Atlantic Classics Volume I Part 5

Of course I know that after she has lived in it longer, it is bound to improve, because it is her nature to humanize and modify all her surroundings. But the crucial question is--_how big a house can she humanize?_ Something bigger than a cottage probably--but certainly something much smaller than a hotel. The longer I looked at this question, the more it seemed to me that unconsciously I had put my finger on the vital query that, in the ideal state, should underlie all property, all education, all privilege.

'I have been talking about houses,--they are the most intimate, the most organic of a woman's possessions,--but the argument applies to all we own. It is the mark of our era to want more of everything than we can use, yet when we get the Too-Much we demand, we are crushed by it, as Tarpeia was crushed by the shields.'

'I have often thought' said Grace, 'that the sheer, brute ma.s.s of life--of people to know, of books to read, of plays to hear, of pictures to see, of things to do, buy, learn, enjoy--within reach of the well-to-do person in the modern world, far outruns the capacity of any human being to take it in and make of it the sane whole that a life should be.'

'Yes--yet we go crazily on, trying to expand to illimitable possibilities, thinking we shall be happier so soon as we have discarded all our present belongings and opportunities for bigger, newer, richer ones. How many people do you know who have not met a substantial increase of income with a corresponding enlargement of their whole scale of living, a senseless expansion sometimes out-running their increased ability to provide for it? There is no future but chaos for a society with such ambitions. They are centrifugal and can only lead to disintegration.

'The truth is, we have no notion of the value and necessity of a doctrine of limitations. Just as an ill.u.s.tration--not once in all the ma.s.s of matter printed in the last twenty years about the gyro-car, the aeroplane or other inventions capable of enormous swiftness, have I seen the faintest intimation that human beings could not intelligently direct a speed of two hundred miles an hour--yet the railroads are now tardily discovering that the capacity of engineers is seriously taxed by sixty miles!

'Don't mistake my meaning. I am not preaching the moral value of poverty. I am no convert to asceticism. That method of ridding one's self of the overweight of the material life is too extreme to the correct solution. I am simply calling attention with all my might to the aesthetic and vital value of Not-Too-Much. I am not afraid of Enough. I am greatly afraid of Too-Much. And the reason I am afraid is this:--

'Just as the capacity of the human stomach is limited to a certain quant.i.ty of food, so also is limited the capacity of the human spirit for appropriating and a.s.similating property in its different forms.

Beyond a certain somewhat variable point, material possessions _do the holder no more good_. The common saying, "All you get in this world is your board and clothes," is the popular acknowledgment of this restricted capacity. The affirmation of bounds to our capacity holds good as regards the property of the mind--education, cultivation, aesthetic satisfactions--just as it does of material goods. There is a definite limit to what we can effectively make our own. Beyond that limit, possession is a detriment.'

'The direct result of helping ourselves to too much of anything is to coa.r.s.en and degrade. We can see this clearly as regards the primal necessity of food. Nature promptly writes it, in large letters, all over the man or woman of gross appet.i.tes.'

'It is as plainly printed, if in smaller type, on the faces of those who want too much of other things,--houses, notoriety, money, power,--what you will. The porcine brand is there, however disguised. Personally, I fear the Mark of the Pig as I fear nothing else on earth. Shaler says that certain lines of evolution terminate in such grotesque effects that one almost believes the guiding thought behind the process was humorous.

I never see a stye with its squealing, shouldering inhabitants, without thinking how tremendously satiric it is--a master-caricature of human greed, not over-drawn! And I say, "Brother Pig, Heaven grant that I keep my voracities better concealed than thou."'

Her companions regarded Honoria, in type thin, nervous, ardent, with a keen and vivid face. The comparison was certainly not apparent--but the heart knoweth its own gluttonies.

'You are doing fairly well at it thus far,' said Martha dryly. 'What's the next step in your argument, Honoria?'

'Since our capacity is limited, and since to glut ourselves beyond it burdens and degrades, clearly the thing for each individual with intelligence to do is to find out where, for him, lies the golden point beyond which riches turns to the poverty of burden. When even the wise and earnest Adelaides get their houses too big and don't know what is the matter, it is time to formulate the principles of First Aid to the Prosperous. I believe the point from which the women of the comfortable cla.s.ses should attack the problem of a saner living is this doctrine of limitation and selection, and that we should attack it first of all in our homes.

'Now, we human beings really do something to our immediate material surroundings which I can best describe as charging them with our personality. With the revolution of the days, personality acc.u.mulates in the things we handle and love and live with, much as electricity gathers upon the acc.u.mulator of a static machine with the revolution of the plates. This idea has always been popular with the poets and artists, but people who advance it in everyday life always do so apologetically, with the air of saying, "I know this is slightly fantastic, but doesn't it seem true?" Yet most housekeepers know its utter truth. I never doubted from the time I consciously began to care for old furniture, old rugs, old china--all the beautiful cast-offs of vanished lives--that a vast part of their charm was atmosphere, something imparted to them by the affection of those forgotten ones and now inhering, for the perceptive vision, in their very substance. The craftsman of those elder days is not the only creator of the beauty that has come down to us.

