When the house was up as far as the second floor and the first mortgage,
talk rose touching on the furnishings. To me it seemed there would be
ample time a decade or so thence to begin thinking of the furnishings.
So far as I could tell there was no hurry and probably there never would
be any hurry. For the job had reached that stage so dismally familiar
to any one who ever started a house with intent to live in it when
completed, if ever. I refer to the stage when a large and variegated
assortment of hired help are ostensibly busy upon the premises and yet
everything seems practically to be at a standstill. From the standpoint
of a mere bystander whose only function is to pay the bills, it seems
that the workmen are only coming to the job of a morning because they
hate the idea of hanging round their own homes all day with nothing to
do.
So it was with us. Sawing and hammering and steam fitting and plumbing
and stone-lying and brick-lying were presumed to be going on; laborers
were wielding the languid pick; a roof layer was defying the laws of
gravitation on our ridgepole; at stated intervals there were great gobs
of payments on account of this or that to be met and still and yet and
notwithstanding, to the lay eye the progress appeared infinitesimal. For
the first time I could understand why Pharaoh or Rameses or whoever it
was that built the Pyramids displayed peevishness toward the Children
of Israel. Indeed I developed a cordial sympathy for him. He had my best
wishes. They were four or five thousand years late, but even so he had
'em and welcome.
Accordingly when the matter of investing in furnishings was broached I
stoutly demurred. As I recall, I spoke substantially as follows:
“Why all this mad haste? Rome wasn't built in a day, as I have often
heard, and in view of my own recent experiences I am ready to make
affidavit to the fact. I'll go further than that. I'll bet any sum
within reason, up to a million dollars, that the meanest smokehouse
in Rome was not built in a day. No Roman smokehouse--Ionic, Doric,
Corinthian or Old Line Etruscan--is barred.
“Unless workingmen have changed a whole lot since those times, it was
not possible to begin to start to commence to get ready to go ahead to
proceed to advance with that smokehouse or any other smokehouse in a
day. And after they did get started they dallied along and dallied along
and killed time until process curing came into fashion among the best
families of Ancient Rome and smokehouses lost their vogue altogether.
Let us not be too impetuous about the detail of furnishings. I have a
feeling--a feeling based on my own observations over yonder at the site
of our own little undertaking--that when that house is really done the
only furnishings we'll require will be a couple of wheel chairs and
something to warm up spoon victuals in.
“Anyhow, what's wrong with the furnishings we already have in storage?
Judging by the present rate of non-progress--of static advancement, if I
may use such a phrase--long before we have a place to set them up in
our furnishings will be so entirely out of style that they'll be back
in style all over again, if you get me. These things move in cycles,
you know. One generation buys furniture and uses it. The next generation
finding it hopelessly old-fashioned and out of date burns it up or casts
it away or gives it away or stores it in the attic--anything to get rid
of it. The third generation spends vast sums of money trying to restore
it or the likes of it, for by that time the stuff which was despised and
discarded is in strong demand and fetching fancy prices.
“The only mistake is to belong to the middle generation, which curiously
enough is always the present one. We crave what our grandparents owned
but our parents did not. Our grandchildren will crave what we had
but our own children won't. They'll junk it. To-day's monstrosity
is day-after-tomorrow's art treasure just as today's museum piece is
day-before-yesterday's monstrosity. Therefore, I repeat, let us
remain calm. I figure that when we actually get into that house our
grandchildren will be of a proper age to appreciate the belongings now
appertaining to us, and all will be well.”
Thus in substance I spoke. The counter argument offered was
that--conceding what I said to be true--the fact remained and was not to
be gainsaid that we did not have anywhere near enough of furnishings to
equip the house we hoped at some distant date to occupy.
“You must remember,” I was told, “that for the six or eight years before
we decided to move out here to the country we lived in a flat.”
“What of it?” I retorted instantly. “What of it?” I repeated, for when
in the heat of controversy I think up an apt bit of repartee like that I
am apt to utter it a second time for the sake of emphasis. Pausing only
to see if my stroke of instantaneous retort had struck in, I continued:
“That last flat we had swallowed up furniture as a rat hole swallows
sand. First and last we must have poured enough stuff into that flat to
furnish the state of Rhode Island. And what about the monthly statements
we are getting now from the storage warehouse signed by the president of
the company, old man Pl. Remit? Doesn't the size of them prove that in
the furniture-owning line at least we are to be regarded as persons of
considerable consequence?”
“Don't be absurd,” I was admonished. “Just compare the size of the
largest bedroom in that last flat we had in One Hundred and Tenth Street
with the size of the smallest bedroom we expect to have in the new
place. Why, you could put the biggest bedroom we had there into the
smallest bedroom we are going to have here and lose it! And then think
of the halls we must furnish and the living room and the breakfast porch
and everything. Did we have a breakfast porch in the flat? We did not!
Did we have a living room forty feet one way and twenty-eight the other?
We did not! Did we have a dining room in that flat that was big enough
to swing a cat in?”
“We didn't have any cat.”
