 | Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches |  |
NEIGHBORHOODS I HAVE MOVED FROM.
1. I.
A BAY-WINDOW once settled the choice of
my house and compensated for many of its inconveniences.
When the chimney smoked, or the
doors alternately shrunk and swelled, resisting any
forcible attempt to open them, or opening of themselves
with ghostly deliberation, or when suspicious
blotches appeared on the ceiling in rainy weather,
there was always the bay-window to turn to for
comfort. And the view was a fine one. Alcatraz,
Lime Point, Fort Point, and Saucelito were plainly
visible over a restless expanse of water that
changed continually, glittering in the sunlight,
darkening in rocky shadow, or sweeping in mimic
waves on a miniature beach below.
Although at first the bay-window was supposed
to be sacred to myself and my writing materials,
in obedience to some organic law, it by and by
became a general lounging-place. A rocking-chair
and crochet basket one day found their way there.
Then the baby invaded its recesses, fortifying himself
behind intrenchments of colored worsteds and
spools of cotton, from which he was only dislodged
captivity. A subtle glamour crept over all who
came within its influence. To apply one's self to
serious work there was an absurdity. An incoming
ship, a gleam on the water, a cloud lingering
about Tamalpais, were enough to distract the
attention. Reading or writing, the bay-window
was always showing something to be looked at.
Unfortunately, these views were not always pleasant,
but the window gave equal prominence and
importance to all, without respect to quality.
The landscape in the vicinity was unimproved,
but not rural. The adjacent lots had apparently
just given up bearing scrub-oaks, but had not
seriously taken to bricks and mortar. In one
direction the vista was closed by the Home of the
Inebriates, not in itself a cheerful-looking building,
and, as the apparent terminus of a ramble in a
certain direction, having all the effect of a moral
lesson. To a certain extent, however, this building
was an imposition. The enthusiastic members of
my family, who confidently expected to see its
inmates hilariously disporting themselves at its
windows in the different stages of inebriation portrayed
by the late W. E. Burton, were much disappointed.
The Home was reticent of its secrets.
The County Hospital, also in range of the bay-window,
showed much more animation. At
certain hours of the day convalescents passed in
This spectacle was the still more depressing
from a singular lack of sociability that appeared to
prevail among them. Each man was encompassed
by the impenetrable atmosphere of his own peculiar
suffering. They did not talk or walk together.
From the window I have seen half a dozen sunning
themselves against a wall within a few feet of each
other, to all appearance utterly oblivious of the
fact. Had they but quarrelled or fought, — anything
would have been better than this horrible
apathy.
The lower end of the street on which the bay-window
was situate, opened invitingly from a popular
thoroughfare; and after beckoning the unwary
stranger into its recesses, ended unexpectedly
at a frightful precipice. On Sundays, when the
travel North-Beachwards was considerable, the bay-window
delighted in the spectacle afforded by unhappy
pedestrians who were seduced into taking
this street as a short-cut somewhere else. It was
amusing to notice how these people invariably, on
coming to the precipice, glanced upward to the
bay-window and endeavored to assume a careless
air before they retraced their steps, whistling ostentatiously,
as if they had previously known all
about it. One high-spirited young man in particular,
being incited thereto by a pair of mischievous
bright eyes in an opposite window,
than return, to the great peril of life and limb, and
manifest injury to his Sunday clothes.
Dogs, goats, and horses constituted the fauna of
our neighborhood. Possessing the lawless freedom
of their normal condition, they still evinced a tender
attachment to man and his habitations. Spirited
steeds got up extempore races on the sidewalks,
turning the street into a miniature Corso; dogs
wrangled in the areas; while from the hill beside
the house a goat browsed peacefully upon my
wife's geraniums in the flower-pots of the second-story
window. “We had a fine hail-storm last
night,” remarked a newly arrived neighbor, who
had just moved into the adjoining house. It
would have been a pity to set him right, as he was
quite enthusiastic about the view and the general
sanitary qualifications of the locality. So I did n't
tell him anything about the goats who were in the
habit of using his house as a stepping-stone to the
adjoining hill.
But the locality was remarkably healthy. People
who fell down the embankments found their wounds
heal rapidly in the steady sea-breeze. Ventilation
was complete and thorough. The opening of the
bay-window produced a current of wholesome air
which effectually removed all noxious exhalations,
together with the curtains, the hinges of the back
door, and the window-shutters. Owing to this
circulation and publicity in the neighborhood,
which years in another locality might not
have produced. Several articles of wearing apparel,
which were mysteriously transposed from our
clothes-line to that of an humble though honest
neighbor, was undoubtedly the result of these
sanitary winds. Yet in spite of these advantages
I found it convenient in a few months to move.
And the result whereof I shall communicate in
other papers.
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!
3. III.
Soon after I moved into Happy Valley I was
struck with the remarkable infelicity of its title.
Generous as Californians are in the use of adjectives,
this passed into the domain of irony. But I
was inclined to think it sincere, — the production
of a weak but gushing mind, just as the feminine
nomenclature of streets in the vicinity was evidently
bestowed by one in habitual communion with
“Friendship's Gifts” and “Affection's Offerings.”
Our house on Laura Matilda Street looked somewhat
like a toy Swiss Cottage, — a style of architecture
so prevalent, that in walking down the
block it was quite difficult to resist an impression
of fresh glue and pine shavings. The few shade-trees
might have belonged originally to those oval
Christmas boxes which contain toy villages; and
even the people who sat by the windows had a
stiffness that made them appear surprisingly unreal
and artificial. A little dog belonging to a neighbor
was known to the members of my household by
the name of “Glass,” from the general suggestion
he gave of having been spun of that article. Perhaps
I have somewhat exaggerated these illustrations
of the dapper nicety of our neighborhood, —
a neatness and conciseness which I think have a
general tendency to belittle, dwarf, and contract
ways and narrow ideas, and to some extent squared
the round world outside to the correct angles of
Laura Matilda Street.
One reason for this insincere quality may have
been the fact that the very foundations of our
neighborhood were artificial. Laura Matilda Street
was “made ground.” The land, not yet quite
reclaimed, was continually struggling with its old
enemy. We had not been long in our new home
before we found an older tenant, not yet wholly
divested of his rights, who sometimes showed himself
in clammy perspiration on the basement walls,
whose damp breath chilled our dining-room, and in
the night struck a mortal chilliness through the
house. There were no patent fastenings that
could keep him out, — no writ of unlawful detainer
that could eject him. In the winter his presence
was quite palpable; he sapped the roots of
the trees, he gurgled under the kitchen floor, he
wrought an unwholesome greenness on the side of
the veranda. In summer he became invisible, but
still exercised a familiar influence over the locality.
He planted little stitches in the small of the back,
sought out old aches and weak joints, and sportively
punched the tenants of the Swiss Cottage
under the ribs. He inveigled little children to
play with him, but his plays generally ended in
scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping-cough, and measles.
until they sickened suddenly and took to their
beds. But he kept the green-plants in good order,
and was very fond of verdure, bestowing it even
upon lath and plaster and soulless stone. He was
generally invisible, as I have said; but some time
after I had moved, I saw him one morning from the
hill stretching his gray wings over the valley, like
some fabulous vampire, who had spent the night
sucking the wholesome juices of the sleepers below,
and was sluggish from the effects of his repast. It
was then that I recognized him as Malaria, and
knew his abode to be the dread Valley of the shadow
of Miasma, — miscalled the Happy Valley!
On week days there was a pleasant melody of
boiler-making from the foundries, and the gas
works in the vicinity sometimes lent a mild perfume
to the breeze. Our street was usually quiet,
however, — a footfall being sufficient to draw the
inhabitants to their front windows, and to oblige
an incautious trespasser to run the gauntlet of batteries
of blue and black eyes on either side of the
way. A carriage passing through it communicated
a singular thrill to the floors, and caused the china
on the dining-table to rattle. Although we were
comparatively free from the prevailing winds,
wandering gusts sometimes got bewildered and
strayed unconsciously into our street, and finding
an unencumbered field, incontinently set up a
clothes-lines and chimney-pots, and had a good
time generally until they were quite exhausted. I
have a very vivid picture in my memory of an
organ-grinder who was at one time blown into the
end of our street, and actually blown through it
in spite of several ineffectual efforts to come to a
stand before the different dwellings, but who was
finally whirled out of the other extremity, still
playing and vainly endeavoring to pursue his
unhallowed calling. But these were noteworthy
exceptions to the calm and even tenor of our life.
There was contiguity but not much sociability
in our neighborhood. From my bedroom window
I could plainly distinguish the peculiar kind of
victuals spread on my neighbor's dining-table;
while, on the other hand, he obtained an equally
uninterrupted view of the mysteries of my toilet.
Still, that “low vice, curiosity,” was regulated by
certain laws, and a kind of rude chivalry invested
our observation. A pretty girl, whose bedroom
window was the cynosure of neighboring eyes,
was once brought under the focus of an opera-glass
in the hands of one of our ingenuous youth; but this
act met such prompt and universal condemnation,
as an unmanly advantage, from the lips of married
men and bachelors who did n't own opera-glasses,
that it was never repeated.
With this brief sketch I conclude my record of
moved from many others since then, but they
have generally presented features not dissimilar to
the three I have endeavored to describe in these
pages. I offer them as types containing the salient
peculiarities of all. Let no inconsiderate
reader rashly move on account of them. My
experience has not been cheaply bought. From
the nettle Change I have tried to pluck the flower
Security. Draymen have grown rich at my expense.
House-agents have known me and were glad,
and landlords have risen up to meet me from afar.
The force of habit impels me still to consult all
the bills I see in the streets, nor can the war telegrams
divert my first attention from the advertising
columns of the daily papers. I repeat, let no man
think I have disclosed the weaknesses of the
neighborhood, nor rashly open that closet which
contains the secret skeleton of his dwelling. My
carpets have been altered to fit all sized odd-shaped
apartments from parallelopiped to hexagons.
Much of my furniture has been distributed
among my former dwellings. These limbs have
stretched upon uncarpeted floors, or have been let
down suddenly from imperfectly established bedsteads.
I have dined in the parlor and slept in
the back kitchen. Yet the result of these sacrifices
and trials may be briefly summed up in the
statement that I am now on the eve of removal
from my Present Neighborhood.
| Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches | |