Speaking of homes, I am building one now, and I venture to assert that
very few homes have received more serious thought in the planning. Let
me tell you about it. In the first place, there will be no grounds
whatever, no fences, lawns, nor flowers. Roughly, the dimensions will be
forty-five feet by fifteen. That is, it will be fifteen feet wide at its
widest--and, if you will pardon the bull, it will be narrower than it is
wide.
The details must submit to the general plan of economy. There will be no
veranda, no porch entrances, no grand staircases. I'm ashamed to say how
steep the stairways are going to be. The bedrooms will be seven by
seven, and one will be even smaller. A bedroom is only good to sleep in,
anyway. There will be no hallway, thank goodness. Rooms were made to go
through. Why a separate passage for traffic?
The bath-room will be a trifle larger than the size of the smallest
bath-tub--it won't require so much work to keep in order. The kitchen
won't be very much larger, but this will make it easy for the cook. In
place of a drawing-room, there will be a large living-room--fourteen by
six. The walls of this room will be covered with books, and it can serve
as library and smoking-room as well. Then, the floor-space not being
occupied, we shall use the room as a dining-room. Incidentally, such a
room not being used after bedtime, the cook and the second boy can sleep
in it. One thing that I am temperamentally opposed to is waste, and why
should all this splendid room be wasted at night when we do not occupy
it?
My ideas are cramped, you say?--Oh, I forgot to tell you that this home I
am describing is to be a floating home, and that my wife and I are to
journey around the world in it for the matter of seven years or more. I
forgot also to state that there will be an engine-room in it for a
seventy-horse-power engine, a dynamo, storage batteries, etc.; tanks for
water to last long weeks at sea; space for fifteen hundred gallons of
gasolene, fire extinguishers, and life-preservers; and a great store-room
for food, spare sails, anchors, hawsers, tackles, and a thousand and one
other things.
Since I have not yet built my land house, I haven't got beyond a few
general ideas, and in presenting them I feel as cocksure as the unmarried
woman who writes the column in the Sunday supplement on how to rear
children. My first idea about a house is that it should be built to live
in. Throughout the house, in all the building of it, this should be the
paramount idea. It must be granted that this idea is lost sight of by
countless persons who build houses apparently for every purpose under the
sun except to live in them.
Perhaps it is because of the practical life I have lived that I worship
utility and have come to believe that utility and beauty should be one,
and that there is no utility that need not be beautiful. What finer
beauty than strength--whether it be airy steel, or massive masonry, or a
woman's hand? A plain black leather strap is beautiful. It is all
strength and all utility, and it is beautiful. It efficiently performs
work in the world, and it is good to look upon. Perhaps it is because it
is useful that it is beautiful. I do not know. I sometimes wonder.
A boat on the sea is beautiful. Yet it is not built for beauty. Every
graceful line of it is a utility, is designed to perform work. It is
created for the express purpose of dividing the water in front of it, of
gliding over the water beneath it, of leaving the water behind it--and
all with the least possible wastage of stress and friction. It is not
created for the purpose of filling the eye with beauty. It is created
for the purpose of moving through the sea and over the sea with the
smallest resistance and the greatest stability; yet, somehow, it does
fill the eye with its beauty. And in so far as a boat fails in its
purpose, by that much does it diminish in beauty.
I am still a long way from the house I have in my mind some day to build,
yet I have arrived somewhere. I have discovered, to my own satisfaction
at any rate, that beauty and utility should be one. In applying this
general idea to the building of a house, it may be stated, in another and
better way; namely, construction and decoration must be one. This idea
is more important than the building of the house, for without the idea
the house so built is certain to be an insult to intelligence and
beauty-love.
I bought a house in a hurry in the city of Oakland some time ago. I do
not live in it. I sleep in it half a dozen times a year. I do not love
the house. I am hurt every time I look at it. No drunken rowdy or
political enemy can insult me so deeply as that house does. Let me tell
you why. It is an ordinary two-storey frame house. After it was built,
the criminal that constructed it nailed on, at the corners
perpendicularly, some two-inch fluted planks. These planks rise the
height of the house, and to a drunken man have the appearance of fluted
columns. To complete the illusion in the eyes of the drunken man, the
planks are topped with wooden Ionic capitals, nailed on, and in, I may
say, bas-relief.
When I analyze the irritation these fluted planks cause in me, I find the
reason in the fact that the first rule for building a house has been
violated. These decorative planks are no part of the construction. They
have no use, no work to perform. They are plastered gawds that tell lies
that nobody believes. A column is made for the purpose of supporting
weight; this is its use. A column, when it is a utility, is beautiful.
The fluted wooden columns nailed on outside my house are not utilities.
They are not beautiful. They are nightmares. They not only support no
weight, but they themselves are a weight that drags upon the supports of
the house. Some day, when I get time, one of two things will surely
happen. Either I'll go forth and murder the man who perpetrated the
atrocity, or else I'll take an axe and chop off the lying, fluted planks.
