Читать книгу The Art of Living - Грант Роберт - Страница 3

Mr. and Mrs. Julius Cæsar, who, as you may remember, divide their income into parts with mathematical precision, were not as well off in this world’s goods at the time of their marriage as they are now. Neither Mr. Cæsar’s father nor Mrs. Cæsar’s grandmother was then dead, and consequently the newly wedded pair, though set up by their respective families with a comfortable income, felt that it was incumbent upon them to practise strict economy. Then it was that Julius conceived what seemed to them both the happy idea of buying a house dirt cheap in a neighborhood which was not yet improved, and improving the neighborhood, instead of paying an exorbitant price for a residence in a street which was already all it should be.

“Why,” said Julius, “shouldn’t we buy one of those new houses in Sunset Terrace? They look very attractive, and if we can only induce two or three congenial couples to join forces with us we shall have the nucleus of a delightful colony.”

“Besides, everything will be nice and new,” said Mrs. Julius, or Dolly Cæsar, as her friends know her. “No cockroaches, no mice, no moths, no family skeletons to torment us. Julius, you are a genius. We can just as well set the fashion as follow meekly in fashion’s wake.”

So said, so done. Julius Cæsar bent his intellect upon the matter and soon found three congenial couples who were willing to join forces with him. Before another twelve months had passed, four baby-wagons – one of them double-seated – were to be seen on four sunny grass-plots in front of four attractive, artistic-looking villas on Sunset Terrace. Where lately sterility, mortar, and weeds had held carnival, there was now an air of tasteful gentility. Thanks to the example of Dolly Cæsar, who had an eye and an instinct for such matters, the four brass door-plates shone like the sun, the paint was spick and span, the four gravel paths were in apple-pie order, the four grass-plots were emerald from timely use of a revolving lawn sprinkler, and the four nurse-maids, who watched like dragons over the four baby-wagons, were neat-looking and comely. No wonder that by the end of the second year there was not a vacant house in the street, and that everybody who wished to live in a fashionable locality was eager for a chance to enter Sunset Terrace. No wonder, too, that Mr. and Mrs. Julius Cæsar were able, by the end of the fourth year, to emerge from Sunset Terrace with a profit on the sale of their villa which made it rent free for the entire period, and left them with a neat little surplus to boot, and to settle down with calm minds on really fashionable Belport Avenue, in the stately mansion devised to them by Mrs. Cæsar’s grandmother.

Now, it must be borne in mind that a Mr. and Mrs. Julius Cæsar can sometimes do that which a Mr. and Mrs. George J. Spriggs find difficulty in accomplishing. Spriggs, at the time of his marriage to Miss Florence Green, the daughter of ex-Assistant Postmaster-General Homer W. Green, conceived the happy idea of setting up his household gods in Locust Road, which lies about as far from Belport Avenue in one direction as Sunset Terrace in the other. Both are semi-suburban. It also occurred to him at the outset to join forces with three or four congenial couples, but at the last moment the engagement of one of the couples in question was broken, and the other three decided to live somewhere else. To have changed his mind then would have involved the sacrifice of one hundred dollars paid to bind the bargain to the landowner. So it seemed best to them on the whole to move in, as they had to live somewhere.

“It’s just a little bit dreary, isn’t it?” said Florence Spriggs, pathetically, as she looked out of her bow window at the newly finished street which was not finished, and at the grass-plot where there was no grass. “But I sha’n’t be a bit lonely with you, George.”

“I wonder if the color of this house has been changed,” said Spriggs, presently, as he glanced up at the façade and from that to the other houses in the block, each of which was vacant. He and Florence had gone out after dinner to take a stroll and survey the neighborhood which they hoped to improve.

“Of course it hasn’t! How could it be?” said Florence.

“Somehow it looks a more staring shade of yellow than it did the first time we saw it. And I don’t fancy altogether the filigree work on the door, or that Egyptian renaissance scroll set into the eastern wall, do you, dearest? However, we’re in now and can’t get out, for the title has passed. I wonder who will buy the other houses?”

They were soon to know. They were alone all winter, but in the early spring a family moved in on either side of them. The houses in Locust Road, like those in Sunset Terrace, were of the villa order, with grass-plots, which were almost lawns, appurtenant. Though less pleasing than those which had taken the more discerning eye of Mrs. Julius Cæsar, they were nevertheless comparatively inoffensive and sufficiently tasteful. Neighbor number one proved to be of an enterprising and imaginative turn. He changed the color of his villa from staring yellow to startling crushed strawberry, supplemented his Egyptian renaissance scroll and filigree with inlaid jewel and frost work, stationed a cast-iron stag in one corner of the grass-plot and a cast-iron Diana with a bow in another, and then rested on his laurels. Neighbor number two was shiftless and untidy. His grass-plot did not thrive, and the autumn leaves choked his gravel path. His windows were never washed, his blinds hung askew, and his one maid-of-all-work preferred the lawn to the laundry as a drying-room. His wife sunned herself in a wrapper, and he himself in his shirt sleeves. A big mongrel dog drooled perpetually on the piazza or tracked it with his muddy feet, and even the baby-wagon wore the appearance of dilapidation and halted because of a broken spring.

