Chapter 5

"Your rooms," says Monsignore, "seem to me to be made almost as uncomfortable as they possibly can be."

"Why, of course!" exclaims the astonished artist, fixing his glass somewhat indignantly in his eye. "What you call uncomfortable I call quaint."

"Very possibly I should call it the same; but, my dear sir, _cui bono_?"

"_Cui bono!_" answers the architect contemptuously. "That's what all modern people say; that's the horrible mistake of the whole modern world. We shall never recover the tone of the old men till we get rid of such jargon. Now, just for an instant, imagine the fathers of this abbey of ours going in for wash-hand-basins!"

He drops his eye-glass in sheer dismay at such an idea. They next visit the refectory. Master Georgius here excels himself. "I'm going in for doing it inside in red brick, and vaulting it in red brick too, with black diaper-patterns all over, you know."

"How pretty!"

"I hope not," (dropping his glass.) "The diapers will be quite irregular, and full of what you would very likely call mistakes."

"A sort of intentional accidents, George."

"Yes; not a bad term. And then the joints will be all raked out roughly, and the brick-work smeared, you know. I have quite a new idea about that. I mean to go in for letting the workmen have the use of all the rooms, with liberty to smudge them as much as they like; and so at the end we shall have a sort of antique effect, you know."

"They will be dirty."

"You may call it dirt," says Georgius, refixing his eye-glass. "I call it art. And there will be marks here and there where the fellows have lighted fires, you know."

"And caricatures on the walls, I suppose."

"Of course. I shall go in for that very much. I shall offer a prize for the quaintest. I'll have them done with a brush of paint, you know, or scratch them with a screw-driver, and so on. I call that real art."

"So it is, George."

"And smudges of candle-smoke everywhere, and grease, and all that sort of thing. Well, here's the dormitory; that's in yellow brick, with white ones, and red ones, and so on, intermixed at random. Magnificent!"

The tower he proposes to treat in an equally artistic manner. "I shall go in for building it quite rough on purpose, and have it washed over with something--that's a matter of detail, you know--to produce fungus, or moss, or lichens, or whatever you choose to call it; and I shall plant things in the crevices as we go up,--wall-flowers, and houseleek, and ferns, and couch-grass, and all that kind of thing, you know."

"But what is all that for?"

"What is it all for?" says Master Georgius, dropping his glass. "Why, what could it be for? To give authenticity to the tower, of course."

With all this so-called aestheticism and crude speculation upon the proper development of architecture as a fine art, I believe the reformers of the Queen Anne school have honestly attempted to improve and elevate the standard of our domestic buildings. At all events, they have brought into the ranks of the profession life and nerve, elements absolutely necessary to an honest development of art-methods. The sentiment for art pure and simple will gradually expand into a greater veneration for the scientific elements of their professional career, and the necessity of clearly demonstrating to the uneducated comprehension of mechanics the practicability of their designs will induce those habits of thought and investigation which, if honestly pursued, will elevate the standard of professional attainments. As a natural result, their designs when executed will give us edifices artistic in conception and detail, well planned, and built by the best-known methods of construction.

The Queen Anne revival, viewed apart from the incongruities which have been engrafted upon it, is a movement of great interest to the architectural fraternity. Although a worn-out and debased art was the foundation of this renaissance, the movement has given to us, in the works of its best masters, much that is beautiful and honest in theory and in real domestic comfort. It may be said to be the picturesque art of a hitherto unpicturesque time and people. Let us, then, cultivate the principles of Free-Classicism honestly and logically, striving to secure the best results from our studies and the works of our predecessors; but do not let us be carried away by our love for archaeology and attempt to make our Queen Anne houses of to-day simply a reflex of those of the early eighteenth century. If we attempt such purism we must fail signally as constructors and as artists. Architecture, to be a living art, must press forward and keep pace with the advance of civilization, combining and utilizing all the varied resources at its command, and aiming to meet all the public and domestic requirements of a complex and artificial state of civilization. To Americans, Queen Anne or early Georgian is the starting-point of architectural history. Let us, then, take it as our standard, the Alpha of our profession, and aim to emulate the old masters in their endeavors to do their best with the small means at their command. Let us so design our modern buildings as to obtain the best results from diversified industries, almost human machinery, and the refined taste and superior cultivation of our clients, and we shall be carrying out the Queen Anne revival more logically and with more common sense than by aiming simply to attain the quaint and picturesque aspects of earlier work, forgetting the necessities which compelled the builders of the eighteenth century to stop short in their aspirations for a better and truer art. Let us build strongly, honestly, and conveniently,--eclectically if we will,--and our modified and beautified Queen Anne will become the logical expression of American domestic architecture. It contains the germ of greatness and artistic truth: let us endeavor to secure that germ, and our dwellings, enriched and beautified, will realize the idea of Skelton, who tells us of the early masters who, centuries before the advent of Queen Anne or Free Classic architecture, were

