Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “What a shrewd little trader you are getting to be!” I said, admiring this profound financial view.

  “Oh, indeed I am; and, now, Harry dear, don’t let’s go to any expense about furniture till I’ve shown you what I intend to do. I know devices for giving a room an air with so little; for example, look at this recess. I shall fill this up with a divan that I shall get up for nine or ten dollars.”

  “You get it up!”

  “Yes, I — with Mary to help me — you’ll see in time. We’ll have all the comfort that could be got out of a sofa, for which people pay eighty or ninety dollars, and the eighty or ninety dollars will go to get other things, you see. And then we must have a stuffed seat running round this bay-window. I can get that up. I’ve seen at Stewart’s such a lovely piece of patch, with broad crimson stripes, and a sort of mauresque figure interposed. I think we had better get the whole of it, and that will do for one whole room. Let’s see. I shall make lambrequins for the windows, and cover the window-seats, and then we shall have only to buy two or three great stuffed chairs and cover them with the same. Oh, you’ll see what I’ll do. I shall make this house so comfortable and charming that people will wonder to see it.”

  “Well, darling, I give all that up to you; that is your dominion, your reign.”

  “To be sure, you have all your work up at the office there, and your articles to write, and besides, dear, with all your genius, and all that, you really don’t know much about this sort of thing, so give yourself no trouble, I’ll attend to it — it is my ground, you know. Now, I don’t mean mother or Aunt Maria shall come down here till we have got everything arranged. Alice is going to come and stay with me and help, and when I want you I’ll call on you, for, though I am not a writing genius, I am a genius in these matters, as you’ll see.”

  “You are a veritable household fairy,” said I, “and this house, henceforth, lies on the borders of the fairy land. Troops of gay and joyous spirits are flocking to take possession of it, and their little hands will carry forward what you begin.”

  CHAPTER XLVIII. PICNICKING IN NEW YORK

  OUR house seemed so far to-be ours that it was apparently regarded by the firm of good fellows as much their affair as mine. The visits of Jim and Bolton to our quarters were daily, and sometimes even hourly. They counseled, advised, theorized, and admired my wife’s generalship in an artless solidarity with myself. Jim was omnipresent. Now he would be seen in his shirt-sleeves nailing down a carpet, or unpacking a barrel, and again making good the time lost in these operations by scribbling his articles on the top of some packing-box, dodging in and out at all hours with news of discoveries of possible bargains that he had hit upon in his rambles.

  For a while we merely bivouacked in the house, as of old the pilgrims in a caravansary, or as a picnic party might do, out under a tree. The house itself was in a state of growth and construction, and, meanwhile, the work of eating and drinking was performed in moments snatched in the most pastoral freedom and simplicity. I must confess that there was a joyous, rollicking freedom about these times that was lost in the precision of regular housekeepers. When we all gathered about Mary’s cooking-stove in the kitchen, eating roast oysters and bread and butter, without troubling ourselves about table equipage, we seemed to come closer to each other than we could in months of orderly housekeeping.

  Our cooking-stove was Bolton’s especial protégé and pet. He had studied the subject of stoves, for our sakes, with praiseworthy perseverance, and after philosophic investigation had persuaded us to buy this one, and of course had a fatherly interest in its well-doing. I have the image of him now as he sat, seriously, with the book of directions in his hand, reading and explaining to us all, while a set of muffins were going through the experimentum crucis —— the oven. The muffins were excellent, and we ate them hot out of the oven with gladness and singleness of heart, and agreed that we had touched the absolute in the matter of cooking-stoves. All my wife’s plans and achievements, all her bargains and successes, were reported and admired in full conclave, when we all looked in at night, and took our snack together in the kitchen.

  One of my wife’s enterprises was the regeneration of the dining-room. It had a pretty window draped pleasantly by the grape-vine, but it had a dreadfully common wallpaper, a paper that evidently had been chosen for no other reason than because it was cheap. It had moreover a wainscot of dark wood running round the side, so that what with our low ceiling, the portion covered by this offending paper was only four feet and a half wide.