“All the same, we--”
“I doubt whether any of the neighbors would have loaned us a cat just
for that purpose.” I felt I had the upper hand and I meant to keep
it. “Besides, you know I don't like cats. What is the use of importing
foreign matters such as cats--and purely problematical cats at
that--into a discussion about something else? What relation does a cat
bear to furniture, I ask you? Still, speaking of cats, I'm reminded--”
“Never mind trying to be funny. And never mind trying to steer the
conversation off the right track either. Please pay attention to what I
am saying--let's see, where was I? Oh, yes: Did we have a hall in that
flat worthy to be dignified by the name of a hall? We did not! We had a
passageway--that's what it was--a passageway. Now there is a difference
between furnishing a mere passageway and a regular hall, as you are
about to discover before you are many months older.”
On second thought I had to concede there was something in what had just
been said. One could not have swung one's cat in our dining room in
the flat with any expectation of doing the cat any real good. And the
hallway we had in our flat was like nearly all halls in New York flats.
It was comfortably filled when you hung a water-color picture up on its
wall and uncomfortably crowded if you put a clarionet in the corner. It
would have been bad luck to open an umbrella anywhere in our flat--bad
luck for the umbrella if for nothing else. Despite its enormous capacity
for inhaling furniture it had been, when you came right down to cases,
a form-fitting fiat. So mentally confessing myself worsted at this angle
of the controversy, I fell back on my original argument that certainly
it would be years and years and it might be forever before we possibly
could expect--at the current rate of speed of the building operations,
or speaking exactly, at the current rate of the lack of speed--to move
in.
“But the architect has promised us on his solemn word of honor--”
“Don't tell me what the architect has promised!” I said bitterly. “Next
to waiters, architects are the most optimistic creatures on earth. A
waiter is always morally certain that twenty minutes is the extreme
limit of time that will be required to cook anything. You think that you
would like, say, to have a fish that is not listed on the bill of fare
under the subheading 'Ready Dishes'--it may be a whale or it may be a
minnow: that detail makes no difference to him--and you ask the waiter
how about it, and he is absolutely certain that it will be possible to
borrow a fishing pole somewhere and dig bait and send out and catch that
fish and bring it back in and clean it and take the scales and the fins
off and garnish it with sprigs of parsley and potatoes and lemon and
make some drawn butter sauce to pour over it and bring it to you in
twenty minutes. If he didn't think so he would not be a waiter. An
architect is exactly like a waiter, except that he thinks in terms of
days instead of terms of minutes. Don't tell me about architects! I only
wish I were as sure of heaven as the average architect is regarding that
which no mortal possibly can be sure of, labor conditions being what
chronically they are.”
But conceded that the reader is but a humble husbandman--meaning by that
a man who is married--he doubtless has already figured out the result of
this debate. Himself, he knows how such debates usually do terminate.
In the end I surrendered, and the final upshot was that we set about the
task of furnishing the rooms that were to be. From that hour dated the
beginning of my wider and fuller education into the system commonly
in vogue these times in or near the larger cities along our Atlantic
seaboard for the furnishing of homes. I have learned though. It has cost
me a good deal of time and some money and my nervous system is not what
it was, having suffered a series of abrupt shocks, but I have learned. I
know something now--not much, but a little--about period furniture.
A period, as you may recall, is equal to a full stop; in fact a period
is a full stop. This is a rule in punctuation which applies in other
departments of life, as I have discovered. Go in extensively for the
period stuff in your interior equipments and presently you will be
coming to a full stop in your funds on hand. The thing works out the
same way every time. I care not how voluminously large and plethoric
your cash balance may be, period furniture carried to an excess will
convert it into a recent site and then the bank will be sending you one
of those little printed notices politely intimating that “your account
appears overdrawn.” And any time a banker goes so far as to hint that
your account appears overdrawn you may bet the last cent you haven't
left that he is correct. He knows darned good and well it is overdrawn
and this merely is his kindly way of softening the blow to you.
I have a theory that when checks begin to roll in from the clearing
house made out to this or that dealer in period furniture the paying
teller hastens to the adjusting department to see how your deposits seem
to be bearing up under the strain. It is as though he heard you were
buying oil stocks or playing the races out of your savings and he might
as well begin figuring now about how long approximately it will be
before your account will become absolutely vacant in appearance.
As I was remarking, I know a trifle about period furniture. Offhand
now, I can distinguish a piece which dates back to Battle Abbey from
something which goes back no farther than Battle Creek. Before I could
not do this. I was forever getting stuff of the time of the Grand
Monarch confused with something right fresh out of Grand Rapids.
Generally speaking, all antiques--whether handed down from antiquity
or made on the premises--looked alike to me. But in the light of my
painfully acquired knowledge I now can see the difference almost at a
glance. Sometimes I may waver a trifle. I look at a piece of furniture
which purports to be an authentic antique. It is decrepit and creaky and
infirm; the upholstering is frayed and faded and stained; the legs
are splayed and tottery; the seams gape and there are cracks in the
paneling. If it is a chair, no plump person in his or her right mind
would dare sit down in it. If it is a bedstead, any sizable adult
undertaking to sleep in it would do so at his peril. So, outwardly and
visibly it seems to bear the stamp of authenticity. Yet still I doubt.
