“The fireplaces have no jambs (as ours have), but the backs run flush with the walls, and the hearth is of tiles and is as far out into the room at the ends as before the fire, which is generally five foot in the lower rooms, and the piece over where the mantle-tree should be is made as ours with joiners’ work and as I suppose is fastened to iron rods inside.”
The kitchen fireplace was high as well as wide, and disclosed a vast smoky throat. When the week’s cooking was ended and the Sabbath was approaching, this great fireplace was dressed up, put on its best clothes for Sunday, as did all the rest of the family; across the top was hung a short petticoat, or valance, or little curtain gathered full on a string. This was called a schouwe-kleedt, a schoorsteen valletje, or sometimes a dobbelstee-tiens valletje, this latter in allusion to the stuff of which the valance was usually made,—a strong close homespun linen checked off with blue or red. This clean, sweet linen frill was placed, freshly washed and ironed, every Saturday afternoon on the faithful, work-worn chimney while it took its Sunday rest. In some houses there hung throughout the week a schoorsteen valletje; in others it was only Sunday gear. This was a fashion from early colonial days for both town and country. In the house of Mayor Rombouts in 1690 were fine chimney-cloths trimmed with fringe and lace, and worth half a pound each, and humbler checked chimney-cloths. Cornelius Steenwyck a few years earlier had in his “great chamber” a still gayer valletje of flowered tabby to match the tabby window-curtains. Peter Marius had calico valances for his chimneys.
A description given by a Scotchwoman of fireplaces in Holland at about this date shows very plainly from whence this form of hearth-dressing and chimney were derived:—
“The chimney-places are very droll-like; they have no jams nor lintell, as we have, but a flat grate, and there projects over it a lum in a form of the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or ruffled pawn around it.”
When tiles were used for facing the fireplace and even for hearths, as they often were in the kamer, or parlor, they were usually of Delft manufacture, printed in dull blue with coarsely executed outline drawings of Scriptural scenes. In the Van Cortlandt manor-house, the tiles were pure white. I have some of the tiles taken from the old Schermerhorn house in Brooklyn, built in the middle of the seventeenth century and demolished in 1895. There were nearly two hundred in each fireplace in the house. The scenes were from the Old Testament, and several, if I interpret their significance aright, from the Apocrypha. The figures are discreetly attired in Dutch costumes. Irving says of these Scripture-tiles: “Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; Jonah appeared most manfully bursting out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.” To these let me add the very amusing one of Lazarus leaving his tomb, triumphantly waving the flag of the Netherlands.
Sometimes the space between the open fireplace and the ceiling of the kamer was panelled, and it had a narrow ledge of a mantelpiece upon which usually were placed a pair of silver, brass, or pewter candlesticks and a snuffers with tray. Occasionally a blekker, or hanging candlestick, hung over the mantel. In some handsome houses the sur-base was of tiles and also the staircase; but such luxuries were unusual.
Domestic comfort and kindly charity sat enthroned in every room of these Dutch homes. Daniel Denton wrote of them as early as 1670:—
“Though their low-roofed houses may seem to shut their doors against pride and luxury, yet how do they stand wide open to let charity in and out, either to assist each other, or relieve a stranger.”
In these neighborly homes thrift and simple plenty and sober satisfaction in life had full sway; and these true and honorable modes of living lingered long, even to our own day. On the outskirts of a great city, within a few miles of the centre of our greatest city, still stand some of the farmhouses of Flatbush, whose story has been told con amore by one to the manner born. These old homesteads form an object-lesson which we may heed with profit to-day, of the dignity, the happiness, the beauty that comes from simplicity in every-day life.