University of Virginia Library

MY LODGINGS,
AN
INTRODUCTION TO THE READER.

I am a bachelor, dear reader! This I deem necessary
to premise, lest, peradventure, regarding me as
one of that class whose fate is sealed,

you should deem me traitor to my sworn alliance.
For what has a Benedict to do with things out of the
window, when his gentle wife—(what sweet phraseology
this last! How prettily it looks printed!) his
“gentle wife” with her quiet eye, her sewing and
rocking chair on one side, and his duplicates or triplicates,
in the shape of a round chunk of a baby, fat as
a butter-ball; two or three roguish urchins with tops
and wooden horses, and a fawn-like, pretty daughter
of some nine years, with her tresses adown her neck,
and a volume of Miss Edgworth's “Harry and Lucy”
in her hand, which she is reading by the fading
twilight—demand and invite his attention on the
other.

No, my dear reader, I am not married! If I were,

I should have brief leisure to gaze by the hour from
my dormant window. Dormant window! Thereby
hangs a tale! Not one only, but many tales; vide
the “Lives of the Poets.” If I had hinted in the
beginning, that my dormitory was lighted by a dormant
window, it would sufficiently have indicated to
the sagacious reader my peculiar state. To him or
her not initiated in all the mysteries appertaining to
localities in great cities, and the “ways and means”
whereby single gentlemen manage to keep the grim
enemy at bay, I will merely hint that dormant windows
are sacred to us single gentlemen, particularly to
poets and certain fundless members of the literati.
They are situate on the roof, protruding above it like
the rampant nasal organ of the Knight of La Mancha,
from the plane of his grave physiognomy, himself
recumbent, and the barber's brazen basin upon his
sconce. The apartment to which they admit the light
of heaven is called the attick—certainly a most classical
appellation—but in vulgar parlance it is degradingly
ycleped “a garret.” I always hold a preference
for atticks and dormant windows. I do not thereby
mean to challenge the inference naturally deducible
from this confession, that considerations unworthy of
the minds of Crœsus, Girard, or Astor, had aught to
do with my choice. No, courteous loiterer—whether
of needle or cigar—over this page, I beg you will
not for a moment harbor such an uncharitable suspicion.
That a room in an attick draws more tenderly
and considerately upon the purses of single lodgers,
cannot be denied. I prefer an attick for many good
and weighty reasons. A basement is too low—too
low, literally and figuratively. It is base both nominally
and literally. It is, nevertheless, convenient to
the street and to the kitchen! But I eschew this domiciliary
subdivision altogether. Four feet lower than
the pavé! It is associated too intimately with our
last abiding-place. I cannot abide the basement.
The attick is cheaper! The first floor, as it is called
by way of fashionable misnomer, is, of course, unattainable.
In all the dwellings in Gotham, this “flat,”
as it is likewise denominated, is appropriated to drawing-room
and parlour. Couch or laver never desecrates
its precincts; for here stand the long, polished
dining-table, the eighteen chairs, the carpet, piano,
centre-rable, looking-glasses, and sideboard of the establishment.
Reader, this floor of two rooms, separate
or made one by folding doors intervening, is
sacred to the god who presides over eating. His name,
if there be such a heathenish deity set down in Tooke's
Pantheon, has slipped from my memory, or I would
give it you.

The second floor, so called, which is properly the
third, (but modern language is not used to express, but
merely to suggest ideas,) is still more sacred than the
last. It contains sleeping-rooms—and withal, sleeping-rooms
containing double beds. You can see, compassionate
reader, with “half an eye,” (as the speculators
in Wall street say, in pointing out natural beauties,
invisible to two whole ones, when they would sell
estates on paper,)—with half an eye, my dear reader,
you can see that this floor, thus qualified, is no caravansary
for a single gentleman. I yet aspire to such
a room! The third floor is the legitimate dormitory
of the “single-hearted,” provided always a fourth
floor intervene not between this and the gar— attick,
I would say. But this floor hath this objection; it is
habitually and pertinaciously, in all houses in Manhattan,
honey-combed; desperately cut up and partitioned
off in the merest slips, that fit a man almost as
closely as his coffin. They contain, by actual appraisement,
a narrow laver-stand, one chair, and a cot-bed,
so narrow that one would apprehend a fall if he
moved in his sleep, were he not comfortably assured
of the impossibility of such an adventure, after taking
a second glance at the friendly proximity of the two

sides of the room. I like a roomy room. Such boxes
are not rooms; there is no room in them. Perversion
of language thus to term them, seven by nines as they
are! It was in May I sought rooms. We changed
our lodgings every May morning in this city, distant
reader, as regularly as our grandsires did their ruffled
bosoms, which, in those tidy days, was every other
morning. Now, Heaven save the mark! if we change
once in a week, we do, we think, sufficient homage to
the spirit of Brummel! Dickies obtain, as the lawyers
phrase it, in these degenerate days! But I am
becoming digressive, and episodical, for which I crave
your indulgence, kind reader. I was seeking lodgings
of a fine May morning in a “genteel private boarding-house.”
I had completed my survey of the third story.

“Have you another floor above this?” I inquired
of the pretty—(I am very susceptible of pretty faces)
—fille de chambre.

