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diff --git a/3381.txt b/3381.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e0f6e5c --- /dev/null +++ b/3381.txt @@ -0,0 +1,802 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Standard Household-Effect Company +by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Standard Household-Effect Company + From "Literature and Life" + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #3381] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STANDARD *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +LITERATURE AND LIFE--The Standard Household-Effect Company + +by William Dean Howells + + +THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY + + +My friend came in the other day, before we had left town, and looked +round at the appointments of the room in their summer shrouds, and said, +with a faint sigh, "I see you have had the eternal-womanly with you, +too." + + + + +I. + +"Isn't the eternal-womanly everywhere? What has happened to you?" +I asked. + +"I wish you would come to my house and see. Every rug has been up for a +month, and we have been living on bare floors. Everything that could be +tied up has been tied up, everything that could be sewed up has been +sewed up. Everything that could be moth-balled and put away in chests +has been moth-balled and put away. Everything that could be taken down +has been taken down. Bags with draw-strings at their necks have been +pulled over the chandeliers and tied. The pictures have been hidden in +cheese-cloth, and the mirrors veiled in gauze so that I cannot see my own +miserable face anywhere." + +"Come! That's something." + +"Yes, it's something. But I have been thinking this matter over very +seriously, and I believe it is going from bad to worse. I have heard +praises of the thorough housekeeping of our grandmothers, but the +housekeeping of their granddaughters is a thousand times more intense." + +"Do you really believe that?" I asked. "And if you do, what of it?" + +"Simply this, that if we don't put a stop to it, at the gait it's going, +it will put a stop to the eternal-womanly." + +"I suppose we should hate that." + +"Yes, it would be bad. It would be very bad; and I have been turning the +matter over in my mind, and studying out a remedy." + +"The highest type of philosopher turns a thing over in his mind and lets +some one else study out a remedy." + +"Yes, I know. I feel that I may be wrong in my processes, but I am sure +that I am right in my results. The reason why our grandmothers could be +such good housekeepers without danger of putting a stop to the eternal- +womanly was that they had so few things to look after in their houses. +Life was indefinitely simpler with them. But the modern improvements, +as we call them, have multiplied the cares of housekeeping without +subtracting its burdens, as they were expected to do. Every novel +convenience and comfort, every article of beauty and luxury, every means +of refinement and enjoyment in our houses, has been so much added to the +burdens of housekeeping, and the granddaughters have inherited from the +grandmothers an undiminished conscience against rust and the moth, which +will not suffer them to forget the least duty they owe to the naughtiest +of their superfluities." + +"Yes, I see what you mean," I said. This is what one usually says when +one does not quite know what another is driving at; but in this case I +really did know, or thought I did. "That survival of the conscience is a +very curious thing, especially in our eternal-womanly. I suppose that +the North American conscience was evolved from the rudimental European +conscience during the first centuries of struggle here, and was more or +less religious and economical in its origin. But with the advance of +wealth and the decay of faith among us, the conscience seems to be simply +conscientious, or, if it is otherwise, it is social. The eternal-womanly +continues along the old lines of housekeeping from an atavistic impulse, +and no one woman can stop because all the other women are going on. It +is something in the air, or something in the blood. Perhaps it is +something in both." + +"Yes," said my friend, quite as I had said already, "I see what you mean. +But I think it is in the air more than in the blood. I was in Paris, +about this time last year, perhaps because I was the only thing in my +house that had not been swathed in cheese-cloth, or tied up in a bag with +drawstrings, or rolled up with moth-balls and put away in chests. At any +rate, I was there. One day I left my wife in New York carefully tagging +three worn-out feather dusters, and putting them into a pillow-case, and +tagging it, and putting the pillow-case into a camphorated self-sealing +paper sack, and tagging it; and another day I was in Paris, dining at the +house of a lady whom I asked how she managed with the things in her house +when she went into the country for the summer. 'Leave them just as they +are,' she said. 