It may be a craftily devised counterfeit. It may be something of
comparatively recent manufacture which has undergone careless handling.
In such a case I seek for the wormholes--if any--the same as any other
seasoned collector would.
Up until comparatively recently wormholes, considered as such, had no
great lure to me. If I thought of them at all I thought of them as a
topic which was rather lacking in interest to begin with and one
easily exhausted. If you had asked me about wormholes I--speaking
offhand--probably would say that this was a matter which naturally might
appeal to a worm but would probably hold forth no great attraction for
a human being, unless he happened to be thinking of going fishing. But
this was in my more ignorant, cruder days, before I took a beginner's
easy course in the general science of wormholes. I am proud of my
progress, but I would not go so far just yet as to say that I am a
professional. Still I am out of the amateur class. I suppose you might
call me a semi-pro, able under ordinary circumstances to do any given
wormhole in par.
For example, at present I have an average of three correct guesses out
of five chances--which is a very high average for one who but a little
while ago was the veriest novice at distinguishing between ancient
wormholes, as made by a worm, and modern wormholing done by piece-work.
I cannot explain to you just how I do this--it is a thing which after a
while just seems to come to you. But of course you must have a natural
gift for it to start with--an inherent affinity for wormholes, as it
were.
However, I will say that I did not thoroughly master the cardinal
principles of this art until after I had studied under one of the
leading wormhole experts in this country--a man who has devoted years
of his life just to wormholes. True, like most great specialists he is a
person of one idea. Get him off of wormholes and the conversation is apt
to drag, but discussing his own topic he can go on for hours and
hours. I really believe he gets more pleasure out of one first-class,
sixteenth-century wormhole than the original worm did. And as Kipling
would say: I learned about wormholes from him.
At the outset I must confess I rather leaned toward a nice, neat,
up-to-date wormhole as produced amid sanitary surroundings in an
inspected factory out in Michigan, where no scab wormholes would be
tolerated, rather than toward one which had been done by an unorganized
foreign worm--possibly even a pauperized worm--two or three hundred
years ago, when there was no such thing as a closed shop and no
protection against germs. Whenever possible I believe in patronizing the
products of union labor. But the expert speedily set me right on this
point. He made me see that in furnishings and decorations nothing modern
can possibly compare with something which is crumbly and tottery with
the accumulated weight of the hoary years.
He taught me about patina, too. Patina is a most fascinating subject,
once you get thoroughly into it. Everybody who goes in for period
furniture must get into it sooner or later, and the sooner the better,
because if you are not able to recognize patina at a glance you are as
good as lost when you undertake to appraise antique furniture. When
a connoisseur lays hold upon a piece of furniture al-leged to have
rightful claims to antiquity the first thing he does is to run his hand
along the exposed surfaces to ascertain by the practiced touch of his
fingers whether the patina is on the level or was applied by a crafty
counterfeiter. After that he upends it to look for the wormholes. If
both are orthodox he gives it his validation as the genuine article. If
they are not he brands the article a spurious imitation and rejects it
with ill-concealed scorn. There are other tests, but these two are the
surest ones.
For the benefit of those who may not have had any advantages as recently
and expensively enjoyed I will state that patina is the gloss or film
which certain sorts of metal and certain sorts of polished woods acquire
through age, long usage and wear. With the passage of time fabrics also
may acquire it. You may have noticed it in connection with a pair of
black diagonal trousers that had seen long and severe wear or on the
elbows of summer-before-last's blue serge coat. However, patina in pants
or on the braided seams of a presiding elder's Sunday suit is not so
highly valued as when it occurs in relation to a Jacobean church pew or
a William-and-Mary what-not.
When I look back on my untutored state before we began to patronize the
antique shops and the auction shops I am ashamed--honestly I am. The
only excuse I can offer is based on the grounds of my earlier training.
Like so many of my fellow countrymen, born and reared as I was in the
crude raw atmosphere of interior America--anyhow, almost any wealthy New
Yorker will tell you it is a crude raw atmosphere and not in any way to
be compared with the refined atmosphere which is about the only thing
you can get for nothing in Europe--as I say, brought up as I was amid
such raw surroundings and from the cradle made the unconscious victim of
this environment, I had an idea that when a person craved furniture
he went for it to a regular furniture store having ice boxes and porch
hammocks and unparalleled bargains in golden oak dining-room sets in
the show windows, and there he made his selection and gave his order and
paid a deposit down and the people at the shop sent it up to his house
in a truck with historic scenes such as Washington Crossing the Delaware
and Daniel in the Lions' Den painted on the sides of the truck,
and after that he had nothing to worry about in connection with the
transaction except the monthly installments.
