The Potiphar Papers

by George William Curtis

“I’m ashamed of you, Potiphar. Do you pretend to be an American, and not give way willingly to the march of improvement? You had better talk with Mr. Cream Cheese upon the ‘genius of the country.’ You are really unpatriotic, you show nothing of the enterprising spirit of your time.” “Yes,” I answer. “That’s pretty from you; you are patriotic aren’t you, with your liveries and illimitable expenses, and your low bows to money, and your immense intimacy with all lords and ladies that honor the city by visiting it. You are prodigiously patriotic with your inane imitations of a splendor impossible to you in the nature of things. You are the ideal American woman, aren’t you, Mrs. Potiphar?”

Then I run, for I’m afraid of myself, as much as of her. I am sick of this universal plea of patriotism. It is used to excuse all the follies that outrage it. I am not patriotic if I do not do this and that, which, if done, is a ludicrous caricature of something foreign. I am not up to the time if I persist in having my own comfort in my own way. I try to resist the irresistible march of improvement, if I decline to build a great house, which, when it is built, is a puny copy of a bad model. I am very unpatriotic if I am not trying to outspend foreign noblemen, and if I don’t affect, without education, or taste, or habit, what is only beautiful, when it is the result of the three.

However, this is merely my grumble. I knew, the first morning Mrs. Potiphar spoke of a new house, that I must build it. What she said was perfectly true; we were getting down town, there was no doubt of the growing inconvenience of our situation. It was becoming a dusty noisy region. The congregation of the Rev. Far Niente had sold their church and moved up town. Now doesn’t it really seem as if we were a cross between the Arabs who dwell in tents and those who live in cities, for we are migratory in the city? A directory is a more imperative annual necessity here than in any other civilized region. My wife says it is a constant pleasure to her to go round and see the new houses and the new furniture of her new friends, every year. I saw that I must submit. But I determined to make little occasional stands against it. So one day I said:

“Polly, do you know that the wives of all the noblemen who will be your very dear and intimate friends and models when you go abroad, always live in the same houses in London, and Paris, and Rome, and Vienna? Do you know that Northumberland House is so called because it is the hereditary town mansion of the Duke, and that the son and daughter-in-law of Lord Londonderry will live after him in the house where his father and mother lived before him? Did that ever occur to you, my dear?”

“Mr. Potiphar,” she replied, “do you mean to go by the example of foreign noblemen? I thought you always laughed at me for what you call ‘aping.’”

“So I do, and so I will continue to do, Mrs. Potiphar; only I thought that, perhaps, you would like to know the fact, because it might make you more lenient to me when I regretted leaving our old house here. It has an aristocratic precedent.”

Poor, dear little Mrs. P.! It didn’t take as I meant it should, and I said no more. Yet it does seem to me a pity that we lose all the interest and advantage of a homestead. The house and its furniture become endeared by long residence, and by their mute share in all the chances of our life. The chair in which some dear old friend so often sat—father and mother, perhaps—and in which they shall sit no more; the old-fashioned table with the cuts and scratches that generations of children have made upon it; the old book-cases; the heavy side-board; the glass, from which such bumpers sparkled for those who are hopelessly scattered now, or for ever gone; the doors they opened; the walls that echoed their long-hushed laughter,—are we wise when we part with them all, or, when compelled to do so, to leave them eagerly?

I remember my brother James used to say: “What is our envy for our country friends, but that their homes are permanent and characteristic? Their children’s children may play in the same garden. Each annual festival may summon them to the old hearth. In the meeting-house they sit in the wooden pews where long ago they sat and dreamed of Jerusalem, and now as they sit there, that long ago is fairer than the holy city. Through the open window they see the grass waving softly in the summer air, over old graves dearer to them than many new houses. By a thousand tangible and visible associations they are still, with a peculiar sense of actuality, near to all they love.”

Polly would call it a sentimental whim—if she could take Mrs. Croesus’s advice before she spoke of it—but what then? When I was fifteen, I fell desperately in love with Lucy Lamb. “Pooh, pooh,” said my father, “you are romantic, it’s til a whim of yours.”

And he succeeded in breaking it up. I went to China, and Lucy married old Firkin, and lived in a splendid house, and now lies in a splendid tomb of Carrara marble, exquisitely sculptured.