When my ship comes home I shall have a study of a very superior kind
built. A part of the scheme will be a garden and a greenhouse which
shall be especially adapted to the exigencies of authorcraft.—J.
ASHBY-STERRY, CUCUMBER CHRONICLES.
WHILE silence is pre-eminently golden in the study, the study,
nevertheless should be more than “a chamber deaf to noise.” Situated
away from disturbing household sounds, it should also be withdrawn from
ready access on the part of all intruders. It should be a “den” in the
literal sense of the word—a covert, a haven. Not that it should
necessarily be below ground, but the way leading to it should be
difficult to find; and, like the fox’s den, it should be provided with
two entrances or means of escape, the more readily to baffle pursuers.
In how many houses, even those which are supposed to have been most
carefully planned, are not the library and the study placed in close
proximity to the front entrance, where anything like continuous repose
is as far removed as the constellation Orion, and where the volume with
which one endeavors to be engaged is forever chafed by the friction of
passing inmates! Apart from mere noise, the discomfort of a library or
study so situated is always great from the facility it offers to the
wiles of innumerable outside forces. It is necessarily unpleasant to
have certain visitors thrust unceremoniously upon one. You can not tell
by the mere ring of the bell whether it is A, B, or C who has come to
honor you with his presence—to bore or to charm; and without at every
announcement making a sudden dive at the risk of being seen or heard,
you are liable to be chambered for an hour with the very person you may
most desire to avoid. Thoreau often waited for the Visitor who never
comes; many of us must wait for the visitor who never goes.
Not that I would limit visitors to a circumscribed few, or banish
welcome ones at an early hour. I entertain the highest regard for the
maxim of Pope respecting the coming and the parting guest; yet, in the
very nature of things, there are always some to whom one would fain send
the conventional message, “not at home.” It was to obviate such
monstrous misplacements as a library near the front door (a library
merely in name), that Naudé, years since, in his Advis pour dresser une
Bibliothèque, gave this excellent advice: “Let the library be placed in
a portion of the house most removed from noise and disturbance, not only
from without, but also from family and servants; away from the street,
the kitchen, sitting-room, and similar places; locating it, if possible,
between some spacious court and a fine garden where it may have abundant
light, pure air, and extended and agreeable views.”
In the case of all houses where rooms are thus misplaced, some means of
spiriting one’s self away through a side or rear door are absolutely
essential to even a semblance of comfort. A study amid such
surroundings, without safe and instantaneous means of flight from
unwelcome callers is a grotesque misnomer. Is not a man’s house his
castle? The term “growlery,” often applied to the study, undoubtedly
arose from an apartment so situated, referring not to a cage where the
master of the house may work off his surly moods, as some ladies
erroneously suppose, but to the anathemas bestowed by its harassed
inmate upon the architect who planned a place for retirement where
retirement is only possible after midnight. All these can the more
readily comprehend the force of a passage in Walden-“the mass of men
lead lives of quiet desperation; what is called resignation is confirmed
desperation.” A trap-door, concealed by an Oriental rug, that would
respond to a certain pressure of the foot known only to the initiated,
might be worthy of consideration by house-builders in this connection.
Or some kind of reflecting-glass might be devised that would enable
coming events of an unpleasant nature to cast their shadows before.
Even though one meet his modest accounts with all reasonable
promptitude, there are still creditors oblivious to the amenities of
life, who, instead of forwarding annual or semi-annual statements
through the certain channel of the mails, send their “cards of
compliment” for collection through the medium of middlemen or runners,
who, even yet more callous to the finer feelings of humanity, and intent
solely upon pouching their guerdon, invariably present themselves at the
front door to force a passage within. Fancy an intrusion of this kind
while you may be rereading The Eve of St. Agnes, or perusing The
Good-Natured Man! Though it occur but once a year, the shock must still
remain. At one time or another this form of visitant is bound to appear
to every one; for the species of fiend exists in common with front-door
book-agents, itinerant venders, census-takers, expressmen,
telegraph-messengers, and the rest of the customary mob that charges
upon one’s front entrance wherever and whenever it is the most
accessible means of invasion. Even the parcels’-delivery, despite
reiterated warnings, will not unfrequently persist in demanding ingress
through the forbidden portal. Indeed, the front door is a constant
factor of discord, the baiting-place of disquiet, the arch enemy of
household peace.
