The story of my house

by George H. Ellwanger

IV.
THE IDEAL HAVEN.

When my ship comes home I shall have a study of a very superior kind built. A part of the scheme will be a garden and a greenhouse which shall be especially adapted to the exigencies of authorcraft.—J. Ashby-Sterry, Cucumber Chronicles.

WHILE silence is pre-eminently golden in the study, the study, nevertheless should be more than “a chamber deaf to noise.” Situated away from disturbing household sounds, it should also be withdrawn from ready access on the part of all intruders. It should be a “den” in the literal sense of the word—a covert, a haven. Not that it should necessarily be below ground, but the way leading to it should be difficult to find; and, like the fox’s den, it should be provided with two entrances or means of escape, the more readily to baffle pursuers.

In how many houses, even those which are supposed to have been most carefully planned, are not the library and the study placed in close proximity to the front entrance, where anything like continuous repose is as far removed as the constellation Orion, and where the volume with which one endeavors to be engaged is forever chafed by the friction of passing inmates! Apart from mere noise, the discomfort of a library or study so situated is always great from the facility it offers to the wiles of innumerable outside forces. It is necessarily unpleasant to have certain visitors thrust unceremoniously upon one. You can not tell by the mere ring of the bell whether it is A, B, or C who has come to honor you with his presence—to bore or to charm; and without at every announcement making a sudden dive at the risk of being seen or heard, you are liable to be chambered for an hour with the very person you may most desire to avoid. Thoreau often waited for the Visitor who never comes; many of us must wait for the visitor who never goes.

Not that I would limit visitors to a circumscribed few, or banish welcome ones at an early hour. I entertain the highest regard for the maxim of Pope respecting the coming and the parting guest; yet, in the very nature of things, there are always some to whom one would fain send the conventional message, “not at home.” It was to obviate such monstrous misplacements as a library near the front door (a library merely in name), that Naudé, years since, in his Advis pour dresser une Bibliothèque, gave this excellent advice: “Let the library be placed in a portion of the house most removed from noise and disturbance, not only from without, but also from family and servants; away from the street, the kitchen, sitting-room, and similar places; locating it, if possible, between some spacious court and a fine garden where it may have abundant light, pure air, and extended and agreeable views.”

In the case of all houses where rooms are thus misplaced, some means of spiriting one’s self away through a side or rear door are absolutely essential to even a semblance of comfort. A study amid such surroundings, without safe and instantaneous means of flight from unwelcome callers is a grotesque misnomer. Is not a man’s house his castle? The term “growlery,” often applied to the study, undoubtedly arose from an apartment so situated, referring not to a cage where the master of the house may work off his surly moods, as some ladies erroneously suppose, but to the anathemas bestowed by its harassed inmate upon the architect who planned a place for retirement where retirement is only possible after midnight. All these can the more readily comprehend the force of a passage in Walden-“the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation; what is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” A trap-door, concealed by an Oriental rug, that would respond to a certain pressure of the foot known only to the initiated, might be worthy of consideration by house-builders in this connection. Or some kind of reflecting-glass might be devised that would enable coming events of an unpleasant nature to cast their shadows before.

Even though one meet his modest accounts with all reasonable promptitude, there are still creditors oblivious to the amenities of life, who, instead of forwarding annual or semi-annual statements through the certain channel of the mails, send their “cards of compliment” for collection through the medium of middlemen or runners, who, even yet more callous to the finer feelings of humanity, and intent solely upon pouching their guerdon, invariably present themselves at the front door to force a passage within. Fancy an intrusion of this kind while you may be rereading The Eve of St. Agnes, or perusing The Good-Natured Man! Though it occur but once a year, the shock must still remain. At one time or another this form of visitant is bound to appear to every one; for the species of fiend exists in common with front-door book-agents, itinerant venders, census-takers, expressmen, telegraph-messengers, and the rest of the customary mob that charges upon one’s front entrance wherever and whenever it is the most accessible means of invasion. Even the parcels’-delivery, despite reiterated warnings, will not unfrequently persist in demanding ingress through the forbidden portal. Indeed, the front door is a constant factor of discord, the baiting-place of disquiet, the arch enemy of household peace.

Many of the vexations that are ever striving to wedge their way through the vestibule may be avoided by intelligent, well-drilled servants who are capable of reading human nature, and at a glance can distinguish the false from the true. A thoroughly competent house-maid should wear her cap internally as well as externally, and, like a thrasher’s sieve, be able to winnow the chaff from the wheat. But such discriminating Cerberi are as rare as they are desirable, and the melancholy fact exists that the servant is invariably ready to leave so soon as she or he has become really valuable or thoroughly accustomed to your ways.