THEORIES
If there is anything more delightful than to furnish one's first home,
I have yet to discover it. Aubrey says that "moving in goes it one
better," but his preference is based on the solid satisfaction he takes
in putting in two shelves where one grew before and in providing
towel-racks and closet-hooks wherever there is an inviting wall-space
for them.
But to me, even the list I made out and changed and figured on and
priced before I made a single purchase was full of possibilities, and
contained wild flutters of excitement on account of certain innovations
I wished to try.
"Aubrey," I said one evening as the Angel sat reading Draper's
"Intellectual Development of Europe," "have you any pet theories?"
"What's that? Pet theories about what?"
"Housekeeping."
"I don't quite understand. I've never kept house, you know."
"I mean did your mother keep her house and buy her furniture and manage
her servants to suit you, or exactly as you would do if you had been in
her place?"
"Not in the least," said the Angel, laying down his book, all interest
at once.
"Ah! I knew it! Then you _have_ theories! That's what I wanted to
bring out. Now I have theories, too. One is the rag-bag theory."
"The--?"
"The theory that every housewife must have a rag-bag. My mother had
one because her mother did and _her_ mother because _hers_ did, and so
on back to the English one who probably brought _her_ rag-bag across
with her. Ours was made of bed-ticking, and had a draw-string in it
and hung in the bathroom closet. Now if you ever tried to lift a heavy
bag down from a hook and knew the bother of emptying it of neat little
rolls of every sort of cloth from big rolls of cotton-batting to little
bundles of silk patches and having to look through every one of them to
find a scrap of white taffeta to line a stock, then you know what a
trial of temper the family rag-bag is."
"And you--" said the Angel, who is definite in his conclusions.
"_I_ mean to have a large drawer in a good light absolutely
_sacrificed_, as some people would call it, to the scraps. When you
want a rag or a bone or a hank of hair in our house, all you will have
to do is to pull out an easy sliding drawer without opening a door that
sticks, or crawling into a dark corner, or having to light a candle, or
doing anything to ruffle your temper or your hair. A flood of
brilliant sunlight or moonlight will pour into my rag-drawer, and a few
pawings of your unoccupied hand will bring everything to the top.
Won't that be joyful?"
Aubrey, who loves to fuss about repairs and is for ever wanting
material, was so enchanted with the picture I drew that he longed to
have a cut finger to bind up on the spot.
"Have you any more theories?" he asked, laying Draper on his knee
without even marking his place.
"A few. Some are about buying furniture."
"We want everything good," said Aubrey, firmly.
"More than that. We want _some_ things beautiful. And some things
_very_ expensive."
I thought I saw the bank-book give a nervous flop just here. But
perhaps it was only Aubrey's expression of countenance which changed.
"For instance, I want no chairs for show. Every spot intended to rest
the human frame in our house shall bring a sigh of relief from the
weary one who sinks into it. I have already started it by the couch I
ordered last week for your study. I went to the man who takes orders
and said: 'Have you ever read "Trilby"?' And he said no, but his wife
had when it was the rage about five years ago. I had brought a copy on
purpose, so I read him that paragraph from the first chapter describing
the studio. Here it is: 'An immense divan spread itself in width and
length and delightful thickness just beneath the big north window, the
business window--a divan so immense that three well-fed, well-contented
Englishmen could all lie lazily smoking their pipes on it at once,
without being in each other's way, and very often did!' He smiled and
said it made very agreeable reading, to which I replied that I wanted
one made just like it."
"What did he say?"
"Well, of course he argued. He wanted to make it a normal size. He
wanted to know the size of the doors it would have to go through, and I
told him it was for an apartment. As soon as he knew that he wanted to
make the lower part of cedar to store furs in for the winter. I said:
'No, no! This is a luxury. There is to be nothing useful about it. I
want the whole inside given up to springs!' He said, 'Turkish?' and I
said yes, and put in two sets of them. At that he began to catch the
spirit of the thing and took an interest. We argued so over the size
of it that finally I told him to send out and measure the elevator and
the door and the room it was to go in and make it just as large as
those spaces would allow. So you'll have a divan ten by six. I wanted
it bigger, but I couldn't have got it through any front door."
