Part 17 (1/2)
”Mamma took care of that,” said Marianne.
”You may be quite sure,” said I, ”if your mother has had a hand in planning your house, that the ventilation is cared for.”
It must be confessed that Bob's princ.i.p.al idea in a house had been a Gothic library, and his mind had labored more on the possibility of adapting some favorite bits from the baronial antiquities to modern needs than on anything so terrestrial as air. Therefore he awoke as from a dream, and taking two or three monstrous inhalations, he seized the plans and began looking over them with new energy. Meanwhile I went on with my prelection.
The second great vital element for which provision must be made in ”our house” is FIRE. By which I do not mean merely artificial fire, but fire in all its extent and branches,--the heavenly fire which G.o.d sends us daily on the bright wings of sunbeams, as well as the mimic fires by which we warm our dwellings, cook our food, and light our nightly darkness.
To begin, then, with heavenly fire or suns.h.i.+ne. If G.o.d's gift of vital air is neglected and undervalued, His gift of suns.h.i.+ne appears to be hated. There are many houses where not a cent has been expended on ventilation, but where hundreds of dollars have been freely lavished to keep out the suns.h.i.+ne. The chamber, truly, is tight as a box; it has no fireplace, not even a ventilator opening into the stove-flue; but, oh, joy and gladness! it has outside blinds and inside folding-shutters, so that in the brightest of days we may create there a darkness that may be felt. To observe the generality of New England houses, a spectator might imagine they were planned for the torrid zone, where the great object is to keep out a furnace draught of burning air.
But let us look over the months of our calendar. In which of them do we not need fires on our hearths? We will venture to say that from October to June all families, whether they actually have it or not, would be the more comfortable for a morning and evening fire. For eight months in the year the weather varies on the scale of cool, cold, colder, and freezing; and for all the four other months what is the number of days that really require the torrid-zone system of shutting up houses? We all know that extreme heat is the exception, and not the rule.
Yet let anybody travel, as I did last year, through the valley of the Connecticut, and observe the houses. All clean and white and neat and well-to-do, with their turfy yards and their breezy great elms, but all shut up from bas.e.m.e.nt to attic, as if the inmates had all sold out and gone to China. Not a window-blind open above or below. Is the house inhabited? No,--yes,--there is a faint stream of blue smoke from the kitchen chimney, and half a window-blind open in some distant back part of the house. They are living there in the dim shadows, bleaching like potato-sprouts in the cellar.
”I can tell you why they do it, papa,” said Jenny. ”It's the flies, and flies are certainly worthy to be one of the plagues of Egypt. I can't myself blame people that shut up their rooms and darken their houses in fly-time,--do you, mamma?”
”Not in extreme cases; though I think there is but a short season when this is necessary; yet the habit of shutting up lasts the year round, and gives to New England villages that dead, silent, cold, uninhabited look which is so peculiar.”
”The one fact that a traveler would gather in pa.s.sing through our villages would be this,” said I, ”that the people live in their houses and in the dark. Barely do you see doors and windows open, people sitting at them, chairs in the yard, and signs that the inhabitants are living out-of-doors.”
”Well,” said Jenny, ”I have told you why, for I have been at Uncle Peter's in summer, and aunt does her spring-cleaning in May, and then she shuts all the blinds and drops all the curtains, and the house stays clean till October. That's the whole of it. If she had all her windows open, there would be paint and windows to be cleaned every week; and who is to do it? For my part, I can't much blame her.”
”Well,” said I, ”I have my doubts about the sovereign efficacy of living in the dark, even if the great object of existence were to be rid of flies. I remember, during this same journey, stopping for a day or two at a country boarding-house, which was dark as Egypt from cellar to garret. The long, dim, gloomy dining-room was first closed by outside blinds, and then by impenetrable paper curtains, notwithstanding which it swarmed and buzzed like a beehive. You found where the cake plate was by the buzz which your hand made, if you chanced to reach in that direction. It was disagreeable, because in the darkness flies could not always be distinguished from huckleberries; and I couldn't help wis.h.i.+ng, that, since we must have the flies, we might at last have the light and air to console us under them. People darken their rooms and shut up every avenue of outdoor enjoyment, and sit and think of nothing but flies; in fact, flies are all they have left. No wonder they become morbid on the subject.”
”Well now, papa talks just like a man, doesn't he?” said Jenny. ”He hasn't the responsibility of keeping things clean. I wonder what he would do, if he were a housekeeper.”
