Lamb, in one of his essays on Popular Fallacies, has said some excellent things about visitors. If certain visitors would only read these things, and, reading, comprehend! And if the visitor who never knows when to leave, as distinguished from those who, staying late, always leave too soon, would only peruse and ponder! In his category of intruders Lamb emphasizes “purposeless visitants and droppers-in,” and he sometimes wonders from what sky they fall. Whittier’s Demon of the Study, too, would indicate that the type still flourishes in New as well as Old England. Under the inspiration of an architect who is yet to be born, the house of the millennium will be able to avoid all unpleasant intrusions upon a privacy that is its inherent right, but which, alas! exists not in the home of the present.
It is apparent at once that the ideal haven can not hide itself amid the turmoil of the first floor. To fulfill its mission it must betake itself to surroundings more retired, and soar to a serener sphere. The true place for the study, therefore, is on an upper floor, and in the ideal house I would have it a spacious oriel approached by a hidden staircase.
Hawthorne’s idea was an excellent one—the study in the tower or upper story of his residence at Concord, which he approached by a ladder and trap-door, pulling the ladder up after him, and placing a weight over the door for additional security. Here he could look out upon his favorite walk amid the evergreens, almost touch the crowns of the leafy elms, and bathe in the sunshine that illumined the fertile plain across the roadway. His first residence at Concord—the Old Manse—was sufficiently remote to dispense with a trap-door, unless, indeed, this was an after-consideration owing to family reasons. At an opposite extremity of the village, far removed from Emerson and even the fleet feet of Thoreau, situated at a distance from the highway, the house itself of a gray neutral tone to baffle observation, and half concealed amid the shade of the distant suburbs, he was here free from all external annoyances. Here in the retired three-windowed study in the rear of the house, which overlooked the romantic Concord River below, he could set about his chosen task with no dread of interruption from the outside world.
Montaigne’s was a model study, a true sanctum. Without the quiet and reclusion it afforded, the pervading charm of the Essays would never have been ours. Instead of sauntering and loitering along with the easy abandon they do, they would have hurried and galloped by at breakneck speed, striding the noisy highway rather than pacing the shady lane. The placid, thinking, receptive mind of Montaigne was obviously the direct outcome of the calm and tranquillity exhaled by the inaccessible round Tower of Périgord.
The enchanting landscape, too, that smiled through the spacious windows was, no doubt, a constant inspiration, serving to rest the eye and mind when they were wearied by the tyranny of print, or fatigued by protracted writing. There would doubtless be more Montaignes were it possible to reproduce the life and surroundings amid which the Essays were inspired. Genius is capable of much; but, to be at its best, even genius must be in the mood, and moods are largely the result of surroundings. “No doubt,” observes Lord Lytton, “the cradle and nursery of definite thought is in the hazy limbo of Reverie. There ideas float before us, rapid, magical, vague, half formed; apparitions of the thoughts that are to be born later into the light, and run their course in the world of man.”
“Like the rain of night,” remarks Henri Amiel in the Journal Intime, “reverie restores color and force to thoughts which have been blanched and wearied by the heat of the day.”
The true flavor of a fine vintage may not be savored if the wine be roiled, or served at an improper temperature; the fine effluence that should emanate from the study—the framing of one’s mood and the molding of one’s thoughts, is only to be obtained in its perfect measure when the mind is freed from all disturbing influences.
Let us mount the classic staircase with Montaigne, and view the apartment so minutely described in the third chapter of the Third Book. The well-filled book-cases, the sunlight, the seclusion, the inviting prospect, the fireplace, and the immunity from noise, all are there:
“At home I betake me somewhat the oftener to my library, whence all at once I command and survey all my household; it is seated in the chiefe entrie of my house, thence I behold under me my garden, my base court, my yard, and looke even into most roomes of my house. There without order, without method, and by peece-meales I turn over and ransacke, now one booke and now another. Sometimes I muse and rave; and walking up and downe I endight and enregister these my humours, these my conceits. It is placed on the third storie of a tower. The lowermost is my Chapell; the second a chamber with other lodgings, where I often lie because I would be alone. Above it is a great wardrobe. It was in times past the most unprofitable place of all my house. There I past the greatest part of my lives dayes, and weare out most houres of the day. I am never there a nights: Next unto it is a handsome neat cabinet, able and large enough to receive fire in winter, and very pleasantly windowen. And if I feared not care, more than cost; (care which drives and diverts me from all businesse) I might easily joyne a convenient gallerie of a hundred paces long, and twelve broad, on each side of it, and upon one floore; having already for some other purpose, found all the walles raised unto a convenient height. Each retired place requireth a walke. My thoughts are prone to sleepe, if I sit long. My minde goes not alone as if ledges did moove it. Those that studie without bookes, are all in the same case. The forme of it is round, and hath no flat side, but what serveth for my table and my chaire: In which bending or circling manner, at one looke it offreth me the full sight of all my books, set round about upon shelves or desks, five rancks one upon another. It hath three bay-windowes, of a farre-extending, rich and unresisted prospect, and is in diameter sixteen paces wide. In winter I am less continually there: for my house (as the name of it importeth) is pearched upon an overpearing hillocke; and hath no part more subject to all wethers than this: which pleaseth me the more, both because the accesse unto it is somewhat troublesome and remote, and for the benefit of the exercise which is to be respected; and that I may the better seclude myselfe from companie, and keepe incroachers from me: There is my seat, that is my throne. I endeavour to make my rule therein absolute, and to sequester that only corner from the communitie of wife, of children, and of acquaintance. Else-where I have but a verball authoritie, of confused essence. Miserable in my minde is he, who in his owne home, hath no where to be to himselfe; where he may particularly court, and at his pleasure hide or with-draw himself. Ambition paieth her followers well, to keepe them still in open view, as a statue in some conspicuous place.”[[6]]
[6]. Florio’s translation.