'But what about the dust and the moths, and the rust and +the tarnish?' She said, 'Why, the things would have to be all gone over +when I came back in the autumn, anyway, and why should I give myself +double trouble?' I asked her if she didn't even roll anything up and put +it away in closets, and she said: 'Oh, you mean that old American horror +of getting ready to go away. I used to go through all that at home, too, +but I shouldn't dream of it here. In the first place, there are no +closets in the house, and I couldn't put anything away if I wanted to. +And really nothing happens. I scatter some Persian powder along the +edges of things, and under the lower shelves, and in the dim corners, and +I pull down the shades. When I come back in the fall I have the powder +swept out, and the shades pulled up, and begin living again. Suppose a +little dust has got in, and the moths have nibbled a little here and +there? The whole damage would not amount to half the cost of putting +everything away and taking everything out, not to speak of the weeks of +discomfort, and the wear and tear of spirit. No, thank goodness--I left +American housekeeping in America.' I asked her: 'But if you went back?' +and she gave a sigh, and said: + +"'I suppose I should go back to that, along with all the rest. Everybody +does it there.' So you see," my friend concluded, "it's in the air, +rather than the blood." + +"Then your famous specific is that our eternal-womanly should go and live +in Paris?" + +"Oh, dear, not" said my friend. "Nothing so drastic as all that. Merely +the extinction of household property." + +"I see what you mean," I said. "But--what do you mean?" + +"Simply that hired houses, such as most of us live in, shall all be +furnished houses, and that the landlord shall own every stick in them, +and every appliance down to the last spoon and ultimate towel. There +must be no compromise, by which the tenant agrees to provide his own +linen and silver; that would neutralize the effect I intend by the +expropriation of the personal proprietor, if that says what I mean. It +must be in the lease, with severe penalties against the tenant in case of +violation, that the landlord into furnish everything in perfect order +when the tenant comes in, and is to put everything in perfect order when +the tenant goes out, and the tenant is not to touch anything, to clean +it, or dust it, or roll it up in moth-balls and put it away in chests. +All is to be so sacredly and inalienably the property of the landlord +that it shall constitute a kind of trespass if the tenant attempts to +close the house for the summer or to open it for the winter in the usual +way that houses are now closed and opened. Otherwise my scheme would be +measurably vitiated." + +"I see what you mean," I murmured. "Well?" + +"Some years ago," my friend went on, "when we came home from Europe, we +left our furniture in storage for a time, while we rather drifted about, +and did not settle anywhere in particular. During that interval my wife +opened and closed five furnished houses in two years." + +"And she has lived to tell the tale?" + +"She has lived to tell it a great many times. She can hardly be kept +from telling it yet. But it is my belief that, although she brought to +the work all the anguish of a quickened conscience, under the influence +of the American conditions she had returned to, she suffered far less in +her encounters with either of those furnished houses than she now does +with our own furniture when she shuts up our house in the summer, and +opens it for the winter. But if there had been a clause in the lease, as +there should have been, forbidding her to put those houses in order when +she left them, life would have been simply a rapture. Why, in Europe +custom almost supplies the place of statute in such cases, and you come +and go so lightly in and out of furnished houses that you do not mind +taking them for a month, or a few weeks. We are very far behind in this +matter, but I have no doubt that if we once came to do it on any extended +scale we should do it, as we do everything else we attempt, more +perfectly than any other people in the world. You see what I mean?" + +"I am not sure that I do. But go on." + +"I would invert the whole Henry George principle, and I would tax +personal property of the household kind so heavily that it would +necessarily pass out of private hands; I would make its tenure so costly +that it would be impossible to any but the very rich, who are also the +very wicked, and ought to suffer." + +"Oh, come, now!" + +"I refer you to your Testament. In the end, all household property would +pass into the hands of the state." + +"Aren't you getting worse and worse?" + +"Oh, I'm not supposing there won't be a long interval when household +property will be in the hands of powerful monopolies, and many +millionaires will be made by letting it out to middle-class tenants like +you and me, along with the houses we hire of them. I have no doubt that +there will be a Standard Household-Effect Company, which will extend its +relations to Europe, and get the household effects of the whole world +into its grasp. It will be a fearful oppression, and we shall probably +groan under it for generations, but it will liberate us from our personal +ownership of them, and from the far more crushing weight of the +mothball. We shall suffer, but--" + +"I see what you mean," I hastened to interrupt at this point, "but these +suggestive remarks of yours are getting beyond--Do you think you could +defer the rest of your incompleted sentence for a week?" + +"Well, for not more than a week," said my friend, with an air of +discomfort in his arrest. + + + + +II. + +--"We shall not suffer so much as we do under our present system," said +my friend, completing his sentence after the interruption of a week. By +this time we had both left town, and were taking up the talk again on the +veranda of a sea-side hotel. "As for the eternal-womanly, it will be her +salvation from herself. When once she is expropriated from her household +effects, and forbidden under severe penalties from meddling with those of +the Standard Household-Effect Company, she will begin to get back her +peace of mind, and be the same blessing she was before she began +housekeeping." + +"That may all very well be," I assented, though I did not believe it, and +I found something almost too