You see, I date back to the Rutherford B. Hayes period of American
architecture and applied designing---a period which had a solid
background of mid-Victorian influence with a trace of Philadelphia
Centennial running through it, being bounded at the farther end by such
sterling examples of parlor statuary as the popular pieces respectively
entitled, “Welcoming the New Minister,” “Bringing Home the Bride,” and
“Baby's First Bath,” and bounded at the nearer end by burnt-wood plaques
and frames for family portraits with plush insets and hand-painted
flowers on the moldings. By the conceptions of those primitive times
nothing so set off the likeness of a departed great-aunt as a few
red-plush insets.
Some of my most cherished boyhood memories centered about
bird's-eye-maple bedroom sets and parlor furniture of heavy black
walnut trimmed in a manner which subsequently came to be popular among
undertakers for the adornment of the casket when they had orders to
spare no expense for a really fashionable or--as the saying went then--a
tony funeral. Tony subsequently became nobby and nobby is now swagger,
but though the idioms change with the years the meaning remains the
same. When the parlor was opened for a formal occasion--it remained
closed while the ordinary life of the household went on--its interior
gave off a rich deep turpentiny smell like a paint-and-varnish store on a
hot day. And the bird's-eye maple, as I recall, had a high slick finish
which, however, did not dim the staring, unwinking effect of the round
knots which so plentifully dappled its graining. Lying on the bed and
contemplating the footboard gave one the feeling that countless
eyes were looking at one, which in those days was regarded as highly
desirable.
I remember all our best people favored bird's-eye maple for the company
room. They clung to it, too. East Aurora had a hard struggle before
it made any noticeable impress upon the decorative tendencies of West
Kentucky, for we were a conservative breed and slow to take up the
mission styles featuring armchairs weighing a couple of hundred
pounds apiece and art-craft designs in hammered metals and semi-tanned
leathers. Moreover, a second-hand shop in our town was not an antique
shop; it was what its name implied--a second-hand shop. You didn't go
there to buy things you wanted, but to sell things you did not want.
So in view of these youthful influences it should be patent to all
that, having other things to think of--such, for example, as making a
living--I did not realize that in New York at least those wishful of
following the modes did not go to a good live shop making a specialty
of easy payments when they had a house-furnishing proposition on their
hands. That might be all very well for the pedestrian classes and for
those living in the remote districts who kept a mail-order catalogue
on the center table and wrote on from time to time with the money order
enclosed.
I soon was made to understand that the really correct thing was first
of all to call in a professional decorator, if one could afford it. A
professional decorator is a person of either sex who can think up more
ways and quicker ways of spending other people's money than the director
of a shipping board can. But whether you retained the services of a
regular decorator or elected to struggle along on your own, you went
for your purchases to specialty shops or to antique shops, or--best of
all--to the smart auction shops on or hard by Fifth Avenue and Madison
Avenue.
Than the auction rooms in the Fifth Avenue district I know of no places
better adapted for studying patina, wormholing and human nature in a
variety of interesting phases. To such an establishment, on the days
when a sale is announced--which means two or three times a week for a
good part of the year--repair wealthy patrons, patrons who were wealthy
before the mania for bidding in things came upon them, as it does come
upon so many, and patrons who are trying to look as though they were
wealthy. The third group are in the majority.
Amateur collectors come, on the lookout for lace fans or Japanese
bronzes or Chinese ceramics or furniture or pictures or hangings or rugs
or tapestries, or whatever it is that constitutes their favorite hobby.
There are sure to be prominent actor folk and author folk in this
category. Dealers are on hand, each as wise looking as a barnful of
hoot-owls and talking the jargon of the craft.
Agents from rival auction houses are sometimes seen, ready, should
the opportunity present itself, to snap up a bargain with intent
to reauction it at their own houses at a profit. With the resident
proprietor one of this gentry is about as popular as a bat in a boarding
school, but since there is no law to bar him out and since it is in the
line of business for him to be present, why present he generally is.
Rich women drive up in their town cars and shabby purveyors of antique
wares from little clutter-hole shops on cross streets at the fringe of
the East Side shamble in on their fiat arches. Then, too, there are
the habitués of the auction room habit; women mostly, but some men too,
unfortunate creatures who have fallen victim to an incurable vice and
to whom the announcement in the papers of an unusual sale is lure
sufficient to draw them hither whether or not they hope to buy anything;
and finally there are representatives of a common class in any big
city--individuals who go wherever free entertainment is provided and
especially to spots where they are likely to see assembled notables of
the stage or society or of high financial circles.
The auctioneer almost invariably is of a compounded and composite
type that might be described as part matinée idol, part professional
revivalist, part floor walker, part court jester and part jury pleader,
with just a trace of a suggestion of the official manner of the
well-to-do undertaker stirred into the mixture. By sight at least he
knows all of his regular customers and is inclined with a special touch
of respectful affection toward such of them as prefer on these occasions
to be known by an initial rather than by name.
“And sold to Mr. B.,” he says with a gracious smile. Or--“Now then, Mrs.
H., doesn't this bea-u-tiful varse mean anything to you?” he inquires
deferentially when the bidding lags. “Did I hear you offer seven hundred
and fifty, Colonel J.?” he asks in a tone of deep solicitude.