She looked at me steadily and anxiously for a moment,
inspecting me from the apex of my cranium to
the slightly, very slightly, worn toes of my boots.
My habiliments, constituted of a black satin hat, ironed
that very morning, for the ninth time, and all the
whitish places, renewed with ink, so that it shone like
silk. It was presentable, or at least I felt myself to
be so in it. Her eyes lingered over it for an instant,
and, as I thought, approvingly, before she replied,
and then, dropped to my stock, vest, and bosom. The
first bore the scrutiny with confidence; it was of silk
velvet, and only slightly defaced. The vest was of
valencia, and worn a trifle about the pockets, from the
protrusion of sundry pennies, and a penknife. These
dilapidations were, however, invisible. My black
broadcloth coat, very opportunely buttoned by the
second button, concealed it. My shirt bosom passed
well; yet she cast her eye down to see if I had wristbands.
I put my hands gravely behind me. Her inventory
of the coat seemed less satisfactory; at least

so said her eye. Woman's eye is a natural telltale;
he that runs may read it. I flatter myself in possessing
peculiar tact at reading this pretty picture-book
with wonderful accuracy. Her eye expressed, though
with scarce perceptible shade, dissatisfaction. My
coat was undoubtedly a perfect coat; it fitted me well.
I had had it upon my back only a twelvemonth from
the tailor's, when I made my search the May preceding
for lodgings. It was now colourless; that is, black.
Possibly it might have acknowledged a slight modification
of black—an inclination to a delicate shade of
gray. I was also lintless. It had been well brushed
that morning; and by dint of brushing, it could not be
told, I verily believe, a short distance off, from the
finest bombazine. It once had been graced by lappels,
but when the late fashions came round, I had taken
them off. There was economy in that. I have since
found use for them! I consider my coat altogether
comme il faut. But woman's tact and penetration!
Oh, woman!
Fortune favor the wretch who has to pass the ordeal
of your inquisitive and searching glance! I foresaw
the result!

My nether teguments next passed muster. I trembled
for them. One can preserve a coat longer than
pantaloons. He can take it off when he enters his
room, and be almost ever without it, except in Broadway.
It is not so with the pantaloons. One would
not like to write or read in drawers, if he had such
useless and expensive under garments. A coat, reader
—this for your private ear—will last twenty-seven
months, where pantaloons will dilapidate at nineteen.
I know this to be the case, my friend, for I proved it
experimentally. My pantaloons called forth a glance

of decided disapproval. They were only a little
whitish about the angles of my limbs—(my ink had
been getting pale for several days, or I should not
have been so betrayed)—and although I “kind o'
dropped”—(bless Jack Downing for this morceau of
expressive phraseology)—my handkerchief before me
when I saw what I had to pass through, I could not
conceal it. But I had done better to let it remain perdu
in my coat pocket. It did not benefit me; but rather
coming itself in such questionable shape to the aid of
its friend, the trousers, it operated materially, I could
see by the lurking devil in her eye, to my disadvantage.
The fashion of my trousers—(for I used carefully
to have them “taken in” when the tights came
about, and “let out” when the fulls had the ascendant)—their
fashion was indisputable. My boots were
highly polished; the heels were worn a little one sided,
but, thank heaven! as she stood in front of me, she
could not discern this contingent feature; and also
there had been a rip—merely a rip, sir—on one side
of the left boot, which had been carefully closed with
a neat patch. Her eye rested—(how much these
women understand! how faithfully they discriminate!
verily, I stand in fear of the whole sex)—for full
twenty seconds upon that little, very little patch,
which a man with his obtuser organs, would never,
upon my honor, certainly never would have detected
—(oh, woman, woman is—young and pretty ones I
mean—the d—l!)—and then glanced to a pair of kid
gloves, somewhat soiled, held, for certain obvious reasons,
folded together in my hand.

This whole survey and inventory of my personal
habiliments, consumed about twenty-eight seconds by
the watch. I wear a watch! It is of massive silver,
with a single case and a double case. It had been my
great uncle's. It was now and still is mine. Inter
nos; the pawnbrokers wouldn't take it!

“Yes, sir,” came at last the reply to my query,

“there is a large room in the garret,” and her pretty
lip curled as she said it. Cupid befriend me! I saw
she took my cloth at once.

Sympathising reader, that “large room in the attick”
became, after certain necessary preliminaries
between the landlady and myself—interesting only to
the parties concerned, but which finally were amicably
adjusted—became my domicilium; my drawing-room,
parlor, library, dormitory, and study. It became,
emphatically my home! It was square in shape,
the ceiling descending obliquely from the top of the
back side of the room to the floor on the front side.
This surface was pierced about midway, and in the
cavity, and jutting far out of the roof, was inserted a
dormant window. This window was accessible by a
flight of three steps, springing from the centre of the
apartment. The upper one was broad and could contain
a chair. I am now seated in it, and at the window.
It is a comfortable nook; and the fresh wind
from the sound and Long Island comes gratefully in
as I sit here in the evening, and watch the moving
spectacle from the streets below. I love an attick!
You are nearer heaven, and beyond the reach of
kitchen odors and scolding housewives; above the
dust and noise of the streets, with a glorious prospect
of the verdant country outspread beyond a thousand
roofs, unknown by, and denied to, the cooped up cits
on the first and second floors. What an invigorating
breeze! Not the tainted current, circulating stagnant
and slow through the close streets, but the sweet
breath of summer, laden with a thousand fragrant
spices, stolen from the hills, meadows, and gardens
over which it has passed. For these blessings the cits
go to the country, with much expenditure of time and
money and patience. I can have them all by going
two pair of stairs higher than fashion will allow them
to mount.

From my attick window, then, courteous reader,

we will look forth for subjects that shall both benefit
our philosophies, and withal contribute to our divertisement.
This paper is only introductory thereto. If
prolix, attribute it, patient reader, to the excellency of
thy companionship; for when a man findeth good
company he is loth to take leave soon, and his hand
lingers long in the friendly grasp, ere the tongue can
reluctantly repeat “farewell.”