at such an ideal point of perfection that he needed another house to
live in,—for, poor fellow, he found the difference between having a
house and a home. It was only a year or two after that my wife and I
started our _menage_ on very different principles, and Bill would often
drop in upon us, wistfully lingering in the cosey arm-chair between my
writing-table and my wife’s sofa, and saying with a sigh how
confoundedly pleasant things looked there,—so pleasant to have a bright,
open fire, and geraniums and roses and birds, and all that sort of
thing, and to dare to stretch out one’s legs and move without thinking
what one was going to hit. “Sophie is a good girl!” he would say, “and
wants to have everything right, but you see they won’t let her. They’ve
loaded her with so many things that have to be kept in lavender, that
the poor girl is actually getting thin and losing her health; and then,
you see, there’s Aunt Zeruah, she mounts guard at our house, and keeps
up such strict police-regulations that a fellow can’t do a thing. The
parlors are splendid, but so lonesome and dismal!—not a ray of sunshine,
in fact not a ray of light, except when a visitor is calling, and then
they open a crack. They’re afraid of flies, and yet, dear knows, they
keep every looking-glass and picture-frame muffled to its throat from
March to December. I’d like for curiosity to see what a fly would do in
our parlors!”
“Well,” said I, “can’t you have some little family sitting-room, where
you can make yourselves cosey?”
“Not a bit of it. Sophie and Aunt Zeruah have fixed their throne up in
our bedroom, and there they sit all day long, except at calling-hours,
and then Sophie dresses herself and comes down. Aunt Zeruah insists upon
it that the way is to put the whole house in order, and shut all the
blinds, and sit in your bedroom, and then, she says, nothing gets out of
place; and she tells poor Sophie the most hocus-pocus stories about her
grandmothers and aunts, who always kept everything in their houses so
that they could go and lay their hands on it in the darkest night. I’ll
bet they could in our house. From end to end it is kept looking as if we
had shut it up and gone to Europe,—not a book, not a paper, not a glove,
or any trace of a human being, in sight. The piano shut tight, the
bookcases shut and locked, the engravings locked up, all the drawers and
closets locked. Why, if I want to take a fellow into the library, in the
first place it smells like a vault, and I have to unbarricade windows,
and unlock and rummage for half an hour before I can get at anything;
and I know Aunt Zeruah is standing tiptoe at the door, ready to whip
everything back and lock up again. A fellow can’t be social, or take any
comfort in showing his books and pictures that way. Then there’s our
great, light dining-room, with its sunny south windows,—Aunt Zeruah got
us out of that early in April, because she said the flies would speck
the frescos and get into the china-closet, and we have been eating in a
little dingy den, with a window looking out on a back-alley, ever since;
and Aunt Zeruah says that now the dining-room is always in perfect
order, and that it is such a care off Sophie’s mind that I ought to be
willing to eat down-cellar to the end of the chapter. Now, you see,
Chris, my position is a delicate one, because Sophie’s folks all agree,
that, if there is anything in creation that is ignorant and dreadful and
mustn’t be allowed his way anywhere, it’s ‘a man.’ Why, you’d think, to
hear Aunt Zeruah talk, that we were all like bulls in a china-shop,
ready to toss and tear and rend, if we are not kept down-cellar and
chained; and she worries Sophie, and Sophie’s mother comes in and
worries, and if I try to get anything done differently, Sophie cries,
and says she don’t know what to do, and so I give it up. Now, if I want
to ask a few of our set in sociably to dinner, I can’t have them where
we eat down-cellar,—O, that would never do! Aunt Zeruah and Sophie’s
mother and the whole family would think the family honor was forever
ruined and undone. We mustn’t ask them, unless we open the dining-room,
and have out all the best china, and get the silver home from the bank;
and if we do that, Aunt Zeruah doesn’t sleep for a week beforehand,
getting ready for it, and for a week after, getting things put away; and
then she tells me, that, in Sophie’s delicate state, it really is
abominable for me to increase her cares, and so I invite fellows to dine
with me at Delmonico’s, and then Sophie cries, and Sophie’s mother says
it doesn’t look respectable for a family-man to be dining at public
places; but, hang it, a fellow wants a home somewhere!”