By long acquaintance with his regular clientèle, or perhaps by a sort of
intuition which is not the least of his gifts, he is able to interpret
into sums of currency a nod, a wink, a raised finger, a shrug or the
lift of an eyebrow, at a distance of anywhere from ten to sixty feet.
In the face of disappointments manifolded a thousand times a month this
man yet remains an unfailing optimist. Watching him in action one gets
the impression that he reads none but glad books, goes to none save glad
plays and when the weather is inclement shares the viewpoint of that
sweet singer of the Sunny South who wrote to the effect that it is not
raining rain to-day, it's raining daffodils, and then two lines further
along corrects his botany to state that having been convinced of
his error of a moment before he now wishes to take advantage of this
opportunity to inform the public that it is not raining rain to-day, but
on the contrary is raining roses down, or metrical words to that general
tenor. He was a good poet, as poets go, but not the sort of person you
would care to loan your best umbrella to.
In another noticeable regard our auctioneer friend betrays somewhat the
same abrupt shiftings of temperamental manifestations that are reputed
to have been shown by Ben Bolt's lady friend. I am speaking of the late
lamented Sweet Alice, who--as will be recalled--would weep with delight
when you gave her a smile, but trembled with fear at your frown.
Apparently Alice couldn't help behaving in this curious way--one
gathers that she must have been the village idiot, harmless enough but
undoubtedly an annoying sort of person to have hanging round, weeping
copiously whenever anybody else was cheerful, and perhaps immediately
afterward trembling in a disconcerting sort of way. She must have
spoiled many a pleasant party in her day, so probably it was just as
well that the community saw fit to file her away in the old churchyard
in the obscure corner mentioned more or less rhythmically in the
disclosures recorded as having been made to Mr. Bolt upon the occasion
of his return to his native shire after what presumably had been a
considerable absence.
The poet chronicler, Mr. English, is a trifle vague on this point, but
considering everything it is but fair to infer that Alice's funeral was
practically by acclamation. Beyond question it must have been a relief
to all concerned, including the family of deceased, to feel that a
person so grievously afflicted mentally was at last permanently
planted under a certain slab of stone rather loosely described in the
conversation just referred to as granite so gray. One wishes Mr. English
had been a trifle more exact in furnishing the particular details of
this sad case. Still, I suppose it is hard for a poet to be technical
and poetical at the same time. And though he failed to go into
particulars I am quite sure that when asked if he didn't remember Alice,
Mr. Bolt answered in the decided affirmative. It is a cinch he couldn't
have forgotten her, the official half-wit and lightning-change artist of
the county.
But whereas this unfortunate young woman's conduct may only be accounted
for on the grounds of a total irresponsibility, there is method behind
the same sharply contrasted shift of mood as displayed by the chief
salesman of the auction room. He is thrilled--visibly and physically
thrilled--at each rapidly recurring opportunity of presenting an article
for disposal to the highest bidder; hardly can he control his emotions
of joy at the prospect of offering this particular object to an audience
of discriminating tastes and balanced judgment. But mark the change:
How instantly, how completely does a devastating and poignant distress
overcome him when his hearers perversely decline to enter into spirited
competition for a thing so priceless! A sob rises in his throat, choking
his utterance to a degree where it becomes impossible for him to speak
more than three or four hundred words per minute; grief dims his eye;
regret--not on his own account but for others--droops his shoulders.
When it comes to showing distress he makes that poor feeble-minded Alice
girl look like a beginner. Yet repeated shocks of this character fail
to daunt the sunniness of his true nature. The harder his spirits are
dashed down to earth the greater the resiliency and the buoyancy with
which they bounce up again. The man has a soul of new rubber!
Let us draw near and scrutinize the scene that unfolds itself at each
presentation: The attendants fetch out an offering described in the
printed catalogue, let us say, as Number 77 A: Oriental Lamp with Silk
Shade. Reverently they place it upon a velvet-covered stand in a space
at the back end of the salesroom, where a platform is inclosed in
draperies with lights so disposed overhead and in the wings as to shed
a soft radiance upon the inclosed area. The helpers fade out of the
picture respectfully. A tiny pause ensues; this stage wait has been
skillfully timed; a suitable atmosphere subtly has been created. Oh,
believe me, in New York we do these things with a proper regard for the
dramatic values--culture governs all!
The withdrawal of the attendants is the cue for our sunny friend,
perched up as he is behind his little pulpit with his little gavel in
his hand, to fall gracefully into a posture bespeaking in every curve of
it a worshipful, almost an idolatrous admiration.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen”--hear him say it--“I have the pleasure
and the privilege of submitting for your approval one of the absolute
gems of this splendid collection. A magnificent example of the Ming
period--mind you, a genuine Ming. I am confidentially informed by the
executors of the estate of the late Mr. Gezinks, the former owner of
these wonderful belongings, that it was the prize piece of his entire
collection. Look at the color--just look at the shape! Worth a thousand
dollars if it is worth a cent. Try to buy it in one of the antique shops
round the corner for that--just try, that's all I ask you to do. Now
then”--this with a cheery, inviting, confident smile--“now then, what am
I offered? Who'll start it off at five hundred?”
