The story of my house

A SHADED slope bounds the homestead to the southward, and a thick copse, descending rather abruptly to the river, flanks the grounds in the rear. Screened from sun and glare, the grass-plot is always a favorite lounging-place during hot weather. Across the water a west or south wind invariably blows, freighted with coolness and charged with that indefinable odor which the wind gathers from its passage through a wood.

From the trees and bushes and grasses along the river banks the air has dusted a fragrance; from the leaves, the fern fronds, and the flowers it has extracted an aroma. The scent of the swamp honeysuckle along the hillside now forms its strongest component part. Its perfume is tangible, fresh, and uncloying—sentient with the delicious breath of the summer—and, I fancy, charms the wood-thrushes into sweeter song.

The west or south wind invariably blows. Even when not felt, it may be seen in the aspen’s trembling leaves; so that, however hot the day, here a breeze may be always felt or seen. Through the trees the river sparkles, and through a wider opening may be traced its sinuous course until it merges into haze and sky. My book remains unopened; it is pleasanter to read the earth and air. The bees hum, a wood-dove calls, the soothing roar of the rapids rises and falls. So sweet is summer air, so caressing are summer sounds.

How the sails have multiplied on the river! Is it the haze or the sudden sunlight that has transformed their canvas into unaccustomed color? Yonder a larger vessel, of different mold from the pleasure-craft, is rounding the river’s curve in her cruise up-stream. Her clean-cut prow rises high in air, her painted canvas is spread, and the sunlight strikes the gold of her sides. Onward she sails, graceful as a water-bird, tacking at intervals to catch the breeze. At once it becomes plain to me—it is no mirage, no cheat of the atmosphere, but a reality. Up the river from the lake, through the lake from the sea; launched from her harbor in distant lands, and laden with her precious stores, my ship has come!

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I.

THE PERFECT HOUSE.

People who know my house come to like it a little; people who merely glance at it see nothing to call for comment, and so pass on....

My house not being a fine house, nor a costly house, nor what people call an elegant house, what is there in it to describe?—O. B. BUNCE, MY HOUSE.

I MAKE no claim that the house wherein I dwell is a perfect one; it is my first house—a fledgling. One must build at least thrice, it has been truly observed, to obtain the perfected dwelling, and still there will remain room for improvement. So many things go to make up the ideal house, it is beyond human possibility to combine them all; while even during the process of construction one’s tastes are liable to change or become subject to modification.

To the most of mankind a single venture is sufficient; only architects build more than once for a pastime. For the sole office of the architect is to plan; the province of the builder to delay. The asylums teem with victims to the vexations of house-building. Having money to make and not to disburse, with no further care than to complete the work in hand with the utmost leisure, the architect and builder pass through the ordeal unscathed, and remain to lure new victims. One exception I recall. Picturesquely situated on the eastern coast, within hearing of the surge and rising amid the forest-growth, stands an untenanted villa. The imposing exterior is of massive stone, and all that unlimited wealth and taste could contribute has been lavished upon the interior. The mansion was completed within the specified time, but during its construction architect and builder both died, the owner living only three days after its completion. From the placing of the foundation-stone to the prospective fire in the hearth—from commencement to completion—who may foresee the possibilities? Ever man proposes while Fate disposes.

Plans look so feasible on paper, and building seems so delightfully facile in theory—so much time, so much money, and your long-dreamed-of castle in Spain is a reality. But, like the quest of a German professor I once knew who was searching for a wife who must be rich, beautiful, young, angelic, and not afraid of a mouse, the perfect house is difficult to attain; while plans often resemble the summer excursions one takes with the mind during winter, apparently so easy to carry out and yet so unfrequently realized. We forget the toilsome climb up the mountain where we arrive, perchance, to find the view shrouded in mist; or a cold spell sets in when we reach the seashore; or heavy rains render the long-contemplated angling trip a dismal failure.

If we leave the house to the architect, he builds merely for himself—he builds his house, not yours. You must be the idealist of your own ideal. “Our so-called architects,” says Richard Jefferies, “are mere surveyors, engineers, educated bricklayers, men of hard, straight ruler and square, mathematically accurate, and utterly devoid of feeling. You call in your practical architect, and he builds you a brick box. The princes of Italy knew better; they called in the poet and the painter, the dreamers, to dream for them.” How the penetrating insight of Montaigne pierced the mask of the architect: “The Merchant thrives not but by the licentiousness of youth; the Husbandman but by dearth of corne; the Architect but by the ruine of houses!”

Perhaps the easiest way out of the difficulty is to secure a house already constructed that will meet your requirements as nearly as may be. But the mere building, the foundation, construction, architectural details, and interior arrangement are only a small part of numerous vital factors that should enter into the question of the house and home. There are equally the considerations of situation, neighborhood, accessibility, and a score of like important features to be seriously meditated on. One can not afford to make mistakes in building or in marrying. “In early manhood,” says Cato, “the master of a family must study to plant his ground. As for building, he must think a long time about it.” The external construction is, indeed, the least part of building—there is still the decorating and the furnishing.

