We take shame to ourselves for having never asked our friends into the Doctor's house, but left them, inhospitably, to wander about Norwood as best they might. Not that they are in danger of lacking accommodations; for Norwood is not unaccustomed to company. Hither come hundreds every summer for the pleasure of its wholesome air and the beauty of its charming scenery. There is no lack of hospitable hotels; nor are the landlords unskilled in catеring. For all that, our readers had a right to expеct an invitation to the Doctor’s house; and as the whole family are off to-day on a pic-nic, we will steal in and look over the whole place. This intrusion would be exceedingly rude in actual life; but in books such things are often done, and may be again; and if any complaint arises, I will take the blame.
Approach the old-fashioned mansion through the front yard. First take notice of the roof. The ancient New-England architects seem to have had a vague idea of a Mansard roof. As the attempt was carried out in the case before us, it resulted very nearly in justifying Hiram Beers' saying that the Doctor's roof looked like an old woman’s cap, with spectacles mounted on it; for two windows projected from the steep double-leaved roof in a manner that invariable suggested a pair of great eyes! And as there was an open, ornamental railing carried along the eaves and up the gables of the roof, resembling a stiff ruffle, the notion of an old lady's cap and frill once hinted could not be got out of the mind.
The front yard was deep. A straight path led to the front door. On either side of it was a border of shrubs, with intermediate spaces filled with flowers.
A porch of some architectural pretension bestrid the front door, and was itself at once a protection from rain and a trellis for honeysuckles.
The windows on either side were small, if compared with modern windows, and filled with glass that seemed even more diminutive. No mean little entry receives you, as is too often the case in modern houses. The hall of a dwelling gives you the first impressions. Sometimes on entering you fear that by some mistake you have got into a clothes closet; at others, you enter upon a space so small that it is only by a dexterous interchange of civilities between yourself and the door that you can get in or the door be shut. In some halls, so called, a man sees a pair of corkscrew stairs coming right down upon him, and fears lest by some jugglery he be seized and extracted like a cork into some upper space. Often the doors are so arranged that what with the shutting of the outside door, and the opening of inside ones, the timid stranger stands a chance of being impaled on the latch, or flapped front and rear; for, vigorous springs attached to the doors work with such nimbleness that one needs to be expert, or, having opened the door, before he can dash through, it will spring back on him with a “now-I've-got-you” air quite alarming.
Such houses seldom remit their torments here. There is an exquisite symmetry in all the interior adaptations. You finish your visit and rise to depart, taking the door most likely to let you out, and find yourself walking into a sweet-meat closet!
A young beau, having acquitted himself well of the last critical sentences, and executed a half-backward, and wholly awkward march toward the door, with ineffable satisfaction, opens and steps into the china closet! The little girls giggle; the little boys laugh out; the young ladies are confused, and the beau still more so. But, what if it had been the cellar door? On one occasion, visiting a thrifty friend whose dining-room and sitting-room were one, I came near descending headlong into his cellar, which, for convenience probably, opened into the dining-room. I once saw three like and equal doors in a sitting-room. The one was the true door of departure; the next, the cellar; and the third a bedroom. There was only one chance in three for a stranger.
Do you not think that a house reveals the architect's disposition? I do. We know much of a writer from his style. The style of a cautious nature will have involved parenthetical sentences, full of qualifications and limitations. An open and imperious disposition is shown in short sentences, direct and energetic. A secretive and proud mind is cold and obscure in style. An affectionate and imaginative nature pours out luxuriantly, and blossoms all over with ornaments.
The same is true with artists who really deserve the name. They paint what they see and feel, and it is this self-part that gives the style. Some subtle part of every man's own spirit goes with his work, is incarnated in it, and gives to it that undiscoverable something which marks and discriminates one artist from another. And so, every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
Why should not the architect, then, transfuse into his work something of his nature, too? Every house has an expression. Every room has a disposition. Some houses are precisionists. They are pinched and crimped, and you almost expect to see a starched ruffle and white apron on them. Others are generous and hospitable. Every time you look at them they seem to say; “Why don't you come in? I am waiting for you.” Some dwellings are stately and dignified, and some are cosy and jolly. Every day I see houses that cannot repress their scorn at beggarly houses in their neighborhood! The door has an excluding air. The windows are supercilious, and the very cornice has a curl of well-bred contempt. But it is in the interior of men and houses, that the real disposition must be found. The moment you enter some dwellings, your heart cries out spontaneously, “Peace be within thy walls.” There is a charm upon the threshold, a joy in every room. Not a minute of the day do the apartments cease to breathe upon your ear, you are welcome! But, shiver as I do, when you enter as I do, this selfishness in brick and mortar! The architect was a mean and narrow soul, I know! His ceilings are only fifteen feet high. I wonder he did not go on up with them till they were as high as he felt himself to be above common men. What a good ice house this would make! What repulsion is in these walls! As you stand upon the threshold, the whole hall stares at you, and says, in white plaster, “Well, what do you want here?”