fantastical in my friend's scheme. "But +when we are expropriated from all our dearest belongings, what is to +become of our tender and sacred associations with them?" + +"What has become of devotion to the family gods, and the worship of +ancestors? Once the graves of the dead were at the door of the living, +so that libations might be conveniently poured out on them, and the +ground where they lay was inalienable because it was supposed to be used +by their spirits as well as their bodies. A man could not sell the +bones, because he could not sell the ghosts, of his kindred. By-and by, +when religion ceased to be domestic and became social, and the service of +the gods was carried on in temples common to all, it was found that the +tombs of one's forefathers could be sold without violence to their +spectres. I dare say it wouldn't be different in the case of our tender +and sacred associations with tables and chairs, pots and pans, beds and +bedding, pictures and bric-a-brac. We have only to evolve a little +further. In fact we have already evolved far beyond the point that +troubles you. Most people in modern towns and cities have changed their +domiciles from ten to twenty times during their lives, and have not paid +the slightest attention to the tender and sacred associations connected +with them. I don't suppose you would say that a man has no such +associations with the house that has sheltered him, while he has them +with the stuff that has furnished it?" + +"No, I shouldn't say that." + +"If anything, the house should be dearer than the household gear. Yet at +each remove we drag a lengthening chain of tables, chairs, side-boards, +portraits, landscapes, bedsteads, washstands, stoves, kitchen utensils, +and bric-a-brac after us, because, as my wife says, we cannot bear to +part with them. At several times in our own lives we have accumulated +stuff enough to furnish two or three house and have paid a pretty stiff +house-rent in the form of storage for the overflow. Why, I am doing that +very thing now! Aren't you?" + +"I am--in a certain degree," I assented. + +"We all are, we well-to-do people, as we think ourselves. Once my wife +and I revolted by a common impulse against the ridiculous waste and +slavery of the thing. We went to the storage warehouse and sent three or +four vanloads of the rubbish to the auctioneer. Some of the pieces we +had not seen for years, and as each was hauled out for us to inspect and +decide upon, we condemned it to the auction-block with shouts of +rejoicing. Tender and sacred associations! We hadn't had such light +hearts since we had put everything in storage and gone to Europe +indefinitely as we had when we left those things to be carted out of our +lives forever. Not one had been a pleasure to us; the sight of every one +had been a pang. All we wanted was never to set eyes on them again." + +"I must say you have disposed of the tender and sacred associations +pretty effectually, so far as they relate to things in storage. But the +things that we have in daily use?" + +"It is exactly the same with them. Why should they be more to us than +the floors and walls of the houses we move in and move out of with no +particular pathos? And I think we ought not to care for them, certainly +not to the point of letting them destroy our eternal-womanly with the +anxiety she feels for them. She is really much more precious, if she +could but realize it, than anything she swathes in cheese-cloth or wraps +up with moth-balls. The proof of the fact that the whole thing is a +piece of mere sentimentality is that we may live in a furnished house for +years, amid all the accidents of birth and death, joy and sorrow, and yet +not form the slightest attachment to the furniture. Why should we have +tender and sacred associations with a thing we have bought, and not with +a thing we have hired?" + +"I confess, I don't know. And do you really think we could liberate +ourselves from our belongings if they didn't belong to us? Wouldn't the +eternal-womanly still keep putting them away for summer and taking them +out for winter?" + +"At first, yes, there might be some such mechanical action in her; but it +would be purely mechanical, and it would soon cease. When the Standard +Household-Effect Company came down on the temporal-manly with a penalty +for violation of the lease, the eternal-womanly would see the folly of +her ways and stop; for the eternal-womanly is essentially economical, +whatever we say about the dressmaker's bills; and the very futilities of +putting away and taking out, that she now wears herself to a thread with, +are founded in the instinct of saving." + +"But," I asked, "wouldn't our household belongings lose a good deal of +character if they didn't belong to us? Wouldn't our domestic interiors +become dreadfully impersonal?" + +"How many houses now have character-personality? Most people let the +different dealers choose for them, as it is. Why not let the Standard +Household-Effect Company, and finally the state? I am sure that either +would choose much more wisely than people choose for themselves, in the +few cases where they even seem to choose for themselves. In most +interiors the appointments are without fitness, taste, or sense; they are +the mere accretions of accident in the greater number of cases; where +they are the result of design, they are worse. I see what you mean by +character and personality in them. You mean the sort of madness that let +itself loose a few years ago in what was called household art, and has +since gone to make the junk-shops hideous. Each of the eternal-womanly +was supposed suddenly to have acquired a talent for decoration and a gift +for the selection