Whoever has loved another's work has thereby added something to it. Is it not so? And I, in my turn, ought to be beautifying my belongings for those who come after me.'

Grace and Martha nodded readily enough, for this doctrine needs no long expounding to any woman who has lived her way into her material possessions, and distilled atmosphere from them for the comfort of her household. She knows what she has done, and knows, though she says little about it, that this business of turning lifeless into living things is one of her important natural functions.

'When I studied physics,' Honoria went on, 'I learned that science had been compelled to posit ether, an all-pervading, absolutely elastic, wave-bearing substance, to explain the commonest facts of our physical experience. Later yet, I learned that the pa.s.sage of thought-waves through ether had found defenders among men of the exact sciences.

Naturally I said to myself, "Ah, the scientists are growing 'warm.'

Next, they will be demonstrating some of the things women have always known. They will show how we send out vibrations that get caught and entangled in our intimate belongings, never to be wholly freed again.

The thing will be worked out and demonstrated like a problem in geometry. Doubtless they will be measuring everybody's wave-lengths and teaching children in the Eighth Grade easy ways of charging their belongings with their personality so unmistakably that stealing will have to become a lost art." Well! They haven't done it yet. In fact, they don't seem so near doing it as they once did. The mechanism of the process by which I take a chair fresh from Grand Rapids and in the course of years make it _my_ chair and no other woman's, is a secret still, but I don't have to argue with anybody who ever had a favorite chair that the thing is as I have stated it. Neither do I have to argue that I could not so appropriate and make my own the output of an entire factory. It must be equally obvious that the dignified, proper environment for me and my family contains what we can thus make our own, and not much more.'

'Of course there are people,' said Martha reflectively, 'the routine of whose living demands large and formal apartments, impossible to do anything with from your point of view.'

'a.s.suredly there are such people,' Honoria admitted, 'just as there are people whose entertaining must be in the line of banquets rather than little dinners. I am not predicating a world full of model cottages, even though I think it might prove the happiest world. Still, outside of official circles, the need of state drawing-rooms is certainly not general, and it is of the very gist of my argument--my argument isn't all developed yet, Martha, don't think it!--that for the sake of developing a finer and more individual quality in our possessions, we should cut off some superfluous ones. Please listen patiently while I carry the idea to its logical limit, even though that limit lies beyond the bounds of practicability.

'Economists profess that, in an ideal distribution of goods, each man would have as much as he could consume without waste. But this takes no account of the differing needs of men, developed through ages of the upward struggle, nor of their different capabilities of turning goods to account. If you are going to dabble at all in theories of ideal distribution, why not have one that is genuinely ideal--that is, non-material? _The true distribution would require that each man should possess what goods he could animate and vitalize._ Even so, how vastly would possessions differ in amount and quality!

'If life could be adjusted on this basis, it would automatically become simplified, charged with beauty and with character. We should slough off ugly and useless possessions, or, if we retained through affection things ugly in themselves, that very affection would impart to them a certain importance and distinction. We should then, at least, live in a world in which everything had significance. Think of the infinite satisfaction of that!'

'What do you mean when you say, "if life could be adjusted on this basis," Honoria?' Grace inquired. 'Are you implying some kind of a final socialistic state which calls for an omniscient Distributor of Goods who shall know how much each man can vitalize?'

'Really, Grace, I am not a fool, even when I am evolving a reformed society!' returned Honoria promptly. 'Most conceptions of an improved state demand G.o.d for their Chief Executive and an enormous force of government officials with the fine honor which, thus far, has only been developed in human nature by conditions entirely different from those the visionaries are forecasting. Unquestionably we have fallen into the habit of thinking that if we only pa.s.s a law, any wrong at which we aim is regulated. In fact, however, so long as that law only expresses the practice of a minority, its enforcement will be evaded. Legislation without character is as helpless as a motor without fuel,--and my little reform, like every other effective change, must proceed from within outward.

'So I believe that if I wish to live in a world where n.o.body has more food, clothes, houses, wealth, power, than he can make significant and vital use of, it is up to me to remake my own life on that basis first.

I am, if not the only woman whom I can reform, at least the most suitable subject for my experimentation. And I admit that I have too many possessions. Sometimes I am ridden to exhaustion by the care of my "things," modest as they are when compared to the goods of my neighbors. I know that if thousands of people did not feel as I do, the "simple life" slogan would never have acquired the popularity it had some years ago. We no longer hear much of the simple life, but we need it increasingly. Personally, I am persuaded that the method I am trying to set forth is workable.