Building royally Their mansions curiously, With turrets and with toures, With halls and with boures, Stretching to the starres; With glass windows and barres; Hanging about the walls, Clothes of golde and palles, Arras of rich arraye, Freshe as flowers in Maye.

GEORGE C. MASON, JR.

MORNING.

I woke and heard the thrushes sing at dawn,-- A strangely blissful burst of melody, A chant of rare, exultant certainty, Fragrant, as springtime breaths, of wood and lawn. Night's eastern curtains still were closely drawn; No roseate flush predicted pomps to be, Or spoke of morning loveliness to me. But for those happy birds the night was gone! Darkling they sang, nor guessed what care consumes Man's questioning spirit; heedless of decay, They sang of joy and dew-embalmed blooms. My doubts grew still, doubts seemed so poor while they, Sweet worshippers of light, from leafy glooms Poured forth transporting prophecies of Day.

FLORENCE EARLE COATES.

NOS PENSIONS.

They have been many and of a widely various character. We tried them in England, in France, in Italy; we tried them likewise in Germany, Sweden, and Spain, but the result of that trying was, in these last-named countries, far more trying to our digestions and tempers than rich in such recollections as would add to the interest of this paper.

Our first European _pension_ was, naturally, a London one. It was one of the innumerable host in the pale realms of Bloomsbury. Like others of its kind in that region, it prided itself upon its "connexion,"--or, less euphemistically, its _custom_,--and made a specialty of an Australian "connexion," as the next number upon the right made a specialty of Germans, the one upon the left of South Americans and Spaniards, the one opposite of Russians, and uncounted ones all over London of our countrymen. Although our house was largely frequented by Australians, it did by no means confine its privileges to them. Like every other London boarding-house, it was a perfect caravansary of foreigners of almost every nation and every shade of color. At one time, with a Danish landlord and an Irish landlady, we were Norwegians, Swedes, Russians, Spaniards, Germans, Italians, and East Indians. Also we were several Americans, as was proved one notable day. That day we heard the arrival of new-comers in the hall below. We saw not their hue, but we recognized their cry as that of our countrypeople. We are not madly enamoured of our countryman in foreign climes. There his least adorable qualities--his bumptiousness, his provincialism, his strident tones and "_costume de Yank_"--are always more strikingly conspicuous than the chivalry toward women and the self-respecting manliness we always recognize so emphatically in him when we return to our own land after a prolonged absence. Hence we panted not for the dinner-hour, that should show us the faces whose voices we recognized as to our own manner born. That hour came, however, as all hours come to those who know how to wait. We descended to the showy table, with its floral decorations of paper, muslin, and gay paint, the ladies in the evening dress of flowers, trains, and _decolletee_ bodices which is the absurd custom of pretentious London _pensions_. We glanced along the table to note the new-comers. They were there, neatly and stylishly dressed in walking-costumes. They were three quiet gentlemanly and lady-like persons, but their faces were Medusa-like to almost every American who gazed upon them. The foreigners looked intensely amused at this collapse of the American contingent,--all save our Danish landlord, who stared with amazement. Next day our new-comers disappeared.

