The Potiphar Papers Part 4

Now, Carrie, dear, isn't that nice?

Well, I don't know how it is--but things are so queer. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, in my room, which I have had tapestried with fluted rose silk, and lie thinking, under the lace curtains; although I may have been at one of Mrs. Gnu's splendid parties the night before, and am going to Mrs. Silke's to dinner, and to the opera and Mrs. Settum Downe's in the evening, and have nothing to do all the day but go to Stewart's, or Martelle's or Lefevre's, and shop, and pay morning calls;--do you know, as I say, that sometimes I hear an old familiar tune played upon a hand-organ far away in some street, and it seems to me in that half-drowsy state under the laces, that I hear the girls and boys singing it in the fields where we used to play. It is a kind of dream, I suppose, but often, as I listen, I am sure that I hear Henry's voice again that used to ring so gayly among the old trees, and I walk with him in the sunlight to the bank by the river, and he throws in the flower--as he really did--and says, with a laugh, "If it goes this side of the stump I am saved; if the other, I am lost;" and then he looks at me as if I had anything to do with it, and the flower drifts slowly off and off, and goes the other side of the old stump, and we walk homeward silently, until Henry laughs out, and says, "Thank heaven, my fate is not a flower;" and I swear to love him for ever and ever, and marry him, and live in a dingy little old room in some of the dark and dirty streets in the city.

Then I doze again: but presently the music steals into my sleep, and I see him as I saw him last standing in his pulpit, so calm and n.o.ble, and drawing the strong men as well as the weak women by his earnest persuasion; and after service he smiles upon me kindly, and says, "This is my wife, and the wife, who looks like the Madonna in that picture of Andrea Del Sarto's, which you liked so at the gallery, leads us to a little house buried in roses, looking upon a broad and lovely landscape," and Henry whispers to me as a beautiful boy bounds into the room, "Mrs. Potiphar, I am very happy."

I doze again until Adele comes in and opens the shutters. I do not hear the music any more; but those days I do somehow seem to hear it all the time. Of course, Mr. P. is gone long before I wake, so he knows nothing about all this. I generally come in at night after he is asleep, and he is up and has his breakfast, and goes down town before I wake in the morning. He comes home to dinner, but he is apt to be silent; and after dinner he takes his nap in the parlor over his newspaper, while I go up and let Adele dress my hair for the evening. Sometimes Mr. P. groans into a clean shirt and goes with me to the ball; but not often. When I come home, as I said, he is asleep, so I don't see a great deal of him, except in the summer, when I am at Saratoga or Newport; and then, not so much, after all, for he usually only pa.s.ses Sunday, and I must be a good Christian, you know, and go to church. On the whole, we have not a very intimate acquaintance; but I have a great respect for him. He told me the other day that he should make at least thirty thousand dollars this year.

My darling Carrie--I am very sorry I can't write you a longer letter. I want to consult you about wearing gold powder like the new Empress. It would kill Mrs. Croesus if you and I should be the first to come out in it; and don't you think the effect would be fine, when we were dancing, to shower the gold mist around us! How it would sparkle upon the gentlemen's black coats! ("Yes," says Mr. P., "and how finely Gauche Boosey, and Timon Croesus, and young Downe will look in silk tights and small clothes!") They say it's genuine gold ground up. I have already sent for a white velvet and lace--the Empress's bridal dress, you know. That foolish old P. asked me if I had sent for the Emperor and the Bank of France too.

"Men ask such absurd questions," said I. -- "Mrs. Potiphar, I never asked but one utterly absurd question in my life," said he, and marched out of the house.

_Au revoir, chere Caroline_. I have a thousand things to say, but I know you must be tired to death.

Fondly yours,

POLLY POTIPHAR.

P. S.--Our little Fred. is quite down with the scarlet fever. Potiphar says I mustn't expose myself, so I don't go into the room; but Mrs. Jollup, the nurse, tells me through the keyhole how he is.

Mr. P. sleeps in the room next the nursery, so as not to carry the infection to me. He looks very solemn as he walks down town. I hope it won't spoil Fred's complexion. I should be so sorry to have him a little fright! Poor little thing!

