Ideal Houses.
Wandering one morning into the Lowther Arcade, I found myself behind an old man and a little girl. The man was very feeble and tottering in his steps, and the child was very young. It was near the Christmas season, and many children, richly dressed, in the care of mothers, sisters, and nursery governesses, were loading themselves with all kinds of amusing and expensive toys. The vaulted roof re-echoed with the sounds of young voices, shrill whistles, wiry tinklings of musical gocarts, the rustling of paper, and the notes of cornopeans or pianos. It was the Exhibition of 1851 repeated, in miniature; the toys of manhood being exchanged for the toys of youth.
My old man and my little girl were not amongst the happy buyers, or the richly dressed, for they were evidently very poor. They had wandered into the bazaar to feast upon its sights, and it was difficult to say which was the more entranced of the two. The old man gazed about him, with a vacant, gratified smile upon his face, and the child was too young to know that any barrier existed to prevent her plucking the tempting fruit which she saw hanging in clusters on every side. This barrier—the old, thick, black, impassable barrier of poverty—though invisible to the child, was not invisible to me; and I blamed the old man for turning her steps into such a glittering enchanted cavern, whose walls were really lined, to her, with bitterness and despair.
“Why don’t we live here, gran’da?” asked the child. The old man gave no other answer than a weak laugh.
“Why don’t I have a house like that?” continued the child, pointing to a bright doll’s-house displayed upon a stall, and trying to drag her guardian towards it.
The old man still only laughed feebly, as he shuffled past the attraction, and before the thought had struck me that I might have purchased a cheap pleasure by giving this house to the child, they were both lost in the pushing, laughing crowd.
This incident naturally set me thinking about toys, and their effect in increasing the amount of human happiness. I asked myself if I, ——, a respectable, middle-aged man of moderate means, was free from the influence of these powerful trifles. I was compelled, in all the cheap honesty of self-examination, to answer “No.” I felt, upon reflection, that I was even weaker than the poor child I had just seen. The chief toy that I was seeking for was an ideal house that I had never been able to find. I was led away by a vague sentiment about the poetry of neighbourhoods—a secret consuming passion for red-brick—a something that could hardly be weighed or spanned; the echo of an old song; the mists of a picture; the shadow of a dream. She was led away by no such unsubstantial phantoms. Her eyes had suddenly rested, for a few moments, upon her childish paradise, and a few shillings would have made her happy. I, on the contrary, had exhausted years in searching for my paradise, but without a prospect of success.
The fact is, I have got an unfortunate habit of looking back. I am fond of the past, though only in a dreamy, unsystematic way. My history is a little out of order, and I am no authority upon dates; but I like to hover about places. I cannot tell the day, the hour, or even the year in which the battle of Sedgemoor occurred; but I have gloated over the old roadside mill from which the Duke of Monmouth watched his losing contest, and the old houses at Bridgewater, whose roofs were then probably crowded with women and children. I have even been through the straggling village of Weston Zoyland, and into the sanded tavern where the late Lord Macaulay resided for weeks while he wrote this portion of his history. I have heard the landlord’s proud account of his distinguished guest, and how “he worrited about the neighbourhood.” This interesting fact, so I am informed, is duly recorded, upon my authority, in the latest edition of Men of the Time. My only objection to the late Lord Macaulay is, that he was one of these men of the time—of my own time. If Gibbon had been the careful historian of Sedgemoor, the village pothouse would have had a finer old crusted flavour, to my taste. The sentiment that governs me scarcely blooms under a hundred years, neither more nor less. I cannot learn to love the Elizabethan times—they are too remote. I have no more real sympathy with fifteen hundred and fifty, than with eighteen hundred and fifty. I can tolerate the seventeenth century; but the eighteenth always “stirs my heart, like a trumpet.”