"Why, won't it about fill that little room?" asked my husband, with a
trace of anxiety in his tone.
"Only about half-way. There's just room for a little table of books at
one end of the divan, and I'm going to have a movable electric lamp
with a ground-glass globe and a green shade to be good for the eyes.
Your pipe-rack will be on the wall over it. Then by squeezing a little
there will be just room for my writing-chair,--you know the one with
the desk on the arm and the little drawer for note-paper?"
Aubrey got up and came over to where I had my list, and Draper fell to
the floor unnoticed.
"I never heard anything sound so comfortable," he said. The Angel is
always appreciative, and, moreover, is never too absorbed or too tired
to express it fluently. That's one of the things which make it such a
pleasure to plan his comfort.
"Doesn't it sound winter evening-y and snowy outside?" I said.
"I can hear the wind howling," said the Angel. "What's the next item?"
"Well, now we come to a theory. Of course I have had no more
experience than you in buying furniture, but it stands to reason that
some of the things we buy now will be with us at death. Some furniture
stays by you like a murder. For instance, a dining-room table. I have
known some very rich people in my life, Aubrey, but I have seldom seen
any who grew rich gradually who had had the moral courage to discard a
dining-room table if it were even decently good. Have you ever thought
about that?"
"I can't say that I have, but it is fraught with possibility. 'The
Ethics of Household Furniture' would make good reading."
"Well, haven't you," I persisted, "in all seriousness, haven't you seen
some very handsome modern dining-rooms marred by a dinner-table too
good to throw away, which you were convinced the family had begun
housekeeping with?"
"Yes, I have!" cried Aubrey. "You are right, I have. I thought you
were jesting at first."
"Well, I am, sort of half-way. But the sort of dinner-table I want to
buy is no joke. It is one which will grace an apartment or a palace.
We can be proud of it even when we are rich. Yet it is not showy, or
one which will be too screamingly prominent. It is of carved oak with
the value all in the carving. It costs--" Here I whispered the price,
for to us it was almost a crime to think of it.
The Angel looked sober when my whisper reached him. But he did not
commit himself. I eyed him anxiously.
"But to make up for that outlay, here is the way I have planned the
rest of the house. Let's have no drawing-room."
"No drawing-room? Then where will you receive guests?"
"The room will be there, and people may come into it and sit down, but
it will not be familiar ground to strangers. They will find themselves
in a cheerful room with soothing walls and comfortable chairs. There
will be books and magazines. It will not be a library, for quantities
of bookcases discourage the frivolous. It will have no gilt chairs,
because big men always want to sit in them. It will have no lace
curtains, because I hate them. The piano will be there and most of our
wedding-presents,--all which lend themselves to the decoration of a
room which will look as if people lived in it."
"If you put bric-à-brac in it people will call it a parlour in spite of
you," said the Angel.
"Not at all. It will have one distinguishing feature which will
effectually prevent the discriminating from making that mistake. I
intend to make the clock on the mantel _go_. That will settle matters."
"Of course."
"This room will lack the stiffness of a drawing-room and so invite
conversation, yet will be sufficiently dignified to prevent
familiarity. I shall endeavour to invest it with an invitation which
will practically say to your college friends, 'You may smoke here, but
you may not throw ashes on the floor.' Do you see my point?"
The Angel looked thoughtful.
"I hope it will work," he said.
"We can but try it. I am doing this because I wish our friends to meet
us together, and I don't approve of this separating men and women,--the
women remaining alone to gossip while the men go away to smoke. It is
too narrowing on us and too broadening on you."
"I like it,--in theory,--but some men are chimneys. They don't know
how to smoke when ladies are present."
"They will soon learn!" I declared, stoutly. "I shall be so attentive
to their comfort, so ready with an ash-tray, so eager to offer them the
last cigar in the jar (if I think they have smoked enough) that they
will notice my slightest cough."
Aubrey waxed enthusiastic.
"An evening spent in that room will be 'An Education in Polite
Smoking,' won't it?"
