAY

Dear Sir, 10.11.25.

I had to call your foreman’s attention to boarding on flats over bays, which is specified to run with the fall, but has been laid across it to suit the joists which run the wrong way. I must ask you to nail S boarding over present boarding with feather-edged border so as to get neat finish of lead on to brick cornice. [
Boards are apt to curl up at edges under lead, and prevent free drainage of water if laid across the fall.
]

The trefoil piercings in skirtings of panelled rooms have been omitted. This makes the broken battening and openings in top of capping useless. Please put stout cop-bronze wire mesh behind piercings. [
The purpose of this arrangement is to give free ventilation behind the panelling, for if air is bottled up between panelling and damp walls the warmth of the house will favour dry-rot. The wire gauge is against mice.
]

The eaves gutter at N. of kitchen wing stops short of the gable verge. I am aware that the verge is tilted but the finish is unworkmanlike. The stopped end should be 1” in front of line of verge. [
The tilting of the tiles at gable verge throws the water back so that the eaves gutter probably is effective in catching all of it. It is the rigid exactness of modern building that makes this immaterial deviation an offence.
]

Now that the heating service is working will you please see that the windows are kept open. I have called your foreman’s attention to this before. [
The heating is put on to dry out the house, but if the windows are kept shut the steam-laden air, which can take up no more moisture, cannot escape, condensation takes place and the object of having the heat on is in great part defeated. The windows are kept shut because of the blinking draught, and in pursuit of snug comfort. Even at the best of times the luxury of shutting oneself up for a day with a mate and a radiator in an unventilated bathroom with a few cans of paint, a plumber’s furnace, two clay pipes, a quart of boiling tea and a pound of putty, is rarely enjoyed.
]

The lead tacks of soil pipes, as well as of waste pipes, are to be wiped on the front angle. This has not been done. The service pipes carrying taps are to be vertical. The double tacks above and below taps are as specified, but in the pantry the pipes are horizontal. They must be carried along under sink and then taken up vertically to match scullery taps.

[
The nozzle of a tap fixed on a horizontal pipe tends to sag down after a time. A vertical pipe, properly fixed, resists the leverage of the hand screwing down the tap.
]

Please give these matters your attention.

Yours faithfully,

Spinlove has been away from the works for some weeks and, if these are the only matters he has to complain of, Grigblay is doing well.

SPINLOVE TO GRIGBLAY

Dear Sir, 15.11.25.

Sir Leslie Brash rang me up to-day to tell me Lady Brash is complaining of a smell in the house. Will you find out what is the matter? I could get no description of it except that it is an unpleasant smell.

Yours faithfully,

Most of them are so or they would not be smells; and it is difficult to describe a smell even when it will bear description, which is rare. Lady Brash’s famous “olfactory sensitiveness” has claimed tribute.

BRASH TO SPINLOVE

Dear Mr. Spinlove, 17.11.25.

Would it be practicably feasible to insert french windows in the drawing-room, and what would be the amount of the probable anticipated estimate? A friend has pointed out that it will not be practicably possible for a person seated in the middle of the drawing room to get a view of the gardens owing to the excessive height of the bottoms of the windows. This is disturbing. Alternatively, and as a different proposition, could not the windows be lowered a foot or two? What would be the probably approximate estimate for doing so, including, of course, the bay windows? I comprehend the necessary desirability of disposing the windows of the bedroom chambers in a lofty situation in view of the danger of a fall, but this desirability scarcely obtains in the downstair apartments.

Lady Brash informs me the smell is much worse. It is desired that the necessary steps towards eradication may be at once put in active operation, as Lady Brash spends several hours of each day in the house.

Yours sincerely,

SPINLOVE TO GRIGBLAY

Dear Sir, 19.11.25.

Have you done anything about the smell? Sir Leslie Brash referred to it again in a letter I received on Saturday and he has rung up to-day to say that Lady Brash was in the house on Sunday and that the smell was “dreadful.” Please take steps to have the nuisance ended at once, as it is causing great annoyance. I wish you had not allowed the plumbers to use the den as a shop. They have made the place in a disgusting state—litter of all kinds, bacon rind, banana peel thrown about, crusts and bones and tea leaves—your foreman ought to be told to look after things better.

Yours faithfully,

Spinlove is evidently getting rattled; but until Lady Brash is appeased there will be no peace for anyone.

LADY BRASH TO SPINLOVE

Dear Mr. Spinlove, 19.11.25.

I really think I ought to write to you about the smell! It was quite dreadful on Sunday they all noticed it and Mrs. Bingham said it made her eyes water she is so subject to hay fever like my dear mother was and I take after them both!!! I could never consent to live in a house with a smell like that which goes on and on even after I get home like the monkey house in the Zoo especially the drawing-room. Whatever Sir Leslie may say something will have to be done or none of our friends will ever come to see us!!!

How fast the leaves are falling!

Yours v. sincerely,

SPINLOVE TO LADY BRASH

Dear Lady Brash, 20.11.25.

I do not know what the particular smell is that you do not like. I have asked Mr. Grigblay to try and find out. Of course many of the materials used by the workmen have strange smells, but that is unavoidable and they will all disappear, I can assure you, before the work is finished. If you find the atmosphere of the house so unpleasant it would perhaps be wiser not to go into it just at present, or why not ask Mr. Bloggs to open the windows; have you thought of that I wonder?

Yes, I noticed the leaves were beginning to fall.

Yours sincerely,

Spinlove’s solicitude leads him to ascribe to the lady a degree of imbecility which is scarcely flattering.

GRIGBLAY TO SPINLOVE

Dear Sir, 20.11.25.