  I confess, in the multitude of things on hand in the work of reconstruction, I was rather disposed to put up with the old paper as the best under the circumstances. “My dear,” said I, “why not let pretty well alone?”

  “My darling child!” said my wife, “it is impossible — that paper is a horror.”

  “It certainly isn’t pretty, but who cares?” said I. “I don’t see so very much the matter with it, and you are undertaking so much that you’ll be worn out.”

  “It will wear me out to have that paper, so now, Harry dear, be a good boy, and do just what I tell you. Go to Berthold & Capstick’s and bring me one roll of plain black paper, and six or eight of plain crimson, and wait then to see what I’ll do.”

  The result on a certain day after was that I found my dining-room transformed into a Pompeiian salon, by the busy fingers of the house fairies.

  The ground-work was crimson, but there was a series of black panels, in each of which was one of those floating Pompeiian figures which the traveler in Italy buys for a trifle in Naples.

  “There now,” said my wife, “do you remember my portfolio of cheap Neapolitan prints? Haven’t I made good use of them?”

  “You are a witch,” said I. “You certainly can’t paper walls.”

  “Can’t I! haven’t I as many fingers as your mother? and she has done it time and again; and this is such a crumb of a wall. Alice and Jim and I did it to-day, and have had real fun over it.”

  “Jim?” said I, looking amused..

  “Jim!” said my wife, nodding with a significant laugh.

  “Seems to me,” said I.

  “So it seems to me,” said she. After a pause she added, with a smile, “But the creature is both entertaining and useful. We have had the greatest kind of a frolic over this wall.”

  “But, really,” said I, “this case of Jim and Alice is getting serious.”

  “Don’t say a word,” said my wife, laughing. “They are in the F’s; they have got out of Flirtation and into Friendship.”

  “And friendship between a girl like Alice and a young man, on his part soon gets to mean” —

  “Oh, well, let it get to mean what it will,” said my wife; “they are having nice times now, and the best of it is, nobody sees anything but you and I. Nobody bothers Alice, or asks her if she is engaged, and she is careful to inform me that she regards Jim quite as a brother. You see that is one advantage of our living where nobody knows us — we can all do just as we like. This little house is Robinson Crusoe’s island — in the middle of New York. But now, Harry, there is one thing you must do toward this room. There must be a little gilt moulding to finish off the top and sides. You just go to Berthold & Capstick’s and get it. See, here are the figures,” she said, showing her memorandum-book. “We shall want just that much.”

  “But can we put it up?”

  “No, but you just speak to little Tim Brady, who is a clerk there — Tim used to be a boy in father’s office — he will like nothing better than to come and put it up for us, and then we shall be fine as a new fiddle.”

  And so, while I was driving under a great pressure of business at the office daily, my home was growing leaf by leaf, and unfolding flower by flower, under the creative hands of my home-queen and sovereign lady.

  Time would fail me to relate the enterprises conceived, carried out, and prosperously finished under her hands. Indeed, I came to have such a reverential belief in her power that had she announced
that she intended to take my house up bodily and set it down in Japan, in the true “Arabian Nights” style, I should not in the least have doubted her ability to do it. The house was as much an expression of my wife’s personality, a thing wrought out of her being, as any picture painted by an artist.

  Many homes have no personality. They are made by the upholsterers; the things in them express the tastes of David & Saul, or Berthold & Capstick, or whoever else of artificers undertake the getting up of houses. But our house formed itself around my wife like the pearly shell around the nautilus. My home was Eva, — she the scheming, the busy, the creative, was the life, soul, and spirit of all that was there.

  Is not this a species of high art, by which a house, in itself cold and barren, becomes in every part warm and inviting, glowing with suggestion, alive with human tastes and personalities? Wall-paper, paint, furniture, pictures, in the hands of the home artist, are like the tubes of paint out of which arises, as by inspiration, a picture. It is the woman who combines them into the wonderful creation which we call a home.

