The Personality of a House

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

THAT every city has a personality, you are probably aware. But the little minor personalities that make up the character of the cities — do you know them? They are the houses, the quiet unadventurous houses, which are steeped none the less in an atmosphere of adventure, of happiness and sorrow, of feeling more than human, because it is larger than that of one human being and includes many. Every house on every street is a story, if you could but hear it with that sixth sense common to children, to fairies, and to poets. There are houses that belong in other centuries, or other streets. There are houses, alas! built for certain persons who have never found them; and what more pitiable than domestic affinities forever separated by unfeeling miles?

I know one house that has met its kindred spirit. A crooked side street meanders in the most casual fashion among lawns and gardens. Behind one of the lawns — a shady stretch, covered with shamelessly long grass and peeping ferns—lurks the house: small, with unpainted clapboards weathered a soft brown-gray. It has a stone chimney grown with perpetual ivy; and around the porch, geraniums seven feet high blossom like inadvertent roses. An apple tree brushes careless fingers against the wall; the roof slopes low, with an air truly temperamental; and audacious crimson ramblers lift their heads to the open windows. Who but a poet could dwell within? — and he does.

If you are incredulous, if you doubt that houses have as much personality as persons, look for windows that smile or frown, the next time you challenge life to adventure by walking along a street. Pay a respectful glance to the old-fashioned house, where a hedge escorts the flagged walk to the front door: the house that is like a Colonial lady, charmingly aloof and aristocratic. See the friendly-faced little dwelling, shingled in dark brown, with a multitude of diamond-paned windows, and two chimneys that fairly chime their symmetry on the passer-by. A short lawn spreads between porch and sidewalk, with violets running tame among the grass-blades.

Look, for contrast, on the modern apartment, parti-colored in cinnamonbrown and lemon-yellow: it is written with blatant egotism and self-satisfied smugness, from the three chimneys forming a straight angle on the roof to the brick walk that marches to the street, accompanied by magenta petunias. Even a haunted house is a relief in comparison, though haunted houses have about them a tinge of sadness that hangs like the crape veil over a widow’s face. Alone, and — worse than forgotten — feared, they mope by the roadside, with windows sunken in and chimneys awry, while memories go tap-tapping along the broken floors, like thoughts through the mind of one half-insane. Indeed, you will find a house to companion every mood, though among houses, as among people, it is hard to reach the depth of comprehension that makes for perfect friendship.

But I know a House. It is a large ample house, with a broad lap of lawn, and flowing skirts with a pattern of gardens. Children scrambling about its doors lend it a maternal air, and sometimes a harassed appearance; for although there are only four, they seem many more. They are in a large number of places at apparently the same time; and they choose alarming and unprecedented spots in which to gambol. The ridgepole is one; the shade of the chimneys is indefinably alluring. Imagine fairies playing hide-and-seek behind your side-combs! They are undependable children, too. One or another, or several, are forever disappearing, to hunt for the end of the world, or to go Into-the-Deep-WoodsFowling. Then the House looks worn and worried till they reappear; whereupon it becomes once more cordial, protecting, gracious.

Even beneath mild presentiment concerning the children’s whereabouts, the House is delicately hospitable in manner. As soon as you enter the parlor, with the gentle aroma of its oldfashioned name about it like an aura, you feel that, at last, you have found someone who understands you, welcomes you, sympathizes with you, and invites your sympathy and adoration in return. There is a Franklin stove, with brass andirons glimmering, and a fire ready to dance into flame at a wish. There is wall paper of golden buff, with a deep Chinese rug to match, and furniture harmoniously covered with soft crimson brocade. In every corner where flowers do not breathe sweetly, books whisper. The ceiling is generously high — high enough for any dream you may send soaring, to spread its blue wings freely.

You are sure that no other room could bring so many dreams to birth, until the House invites you into the room called (still with the old-fashioned aroma) the library. It has Indian-red walls, and a Christmasy rug of dull green and red. For the rest, there are old books and old pictures, with the odor of the Civil War about them, like spice in potpourri. General Hooker hangs over the broad stone fireplace, where the spirit of fire only waits to be summoned. Beside him is ‘ War-is-Hell’ Sherman, with Sheridan, Grant, and Lincoln sharing a second wall, and Napoleon exotically near-by. Six bookcases bow each other around the rest of the room; you can almost see their powdered wigs and plum-colored kneebreeches, such an air of old-time courtesy and goodwill emanates from them. It may be because they keep courtly company with Dickens and Thackeray, Dr. Holmes and Robert Louis Stevenson — he the most modern, and so much more than modern. Shelves of poetry stand faithful to Chaucer and Pope and Dryden, gentle Jean Ingelow, Burns, Tennyson, Bryant, even Longfellow of the humble gift and great heart—a jumble of periods and persons. Through a wide baywindow comes the silent speech of the pines; flowers spread little trails of scent on the air; the House lays her goodly best before you.

Upstairs is still the generosity of high ceilings and many windows. Books that have gone wandering handin-hand with the children greet you from table or bed where they lie. The House wears a pleasant rumpled aspect, as if to say, ‘There! One can’t keep tidy, with those darling children forever romping and ruffling one; so forgive me, take me as I am, and be as comfortable as you like, yourself. ’

The General’s room, well off to the front, is inviolate, dedicate to the General; a storm of newspapers snows the floor under daily; the air is colored with unchallenged tobacco smoke. It is a small false tropic all winter long, with red roses trailing over the walls, and a huge fire almost bursting the little stove, which flushes to match the roses, in its endeavor to hold fast. A light burns over the depths of a mighty armchair, glowing on the record of the Revolution one night, on the War of the Rebellion another, again on the World War. There the General sits, with his friends: newspapers, cigars, many old pipes with a comfortable reek, and visitors who talk with him of new wars, old battles, Lincoln remembered. It is a room that is mate to the library, fit lion to that purring friendly lioness.

Up and up, overhead, sprawls the attic, stretched out in a dusty length under the warmth of the roof. It is an unfloored place for the most part , with loose boards laid across a few gaps, and cobwebs leaning down in wonderfully heavy masses from the sloped beams. Adventure holds finger to lip from long, long dark vistas beyond the insufficient window — a kindly Adventure with gentle eyes, not a creature that snaps out unexpectedly and sends you flying, with screams. It holds possible secret rooms in its pocket, and perhaps a little old lady, who will give you three wishes from the tip of a crooked wand.

And still higher, if you climb arduously through a trapdoor into the dazzle of outdoor light on the roof, you look into the tree-tops, as if they were the cups of flowers. Down there, down where you usually play in the grass, how small and far it is! It does not seem like distance grown dizzying, but as if you had quickly become a giant, able to cradle ordinary people in your hand. The House, instead of putting on timidity, or letting shingles slip beneath your feet, holds you in her close arms, and gloats with you on the singing of the pines, of the robins, of the wind across the jeweled sky with its million facets of sunlight. Through her very finger-tips to yours comes her love, her protection; you know that, wherever you travel, to whatever strange or awful places you may go, she will send light wings of thought brushing through your mind. Her strong bosom, her gardened skirts, the sweet breath of her pines and the deep calm of her encircling embrace, will be the memory of a mother almost as dear as your own, of your happy, happy life playing fairy behind the chimneys of your House.