It is true there are cheap little houses in New York, but where, and on what streets? You would not want to live among mechanics and dentists, small clerks, and people of that description. Everything when one is first married depends on taking a right stand in the beginning. Of course, since the ruin that has come on your father, and with which you will see I never reproach you, though you might have prevented it, it is necessary for all of us to be doubly careful. Everybody is very kind and considerate, and people have called and continue to invite us, and we may maintain our footing as before, if we give our whole mind to it, as evidently it is our duty to do, paying proper attention to appearances. I have partially engaged a place for you, subject of course to your and your husband’s approval, at Mivart’s, which is a place that can be spoken of —— a place where the best sort of people are. Mrs. Mivart is a protégée of mine, and is willing to take you at a considerable reduction, if you take a small back room. Thus you will have no cares, and no obligations of hospitality, and be able to turn your resources all to keeping up the proper air and appearances, which with the present shocking prices for everything, silks, gloves, shoes, etc., and the requirements of the times, are something quite frightful to contemplate.
The course of conduct I have indicated seems specially necessary in view of Alice’s future. The blight that comes on all her prospects in this dreadful calamity of your father’s is something that lies with weight on my mind. A year ago Alice might have commanded the very best of offers, and we had every reason to hope such an establishment for her as her beauty and accomplishments ought to bring. It is a mercy to think that she will still be invited and have her chances, though she will have to struggle with her limited means to keep up a proper style; but with energy and attention it can be done. I have known girls capable of making, in secret, dresses and bonnets that were ascribed to the first artists. The puffed tulle in which Sallie Morton came to your last german was wholly of her own make — although of course this was told me in confidence by her mother and ought to go no farther. But if you take a mean little house among ordinary low classes, and live in a poor, cheap, and scrubby way, of course you cut yourself off from society, and you see it degrades the whole family. I am sure, as I told your mother, nothing but your inexperience would lead you to think of it, and your husband being a literary man naturally would not understand considerations of this nature. I have seen a good deal of life, and I give it as the result of my observation that there are two things that very materially influence standing in society: the part of the city we live in, and the church we go to. Of course, I presume you will not think of leaving your church, which has in it the most select circles of New York. A wife’s religious consolations are things no husband should interfere with, and I trust you will not fling away your money on a mean little house in a fit of childish ignorance. You will want the income of that money for your dress, and carriages for calls and other items essential to keep up life.
I suppose you have heard that the Elmores are making extensive preparations for Sophie’s wedding in the fall. When I see the vanity and instability of earthly riches, I cannot but be glad that there is a better world; the consolations of religion at times are all one has to turn to. Be careful of your health, my dear child, and don’t wet your feet. From your letters I should infer that you were needlessly going into very damp, unpleasant places. Write me immediately what I am to tell them at Mivart’s.
Your affectionate aunt,
MARIA WOUVERMANS.
It was as good as a play to see my wife’s face as she read this letter, with flushed cheeks and an impatient tapping of her little foot that foreboded an outburst.
“Just like her for all the world,” she said, tossing the letter to me, which I read with vast amusement.
“We’ll have a house of our own as quick as we can get one,” she said. “I think I see myself gossiping in a boarding-house, hanging on to the outskirts of fashion in the way she plans, making puffed tulle dresses in secret places and wearing out life to look as if I were as rich as I am not, and trying to keep step with people of five times our income. If you catch Eva Van Arsdel at that game, then tell me!”
“Eva Van Arsdel is a being of the past, fortunately for me, darling.”
“Well, Eva Van Arsdel Henderson, then,” said she. “That compound personage is stronger and more defiant of worldly nonsense than the old Eva dared to be.”
“And I think your aunt has no idea of what there is developing in Alice.”
“To be sure she hasn’t; not the remotest. Alice is proud and sensible, proud in the proper way I mean. She was full willing to take the goods the gods provided while she had them, but she never will stoop to all the worries, and cares, and little mean artifices of genteel poverty. She never will dress and go out on hunting expeditions to catch a rich husband. I always said Alice’s mind lay in two strata, the upper one worldly and ambitious, the second generous and high-minded. Our fall from wealth has been like a landslide; the upper stratum has slid off and left the lower. Alice will now show that she is both a strong and noble woman. Our engagement and marriage have wholly converted her, and she has stood by me like a little Trojan all along.”
“Well,” said I, “about this letter?”
“Oh! you answer it for me. It’s time Aunt Maria learned that there is a man to the fore; besides, you are not vexed, you are only amused, and you can write a diplomatic letter.”
“And tell her sweetly and politely, with all ruffles and trimmings, that it is none of her business?” said I.
“Yes, just that, but of course with all possible homage of your high consideration. Then till we can find a house I suppose we can find nice country board for the hot months near New York, where you can come out every night on the railroad and stay Sundays.”