My wife soothed the chafed spirit, and spake comfortably unto him, and
told him that he knew there was the old lounging-chair always ready for
him at our fireside. “And you know,” she said, “our things are all so
plain that we are never tempted to mount any guard over them; our
carpets are nothing, and therefore we let the sun fade them, and live on
the sunshine and the flowers.”
“That’s it,” said Bill, bitterly. “Carpets fading—that’s Aunt Zeruah’s
monomania. These women think that the great object of houses is to keep
out sunshine. What a fool I was, when I gloated over the prospect of our
sunny south windows! Why, man, there are three distinct sets of
fortifications against the sunshine in those windows: first, outside
blinds; then, solid, folding, inside shutters; and, lastly, heavy,
thick, lined damask curtains, which loop quite down to the floor. What’s
the use of my pictures, I desire to know? They are hung in that room,
and it’s a regular campaign to get light enough to see what they are.”
“But, at all events, you can light them up with gas in the evening.”
“In the evening! Why, do you know my wife never wants to sit there in
the evening? She says she has so much sewing to do that she and Aunt
Zeruah must sit up in the bedroom, because it wouldn’t do to bring work
into the parlor. Didn’t you know that? Don’t you know there mustn’t be
such a thing as a bit of real work ever seen in a parlor? What if some
threads should drop on the carpet? Aunt Zeruah would have to open all
the fortifications next day, and search Jerusalem with candles to find
them. No; in the evening the gas is lighted at half-cock, you know; and
if I turn it up, and bring in my newspapers and spread about me, and
pull down some books to read, I can feel the nervousness through the
chamber-floor. Aunt Zeruah looks in at eight, and at a quarter past, and
at half-past, and at nine, and at ten, to see if I am done, so that she
may fold up the papers and put a book on them, and lock up the books in
their cases. Nobody ever comes in to spend an evening. They used to try
it when we were first married, but I believe the uninhabited appearance
of our parlors discouraged them. Everybody has stopped coming now, and
Aunt Zeruah says ‘it is such a comfort, for now the rooms are always in
order. How poor Mrs. Crowfield lives, with her house such a
thoroughfare, she is sure she can’t see. Sophie never would have
strength for it; but then, to be sure, some folks a’n’t as particular as
others. Sophie was brought up in a family of _very_ particular
housekeepers.’”
My wife smiled, with that calm, easy, amused smile that has brightened
up her sofa for so many years.
Bill added, bitterly,—
“Of course, I couldn’t say that I wished the whole set and system of
housekeeping women at the—what-’s-his-name? because Sophie would have
cried for a week, and been utterly forlorn and disconsolate. I know it’s
not the poor girl’s fault; I try sometimes to reason with her, but you
can’t reason with the whole of your wife’s family, to the third and
fourth generation backwards; but I’m sure it’s hurting her
health,—wearing her out. Why, you know Sophie used to be the life of our
set; and now she really seems eaten up with care from morning to night,
there are so many things in the house that something dreadful is
happening to all the while, and the servants we get are so clumsy. Why,
when I sit with Sophie and Aunt Zeruah, it’s nothing but a constant
string of complaints about the girls in the kitchen. We keep changing
our servants all the time, and they break and destroy so that now we are
turned out of the use of all our things. We not only eat in the
basement, but all our pretty table-things are put away, and we have all
the cracked plates and cracked tumblers and cracked teacups and old
buck-handled knives that can be raised out of chaos. I could use these
things and be merry, if I didn’t know we had better ones; and I can’t
help wondering whether there isn’t some way that our table could be set
to look like a gentleman’s table; but Aunt Zeruah says that ‘it would
cost thousands, and what difference does it make as long as nobody sees
it but us?’ You see, there is no medium in her mind between china and
crystal and cracked earthen-ware. Well, I’m wondering how all these laws
of the Medes and Persians are going to work when the children come
along. I’m in hopes the children will soften off the old folks, and make
the house more habitable.”
Well, children did come, a good many of them, in time. There was Tom, a
broad-shouldered, chubby-cheeked, active, hilarious son of mischief,
born in the very image of his father; and there was Charlie, and Jim,
and Louisa, and Sophie the second, and Frank,—and a better, brighter,
more joy-giving household, as far as temperament and nature were
concerned, never existed.