We have noted the various instructions you gave our foreman, which are receiving attention. He has searched for the smell complained of but has not succeeded in discovering it. His report is as follows:

“About her Ladyship’s smell there is not anything to complain about as I can see. The paint is nothing at all scarcely. There was a bit of a hum in the kitchen but that was just a coat the gasfitter’s mate had there. He said it was fish and I reckon like enough it was. I told him take it outside. The plumber’s shop is swept out.”

We do not know what more we can do in the matter.

Yours faithfully,

SPINLOVE TO BRASH

Dear Sir Leslie Brash, 21.11.25.

I have twice written to Grigblay about the unpleasant smell, and I have to-day heard from him that they cannot detect anything which is not as it should be. In writing to Lady Brash yesterday I suggested that she might perhaps see that the windows are opened.

In answer to your question, french windows are impossible. They could not be fitted to the existing openings, could not be made to match the other windows and would be disastrous architecturally, as you would at once realize if I made you a sketch of the altered elevation. If you had said originally that you wanted french windows I could have designed them suitably, but the style of the house would have been entirely different.

It would be possible to lower the windows, but if you did so the transom—that is the intermediate horizontal member of the frame—would come right across the line of vision of anyone standing. The top of cills is 2’ 9½ ” from the floor and this is as low as can be managed. I may point out to you that the reason you cannot see the ground outside when seated away from the window is that the ground slopes away. In any case the top of the terrace wall will appear above the line of the window cill to anyone seated in the room, so that even if you lowered the windows you would have no better view of the garden.

I had intended to suggest to you, when the subject was allowed to drop, that instead of painting the doors pink, yellow, blue—for I am sure you would dislike the array of differently coloured doors—the name “Pink Room,” “Yellow Room,” etc. might be lettered on each door. I could design a scutcheon upon which the words might appear, and this might be of the appropriate colour if you wish, or the coloured scutcheon without the words might serve. Personally I would recommend the words without the scutcheon.

I hope you will not think me unduly persistent, but I am sure you would regret a parti-coloured corridor.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

Apparently the conversations grew heated when the rainbowed bedroom proposals were discussed, and Spinlove had to change the subject. It is a torturing effort for the designer to get the heads —or transoms—of casement windows above the eye, and the cills duly low, while at the same time keeping the proportions of windows satisfactory.

BRASH TO SPINLOVE

Dear Mr. Spinlove, 22.11.25.

I have considered your remarks
anent
the windows and suggest you will raise the floor of the room which will, I apprehend, give the same equivalent effect as the lowering of the windows to which you demur, and prevent the terrace wall obstructing the view. There will be no objection to going up two steps into the drawing-room—in fact most pleasing effects may be obtained in this manner, and we can postpone using the apartment until the operations are completed. What will the cost of this work be? I recall that £300 is included in the contract amount to meet contingencies of this kind.

I am not at all averse to your proposal for identification of bedroom doors. If you will have a door painted and appropriately lettered as you propose, I will give you an ultimate final decision.

We are contemplating moving into the house for Xmas day. Do you think that a feasible proposition?

I have seized the opportune occasion to purchase certain cottages and shall in consequence not now find the necessity to erect those conveniences. Will you please advise Messrs. Nibnose & Rasper with the appropriate intimation.

Yours sincerely,

PHYLLIS BRASH TO SPINLOVE

Dear Jazz, 24.11.25.

You ought to hop down as soon as poss. Mum is worrying dreadfully over the smell in the house. She spent most of this morning and part of the afternoon listening for it; it did not squeak to-day but was apparently known to be in hiding. I have not been in the house myself on a good hunting morning when the scent was lying well, but two people besides M. found on Sunday, so something must be wrong.

Dad started an innocent little frolic with a dentist ten days ago; it became a serious game and poor Dad is now seventeen down with nine to play. He is staying up in town till after the final round, which is why I write. Will you phone to-morrow, please?

pud.

SPINLOVE TO GRIGBLAY

Dear Sir, 25.11.25.

I am directed by Sir Leslie Brash to say that he does not now intend to build any cottages.

Will you please tell your foreman to see that all windows are securely
shut
before the men leave on Saturday, so that I may satisfy myself about this reported smell.

Yours faithfully,

SPINLOVE TO BRASH

Dear Sir Leslie Brash, 28.11.25.

I am sorry to know you are having such a bad time of it.

As you will no doubt have heard, the smell Lady Brash complained of is that of the new oak. It is a penetrating smell certainly, but most people like it. It will entirely disappear in a short time, in fact I do not think it will be noticed after the oak has been waxed.

I am afraid it will not be possible for you to get into the house for Xmas. There is much more to be done than appears. In six weeks’ time it might be possible, but it would be better for you to wait. The house is drying out well, and I do not think there would then be any actual objection to its being lived in, but if you waited, say, till March you could be certain of no ill consequences.

As regards raising the floor of the drawing-room, there are grave difficulties and objections which I think you have not realized. Ten or twelve inches off the height of the room would make it appear very low. This is a big room and the height to ceiling is no more than is necessary, for it fixes the height of the first floor throughout. To raise the floor would mean raising the panelling to about 10 in. from the ceiling which would look very ugly, and also rebuilding the brick chimney, for the opening of the fireplace would be much too low. The transom of the window would also come very awkwardly; people looking out would have to stoop or stand on tip toe. It would be dangerous to have the steps close up to the door; a landing outside would be necessary which would stand out, with the steps, four or five feet into the hall, and, of course, the new floor would have to be carried on joists. The concrete floor is prepared for nailing the floorboards to it, and the only reason this has not been done is that I told Grigblay to hold off so that the concrete should be thoroughly dry. The cost of the alteration would, as you may judge, be a considerable sum—£200 very likely.