“Exactly. I have the place all thought of and terms arranged long ago. A charming Quaker family where you will find the best of fruit, and the nicest of board, and the quietest and gentlest of hosts, all for a sum quite within our means.”
“And then,” said she, “by fall I trust we shall find a house to suit us.”
“Certainly,” said I. “I have faith that such a house is all waiting for us somewhere in the unknown future. We are traveling toward it, and shall know it when we see it.”
“Just think,” said my wife, “of Aunt Maria as suggesting that we should board so that we could shirk all obligations of hospitality! What’s life good for if you can’t have your friends with you, and make people happy under your roof?”
“And who would think of counting the money spent in hospitality?” said I.
“Yet I have heard of people who purposely plan to have no spare room in their house,” answered Eva. “I remember, now, Aunt Maria’s speaking of Mrs. Jacobs with approbation for just this piece of economy.”
“By which she secures money for party dresses and a brilliant annual entertainment, I suppose,” said I.
“Well,” said Eva, “I have always imagined my home with friends in it. A warm peculiar corner for each one of yours and mine. It is the very charm of the prospect when I figure this, that, and the other one enjoying with us, and then I have the great essential of ‘help’ secured. Do you know that there was one Mary McClellan married from our house years ago who was a perfect adorer at my shrine, and always begged me to be married that she might come and live with me? Now she is a widow with a little girl eight years old, and it is the desire of her heart to get a place where she can have her child with her. It will fit exactly. The little cub, under my training, can wait on the table and tend the door, and Mary will be meanwhile a mother to me in my inexperience.”
“Capital!” said I. “I am sure our star is in the ascendant, and we shall hear from our house before the summer is through.”
One day, near the first of October, while up for a Sunday at our country boarding-place, I got the following letter from Jim Fellows: —
My DEAR Old Boy, — I think we have got it. I mean got the
house. I am not quite sure what your wife will say, but I happened to meet Miss Alice last night and I told her, and she says she is sure it will do. Hear and understand.
Coming down town yesterday I bought the “Herald” and read to my joy that Jack Fergus had been appointed Consul to Algiers. To say the truth we fellows have thought the game was pretty much up with poor Jack; his throat and lungs are so bad, and his family consumptive. So I said when I read it, “Good! there’s a thing that’ll do.” I went right round to congratulate him and found three or four of our fellows doing the same thing. Jack was pleased, said it was all right, but still I could see there was a hitch somewhere, and that, in fact, it was not all right, and when the other fellows went away I stayed, and then it came out. He said at once that he was glad of the appointment, but that he had no money; the place at Algiers does not support a man. He will have to give up his bank salary, and unless he could sell his house for ready money he could do nothing. I never knew he had any house. Heaven knows none of the rest of us have got any houses. But it seems some aunt of his, an old Knickerbocker, left him one. Well, I asked him why he didn’t sell it. He said he couldn’t. He had had two agents there that morning. They wouldn’t give him any encouragement till the whole place was sold together. They wouldn’t offer anything, and would only say they would advertise it on his account. You see it is one of those betwixt-and-between places which is going to be a business place, but isn’t yet. So he said; and it was that which made me think of you and your wife.
I asked where it was, and he told me. It is one of those little streets that lead out of Varick Street, if you know where that is; I’ll bet Mrs. Henderson a dozen pair that she doesn’t. Well, I went with him to see it when the bank closed, for I still thought of you. By George, I think you will like it. It is the last house in a block; the street is dull enough, but is inhabited by decent, quiet people, who mind their own business. Of course the respectable Mrs. Wouvermans would think it an unknown horror to live there; and be quite sure they were all Jews or sorcerers, or some other sort of come-outers. Well, this house itself is not like the rest of the block — having been built by this old Aunt Martila, or Van Beest, or whatever else her name was, for her own use. It is a brick house, with a queer stoop, two and a half stories high (the house, not the stoop), with a bay-window on the end, going out on a sort of a churchyard, across which you look to what is, I believe, St. John’s Park* — a place with trees, and English sparrows, and bird-houses, and things. Jack and his wife have made the place look quite cosy, and managed to get a deal of comfort out of it. I wish I could buy it and take my wife there if only I had one. This place Jack will sell for eight thousand dollars — four thousand down and four thousand on mortgage. I call that dirt cheap, and Livingstone, our head bookkeeper, who used to be a house-broker, tells me it is a bargain such as he never heard of, and that you can sell it at any time for more than that. I have taken the refusal for three days, so come down, both of you, bright and early Monday and look at it.
So down we came; we saw; we bought. In a few days we were ready, key in hand, to open and walk into “Our House.”
* It was; but alas! since the recent time of this story, insatiate commerce has taken the old Park and built therein a huge railway freight depot.
