My Wife and I. Harry Henderson's History

To be sure, this runs into a thousand follies and extravagances; but in this as in everything else the remedy is not extirpation, but direction.

Certainly my pretty wife's pretty toilets had a success in our limited circle, which might possibly have been denied in fashionable society at Saratoga and Newport. She was beauty, color, and life to our little world, and followed by almost adoring eyes wherever she went. It was as real an accession of light and joy to the simple ways of our household to have her there, as a choice picture, or a marvelous strain of music. My wife had to perfection the truly artistic gift of dress. Had she lived in Robinson Crusoe's island with no one to look at her but the paroquets and the monkeys, and with no mirror but a pool of water, she would have made a careful toilet every day, from the mere love of beauty; and it was delightful to see how a fresh, young, charming woman, by this faculty of adornment, seemed to make the whole of the sober, old house like a picture or a poem.

"She is like the blossom on a cactus," said my Uncle Jacob. "We have come to our flower, in her; we have it in us; we all like it, but she brings it out; she is our blossom."

In fact, it was charming to see the delight of the two sober, elderly matrons, my mother and my aunt, in turning over and surveying the pretty things of her toilet. My mother, with all her delicate tastes and love of fineness and exquisiteness, had lived in these respects the self-denied life of a poor country minister, who never has but one "best pocket handkerchief," and whom one pair of gloves must last through a year. It was a fresh little scene of delight to see the two way-worn matrons in the calm, silvery twilight of their old age, sitting like a pair of amicable doves on the trunks in our room, while my wife displayed to them all her little store of fineries, and all three chatted them over with as whole-hearted a zeal as if finery were one of the final ends in creation.

Every morning it was a part of the family breakfast to admire some new device of berries or blossoms adapted to her toilet. Now, it was knots of blue violets, and now clusters of apple blossoms, that seemed to adapt themselves to the purpose, as if they had been made for it. In the same manner she went about the house filling all possible flower vases with quaint and original combinations of leaves and blossoms till the house bloomed like a garland.

Then there were days when I have the vision of my wife in calico dress and crisp white apron, taking lessons in ornamental housewifery of my mother and aunt in the great, clean kitchen. There the three proceeded with all care and solemnity to perform the incantations out of which arose strange savory compounds of cakes and confections, whose recipes were family heir-looms. Out of great platters of egg-whites, whipped into foamy masses, these mystical dainties arose, as of old rose Venus from the foam of the sea.

I observe that the elderly priestesses in the temple of domestic experience, have a peculiar pride and pleasure in the young neophyte that seeks admission to these Eleusinian mysteries.

Eva began to wear an air of precocious matronly gravity, as she held long discourses with my mother and aunt on all the high mysteries of household ways, following them even to the deepest recesses of the house where they displayed to her their hidden treasures of fine linen and napery, and drew forth gifts wherewith to enrich our future home.

In the olden times the family linen of a bride was of her own spinning and that of her mother and kinswomen; so that every thread in it had a sacredness of family life and association. One can fancy dreams of peace could come in a bed, every thread of whose linen has been spun by loving and sainted hands. So, the gift to my wife from my mother was some of this priceless old linen, every piece of which had its story. These towels were spun by a beloved aunt Avis, whose life was a charming story of faith and patience; and those sheets and pillow-cases were the work of my mother's mother; they had been through the history of a family life, and came to us fragrant with rosemary and legend. We touched them with reverence, as the relics of ascended saints.

Then there were the family receipt books, which had a quaint poetry of their own. I must confess, in the face of the modern excellent printed manuals of cookery and housekeeping, a tenderness for these old-fashioned receipt books of our mothers and grandmothers, yellow with age, where in their own handwriting are the records of their attainments and discoveries in the art of making life healthful and charming. There was a loving carefulness about these receipts – an evident breathing of human experience and family life – they were entwined with so many associations of the tastes and habits of individual members of the family, that the reading of my mother's receipt-book seemed to bring back all the old pictures of home-life; and this precious manual she gave to Eva, who forthwith resolved to set up one of her own on the model of it.