P. S. 2d.--Isn't it funny about the music?

III. -- A MEDITATION BY PAUL POTIPHAR, ESQ.

Well, my new house is finished--and so am I. I hope Mrs. Potiphar is satisfied. Everybody agrees that it is "palatial." The daily papers have had columns of description, and I am, evidently, according to their authority, "munificent," "tasteful," "enterprising," and "patriotic."

Amen! but what business have I with palatial residences? What more can I possibly want, than a s.p.a.cious, comfortable house? Do _I_ want buhl _escritoires_? Do I want or _molu_ things? Do I know anything about pictures and statues? In the name of heaven do I want rose-pink bed-curtains to give my grizzly old phiz a delicate "uroral hue," as Cream Cheese says of Mrs. P.'s complexion? Because I have made fifty thousand this last year in Timbuctoo bonds, must I convert it all into a house, so large that it will not hold me comfortably,--so splendid that I might as well live in a porcelain vase, for the trouble of taking care of it,--so prodigiously "palatial" that I have to skulk into my private room, put on my slippers, close the door, shut myself up with myself, and wonder why I married Mrs. Potiphar?

This house is her doing. Before I married her, I would have worn yellow silk breeches on 'Change if she had commanded me--for love. Now I would build her two houses twice as large as this, if she required it--for peace. It's all over. When I came home from China I was the desirable Mr. Potiphar, and every evening was a field-day for me, in which I reviewed all the matrimonial forces. It is astonishing, now I come to think of it, how skilfully Brigadier-General Mrs. Pett.i.toes deployed those daughters of hers; how vigorously Mrs. Tabby led on her forlorn hope; and how unweariedly, Murat-like, Mrs. De Famille charged at the head of her cavalry. They deserve to be made Marshals of France, all of them. And I am sure, that if women ought ever to receive honorary testimonials, it is for having "married a daughter well."

That's a pretty phrase! The mammas marry, the misses are married.

And yet, I don't see why I say so. I fear I am getting sour. For certainly, Polly's mother didn't marry Polly to me. I fell in love with her, the rest followed. Old Gnu says that it's true Polly's mother didn't marry her, but she did marry herself, to me.

{Ill.u.s.tration}

"Do you really think, Paul Potiphar," said he, a few months ago, when I was troubled about Polly's getting a livery, "that your wife was in love with you, a dry old chip from China? Don't you hear her say whenever any of her friends are engaged, that they 'have done very well!' and made a 'capital match!' and have you any doubt of her meaning? Don't you know that this is the only country in which the word 'money' must never be named in the young female ear; and in whose best society--not universally nor without exception, of course not; Paul, don't be a fool--money makes marriages? When you were engaged, 'the world' said that it was a 'capital thing' for Polly. Did that mean that you were a good, generous, intelligent, friendly, and patient man, who would be the companion for life she ought to have?

You know, as well as I do, and as all the people who said it know, that it meant you were worth a few hundred thousands, that you could build a splendid house, keep horses and chariots, and live in style. You and I are sensible men, Paul, and we take the world as we find it; and know that if a man wants a good dinner he must pay for it. We don't quarrel with this state of things. How can it be helped?

But we need not virtuously pretend it's something else. When my wife, being then a gay girl, first smiled at me, and looked at me, and smelt at the flowers I sent her in an unutterable manner, and proved to me that she didn't love me by the efforts she made to show that she did, why, I was foolishly smitten with her, and married her. I knew that she did not marry me, but sundry shares in the Patagonia and Nova Zembla Consolidation, and a few hundred house lots upon the island. What then? I wanted her, she was willing to take me,--being sensible enough to know that the stock and the lots had an inc.u.mbrance. _Voila tout,_ as young Boosey says. Your wife wants you to build a house. You'd better build it. It's the easiest way. Make up your mind to Mrs. Potiphar, my dear Paul, and thank heaven you've no daughters to be married off by that estimable woman."

