his little cap, and not to climb into the chairs with his shoes on,
but I can't make a model husband of John. He is as good as gold, but
will leave his hat on the floor, his coat on the nearest chair, and
never keeps himself or any of his things in order in the house. He
says it's born with him; comes from a long line of ancestors (he's
been reading Darwin lately) who lived in houses without any cupboards
or drawers or closets, and he could no more put away his hat and coat
when he comes in than a blue-jay could build a hang-bird's nest. Yes;
I was vexed, but thankful, too, that Jane was out of sight. Of all
people in the world; she has the least mercy for anything like
domestic untidiness. I only hope she will some time have a house and a
husband of her own; if one doesn't shine and the other shake, her
practice will fall a long way behind her preaching. Let me warn you
now, not to attempt making any plans for her. It will be worry and
vexation of spirit from first to last. Every knot will be examined,
every shingle ironed flat before it is laid, every nail counted and
driven by rule. When I tell her it would wear me out, body and mind,
to feel obliged to keep things always in order, she gravely reminds me
that Mrs. Keep-clean lived ten years longer than Mrs. Clean-up,
besides having an easier time, a tidy house, and an enviable
reputation all her life. Yes; I was thankful she had gone philandering
off after May-flowers, and hoped she would stay till I had had time to
brush up the room and get John into presentable shape. But as soon as
I went to rouse him I was thoroughly frightened. His face was flushed,
his hair was ruffled, and he looked up in such a dazed kind of way, I
really thought he was going to have something dreadful. He held out
your letter and told me to read the last sentence, which I did. Even
then I didn't understand what was the trouble until he went on to say
that your final charge was too much for him. He was totally
discouraged. You began, he said, by urging him to build a stone house,
which neither of us liked, though we finally came around to it,--even
went so far as to commence hauling stones. All at once you went into
ecstasies over brickwork, and argued for it as though our hope of
salvation lay in our living in a brick house. Now, as he was beginning
to feel that he must change his mind again (he would almost as soon
change his head) and cultivate an admiration for brickwork, you must
needs switch off upon another track and coolly advise him to build of
wood! He declared he was further from a new house to-day than three
months ago. At that rate we should live in the old one till it tumbled
down over our heads, which I don't propose to do.
[Illustration: A WISE GENERAL.]
The baby was asleep, so I sat down on the lounge, took John's head in
my lap, and tried to explain what you meant. I told him I had heard
enough about brick, and didn't care what you said about wood. We
should hold to our original plan and have a stone house; but you
didn't know where it was to be, and wished us to be thoroughly posted,
then use our common-sense and decide for ourselves what it should be.
In some places it would be most absurd to build of wood; in others
equally so to build of anything else. The matter of cost, too, might
affect our choice, and that you knew nothing about.
In my efforts to restore his equanimity, I had forgotten my broom and
dust-pan, lying in the middle of the floor; forgotten John's big
boots, not only on the lounge, but directly on one of Jane's most
exquisite tidies; forgotten--actually forgotten--the baby, and was
treating my disturbed husband in genuine ante-matrimonial style, when,
of all things to happen at this very crisis, in marched Sister Jane
and her cavalier! Simultaneously the baby awoke with a resounding
scream.
Now there are three things that my notable sister holds in especial
abhorrence,--untidy housekeeping, sentimental demonstrations between
married people, and crying babies; and here they all were in an
avalanche, overwhelming, not only herself, but a most prepossessing
young man, who, for all I knew, was viewing me with a critic's eye,
as a possible sister-in-law, and wondering how far certain traits are
universal in families.
You will think I stand in great awe of Sister Jane; and so I do, for
though she is two years younger than I, unmarried, and, candidly, not
a bit wiser, she is one of those oracular persons who, unlike Mr.
Toots, not only fancy that what they say and do is of the utmost
consequence, but contrive to make other people think so, too.
It is one of my husband's notions that nothing in the house is too
good to be used every day by those he loves best, meaning baby and I.
So I have no parlor--no best room always ready for exhibition--into
which I could send them, but my inspiration came just at the right
moment.
"Don't, Jane, don't, for pity's sake, bring all that rubbish into the
sitting-room!" She had her hands full of moss and flowers. "Please
take it out on the piazza. John will carry you some chairs." And Jane
was positively too much astonished to say a single word, but turned
and walked out the way she came in, driving her dutiful escort before
her.
Fortunately, our piazza is eight or nine feet wide. I wouldn't have
one less than that. So John took out the chairs, and was properly
presented to the young gentleman.