Notwithstanding all this, I am not an obstructive man; I am not a “fogey.” I take the good the gods provide me. I have no prejudices against gas; though I wish it could be supplied without so much parochial quarrelling. It may generate poison, as certain chemists assert; but it certainly generates too many pamphlets and public meetings. I use the electric telegraph; I travel by the railway; and I am thankful to their inventors and originators. The moment, however, I leave the railway, I plunge rapidly into the past. I never linger, for a moment, at the bright, new, damp, lofty railway hotel (I hate the name of hotel, although I know it springs from hostelry); nor amongst the mushroom houses that rally round the station. My course is always through the distant trees, beyond the dwarfish, crumbling church, whose broad low windows seem to have taken root amongst the flat, uneven tombstones, into the old town or village, into its very heart—its market-place—and up to the brown old door of its oldest inn. I know everything that can be said against such places. They are very yellow; they have too strong a flavour of stale tobacco-smoke; their roofs are low, and their floors have a leaning either to one side or the other. Their passages are dark, and often built on various levels; so that you may tumble down into your bed-chamber, or tumble up into your sitting-room, shaking every tooth in your head, or possibly biting your tongue. These may be serious drawbacks to some people, but they are not so serious to me, and I am able to find many compensating advantages. The last vestige of the real old able-bodied port lingers only in such nooks and corners, and is served out by matronly servants, like housekeepers in ancient families. I know one inn of the kind where the very “boots” looks positively venerable. He wears a velvet skull-cap that Cardinal Wolsey might have been proud of; he has saved ten thousand pounds in his humble servitude, and is a large landed proprietor in the county. Prosperity has not made him inattentive. No one will give your shoes such an enduring polish, or call you up for an early train with such unerring punctuality.
With these sentiments, fancies, and prejudices in favour of the past, joined to a fastidious, quaintly luxurious taste, and limited funds, it is hardly to be wondered at that I have searched long and vainly for my ideal dwelling. I might, perhaps, have found it readily enough in the country, but my habits only allowed me to seek it in town. I am a London man—London born and London bred—a genuine cockney, I hope, of the school of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb. I cannot tear myself away from old taverns, old courts and alleys, old suburbs (now standing in the very centre of the town), old print-shops, old mansions, old archways, and old churches. I must hear the London chimes at midnight, or life would not be worth a jot. I hear them, as they were heard a century and more ago, for they are the last things to change; but forty or fifty years have played sad havoc with land, and brick, and stone. Fire has done something; metropolitan improvements have done more. Not only do I mourn over what is lost, but what is gained. The town grows newer every day that it grows older. I know it must be so; I know it ought to be so; I know it is a sign of increased prosperity and strength. I see this with one half of my mind, while I abhor it with the other. I cannot love New Oxford Street, while St. Giles’s Church and old Holborn still remain. I have no affection for Bayswater and Notting-hill, but a tender remembrance of Tyburn Gate. I feel no sensation of delight when I hear the name of St. John’s Wood or the Regent’s Park; and Camden Town is a thing of yesterday that I treat with utter contempt. If I allow my footsteps to wander along Piccadilly and through Knightsbridge, they turn down, on one side, into Chelsea, or up, on the other side, into Kensington, leaving Brompton unvisited in the middle. I am never tired of sitting under the trees in Cheyne Walk; of walking round the red bricks and trim gravel pathways of Chelsea Hospital; of peeping through the railings at Gough House, or watching the old Physic Garden from a boat on the river. I am never weary of roaming hand-in-hand with an amiable, gossiping companion, like Leigh Hunt, listening to stories at every doorstep in the old town, and repeopling faded, half-deserted streets with the great and little celebrities of the past. I never consider a day ill spent that has ended in plucking daisies upon Kew Green, or in wasting an hour or two in the cathedral stillness of Charter-House Square. I am fond of tracing resemblances, perhaps imaginary, between Mark Lane and Old Highgate, and of visiting old merchants’ decayed mansions far away in tarry Poplar. I could add a chapter to Leigh Hunt’s pleasant essay upon City trees,[14] and tell of many fountains and flower-gardens that stand under the windows of dusky counting-houses.