In short, by the time our honeymoon had passed, Eva regarded herself as a passed mistress in the grand free-masonry of home life, and assumed toward me those grave little airs of instruction blent with gracious condescension for male inferiority which obtain among good wives. She began to be my little mother no less than wife.

My mother and aunt were confident of her success and abilities as queen in her new dominions. It was evident that though a city girl and a child of wealth and fashion, she had what Yankee matrons are pleased to denominate "faculty," which is, being interpreted, a genius for home life, and she was only impatient now to return to her realm and set up her kingdom.

CHAPTER XLVI.

LETTERS FROM NEW YORK

About this time we got a very characteristic letter from Jim. Here it is:

Dear Hal: – My head buzzes like a swarm of bees. What haven't I done since you left? The Van Arsdels are all packing up and getting ready to move out, and of course I have been up making myself generally useful there. I have been daily call-boy and page to the adorable Alice. Mem: —That girl is a brick! Didn't use to think so, but she's sublime! The way she takes things is so confounded sensible and steady! I respect her – there's not a bit of nonsense about her now – you'd better believe. They are all going up to the old paternal farm to spend the summer with his father, and by Fall there'll be an arrangement to give him an income (Van Arsdel I mean), so that they'll have something to go on. They'll take a house somewhere in New York in the Fall and do fairly; but think what a change to Alice!

Oh, by the by, Hal, the Whang Doodle has made her appearance in our parts again. Yesterday as I sat scratching for dear life, our friend 'Dacia sailed in, cock's feathers and all, large as life. She was after money, as usual, but this time it's her book she insisted on my subscribing for. She informed me that it was destined to regenerate society, and she wanted five dollars for it. The title is:

THE UNIVERSAL EMPYREAN HARMONIAD,BEINGAn Exposition of the Dual TriplicateConglomeration of the Infinite

There, now, is a book for you.

'Dacia was in high spirits, jaunty as ever, and informed me that the millennium was a-coming straight along, and favored me with her views of how they intended to manage things in the good time.

The great mischief at present, she informs me, lies in possessive pronouns, which they intend to abolish. There isn't to be any my or thy. Everybody is to have everything just the minute they happen to want it, and everybody else is to let 'em. Marriage is an old effete institution, a relic of barbarous ages. There is to be no my of husband and wife, and no my of children. The State is to raise all the children as they do turnips in great institutions, and they are to belong to everybody. Love, she informed me, in those delightful days is to be free as air; everybody to do exactly as they've a mind to; a privilege she remarked that she took now as her right. "If I see a man that pleases me," said she, "I shall not ask Priest or Levitt for leave to have him." This was declared with so martial an air that I shrank a little, but she relieved me by saying, "You needn't be frightened. I don't want you. You wouldn't suit me. All I want of you is your money." Whereat she came down to business again.

The book she informed me was every word of it dictated by spirits while she was in the trance state, and was composed conjointly by Socrates, St. Paul, Ching Ling, and Jim Crow, representing different races of the earth and states of progression. From some specimens of the style which she read to me, I was led to hope that we might all live as long as possible, if that sort of thing is what we are coming to after death.

Well, it was all funny and entertaining enough to hear her go on, but when it came to buying the book and planking the V, I flunked. Told 'Dacia I couldn't encourage her in possessive pronouns, that she had no more right to the book than I had, that truth was a universal birthright, and so the truths in that book were mine as much as hers, and as I needed a V more than she did I proposed she should buy the book of me. She didn't see it in that light, and we had high words in consequence, and she poured down on me like a thousand of brick, and so I coolly walked down stairs, telling her when she had done scolding to shut the door.

Isn't she a case? The Domini was up in his den, and I believe she got at him after I left. How he managed her I don't know. He won't talk about her. The Domini is working like a Trojan, and his family are doing finely. The kittens are all over his room with as many capers as the fairies, and I hear him laughing all by himself at the way they go on. We have looked at a dozen houses advertised in the paper, but not one yet is the bargain you want; but we trudge on the quest all our exercise-time daily. It will turn up yet, I'm convinced, the very thing you want.

Height, Hal, you are a lucky dog. I'm like a lean old nag out on a common, looking over a fence and seeing you in clover up to your hat-band. If my kettle only could boil for two I'd risk about the possessive pronouns. To say the truth I am tired of I and my, and would like to say we and our if I dared.

Come home any way and kindle your tent fire, and let a poor tramp warm himself at it.

Your dog and slave,Jim.

Bolton's letter was as follows:

Dear Hal: – I promised you a family cat, but I am going to do better by you. There is a pair of my kittens that would bring laughter to the cheeks of a dying anchorite. They are just the craziest specimens of pure jollity that flesh, blood, and fur could be wrought into. Who wants a comic opera at a dollar a night when a family cat will supply eight kittens a year? Nobody seems to have found out what kittens are for. I do believe these two kittens of mine would cure the most obstinate hypochondria of mortal man, and, think of it, I am going to give them to you! Their names are Whisky and Frisky, and their ways are past finding out.

The house in which the golden age pastoral is to be enacted has not yet been found. It is somewhere in fairy land, and will probably suddenly appear to you as things used to, to good knights in enchanted forests.

Jim and I went down to the steamer yesterday to see Miss Van Arsdel and your cousin off for Europe. They are part of a very pleasant party that are going together and seem in high spirits. I find her articles (your cousin's) take well, and there is an immediate call for more. So far, good! Stay your month out, my boy, and get all you can out of it before you come back to the "Dem'd horrid grind" of New York.

Ever yours,Bolton.

P. S. – While I have been writing, Whisky and Frisky have pitched into a pile of the proof-sheets of your Milky Way story, and performed a ballet dance with them so that they are rather the worse for wear. No fatal harm done however, and I find it reads capitally. I met Hestermann yesterday quite enthusiastic over one of your articles in the Democracy that happened to hit his fancy, and plumed myself to him for having secured you next year for his service. So you see your star is in the ascendant. The Hestermanns are liberal fellows, and the place you have is as sure as the Bank of England. So your pastoral will have a good bit of earthly ground to begin on.

B.

The next was from Alice.

Dear Sister: – I am so tired out with packing, and all the thousand and one things that have to be attended to! You know mamma is not strong, and now you and Ida are gone, I am the eldest daughter, and take everything on my shoulders. Aunt Maria comes here daily, looking like a hearse, and I really think she depresses mamma as much by her lugubrious ways as she helps. She positively is a most provoking person. She assumes with such certainty that mamma is a fool, and that all that has happened out of the way comes by some fault of hers, that when she has been here a day mamma is sure to have a headache. But I have discovered faculties and strength I never knew I possessed. I have taken on myself the whole work of separating the things we are to keep from those which are to be sold, and those which we are to take into the country with us, from those which are to be stored in New York for our return. I don't know what I should have done if Jim Fellows hadn't been the real considerate friend he is. Papa is overwhelmed with settling up business matters, and one wants to save him every care, and Jim has really been like a brother – looking up a place to store the goods, finding just the nicest kind of a man to cart them, and actually coming in and packing for me, till I told him I knew he must be giving us time that he wanted for himself – and all this with so much fun and jollification that we really have had some merry times over it, and quite shocked Aunt Maria, who insists on maintaining a general demeanor as if there were a corpse in the house.

One wicked thing about Jim is that he will take her off; and though I scold him for it, between you and me, Eva, and in the "buzzom of the family," as old Mrs. Knabbs used to say, I must admit that it's a little too funny for anything. He can make himself look and speak exactly like her, and breaks out in that way every once in a while; and if we reprove him, says, "What's the matter? Who are you thinking of? I wasn't thinking of what you were." He is a dreadful rogue, and one can't do anything with him; but what we should have done without him, I'm sure I don't know.

Sophie Elmore called the other day, and told me all about things between her and Sydney. She is sending to Paris for all her things, and Tullegig's is all in commotion. They are to be married early in October and go off for a tour in Europe. You ought to see the gloom on Aunt Maria's visage when the thing is talked about. If it had been anybody but the Elmores I think Aunt Maria could have survived it, but they have been her Mordecai in the gate all this time, and now she sees them triumphant. She speaks familiarly about our being ruined, and finally the other day I told her that I found ruin altogether a more comfortable thing than I expected, whereat she looked at me as if I were an abandoned sinner, sighed deeply, and said nothing. Poor soul! I oughtn't to laugh, but she does provoke me so I am tempted to revenge myself in a little quiet fun at her expense.

The other day Jim was telling me about a house he had been looking at. Aunt Maria listened with a severe gravity and interposed with, "Of course nobody could live on that street. Eva would be crazy to think of it. There isn't a good family within squares of that quarter."

I said you didn't care for fashion, and she gave me one of her looks and said, "I trust I sha'n't see Eva in that street; none but most ordinary people live there." Only think, Eva, what if you should live on a street where ordinary people live? How dreadful!

Well, darling, I can't write more; my hands are dusty with packing and overhauling, and I am writing now on the top of a box waiting for the man to cart away the next load. We are all well, and the girls behave charmingly, and are just as handy and helpful as they can be, and mamma says she never knew the comfort of her children before.

God bless you, dear, and good by,

Your lovingAlice.

CHAPTER XLVII.

AUNT MARIA'S DICTUM

Our lovely moon of moons had now waned, and the time drew on when, like Adam and Eve, we were hand in hand to turn our backs on Paradise and set our faces toward the battle of life.

"The world was all before us where to choose." In just this crisis we got the following from Aunt Maria:

My Dear Eva: – Notwithstanding all that has passed, I cannot help writing to show that interest in your affairs, which it may be presumed, as your aunt and godmother, I have some right to feel, and though I know that my advice always has been disregarded, still I think it my duty to speak, and shall speak.

Of course, as I have not been consulted or taken into your confidence at all, this may seem like interference, but I overheard Mr. Fellows talking with Alice about looking for houses for you, and I must tell you that I am astonished that you should think of such a thing. Housekeeping is very expensive, if you keep house with the least attention to appearance; and genteel board can be obtained at a far less figure. Then as to your investing the little that your grandmother left you in a house, it is something that shows such childish ignorance as really is pitiable. I don't suppose either you or your husband ever priced an article of furniture at David and Saul's in your lives, and have not the smallest idea of the cost of all those things which a house makes at once indispensable. You fancy a house arranged as you have always seen your father's, and do not know that the kind of marriage you have chosen places all these luxuries wholly out of your reach. Then as to the house itself, the whole of your little property would go but a small way toward giving you a dwelling any way respectable for you to live in.

It is true there are cheap little houses in New York, but where, and on what streets? You would not want to live among mechanics and dentists, small clerks, and people of that description. Everything when one is first married depends on taking a right stand in the beginning. Of course, since the ruin that has come on your father, and with which you will see I never reproach you, though you might have prevented it, it is necessary for all of us to be doubly careful. Everybody is very kind and considerate, and people have called and continue to invite us, and we may maintain our footing as before, if we give our whole mind to it, as evidently it is our duty to do, paying proper attention to appearances. I have partially engaged a place for you, subject of course to your and your husband's approval, at Mivart's, which is a place that can be spoken of – a place where the best sort of people are. Mrs. Mivart is a protégée of mine, and is willing to take you at a considerable reduction, if you take a small back room. Thus you will have no cares, and no obligations of hospitality, and be able to turn your resources all to keeping up the proper air and appearances, which with the present shocking prices for everything, silks, gloves, shoes, etc., and the requirements of the times, are something quite frightful to contemplate.

The course of conduct I have indicated seems specially necessary in view of Alice's future. The blight that comes on all her prospects in this dreadful calamity of your father's is something that lies with weight on my mind. A year ago Alice might have commanded the very best of offers, and we had every reason to hope such an establishment for her as her beauty and accomplishments ought to bring. It is a mercy to think that she will still be invited and have her chances, though she will have to struggle with her limited means to keep up a proper style; but with energy and attention it can be done. I have known girls capable of making, in secret, dresses and bonnets that were ascribed to the first artists. The puffed tulle in which Sallie Morton came to your last German was wholly of her own make – although of course this was told me in confidence by her mother and ought to go no farther. But if you take a mean little house among ordinary low classes, and live in a poor, cheap, and scrubby way, of course you cut yourself off from society, and you see it degrades the whole family. I am sure, as I told your mother, nothing but your inexperience would lead you to think of it, and your husband being a literary man naturally would not understand considerations of this nature. I have seen a good deal of life, and I give it as the result of my observation that there are two things that very materially influence standing in society; the part of the city we live in, and the church we go to. Of course, I presume you will not think of leaving your church, which has in it the most select circles of New York. A wife's religious consolations are things no husband should interfere with, and I trust you will not fling away your money on a mean little house in a fit of childish ignorance. You will want the income of that money for your dress, and carriages for calls and other items essential to keep up life.

I suppose you have heard that the Elmores are making extensive preparations for Sophie's wedding in the Fall. When I see the vanity and instability of earthly riches, I cannot but be glad that there is a better world; the consolations of religion at times are all one has to turn to. Be careful of your health, my dear child, and don't wet your feet. From your letters I should infer that you were needlessly going into very damp unpleasant places. Write me immediately what I am to tell them at Mivart's.

Your affectionate aunt,Maria Wouvermans.

It was as good as a play to see my wife's face as she read this letter, with flushed cheeks and an impatient tapping of her little foot that foreboded an outburst.

"Just like her for all the world," she said, tossing the letter to me, which I read with vast amusement.

"We'll have a house of our own as quick as we can get one," she said. "I think I see myself gossipping in a boarding house, hanging on to the outskirts of fashion in the way she plans, making puffed tulle dresses in secret places and wearing out life to look as if I were as rich as I am not, and trying to keep step with people of five times our income. If you catch Eva Van Arsdel at that game, then tell me!"

"Eva Van Arsdel is a being of the past, fortunately for me, darling."

"Well, Eva Van Arsdel Henderson, then," said she. "That compound personage is stronger and more defiant of worldly nonsense than the old Eva dared to be."

"And I think your aunt has no idea of what there is developing in Alice."

"To be sure she hasn't; not the remotest. Alice is proud and sensible, proud in the proper way I mean. She was full willing to take the goods the gods provided while she had them, but she never will stoop to all the worries, and cares, and little mean artifices of genteel poverty. She never will dress and go out on hunting expeditions to catch a rich husband. I always said Alice's mind lay in two strata, the upper one worldly and ambitious, the second generous and high minded. Our fall from wealth has been like a land slide, the upper stratum has slid off and left the lower. Alice will now show that she is both a strong and noble woman. Our engagement and marriage has wholly converted her, and she has stood by me like a little Trojan all along."

"Well," said I, "about this letter?"

"Oh! you answer it for me. It's time Aunt Maria learned that there is a man to the fore; besides you are not vexed, you are only amused, and you can write a diplomatic letter."

"And tell her sweetly and politely, with all ruffles and trimmings, that it is none of her business?" said I.

"Yes, just that, but of course with all possible homage of your high consideration. Then tell we can find a house. I suppose we can find nice country board for the hot months near New York, where you can come out every night on the railroad and stay Sundays."

"Exactly. I have the place all thought of and terms arranged long ago. A charming Quaker family where you will find the best of fruit, and the nicest of board, and the quietest and gentlest of hosts, all for a sum quite within our means."