CHAPTER VII. "AND SOLD TO----"
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 beample 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 wouldbe any hurry. For the job had reached that stage so dismally familiarto any one who ever started a house with intent to live in it whencompleted, if ever. I refer to the stage when a large and variegatedassortment of hired help are ostensibly busy upon the premises and yeteverything seems practically to be at a standstill. From the standpointof a mere bystander whose only function is to pay the bills, it seemsthat the workmen are only coming to the job of a morning because theyhate the idea of hanging round their own homes all day with nothing todo.
So it was with us. Sawing and hammering and steam fitting and plumbingand stone-lying and brick-lying were presumed to be going on; laborerswere wielding the languid pick; a roof layer was defying the laws ofgravitation on our ridgepole; at stated intervals there were great gobsof payments on account of this or that to be met and still and yet andnotwithstanding, to the lay eye the progress appeared infinitesimal. Forthe first time I could understand why Pharaoh or Rameses or whoever itwas that built the Pyramids displayed peevishness toward the Childrenof Israel. Indeed I developed a cordial sympathy for him. He had my bestwishes. 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 Istoutly demurred. As I recall, I spoke substantially as follows:
"Why all this mad haste? Rome wasn't built in a day, as I have oftenheard, and in view of my own recent experiences I am ready to makeaffidavit to the fact. I'll go further than that. I'll bet any sumwithin reason, up to a million dollars, that the meanest smokehousein 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 wasnot possible to begin to start to commence to get ready to go ahead toproceed to advance with that smokehouse or any other smokehouse in aday. And after they did get started they dallied along and dallied alongand killed time until process curing came into fashion among the bestfamilies of Ancient Rome and smokehouses lost their vogue altogether.Let us not be too impetuous about the detail of furnishings. I have afeeling--a feeling based on my own observations over yonder at the siteof our own little undertaking--that when that house is really done theonly furnishings we'll require will be a couple of wheel chairs andsomething 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 Imay use such a phrase--long before we have a place to set them up inour furnishings will be so entirely out of style that they'll be backin style all over again, if you get me. These things move in cycles,you know. One generation buys furniture and uses it. The next generationfinding it hopelessly old-fashioned and out of date burns it up or castsit away or gives it away or stores it in the attic--anything to get ridof it. The third generation spends vast sums of money trying to restoreit or the likes of it, for by that time the stuff which was despised anddiscarded is in strong demand and fetching fancy prices.
"The only mistake is to belong to the middle generation, which curiouslyenough is always the present one. We crave what our grandparents ownedbut our parents did not. Our grandchildren will crave what we hadbut our own children won't. They'll junk it. To-day's monstrosityis day-after-tomorrow's art treasure just as today's museum piece isday-before-yesterday's monstrosity. Therefore, I repeat, let usremain calm. I figure that when we actually get into that house ourgrandchildren will be of a proper age to appreciate the belongings nowappertaining to us, and all will be well."
Thus in substance I spoke. The counter argument offered wasthat--conceding what I said to be true--the fact remained and was not tobe gainsaid that we did not have anywhere near enough of furnishings toequip the house we hoped at some distant date to occupy.
"You must remember," I was told, "that for the six or eight years beforewe 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 whenin the heat of controversy I think up an apt bit of repartee like that Iam apt to utter it a second time for the sake of emphasis. Pausing onlyto see if my stroke of instantaneous retort had struck in, I continued:
"That last flat we had swallowed up furniture as a rat hole swallowssand. First and last we must have poured enough stuff into that flat tofurnish the state of Rhode Island. And what about the monthly statementswe are getting now from the storage warehouse signed by the president ofthe company, old man Pl. Remit? Doesn't the size of them prove that inthe furniture-owning line at least we are to be regarded as persons ofconsiderable consequence?"
"Don't be absurd," I was admonished. "Just compare the size of thelargest bedroom in that last flat we had in One Hundred and Tenth Streetwith the size of the smallest bedroom we expect to have in the newplace. Why, you could put the biggest bedroom we had there into thesmallest bedroom we are going to have here and lose it! And then thinkof the halls we must furnish and the living room and the breakfast porchand 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 enoughto 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 justfor that purpose." I felt I had the upper hand and I meant to keepit. "Besides, you know I don't like cats. What is the use of importingforeign matters such as cats--and purely problematical cats atthat--into a discussion about something else? What relation does a catbear to furniture, I ask you? Still, speaking of cats, I'm reminded--"
"Never mind trying to be funny. And never mind trying to steer theconversation off the right track either. Please pay attention to what Iam saying--let's see, where was I? Oh, yes: Did we have a hall in thatflat worthy to be dignified by the name of a hall? We did not! We had apassageway--that's what it was--a passageway. Now there is a differencebetween furnishing a mere passageway and a regular hall, as you areabout to discover before you are many months older."