"How in the world did you _congedier_ them?" somebody asked.

"I told them my Americans admire enough coppery Turks, South Americans, Japanese, and East Indians, but they turn to stone at sight of niggers," answered Mr. Nodskou.

The line was certainly not drawn at color, for our Parsees were dusky enough, goodness knows, and them our maidens found very captivating. Several of them spoke no English, and it was the fascinating pastime of our English, Australian, and American girls to teach them our common language. But the result was, alas, not a little confusing to our Parsees.

"Don't fancy you are learning English from those Americans," warned Britannia. "Their accent is horrible: they say the weather is 'fair' when they mean 'fine,' they call their luggage 'baggage,' and when they speak of their travelling-boxes talk of their 'trunks,' like elephants!"

"Don't be fooled by English English," advised Columbia: "the accent is like a mouthful of pudding, and when they mean to say the weather is bad they say it is 'nawsty;' they call their rubbers 'galoshes,' their depots 'stations,' and when they start on a journey they get their 'boxes' together, like sweet-biscuit-peddlers."

"Don't mind what either of them say," quoth Miss Melbourne. "Both are wrong. It is only we Australians, living between the two branches of the language, as it were, who select the best and gobble it."

"What must it to say when I have such a fear, _such_ a fear, that I speak not?" asked one of the Parsees.

"Say you're dickey on your pins," laughed Australia.

"Say you feel all of a goneness," spoke up Columbia.

"No; that is Americanese," flouted Britannia: "say you're in a beastly funk!"

That our Parsees improved under such tuition was somewhat remarkable. The lingual advance of one of them was quite startling. Our young ladies had striven to teach him "good-by." One day, therefore, as the ladies were departing from the dining-room, leaving the gentlemen to their wine, our Parsee opened the door with grave, Oriental courtesy, and, bowing to the rustling covey, said solemnly, "By god, ladies, by god!"

During a political discussion in which English and Australians took chief parts, a Melbourne girl exclaimed excitedly, "Thank goodness, _I'm_ not English!"

"Not Engleesh!" exclaimed her neighboring Parsee. "What are you but the small little brat of the mother-country?"

Not until we laughed did our grave Oriental remember that "brat" and "child" are not strictly synonymous.

Said one of our English girls afterward to me, with tact and taste pre-eminently British, "_She_ glad she is not English! Really, _I'd_ almost as soon be American as Australian."

Our Parsees were not our only peculiar people. We Americans found quite as much food for sly laughter in the queerness of our English _habitues_ as they did in ours. Our English contingent was largely feminine, therefore, as goes without saying, very High-Church, very _devote_, and excessively Tory, worshipping the English aristocracy vastly more than that of celestial courts. Everybody knows the two diseases that virulently assail young Englishwomen,--"scarlet fever" and "black vomit,"--maladies provoked by association with red-coated officers and black-coated curates.

One of our fair Britons had the darker malady. She fasted regularly on Fridays and Tuesdays. We always recognized her _jours maigres_ by the quantity of cakes and pastry we saw carried to her room just before dinner, to which dinner she came in nun-like gray silk, saintly coiffure, with ascetic pallor on cheeks wont to bloom with roses de Ninon, to dine, _a la_ Sainte Catherine or Sainte Something else, on a few lentils or a lettuce-leaf.

One Sunday somebody asked this fair devotee to give us a certain popular but profane piano-arrangement. She was shocked beyond measure. A few moments' temptation, however, brought her to a compromise.

"I think there will be no harm if I play it slowly and make it as solemn as possible."

We smiled at the aesthetic piety of our Saint Catherine. But she did more than smile at our national practicality when, one evening, from the gay drawing-room we heard the clamor of a feminine arrival below:

"I won't see any rooms till I know your price. I won't stir a peg till I know what's to pay. I've come from Chicago, where folks know what's what, and I'm going to do Yoorup on the cheap!"