Half an hour later, when order once more prevailed, I went out to find
Jane finishing a lovely moss basket, and the gentlemen amiably
building air-castles. John had been reading your last letter aloud,
omitting your reply to Jane's question, and was advocating brick in a
most edifying fashion. As I sat down, the young man inquired very
seriously if there would be any difficulty in making additions to a
brick house, in case one wished to begin in a small way. John gave one
of his queer looks, and guessed not; I, for a wonder, kept still; and
Jane blushed brilliantly, remembering that she had already asked the
same question on her friend's account.
I am, truly, anxious about the kitchen and closets, whatever nonsense
my husband may write, but should be sorry to have the house look just
like any other, and, of course, wish to have it look well. Why may not
our stone house be built in the manner of your model brick one, at
least basement and first story, thoroughly warmed and ventilated,
brick partitions, fire-proof, and so on,--that is, if we can afford
it? And that brings me to the question that I intended to ask in the
beginning, Are these suggestions intended to apply to common kind of
buildings or only to those that are usually described as "first
class"? Architectural rules and the principles of good taste are not
thought to concern those who, in building, know no law but
necessity,--with whom the problem is to get the greatest amount of use
for the least possible outlay.
John is industrious and serene, this morning. He thinks my letter
isn't very practical, and hopes you won't forget that the subject in
hand is house-building, not family history.
Yours truly,
MRS. JOHN.
LETTER XVII.
From the Architect.
GOOD TASTE IS NOT A FOE BUT A FRIEND TO ECONOMY.
MRS. JOHN: Dear Madam,--For your wise and tender treatment of John you
have my heartiest thanks and admiration. It is not strictly an
architectural suggestion, but could you not found a sort of
training-school for wives who have not learned to manage their
refractory husbands? I'm sure you would have plenty of pupils.
Your query as to applying these hints I am glad to answer. Instead of
preventing its indulgence, close economy demands the exercise of the
most refined taste. The very houses that must pay strict regard to the
first principles of art are those upon which not one dollar can be
wasted. But these fundamental rules are identical, whether the
building costs five hundred dollars or fifty thousand. When the
newspapers describe "first-class" houses, those above a certain size
or cost are meant. Let us henceforth have a truer standard, placing
only those in the front rank whose design and construction are
throughout in wise accord with the material of which they are built
and the uses for which they are intended.
Notwithstanding your want of interest in the wood question, I must
give your husband one chapter on that subject, and promise him it
shall be thoroughly practical, free from all romance and family
allusions.
LETTER XVIII.
From John.
OUR PICTURESQUE ANCESTORS.
MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I've no doubt it would be vastly agreeable to you
to have Mrs. John keep up this end of the correspondence. Very
gratifying, too, to another party,--the paper-makers. It would be a
big thing for them. But I don't want to hire a housekeeper, even in so
good a cause, not till I have a house.
In spite of Mrs. John's devotion to her first love (I mean the stone
walls), it is, as you say, quite possible that our family mansion will
be wood; and Barkis is willin' to hear what you have to say about it.
One topic in your reply to my wife's historical report I hope you will
work up more fully. Just explain, if you can, why the cheap buildings
we have nowadays are so much less satisfactory to look at than those
built fifty or a hundred years ago. Do you suppose the bravest artist
that ever swung a brush would dare put an ordinary two-story house of
modern style on the front seat in a New England landscape? It would
ruin his reputation if he did,--even without the French roof. Can you
tell why? There's no such objection to the homesteads of a generation
or two ago. Don't tell me age is venerable, and moralize about the
sacred associations and old-time memories that lend a halo of poetry
and romance and what-'s-his-name to these relics of the past. That's
all very well in its place, but if our grandchildren can discover
anything artistic or even picturesque in our common houses of to-day,
they'll be a progeny of enormous imaginations,--regular Don Quixotes;
windmills will be nothing to them.
Yours,
JOHN.
LETTER XIX.
From the Architect.
THE USE AND THE ABUSE OF WOOD.
DEAR JOHN: One reason, among many, why the old-time houses are more
grateful to the eye than those of similar cost but modern style, is
that they were built of wood honestly and legitimately used, when wood
was on all accounts the most suitable material for building. It is so
still, and will be for a long time in many places, for its economy and
convenience. Given a fair chance, it may be made very durable, and is
even rendered practically fire-proof without great cost, by kyanizing
and various other methods that are adopted for the same purpose. You
will find one mode described in the June number of Harper's Magazine
for 1870. Wood is effective, too, in appearance, when rightly used,
which, more's the pity, does not often happen; for of all the
materials that minister to human comfort and needs, this seems to me
the most abused. Iron, like the old-time saints, betrays not its solid
worth till it has been tried by fire,--is all the better for being
hammered and beaten; stone is as much improved as an unruly boy by a
good dressing; while bricks, like ghosts, come forth from their
purgatory for the express purpose of being laid. All of these, by
appropriate treatment, are invested with graces and glories that by
nature they never owned. But a tree, graceful, noble, and grand beyond
all human imitation, is ignominiously hewn down, every natural beauty
disguised or annihilated, and its helpless form compelled to assume
most uncouth shapes and grimmest colors.