On second thought I had to concede there was something in what had justbeen said. One could not have swung one's cat in our dining room inthe flat with any expectation of doing the cat any real good. And thehallway 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 itswall and uncomfortably crowded if you put a clarionet in the corner. Itwould have been bad luck to open an umbrella anywhere in our flat--badluck for the umbrella if for nothing else. Despite its enormous capacityfor inhaling furniture it had been, when you came right down to cases,a form-fitting fiat. So mentally confessing myself worsted at this angleof the controversy, I fell back on my original argument that certainlyit would be years and years and it might be forever before we possiblycould expect--at the current rate of speed of the building operations,or speaking exactly, at the current rate of the lack of speed--to movein.
"But the architect has promised us on his solemn word of honor--"
"Don't tell me what the architect has promised!" I said bitterly. "Nextto waiters, architects are the most optimistic creatures on earth. Awaiter is always morally certain that twenty minutes is the extremelimit of time that will be required to cook anything. You think that youwould like, say, to have a fish that is not listed on the bill of fareunder the subheading 'Ready Dishes'--it may be a whale or it may be aminnow: that detail makes no difference to him--and you ask the waiterhow about it, and he is absolutely certain that it will be possible toborrow a fishing pole somewhere and dig bait and send out and catch thatfish and bring it back in and clean it and take the scale
s and the finsoff and garnish it with sprigs of parsley and potatoes and lemon andmake some drawn butter sauce to pour over it and bring it to you intwenty minutes. If he didn't think so he would not be a waiter. Anarchitect is exactly like a waiter, except that he thinks in terms ofdays instead of terms of minutes. Don't tell me about architects! I onlywish I were as sure of heaven as the average architect is regarding thatwhich no mortal possibly can be sure of, labor conditions being whatchronically they are."
But conceded that the reader is but a humble husbandman--meaning by thata man who is married--he doubtless has already figured out the result ofthis debate. Himself, he knows how such debates usually do terminate.In the end I surrendered, and the final upshot was that we set about thetask of furnishing the rooms that were to be. From that hour dated thebeginning of my wider and fuller education into the system commonlyin vogue these times in or near the larger cities along our Atlanticseaboard for the furnishing of homes. I have learned though. It has costme a good deal of time and some money and my nervous system is not whatit was, having suffered a series of abrupt shocks, but I have learned. Iknow 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 periodis a full stop. This is a rule in punctuation which applies in otherdepartments of life, as I have discovered. Go in extensively for theperiod stuff in your interior equipments and presently you will becoming to a full stop in your funds on hand. The thing works out thesame way every time. I care not how voluminously large and plethoricyour cash balance may be, period furniture carried to an excess willconvert it into a recent site and then the bank will be sending you oneof those little printed notices politely intimating that "your accountappears overdrawn." And any time a banker goes so far as to hint thatyour account appears overdrawn you may bet the last cent you haven'tleft that he is correct. He knows darned good and well it is overdrawnand 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 clearinghouse made out to this or that dealer in period furniture the payingteller hastens to the adjusting department to see how your deposits seemto be bearing up under the strain. It is as though he heard you werebuying oil stocks or playing the races out of your savings and he mightas well begin figuring now about how long approximately it will bebefore your account will become absolutely vacant in appearance.
As I was remarking, I know a trifle about period furniture. Offhandnow, I can distinguish a piece which dates back to Battle Abbey fromsomething which goes back no farther than Battle Creek. Before I couldnot do this. I was forever getting stuff of the time of the GrandMonarch confused with something right fresh out of Grand Rapids.Generally speaking, all antiques--whether handed down from antiquityor made on the premises--looked alike to me. But in the light of mypainfully acquired knowledge I now can see the difference almost at aglance. Sometimes I may waver a trifle. I look at a piece of furniturewhich purports to be an authentic antique. It is decrepit and creaky andinfirm; the upholstering is frayed and faded and stained; the legsare splayed and tottery; the seams gape and there are cracks in thepaneling. If it is a chair, no plump person in his or her right mindwould dare sit down in it. If it is a bedstead, any sizable adultundertaking to sleep in it would do so at his peril. So, outwardly andvisibly it seems to bear the stamp of authenticity. Yet still I doubt.It may be a craftily devised counterfeit. It may be something ofcomparatively recent manufacture which has undergone careless handling.In such a case I seek for the wormholes--if any--the same as any otherseasoned collector would.
