An 'Omnium Gatherum'

I HAVE just been reading what Teresina’s mother has to say in the August Contributors’ Club about a pet art or handicraft and domestic freedom: how she would like to keep two hours of every morning free in the privacy of her own soul, for the indulgence of her unquenchable desire to ‘write.’

No one could understand her apologies and confessions better than I. I, too, have a slightly curly Teresina, who trots away to school every morning and leaves me a little time of potential quietness with myself and my house. I, too, have an X, who says little and understands all. And I, too, have often ached to grab the axe out of its chopping-block and smash the telephone into dumb fragments.

Teresina’s mother might be my very Doppelgängerin in most material and spiritual ways.

But she has the ethical advantage of me. She yearns for freedom just to ‘write’; and in spite of her humility she knows that ‘writing’ is a proper and honest thing to do. She knows in her heart that she even ought to ‘write.’ To practise a real art, however imperfectly, is surely an obligation — so long, indeed, as you don’t try to impose all your grotesque efforts on other people.

But what would Teresina’s mother say to me about what I want to do with those precious hours of freedom? Let me confess, for my mortification, to an omnium gatherum of suppressed desires, a ‘regular farrago,’ — as our dear old doctor described some thundering lastresort dose he was about to administer.

I want, this very morning, this minute, with no least delay or interruption, to make my Teresina a leaf-green coat and a nut-brown jersey dress and a black velvet tam-o’-shanter and a green apron, with two blackbirds pecking at an orange appliquéd to the front. I want to make myself a tailored pongee blouse, and a zinnia-yellow crêpe smock, and a gray velvet tabard-thing with silver threads wrought into it, and wide thin blue sleeves and blue linings and a silver girdle; and a gray-andblue twisted turban, with peacock feathers swirling gently out behind.

I want to knit X a pair of brown-andgreen-heather golf stockings, and make him a very handsome dull-blue dressing-gown instead of the pitiable, Main Street-ish green one he has worn so long. (I really do want to make these things, although he asserts that I would be a more ready seamstress for him if his shirts could have purple lions rampant on the chest, and his socks could be mended with Christmas tinsel.)

I want to paint the kitchen chairs and table bright blue all over again, and have them dry (two coats) at once, so as to paint orange-and-black flowers on them, and varnish them smartly to last another two years.

I want to dye the curtains in the guest-room, so that the light through them will look like copper. I might dye my Teresina’s old white dress too. Copper is a good color for playing in red leaves.

I want to try a new recipe for a cake that has a great many nuts and a great deal of chocolate in it, and to fix a large cold bowl of salad, — because frost is coming and the celery and the tomatoes will never be perfect again, — and to spice some peaches, because they smell so good while they are a-spicing.

I want to make Christmas presents for all my friends, — cheaply and delightfully, — by shaping from modeling clay, which hardens at a merry pace to quasi-stone, beads and pendants manifold, painting them with weird designs in gay colors, and stringing them upon cords, green and blue and orange, and pretending that I bought them for large sums at what my X vulgarly calls a Graft Shop. (But my friends will all know by the bumps and splotches that no one but I was guilty of them.)

I want to learn to play the ‘Pathétique’ a little less miserably, for my X likes it above all, even in my mangling hands. And there is on the piano a book of old French Noëls, far more beautiful than the carols our Sunday School has done to death so many years. If I had real courage, I would try to translate the easiest one, even though it appears to be in Gascon, and something about stars and angels is all I can understand of it at first glance.

I want to open a big box that the expressman has just brought. It has Dutch scribblings and billings all over it, and I know it holds Mr. C. Zandbergen’s treasure of bulbs. I want to sort over, in miserly secret, the brownpaperv mysteries that in January and February shall be tall golden Emperor, and starry Sir Watkin, and cleareyed Poeticus Ornatus, and all their shining kin. I want to plant, and plant, and plant, with my pots and dirt and labels spread gloriously, and to save for my Teresina’s planting certain evil fancy pots of her admiration, that she too may cherish and adore, all winter long.

Then — then — I want to read the Atlantic, too. It lies on the hall table still, beseeching me.

Now, Teresina’s mother, do you see what a lost creature I am? Setting down in order all these things that I yearn to do has shown me up very terribly. Not one thing do I desire that is necessary, or progressive, or intellectual, or even common-sensible. They are all (except reading the Atlantic, and you notice how lamely that comes at the bottom of the list) silly pleasant things, that my hands want to do far more than my head.

In short, I just want to play — and I, a grown-up woman, with a college education and a cloud of New England ministers witnessing me sternly.

I want to play, and I want my Teresina and my X to play with me. I don’t believe I care whether my Teresina learns much at school, or whether my X makes great important sums of money at his job. If they will let me play, and play with me, I am content.

That must be why I resent the telephonings and the committee meetings and the ‘drives’ and the bazaars and the lectures and the clubs. All these things interrupt my play.

An omnium gatherum—a ‘ regular farrago’ — of desires. It is very shameful.

But I have one comfortable thought. When I am old and tirgsome, my Teresina will never have to sigh, ‘What can I do to amuse mother?’ I shall never have painted the kitchen chairs often enough, nor have tried all the recipes, nor have planted all the bulbs.

And there will always be more Allantics to read, to redeem me from utter earthiness.

Shameful as it is, I like my omnium gatherum. So good hunting, Tercsina’s mother! My hands salute your head!