[Illustration: THE GROVES WERE GOD'S FIRST TEMPLES.]
Of late our injustice is greater and more disastrous; for we are
destroying the very sources of supply without providing for the
future, using wood in large quantities where other materials would be
better and cheaper. Yet we think ourselves very economical. Once it
was common to enclose wood buildings of all grades by walls at least
ten or twelve inches thick, sometimes much more, and solid at that.
They were called log-houses. Now it is the fashion to use two by four
inch studs standing in rows at such distances that the whole substance
of the frame in a single sheet would be about half an inch thick.
These are suggestively called balloon frames. The former would be huge
and inconvenient, the latter are often fair and frail. That the frame
of the outer wall of a wooden building should be mainly vertical is
evident, the outer studs, if possible, extending from the sill to the
plates, and as many of the inner ones as may be reaching through both
stories, especially those by the staircase, where the shrinking of the
second-floor timbers will reveal ugly cracks and crooks. That the
greatest strength and economy of material are secured by sawing logs
into thin, wide scantling is also beyond question, but don't try to
save too closely on a bill of timber. A thousand feet added to the
width of the studs and the depth of the joist will make the difference
between a stiff, unterrified frame, and a weak, trembling one.
Neither be sparing of the number of these light sticks. Sixteen inches
between centres is far enough for studs or joists; twelve is better,
though particulars will depend on circumstances. We have no use for
the old-fashioned huge square posts, horizontal girts, and braces
midway the walls of a two-story building, having found that studs two
inches by five will carry all that is required of them as well as if
ten times as large. Let us generously give the light frame the stanch
support of a sound, well-matched, and bountifully nailed covering of
inch boards. There's great virtue in tenpenny nails. Let the building
be well peppered with them. Even after boarding, your walls will have
less than two inches of solid wood. If you wish to make an example of
yourself, lay this boarding diagonally; and, to cap the climax of
scientific thoroughness, having given it a good nailing and a layer
of sheathing-felt, cover the whole with another wooden garment of the
same style as the first, and crossing it at right angles. All of this
before the final overcoat of clapboards, or whatever it may be. A
house built in this way would laugh at earthquakes and tornadoes. It
couldn't fall down, but would blow over and roll down hill without
doing any damage except disarranging the furniture, and, possibly,
shaking off the chimney-tops! It would hardly need any studs except as
furrings for lath and plastering, and would be very warm. You know my
mind about floors. If you can't afford joists stiff enough to hold you
without jarring, even when you chance to cut a caper with the baby,
defer building till you are a little richer. Floors need the
well-nailed linings, too, especially those of the upper stories,
almost as much as the outer walls, and should be deafened with mortar
if you can stand the cost; if not, with felt. The upper floors we will
talk over by and by. Some people have a fancy for filling in between
studs with soft brick, but I don't believe in it. It is seldom well
done, it injures the frame, and costs more than back plastering,
without being much if any better. Rather build a brick house outright.
It is well, however, to lay a course or two of brick in mortar against
each floor, filling the space between the inner base board and the
outer covering entirely full and solid, leaving never the faintest
hint of the beginning of a chance for mice. Then when you hear the
dear little creatures galloping over the ceiling, driving hickory-nuts
before them and making noise enough for a whole battalion of wharf
rats, there will be a melancholy satisfaction in knowing that you did
your best to keep them out, and these brick courses will make the
house warmer by preventing currents of air.
Here is one advantage in wood not easily obtained in brick or
stone,--the overhanging of the whole, or a part of the second story,
which may be made picturesque in effect and will add much to the charm
of the interior. It may be simply an oriel window swinging forward to
catch the sun or a distant view, an entire gable pushing the
guest-chamber hospitably forth, or the whole upper story may extend
beyond the lower walls, giving large chambers, abundant closets, and
cosey window-seats. Of course, such projections must be well
sustained. Let their support be apparent, in the shape of massive
brackets or the actual timbers of the house.
Speaking of brackets, if we could learn to think of them, wherever
they occur, simply as braces, we might have better success in their
treatment. Our abominable achievements in this line spring from an
attempt to hide the use of the thing in its abstract beauty. The
straight three by four inch braces found under any barn-shed roof are
positively more agreeable to look at than the majority of the
distorted, turned, and becarved blocks of strange device that hang in
gorgeous array upon thousands of "ornamental" houses. Besides these
there are a host of pet performances of builders and would-be
architects that deserve only to be abolished and exterminated; put up,
as they are, with an enormous waste of pine and painful toil of the
flesh, to become a lasting weariness to the spirit. Far more
satisfying and truly ornamental is it, to let the essential structure
of the building be its own interpreter. Very much can be done by a
skilful arrangement of the outer covering alone. Don't try to clothe
the house with a smooth coat of boards laid horizontally with no
visible joints or corner finish. Such a covering is costly, defective,
and contrary to first principles. Clapboards are good. Hardly anything
is better, but don't feel restricted to one mode. I send you some
sketches suggesting what may be done in this department by a careful
design in the use of wide boards and narrow boards, clapboards and
battens; boards horizontal, vertical, and cornerwise,--any and all are
legitimate, and it may be well to use them all on one building.