”Do? I will tell you. I would do the best I could. I would shut my eyes on fly-specks, and open them on the beauties of Nature. I would let the cheerful sun in all day long, in all but the few summer days when coolness is the one thing needful: those days may be soon numbered every year. I would make a calculation in the spring how much it would cost to hire a woman to keep my windows and paint clean, and I would do with one less gown and have her; and when I had spent all I could afford on cleaning windows and paint, I would harden my heart and turn off my eyes, and enjoy my suns.h.i.+ne and my fresh air, my breezes, and all that can be seen through the picture windows of an open, airy house, and snap my fingers at the flies. There you have it.”
”Papa's hobby is suns.h.i.+ne,” said Marianne.
”Why shouldn't it be? Was G.o.d mistaken, when He made the sun? Did He make him for us to hold a life's battle with? Is that vital power which reddens the cheek of the peach and pours sweetness through the fruits and flowers of no use to us? Look at plants that grow without sun,--wan, pale, long-visaged, holding feeble, imploring hands of supplication towards the light. Can human beings afford to throw away a vitalizing force so pungent, so exhilarating? You remember the experiment of a prison where one row of cells had daily suns.h.i.+ne and the others none. With the same regimen, the same cleanliness, the same care, the inmates of the sunless cells were visited with sickness and death in double measure. Our whole population in New England are groaning and suffering under afflictions, the result of a depressed vitality,--neuralgia, with a new ache for every day of the year, rheumatism, consumption, general debility; for all these a thousand nostrums are daily advertised, and money enough is spent on them to equip an army, while we are fighting against, wasting, and throwing away with both hands, that blessed influence which comes nearest to pure vitality of anything G.o.d has given.
”Who is it that the Bible describes as a sun, arising with healing in his wings? Surely, that suns.h.i.+ne which is the chosen type and image of His love must be healing through all the recesses of our daily life, drying damp and mould, defending from moth and rust, sweetening ill smells, clearing from the nerves the vapors of melancholy, making life cheery. If I did not know Him, I should certainly adore and wors.h.i.+p the sun, the most blessed and beautiful image of Him among things visible! In the land of Egypt, in the day of G.o.d's wrath, there was darkness, but in the land of Goshen there was light. I am a Goshenite, and mean to walk in the light, and forswear the works of darkness. But to proceed with our reading.”
”Our house” shall be set on a southeast line, so that there shall not be a sunless room in it, and windows shall be so arranged that it can be traversed and transpierced through and through with those bright shafts of light which come straight from G.o.d.
”Our house” shall not be blockaded with a dank, dripping ma.s.s of shrubbery set plumb against the windows, keeping out light and air.
There shall be room all round it for breezes to sweep, and suns.h.i.+ne to sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all good souls who begin life by setting out two little evergreen-trees within a foot of each of their front-windows, that these trees will grow and increase till their front-rooms will be brooded over by a sombre, stifling shadow fit only for ravens to croak in.
One would think, by the way some people hasten to convert a very narrow front-yard into a dismal jungle, that the only danger of our New England climate was sunstroke. Ah, in those drizzling months which form at least one half of our life here, what sullen, censorious, uncomfortable, unhealthy thoughts are bred of living in dark, chilly rooms, behind such dripping thickets? Our neighbors' faults a.s.sume a deeper hue, life seems a dismal thing, our very religion grows mouldy.
My idea of a house is, that, as far as is consistent with shelter and reasonable privacy, it should give you on first entering an open, breezy, outdoor freshness of sensation. Every window should be a picture--sun and trees and clouds and green gra.s.s should seem never to be far from us. ”Our house” may shade but not darken us. ”Our house”
shall have bow-windows, many, sunny, and airy,--not for the purpose of being cleaned and shut up, but to be open and enjoyed. There shall be long verandas above and below, where invalids may walk dry-shod, and enjoy open-air recreation in wettest weather. In short, I will try to have ”our house” combine as far as possible the sunny, joyous, fresh life of a gypsy in the fields and woods with the quiet and neatness and comfort and shelter of a roof, rooms, floors, and carpets.
After heavenly fire, I have a word to say of earthly, artificial fires. Furnaces, whether of hot water, steam, or hot air, are all healthy and admirable provisions for warming our houses during the eight or nine months of our year that we must have artificial heat, if only, as I have said, fireplaces keep up a current of ventilation.
The kitchen-range with its water-back I humbly salute. It is a great throbbing heart, and sends its warm tides of cleansing, comforting fluid all through the house. One could wish that this friendly dragon could be in some way moderated in his appet.i.te for coal,--he does consume without mercy, it must be confessed,--but then great is the work he has to do. At any hour of day or night, in the most distant part of your house, you have but to turn a stop-c.o.c.k and your red dragon sends you hot water for your need; your was.h.i.+ng-day becomes a mere play-day; your pantry has its ever-ready supply; and then, by a little judicious care in arranging apartments and economizing heat, a range may make two or three chambers comfortable in winter weather. A range with a water-back is among the _must-be's_ in ”our house.”