Saint Catherine worshipped her country's aristocracy. One day Jonathan happened to be putting on his coat in the hall, when somebody knocked at the front door. Forgetting that the act, so natural to an American, is ungentlemanly and menial in England, he opened the door himself. A couple of young swells inquired for Saint Catherine.

"I just saw her go out," answered Jonathan.

"Tell her that the brothers of Lord Verisopht called," said the spokesman.

"I'll tell her," spoke Jonathan; "but, good heavens, young man, don't lords' brothers have any names of their own in this country?"

Another day came a gorgeous individual with a bouquet to the door.

"What skion of the British nobility is that?" asked Jonathan.

"That is Lord Blank's footman," replied Saint Catherine.

"My! Well, whose footman is _that_?" continued her interlocutor, pointing to a less gorgeous person holding the reins.

"That is Lord Blank," answered Saint Catherine loftily.

"Sakes alive! Does that goose of a lord think he will stand any chance with the girls when he takes such a howling swell as _that_ around with him?" asked simple Jonathan.

To this question Saint Catherine deigned no reply, having, perhaps, remarked the wicked twinkle of Jonathan's eye.

One of our _pensionnaires_ objected very much to the American language. "It is principally slang," she said. This lady, no longer young, had been three times upon the eve of marriage, had had three bridal dresses, had countermanded three wedding-feasts. She was heiress at that time to the fifty thousand pounds she has since inherited, and the persistent failure of her matrimonial endeavors surprised us all.

"It is because Monsieur mon Pere is perfectly addled on the matter of settlements, and rowed with every one of my _fiances_," she explained.

She said one day, "The gov'nor has done me out of a guinea of my allowance this week. He's a first-class _Do_!"

Another time, "The mater and I prefer to live in our own house, but the gov'nor won't hear to it. He prefers 'diggin's' where he can always have his whist."

Some time after our sojourn in Bloomsbury "diggin's" we found ourselves in a Continental _pension_, the very reverse of this in every respect. It was a Parisian _pension bourgeoise_, but one entirely away from every haunt of foreigners as well as from foreign influences,--a _pension_ as French as French could be, where we were not merely the only foreigners present, but the only ones who had ever penetrated there.

It was a large white house, standing in its own grounds, not far from the Bois de Vincennes, pre-eminently a _pension bourgeoise_, and without pretensions higher than the widows of shopkeepers and the relicts of small government employees that formed its support. Not counting ourselves, there were twenty Relicts and one Maiden, all with handsome incomes and diamonds, but with the habit of running far and wide upon the open boulevard in caps, loose sacques, and list slippers, and of boasting of the cheap bargains they made in stockings and gowns. Their toilets were always _tout ce qu'il y a de plus bourgeois_, their conversation ran upon public scandals, private gossip, and fluctuations of trade (almost all of them had kept shop with their departed consorts), their reading was Paul de Kock's novels and the _feuilletons_ of "Le Petit Journal." The youngest widow was fifty, the Maiden ninety-and-nine. The latter was daughter of a man who had been _concierge_ of the Tuileries during the reign of Charles X. She was dusky and shrivelled as any daughter of the Pharaohs, but her faculties were marvellously preserved and her memory rich with interesting personal gossip of a former period. We Americans should have delighted to draw upon that memory, but one thing hindered us: that was the insatiable, indomitable, unparalleled coquetry of our ancient Maiden. She would never talk with any woman when any man was in the room. She descended to the stuffy little _salon_ only in the evening, when the Relicts were gathered to their gambling for sous and the atmosphere was an imitation of the Black Hole of Calcutta. She descended _en grande tenue_, the grandest ever seen there, frizzled, jewelled, and muffled to the throat in fleecy clouds of white wool. She came all quirks and quivers, all flutters and smiles, for there she met our only Monsieur,--Monsieur Boulanger, our landlord. She invariably took her seat beside him, and devoted quirks and quivers exclusively to him, tapping him with her fan, calling him "_Mechant! mechant!_" "_farceur_," or "_quel diable d'homme!_" twittering and carolling in her old broken voice, like a senile canary dreaming of its far-off youth. M. Boulanger was of peasant origin and appearance, gray-bearded and gray-haired, and clumping always in _sabots_ over the stone floors, except in the _salon_ in the evening. But her eyes were only for him; and the only occasion on which any of her own uninteresting sex had her attention was when Madame Boulanger pouted and pretended to be jealous, or some Relict showed pique that our only Monsieur was monopolized by our only Maiden. Then she smiled archly, cooed sweetly, and arched her ancient neck with visible triumph.