Up until comparatively recently wormholes, considered as such, had nogreat lure to me. If I thought of them at all I thought of them as atopic which was rather lacking in interest to begin with and oneeasily exhausted. If you had asked me about wormholes I--speakingoffhand--probably would say that this was a matter which naturally mightappeal to a worm but would probably hold forth no great attraction fora human being, unless he happened to be thinking of going fishing. Butthis was in my more ignorant, cruder days, before I took a beginner'seasy course in the general science of wormholes. I am proud of myprogress, but I would not go so far just yet as to say that I am aprofessional. Still I am out of the amateur class. I suppose you mightcall me a semi-pro, able under ordinary circumstances to do any givenwormhole in par.
For example, at present I have an average of three correct guesses outof five chances--which is a very high average for one who but a littlewhile ago was the veriest novice at distinguishing between ancientwormholes, 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 awhile just seems to come to you. But of course you must have a naturalgift for it to start with--an inherent affinity for wormholes, as itwere.
However, I will say that I did not thoroughly master the cardinalprinciples of this art until after I had studied under one of theleading wormhole experts in this country--a man who has devoted yearsof his life just to wormholes. True, like most great specialists he is aperson of one idea. Get him off of wormholes and the conversation is aptto drag, but discussing his own topic he can go on for hours andhours. I really believe he gets more pleasure out of one first-class,sixteenth-century wormhole than the original worm did. And as Kiplingwould 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 aninspected factory out in Michigan, where no scab wormholes would betolerated, rather than toward one which had been done by an unorganizedforeign worm--possibly even a pauperized worm--two or three hundredyears ago, when there was no such thing as a closed shop and noprotection against germs. Whenever possible I believe in patronizing theproducts of union labor. But the expert speedily set me right on thispoint. He made me see that in furnishings and decorations nothing moderncan possibly compare with something which is crumbly and tottery withthe 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 periodfurniture 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 asgood as lost when you undertake to appraise antique furniture. Whena connoisseur lays hold upon a piece of furniture al-leged to haverightful claims to antiquity the first thing he does is to run his handalong the exposed surfaces to ascertain by the practiced touch of hisfingers whether the patina is on the level or was applied by a craftycounterfeiter. After that he upends it to look for the wormholes. Ifboth are orthodox he gives it his validation as the genuine article. Ifthey are not he brands the article a spurious imitation and rejects itwith ill-concealed scorn. There are other tests, but these two are thesurest ones.
For the benefit of those who may not have had any advantages as recentlyand expensively enjoyed I will state that patina is the gloss or filmwhich certain sorts of metal and certain sorts of polished woods acquirethrough age, long usage and wear. With the passage of time fabrics alsomay acquire it. You may have noticed it in connection with a pair ofblack diagonal trousers that had seen long and severe wear or on theelbows of summer-before-last's blue serge coat. However, patina in pantsor on the braided seams of a presiding elder's Sunday suit is not sohighly valued as when it occurs in relation to a Jacobean church pew ora William-and-Mary what-not.
When I look back on my untutored state before we began to patronize theantique shops and the auction shops I am ashamed--honestly I am. Theonly 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 thecrude raw atmosphere of interior America--anyhow, almost any wealthy NewYorker will tell you it is a crude raw atmosphere and not in any way tobe compared with the refined atmosphere which is about the only thingyou can get for nothing in Europe--as I say, brought up as I was amidsuch raw surroundings and from the cradle made th
e unconscious victim ofthis environment, I had an idea that when a person craved furniturehe went for it to a regular furniture store having ice boxes and porchhammocks and unparalleled bargains in golden oak dining-room sets inthe show windows, and there he made his selection and gave his order andpaid a deposit down and the people at the shop sent it up to his housein a truck with historic scenes such as Washington Crossing the Delawareand Daniel in the Lions' Den painted on the sides of the truck,and after that he had nothing to worry about in connection with thetransaction except the monthly installments.
You see, I date back to the Rutherford B. Hayes period of Americanarchitecture and applied designing---a period which had a solidbackground of mid-Victorian influence with a trace of PhiladelphiaCentennial running through it, being bounded at the farther end by suchsterling examples of parlor statuary as the popular pieces respectivelyentitled, "Welcoming the New Minister," "Bringing Home the Bride," and"Baby's First Bath," and bounded at the nearer end by burnt-wood plaquesand frames for family portraits with plush insets and hand-paintedflowers on the moldings. By the conceptions of those primitive timesnothing so set off the likeness of a departed great-aunt as a fewred-plush insets.