But their whole childhood was a long battle, children _versus_
furniture, and furniture always carried the day. The first step of the
housekeeping powers was to choose the least agreeable and least
available room in the house for the children’s nursery, and to fit it up
with all the old, cracked, rickety furniture a neighboring auction-shop
could afford, and then to keep them in it. Now everybody knows that to
bring up children to be upright, true, generous, and religious, needs so
much discipline, so much restraint and correction, and so many rules and
regulations, that it is all that the parents can carry out, and all the
children can bear. There is only a certain amount of the vital force for
parents or children to use in this business of education, and one must
choose what it shall be used for. The Aunt-Zeruah faction chose to use
it for keeping the house and furniture, and the children’s education
proceeded accordingly. The rules of right and wrong of which they heard
most frequently were all of this sort: Naughty children were those who
went up the front-stairs, or sat on the best sofa, or fingered any of
the books in the library, or got out one of the best teacups, or drank
out of the cut-glass goblets.
Why did they ever want to do it? If there ever is a forbidden fruit in
an Eden, will not our young Adams and Eves risk soul and body to find
out how it tastes? Little Tom, the oldest boy, had the courage and
enterprise and perseverance of a Captain Parry or Dr. Kane, and he used
them all in voyages of discovery to forbidden grounds. He stole Aunt
Zeruah’s keys, unlocked her cupboards and closets, saw, handled, and
tasted everything for himself, and gloried in his sins.
“Don’t you know, Tom,” said the nurse to him once, “if you are so noisy
and rude, you’ll disturb your dear mamma? She’s sick, and she may die,
if you’re not careful.”
“Will she die?” says Tom, gravely.
“Why, she _may_.”
“Then,” said Tom, turning on his heel,—“then I’ll go up the
front-stairs.”
As soon as ever the little rebel was old enough, he was sent away to
boarding-school, and then there was never found a time when it was
convenient to have him come home again. He could not come in the spring,
for then they were house-cleaning, nor in the autumn, because _then_
they were house-cleaning; and so he spent his vacations at school,
unless, by good luck, a companion who was so fortunate as to have a home
invited him there. His associations, associates, habits, principles,
were as little known to his mother as if she had sent him to China. Aunt
Zeruah used to congratulate herself on the rest there was at home, now
he was gone, and say she was only living in hopes of the time when
Charlie and Jim would be big enough to send away too; and meanwhile
Charlie and Jim, turned out of the charmed circle which should hold
growing boys to the father’s and mother’s side, detesting the dingy,
lonely play-room, used to run the city streets, and hang round the
railroad depots or docks. Parents may depend upon it, that, if they do
not make an attractive resort for their boys, Satan will. There are
places enough, kept warm and light and bright and merry, where boys can
go whose mothers’ parlors are too fine for them to sit in. There are
enough to be found to clap them on the back, and tell them stories that
their mothers must not hear, and laugh when they compass with their
little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. In middle
life, our poor Sophie, who as a girl was so gay and frolicsome, so full
of spirits, had dried and sharpened into a hard-visaged, angular
woman,—careful and troubled about many things, and forgetful that one
thing is needful. One of the boys had run away to sea; I believe he has
never been heard of. As to Tom, the oldest, he ran a career wild and
hard enough for a time, first at school and then in college, and there
came a time when he came home, in the full might of six feet two, and
almost broke his mother’s heart with his assertions of his home rights
and privileges. Mothers who throw away the key of their children’s
hearts and childhood sometimes have a sad retribution. As the children
never were considered when they were little and helpless, so they do not
consider when they are strong and powerful. Tom spread wide desolation
among the household gods, lounging on the sofas, spitting tobacco-juice
on the carpets, scattering books and engravings hither and thither, and
throwing all the family traditions into wild disorder, as he would never
have done, had not all his childish remembrances of them been embittered
by the association of restraint and privation. He actually seemed to
hate any appearance of luxury or taste or order,—he was a perfect
Philistine.
As for my friend Bill, from being the pleasantest and most genial of
fellows, he became a morose, misanthropic man. Dr. Franklin has a
significant proverb,—“Silks and satins put out the kitchen-fire.” Silks
and satins—meaning by them the luxuries of housekeeping—often put out
not only the parlor-fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire of
domestic love. It is the greatest possible misery to a man and to his
children to be _homeless_; and many a man has a splendid house, but no
home.