'Why shouldn't a human being, seeking to get the most out of life, take lessons from the husbandman seeking to get the richest returns from the soil? It used to be thought that to cultivate many acres superficially was the way to feed the world and enrich the farmer. But the study of the soil as a science has taught us that we must resort, instead, to the intensive farming which gives greater returns from reduced acreage. What is true of the returns earth makes to our granaries, is true of the returns life makes to our spirits. We need a science of intensive living that we may get the larger crop from the smaller field. It will be worked out by women, and it must begin in their domain, which still is, in spite of the sociologists, the home.'

'The Norwegian maid who cared for my rooms at the hotel last winter had figured out something of the sort for herself,' said Grace. 'After I had put a few bits of things about, she said to me, "I like dis room. It looks like Norway. Dere iss more moneys in America, but in Norway t'ings iss more pretty. Even de kitchen iss good to see. Dere iss shelves an'

copper cooking-dishes all shiny, all so happy-looking. I like dem way best. It iss better not so much moneys to haf, but to be more happy wit'

one's t'ings!"'

'That is the doctrine in a nutsh.e.l.l! In its poorer, more restricted days, the world learned that secret of the art of living, and it still lingers in corners that our blatant, crashing "civilization" pa.s.ses by--so that a Norwegian peasant's daughter may know far more than an American girl "who has always had everything" about the priceless secret of being "happy wit' one's t'ings." It is the richest knowledge a woman can possess.'

'What is the real rock-bottom reason why people go on piling up money after they have enough?' Martha demanded.

'I imagine,' said Honoria, 'that excessive acc.u.mulation is a form of egotism. Now, if public opinion, the race-ideal, or what you please, once demanded that we vitalize all our possessions; if it were once admitted to be unspeakably gross to demand more property than we can animate, as gross as it now is to over-eat, then the stress upon possession would be transferred at once from "How much" to "How," and large possessions would really become what some of the undistinguished rich now fondly imagine them to be--a direct and sensitive register of the finer qualities.'

Martha suddenly and irresistibly chuckled.

'I have a story for you, Honoria,' she said. 'A lot of ranchers over there,' she vaguely gestured toward the southwest across the hills, 'have grown suddenly rich, raising sugar beets, and have bought motor-cars and other paraphernalia proper to their improved condition.

One of them was heard to say, "I b'lieve these college graduates that teach school 'round here really think they're as good as us rich folks."

That is the real att.i.tude of your "undistinguished rich" toward the gifts of culture and the finer qualities!'

'Honoria,' said Grace, 'haven't the sages always said, "Give me neither poverty nor riches"? Why should your propaganda succeed where Job and Socrates have failed? Job lived a long while ago! If the race were going to be converted to his view, the process ought to be more advanced. You will need very strong arguments for your doctrine of limitations.'

'Arguments are to be had for the picking up,' returned Honoria. 'What kind will you have? Reasonable limitation on the material side always brings some amazing flowering of mind or spirit like the blossoming of a root-bound plant. If you want a racial argument, consider the Irish--the poorest people in Europe and _therefore_ the richest in spirit. Poverty forced them to concentrate their attention upon their neighbors; there resulted an astonishing increase in sympathy, wit, and general humanness.--If you want an argument from Art, consider the Middle Ages.

Peering out of a narrow world, hemmed in by ignorance and squalor, the mediaeval artist caught sight of beauty and immediately loved it with such fervent, personal pa.s.sion that everything he made in its image was vital and wonderful. As his world broadened in the Renaissance, much of his art grew florid and meaningless, lacking that marvelous, intimate quality of the earlier, restricted day.--If you want an argument from literary material, there's the _Picciola_ of Saintine. You can make an imperishable literary masterpiece out of a convict's love for a tiny plant struggling up between two stones in a prison-yard, but you cannot make men listen to tales of great possessions. The interest in Monte Cristo centres upon the process of _acquirement_, and it is the same in any successful money-romance. Midas is only fit to point a moral, never to adorn a tale.--If you want an argument from philology, consider that the diminutives in every language show the lesser thing to be the dearer thing, always. Remember Marie Antoinette and the Little Trianon!

Consider the increasing specialization in science--science which always falls on its feet! I know a thousand arguments! The thing I am in need of is converts!'

'If you could get them,' said Martha, 'there might really be a Woman's Reformation, only it would begin at home instead of at the polls.'

'What other permanent thing is there in life but the hearthstone?

Nations rise and fall, laws and inst.i.tutions come and go--but that remains, the one fixed point in human society. I take it, therefore, it is the one point from which the lever can successfully be brought to bear on human society. If anything is to be moved or altered, the force must be applied there.'