Many of the vexations that are ever striving to wedge their way through
the vestibule may be avoided by intelligent, well-drilled servants who
are capable of reading human nature, and at a glance can distinguish the
false from the true. A thoroughly competent house-maid should wear her
cap internally as well as externally, and, like a thrasher’s sieve, be
able to winnow the chaff from the wheat. But such discriminating Cerberi
are as rare as they are desirable, and the melancholy fact exists that
the servant is invariably ready to leave so soon as she or he has become
really valuable or thoroughly accustomed to your ways.
Lamb, in one of his essays on Popular Fallacies, has said some excellent
things about visitors. If certain visitors would only read these things,
and, reading, comprehend! And if the visitor who never knows when to
leave, as distinguished from those who, staying late, always leave too
soon, would only peruse and ponder! In his category of intruders Lamb
emphasizes “purposeless visitants and droppers-in,” and he sometimes
wonders from what sky they fall. Whittier’s Demon of the Study, too,
would indicate that the type still flourishes in New as well as Old
England. Under the inspiration of an architect who is yet to be born,
the house of the millennium will be able to avoid all unpleasant
intrusions upon a privacy that is its inherent right, but which, alas!
exists not in the home of the present.
It is apparent at once that the ideal haven can not hide itself amid the
turmoil of the first floor. To fulfill its mission it must betake itself
to surroundings more retired, and soar to a serener sphere. The true
place for the study, therefore, is on an upper floor, and in the ideal
house I would have it a spacious oriel approached by a hidden staircase.
Hawthorne’s idea was an excellent one—the study in the tower or upper
story of his residence at Concord, which he approached by a ladder and
trap-door, pulling the ladder up after him, and placing a weight over
the door for additional security. Here he could look out upon his
favorite walk amid the evergreens, almost touch the crowns of the leafy
elms, and bathe in the sunshine that illumined the fertile plain across
the roadway. His first residence at Concord—the Old Manse—was
sufficiently remote to dispense with a trap-door, unless, indeed, this
was an after-consideration owing to family reasons. At an opposite
extremity of the village, far removed from Emerson and even the fleet
feet of Thoreau, situated at a distance from the highway, the house
itself of a gray neutral tone to baffle observation, and half concealed
amid the shade of the distant suburbs, he was here free from all
external annoyances. Here in the retired three-windowed study in the
rear of the house, which overlooked the romantic Concord River below, he
could set about his chosen task with no dread of interruption from the
outside world.
Montaigne’s was a model study, a true sanctum. Without the quiet and
reclusion it afforded, the pervading charm of the Essays would never
have been ours. Instead of sauntering and loitering along with the easy
abandon they do, they would have hurried and galloped by at breakneck
speed, striding the noisy highway rather than pacing the shady lane. The
placid, thinking, receptive mind of Montaigne was obviously the direct
outcome of the calm and tranquillity exhaled by the inaccessible round
Tower of Périgord.
The enchanting landscape, too, that smiled through the spacious windows
was, no doubt, a constant inspiration, serving to rest the eye and mind
when they were wearied by the tyranny of print, or fatigued by
protracted writing. There would doubtless be more Montaignes were it
possible to reproduce the life and surroundings amid which the Essays
were inspired. Genius is capable of much; but, to be at its best, even
genius must be in the mood, and moods are largely the result of
surroundings. “No doubt,” observes Lord Lytton, “the cradle and nursery
of definite thought is in the hazy limbo of Reverie. There ideas float
before us, rapid, magical, vague, half formed; apparitions of the
thoughts that are to be born later into the light, and run their course
in the world of man.”
“Like the rain of night,” remarks Henri Amiel in the Journal Intime,
“reverie restores color and force to thoughts which have been blanched
and wearied by the heat of the day.”
The true flavor of a fine vintage may not be savored if the wine be
roiled, or served at an improper temperature; the fine effluence that
should emanate from the study—the framing of one’s mood and the molding
of one’s thoughts, is only to be obtained in its perfect measure when
the mind is freed from all disturbing influences.
Let us mount the classic staircase with Montaigne, and view the
apartment so minutely described in the third chapter of the Third Book.
