A STRUGGLE FOR SHELTER.
Having, in "A Letter to a Young Housekeeper," held counsel with her whose home is made by a noble husband, it is no less pleasant to recall the claims of her whose home is made by herself; who, instead of keeping house for two, keeps house for but one, and whose stars have not yet led her on either to matrimony or to Washington Territory.
Mrs. Stowe, in a late number of the Atlantic, has discoursed admirably on the woman question of how to get occupation; a point to be equally anxious upon is that of how to get a shelter. It is often easier to get a husband than either. Perhaps every one knows the exceeding difficulty with which, in our large cities, the single woman obtains even a room wherein to lodge; but only the victims can know the real distresses it involves. In the capital, where noble women are chiefly needed, to begin homeless is a positive peril; and to stand on the surest integrity is only to fall at last. If one apply at the boarding-houses it is either to be instantly rebuffed by learning that no rooms are let to ladies, or more delicately parried by being told that the terms are forty dollars a week! If one have attractions and friends, it is equivocal; if one have them not, it is equally desperate. Should Minerva herself alight there with a purse that would not compass Willard's, one cannot imagine what would become of her. She would probably be seen wandering at late night, with bedimmed stars and bedraggled gauze, until some vigorous officer should lead her to the station-house for vagrancy. Thus when fascination and forlornness are at equal discount, when powers and penuries go down together, and common and uncommon sense fail alike, to what natural feeling shall one hope to appeal? There is no sound spot of humanity left to rest upon. It is a dilemma that is nothing but horns.
Possibly it is a trifle better in New England; but here, as elsewhere, the chief enemy of woman is woman. It is women who keep our houses for boarding and lodging, and, with a few radiant exceptions, it is they who never take ladies. If by any chance a foothold be obtained there, the only safety is in keeping it with stern self-denial of all outside pleasures or excursions. Surrender for a week, and you return to that door only to hear that two gentlemen have taken your room, and that they will pay more. You ask for an attic. Just now there are two gentlemen there. Will there be a place under the eaves? Possibly, next week. But before then the two gentlemen are on hand again, have unpacked their vials of unctuous hair-oil, and are happily snuggled under the eaves. Indeed, they seem to make long journeys expressly to head one off, and to be where they should not be. They are on time always, and in at the winning. Some day one will pathetically die of two gentlemen on the brain; and the doctor will only call it congestion. O for a new Knight of a Sorrowful Figure, to demolish all such ubiquitous persons! I have sometimes had as many as three of my engaged rooms at a time occupied by these perpetual individuals,—myself waiting a-tremble on the portico. Then it struck me that, if there were really any more gentlemen in Washington Territory than here, women had better not go there.
Out of this exigency has arisen a grand vision of mine to build a flat of five or six rooms; a single landing of dining- and drawing-rooms, boudoir, bedroom, and kitchen with its apartment for a domestic. And, either by lounge-bedstead or famous Plympton, there should be the possibility of sleeping in every apartment but the kitchen. This would be such sweet revenge for one whom the Fates had driven about for five years to hunt lodgings. I would gormandize on bedrooms,—like Cromwell resting in a different one every night,—and the empty ones filling with forlornest of females, provided one need not do the honors at their table in the morning and hear how they have slept. There should be alcoves too, with statues; and unexpected niches of rooms crimson with drapery, "fit to soothe the imagination with privacy"; and oh! perhaps somewhere a bit of a conservatory and a fountain,—did not Mrs. Stowe tell us of these too? Here one could dwell snugly as in the petals of a rose, or expansively as in a banyan-tree, undisturbed alike from gentlemen in black or women in white, liable only to the elements and to mortality.
If only this castle were as attainable as that of Thoreau!—which was to consist of but one room, with one door to enter it, and where "some should live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles,—some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders if they chose."
But on the terra firma of realities one's trouble is somewhat mitigated by the fact that, when all is said and done, the boarding-houses are usually so poor, that, having entered them, one's effort to get admitted is rather exceeded by one's desire to depart. The meats are all cooked together with one universal gravy;—beef is pork, and lamb is pork, each passing round the swinal sin; the vegetables often seem to know but one common kettle, for turnip is onion, and squash is onion; while the corn-cake has soda for sugar, and the bread is sour and drab-colored, much resembling slices of Kossuth hat.
From these facts grew the experiment of becoming housekeeper extraordinary to myself,—a strait to which many a one is likely to be driven, unless we are to have something better than can be offered by the present system of boarding-houses. For since one's castle was not yet builded outside of the brain, it only took a little Quixotism of imagination to consider as castles all these four-story brick houses with placards affixed of "Rooms to be let," and to secure the most eligible corner in one of these at moderate rent.
This of course is not so easy to do; but at last a petite room seemed to be struck out from the white heat of luck,—so petite!—six feet by thirteen feet, two carpet-breadths wide and four masculine strides long; one flight up, and just large enough to sheathe one's self in; high-walled and corniced, with on the one hand a charming bay-window looking three ways, and cheerily catching the sunlight early and late; on the other, an open grate fire, fit to illuminate the gray Boston mornings,—though, when the brilliant sun came round full at noon, there seemed no fire till that was gone. I strove to forget that it might have been a doctor's consulting office, and three days after there blossomed out of it seven several apartments; the inevitable curtain across the corner giving a wardrobe and bath; the short side of the room, with desk, a library; the long side, with sofa, a bedchamber; the upper end, with table, a dining-hall; the cupboard and region about the hearth, a kitchen; while the remainder, with a lively camp-stool chair that balanced about anywhere and doubled into nothing when desired, was drawing-room,—that is, it was drawing-room wherever the chair was drawn. In this apartment everything was handy. One could sit in the centre thereof, and, by a little dexterous tacking to north or south, reach every article in it. But when a lad whose occasional infirmity was fainting was proposed to build the fire, it became necessary to decline, on the ground that there really was not room enough, unless he were so kind as to faint up chimney. A genuine bower it was, but not a Boffin's Bower, where the wedded occupants suited their contrary tastes by having part sanded-floor for Mr. Boffin, and part high-colored carpet for Mrs. Boffin,—"comfort on one side and fashion on the other." In this the walls were hung with pictures, and the windows with lace, while the corner curtain was a gorgeous piano cover. Mr. Boffin not being here, it was both comfort and fashion all round.