Some of my most cherished boyhood memories centered aboutbird's-eye-maple bedroom sets and parlor furniture of heavy blackwalnut trimmed in a manner which subsequently came to be popular amongundertakers for the adornment of the casket when they had orders tospare no expense for a really fashionable or--as the saying went then--atony funeral. Tony subsequently became nobby and nobby is now swagger,but though the idioms change with the years the meaning remains thesame. When the parlor was opened for a formal occasion--it remainedclosed while the ordinary life of the household went on--its interiorgave off a rich deep turpentiny smell like a paint-and-varnish store on ahot day. And the bird's-eye maple, as I recall, had a high slick finishwhich, however, did not dim the staring, unwinking effect of the roundknots which so plentifully dappled its graining. Lying on the bed andcontemplating the footboard gave one the feeling that countlesseyes were looking at one, which in those days was regarded as highlydesirable.
I remember all our best people favored bird's-eye maple for the companyroom. They clung to it, too. East Aurora had a hard struggle beforeit made any noticeable impress upon the decorative tendencies of WestKentucky, for we were a conservative breed and slow to take up themission styles featuring armchairs weighing a couple of hundredpounds apiece and art-craft designs in hammered metals and semi-tannedleathers. Moreover, a second-hand shop in our town was not an antiqueshop; it was what its name implied--a second-hand shop. You didn't gothere 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 allthat, having other things to think of--such, for example, as making aliving--I did not realize that in New York at least those wishful offollowing the modes did not go to a good live shop making a specialtyof easy payments when they had a house-furnishing proposition on theirhands. That might be all very well for the pedestrian classes and forthose living in the remote districts who kept a mail-order catalogueon the center table and wrote on from time to time with the money orderenclosed.
I soon was made to understand that the really correct thing was firstof all to call in a professional decorator, if one could afford it. Aprofessional decorator is a person of either sex who can think up moreways and quicker ways of spending other people's money than the directorof a shipping board can. But whether you retained the services of aregular decorator or elected to struggle along on your own, you wentfor your purchases to specialty shops or to antique shops, or--best ofall--to the smart auction shops on or hard by Fifth Avenue and MadisonAvenue.
Than the auction rooms in the Fifth Avenue district I know of no placesbetter adapted for studying patina, wormholing and human nature in avariety of interesting phases. To such an establishment, on the dayswhen a sale is announced--which means two or three times a week for agood part of the year--repair wealthy patrons, patrons who were wealthybefore the mania for bidding in things came upon them, as it does comeupon so many, and patrons who are trying to look as though they werewealthy. The third group are in the majority.
Amateur collectors come, on the lookout for lace fans or Japanesebronzes or Chinese ceramics or furniture or pictures or hangings or rugsor tapestries, or whatever it is that constitutes their favorite hobby.There are sure to be prominent actor folk and author folk in thiscategory. Dealers are on hand, each as wise looking as a barnful ofhoot-owls and talking the jargon of the craft.
Agents from rival auction houses are sometimes seen, ready, shouldthe opportunity present itself, to snap up a bargain with intentto reauction it at their own houses at a profit. With the residentproprietor one of this gentry is about as popular as a bat in a boardingschool, but since there is no law to bar him out and since it is in theline of business for him to be present, why present he generally is.
Rich women drive up in their town cars and shabby purveyors of antiquewares from little clutter-hole shops on cross streets at the fringe ofthe East Side shamble in on their fiat arches. Then, too, there arethe habitues of the auction room habit; women mostly, but some men too,unfortunate creatures who have fallen victim to an incurable vice andto whom the announcement in the papers of an unusual sale is luresufficient to draw them hither whether or not they hope to buy anything;and finally there are representatives of a common class in any bigcity--individuals who go wherever free entertainment is provided andespecially to spots where they are likely to see assembled notables ofthe stage or society or of high financial circles.
The auctioneer almost invariably is of a compounded and compositetype that might be described as part matinee idol, part professionalrevivalist, part floor walker, part court jester and part jury pleader,with just a trace of a suggestion of the official manner of thewell-to-do undertaker stirred into the mixture. By sight at least heknows all of his regular customers and is inclined with a special touchof respectful affection toward such of them as prefer on these occasionsto 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 inquiresdeferentially when the bidding lags. "Did I hear you offer seven hundredand fifty, Colonel J.?" he asks in a tone of deep solicitude.
By long acquaintance with his regular clientele, or perhaps by a sort ofintuition which is not the least of his gifts, he is able to interpretinto sums of currency a nod, a wink, a raised finger, a shrug or thelift of an eyebrow, at a distance of anywhere from ten to sixty feet.
