“Nescire autem quid antea quam natus sis
acciderit id est semper puerum esse.”
Cicero.
“History is bunk.”
Henry Ford
The burghers of Holland, being (like the Chinese) inclined towards a certain conservatism of both manners and habits, continued the tradition of the “front parlour”—the so-called “good-room”—well into the 20th century. Every farmer had his “front parlour” filled with stuffy air, stuffy furniture, and an engraving of the Eiffel Tower facing the lithographic representation of a lady in mid-seas clinging desperately to a somewhat ramshackle granite cross.
But the custom was not restricted to the bucolic districts. His late Majesty, William III (whose funeral was the most useful event of his long life), had been married to an estimable lady of Victorian proclivities, who loved a “tidy” and an “antimacassar” better than life itself. An aristocracy, recruited from the descendants of East India Directors and West India sugar planters, followed the Royal Example. They owned modest homes which the more imaginative Latin would have called “Palazzi.” Most of the ground floor was taken up by an immense “front parlour.” For the greater part of the year it was kept under lock and key while the family clustered around the oil lamp of the “back parlour” where they lived in the happy cacophony of young daughters practising Czerny and young sons trying to master the intricacies of “paideuo—paideueis—paideuei.”
As for the “front parlour” (which will form the main part of my text), it was opened once or twice a twelve-month for high family functions. A week beforehand, the cleaning woman (who received six cents per hour in those blessed Neanderthal days) would arrive with many mops and many brooms. The covers would be removed from the antique furniture, the frames of the pictures would be duly scrubbed. The carpets were submitted to a process which resembled indoor ploughing and for fully half an hour each afternoon the windows were opened to the extent of three or four inches.
Then came the day of the reception—the birthday party of the grandfather—the betrothal of the young daughter. All the relatives were there in their best silks and satins. The guests were there in ditto. There was light and there was music. There was enough food and drink to keep an entire Chinese province from starving. Yet the party was a failure. The old family portraits—excellent pieces by Rembrandt or Terborch—looked down upon grandchildren whom they did not know. The grandchildren, on the other hand, were quite uncomfortable in the presence of this past glory. Sometimes, when the guests had expressed a sincere admiration of these works of art, they hired a hungry Ph.D. to write a critical essay upon their collection for the benefit of the “Studio” or the “Connoisseur.” Then they ordered a hundred copies, which they sent to their friends that they might admire (and perhaps envy) the ancient lineage of their neighbours. Thereafter, darkness and denim covers and oblivion.
The history of our great Republic suffers from a fate similar to that of these heirlooms. It lives in the “front parlour” of the national consciousness. It is brought out upon a few grand occasions when it merely adds to the general discomfort of the assisting multitude. For the rest of the time it lies forgotten in the half dark of those Washington cellars which for lack of National Archives serve as a receptacle for the written record of our past.