The well-filled book-cases, the sunlight, the seclusion, the inviting
prospect, the fireplace, and the immunity from noise, all are there:
“At home I betake me somewhat the oftener to my library, whence all at
once I command and survey all my household; it is seated in the chiefe
entrie of my house, thence I behold under me my garden, my base court,
my yard, and looke even into most roomes of my house. There without
order, without method, and by peece-meales I turn over and ransacke, now
one booke and now another. Sometimes I muse and rave; and walking up and
downe I endight and enregister these my humours, these my conceits. It
is placed on the third storie of a tower. The lowermost is my Chapell;
the second a chamber with other lodgings, where I often lie because I
would be alone. Above it is a great wardrobe. It was in times past the
most unprofitable place of all my house. There I past the greatest part
of my lives dayes, and weare out most houres of the day. I am never
there a nights: Next unto it is a handsome neat cabinet, able and large
enough to receive fire in winter, and very pleasantly windowen. And if I
feared not care, more than cost; (care which drives and diverts me from
all businesse) I might easily joyne a convenient gallerie of a hundred
paces long, and twelve broad, on each side of it, and upon one floore;
having already for some other purpose, found all the walles raised unto
a convenient height. Each retired place requireth a walke. My thoughts
are prone to sleepe, if I sit long. My minde goes not alone as if ledges
did moove it. Those that studie without bookes, are all in the same
case. The forme of it is round, and hath no flat side, but what serveth
for my table and my chaire: In which bending or circling manner, at one
looke it offreth me the full sight of all my books, set round about upon
shelves or desks, five rancks one upon another. It hath three
bay-windowes, of a farre-extending, rich and unresisted prospect, and is
in diameter sixteen paces wide. In winter I am less continually there:
for my house (as the name of it importeth) is pearched upon an
overpearing hillocke; and hath no part more subject to all wethers than
this: which pleaseth me the more, both because the accesse unto it is
somewhat troublesome and remote, and for the benefit of the exercise
which is to be respected; and that I may the better seclude myselfe from
companie, and keepe incroachers from me: There is my seat, that is my
throne. I endeavour to make my rule therein absolute, and to sequester
that only corner from the communitie of wife, of children, and of
acquaintance. Else-where I have but a verball authoritie, of confused
essence. Miserable in my minde is he, who in his owne home, hath no
where to be to himselfe; where he may particularly court, and at his
pleasure hide or with-draw himself. Ambition paieth her followers well,
to keepe them still in open view, as a statue in some conspicuous
place.”[6]
Footnote 6:
Florio’s translation.
Aside from the quiet, sequestration, and conveniences of the
philosopher’s study, it will be observed that among its many desirable
features was that of its being “very pleasantly windowen”
(_très-plaisamment percé_), the windows commanding a “farre-extending,
rich, and unresisted prospect” (_trois veuës de riche et libre
prospect_). Assuredly the sunshine and light that warmed and brightened
the apartment, and the unlimited view of hill and plain, were a stimulus
to the writer.
Fortunate is he who has a pleasing prospect to look in upon him—it
invigorates and cheers like a cordial. Whatever the time of year, the
distant hills, visible through my windows, are a source of companionship
and charm. So constantly are they before me, I have begun to consider
them as my own, a remote part of the garden and the grounds to which
they form the frame. I love to watch their changing expression and note
their play of light and shade. Meseems they almost resemble a human
countenance in the varying sentiments they convey. Content and
malcontent are as plainly expressed by their mobile curves as they are
by the lines of the human face. Like the rest of us, in sunshine they
smile, in storm they frown. They are warm, or cool, as the mood takes
them; as they reflect or absorb the sky and atmosphere. For days they
rest in absolute calm; again they recede, and, again, they advance.
Mirroring every change of the day and of the passing seasons, they are a
dial that tells the hour, the time of year to me. The sun salutes one
side of their profile the first thing in the morning; his parting rays
illumine the other side the last thing in the evening. They hasten the
dawn, and prolong the twilight. The full moon rising from the far
horizon behind them, silvers their wooded slopes ere it gilds the
topmost gables of my house. They catch the first drops of the summer
shower, and receive the first flakes of the November snow. The loveliest
blues and purples seek them, drawing a semi-transparent veil over them.
On hot summer noontides the cloud-flocks repose upon them, and the
orange afterglow lingers long upon their tranquil heights. In spring the
earliest violets carpet their sheltered places; in autumn they yield me
the last blue gentian bloom. I see the wind lifting their green skirts,
and fancy I hear his voice murmuring through their umbrageous depths. My
hills ever catch and focus color, and toy and play with wind and sun.
Whether shimmering in midsummer glare, or standing out against the
wintry sky, or slumbering in the haze of the dreamy autumnal day, they
are my finest landscape paintings. When the snow has spread its shroud
over the silent fields they still speak to me in color—gray, bronze, and
purple—by turns during the day; a kaleidoscope of tones when the sun
sinks behind their serried ranks of trees.
Seeing them thus year after year they have come to possess a
personality; and when a rarefied atmosphere brings them unusually near,
I find myself casting an imaginary lasso at them to bring them still
closer to me that I may stroke their lovely contours. So familiar have I
become with them, I have only to look out of my windows, and I am
treading their luminous heights, and am fanned by the breeze that
perpetually blows upon their peaceful crests.
With the wind from the southeast, I hear the roar of the railroad
trains, panting and steaming, coming and going along their slopes,
leaving a trail of smoke to mark the passage of their flight. The
ceaseless tide of travel ever hurries on. How many of those seated in
the luxurious coaches note the beauty of my hills? Cloud-shadows chase
each other, and hawks wheel over their summits, while the train speeds
on, intent upon overtaking other hills and its remote destination: the
beauty of my hills remains for me.
A knock at my study-door interrupts my musings, and my hills abruptly
recede. Not that my friend Sherlock drives them away; he is so versatile
and colorful himself that the charm of his presence and conversation
takes the place of my hills. I never learned until to-day why he has
remained a bachelor. It was only when conversing about the ideal home
that the true reason occurred to me—he has failed, not in discovering
the ideal woman, but the ideal architect to carry out his admirable
conceptions of the perfect house; and rather than fall below his
artistic standard he passively submits to fate, and awaits the architect
who is to be.
“You seem to overlook the probability of my being referred to a
committee _inquirendo lunatico_, should my views ever be carried out;
and it seems dangerous to commit them to print,” was my friend’s
rejoinder to a request that he present his views in detail.
“But the simple story of my house will at most be read by a few,” I
replied; “and these few will charitably give us credit for good
intentions; moreover the critics are not nearly as black as they are
painted.”
“My ideas,” continued my friend, “fly so rudely in the face of all
convention that people would consider the order of Nature reversed. ‘A
kitchen in the front yard!’ I hear them say, ‘Away with him!’
“Nevertheless, had I the courage of my convictions, together with ten
times as much money as I shall ever possess, I would build my house all
front, and no rear!
“A capacious vestibule, say 20 × 20 feet, should be, not the entrance
exactly, but a means of exclusion for unwelcome visitors. A door on one
side should open to my lady’s reception-room where she should receive
all formal and business calls; in short, every one whom she took no
pleasure in seeing at all.
“This reception-room should be connected with the domestic end of the
house; the store-rooms, servants’ hall, kitchen, kitchen-pantries, and,
_back of these_, the dining- and breakfast-rooms.
“On the opposite side of the vestibule should be a door, similarly
accommodating all unwelcome guests of the master, being the entrance to
the office, and connected by a heavy _portière_ and door with the den
and library. From these masculine apartments a staircase, concealed in
the wall, should enable the good man of the house to disappear to his
bath- and dressing-room; and there should also be an outer side-door
from the den, through which could be ‘fired’ (and admitted also) such
tardy and bibulous friends as might meet the disapproval of madame.
“The back of the vestibule should open and expand into the hall—a great
living-room connecting the library at one end with the dining-room at
the other, and out of which should open such little parlors and
snuggeries as inventive genius might suggest.
“Into this hall, the real house, only those one wished to see should be
admitted. Here the great staircase should rest the eye, and the great
hearth should blaze. On occasions of festivity the guests, in their
wraps, should ascend by a modest staircase in the vestibule to their
disrobing rooms, and thence descend by the grand staircase.
“The kitchen being at one end of the front part of the house, and so
conveniently accessible to the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker,
would leave all the space behind the house for piazzas, terraces, and
gardens, with such fountains, statuary, and conservatories as might be
within reach of the goodman’s purse; and all where the reporter and
unwelcome caller could not intrude; for they would be secluded alike
from the general public and the ordinary domestic offices. The principal
apartments of all Japanese houses, I may observe, are at the back of the
house, looking out upon the garden with its lilies, irises, pæonias,
azaleas, its foliage plants and flowering shrubs.
“Thus you perceive my ideal house requires four staircases: the great
one in the great hall, the modest one in the vestibule, the secret one
(to escape creditors), and the one for the servants.
“When I consider that this is only two more than all civilized houses
have, I am surprised at the moderation and restraint of the average
house-builder. But pray remember I am anxious to avoid that committee of
lunacy; and I have not yet begun to build.”
Personally, I entertain the highest regard for my versatile friend’s
ideal. Were I to suggest any change in the main points, so admirably
conceived, it would be to have the study removed to a still serener
sphere, as has already been suggested. Even with my friend’s excellent
barricade, still, on _some_ occasion when least expected—perchance a
most momentous one, just as a long-lost conceit had winged its
return—the dreaded intruder might force an entrance, and put the thought
to instantaneous and irremeable flight.
The size of the study, methinks, should be small rather than large; yet
ample enough to harbor the cheering grate-fire, the easy-chairs, the
center-table, the writing-desk, the well-filled book-cases, and the
artistic glass cabinet or cabinets, for such precious works as should be
kept under lock and key and never loaned, or even touched by
sacrilegious hands.
Let these gems be worthily set as becomes their quality and rarity, so
they may minister to the delight of the eye and the pleasure of the
touch as they contribute to the delectation of the mind. “Sashes of gold
for old saints, golden bindings for old writings,” Nodier expresses it;
and Charles Asselineau affectionately exclaims: “My Books, I love them!
I have sought them, gathered them, searched for them; I have had them
habited to the best of my ability by the best tailors of books.” My
glass cabinet is my casket, my jewel-case; and in the many-colored
morocco of the bindings that reflect the precious riches contained
within them, I see all manner of jewels flash and glow. In these, and in
some of the superb marblings employed in the finer French bindings—and
here the exquisite beauty of the perfect half-morocco binding is
apparent—I derive a satisfaction akin to that I receive from the
contemplation of any fine art object. The airy conceits and felicities
of phrase of a favorite author become yet more entrancing when held by
these colored butterfly-wings and variegated plumes dreamed out by the
artist, and stamped in permanent form by the skill of the binder.
Thought is inclined to wander amid the freedom of a large room. But
though the study should not be a vast apartment, it should be
sufficiently spacious for comfort and to avoid overcrowding.
Sufficiently large it should also be and the ceiling sufficiently high
to insure a pure atmosphere. On account of ventilation, a fire-place is
of great advantage in the room where one is engaged in sedentary
pursuits. It is the next thing to the walk and the elixir of the open
air. De Quincey worked in a room seventeen by twelve, and not more than
seven and a half feet high. The low ceilings must have oppressed him;
and the vitiated air and sense of suffocation, it is not unlikely, led
him to yield to the dangerous stimulus that inspired the Confessions.
Most wisely has Leigh Hunt discoursed upon the study and its
surroundings in that ever-pleasing essay, My Books. “I do not like this
fine large study. I like elegance. I like room to breathe in, and even
walk about, when I want to breathe and walk about. I like a great
library next my study; but for the study itself give me a small, snug
place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one
window in it looking on trees.... I dislike a grand library to study in.
I mean an immense apartment with books all in museum order, especially
wire-safed. I say nothing against the museum itself, or public
libraries.... A grand private library, which the master of the house
also makes his study, never looks to me like a real place of books, much
less of authorship. I can not take kindly to it. It is certainly not out
of envy; for three parts of the books are generally trash, and I can
seldom think of the rest and the proprietor together.”
To be attractive and cozy, the study need not be extravagantly
furnished. As in other apartments of the house, light is one of its
first requisites; with color, ease, quiet, and, if possible, a pleasant
prospect. In the study, above all, no discordant elements should
intrude. The general tone of the walls, decorations, and furnishings,
while rich, should yet be subdued and restful. A glaring placque, a
staring figure in the wall or carpet pattern, or any subject unpleasing
in its nature or sentiment, whether in paintings, pictures, or
ornaments, has no place in an apartment which, by its very atmosphere,
should conduce to reverie and a contemplative frame of mind. Let
dreamful landscapes, rather than figures in action, adorn and complement
the rich slate or sage of its walls and hangings; and I picture my ideal
study, when my second ship comes in, hung round about solely with
Daubigny’s tender twilights and peaceful river-reaches on his calm and
slowly gliding Oise.
For the closer concentration of thought, the working-chair would be
placed in the most attractive corner of the apartment, back of the
spacious writing-desk, with its amplitude of drawers and pigeon-holes;
its topmost shelf and other convenient places so arranged with pictures
and portraits of favorite authors and dear or absent friends as to
create and constantly diffuse an atmosphere of congenial companionship.
A carved book-rest should hold the dictionary in place close to the
working-chair, and a revolving case within arm’s reach should bring to
it desired works of reference and such especially treasured volumes from
which ideas may be collected—another name for inspiration. I would
mention some of these—each worthy of crushed levant covers, the
handicraft of a Padeloup or Payne—but for the fact that every one should
choose such inspirations for himself. One may not be guided by another’s
choice in a face or book that charms.
Once during the day, but always unperceived, save for an added freshness
pervading the apartment, my study should respond to the touch of gentle
fingers. Then, as I mount the secret staircase when I would be alone—a
lingering aroma of violets and the vanishing rustle of a silken robe.
[Illustration]
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