A thing must be true, or it is not beautiful, any more than a painted
wanton is beautiful, any more than a sky-scraper is beautiful that is
intrinsically and structurally light and that has a false massiveness of
pillars plastered on outside. The true sky-scraper _is_ beautiful--and
this is the reluctant admission of a man who dislikes humanity-festering
cities. The true sky-scraper is beautiful, and it is beautiful in so far
as it is true. In its construction it is light and airy, therefore in
its appearance it must be light and airy. It dare not, if it wishes to
be beautiful, lay claim to what it is not. And it should not bulk on the
city-scape like Leviathan; it should rise and soar, light and airy and
fairylike.
Man is an ethical animal--or, at least, he is more ethical than any other
animal. Wherefore he has certain yearnings for honesty. And in no way
can these yearnings be more thoroughly satisfied than by the honesty of
the house in which he lives and passes the greater part of his life.
They that dwelt in San Francisco were dishonest. They lied and cheated
in their business life (like the dwellers in all cities), and because
they lied and cheated in their business life, they lied and cheated in
the buildings they erected. Upon the tops of the simple, severe walls of
their buildings they plastered huge projecting cornices. These cornices
were not part of the construction. They made believe to be part of the
construction, and they were lies. The earth wrinkled its back for
twenty-eight seconds, and the lying cornices crashed down as all lies are
doomed to crash down. In this particular instance, the lies crashed down
upon the heads of the people fleeing from their reeling habitations, and
many were killed. They paid the penalty of dishonesty.
Not alone should the construction of a house be truthful and honest, but
the material must be honest. They that lived in San Francisco were
dishonest in the material they used. They sold one quality of material
and delivered another quality of material. They always delivered an
inferior quality. There is not one case recorded in the business history
of San Francisco where a contractor or builder delivered a quality
superior to the one sold. A seven-million-dollar city hall became thirty
cents in twenty-eight seconds. Because the mortar was not honest, a
thousand walls crashed down and scores of lives were snuffed out. There
is something, after all, in the contention of a few religionists that the
San Francisco earthquake was a punishment for sin. It was a punishment
for sin; but it was not for sin against God. The people of San Francisco
sinned against themselves.
An honest house tells the truth about itself. There is a house here in
Glen Ellen. It stands on a corner. It is built of beautiful red stone.
Yet it is not beautiful. On three sides the stone is joined and pointed.
The fourth side is the rear. It faces the back yard. The stone is not
pointed. It is all a smudge of dirty mortar, with here and there bricks
worked in when the stone gave out. The house is not what it seems. It
is a lie. All three of the walls spend their time lying about the fourth
wall. They keep shouting out that the fourth wall is as beautiful as
they. If I lived long in that house I should not be responsible for my
morals. The house is like a man in purple and fine linen, who hasn't had
a bath for a month. If I lived long in that house I should become a
dandy and cut out bathing--for the same reason, I suppose, that an
African is black and that an Eskimo eats whale-blubber. I shall not
build a house like that house.
Last year I started to build a barn. A man who was a liar undertook to
do the stonework and concrete work for me. He could not tell the truth
to my face; he could not tell the truth in his work. I was building for
posterity. The concrete foundations were four feet wide and sunk three
and one-half feet into the earth. The stone walls were two feet thick
and nine feet high. Upon them were to rest the great beams that were to
carry all the weight of hay and the forty tons of the roof. The man who
was a liar made beautiful stone walls. I used to stand alongside of them
and love them. I caressed their massive strength with my hands. I
thought about them in bed, before I went to sheep. And they were lies.
Came the earthquake. Fortunately the rest of the building of the barn
had been postponed. The beautiful stone walls cracked in all directions.
I started, to repair, and discovered the whole enormous lie. The walls
were shells. On each face were beautiful, massive stones--on edge. The
inside was hollow. This hollow in some places was filled with clay and
loose gravel. In other places it was filled with air and emptiness, with
here and there a piece of kindling-wood or dry-goods box, to aid in the
making of the shell. The walls were lies. They were beautiful, but they
were not useful. Construction and decoration had been divorced. The
walls were all decoration. They hadn't any construction in them. "As
God lets Satan live," I let that lying man live, but--I have built new
walls from the foundation up.
And now to my own house beautiful, which I shall build some seven or ten
years from now. I have a few general ideas about it. It must be honest
in construction, material, and appearance. If any feature of it, despite
my efforts, shall tell lies, I shall remove that feature. Utility and
beauty must be indissolubly wedded. Construction and decoration must be
one. If the particular details keep true to these general ideas, all
will be well.
I have not thought of many details. But here are a few. Take the
bath-room, for instance. It shall be as beautiful as any room in the
house, just as it will be as useful. The chance is, that it will be the
most expensive room in the house. Upon that we are resolved--even if we
are compelled to build it first, and to live in a tent till we can get
more money to go on with the rest of the house. In the bath-room no
delights of the bath shall be lacking. Also, a large part of the
expensiveness will be due to the use of material that will make it easy
to keep the bathroom clean and in order. Why should a servant toil
unduly that my body may be clean? On the other hand, the honesty of my
own flesh, and the square dealing I give it, are more important than all
the admiration of my friends for expensive decorative schemes and
magnificent trivialities. More delightful to me is a body that sings
than a stately and costly grand staircase built for show. Not that I
like grand staircases less, but that I like bath-rooms more.