In the face of disappointments manifolded a thousand times a month thisman yet remains an unfailing optimist. Watching him in action one getsthe impression that he reads none but glad books, goes to none save gladplays and when the weather is inclement shares the viewpoint of thatsweet singer of the Sunny South who wrote to the effect that it is notraining rain to-day, it's raining daffodils, and then two lines furtheralong corrects his botany to state that having been convinced ofhis error of a moment before he now wishes to take advantage of thisopportunity to inform the public that it is not raining rain to-day, buton the contrary is raining roses down, or metrical words to that generaltenor. He was a good poet, as poets go, but not the sort of person youwould care to loan your best umbrella to.
In another noticeable regard our auctioneer friend betrays somewhat thesame abrupt shiftings of temperamental manifestations that are reputedto have been shown by Ben Bolt's lady friend. I am speaking of the latelamented Sweet Alice, who--as will be recalled--would weep with delightwhen you gave her a smile, but trembled with fear at your frown.Apparently Alice couldn't help behaving in this curious way--onegathers that she must have been the village idiot, harmless enough butundoubtedly an annoying sort of person to have hanging round, weepingcopiously whenever anybody else was cheerful, and perhaps immediatelyafterward trembling in a disconcerting sort of way. She must havespoiled many a pl
easant party in her day, so probably it was just aswell that the community saw fit to file her away in the old churchyardin the obscure corner mentioned more or less rhythmically in thedisclosures recorded as having been made to Mr. Bolt upon the occasionof his return to his native shire after what presumably had been aconsiderable absence.
The poet chronicler, Mr. English, is a trifle vague on this point, butconsidering everything it is but fair to infer that Alice's funeral waspractically by acclamation. Beyond question it must have been a reliefto all concerned, including the family of deceased, to feel that aperson so grievously afflicted mentally was at last permanentlyplanted under a certain slab of stone rather loosely described in theconversation just referred to as granite so gray. One wishes Mr. Englishhad been a trifle more exact in furnishing the particular details ofthis sad case. Still, I suppose it is hard for a poet to be technicaland poetical at the same time. And though he failed to go intoparticulars 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'thave forgotten her, the official half-wit and lightning-change artist ofthe county.
But whereas this unfortunate young woman's conduct may only be accountedfor on the grounds of a total irresponsibility, there is method behindthe same sharply contrasted shift of mood as displayed by the chiefsalesman of the auction room. He is thrilled--visibly and physicallythrilled--at each rapidly recurring opportunity of presenting an articlefor disposal to the highest bidder; hardly can he control his emotionsof joy at the prospect of offering this particular object to an audienceof discriminating tastes and balanced judgment. But mark the change:How instantly, how completely does a devastating and poignant distressovercome him when his hearers perversely decline to enter into spiritedcompetition for a thing so priceless! A sob rises in his throat, chokinghis utterance to a degree where it becomes impossible for him to speakmore 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 Alicegirl look like a beginner. Yet repeated shocks of this character failto daunt the sunniness of his true nature. The harder his spirits aredashed down to earth the greater the resiliency and the buoyancy withwhich they bounce up again. The man has a soul of new rubber!
Let us draw near and scrutinize the scene that unfolds itself at eachpresentation: The attendants fetch out an offering described in theprinted catalogue, let us say, as Number 77 A: Oriental Lamp with SilkShade. Reverently they place it upon a velvet-covered stand in a spaceat the back end of the salesroom, where a platform is inclosed indraperies with lights so disposed overhead and in the wings as to sheda soft radiance upon the inclosed area. The helpers fade out of thepicture respectfully. A tiny pause ensues; this stage wait has beenskillfully timed; a suitable atmosphere subtly has been created. Oh,believe me, in New York we do these things with a proper regard for thedramatic 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 inhis hand, to fall gracefully into a posture bespeaking in every curve ofit a worshipful, almost an idolatrous admiration.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen"--hear him say it--"I have the pleasureand the privilege of submitting for your approval one of the absolutegems of this splendid collection. A magnificent example of the Mingperiod--mind you, a genuine Ming. I am confidentially informed by theexecutors of the estate of the late Mr. Gezinks, the former owner ofthese wonderful belongings, that it was the prize piece of his entirecollection. Look at the color--just look at the shape! Worth a thousanddollars if it is worth a cent. Try to buy it in one of the antique shopsround the corner for that--just try, that's all I ask you to do. Nowthen"--this with a cheery, inviting, confident smile--"now then, what amI offered? Who'll start it off at five hundred?"