"And," I went on, "then when we are rich and want a truly handsome
drawingroom we can furnish it in pink silk and cupids with a light
heart, for behold, we will simply move all this comfort I have
described into a library, and the wear on the furniture will redeem it
from newness and give it the proper air of age and use. There is
nothing more vulgar to my mind than a perfectly new library. It
looks--well, you know!"
"It does," said the Angel, with conviction. "All of that!"
We discussed these theories in detail, made many corrections, and
finally went down to buy. But a handsome shop and money in my pocket
always excite me so that what little common sense I was born with
instantly departs, and I buy feverishly, mostly things I do not want
and could not use. So the Angel adopted a good, safe rule. When he
saw my eyes begin to glitter with a "I-must-have-that-or-die"
expression, he used to take me by the arm and say:
"Now shut your eyes, and I'll get you past this counter."
I have heard of many curious women who do not enjoy housekeeping. I am
free to confess that I do not understand why, unless they started out
in life with the conceited idea that to bend their wonderful brains
upon the silly problem of keeping a house clean and ordering dinners
was beneath women of their possibilities on club essays. I often
wonder if they attacked the proposition of housekeeping with the
intention of seeing how much fun there is in it, of how much pleasure
could be got out of making a home, not merely keeping house, and of
feeding their conceit with the fuel of a determination to keep house
better than any woman of their acquaintance. The simple but
fascinating problem of how to make each room a little prettier than it
was last week, would keep even an ingenious woman busy and interested
in something worth while, and those of us who are sensitive to
impressions would be spared the truly awful sight of certain
incongruous rooms in handsome houses. Oh, if you only knew what people
say about you--you women who "don't like to keep house!"
But I forgot. Most women have no sense of humour, and few husbands
take the intense interest in a home that the Angel does.
America, foreigners claim, is a country almost as homeless as France is
said to be. The French have no word for home in their language, but
they have homes in fact, which is much more worth while. We Americans
have the lovely word "Home," but we haven't as a nation the article in
fact. Americans have houses, but in truth we are a homeless race.
Only the unenlightened will contradict me for saying that, and for the
opinion of the unenlightened I do not care.
I am not sentimental after the fashion of women who send flowers to
murderers, but I am full of pale and sickly theories as to the making
of a home, and I am free to confess that it would give me more pleasure
to hear people say of me, "Mrs. Jardine's husband is the happiest man I
know," than to have them read on a bronze tablet under a statue in the
Louvre, "Faith Jardine, Sculptor." For if more ambitious women would
devote themselves to making one neglected husband happy the public
would be spared weak and indifferent pictures, silly and rank books,
rainy-day skirts in the house, and heaps of other foolishness and bad
taste, most of which at bottom is not the necessity to work for a
living, but simply Feminine Conceit.
Of course Aubrey and I made some mistakes in spite of all our
precautions, for, happily for me, the Angel can be led away by
enthusiasm, and is not so faultlessly perfect as to be impossible to
get on with. I revel in his weaknesses, they are so human and
companionable, and give me such a feeling of satisfaction when summing
up my own faults. We got so much fun out of shopping for the house
that we dragged out the process to make the delight of it as lingering
as possible. I had planned it all out.
My own room was to be pink. Big pink roses splashed all over the
cretonne counterpane and valance of the bed. Plain pink wall-paper
upon which to hang pictures all in black frames. Small pink roses
tumbling on the ceiling and looking as if every moment they would
scatter their curling petals on the pink rugs on the floor. The dark
furniture against the pink walls toned down the rose colour, which
returned the compliment to the furniture by bringing out the carving on
bold relief.
The guest-room, on the contrary, was to be pale blue with white
furniture. Nothing but gold-framed pictures on the walls and a blue
rug on the floor. The chairs were to be upholstered in blue for this
room, and in pink for mine. Muslin curtains with full deep ruffles,
picked out respectively with pink and blue, would flutter at the sunny
windows, and though simplicity itself, nothing ever struck me as any
more attractive, for it was all mine--my first house--my first
housekeeping! When this dream really came true, I walked around in
such a dazed condition of delight that I was black and blue from
knocking myself into things I didn't see. But even as I did not see
the obstructions, I did not feel the pain of my bruises, for they were
all got from my furniture on corners of _my_ house, and thus were
sacred.