There is no answer. A look of surprise not unmixed with chagrin crosses
his mobile countenance. From his play of expression you feel that what
he feels, underlying his other feelings, is a sympathy for people so
blinded to their own good luck as not to leap headlong and en masse at
this unparalleled chance.
“Tut tut!” he exclaims and again, “tut tut! Very well, then,”--his tone
is resigned--“do I hear four hundred and seventy-five--four hundred and
fifty? Who'll start it at four twenty-five?”
His gaze sweeps the faces of the assemblage. It is a compelling gaze,
indeed you might say mes-meristic. There is a touch of pathos in it,
though, an unuttered appeal to the gathering to consider its own several
interests.
“Do I hear four hundred?” He speaks of four hundred as an ostrich might
speak of a tomtit's egg--as something comparatively insignificant and
puny.
“Twenty dollars!” pipes a voice.
He clasps his hand to his brow. This is too much; it is much too much.
But business is business. He rallies; he smiles bitterly, wanly. His
soul within him is crushed and bruised, but he rallies. Rallying is one
of the best things he does and one of the most frequent. The bidding
livens, slackens, lags, then finally ceases. With a gesture betokening
utter despair, with lineaments bathed in the very waters of woe, he
heart-brokenly knocks the vase down to somebody for $88.50.
But by the time the hired men have fetched forth Lot 78 he miraculously
has recovered his former confidence and for the forty-oddth time since
two o'clock--it is now nearly three forty-five--is his old cheerful
beaming self. Thirty seconds later his heart has been broken in a fresh
place; yet we may be sure that to-morrow morning when he rises he will
be whistling a merry roundelay, his faith in the innate goodness of
human nature all made new and fully restored to him. He would make a
perfectly bully selection if you were sending a messenger to a home to
break to an unsuspecting household some such tragic tidings, say; as
that the head of the family, while rounding a turn on high, had skidded
and was now being removed from the front elevation of an adjacent brick
wall with a putty knife. If example counted for anything at all, he
would have the mourners all cheered up again and the females among them
discussing the most becoming modes in black crepe in less than no time
at all.
My, my, but how my sense of understanding did broaden under the
influence of the auction sales we attended through the spring and
on into the Summer. When the morning paper came we would turn to the
advertising section and look for auction announcements. If there was
to be one, and generally there was--one or more--we canceled all other
plans and attended. Going to auctions became our regular employment, our
pastime, our entertainment. It became our obsession. It almost became
our joint calling in life. To our besetting mania we sacrificed all
else.
I remember there was one afternoon when John McCormack was billed
to sing. I am very fond of hearing John McCormack. For one thing, he
generally sings in a language which I can understand, and for another,
I like his way of singing. He sings very much as I would sing if I had
decided to take up singing for a living instead of writing. This is only
one of the sacrifices I have made for the sake of English literature.
McCormack that day had to struggle through without me. Because there was
a sale of Italian antiques billed for three p. m., and we were going to
have an Italian hall and an Italian living room in the new house, and we
felt it to be our bounden duty to attend.
It took some time and considerable work on the part of those fitted to
guide me in the matter of decorations before I fell entirely into the
idea of an Italian room, this possibly being due to the fact that I was
born so far away from Italy and passed through childhood with so few
Italian influences coming into my life. Even now I balk at the idea
of hanging any faded red-silk stoles or copes, or whatever those
ecclesiastical garments are, on my walls. I reserve the right to admire
such a vestment when it is worn by the officiating cleric at church, but
for the life of me and despite all that has repeatedly been said to me
on the subject I fail to see where it belongs in a simple household as a
part of the scheme of ornamentation.
I do not think it proper to display a strange clergyman's cast-off
costume in my little home any more than I would expect the canon of a
cathedral to let me hang up a pair of my old overalls in his cathedral.
Nor--if I must confess it--have I felt myself greatly drawn to the
suggestion that we should have a lot of tall hand-painted candles
sitting or standing round in odd spots. I mean those candlesticks which
are painted in faded colors, with touches of dull gilt here and there on
them and which are called after a lady named Polly Crome--their original
inventor, I suppose she was, though her name does sound more as if
Arnold Bennett had written her than as if she were a native Italian. I
imagine she thought up this idea of a hand-painted candlestick nine feet
tall and eighteen inches through at the base, and then in her honor the
design was called after her, which in my humble opinion was compounding
one mistake on top of another. Likewise I fear that I shall never become
entirely reconciled to these old-model Italian chairs. My notion of a
chair is something on which a body can sit for as long as half an hour
without anesthetics. In most other details concerning antique furniture
they have made a true believer out of me, but as regards chairs I am
still some distance from being thoroughly converted. In chairs I favor
a chair that is willing to meet you halfway, as it were, in an effort
to be mutually comfortable. The other kind--the kind with a hard flat
wooden seat and short legs and a stiff high back, a chair which looks
as though originally it had been designed to be used by a clown dog in
a trained animal act--may be artistic and beautiful in the chasteness of
its lines and all this and that; but as for me, I say give me the
kind of chair that has fewer admirers and more friends in the fireside
circle. I take it that the early Italians were not a sedentary race.