Humanizing as such harmless wandering ought to be, it seems only to make me break a commandment. I am sorely afraid that I covet my neighbour’s house. When I find the nearest approach to my ideal—my day-dream—my toy dwelling—it is always in the occupation of steady, unshifting people. Such habitations, in or near London, seem to descend as heirlooms from generation to generation. They are never to be let; they are seldom offered for sale; and the house agent—the showman of “eligible villas”—is not familiar with them. I will describe the rarity.
It must be built of red brick, not earlier than 1650, not later than 1750, picked out at the edges with slabs of yellow stone. It must not be too lofty, and must be equally balanced on each side of its doorway. It must stand detached, walled in on about an acre of ground, well surrounded by large old trees. Its roof must be sloping, and if crowned with a bell-turret, so much the better. Its outer entrance must be a lofty gate of flowered ironwork, supported on each side by purple-red brick columns, each one surmounted by a globe of stone. Looking through the tracery of this iron gate, you must see a few broad white steps leading up to the entrance-hall. The doorway of this hall must be dark and massive, the lower half wood and the upper half window-framed glass. Over the top must be a projecting hood-porch filled with nests of wood-carving, representing fruit, flowers, and figures, brown with age. Looking through the glass of the hall-door, you must see more carving like this along the lofty walls; and a broad staircase with banisters, dark as ebony, leading up to a long narrow window, shaded by the rich wings of a spreading cedar-tree. The rooms of this mansion will necessarily be in keeping with its external features, presenting many unexpected, irregular closets and corners, with, perhaps, a mysterious double staircase leading down to the cellars, to which a romantic, unauthenticated story is attached. Such houses are none the worse for being filled with legends; for having one apartment, at least, with a reputed murder-stain upon its floor; and for being generally alluded to as Queen Elizabeth’s palaces, although probably not built for nearly a century after that strong-minded monarch’s death. The window-shutters are none the worse for being studded with alarm-bells, as thick as grapes upon a fruitful vine; as an additional comfort is derived from the security of the present, when we are made to reflect upon the dangers of the past. A few rooks will give an additional charm to the place; and it will be pleasant, when a few crumbs are thrown upon the gravel, to see a fluttering cloud of sparrows dropping down from the sheltering eaves.
With regard to the neighbourhood in which such a house should stand, it must be essentially ripe. Better that it should be a little faded; a little deserted; a little unpopular, and very unfashionable; than so dreadfully raw and new. It should have a flavour of old literature, old politics, and old art. If it is just a little obstructive and High Tory—inclined to stand upon the ancient ways—no sensible man of progress should blame it, but smile blandly and pass on. It will, at least, possess the merit, in his eyes, of being self-supporting; asking for, or obtaining no government aid. While Boards of Works are freely supplied with funds to construct the new, there is no board but unorganized sentiment to maintain the old.
This house and this neighbourhood should not be far from London—from the old centre of the old town. They should stand in Soho, or in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, or in Westminster, like Queen’s Square, near St. James’s Park; or even in Lambeth, like the Archbishop’s Palace. Better still if in the Strand, like Northumberland House; or in Fleet Street, like the Temple Gardens. What luxury would there be, almost equal to anything we read of in the Arabian Nights, in turning on one side from the busy crowd, unlocking a dingy door that promised to lead to nothing but a miserable court, and passing, at once, into a secret, secluded garden! What pleasures would be equal to those of hearing the splash of cool fountains; the sighing of the wind through lofty elms and broad beeches; of standing amongst the scent and colours of a hundred growing flowers; of sitting in an oaken room with a tiled fireplace, surrounded by old china in cabinets, old folios upon carved tables, old portraits of men and women in the costume of a bygone time, and looking out over a lawn of grass into a winding vista of trees, so contrived as to shut out all signs of city life, while the mellow hum of traffic came in at the open window, or through the walls, and you felt that you were within a stone’s throw of Temple Bar!