“Papa,” said Jenny, “you ought to write and tell what are your ideas of
keeping a _home_.”
“Girls, you have only to think how your mother has brought you up.”
* * * * *
Nevertheless, I think, being so fortunate a husband, I might reduce my
wife’s system to an analysis, and my next paper shall be,—
_What is a Home, and how to keep it._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III.
WHAT IS A HOME?
IT is among the sibylline secrets which lie mysteriously between you and
me, O reader, that these papers, besides their public aspect, have a
private one proper to the bosom of mine own particular family.
They are not merely an _ex post facto_ protest in regard to that carpet
and parlor of celebrated memory, but they are forth-looking towards
other homes that may yet arise near us.
For, among my other confidences, you may recollect I stated to you that
our Marianne was busy in those interesting cares and details which
relate to the preparing and ordering of another dwelling.
Now, when any such matter is going on in a family, I have observed that
every feminine instinct is in a state of fluttering vitality,—every
woman, old or young, is alive with womanliness to the tips of her
fingers; and it becomes us of the other sex, however consciously
respected, to walk softly and put forth our sentiments discreetly and
with due reverence for the mysterious powers that reign in the feminine
breast.
I had been too well advised to offer one word of direct counsel on a
subject where there were such charming voices, so able to convict me of
absurdity at every turn. I had merely so arranged my affairs as to put
into the hands of my bankers, subject to my wife’s order, the very
modest marriage-portion which I could place at my girl’s disposal; and
Marianne and Jenny, unused to the handling of money, were incessant in
their discussions with ever-patient mamma as to what was to be done with
it. I say Marianne and Jenny, for, though the case undoubtedly is
Marianne’s, yet, like everything else in our domestic proceedings, it
seems to fall, somehow or other, into Jenny’s hands, through the
intensity and liveliness of her domesticity of nature. Little Jenny is
so bright and wide-awake, and with so many active plans and fancies
touching anything in the housekeeping world, that, though the youngest
sister, and second party in this affair, a stranger, hearkening to the
daily discussions, might listen a half-hour at a time without finding
out that it was not Jenny’s future establishment that was in question.
Marianne is a soft, thoughtful, quiet girl, not given to many words; and
though, when you come fairly at it, you will find, that, like most quiet
girls, she has a will five times as inflexible as one who talks more,
yet in all family counsels it is Jenny and mamma that do the discussion,
and her own little well-considered “Yes,” or “No,” that finally settles
each case.
I must add to this family _tableau_ the portrait of the excellent Bob
Stephens, who figured as future proprietor and householder in these
consultations. So far as the question of financial possibilities is
concerned, it is important to remark that Bob belongs to the class of
young Edmunds celebrated by the poet:—
“Wisdom and worth were all he had.”
He is, in fact, an excellent-hearted and clever fellow, with a world of
agreeable talents, a good tenor in a parlor-duet, a good actor at a
charade, a lively, off-hand conversationist, well up in all the current
literature of the day, and what is more, in my eyes, a well-read lawyer,
just admitted to the bar, and with as fair business prospects as usually
fall to the lot of young aspirants in that profession.
Of course, he and my girl are duly and truly in love, in all the proper
moods and tenses; but as to this work they have in hand of being
householders, managing fuel, rent, provision, taxes, gas- and
water-rates, they seem to my older eyes about as sagacious as a pair of
this year’s robins. Nevertheless, as the robins of each year do somehow
learn to build nests as well as their ancestors, there is reason to hope
as much for each new pair of human creatures. But it is one of the
fatalities of our ill-jointed life that houses are usually furnished for
future homes by young people in just this state of blissful ignorance of
what they are really wanted for, or what is likely to be done with the
things in them.
Now, to people of large incomes, with ready wealth for the rectification
of mistakes, it doesn’t much matter how the _menage_ is arranged at
first; they will, if they have good sense, soon rid themselves of the
little infelicities and absurdities of their first arrangements, and
bring their establishment to meet their more instructed tastes.
But to that greater class who have only a modest investment for this
first start in domestic life mistakes are far more serious. I have known
people go on for years groaning under the weight of domestic possessions
they did not want, and pining in vain for others which they did, simply
from the fact that all their first purchases were made in this time of
blissful ignorance.