They could not have figured on staying long in one place.
I suppose the trouble with me is that I was born and brought up on the
American plan and have never entirely got over it. In fact I was told
as much, though not perhaps in exactly those words, when antiques first
became a vital issue in our domestic life. In no uncertain terms I was
informed that everybody who is anybody goes in for the Italian these
times. I believe the only conspicuous exceptions to the rule are the
Italians who have emigrated to these shores. They, it would appear, are
amply satisfied with American fixtures and fittings. I have a suspicion
that possibly some of them in coming hither may have been actuated by
a desire to get as far away as possible from those medieval effects in
plumbing which seem to be inseparable from Old World architecture.
My education progressed another step forward on the occasion of my first
visit to an auction room where presumably desirable pieces of Italian
workmanship were displayed as a preliminary to their being disposed of
by public outcry. I was accompanied by a friend--the wormholeist already
mentioned--and when he lapsed into rhapsodies over a pair of gilt
mirrors, or rather mirrors which once upon a time, say about the time of
the Fall of the Roman Empire, had been gilded, I was astonished.
“Surely,” I said, “nobody would want those things. See where the glass
is flawed--the quicksilver must be pretty nearly all gone from the backs
of them. And the molding is falling off in chunks and what molding is
left is so dingy and stained that it doesn't look like anything at all.
If you're asking me, I'd call those mirrors a couple of total losses.”
“Exactly!” he said. “That is precisely what makes them so desirable.
You can't counterfeit such age as these things show, my boy.”
“I shouldn't care to try,” I said. “Where I came from, when a mirror got
in such shape that you couldn't see yourself in it it was just the
same to us as a chorus girl that had both legs cut off in a railroad
accident--it was regarded as having lost most of its practical use in
life. Still, it is not for me, a raw green novice, a sub-novice as you
might say, to set myself up against an expert like you. Anyhow, as the
fellow said, live and learn. Let us move along to the next display of
moldy remains.”
We did so. We came to a refectory table. Ordinarily a refectory table
mainly differs in outline from the ordinary dining table by being
constructed on the model of a dachshund. But this table, I should guess
offhand, had seen about four centuries of good hard steady refecting at
the hands of succeeding generations of careless but earnest feeders. Its
top was chipped and marred by a million scars, more or less. Its legs
were scored and worn down. Its seams gaped. From sheer weakness it
canted far down to one side. The pressure of a hand upon it set the
poor, slanted, crippled wreck to shaking as though along with all its
other infirmities it had a touch of buck ague.
“What about this incurable invalid?” I asked. “Unless the fellow who
buys it sends it up in a padded ambulance it'll be hard to get it home
all in one piece. I suppose that makes it all the more valuable, eh?”
“Absolutely!” he said. “It's a perfectly marvelous thing! I figure it
should bring at least six hundred dollars.”
“And cheap enough,” I said. “Why, it must have at least six hundred
dollars' worth of things the matter with it. A good cabinet-maker could
put in a nice busy month just patching--”
“You don't understand,” he said. “You surely wouldn't touch it?”
“I shouldn't dare to,” I said. “I was speaking of a regular
cabinet-maker. No green hand should touch it--he'd have it all in chunks
in no time.”
“But the main value of it lies in leaving it in its present shape,” he
told me. “Don't you realize that this is a condition which could never
be duplicated by a workman?”
“Well, I've seen some house wreckers in my time who could produce a
pretty fair imitation,” I retorted playfully. I continued in a musing
vein, for the sight of that hopelessly damaged wreck all worn down and
dented in and slivered off had sent my mind backward to a memory of
early childhood. I said:
“I can see now how my parents made a mistake in stopping me from doing
something I tackled when I was not more than six years old. I was an
antiquer, but I didn't know it and they didn't know it. They thought
that I was damaging the furniture, when as a matter of fact in my happy,
innocent, childish way I was adding touches to it which would have been
worth considerable money by now.”
What I was thinking of was this: On my sixth birthday, I think it
was, an uncle of mine for whom I was named gave me a toy tool chest
containing a complete outfit of tools. There was a miniature hammer
and a plane and a set of wooden vises and a gimlet and the rest of the
things which belong in a carpenter's kit, but the prize of the entire
collection to my way of thinking was a cross-cut saw measuring about
eight inches from tip to tip.
Armed with this saw, I went round sawing things, or rather trying to. I
could not exactly saw with it, but I could haggle the edges and corners
of wood, producing a gnawed, frazzled effect. My quest for stuff
suitable to exercise my handicraft on led me into the spare, or company
room, where I found material to my liking. I was raking away at the legs
of a rosewood center table--had one leg pretty well damaged to my liking
and was preparing to start on another--when some officious grown person
happened in on me and stopped me with violent words. If I had but been
left undisturbed for half an hour or so I doubtless would have achieved
a result which now after a lapse of thirty-odd years would have thrilled
a lover of antiques to the core of his being. But this was not to be.
My present recollection of the incident is that I was chided in a
painful physical way. The latter-day system of inculcating lessons in
the mind of the child according to a printed form chart of soothing
words was not known in our community at that time. The old-fashioned
method of using the back of a hairbrush and imparting the lesson at the
other end of the child from where the mind is and letting it travel
all the way through him was employed. I was then ordered to go outdoors
where there would be fewer opportunities for engaging in what adults
mistakenly called mischief.
Regretting that the nurse that morning had seen fit to encase me in
snug-fitting linen breeches instead of woolen ones, I wandered about
carrying my saw in one hand and with the other hand from time to time
rubbing a certain well-defined area of my small person to allay the
afterglow. In the barnyard I came upon an egg lying on the edge of a mud
puddle under the protecting lee of the chicken-yard fence. I can shut my
eyes and see that egg right now. It was rather an abandoned-looking egg,
stained and blotched with brownish-yellow spots. It had the look about
it of an egg with a past--a fallen egg, as you might say.
Some impulse moved me to squat down and draw the toothed blade of my saw
thwartwise across the bulge of that egg. For the first time in my little
life I was about to have dealings with a genuine antique, but naturally
at my age and with my limited experience I did not realize that.
Probably I was actuated only by a desire to find out whether I could
saw right through the shell of an egg amidships. That phase of the
proceedings is somewhat blurred in my mind, though the dénouement
remains a vivid memory spot to this very day.
I imparted a brisk raking movement to the saw. It is my distinct
recollection that a fairly loud explosion immediately occurred. I was
greatly shocked. One too young to know aught of the chemical effect on
the reactions following the admission of fresh air to gaseous matter,
which has been forming to the fulminating point within a tightly sealed
casing, would naturally be shocked to have an egg go off suddenly in
that violent manner. Modern military science, I suppose, would classify
it as having been a contact egg.
Not only was I badly shocked, but also I had a profound conviction that
in some way I had been taken advantage of--that my confidence had in
some strange fashion been betrayed. I left my saw where I had dropped
it. At the moment I felt that never again would I care to have anything
to do with a tool so dangerous. I also left the immediate vicinity of
where the accident had occurred and for some minutes wandered about
in rather a distracted fashion. There did not seem to be any place in
particular for me to go, and yet I could not bear to stay wherever I
was. I wished, as it were, to get entirely away from myself--a morbid
fancy perhaps for a mere six-year-old to be having, and yet, I think, a
natural one under the circumstances.
I had a conviction that I would not be welcomed indoors and at the same
time realized that even out in the great open where I could get air--and
air was what I especially craved--I was likely to be shunned by such
persons as I might accidentally encounter. Indeed I rather shunned
myself, if you get what I mean. I was filled with a general shunning
sensation. I felt mortified, too. And this emotion, I found a few
minutes later, was shared by the black cook, who, issuing from the
kitchen door, happened upon me in the act of endeavoring to freshen up
myself somewhat from a barrel of rain water which stood under the eaves.
She evidently decided offhand that not only had mortification set in but
that it had reached an advanced stage. Her language so indicated.
And now, after more than three and a half decades, here on Fifth Avenue
more than a thousand miles remote from those infantile scenes, I was
gleaning another memorable lesson about antiques. I was learning that
junk ceases to be junk if only it costs enough money, and thereafter
becomes treasure.
Having had this great principal fact firmly implanted in my
consciousness, I shortly thereafter embarked in congenial company upon
the auction-room life upon which already I have touched. We went
to sales when we had anything to buy and when we had nothing to
buy--somehow we did not seem to be able to stay away. The joy of bidding
a thing up and maybe of having it knocked down to us undermined our
pooled will power; it weakened our joint resistance.
“And sold to----” became our slogan, our shibboleth and our most
familiar sentence. By day we heard it, by night it dinned in our ears
as we slept, dreaming dreams of going bankrupt in this mad, delirious
pursuit which had mastered us and spending our last days in a poorhouse
entirely furnished in Italian antiques.
But taking everything into consideration, I must say the game was worth
the candle. By degrees we acquired the furnishings for our two Italian
rooms and our other rooms--which, thank heaven, are not Italian but
what you might call fancy-mixed! And by degrees likewise I perfected my
artistic education. Of course we made mistakes in selection, as who does
not? We have a few auction-room skeletons tucked away in our closet, or
to speak more exactly, in the attic of the new house. But in the main
we are satisfied with what we have done and no doubt will continue to be
until Italian-style furniture goes out and Aztec Indian or Peruvian Inca
or Thibetan Grand Llama or some other style comes in.
And when our friends drop in for an evening we talk decorations and
furnishings--it is a subject which never wears out. Mostly the women
callers favor discussions of tapestries and brocades with intervals
spent in fits of mutual wonder over the terrible taste shown by some
other woman--not present--in buying the stuff for her house; and the men
are likely to be interested in carvings or paintings; but my strong suit
is wormholing in all its branches--that and patina. I am very strong on
the latter subject, also. In fact among friends I am now getting to be
known as the Patina Kid.