In such a house, on such a spot, a man might live, and his life be something more than a weary round of food and sleep. His nature would become subdued to what it rested in: the clay would happily take the shape of the mould. I believe more in the influence of dwellings upon human character, than in the influence of authority on matters of opinion. The man may seek the house; or the house may form the man; but in either case the result is the same. A few yards of earth, even on this side of the grave, will make all the difference between life and death. If our dear old friend Charles Lamb was now alive (and we all must wish he was, if only that he might see how every day is bringing him nearer the crown that belongs only to the Prince of British Essayists), there would be something singularly jarring to the human nerves in finding him at Dalston; but not so jarring in finding him a little farther off, at Hackney. He would still have drawn nourishment in the Temple and in Covent Garden; but he must surely have perished if transplanted to New Tyburnia. I cannot imagine him living at Pentonville (I cannot, in my uninquiring ignorance, imagine who Penton was that he should name a ville!), but I can see a certain appropriate oddity in his cottage at Colebrook Row, Islington. In the first place, we may agree that this London suburb is very old, without going into the vexed question of whether it was really very “merry.” In the second place, this same Colebrook Row was built a few years before our dear old friend was born—I believe, in seventeen hundred and seventy. In the third place, it was called a “Row,” though “Lane” or “Walk” would have been as old and as good; but “Terrace” or “Crescent” would have rendered it unbearable. The New River flowed calmly past, the cottage walls—as poor George Dyer found to his cost—bringing with it fair memories of Izaak Walton and the last two centuries. The house itself had also certain peculiarities to recommend it. The door was so constructed that it opened into the chief sitting-room; and this, though promising much annoyance, was really a source of fun and enjoyment to our dear old friend. He was never so delighted as when he stood on the hearthrug receiving many congenial visitors, as they came to him on the muddiest-boot, and the wettest-of-umbrella days. His immediate neighbourhood was also peculiar. It was there that weary wanderers came to seek the waters of oblivion. Suicide could pitch upon no spot so favourable for its sacrifices as the gateway leading into the river enclosure before Charles Lamb’s cottage. Waterloo Bridge had not long been built, and was not then a fashionable theatre for self-destruction. The drags were always kept ready in Colebrook Row, and are still so kept at a small tavern a few doors from the cottage. The landlord’s ear, according to his own account, had become so sensitive by repeated practice, that when aroused at night by a heavy splash in the water, he could tell by the sound whether it was an accident, or a wilful plunge. He never believed that poor George Dyer tumbled in from carelessness, though it was no business of his to express an opinion on the matter. After the eighth suicide, within a short period, Charles Lamb began to grow restless.
“Mary,” he said to his sister, “I think it’s high time we left this place;” and so they went to Edmonton. Those who are painfully familiar with the unfortunate mental infirmity under which they both laboured, will see a sorrowful meaning in words like these. Those who, like me, can see an odd harmony between our dear old friend and Colebrook Row, will lament, the sad necessity which compelled them to part company.
Without wishing for a moment to erect my eccentric taste in houses as an unerring guide for my fellow-creatures (especially as the ancient London dwellings are growing fewer every day, and I am still seeking my ideal toy), I must still be allowed to wonder at that condition of mind which can settle down, with seeming delight, in the new raw buildings that I see springing up on every side. I am not speaking of those who are compelled to practise economy (I am compelled to practise it myself), nor of those whose business arrangements require them to keep within a particular circle; but of those who have the power, to a certain extent, of choosing their ground, and choose it upon some principle that I am unable to understand.
