THE HOMELIKE HOUSE.
BY SUSAN HAYES WARD.
CHAPTER I.—THE HALL.
In studying how to make home beautiful, we must not forget that, first of all, there must be a home; and that in a true home, the household, and not the house, is of primary importance. We have all seen careful housekeepers whose first and last thought was to keep their domains with absolute neatness, and whose domestic law was of Median and Persian inflexibility. Overshoes must be left here; slippers must be put on there; the front stair-carpet must only be trodden by the visitor’s foot; the front door-latch must never be lifted by the children’s hand; curtains must be drawn close lest carpets fade; and autumn fires remain unlighted lest ashes fly. These were housekeepers, not home makers. The virtue of carefulness is a housewife’s glory; but when carried to an excess, it becomes a woman’s shame, leading her to imagine that meat is more than life, raiment than body, and house than man. Of the virtuous woman we read first: “She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness;” then that “she looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness;” after which it follows naturally that “her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her;” but when the devil of neatness enters into a woman he defies family comfort, and banishes the angel of peace from the home. And yet comfort, important though its place may be in the home economy, is not to be the first aim. A wise critic says: “Every house should have in it that which tells of strength, and seems to favor self-sacrifice, simplicity, self-control. Nothing is finer in a house than a kind of subtle ubiquitous spirit, which asserts the superiority of the household, and tells you that they fear neither hunger nor cold, neither toil nor danger, and do not bow down, night and morning to the vulgar divinity, Comfort.” Not the house we live in, but the life we live in it is that on which the real beauty of home depends. In the House Beautiful, not Mr. Cook’s, nor Mrs. Allen’s, but in that incomparable House Beautiful which Bunyan has described for us, even there the boy Matthew fell sick from tampering with the fruit of Beelzebub’s garden. Compared with this soundness of inner life in the house, these questions of outer adornment, of taste, or expediency, or expense, are but unimportant matters, since no home can be truly beautiful that is tarnished by an unworthy life within its walls.
So much of preliminary statement must be pardoned me, because in the refined paganism of these days there seems to be a mania for magnifying the house we live in, and the highest religion of many a family is simply to make their home beautiful and attractive. It is better than no religion at all—but a higher religion teaches us to make the homes of the poor comfortable before—we make our own beautiful, shall I say? Not at all; but before we spend freely to gain this end. For the external beauty of home does not depend on the amount of money spent in its adornment. Money buys a great deal of clutter that had far better be left in the shops; money buys a vast amount of superfluous stuck-on ornaments, that were better left off, but money does not and can not buy good taste—an eye for color, thoughtful care for the general comfort, a quick wit, and common sense. Yet these are the safest and surest helps to the woman who aims to make her home attractive to the eye and restful to the body.
Let us enter the door of this woman’s house and see what she allows and what she disallows.
First, we notice that her entry and stairways are planned upon as liberal a scale as possible. That is but common sense, for furniture and trunks must go in and out, up and down, to say nothing of household and visitors, and the broader the entry way, the more hospitable and inviting it can be made with chairs, table and sofa. Modern builders have at last learned this, and they are giving us the old-fashioned hall again, with a corner or side fireplace, and, if possible, an outlook on the back garden. This hall is not kept too dark in winter, nor too light in summer. In cold weather we need cheerfulness, warmth, and light on entering the house. In summer we should step from the glare of a vertical sun and heat of the nineties, into a cool, refreshing shade, kept, of a purpose, darker than sitting-room, dining-room and kitchen, to prevent flies from swarming into the hall and up the stairway and becoming the pest of the morning sleeper. The back stairs also are closed, either above or below, so that premonitory hints of meals to come may not ascend to the bedrooms and go down the front stairs to guests in the parlor, thus proclaiming on the housetop what you whisper to your cook in the kitchen.