The Spriggses tried to be lenient and even genial with both these neighbors, but somehow the attempt was not successful. Neighbor number one became huffy because Spriggs took no notice of his advice that he embellish his grass-plot with a stone mastiff or an umbrella and cherub fountain, and neighbor number two took offence because Spriggs complained that the ventilator on his chimney kept Mrs. Spriggs awake by squeaking. Mrs. Spriggs did her best to set them both a good example by having everything as tasteful on the one hand and as tidy on the other as it should be. In the hope of improving them she even dropped suggestive hints as to how people ought to live, but the hints were not taken. What was worse none of the other houses were taken. As Spriggs pathetically expressed it, the iron stag on the one side and the weekly wash on the other kept purchasers at bay. He tried to buoy himself up by believing that a glut in the real estate market was the cause why the remaining villas in Locust Road hung fire, but this consolation was taken away from him the following spring when an active buying movement all along the line still left them without other neighbors. The unoccupied villas had begun to wear an air of dilapidation, in spite of their Egyptian renaissance scrolls and the presence of a cast-iron Diana.

To crown the situation the baby of neighbor number two caught diphtheria from being left in its halting wagon by the maid-of-all-work too near the cesspool on the lawn, and was kissed by the Spriggs baby before the fact was discovered. If there is one thing more irritating to the maternal mind than another, it is to have dear baby catch something from the child of people whom you reprobate. One feels that the original horrors of the disease are sure to be enhanced through such a medium. When the only child of the Julius Cæsars died of the same disease, contracted from a germ inhaled on Belport Avenue, the parents felt that only destiny was to blame. On the other hand, though the Spriggs baby recovered, Mrs. Spriggs never quite forgave herself for what had happened. Before the next autumn Spriggs parted with his estate on Locust Road for so much less than he had paid for it that he felt obliged to accept the hospitality of his wife’s father, ex-Assistant Postmaster-General Green, during the succeeding winter.

The moral of this double-jointed tale is twofold; firstly that the young householder cannot always count upon improving the neighborhood in which he sets up his goods and chattels after marriage, and secondly, that, in case the neighborhood fails to improve, a tenancy for a year or two is a less serious burden than absolute ownership. It is extremely pleasant, to be sure, to be able to declare that one has paid for one’s house, and I am aware that the consciousness of unencumbered ownership in the roof over one’s head affords one of the most affecting and effective opportunities for oratory which the free-born citizen can desire. The hand of many a husband and father has been stayed from the wine-cup or the gaming-table by the pathetic thought that he owned his house. As a rule, too, it is cheaper to pay the interest on a mortgage than to pay rent, and if one is perfectly sure of being able to improve the neighborhood, or at least save it from degeneration, it certainly seems desirable to be the landlord of one’s house, even though it be mortgaged so cleverly that the equity of redemption is merely a name. But in this age of semi-suburban development, when Roads and Terraces and Parks and Gates and other Anglo-European substitutes for streets serve as “springes to catch woodcocks,” a young couple on real estate ownership bent should have the discerning eye of a Mrs. Julius Cæsar in order not to fall a prey to the specious land and lot speculator. If you happen to hit on a Sunset Terrace, everything is rose color, but to find one’s self an owner in fee on a Locust Road, next door to crushed strawberry and a cast-iron stag, will palsy the hopes of the hopeful.

What attractive, roomy, tasteful affairs many of these semi-suburban villas, which are built nowadays on the new Roads, Terraces, Parks, Gates, and even Streets, are to be sure. There are plenty of homely ones too, but it is a simple matter to avoid the Egyptian renaissance scroll, and the inlaid jewel work and stained-glass bull’s eyes if one only will. They seem to be affording to many a happy solution of the ever new and ever old problem, which presents itself to every man who is about to take a wife, whether it is preferable to live in the city or the country. These new suburbs, or rather outlying wards of our large cities, which have been carved out of what, not many years ago, was real country where cows browsed and woods flourished, must be very alluring to people who would fain live out of town and still be in it. When, by stepping on an electric car or taking the train, you can, within a quarter of an hour, be on your own piazza inhaling fresh air and privileged to feast your eyes on a half acre or less of greensward belonging to yourself, there would seem to be strong inducements for refusing to settle down in a stuffy, smoky, dusty, wire-pestered city street, however fashionable. Rapid transit has made or is making the environs of our cities so accessible that the time-honored problem presents itself under different conditions than formerly. There is no such thing now as the real country for anybody who is not prepared to spend an hour in the train. Even then one is liable to encounter asphalt walks and a Soldier’s monument in the course of a sylvan stroll. But the intervening territory is ample and alluring.