I often regret that I was born in this particular period of the world.
In the matter of servants, how I wish I were living in the golden future
of the world, where there will be no servants--naught but service of
love. But in the meantime, living here and now, being practical,
understanding the rationality and the necessity of the division of
labour, I accept servants. But such acceptance does not justify me in
lack of consideration for them. In my house beautiful their rooms shall
not be dens and holes. And on this score I foresee a fight with the
architect. They shall have bath-rooms, toilet conveniences, and comforts
for their leisure time and human life--if I have to work Sundays to pay
for it. Even under the division of labour I recognize that no man has a
right to servants who will not treat them as humans compounded of the
same clay as himself, with similar bundles of nerves and desires,
contradictions, irritabilities, and lovablenesses. Heaven in the
drawing-room and hell in the kitchen is not the atmosphere for a growing
child to breathe--nor an adult either. One of the great and selfish
objections to chattel slavery was the effect on the masters themselves.
And because of the foregoing, one chief aim in the building of my house
beautiful will be to have a house that will require the minimum of
trouble and work to keep clean and orderly. It will be no spick and span
and polished house, with an immaculateness that testifies to the tragedy
of drudge. I live in California where the days are warm. I'd prefer
that the servants had three hours to go swimming (or hammocking) than be
compelled to spend those three hours in keeping the house spick and span.
Therefore it devolves upon me to build a house that can be kept clean and
orderly without the need of those three hours.
But underneath the spick and span there is something more dreadful than
the servitude of the servants. This dreadful thing is the philosophy of
the spick and span. In Korea the national costume is white. Nobleman
and coolie dress alike in white. It is hell on the women who do the
washing, but there is more in it than that. The coolie cannot keep his
white clothes clean. He toils and they get dirty. The dirty white of
his costume is the token of his inferiority. The nobleman's dress is
always spotless white. It means that he doesn't have to work. But it
means, further, that somebody else has to work for him. His superiority
is not based upon song-craft nor state-craft, upon the foot-races he has
run nor the wrestlers he has thrown. His superiority is based upon the
fact that he doesn't have to work, and that others are compelled to work
for him. And so the Korean drone flaunts his clean white clothes, for
the same reason that the Chinese flaunts his monstrous finger-nails, and
the white man and woman flaunt the spick-and-spanness of their spotless
houses.
There will be hardwood floors in my house beautiful. But these floors
will not be polished mirrors nor skating-rinks. They will be just plain
and common hardwood floors. Beautiful carpets are not beautiful to the
mind that knows they are filled with germs and bacilli. They are no more
beautiful than the hectic flush of fever, or the silvery skin of leprosy.
Besides, carpets enslave. A thing that enslaves is a monster, and
monsters are not beautiful.
The fireplaces in my house will be many and large. Small fires and cold
weather mean hermetically-sealed rooms and a jealous cherishing of heated
and filth-laden air. With large fire-places and generous heat, some
windows may be open all the time, and without hardship all the windows
can be opened every little while and the rooms flushed with clean pure
air. I have nearly died in the stagnant, rotten air of other people's
houses--especially in the Eastern states. In Maine I have slept in a
room with storm-windows immovable, and with one small pane five inches by
six, that could be opened. Did I say slept? I panted with my mouth in
the opening and blasphemed till I ruined all my chances of heaven.
For countless thousands of years my ancestors have lived and died and
drawn all their breaths in the open air. It is only recently that we
have begun to live in houses. The change is a hardship, especially on
the lungs. I've got only one pair of lungs, and I haven't the address of
any repair-shop. Wherefore I stick by the open air as much as possible.
For this reason my house will have large verandas, and, near to the
kitchen, there will be a veranda dining-room. Also, there will be a
veranda fireplace, where we can breathe fresh air and be comfortable when
the evenings are touched with frost.
I have a plan for my own bedroom. I spend long hours in bed, reading,
studying, and working. I have tried sleeping in the open, but the lamp
attracts all the creeping, crawling, butting, flying, fluttering things
to the pages of my book, into my ears and blankets, and down the back of
my neck. So my bedroom shall be indoors.
But it will be, not be of, indoors. Three sides of it will be open. The
fourth side will divide it from the rest of the house. The three sides
will be screened against the creeping, fluttering things, but not against
the good fresh air and all the breezes that blow. For protection against
storm, to keep out the driving rain, there will be a sliding glass, so
made that when not in use it will occupy small space and shut out very
little air.
There is little more to say about this house. I am to build seven or ten
years from now. There is plenty of time in which to work up all the
details in accord with the general principles I have laid down. It will
be a usable house and a beautiful house, wherein the aesthetic guest can
find comfort for his eyes as well as for his body. It will be a happy
house--or else I'll burn it down. It will be a house of air and sunshine
and laughter. These three cannot be divorced. Laughter without air and
sunshine becomes morbid, decadent, demoniac. I have in me a thousand
generations. Laughter that is decadent is not good for these thousand
generations.
GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA.
_July_ 1906.