All such fears are banished as you enter Dr. Wentworth's old-fashioned mansion. A hall twelve feet wide opens its arms to welcome you. On its sides hang large maps. Toward the farther end rises a flight of stairs six feet wide. They say to you, plain as words can speak, “do not weary yourself.” The short rise and broad tread suggest ease. And six or eight steps being taken, the stairs seemed to have changed their mind and concluded to stop there. For, a landing some eight feet wide ran across the whole width of the hall. And the space was still further augmented by a large bow-window, circling out backward, which the Doctor had built and filled with colored glass. Only at the other end of this landing did the stairs consent to start upward again. Perched between the two stories, a grand look-out was thus furnished for summer;—the window on the one side, and the lower hall and upper hall on the other—giving ample command to the eye of all that was going on. In summer it was a favorite resort; and in winter the blaze of colored light always gave a kind of sunrise cheer to the hall.
Midway in the lower hall a grand, old-fashioned, ebony-cased clock, standing on the floor, reached up to the ceiling. It was not only a time-keeper of hours, but of days and months. Its sable vesture, and the great variety of its duties, gave to this venerable instrument an absent-minded air, a sort of reserve and dignity, which well set off the easy ways of all the rest of the dwelling. That clock and Agate Bissell never lost a minute of time, were never tired, and attended wholly and only to their own business. It was difficult to decide which of the two was the more exact and regular. In any single day the clock might win; but take the year together, Agate Bissell undoubtedly was the best time-keeper. She had the whole care of the clock. Dr. Wentworth used to rally her on her beau. “That clock is an enchanted knight. Agate is waiting for him, some day, to make proposals. Nothing less than such matchless graces as in him do reside will ever tempt her!”
Rose—who must be moved forward in our story six years—took up her father's imaginations, and wove about the old clock all manner of fanciful notions. She was a double child. Her outward nature was sensible, practical, worldly; her inward nature was deep in feeling, solemn and mystical, but veined and traced throughout with the richest flow of imagination. None except her father knew this inward life; nor he, nor she herself, except in a dim and twilight way.
She was just the one to make a hero of this old tall, black clock. To her its strokes, in the deep nights, when summer whip-poor-wills had waked her, were voices proclaiming messages to men. To look upon its face and watch the rise and occultation of pictured stars, and especially of the great plump-faced moon, that, like some men, always seemed scared because it couldn’t see anything—was a perpetual, though unspoken pleasure. But we linger. Opening on the left, as you enter, is the Doctor’s grand resort—his library. The room ran through the whole depth of the house. The ceiling was only about nine feet high. The centre was crossed by a dressed beam, and the cornice all around the room was formed by the carved frame-beams of the house itself. On either side of the chimney, which stood midway on the west side, were two deep bay-windows; and, on the north end, one large window coming down to the floor, and of the size of three ordinary windows. The sides of the library were filled with cases, and the whole range of English literature was stored in them. The best authors in the modern languages, too, held their tongues eloquently in this Walhalla. Drawers stuffed with curious pamphlets; lower cases with folios, atlases, etc.; portfolios and volumes of costly engravings—all evinced the Doctor's tastes. Not like the orderly study of Parson Buell was Dr. Wentworth’s. No long rows of books stood stiff and stern non the shelves, like soldiers on parade. Some books were out visiting; some, in an affectionate mood, were leaning over on an accommodating neighbor; and some, tired of their heavy contents, had lain down flat and gone to sleep, as if to give their readers, should they have any, the proper cue. Some were splendidly bound, and flamed their golden letters from blue, and green, and crimson, or modest russet. Others stood in cloth; some, in paper. Some shelves were packed and stuff till they seemed bursting; others stood thinly, like a school half of whose scholars had gone out to play.
Here was the true peace-society. Old quarrels were hushed here. Heretic and orthodox stood in silent truce. The men that kept the world in a racket, in their time,—Luther and they of the Vatican, Milton and Salmasius, Arminius and the whole Synod of Dort, Jesuits and Jansenists, the ancients, mediæval scholastics, modern reformers—were patient with each other and with the rising fame of modern scientific authors. Books are the true metempsychosis—they are the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead men are scattered, and none shall find them. Behold, they are all here! they do but sleep. At your summons every one shall speak and instruct you in the best experiences of his life!