  When I came home from my office night after night, and was led in triumph by Eva to view the result of her achievements, I confess I began to remember with approbation the old Greek mythology, and no longer to wonder that divine honors had been paid to household goddesses. It seemed to me that she had a portion of the talent of creating out of nothing. Our house had literally nothing in it of the stereotyped sets of articles expected as a matter of course in good families, and yet it looked cosy, comfortable, inviting, and with everywhere a suggestion of ideal tastes, and an eye to beauty. There were chambers which seemed to be built out of drapery and muslins, every detail of which, when explained, was a marvel of results at small expense. My wife had an aptitude for bargains, and when a certain article was wanted, supplied it from some secondhand store with such an admirable adaptation to the place that it was difficult to persuade ourselves after a few days that it had not always been exactly there, where now it was so perfectly adapted to be.

  In fact, her excursions into the great sea of New York and the spoils she brought thence to enrich our bower reminded me of the process by which Robinson Crusoe furnished his island home by repeated visits to the old ship which was going to wreck on the shore. From the wreck of other homes came floating to ours household belongings, which we landed reverently and baptized into the fellowship of our own.

  CHAPTER XLIX. NEIGHBORS

  “Do you know, Harry,” said my wife to me one evening when I came home to dinner, “I have made a discovery?”

  Now, the truth was, that my wife was one of those lively, busy, active, enterprising little women, who are always making incident for themselves and their friends; and it was a regular part of my anticipation, as I plodded home from my office, tired and work-worn, to conjecture what new thing Eva would find to tell me that night. What had she done, or altered, or made up, or arranged, as she always met me full of her subject?

  “Well,” said I, “what is this great discovery?”

  “My dear, I’ll tell you. One of those dumb houses in our neighborhood has suddenly become alive to me. I’ve made an acquaintance.”

  Now, I knew that my wife was just that social, conversing, conversable creature that, had she been in Robinson Crusoe’s island, would have struck up confidential relations with the monkeys and paroquets, rather than not have somebody to talk to. Therefore, I was not in the least surprised, but quite amused, to find that she had begun neighboring in our vicinity.

  “You don’t tell me,” said I, “that you have begun to cultivate acquaintances on this street, so far from the centres of fashion?”

  “Well, I have, and found quite a treasure, in at the very next door.”

  “And pray now, for curiosity’s sake, how did you manage it?”

  “Well, to tell the truth, Harry, I’m the worst person in the world for keeping up what’s called select society; and I never could bear the feeling of not knowing anything about anybody that lives next to me. Why, suppose we should be sick in the night, or anything happen, and we not have a creature to speak to! It seems dreary to think of it. So I was curious to know who lived next door; and I looked down from our chamber window into the next back yard, and saw that whoever it was had a right cunning little garden, with nasturtiums and geraniums, and chrysanthemums, and all sorts of pretty things. Well, this morning I saw the sweetest little dove of a Quaker woman, in a gray dress, with a pressed crape cap, moving about as quiet as a chip sparrow among the flowers. And I took quite a fancy to her, and began to think how I should make her acquaintance.”

  “If that isn’t just like you!” said I. “Well, did you run in and fall on her neck?”

  “Not exactly. But, you see, we had all our windows open to air the rooms, and my very best pocket-handkerchief lay on the bureau. And the wind took it up, and whirled it about, and finally carried it down into that back yard; and it lit on her geranium bush. ‘There, now,’ said I to Alice, ‘there ‘s a providential opening. I ‘m just going to run right down and inquire about my pocket-handkerchief.’ Which I did: I just stepped off from our stoop on to her door-step, and rang the bell. Meanwhile, I saw, on a nice, shining door-plate, that the name was Baxter. Well, who should open the door but the brown dove in person, looking just as pretty as a pink in her cap and drab gown. I declare, Harry, I told Alice I’d a great mind to adopt the Quaker costume right away. It’s a great deal more becoming than all our finery.”