For one-half the rent demanded for a town house of meagre dimensions in the middle of a block, with no outlook whatever, new, spacious, airy, ornamental homes with a plot of land and a pleasing view attached, are to be had for the seeking within easy living distance from nearly every large city. When I begin to rhapsodize, as I sometimes do, I am apt to ask myself why it is that anybody continues to live in town. It was only the other day that I happened, while driving with my wife in the suburbs, to call her attention, enthusiastically, to the new house which Perkins has secured for himself. You may remember that Perkins is the thin, nervous lawyer with four daughters, who is solicitous as to what will become of them when he is dead. We drove by just as he came up the avenue from the station, which is only a three minutes’ walk from the house. He looked tired – he always does – but there was already a fresh jauntiness in his tread as though he sniffed ozone. He looked up at the new house complacently, as well he might, for it is large enough even for four daughters, and has all the engaging impressiveness of a not too quaintly proportioned and not too abnormally stained modern villa, a highly evolved composite of an old colonial mansion, a Queen Anne cottage, and a French château. Before he reached the front door, two of his daughters ran out to embrace him and relieve him of his bag and bundles, and a half-hour later, as we drove back, he was playing lawn tennis with three of his girls, in a white blazer with pink stripes and knickerbockers, which gave his thin and eminently respectable figure a rather rakish air.

“Barbara,” I said to my wife, “why isn’t Perkins doing the sensible thing? That’s a charming house, double the size he could get for the same money in town – and the rent is eight hundred or a thousand dollars instead of fifteen hundred or two thousand. He needs fewer servants out here, for the parlor-maid isn’t kept on tenterhooks to answer the door-bell, and there is fresh air to come back to at night, and the means for outdoor exercise on his own or his neighbor’s lawn, which for a nervous, thin-chested, sedentary man like Perkins is better than cod-liver oil. Think what robust specimens those daughters should be with such opportunities for tennis, golf, skating, and bicycling.

“On Sundays and holidays, if the spirit moves him and his wife and the girls to start off on an exploring expedition, they are not obliged to take a train or pound over dusty pavements before they begin; the wild flowers and autumn foliage and chestnut-burs are all to be had in the woods and glens within a mile or two of their own home. Or if he needs to be undisturbed, no noise, no interruption, but nine hours’ sleep and an atmosphere suited to rest and contemplation on his piazza or by his cheerful, tasteful fireside. Why isn’t this preferable to the artificial, restless life of the city?”

“And yet,” said Barbara, “I have heard you state that only a rich man can afford to live in the country.”

Women certainly delight to store up remarks made in quite another connection, and use them as random arguments against us.

“My dear Barbara,” said I, “this is not the country. Of course in the real country, one needs so many things to be comfortable nowadays – a large house, stables, horses, and what not – it has always seemed to me that a poor man with social or cultivated instincts had better stay in town. But have not Perkins and these other semi-suburbanites hit the happy medium? They have railroads or electric cars at their doors, and yet they can get real barn-yard smells.”

“I doubt if they can,” said Barbara. “That is, unless they start a barn-yard for the purpose, and that would bring the health authorities down upon them at once. If this were the country, I could entirely thrill at the description you have just given of your friend Mr. Perkins. The real country is divine; but this is oleomargarine country. On the other hand, however, I quite agree with you that if Mr. Perkins is delicate, this is a far healthier place for him than the city, in spite of the journey in the train twice a day. The houses – his house in particular – are lovely, and I dare say we all ought to do the same. He can certainly come in contact with nature – such nature as there is left within walking distance – easier than city people. But to console me for not having one of these new, roomy villas, and to prevent you from doing anything rash, I may as well state a few objections to your paradise. As to expense, of course there is a saving in rent, and it is true that the parlor-maid does not have to answer the door-bell so often, and accordingly can do other things instead. Consequently, too, Mrs. Perkins and the four girls may get into the habit of going about untidy and in their old clothes. A dowdy girl with rosy cheeks and a fine constitution is a pitiable object in this age of feminine progress. Mr. Perkins will have to look out for this, and he may require cod-liver oil after all.

“Then there is the question of schools. In many of these semi-suburban paradises there are no desirable schools, especially for girls, which necessitates perpetual coming and going on trains and cars, and will make education a wearisome thing, especially for Mrs. Perkins. She will find, too, that her servants are not so partial to wild flowers and chestnut-burs and fresh air as her husband and daughters. Only the inexperienced will apply, and they will come to her reluctantly, and as soon as she has accustomed them to her ways and made them skilful, they will tell her they are not happy, and need the society of their friends in town.

“Those are a few of the drawbacks to the semi-suburban villa; but the crucial and most serious objection is, that unless one is very watchful, and often in spite of watchfulness, the semi-suburbanite shuts himself off from the best social interests and advantages. He begins by imagining that there will be no difference; that he will see just as much of his friends and go just as frequently to balls and dinner-parties, the concert and the theatre, the educational or philanthropic meeting. But just that requisite and impending twenty minutes in the train or electric car at the fag end of the day is liable to make a hermit of him to all intents and purposes by the end of the second year. Of course, if one is rich and has one’s own carriage, the process of growing rusty is more gradual, though none the less sure. On that very account most people with a large income come to town for a few months in winter at any rate. There are so many things in life to do, that even friends with the best and most loving intentions call once on those who retire to suburban villas and let that do for all time. To be sure, some people revel in being hermits and think social entertainments and excitements a mere waste of time and energy. I am merely suggesting that for those who wish to keep in close touch with the active human interests of the day, the semi-suburban villa is somewhat of a snare. The Perkinses will have to exercise eternal vigilance, or they will find themselves seven evenings out of seven nodding by their fireside after an ample meal, with all their social instincts relaxed.”

Undeniably Barbara offered the best solution of this question in her remark, that those who can afford it spend the spring and autumn in the country and come to town for the winter months. Certainly, if I were one of the persons who are said to have too much for their own good, I should do something of the kind. I might not buy a suburban villa; indeed, I would rather go to the real country, where there are lowing kine, and rich cream and genuine barn-yard smells, instead of electric cars and soldiers’ monuments. There would I remain until it was time to kill the Thanksgiving turkey, and then I would hie me to town in order to refresh my mental faculties with city sights and sounds during the winter-spring solstice, when the lowing kine are all in the barn, and even one who owns a suburban villa has to fight his way from his front door through snow-drifts, and listen to the whistling wind instead of the robin red-breast or tinkling brook.

Patterson, the banker, is surely to be envied in his enjoyment of two establishments, notwithstanding that the double ownership suggests again the effete civilizations of Europe, and was once considered undemocratic. Patterson, though his son has been through the Keeley cure, and his daughter lives apart from her husband, has a charming place thirty-five miles from town, where he has many acres and many horses, cows, and sheep, an expanse of woods, a running stream, delicious vegetables and fruit; golf links, and a fine country house with all the modern improvements, including a cosy, spacious library. Then he has another house – almost a palace – in town which he opens in the late autumn and occupies until the middle of May, for Patterson, in spite of some foibles, is no tax dodger.

Yes, to have two houses and live half of the year in town and the other half in the country, with six to eight weeks at the sea-side or mountains, so as to give the children salt air and bathing, or a thorough change, is what most of us would choose in case we were blessed with too much for our own good. But, unfortunately or fortunately, most of us with even comfortable incomes cannot have two houses, and consequently must choose between town and country or semi-country, especially as the six or eight weeks at the sea-side or mountains is apt to seem imperative when midsummer comes. According, therefore, as we select to live in one or the other, it behooves us to practise eternal vigilance, so that we may not lose our love of nature and wreck our nerves in the worldly bustle of city life, or become inert, rusty, and narrow among the lowing kine or in semi-suburban seclusion. In order to live wisely, we who dwell in the cities should in our spare hours seek fresh air, sunlight, and intercourse with nature, and we whose homes are out of town should in our turn rehabilitate our social instincts and rub up our manners.

Regarding the real country, there is one other consideration of which I am constantly reminded by a little water-color hanging in my library, painted by me a few years ago while I was staying with my friend Henley. It represents a modest but pretty house and a charming rustic landscape. I call it Henley’s Folly. Henley, who possessed ardent social instincts, had always lived in town; but he suddenly took it into his head to move thirty miles into the country. He told me that he did so primarily for the benefit of his wife and children, but added that it would be the best thing in the world for him, that it would domesticate him still more completely, and give him time to read and cultivate himself. When I went to stay with him six months later, he was jubilant regarding the delights of the country, and declared that he had become a genuine farmer. He pished at the suggestion that the daily journey to and from town was exhausting, and informed me that his one idea was to get away from the bricks and mortar as early in the afternoon as possible. Just two years later I heard with surprise, one day, that the Henleys had sold their farm and were coming back to town. The reason – confided to me by one of the family – was that his wife was so much alone that she could not endure the solitude any longer. “You see,” said my informant, “the nearest house of their friends was four miles off, and as Henley stayed in town until the last gun fired, the days he returned home at all, and as he had or invented a reason for staying in town all night at least once a week, poor Mrs. Henley realized that the lot of a farmer’s wife was not all roses and sunshine.” From this I opine that if one with ardent social instincts would live wisely he should not become a gentleman farmer merely for the sake of his wife and children.