There is no answer. A look of surprise not unmixed with chagrin crosseshis mobile countenance. From his play of expression you feel that whathe feels, underlying his other feelings, is a sympathy for people soblinded to their own good luck as not to leap headlong and en masse atthis unparalleled chance.
"Tut tut!" he exclaims and again, "tut tut! Very well, then,"--his toneis resigned--"do I hear four hundred and seventy-five--four hundred andfifty? 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 severalinterests.
"Do I hear four hundred?" He speaks of four hundred as an ostrich mightspeak of a tomtit's egg--as something comparatively insignificant andpuny.
"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. Hissoul within him is crushed and bruised, but he rallies. Rallying is oneof the best things he does and one of the most frequent. The biddinglivens, slackens, lags, then finally ceases. With a gesture betokeningutter despair, with lineaments bathed in the very waters of woe, heheart-brokenly knocks the vase down to somebody for $88.50.
But by the time the hired men have fetched forth Lot 78 he miraculouslyhas recovered his former confidence and for the forty-oddth time sincetwo o'clock--it is now nearly three forty-five--is his old cheerfulbeaming self. Thirty seconds later his heart has been broken in a freshplace; yet we may be sure that to-morrow morning when he rises he willbe whistling a merry roundelay, his faith in the innate goodness ofhuman nature all made new and fully restored to him. He would make aperfectly bully selection if you were sending a messenger to a home tobreak to an unsuspecting household some such tragic tidings, say; asthat the head of the family, while rounding a turn on high, had skiddedand was now being removed from the front elevation of an adjacent brickwall with a putty knife. If example counted for anything at all, hewould have the mourners all cheered up again and the females among themdiscussing the most becoming modes in black crepe in less than no timeat all.
My, my, but how my sense of understanding did broaden under theinfluence of the auction sales we attended through the spring andon into the Summer. When the morning paper came we would turn to theadvertising section and look for auction announcements. If there wasto be one, and generally there was--one or more--we canceled all otherplans and attended. Going to auctions became our regular employment, ourpastime, our entertainment. It became our obsession. It almost becameour joint calling in life. To our besetting mania we sacrificed allelse.
I remember there was one afternoon when John McCormack was billedto sing. I am very fond of hearing John McCormack. For one thing, hegenerally 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 haddecided to take up singing for a living instead of writing. This is onlyone of the sacrifices I have made for the sake of English literature.
McCormack that day had to struggle through without me. Because there wasa sale of Italian antiques billed for three p. m., and we were going tohave an Italian hall and an Italian living room in the new house, and wefelt it to be our bounden duty to attend.
It took some time and considerable work on the part of those fitted toguide me in the matter of decorations before I fell entirely into theidea of an Italian room, this possibly being due to the fact that I wasborn so far away from Italy and passed through childhood with so fewItalian influences coming into my life. Even now I balk at the ideaof hanging any faded red-silk stoles or copes, or whatever thoseecclesiastical garments are, on my walls. I reserve the right to admiresuch a vestment when it is worn by the officiating cleric at church, butfor the life of me and despite all that has repeatedly been said to meon the subject I fail to see where it belongs in a simple household as apart of the scheme of ornamentation.
I do not think it proper to display a strange clergyman's cast-offcostume in my little ho
me any more than I would expect the canon of acathedral 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 thesuggestion that we should have a lot of tall hand-painted candlessitting or standing round in odd spots. I mean those candlesticks whichare painted in faded colors, with touches of dull gilt here and there onthem and which are called after a lady named Polly Crome--their originalinventor, I suppose she was, though her name does sound more as ifArnold Bennett had written her than as if she were a native Italian. Iimagine she thought up this idea of a hand-painted candlestick nine feettall and eighteen inches through at the base, and then in her honor thedesign was called after her, which in my humble opinion was compoundingone mistake on top of another. Likewise I fear that I shall never becomeentirely reconciled to these old-model Italian chairs. My notion of achair is something on which a body can sit for as long as half an hourwithout anesthetics. In most other details concerning antique furniturethey have made a true believer out of me, but as regards chairs I amstill some distance from being thoroughly converted. In chairs I favora chair that is willing to meet you halfway, as it were, in an effortto be mutually comfortable. The other kind--the kind with a hard flatwooden seat and short legs and a stiff high back, a chair which looksas though originally it had been designed to be used by a clown dog ina trained animal act--may be artistic and beautiful in the chasteness ofits lines and all this and that; but as for me, I say give me thekind of chair that has fewer admirers and more friends in the firesidecircle. 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 theAmerican plan and have never entirely got over it. In fact I was toldas much, though not perhaps in exactly those words, when antiques firstbecame a vital issue in our domestic life. In no uncertain terms I wasinformed that everybody who is anybody goes in for the Italian thesetimes. I believe the only conspicuous exceptions to the rule are theItalians who have emigrated to these shores. They, it would appear, areamply satisfied with American fixtures and fittings. I have a suspicionthat possibly some of them in coming hither may have been actuated bya desire to get as far away as possible from those medieval effects inplumbing which seem to be inseparable from Old World architecture.