Turning from the hall, as you come in at the front door, to the right, you enter the large parlor; and, next to it, the sitting-room; and a door from each room opens into the conservatory, where there was summer all the year round.
The dining-room and kitchen were included in the wing which ran back from the south-east corner of the house, and which was of such dimensions that, had it stood alone, it would have seemed a house of itself.
The old mansion was built in a stately style, at a time when stateliness was well understood. Few modern dwellings are more picturesque, more winning to the eye, than the best of the old colonial mansions. They tell their story at once. They proclaim comfort, room, hospitality, and elegant taste. They are passing away. Perhaps we have nothing to regret. Convenience and beauty have their modern architects. Yet, [the] pictorial art ought, while it can be done, to secure those memorials of an early day, and transmit them as precious parts of our New-England history.
But stop. Turn back. We have neglected the heart of home, the mother's room! The old temple had no such holy of holies. The mother's room! Here came she a bride. Here only God's angels and her own husband have heard what words the inmost heart of love can coin. Here were the children born. Here in love were they cherished, in piety consecrated, and here Hope, the mother’s prophet and painter, has filled golden hours with a wealth of expectations and fancied joys!
If every child might live the life predestined in a mother's heart, all the way from the cradle to the coffin they would walk upon a beam of light, and shine in glory. Alas! some are born like the dandelion—glowing bright, soon changing to a fairy globe, and by the first wind dashed and gone!
Paint the man as the mother's thoughts do; then paint him as he really lived! Hang the two portraits side by side, and write, What he was to be! and then, What he was! Life has no sadder contrast.
Shall I? It is audacious; and yet, for your sake, reader, I would do much. Well, come, I will even venture. This is Agate Bissel's room. No one may go in here without leave. She and her room are so much one, that this intrusion she would resent as a personal liberty. I know that politeness forbids, but your curiosity and my love of accurate description prevail, and, as usual, politeness must give way when it is not convenient. No rocking chair, three common chairs—one lower than the others, for sewing,—a mahogany bureau, with an old-fashioned mirror above it, which had been in that very place a hundred years, and had seen—ah! what had it not seen? But most honorable of all friends is the looking-glass, that will not speak—that keeps no secret journal for future treachery—that meets you with the very face that you bring to it—that beholds all your weaknesses without chiding, and never hints advice; into whose placid depths sink, as into a sea, in utter forgetfulness, all the secrets which have figured on its face!
What if one had the power to recall from this cold and passionless glass all that it has ever seen? What if there should be a resurrection of that which has been buried in looking-glasses? Little children's faces, anxious mothers, budding girls beginning to suspect their own beauty, vain and giggling looks, grave and sad looks of those who hate to grow old, vexed looks of those who have cut themselves in shaving, timid and anxious looks of those who have been sick, double images of lovers glancing upon the sweet picture of their embrace, prim and prig pedants touching up their gray whiskers and covering their baldness with the few strawy locks yet left, simple and wondering looks of curly and woolly Phillis, whose honest, homely face is just as dear to her as if it were Cleopatra's.
Many would shrink to have their looking-glasses reveal their secrets. Certain it is that Agate Bissell would not be ashamed to have it tell all that ever she committed to its trust. Faithful, pure-thinking, upright Agate! Positive, precise, sprightly to tartness, who more than thou lived wholly for others? Who ever knew thee fail in the day of trial? When didst thou betray a secret? When didst thou ever shrink from giving honest counsel because it was bitter? Let men look upon thee, Agate, and henceforth honor those words, OLD MAID! When all things are hereafter untied and the contents of various bundles disclosed, it is my opinion that as many noble, self-denying virtues will be found tied up with precise bow-knots in some of those vertical rolls called Old Maids, as in any other that shall appear.
Open the upper drawer! Here we have few laces, one or two ornaments seldom worn, and then only as a special honor to some much-honored friend. Be touched, as I am, with a certain tear-breeding feeling, to see how little the poor have to represent their finer tastes! Some jewels, however, are laid up for them hereafter.
The next drawer. This is fine linen. Not much of it! But it is as white as snow. Not a stitch is broken. How finely folded! How orderly! Agate need not be ashamed that it is so little. She makes it enough by wise economy, and what she misses, some poor shivering creature is wearing, for she is silently generous. All the fine linen of the saints, is not that which is made up into ascension robes. Some of it may yet be found in bureau drawers.
Did you ever see a room with so little in it, that looked so comfortable? Find a speck of dirt! Yet, it is not distressingly neat. It has not that coffin and shroud snugness that you see in some rooms. It is generous and home-like. A true woman lives in it. That furnishes any room, and subdues its very walls, at length, to humane and gentle expression!