CHAPTER XLVII. OUR HOUSE
THERE are certain characteristic words which the human heart loves to conjure with, and one of the strongest among them is the phrase, “Our House.” It is not my house, nor your house, nor their house, but Our House. It is the inseparable we who own it, and it is the we and the our that go a long way towards impregnating it with the charm that makes it the symbol of things most blessed and eternal.
Houses have their physiognomy, as much as persons. There are commonplace houses, suggestive houses, attractive houses, mysterious houses, and fascinating houses, just as there are all these classes of persons. There are houses whose windows seem to yawn idly — to stare vacantly — there are houses whose windows glower weirdly, and look at you askance; there are houses, again, whose very doors and windows seem wide open with frank cordiality, which seem to stretch their arms to embrace you, and woo you kindly to come and possess them.
My wife and I, as we put our key into the door and let ourselves into the deserted dwelling, now all our own, said to each other at once that it was a home-like house. It was built in the old style, when they had solid timbers and low ceilings, with great beams and large windows, with old-fashioned small panes of glass, but there was about it a sort of homely individuality, and suggestive of cosy comforts. The front room had an ancient fireplace, with quaint Dutch tiles around it. The Ferguses had introduced a furnace, gas, and water into it; but the fireplace in most of the rooms still remained, suggestive of the old days in New York when wood was plenty and cheap. One could almost fancy that those days of roaring family hearths had so heartened up the old chimneys that a portion of the ancient warmth yet inhered in the house.
“There, Harry,” said my wife, exultantly pointing to the fireplace, “see: this is the very thing that your mother’s brass andirons will fit into — how charmingly they will go with it!”
And then those bright, sunny windows, and that bay-window looking across upon those trees was perfectly lovely. In fact, the leaves of the trees shimmering in October light cast reflections into the room suggestive of country life, which, fresh from the country as we were, was an added charm.
The rooms were very low studded, scarcely nine feet in height — and, by the bye, I believe that that feature in old English and Dutch house-building is one that greatly conduces to give an air of comfort. A low ceiling insures ease in warming, and in our climate, where one has to depend on fires for nine months in the year, this is something worth while. In general, I have noticed in rooms that the sense of snugness and comfort dies out as the ceiling rises in height — rooms twelve and fifteen feet high may be all very grand and very fine, but they are never sociable, they never seem to brood over you, soothe you, and take you to their heart as the motherly low-browed room does.
My wife ran all over her new dominions — exploring and planning, telling me volubly how she would arrange them. The woman was Queen here; her foot was on her native heath, and she saw capabilities and possibilities with the eye of an artist.
Now, I desire it to be understood that I am not indifferent to the charms of going to housekeeping full-handed.
I do not pretend to say that my wife and I should not have enjoyed opening our family reign in a stone palace, overlooking New York Central Park, with all the charms of city and country life united, with all the upholsterers and furniture shops in New York at our feet. All this was none too good for our taste if we could have had it, but since we could not have it, we took another kind of delight, and one quite as vivid, in seeing how charmingly we could get on without it. In fact, I think there is an exultation in the constant victory over circumstances, in little inventions, substitutions, and combinations, rendered necessary by limited means, which is wanting to those to whose hand everything comes without an effort.
If, for example, the brisk pair of robins, who have built in the elm-tree opposite to our bay-window, had had a nest all made, and lined, and provided for them to go into, what an amount of tweedle and chipper, what a quantity of fluttering, and soaring, and singing would have been wanting to the commencement of their housekeeping! All those pretty little conversations with the sticks and straw, all that brave work in tugging at a bit of twine and thread, which finally are carried off in triumph and wrought into the nest, would be a loss in nature. How much adventure and enterprise, how many little heart-beats of joy go into one robin’s nest simply because Mother Nature makes them work it out for themselves!
We spent a cheerful morning merely in running over our house, and telling each other what we could do with it, and congratulating each other that it was “such a bargain,” for, look, here is an outlook upon trees; and here is a little back yard,. considerably larger than a good-sized p
ocket-handkerchief, where Mrs. Fergus had raised mignonette, heliotropes, and roses and geraniums enough to have a fresh morning bouquet of them daily; and an ancient grape-vine planted by some old Knickerbocker, which Jack Fergus had trained in a sort of arbor over the dining-room window, and which at this present moment was hanging with purple clusters of grapes. We ate of them, and felt like Adam and Eve in Paradise. What was it to us that this little Eden of ours was in an unfashionable quarter, and that, as Aunt Maria would say, there was not a creature living within miles of us, it was still our mystical “garden which the Lord God had planted eastward in Eden.” The purchase of it, it is true, had absorbed all my wife’s little fortune, and laid a debt upon us — but we told each other that it was, after all, our cheapest way of renting a foothold in New York. “For, you see,” said my wife instructively, “papa says it is a safe investment, as it is sure to rise in value, so that even if we want to sell it we can get more than we paid.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 346