My education progressed another step forward on the occasion of my firstvisit to an auction room where presumably desirable pieces of Italianworkmanship were displayed as a preliminary to their being disposed ofby public outcry. I was accompanied by a friend--the wormholeist alreadymentioned--and when he lapsed into rhapsodies over a pair of giltmirrors, or rather mirrors which once upon a time, say about the time ofthe Fall of the Roman Empire, had been gilded, I was astonished.
"Surely," I said, "nobody would want those things. See where the glassis flawed--the quicksilver must be pretty nearly all gone from the backsof them. And the molding is falling off in chunks and what molding isleft 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 gotin such shape that you couldn't see yourself in it it was just thesame to us as a chorus girl that had both legs cut off in a railroadaccident--it was regarded as having lost most of its practical use inlife. Still, it is not for me, a raw green novice, a sub-novice as youmight say, to set myself up against an expert like you. Anyhow, as thefellow said, live and learn. Let us move along to the next display ofmoldy remains."
We did so. We came to a refectory table. Ordinarily a refectory tablemainly differs in outline from the ordinary dining table by beingconstructed on the model of a dachshund. But this table, I should guessoffhand, had seen about four centuries of good hard steady refecting atthe hands of succeeding generations of careless but earnest feeders. Itstop was chipped and marred by a million scars, more or less. Its legswere scored and worn down. Its seams gaped. From sheer weakness itcanted far down to one side. The pressure of a hand upon it set thepoor, slanted, crippled wreck to shaking as though along with all itsother infirmities it had a touch of buck ague.
"What about this incurable invalid?" I asked. "Unless the fellow whobuys it sends it up in a padded ambulance it'll be hard to get it homeall in one piece. I suppose that makes it all the more valuable, eh?"
"Absolutely!" he said. "It's a perfectly marvelous thing! I figure itshould bring at least six hundred dollars."
"And cheap enough," I said. "Why, it must have at least six hundreddollars' worth of things the matter with it. A good cabinet-maker couldput 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 regularcabinet-maker. No green hand should touch it--he'd have it all in chunksin no time."
"But the main value of it lies in leaving it in its present shape," hetold me. "Don't you realize that this is a condition which could neverbe duplicated by a workman?"
"Well, I've seen some house wreckers in my time who could produce apretty fair imitation," I retorted playfully. I continued in a musingvein, for the sight of that hopelessly damaged wreck all worn down anddented in and slivered off had sent my mind backward to a memory ofearly childhood. I said:
"I can see now how my parents made a mistake in stopping me from doingsomething I tackled when I was not more than six years old. I was anantiquer, but I didn't know it and they didn't know it. They thoughtthat 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 beenworth considerable money by now."
What I was thinking of was this: On my sixth birthday, I think itwas, an uncle of mine for whom I was named gave me a toy tool chestcontaining a complete outfit of tools. There was a miniature hammerand a plane and a set of wooden vises and a gimlet and the rest of thethings which belong in a carpenter's kit, but the prize of the entirecollection to my way of thinking was a cross-cut saw measuring abouteight inches from tip to tip.
Armed with this saw, I went round sawing things, or rather trying to. Icould not exactly saw with it, but I could haggle the edges and cornersof wood, producing a gnawed, frazzled effect. My quest for stuffsuitable to exercise my handicraft on led me into the spare, or companyroom, where I found material to my liking. I was raking away at the legsof a rosewood center table--had one leg pretty well damaged to my likingand was preparing to start on another--when some officious grown personhappened in on me and stopped me with violent words. If I had but beenleft undisturbed for half an hour or so I doubtless would have achieveda result which now after a lapse of thirty-odd years would have thrilleda 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 apainful physical way. The latter-day system of inculcating lessons inthe mind of the child according to a printed form chart of soothingwords was not known in our community at that time. The old-fashionedmethod of using the back of a hairbrush and imparting the lesson at theother end of the child from where the mind is and letting it travelall the way through him was employed. I was then ordered to go outdoorswhere there would be fewer opportunities for engaging in what adultsmistakenly called mischief.