'But human society _has_ changed, Honoria,' urged Grace. 'Look at all our new powers and possessions! Steam and electricity have remade the world, and we are not yet adjusted to the alteration. No generation ever lived under our conditions; thus we have no traditions for handling our new environment. No heritage of ancestral wisdom tells us what of the hundreds of new opportunities to accept, what to reject. Save in so far as we are thinking beings--and that is not very far--we are as much at the mercy of our desires as babies in a toy-shop, grabbing now this and now that, heaping up a lapful of futilities and calling it a life.'

'Yes. But why should we make steam and electricity serve our greed only?

Why use them chiefly to darken the world and make life a horror? Dare you affirm that we women and our demands are not at the very centre of the tragic tangle of modern living? Isn't all this horrible speeding-up of business largely an outgrowth of our exactions? What do men do business for, anyhow, except to get us what we want! Homes are to other material possessions what souls are to the bodies--the centre from which the life moves outward. If there is no greed in the home, is there not bound to be less greed in the offices?'

'I'm not so sure, Honoria,' Grace returned. 'No amount of intensiveness in the home would eliminate man's love of power for its own sake.'

'Perhaps. Yet isn't the l.u.s.t for power a secondary development? We begin by being greedy because we want things; we keep on after we have more things than we know what to do with, because greed has created the power-l.u.s.t. It is the aftermath from that ugly root. If the pressure the home puts on the man for money were suddenly slackened all along the line, above the point of poverty, might not the matter of unseemly acc.u.mulations correct itself? If we women of the more favored cla.s.ses avowedly undertook to give quality to our belongings, instead of demanding belongings which we hope will confer quality upon us, there would surely be both a lessening in the stress of life and an improvement in its texture. I can think of nothing else but the Golden Rule that would help to solve so many menacing problems, such as the high cost of living, the commercialization of life, and the divorce problem. Oh, it would be very far-reaching, that att.i.tude, if we could only achieve it!'

'Why wouldn't plain Christianity do all your reforming, and do it better?' demanded Martha abruptly.

'a.s.suredly it would--if Christianity were more generally a condition instead of a theory among us. I wouldn't undertake to say off-hand why the sanctions of common sense seem more precious to the present generation than the sanctions of religion, when in so many points they are identical, but I must conform my theorizings to the fact. Yet with all our neglect of religion the traditions of the spirit have not changed! They are the same from everlasting to everlasting. And one of the things the nineteenth century most wonderfully made clear was that the evolution of the spirit is the thing Nature has been seeking for hundreds of millions of years. I don't suppose that age-long process with the tremendous impetus of all creation behind it is really going to be upset by the turmoil of one materialistic generation. But I do believe that if we go with the current of materialism, we and all our works shall be tossed aside as refuse, thrown into Nature's garbage-can.

I tell you, I can't bear the disgrace of it.'

'Honoria, you almost persuade me to be intensive,' said Grace, 'but I am not reconciled to the doctrine at one point--the question of beauty. I admit that one cannot vitalize a lot of senseless luxury. I admit, too, that comfort and a certain amount of beauty can always be successfully domesticated and charged with personality, as you phrase it, and that the result is completely satisfying. But is one never to indulge one's self in _all the beauty money will buy_, never to have everything of an absolute perfection? You are against great houses, but there is Mountly House, at home. It is big, but so beautiful that you are at home in it all over. What of it, and others like it?'

'Big and beautiful it is, but it is on my side of the argument, none the less. If you remember, the architect was also the decorator. It is the triumph of his imagination. He designed it as a background for a woman of opulent beauty and domestic tastes. He ransacked Europe for the furnishings, tapestries, all sorts of exquisite, ancient things. He was a great artist and he created a work of art. The family fit into the picture more or less awkwardly. It is his house, not theirs at all. And I truly believe that the ultimate purpose of our houses excludes our going up and down another's stairs.

'Yet I believe in all the beauty one can vitalize. It is essentially wholesome. It does not lend itself to morbid demands. The collector's pa.s.sion looks like greed, and doubtless for a time it is greed. But, sooner or later, Too-Much sickens them. Their adorable possessions teach them there is profanation in having more wonderful things than they can enter into personal relation with. Therefore the inevitable end of all overgrown collections is the museum or the auction-room. I have seen it too often not to know it is true!--If you want a perfect ill.u.s.tration of this in literature read Mrs. Wharton's _The Daunt Diana_. It cuts down like a knife to the essential fact that our relations with beauty must be limited enough to have the personal quality. And--don't you see?--this automatic destruction of greed that beauty finally teaches to the collector, is the same automatic destruction of it that I dare think intensive living in our homes might bring to all greed. It is a proof of the theory on another plane.'