Wise is he who weighs and ponders ere he decides upon the location of his house, especially if he would be near the town. For in the ideal home I would unite many things, including pure air, sufficient elevation, pleasant views, the most suitable exposure, good soil, freedom from noise, and the natural protection from wind afforded by trees. “Let our dwelling be lightsome, if possible; in a free air and near a garden,” is the advice of the philosopher, Pierre du Moulin. Very apposite are old Thomas Fuller’s directions for a site—“_Chiefly choose a wholesome air_, for air is a dish one feeds on every minute, and therefore it need be good.” And again: “Light (God’s eldest daughter) is a principal beauty in a building, and a pleasant prospect is to be respected.” In the chapter of the Essays, on Smells and Odors, the author pertinently observes: “The principall care I take, wheresoever I am lodged, is to avoid and be far from all manner of filthy, foggy, ill-savouring, and unwholesome aires. These goodly Cities of strangely seated Venice and huge-built Paris, by reason of the muddy, sharp, and offending savours which they yield; the one by her fennie and marish situation, the other by her durtie uncleannesse and continuall mire, doe greatly alter and diminish the favor which I bear them.”

All these desiderata are well-nigh impossible to unite in the city. There all manner of nuisances necessarily exist—manufactories which discharge noxious smoke and soot, the clangor of bells and whistles, an atmosphere more or less charged with unwholesome exhalations. This more particularly in summer; in winter I grant the city has its charms and advantages. Wealth may sometimes combine the delights of urban and rural life, as when a large residence plot is retained in a pleasant neighborhood of the town. But even unlimited means can rarely procure a place of this description, which comes by inheritance rather than by choosing, and in the end becomes too valuable to retain. Besides, however fine the ancestral trees and endeared the homestead, it must still lack the repose of the country, the free expanse of sky, the unfettered breadth of the fields.

When I look about me I find the combination I would attain a difficult one to secure in almost any city. If I build in the suburbs, upon the most fashionable avenue, its approaches may be disagreeable and the surrounding landscape flat and uninviting. The opposite quarter of the suburbs, the main northern residence avenue, will be windy during winter. If I locate westward there may be factories and car-shops to constantly offend the ear; if I move eastward unsavory odors may assail, and if I select a site in yet another neighborhood that commends itself for its elevation and pleasant society, there may be the smoke and soot of neighboring chimneys to defile the air and intrude themselves unceasingly into my dwelling. The country-seat sufficiently removed from town, and yet comparatively accessible, alone may yield, during the greater portion of the year, all the desired qualifications of the ideal home. Does not Béranger truly sing—

Cherchons loin du bruit de la ville Pour le bonheur un sûr asile.

Seek we far from the city’s noise A refuge safe for peaceful joys.

And have not all the poets before him apostrophized the delights of a country life?

Why not the town-house, and also the country-seat—a hibernaculum for the winter, and a villeggiatura for the summer? Unfortunately, this would involve constructing two houses, meeting a double building liability, harboring two sets of worries; and, moreover, one’s library, however modest, can not well be disarranged or periodically shifted from one place to another.

The old Latins were distinguished as we well know for their love of the country. Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus, and Terence all had their country-seats. Horace, in addition to the Sabine farm, possessed his cottage at Tivoli, and longed for a third resort at Sorrento. Pliny the Younger, and Cicero rode seventeen miles from Rome to Tusculum daily to gain repose. Pliny’s letters attest his intense fondness for rural surroundings. The holder of numerous country-houses, he has described two of them very minutely, his descriptions giving to posterity the most reliable and truthful account of the old Roman villas. Of all his villas, including those at Tusculum, Præneste, Tibur, several on Lake Como, and his Laurentine and Tuscan resorts, the two latter were his especial favorites, whose fascinations he never tires of recounting. Especially attractive is his account of Laurentium: the apartments so planned as to command the most pleasing views; the dining-room built out into the sea, ever washed by the advancing wave; the terrace before the gallery redolent with the scent of violets; the gallery itself so placed that the shadow of the building was thrown on the terrace in the forenoon; and at the end of the gallery “the little garden apartment” looking on one side to the terrace, on the other to the sea; his elaborate bath-rooms and dressing-rooms, his tennis-court and tower, and his own sleeping-room carefully constructed for the exclusion of noise. “My house is for use, and not for show,” he exclaims; “I retire to it for a little quiet reading and writing, and for the bodily rest which freshens the mind.” One side of the spacious sitting-room invited the morning, the other the afternoon sun. One room focused the sunlight the entire day. In the walls of this his study was “a book-case for such works as can never be read too often.”