I had been a quiet auditor to many animated discussions among the young
people as to what they wanted, and were to get, in which the subject of
prudence and economy was discussed, with quotations of advice thereon
given in serious good faith by various friends and relations who lived
easily on incomes four or five times larger than our own. Who can show
the ways of elegant economy more perfectly than people thus at ease in
their possessions? From what serene heights do they instruct the
inexperienced beginners! Ten thousand a year gives one leisure for
reflection, and elegant leisure enables one to view household economies
dispassionately; hence the unction with which these gifted daughters of
upper-air delight to exhort young neophytes.
“Depend upon it, my dear,” Aunt Sophia Easygo had said, “it’s always the
best economy to get the best things. They cost more in the beginning,
but see how they last! These velvet carpets on my floor have been in
constant wear for ten years, and look how they wear! I never have an
ingrain carpet in my house,—not even on the chambers. Velvet and
Brussels cost more to begin with, but then they last. Then I cannot
recommend the fashion that is creeping in, of having plate instead of
solid silver. Plate wears off, and has to be renewed, which comes to
about the same thing in the end as if you bought all solid at first. If
I were beginning as Marianne is, I should just set aside a thousand
dollars for my silver, and be content with a few plain articles. She
should buy all her furniture at Messrs. David and Saul’s. People call
them dear, but their work will prove cheapest in the end, and there is
an air and style about their things that can be told anywhere. Of
course, you won’t go to any extravagant lengths,—simplicity is a grace
of itself.”
The waters of the family council were troubled, when Jenny, flaming with
enthusiasm, brought home the report of this conversation. When my wife
proceeded, with her well-trained business knowledge, to compare the
prices of the simplest elegancies recommended by Aunt Easygo with the
sum-total to be drawn on, faces lengthened perceptibly.
“How _are_ people to go to housekeeping,” said Jenny, “if everything
costs so much?”
My wife quietly remarked, that we had had great comfort in our own
home,—had entertained unnumbered friends, and had only ingrain carpets
on our chambers and a three-ply on our parlor, and she doubted if any
guest had ever thought of it,—if the rooms had been a shade less
pleasant; and as to durability, Aunt Easygo had renewed her carpets
oftener than we. Such as ours were, they had worn longer than hers.
“But, mamma, you know everything has gone on since your day. Everybody
must at least approach a certain style now-a-days. One can’t furnish so
far behind other people.”
My wife answered in her quiet way, setting forth her doctrine of a plain
average to go through the whole establishment, placing parlors,
chambers, kitchen, pantries, and the unseen depths of linen-closets in
harmonious relations of just proportion, and showed by calm estimates
how far the sum given could go towards this result. _There_ the limits
were inexorable. There is nothing so damping to the ardor of youthful
economies as the hard, positive logic of figures. It is so delightful to
think in some airy way that the things we _like_ best are the cheapest,
and that a sort of rigorous duty compels us to get them at any
sacrifice. There is no remedy for this illusion but to show by the
multiplication and addition tables what things are and are not possible.
My wife’s figures met Aunt Easygo’s assertions, and there was a lull
among the high contracting parties for a season; nevertheless, I could
see Jenny was secretly uneasy. I began to hear of journeys made to far
places, here and there, where expensive articles of luxury were selling
at reduced prices. Now a gilded mirror was discussed, and now a velvet
carpet which chance had brought down temptingly near the sphere of
financial possibility. I thought of our parlor, and prayed the good
fairies to avert the advent of ill-assorted articles.
“Pray keep common sense uppermost in the girls’ heads, if you can,” said
I to Mrs. Crowfield, “and don’t let the poor little puss spend her money
for what she won’t care a button about by and by.”
“I shall try,” she said; “but you know Marianne is inexperienced, and
Jenny is so ardent and active, and so confident, too. Then they both, I
think, have the impression that we are a little behind the age. To say
the truth, my dear, I think your papers afford a good opportunity of
dropping a thought now and then in their minds. Jenny was asking last
night when you were going to write your next paper. The girl has a
bright, active mind, and thinks of what she hears.”
So flattered, by the best of flatterers, I sat down to write on my
theme; and that evening, at firelight time, I read to my little senate
as follows:—
WHAT IS A HOME, AND HOW TO KEEP IT.