I have a sensitive horror of regularity, of uniformity, of straight lines, of obtrusive geometrical forms. I prefer a winding alley to a direct street. I detest a modern, well-advertised building estate. The water-colour sketch of such a place is meant to be very fascinating and attractive as it hangs in the great house-agent’s office or window, but it has no charms for me. My theory is that a man must be perpetually struggling if he wishes to preserve his individuality in such a settlement. The water may be pure; the soil may be gravelly; the neighbourhood may be well supplied with all kinds of churches and chapels; the “red book” may not pass it by as being out of the fashionable circle; blue books may refer to it approvingly as a model of perfect drainage; it may be warmed up by thorough occupation; perambulators may be seen in its bare new squares; broughams may stand by the side of its bright level kerbstones; but the demon of sameness, in my eyes, would always be brooding over it. I should feel that when I retired to rest, perhaps eight hundred masters of households were slumbering in eight hundred bedchambers exactly the same size and the same shape as my own. When I took a bath, or lingered over the breakfast-table, I should be haunted by the knowledge that eight hundred people might probably be taking similar baths and similar breakfasts in precisely similar apartments. My library, my dining-room, and my drawing-room would correspond in shape and size with eight hundred other receptacles devoted to study, refreshment, and recreation. If I gazed from a window, or stood at a doorway, I should see hundreds of other windows, and hundreds of other doorways, that matched mine in relative position and design. I should look down upon the same infant shrubs, and the same even, level walls, or up at the same long, level parapets, without break, the same regular army of chimney-pots, without variety,—until I should feel as if I had settled in a fashionable penitentiary, to feed upon monotony for the rest of my days. My dreams at night would probably be a mixture of the past and the present, of my old tastes and my new sufferings. The builder, whose trowel seemed ever ringing in my ears, would dance over me in hoops and patches; and the whitewasher, whose brush seemed always flopping above my head, would be mixing his composition in my favourite punch-bowl. My old books, my old prints, my old china, my old furniture, my old servants, would pine away in such a habitation; and I should have to surround myself with fresh faces and fresh voices, according to the latest model. Finally, I should die of a surfeit of stucco, and be the first lodger entered in the records of the adjoining bleak, unfinished cemetery.
If I have little sympathy with those people who dwell in such tents as these,—who neither belong to the town nor the country,—who hang upon the skirts of London in mushroom suburbs that blend as inharmoniously with the great old city as a Wandsworth villa would blend with Rochester Castle,—I am totally unable to understand the character of those other people whose love for the modern carries them even farther than this, and who take a pride in planting damp and comfortless homes in the very centre of wild, unfinished neighbourhoods. Who are they? Have they human form and shape, with minds and hearts; or are they, as I have often suspected, merely window-blinds? If they are not policemen and laundresses in charge of bare walls and echoing passages; if they are not hired housekeepers put in to bait the trap, and catch unwary tenants; if they are not restless spirits, who, for an abatement of rent, are always willing to lead the advanced posts in suburban colonization,—whence springs that singular ambition which is always anxious to be literally first in the field, and the oldest inhabitant in a settlement of yesterday? Surely, there can be little pleasure in living, for months, amongst heaps of brick-dust, shavings, mortar and wet clay; in staring at hollow shops that are boarded up for years until they are wanted, and at undecided mansions which may turn out to be public-houses; or in being stared at, in a tenfold degree, by rows of spectral carcases and yawning cellars? There can be little pleasure in contemplating cold stucco porticos of a mongrel Greek type, that crack and fall to pieces in rain and frost; or gaping gravel-pits; or stagnant ponds; or lines of oven-like foundations waiting for more capital and more enterprise to cover them with houses. There can be just as little pleasure in seeing your scanty pavement breaking suddenly off before your door, and your muddy, hilly road tapering away in a few rotten planks that lead into a marshy, grassless field, where you may stand and easily fancy yourself the last man at the end of a melancholy, unsuccessful, deserted world, looking into space, with no one person or thing behind you.
The old places that I shall always cling to are unhappily often visited by decay; but it is the decay of ripe old age, which is always venerable. My ideal toy-house—the nearest approach to it that I can find—may become uninhabitable in the fulness of years, but it will still be picturesque; and those who may despise it as a dwelling will admire it upon canvas. In this form it is often brought within my humble reach, and I secure the shadow if I cannot obtain the substance. I still, however, look longingly at the reality, as my little girl looked at her toy-house in her morning’s walk; and, like her, I shall doubtless be swept past it, still looking back, until I am sucked into that countless crowd from which there is no returning.