the very first almost their tenants did not
makeshift and take lodgers and sublet. They were built with basements,
in which their servants worked and lived--servants of a more submissive
and troglodytic generation who did not mind stairs. The dining-room
(with folding doors) was a little above the ground level, and in that
the wholesome boiled and roast with damp boiled potatoes and then pie
to follow, was consumed and the numerous family read and worked in the
evening, and above was the drawing-room (also with folding doors), where
the infrequent callers were received. That was the vision at which those
industrious builders aimed. Even while these houses were being run up,
the threads upon the loom of fate were shaping to abolish altogether
the type of household that would have fitted them. Means of transit were
developing to carry the moderately prosperous middle-class families out
of London, education and factory employment were whittling away at
the supply of rough, hardworking, obedient girls who would stand
the subterranean drudgery of these places, new classes of hard-up
middle-class people such as my uncle, employees of various types, were
coming into existence, for whom no homes were provided. None of these
classes have ideas of what they ought to be, or fit in any legitimate
way into the Bladesover theory that dominates our minds. It was nobody's
concern to see them housed under civilised conditions, and the beautiful
laws of supply and demand had free play. They had to squeeze in. The
landlords came out financially intact from their blundering enterprise.
More and more these houses fell into the hands of married artisans, or
struggling widows or old servants with savings, who became responsible
for the quarterly rent and tried to sweat a living by sub-letting
furnished or unfurnished apartments.

I remember now that a poor grey-haired old woman who had an air of
having been roused from a nap in the dust bin, came out into the area
and looked up at us as we three went out from the front door to "see
London" under my uncle's direction. She was the sub-letting occupier;
she squeezed out a precarious living by taking the house whole and
sub-letting it in detail and she made her food and got the shelter of an
attic above and a basement below by the transaction. And if she didn't
chance to "let" steadily, out she went to pauperdom and some other poor,
sordid old adventurer tried in her place....

It is a foolish c