and arrangement of furniture, and each began to stamp +herself upon our interiors. One painted a high-shouldered stone bottle +with a stork and stood it at the right corner of the mantel on a scarf; +another gilded the bottle and stood it at the left corner, and tied the +scarf through its handle. One knotted a ribbon around the arm of a +chair; another knotted it around the leg. In a day, an hour, a moment, +the chairs suddenly became angular, cushionless, springless; and the +sofas were stood across corners, or parallel with the fireplace, in +slants expressive of the personality of the presiding genius. The walls +became all frieze and dado; and instead of the simple and dignified +ugliness of the impersonal period our interiors abandoned themselves to a +hysterical chaos, full of character. Some people had their doors painted +black, and the daughter or mother of the house then decorated them with +morning-glories. I saw such a door in a house I looked at the other day, +thinking I might hire it. The sight of that black door and its morning- +glories made me wish to turn aside and live with the cattle, as Walt +Whitman says. No, the less we try to get personality and character into +our household effects the more beautiful and interesting they will be. +As soon as we put the Standard Household-Effect Company in possession and +render it a relentless monopoly, it will corrupt a competent architect +and decorator in each of our large towns and cities, and when you hire a +new house these will be sent to advise with the eternal-womanly +concerning its appointments, and tell her what she wants, and what she +will like; for at present the eternal womanly, as soon as she has got a +thing she wants, begins to hate it. The company's agents will begin by +convincing her that she does not need half the things she has lumbered up +her house with, and that every useless thing is an ugly thing, even in +the region of pure aesthetics. I once asked an Italian painter if he did +not think a certain nobly imagined drawing-room was fine, and he said +'SI. Ma troppa roba.' There were too many rugs, tables, chairs, sofas, +pictures; vases, statues, chandeliers. 'Troppa roba' is the vice of all +our household furnishing, and it will be the death of the eternal-womanly +if it is not stopped. But the corrupt agents of a giant monopoly will +teach the eternal-womanly something of the wise simplicity of the South, +and she will end by returning to the ideal of housekeeping as it prevails +among the Latin races, whom it began with, whom civilization began with. +What of a harmless, necessary moth or two, or even a few fleas?" + +"That might be all very well as far as furniture and carpets and curtains +are concerned," I said, "but surely you wouldn't apply it to pictures and +objects of art?" + +"I would apply it to them first of all and above all," rejoined my +friend, hardily. "Among all the people who buy and own such things there +is not one in a thousand who has any real taste or feeling for them, and +the objects they choose are generally such as can only deprave and +degrade them further. The pictures, statues, and vases supplied by the +Standard Household-Effect Company would be selected by agents with a real +sense of art, and a knowledge of it. When the house-letting and house- +furnishing finally passed into the hands of the state, these things would +be lent from the public galleries, or from immense municipal stores for +the purpose." + +"And I suppose you would have ancestral portraits supplied along with the +other pictures?" I sneered. + +"Ancestral portraits, of course," said my friend, with unruffled temper. +"So few people have ancestors of their own that they will be very glad to +have ancestral portraits chosen for them out of the collections of the +company or the state. The agents of the one, or the officers of the +other, will study the existing type of family face, and will select +ancestors and ancestresses whose modelling, coloring, and expression +agree with it, and will keep in view the race and nationality of the +family whose ancestral portraits are to be supplied, so that there shall +be no chance of the grossly improbable effect which ancestral portraits +now have in many cases. Yes, I see no flaw in the scheme," my friend +concluded, "and no difficulty that can't be easily overcome. We must +alienate our household furniture, and make it so sensitively and +exclusively the property of some impersonal agency--company or community, +I don't care which--that any care of it shall be a sort of crime; any +sense of responsibility for its preservation a species of incivism +punishable by fine or imprisonment. This, and nothing short of it, will +be the salvation of the eternal-womanly." + +"And the perdition of something even more precious than that!" + +"What can be more precious?" + +"Individuality." + +"My dear friend," demanded my visitor, who had risen, and whom I was +gradually edging to the door, "do you mean to say there is any +individuality in such things now? What have we been saying about +character?" + +"Ah, I see what you mean," I said. + + + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + As soon as she has got a thing she wants, begins to hate it + Heard praises of the thorough housekeeping of our grandmothers + Yes, I see what you mean + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Standard Household-Effect Company +by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STANDARD *** + +***** This file should be named 3381.txt or 3381.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/8/3381/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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