Before we left the _pension bourgeoise_ our front door was hung with heavy black curtains, and our Maiden passed forth into the broad day for the first time in ten years. She went out unsmiling, uncooing, without flutter or quirk, and no date upon her pine coffin, for with her last breath she had forbidden it.

"Nobody need know that I have lived more than fifty years," she murmured; "and don't let Monsieur Boulanger look at me when I am dead."

One of our widows--Madame Notte--was almost stone-deaf. She was a dwarfish creature, passionately fond of cards, waxing into terrible tempers over them, and with only one interest in life,--worshipful love of her only son, a not too beautiful _citoyen_ of fifty. This son fell ill and died. Poor Madame Notte knew of his illness, but not of its danger and final end. It was thought best to keep from her the knowledge that she was childless, lest the shock should be too great for her frail strength. She was told he had gone to Italy for his health; and when his widow and daughters came twice each week to visit her, they left their weeds at home, came in a close carriage in their gayest attire, and laughed and talked to her blithely with heavy hearts. All about the poor old mother we talked openly and freely of her loss and our pity, and she sat as unwitting as stone of it all. But when we put our mouths to her ear and asked for her son, a beautiful change always dawned upon the leaden countenance. "He has gone away," she invariably smiled,--"gone to a better country, where it is always summer. When I see him again he will be well, quite well." She, too, passed under the heavy black curtains that winter; and from our hearts we prayed that all was well with them in that better country where it is always summer.

One of our Relicts prided herself upon her English, and criticised ours. "They speak English fairly well: I can _understand_ them," I once heard her say of us to a group of Relicts in the garden; "but of course they speak only a _patois_: they are Americans."

"Why say you always to your infant, 'Hurry, my darling'?" she asked one day. "The pure Englishes says always, ''Urry, me darlink.'" Madame had acquired her English from her defunct lord, a commercial traveller from Lancashire.

One day, glancing at an envelope I had just addressed, she remarked, "_Eh bien!_ you Americans are very like English, after all. In England the last name of almost every monsieur is 'Esq.'!"

Another day she sweetly remarked, "This knife has very bad bladders."

As knives in our country are not generally endowed with that physical possession, I could only stare my astonishment.

"Eh, I see! It is an _English_ word, and you do not understand it. It means _lame_."

By which I discovered that had she spoken our transatlantic _patois_ she would have said "_blades_."

Every one of our Relicts had her private sitting-room attached to her bed-room, the house having been built expressly to suit the demands of _bourgeois_ widows with fortunes. Thus our _salon_ was of very little account until after dinner, when our widows, instead of returning to their own rooms, the garden, or the boulevard, where they spent the day, herded together around card-tables almost as closely as sheep in a pen. The _salon_ was not intended for daytime use; in the bitterest weather it had no fire until evening, and it had but a single window, which looked out upon the pavement of a well-like court arched over, three stories above, by a handkerchief bit of sky. Very little light or air ever entered the box-like place; during the day its atmosphere was stale and heavy, at night almost fetid. Whenever we ventured to pass an hour there our struggle was always against fate. Slyly we would leave the one door an inch ajar, or surreptitiously unclose the window a fraction as much. Scarcely, however, had we begun to congratulate ourselves upon success when half a score of antique roses flaunted and flared, and the death-knell of sly hopes sounded with echoed and re-echoed cry: "_Mon Dieu!_ I smell air!" "_Mon Dieu!_ Smell you not air?" "_Mon Dieu!_ Smell we not air?" "_Mon Dieu!_ Smells she not air?" "_Mon Dieu!_ Smell they not air?"