Regretting that the nurse that morning had seen fit to encase me insnug-fitting linen breeches instead of woolen ones, I wandered aboutcarrying my saw in one hand and with the other hand from time to timerubbing a certain well-defined area of my small person to allay theafterglow. In the barnyard I came upon an egg lying on the edge of a mudpuddle under the protecting lee of the chicken-yard fence. I can shut myeyes and see that egg right now. It was rather an abandoned-looking egg,stained and blotched with brownish-yellow spots. It had the look aboutit of an egg wi
th a past--a fallen egg, as you might say.
Some impulse moved me to squat down and draw the toothed blade of my sawthwartwise across the bulge of that egg. For the first time in my littlelife I was about to have dealings with a genuine antique, but naturallyat 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 couldsaw right through the shell of an egg amidships. That phase of theproceedings is somewhat blurred in my mind, though the denouementremains a vivid memory spot to this very day.
I imparted a brisk raking movement to the saw. It is my distinctrecollection that a fairly loud explosion immediately occurred. I wasgreatly shocked. One too young to know aught of the chemical effect onthe reactions following the admission of fresh air to gaseous matter,which has been forming to the fulminating point within a tightly sealedcasing, would naturally be shocked to have an egg go off suddenly inthat violent manner. Modern military science, I suppose, would classifyit as having been a contact egg.
Not only was I badly shocked, but also I had a profound conviction thatin some way I had been taken advantage of--that my confidence had insome strange fashion been betrayed. I left my saw where I had droppedit. At the moment I felt that never again would I care to have anythingto do with a tool so dangerous. I also left the immediate vicinity ofwhere the accident had occurred and for some minutes wandered aboutin rather a distracted fashion. There did not seem to be any place inparticular for me to go, and yet I could not bear to stay wherever Iwas. I wished, as it were, to get entirely away from myself--a morbidfancy perhaps for a mere six-year-old to be having, and yet, I think, anatural one under the circumstances.
I had a conviction that I would not be welcomed indoors and at the sametime realized that even out in the great open where I could get air--andair was what I especially craved--I was likely to be shunned by suchpersons as I might accidentally encounter. Indeed I rather shunnedmyself, if you get what I mean. I was filled with a general shunningsensation. I felt mortified, too. And this emotion, I found a fewminutes later, was shared by the black cook, who, issuing from thekitchen door, happened upon me in the act of endeavoring to freshen upmyself somewhat from a barrel of rain water which stood under the eaves.She evidently decided offhand that not only had mortification set in butthat it had reached an advanced stage. Her language so indicated.
And now, after more than three and a half decades, here on Fifth Avenuemore than a thousand miles remote from those infantile scenes, I wasgleaning another memorable lesson about antiques. I was learning thatjunk ceases to be junk if only it costs enough money, and thereafterbecomes treasure.
Having had this great principal fact firmly implanted in myconsciousness, I shortly thereafter embarked in congenial company uponthe auction-room life upon which already I have touched. We wentto sales when we had anything to buy and when we had nothing tobuy--somehow we did not seem to be able to stay away. The joy of biddinga thing up and maybe of having it knocked down to us undermined ourpooled will power; it weakened our joint resistance.
"And sold to----" became our slogan, our shibboleth and our mostfamiliar sentence. By day we heard it, by night it dinned in our earsas we slept, dreaming dreams of going bankrupt in this mad, deliriouspursuit which had mastered us and spending our last days in a poorhouseentirely furnished in Italian antiques.
But taking everything into consideration, I must say the game was worththe candle. By degrees we acquired the furnishings for our two Italianrooms and our other rooms--which, thank heaven, are not Italian butwhat you might call fancy-mixed! And by degrees likewise I perfected myartistic education. Of course we made mistakes in selection, as who doesnot? We have a few auction-room skeletons tucked away in our closet, orto speak more exactly, in the attic of the new house. But in the mainwe are satisfied with what we have done and no doubt will continue to beuntil Italian-style furniture goes out and Aztec Indian or Peruvian Incaor Thibetan Grand Llama or some other style comes in.
And when our friends drop in for an evening we talk decorations andfurnishings--it is a subject which never wears out. Mostly the womencallers favor discussions of tapestries and brocades with intervalsspent in fits of mutual wonder over the terrible taste shown by someother woman--not present--in buying the stuff for her house; and the menare likely to be interested in carvings or paintings; but my strong suitis wormholing in all its branches--that and patina. I am very strong onthe latter subject, also. In fact among friends I am now getting to beknown as the Patina Kid.
The Abandoned Farmers Page 7
