 | II. Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches |  |
2. II.
“A house with a fine garden and extensive
shrubbery, in a genteel neighborhood,” were, if I
remember rightly, the general terms of an advertisement
which once decided my choice of a dwelling.
I should add that this occurred at an early
stage of my household experience, when I placed
a trustful reliance in advertisements. I have
since learned that the most truthful people are
apt to indulge a slight vein of exaggeration in
describing their own possessions, as though the
mere circumstance of going into print were an
excuse for a certain kind of mendacity. But I did
not fully awaken to this fact until a much later
period, when, in answering an advertisement which
described a highly advantageous tenement, I was
which a thousand inconveniences were impelling
me to move.
The “fine garden” alluded to was not large, but
contained several peculiarly shaped flower-beds. I
was at first struck with the singular resemblance
which they bore to the mutton-chops that are
usually brought on the table at hotels and restaurants,
— a resemblance the more striking from
the sprigs of parsley which they produced freely.
One plat in particular reminded me, not unpleasantly,
of a peculiar cake, known to my boyhood as
“a bolivar.” The owner of the property, however,
who seemed to be a man of original æsthetic ideas,
had banked up one of these beds with bright-colored
sea-shells, so that in rainy weather it suggested
an aquarium, and offered the elements of
botanical and conchological study in pleasing juxtaposition.
I have since thought that the fish-geraniums,
which it also bore to a surprising extent,
were introduced originally from some such
idea of consistency. But it was very pleasant,
after dinner, to ramble up and down the gravelly
paths (whose occasional boulders reminded me of
the dry bed of a somewhat circuitous mining
stream), smoking a cigar, or inhaling the rich
aroma of fennel, or occasionally stopping to pluck
one of the hollyhocks with which the garden
abounded. The prolific qualities of this plant
of enthusiasm, my wife planted several different
kinds of flower-seeds, nothing ever came up
but hollyhocks; and although, impelled by the
same laudable impulse, I procured a copy of
“Downing's Landscape Gardening,” and a few
gardening tools, and worked for several hours in
the garden, my efforts were equally futile.
The “extensive shrubbery” consisted of several
dwarfed trees. One was a very weak young weeping
willow, so very limp and maudlin, and so evidently
bent on establishing its reputation, that it
had to be tied up against the house for support.
The dampness of that portion of the house was
usually attributed to the presence of this lachrymose
shrub. And to these a couple of highly objectionable
trees, known, I think, by the name of
Malva, which made an inordinate show of cheap
blossoms that they were continually shedding, and
one or two dwarf oaks, with scaly leaves and a
generally spiteful exterior, and you have what
was not inaptly termed by our Milesian handmaid
“the scrubbery.”
The gentility of our neighbor suffered a blight
from the unwholesome vicinity of McGinnis Court.
This court was a kind of cul de sac that, on being
penetrated, discovered a primitive people living in
a state of barbarous freedom, and apparently spending
the greater portion of their lives on their own
which a popular prejudice restricts to the dressing-room
in other localities, were here performed in
the open court without fear and without reproach.
Early in the week the court was hid in a choking,
soapy mist, which arose from innumerable washtubs.
This was followed in a day or two later by
an extraordinary exhibition of wearing apparel of
divers colors, fluttering on lines like a display of
bunting on ship-board, and whose flapping in the
breeze was like irregular discharges of musketry.
It was evident also that the court exercised a demoralizing
influence over the whole neighborhood.
A sanguine property-owner once put up a handsome
dwelling on the corner of our street, and lived
therein; but although he appeared frequently on
his balcony, clad in a bright crimson dressing-gown,
which made him look like a tropical bird of some
rare and gorgeous species, he failed to woo any
kindred dressing-gown to the vicinity, and only
provoked opprobrious epithets from the gamins of
the court. He moved away shortly after, and on
going by the house one day, I noticed a bill of
“Rooms to let, with board,” posted conspicuously
on the Corinthian columns of the porch. McGinnis
Court had triumphed. An interchange of civilities
at once took place between the court and the
servants' area of the palatial mansion, and some
of the young men boarders exchange playful slang
that moment we felt that our claims to gentility
were forever abandoned.
Yet, we enjoyed intervals of unalloyed contentment.
When the twilight toned down the hard
outlines of the oaks, and made shadowy clumps
and formless masses of other bushes, it was quite
romantic to sit by the window and inhale the faint,
sad odor of the fennel in the walks below. Perhaps
this economical pleasure was much enhanced
by a picture in my memory, whose faded colors the
odor of this humble plant never failed to restore.
So I often sat there of evenings and closed my eyes
until the forms and benches of a country school-room
came back to me, redolent with the incense
of fennel covertly stowed away in my desk, and
gazed again in silent rapture on the round, red
cheeks and long black braids of that peerless creature
whose glance had often caused my cheeks to
glow over the pretenatural collar, which at that
period of my boyhood it was my pride and privilege
to wear. As I fear I may be often thought hypercritical
and censorious in these articles, I am willing
to record this as one of the advantages of our
new house, not mentioned in the advertisement,
nor chargeable in the rent. May the present tenant,
who is a stock-broker, and who impresses me
with the idea of having always been called “Mr.”
from his cradle up, enjoy this advantage, and try
sometimes to remember he was a boy!
| II. Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches | |