University of Virginia Library

17. XVII.
THE HOTE.

Arriving in town (where my bachelor-rooms, long
before this time, had received some other occupant), I
established myself, for a day or two, in a certain respectable
hotel. It was situated somewhat aloof from my
former track in life; my present mood inclining me to
avoid most of my old companions, from whom I was
now sundered by other interests, and who would have
been likely enough to amuse themselves at the expense
of the amateur working-man. The hotel-keeper put me
into a back-room of the third story of his spacious establishment.
The day was lowering, with occasional gusts
of rain, and an ugly-tempered east wind, which seemed
to come right off the chill and melancholy sea, hardly
mitigated by sweeping over the roofs, and amalgamating
itself with the dusky element of city smoke. All the
effeminacy of past days had returned upon me at once.
Summer as it still was, I ordered a coal-fire in the rusty
grate, and was glad to find myself growing a little too
warm with an artificial temperature.

My sensations were those of a traveller, long sojourning
in remote regions, and at length sitting down again
amid customs once familiar. There was a newness and
an oldness oddly combining themselves into one impression.
It made me acutely sensible how strange a piece
of mosaic-work had lately been wrought into my life.

True, if you look at it in one way, it had been only a
summer in the country. But, considered in a profounder
relation, it was part of another age, a different state of
society, a segment of an existence peculiar in its aims and
methods, a leaf of some mysterious volume interpolated
into the current history which time was writing off. At
one moment, the very circumstances now surrounding
me — my coal-fire, and the dingy room in the bustling
hotel — appeared far off and intangible; the next instant
Blithedale looked vague, as if it were at a distance
both in time and space, and so shadowy that a question
might be raised whether the whole affair had been anything
more than the thoughts of a speculative man. I
had never before experienced a mood that so robbed the
actual world of its solidity. It nevertheless involved a
charm, on which — a devoted epicure of my own emotions
— I resolved to pause, and enjoy the moral sillabub
until quite dissolved away.

Whatever had been my taste for solitude and natural
scenery, yet the thick, foggy, stifled element of cities,
the entangled life of many men together, sordid as it
was, and empty of the beautiful, took quite as strenuous
a hold upon my mind. I felt as if there could never be
enough of it. Each characteristic sound was too suggestive
to be passed over unnoticed. Beneath and
around me, I heard the stir of the hotel; the loud voices
of guests, landlord, or bar-keeper; steps echoing on the
stair-case; the ringing of a bell, announcing arrivals or
departures; the porter lumbering past my door with baggage,
which he thumped down upon the floors of neighboring
chambers; the lighter feet of chamber-maids
scudding along the passages; — it is ridiculous to think

what an interest they had for me! From the street
came the tumult of the pavements, pervading the whole
house with a continual uproar, so broad and deep that
only an unaccustomed ear would dwell upon it. A
company of the city soldiery, with a full military band,
marched in front of the hotel, invisible to me, but stirringly
audible both by its foot-tramp and the clangor of
its instruments. Once or twice all the city bells jangled
together, announcing a fire, which brought out the
engine-men and their machines, like an army with its
artillery rushing to battle. Hour by hour the clocks in
many steeples responded one to another. In some public
hall, not a great way off, there seemed to be an exhibition
of a mechanical diorama; for, three times during
the day, occurred a repetition of obstreperous music,
winding up with the rattle of imitative cannon and
musketry, and a huge final explosion. Then ensued the
applause of the spectators, with clap of hands, and
thump of sticks, and the energetic pounding of their
heels. All this was just as valuable, in its way, as the
sighing of the breeze among the birch-trees that overshadowed
Eliot's pulpit.

Yet I felt a hesitation about plunging into this muddy
tide of human activity and pastime. It suited me better,
for the present, to linger on the brink, or hover in the
air above it. So I spent the first day and the greater
part of the second in the laziest manner possible, in a
rocking-chair, inhaling the fragrance of a series of cigars,
with my legs and slippered feet horizontally disposed,
and in my hand a novel purchased of a railroad bibliopolist.
The gradual waste of my cigar accomplished
itself with an easy and gentle expenditure of breath. My

book was of the dullest, yet had a sort of sluggish flow,
like that of a stream in which your boat is as often
aground as afloat. Had there been a more impetuous
rush, a more absorbing passion of the narrative, I should
the sooner have struggled out of its uneasy current, and
have given myself up to the swell and subsidence of my
thoughts. But, as it was, the torpid life of the book
served as an unobtrusive accompaniment to the life
within me and about me. At intervals, however, when
its effect grew a little too soporific, — not for my
patience, but for the possibility of keeping my eyes open,
— I bestirred myself, started from the rocking-chair, and
looked out of the window.

A gray sky; the weathercock of a steeple, that rose
beyond the opposite range of buildings, pointing from the
eastward; a sprinkle of small, spiteful-looking raindrops
on the window-pane. In that ebb-tide of my energies,
had I thought of venturing abroad, these tokens would
have checked the abortive purpose.

After several such visits to the window, I found
myself getting pretty well acquainted with that little
portion of the backside of the universe which it presented
to my view. Over against the hotel and its adjacent
houses, at the distance of forty or fifty yards, was the
rear of a range of buildings, which appeared to be
spacious, modern, and calculated for fashionable residences.
The interval between was apportioned into
grass-plots, and here and there an apology for a garden,
pertaining severally to these dwellings. There were
apple-trees, and pear and peach trees, too, the fruit on
which looked singularly large, luxuriant and abundant;
as well it might, in a situation so warm and sheltered,

and where the soil had doubtless been enriched to a
more than natural fertility. In two or three places
grape-vines clambered upon trellises, and bore clusters
already purple, and promising the richness of Malta or
Madeira in their ripened juice. The blighting winds of
our rigid climate could not molest these trees and vines;
the sunshine, though descending late into this area, and
too early intercepted by the height of the surrounding
houses, yet lay tropically there, even when less than
temperate in every other region. Dreary as was the
day, the scene was illuminated by not a few sparrows and
other birds, which spread their wings, and flitted and
fluttered, and alighted now here, now there, and busily
scratched their food out of the wormy earth. Most of
these winged people seemed to have their domicile in a
robust and healthy buttonwood-tree. It aspired upward,
high above the roof of the houses, and spread a dense
head of foliage half across the area.

There was a cat — as there invariably is, in such
places — who evidently thought herself entitled to all
the privileges of forest-life, in this close heart of city
conventionalisms. I watched her creeping along the
low, flat roofs of the offices, descending a flight of
wooden steps, gliding among the grass, and besieging
the buttonwood-tree, with murderous purpose against its
feathered citizens. But, after all, they were birds of
city breeding, and doubtless knew how to guard themselves
against the peculiar perils of their position.

Bewitching to my fancy are all those nooks and crannies,
where Nature, like a stray partridge, hides her head
among the long-established haunts of men! It is likewise
to be remarked, as a general rule, that there is far

more of the picturesque, more truth to native and
characteristic tendencies, and vastly greater suggestiveness,
in the back view of a residence, whether in town
or country, than in its front. The latter is always artificial;
it is meant for the world's eye, and is therefore a
veil and a concealment. Realities keep in the rear, and
put forward an advance-guard of show and humbug.
The posterior aspect of any old farm-house, behind which
a railroad has unexpectedly been opened, is so different
from that looking upon the immemorial highway, that
the spectator gets new ideas of rural life and individuality
in the puff or two of steam-breath which shoots
him past the premises. In a city, the distinction between
what is offered to the public and what is kept for
the family is certainly not less striking.

But, to return to my window, at the back of the hotel.
Together with a due contemplation of the fruit-trees,
the grape-vines, the buttonwood-tree, the cat, the birds,
and many other particulars, I failed not to study the row
of fashionable dwellings to which all these appertained.
Here, it must be confessed, there was a general sameness.
From the upper story to the first floor, they were
so much alike, that I could only conceive of the inhabitants
as cut out on one identical pattern, like little
wooden toy-people of German manufacture. One long,
united roof, with its thousands of slates glittering in the
rain, extended over the whole. After the distinctness
of separate characters to which I had recently been
accustomed, it perplexed and annoyed me not to be able
to resolve this combination of human interests into well-defined
elements. It seemed hardly worth while for
more than one of those families to be in existence, since

they all had the same glimpse of the sky, all looked into
the same area, all received just their equal share of sunshine
through the front windows, and all listened to
precisely the same noises of the street on which they
boarded. Men are so much alike in their nature, that
they grow intolerable unless varied by their circumstances.

Just about this time, a waiter entered my room. The
truth was, I had rung the bell and ordered a sherry-cobbler.

“Can you tell me,” I inquired, “what families reside
in any of those houses opposite?”

“The one right opposite is a rather stylish boarding-house,”
said the waiter. “Two of the gentlemen-boarders
keep horses at the stable of our establishment.
They do things in very good style, sir, the people that
live there.”

I might have found out nearly as much for myself, on
examining the house a little more closely. In one of
the upper chambers I saw a young man in a dressing-gown,
standing before the glass and brushing his hair,
for a quarter of an hour together. He then spent an
equal space of time in the elaborate arrangement of his
cravat, and finally made his appearance in a dress-coat,
which I suspected to be newly come from the tailor's,
and now first put on for a dinner-party. At a window
of the next story below, two children, prettily dressed,
were looking out. By and by, a middle-aged gentleman
came softly behind them, kissed the little girl, and playfully
pulled the little boy's ear. It was a papa, no
doubt, just come in from his counting-room or office;
and anon appeared mamma, stealing as softly behind

papa as he had stolen behind the children, and laying
her hand on his shoulder, to surprise him. Then followed
a kiss between papa and mamma; but a noiseless
one, for the children did not turn their heads.

“I bless God for these good folks!” thought I to myself.
“I have not seen a prettier bit of nature, in all
my summer in the country, than they have shown me
here, in a rather stylish boarding-house. I will pay
them a little more attention, by and by.”

On the first floor, an iron balustrade ran along in
front of the tall and spacious windows, evidently belonging
to a back drawing-room; and, far into the interior,
through the arch of the sliding-doors, I could discern a
gleam from the windows of the front apartment. There
were no signs of present occupancy in this suite of rooms;
the curtains being enveloped in a protective covering,
which allowed but a small portion of their crimson material
to be seen. But two housemaids were industriously at
work; so that there was good prospect that the boarding-house
might not long suffer from the absence of its most
expensive and profitable guests. Meanwhile, until they
should appear, I cast my eyes downward to the lower
regions. There, in the dusk that so early settles into
such places, I saw the red glow of the kitchen-range.
The hot cook, or one of her subordinates, with a ladle in
her hand, came to draw a cool breath at the back-door.
As soon as she disappeared, an Irish man-servant, in a
white jacket, crept slyly forth, and threw away the fragments
of a china dish, which, unquestionably, he had
just broken. Soon afterwards, a lady, showily dressed,
with a curling front of what must have been false hair,
and reddish-brown, I suppose, in hue, — though my

remoteness allowed me only to guess at such particulars,
— this respectable mistress of the boarding-house made
a momentary transit across the kitchen window, and
appeared no more. It was her final, comprehensive
glance, in order to make sure that soup, fish and flesh,
were in a proper state of readiness, before the serving up
of dinner.

There was nothing else worth noticing about the
house, unless it be that on the peak of one of the
dormer-windows which opened out of the roof sat a
dove, looking very dreary and forlorn; insomuch that I
wondered why she chose to sit there, in the chilly rain,
while her kindred were doubtless nestling in a warm and
comfortable dove-cote. All at once, this dove spread her
wings, and, launching herself in the air, came flying so
straight across the intervening space that I fully expected
her to alight directly on my window-sill. In the latter
part of her course, however, she swerved aside, flew
upward, and vanished, as did, likewise, the slight, fantastic
pathos with which I had invested her.