There is a place, called "our house," which everybody knows of. The
sailor talks of it in his dreams at sea. The wounded soldier, turning
in his uneasy hospital-bed, brightens at the word; it is like the
dropping of cool water in the desert, like the touch of cool fingers
on a burning brow. "Our house," he says feebly, and the light comes
back into his dim eyes; for all homely charities, all fond thoughts,
all purities, all that man loves on earth or hopes for in heaven, rise
with the word.
"Our house" may be in any style of architecture, low or high. It may
be the brown old farmhouse, with its tall wellsweep, or the one-story
gambrel-roofed cottage, or the large, square, white house, with green
blinds, under the wind-swung elms of a century; or it may be the
log-cabin of the wilderness, with its one room,--still there is a
spell in the memory of it beyond all conjurations. Its stone and brick
and mortar are like no other; its very clapboards and shingles are
dear to us, powerful to bring back the memories of early days and all
that is sacred in home love.
* * * * *
"Papa is getting quite sentimental," whispered Jenny, loud enough for
me to hear. I shook my head at her impressively, and went on
undaunted.
* * * * *
There is no one fact of our human existence that has a stronger
influence upon us than the house we dwell in, especially that in which
our earlier and more impressible years are spent. The building and
arrangement of a house influence the health, the comfort, the morals,
the religion. There have been houses built so devoid of all
consideration for the occupants, so rambling and haphazard in the
disposal of rooms, so sunless and cheerless and wholly without
snugness or privacy, as to make it seem impossible to live a joyous,
generous, rational, religious family life in them.
There are, we shame to say, in our cities _things_ called houses,
built and rented by people who walk erect and have the general air and
manner of civilized and Christianized men, which are so inhuman in
their building that they can only be called snares and traps for
souls,--places where children cannot well escape growing up filthy and
impure; places where to form a home is impossible, and to live a
decent, Christian life would require miraculous strength.
A celebrated British philanthropist, who had devoted much study to the
dwellings of the poor, gave it as his opinion that the temperance
societies were a hopeless undertaking in London unless these dwellings
underwent a transformation. They were so squalid, so dark, so
comfortless, so constantly pressing upon the senses foulness, pain,
and inconvenience, that it was only by being drugged with gin and
opium that their miserable inhabitants could find heart to drag on
life from day to day. He had himself tried the experiment of reforming
a drunkard by taking him from one of these loathsome dens, and
enabling him to rent a tenement in a block of model lodging-houses
which had been built under his supervision. The young man had been a
designer of figures for prints; he was of a delicate frame, and a
nervous, susceptible temperament. Shut in one miserable room with his
wife and little children, without the possibility of pure air, with
only filthy, fetid water to drink, with the noise of other miserable
families resounding through the thin partitions, what possibility was
there of doing anything except by the help of stimulants, which for a
brief hour lifted him above the perception of these miseries? Changed
at once to a neat flat, where, for the same rent as his former den, he
had three good rooms, with water for drinking, house-service, and
bathing freely supplied, and the blessed sunshine and air coming in
through windows well arranged for ventilation, he became in a few
weeks a new man. In the charms of the little spot which he could call
home, its quiet, its order, his former talent came back to him, and he
found strength, in pure air and pure water and those purer thoughts of
which they are the emblems, to abandon burning and stupefying
stimulants.
The influence of dwelling-houses for good or for evil--their influence
on the brain, the nerves, and, through these, on the heart and
life--is one of those things that cannot be enough pondered by those
who build houses to sell or rent.
Something more generous ought to inspire a man than merely the
percentage which he can get for his money. He who would build houses
should think a little on the subject. He should reflect what houses
are for, what they may be made to do for human beings. The great
majority of houses in cities are not built by the indwellers
themselves; they are built for them by those who invest their money in
this way, with little other thought than the percentage which the
investment will return.
For persons of ample fortune there are, indeed, palatial residences,
with all that wealth can do to render life delightful. But in that
class of houses which must be the lot of the large majority, those
which must be chosen by young men in the beginning of life, when means
are comparatively restricted, there is yet wide room for thought and
the judicious application of money.
In looking over houses to be rented by persons of moderate means, one
cannot help longing to build,--one sees so many ways in which the same
sum which built an inconvenient and unpleasant house might have been
made to build a delightful one.
* * * * *
"That's so!" said Bob with emphasis. "Don't you remember, Marianne,
how many dismal, commonplace, shabby houses we trailed through?"
"Yes," said Marianne. "You remember those houses with such little
squeezed rooms and that flourishing staircase, with the colored-glass
china-closet window, and no butler's sink?"
"Yes," said Bob; "and those astonishing, abominable stone abortions
that adorned the doorsteps. People do lay out a deal of money to make
houses look ugly, it must be confessed."
"One would willingly," said Marianne, "dispense with frightful stone
ornaments in front, and with heavy mouldings inside, which are of no
possible use or beauty, and with showy plaster cornices and
centrepieces in the parlor ceilings, and even with marble mantels, for
the luxury of hot and cold water in each chamber, and a couple of
comfortable bath-rooms. Then, the disposition of windows and doors is
so wholly without regard to convenience! How often we find rooms,
meant for bedrooms, where really there is no good place for either bed
or dressing-table!"
Here my wife looked up, having just finished redrawing the plans to
the latest alteration.
"One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these reforming days,"
she observed, "would be to have women architects. The mischief with
houses built to rent is that they are all mere male contrivances. No
woman would ever plan chambers where there is no earthly place to set
a bed except against a window or door, or waste the room in entries
that might be made into closets. I don't see, for my part, apropos to
the modern movement for opening new professions to the female sex, why
there should not be well-educated female architects. The planning and
arrangement of houses, and the laying-out of grounds, are a fair
subject of womanly knowledge and taste. It is the teaching of Nature.
What would anybody think of a bluebird's nest that had been built
entirely by Mr. Blue, without the help of his wife?"
"My dear," said I, "you must positively send a paper on this subject
to the next Woman's Rights Convention."
"I am of Sojourner Truth's opinion," said my wife,--"that the best way
to prove the propriety of one's doing anything is to go and _do it_.
A woman who should have energy to grow through the preparatory
studies and set to work in this field would, I am sure, soon find
employment."
"If she did as well as you would do, my dear," said I. "There are
plenty of young women in our Boston high schools who are going through
higher fields of mathematics than are required by the architect, and
the schools for design show the flexibility and fertility of the
female pencil. The thing appears to me altogether more feasible than
many other openings which have been suggested to woman."
"Well," said Jenny, "isn't papa ever to go on with his paper?"
* * * * *