As I gazed on the delicate beauty of my pretty little guest-chamber I
fell to wondering who would be its first occupant. Would it be a man
or a woman? Would it be Artie Beguelin, the Angel's best man, or my
sweet friend and bridesmaid, Cary Farquhar?
At any rate, he or she would be welcome--oh, so welcome! I hoped the
invisible guest would be happy, and would feel that ours was not a
compulsory hospitality, with the cost counted beforehand and the
benefits we expected in return discounted. No, whoever it was to be
would be a guest and a friend. On the wall over the bed hung these
words illuminated on vellum and framed, for I had always loved them:
"Sleep sweet, within this quiet room,
Oh thou, whoe'er thou art!
And let no mournful yesterday
Disturb thy peaceful heart,
Nor let to-morrow fret thy dreams
With thoughts of coming ill,
Thy Maker is thy changeless Friend,
His love surrounds thee still.
Sleep sweet!
Good night."
Afterward, when my first guest had come and gone, this momentary
reverie came back to me, and I looked up at this benediction with tears
in my eyes.
Of course we spent too much money on our house furnishings. We always
do, but after all--and here come my theories again. I would have fine
table and bed linen. The Angel did not believe I would stick to it,
but I did embroider it all myself. And as to hemming napkins and
table-cloths--I challenge any nun in any convent to make prettier
French hems than I put in! Would I be likely to waste all that labour
on flimsy napkins or cotton sheets and pillow-cases?
Not at all! I can find infinitely more pleasure in putting invisible
stitches into my own first linen than in going to pink teas, and people
don't get permanently angry if you invite them to dinner, and let them
eat off hemmed and embroidered damask. Believe me. You may send cards
to six receptions, and get out of six afternoons of misery and
indigestion by one judiciously arranged dinner--if you don't mix your
people. And thus we did.
So I got my linen. The Angel laughed at another of my theories, but
when I proved to him that I would really see the thing through, he was
convinced. It was on the question of beds. Our friends professed
themselves astonished that we contemplated the extravagance of a
guest-chamber, for here in New York, where rents are so abnormal,
people economize first of all upon their friends, and I am told that an
extra bedroom where a chance guest may be asked to remain overnight is
the exception with people of moderate means. Such monstrous
selfishness struck me as appalling. To provide _only_ for
ourselves--for our own comfort! To have no room in all your own luxury
to share with a friend! To be obliged to tell the woman whose
hospitality you have enjoyed in your girlhood: "Now that I am married,
I have prepared no place for you! Your kindness to me is all
forgotten!"
Well, we simply refused. What if it were a strain on us financially?
I would rather suffer that than cripple myself spiritually and suffer
from no pangs of conscience as most New Yorkers do!
However, we managed it, and in this wise. I said:
"Aubrey, if you are willing, we can save a great deal in this way."
Even at this early stage the Angel always grew deeply attentive when I
talked of saving anything.
"We can and must order the finest springs and mattresses for the beds,
for of all the meanness in this world the meanest is to put a bad bed
in the guest-chamber, and that is where most housekeepers are perfectly
willing to economize. But we can and will buy white iron beds with
brass trimmings for almost nothing,--they are all the same size as the
fine brass ones,--so that at any time when we find ourselves vulgarly
rich and able to live up to the dinner-table we shall feel perfectly
justified in discarding them, and there you are!"
"But how will it look?" said the man.
"How will our bank-account look, if we don't?"
"I know. But I thought women were afraid of what other women would
say," said the Angel.
"Now, Aubrey," I said, "If we have economized on ourselves, or rather
included ourselves in a general scheme of economy in order the better
to provide for our guests, I think even New Yorkers would hesitate to
criticize the Jardines' iron beds,--especially if they ever got a
chance to disport themselves on the Jardines' Turkish springs!"
"There's something in that," said the Angel.