[Illustration: OUTER FINISH OF WOOD.]
Many points relating to the use of wood and appertaining equally to
buildings whose walls are of brick or stone, we may find farther on.
In closing, let me adjure you by all your hope of a comfortable, safe,
and satisfying house,--by all the common-sense in your possession and
all the capital at your command,--resolve that you will never--no,
never--build your house of unseasoned timber.
LETTER XX.
From John.
A SURRENDER AND CHANGE OF BASE.
MY DEAR ARCHITECT: It was very well for Noah and the other
antediluvians, who had any little building to do, to wait for their
timber to season. When a man has a thousand years or so to live, he
can afford to take things easy. It's different in this great and
glorious nineteenth century, when the chief aim is to make the
shortest time on record. You know our Western farmers have a brisk way
of going out into their thousand-acre wheatfields before breakfast,
reaping, threshing, and grinding the grain, which their thrifty wives
make into biscuit for the morning meal; and you've heard of the young
man who caught a sheep in the morning, sheared it, carded, spun, and
wove the wool, cut the cloth and made the coat to wear at his own
wedding in the evening. Young America don't understand why a pine or
an oak tree can't be put over the course, like a sheep or an acre of
grain. Besides, you talk like an old fogy. When a man says he has
decided to build a house, he means he is ready to begin,--right off;
and if our lumber-dealers won't keep dry stuff (which of course they
won't unless obliged to), then he must use green.
I'm surprised you don't admire the fanciful brackets and other wooden
straddle-bugs people are so fond of decorating their houses with. By
the way, if these brackets are purely ornamental, there ought not to
be two alike, any more than you'd have two busts or two pictures alike
in one room. Suppose you collect an assortment of the rich and rarest
specimens, and hang them, like Lord Dundreary's shirts, "all in a wo,"
on somebody's villa. Wouldn't they be lovely? I'd like to pursue the
subject, but have other fish to fry.
Mrs. John is right, as usual; our house will be a stone one, and will
not be built until next year. Meantime, the timber will have a chance
to season, and we shall have time to study up our plan and sort of get
the hang of it.
Now I want you to transfer your interest to another case. Who should
drop down upon us, last week, but our old friend Fred? Been out West
for the last dozen years or more; enterprising and prosperous, you'll
be glad to hear. Come home to stay, bringing a wife who is sure to
make Mrs. John jealous, a triplet of boys (the oldest half as big as
his dad), and plenty of stamps. He has bought the Captain Adams place,
and is going to move off the old gambrel-roofed house (has a dozen or
two men at work already) and build a brick one in place of it. I've
given him the benefit of your advice in my behalf, and now he invites
me, in Western fashion, to stand aside and give him a chance,--which
I'm very willing to do, for he's a tiptop fellow and so is Mrs. Fred.
Eastern people Westernized,--if you can find a better sort of
neighbors I'd like an introduction!
Yours,
JOHN.
LETTER XXI.
From the Architect.
HOSPITALITY AND SUNLIGHT.
DEAR JOHN: Our old friend shall not be neglected. He has only to
present his case and make known his wishes. Meantime, in arranging
your own plans, be generous if you can; not lavish or extravagant in
expenditure, but generous in feeling and expression. Let your doors
and windows be wide, and your roof be high. A wide door is far more
convenient than a narrow one, usually much better in appearance; and
for the windows,--when shall we learn the unspeakable worth of the
bountiful light of heaven? Does Mrs. John complain that the sunlight
will fade her carpets? Let them fade, and know of a truth that all the
colors of all the carpets of all the looms that ever throbbed are not
worth to the civilized mortals who tread the dust-containing fabrics
one single hour of unobstructed sunshine. Is it that our deeds are
evil, that we seem to love darkness rather than light; or is it
through our ignorant exclusion of this glorious gift, "offspring of
heaven first born," that we are left to wander in so many darksome
ways? Be generous, did I say? rather try to be just to yourself.
Practically, the larger opening is scarcely more expensive than the
small one. The work of construction is no greater, and the material
for the door or window costs but little more than the thicker wall of
wood, brick, or stone.
[Illustration: "THE OLD HOUSE AT HOME."]