  “Well, my dear,” said I, “that introduces a large subject; and I want to hear what came next.”

  “Oh, well, I spoke up, and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Baxter, pray excuse me; but I’ve been so very careless as to lose my handkerchief down in your back yard.’ You ought to have seen the pretty pink color rise in her cheeks; and she said in such a cunning way, ‘I’ll get it for thee!’

  “‘Oh, dear, no,’ said I, ‘don’t trouble yourself. Please let me go out into your pretty little garden there.’

  “Well, the upshot was, we went into the garden and had a long chat about the flowers. And she picked me quite a bouquet of geraniums. And then I told her all about our little garden, and how I wanted to make things grow in it, and didn’t know how; and asked’ her if she wouldn’t teach me. Well, then, she took me into the nicest little drab nest of a parlor that ever you saw. The carpet was drab, and the curtains were drab, and the sofas and chairs were all covered with drab; but the windows were perfectly blazing with flowers. She had most gorgeous nasturtium vines trained all around the windows, and scarlet geraniums that would really make your eyes wink to look at them. I couldn’t help laughing a little to myself, that they make it a part of their religion not to have any color, and then fall back upon all these high-colored operations of the Lord by way of brightening up their houses. However, I got a great deal of instruction out of her, and she ‘s going to come in and show me how to arrange my ferns and other things I gathered in the country, in a Ward’s case; and she’s going to show me, too, how to plant an ivy, so as to have it grow all around this bay-window. The inside of hers is a perfect bower.”

  “I perceive,” said I, “the result of all was that you swore eternal friendship on the spot, just like the Eva that you are.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And you didn’t have the fear of your gentility before your eyes?”

  “Not a bit. I always have detested gentility.”

  “You don’t even know the business of her husband.”

  “But I do, though. He ‘s a watchmaker, and works for Tiffany & Co. I know, because she showed me a curious little clock of his construction; and these things came out in a parenthesis, you see.”

  “I see the hopeless degradation which this will imply in Aunt Maria’s eyes,” said I.

  “A fig for Aunt Maria, and a fig for the world! I’m married now, and can do as I’ve a mind to. Besides, you know Quakers are not world’s people. They have come out from it, and don’t belong to it. There ‘s something really refreshin
g about this dear little body, with her ‘thees’ and her ‘thous’ and her nice little ways. And they ‘re young married people, just like us. She ‘s been in this house only a year. But, Harry, she knows everybody on the street, — not in a worldly way, but in the way of her sect. She ‘s made a visitation of Christian love to every one of them. Now, isn’t that pretty? She ‘s been to see what she could do for them, and to offer friendship and kind offices. Isn’t that sort of Arcadian, now?”

  “Well, and what does she tell you?”

  “Oh, there are a great many interesting people on this street. I can’t tell you all about it now, but some that I think we must try to get acquainted with. In the third story of that house opposite to us is a poor French gentleman, who came to New York a political refugee, hoping to give lessons; but has no faculty for getting along, and his wife, a delicate little woman with a baby, and they ‘re very, very poor. I ‘m going with her to visit them some time this week. It seems this dear little Ruth was with her when her baby was born, — this dear little Ruth! It struck me so curiously to see how interesting she thinks everybody on this street is.”

  “Simply,” said I, “because she looks at them from the Christian standpoint. Well, dear, I can’t but think your new acquaintance is an acquisition.”

  “And only think, Harry, this nice little person is one of the people that Aunt Maria calls nobody; not rich, not fashionable, not of the world, in short; but just as sweet and lovely and refined as she can be. I think those plain, sincere manners are so charming. It makes you feel so very near to people to have them call you by your Christian name right away. She calls me Eva and I call her Ruth; and I feel somehow as if I must always have known her.”

  “I want to see her,” said I.

  “You must. It’ll amuse you to have her look at you with her grave, quiet eyes, and call you Harry ‘Henderson. What an effect it has to hear one’s simple, common name, without fuss or title!”