Why does a man build a house? To live in, I suppose--to have a home. But is a fine house a home? I mean, is a "palatial residence,"

with Mrs. Potiphar at the head of it, the "home" of which we all dream more or less, and for which we ardently long as we grow older? A house, I take it, is a retreat to which a man hurries from business, and in which he is compensated by the tenderness and thoughtful regard of a woman, and the play of his children, for the rough rubs with men. I know it is a silly view of the case, but I'm getting old and can't help it. Mrs. Potiphar is perfectly right when she says:

"You men are intolerable. After attending to your own affairs all day, and being free from the fuss of housekeeping, you expect to come home and shuffle into your slippers, and snooze over the evening paper--if it were possible to snooze over the exciting and respectable evening journal you take--while we are to sew, and talk with you if you are talkative, and darn the stockings, and make tea. You come home tired, and likely enough, surly, and gloom about like a thundercloud if dinner isn't ready for you the instant you are ready for it, and then sit mum and eat it; and snap at the children, and show yourselves the selfish, ugly things you are. Am _I_ to have no fun, never go to the opera, never go to a ball, never have a party at home? Men are tyrants, Mr. Potiphar. They are ogres who entice us poor girls into their castles, and then eat up our happiness and scold us while they eat."

Well, I suppose it is so. I suppose I am an ogre and enticed Polly into my castle. But she didn't find it large enough, and teased me to build another. I suppose she does sit with me in the evening, and sew, and make tea, and wait upon me. I suppose she does, but I've not a clear idea of it. I know it's unkind of me, when I have been hard at work all day, trying to make and secure the money that gives her and her family everything they want, and which wearies me body and soul, to expect her to let me stay at home, and be quiet. I know I ought to dress and go into Gnu's house, and smirk at his wife, and stand up in a black suit before him attired in the same way, and talk about the same stocks that we discussed down town in the morning in colored trowsers. That's a social duty, I suppose. And I ought to see various slight young gentlemen whirl my wife around the room, and hear them tell her when they stop, that it's very warm. That's another social duty, I suppose. And I must smile when the same young gentlemen put their elbows into my stomach, and hop on my feet in order to extend the circle of the dance. I'm sure Mrs. P. is right. She does very right to ask, "Have we no social duties, I should like to know?"

And when we have performed these social duties in Gnu's house, how mean it is, how "it looks," not to build a larger house for him and Mrs. Gnu to come and perform their social duties in. I give it up.

There's no doubt of it.

One day Polly said to me:

"Mr. Potiphar, we're getting down town."

"What do you mean, my dear?"

"Why, everybody is building above us, and there are actually shops in the next street. Singe, the pastry-cook, has hired Mrs. Croesus's old house."

"I know it. Old Croesus told me so some time ago; and he said how sorry he was to go. 'Why, Potiphar,' said he, 'I really hoped when I built there, that I should stay, and not go out of the house, finally, until I went into no other. I have lived there long enough to love the place, and have some a.s.sociations with it; and my family have grown up in it, and love the old house too. It was our _home_. When any of us said 'home' we meant not the family only, but the house in which the family lived, where the children were all born, and where two have died, and my old mother, too. I'm in a new house now, and have lost my reckoning entirely. I don't know the house; I've no a.s.sociations with it. The house is new, the furniture is new, and my feelings are new. It's a farce for me to begin again, in this way. But my wife says it's all right, that everybody does it, and wants to know how it can be helped; and, as I don't want to argue the matter, I look amen.'

That's the way Mr. Croesus submits to his new house, Mrs. Potiphar."

She doesn't understand it. Poor child! how should she? She, and Mrs. Croesus, and Mrs. Gnu, and even Mrs. Settum Downe, are all as nomadic as Bedouin Arabs. The Rev. Cream Cheese says, that he sees in this constant migration from one house to another, a striking resemblance to the "tents of a night," spoken of in Scripture. He imparts this religious consolation to me when I grumble. He says, that it prevents a too-closely clinging affection to temporary abodes. One day, at dinner, that audacious wag, Boosey, asked him if the "many manthuns" mentioned in the Bible, were not as true of mortal as of immortal life. Mrs. Potiphar grew purple, and Mr. Cheese looked at Boosey in the most serious manner over the top of his champagne-gla.s.s.

I am glad to say that Polly has properly rebuked Gauche Boosey for his irreligion, by not asking him to her Sat.u.r.day evening _matinees dansantes_.

There was no escape from the house, however. It must be built. It was not only Mrs. Potiphar that persisted, but the spirit of the age and of the country. One can't live among shops. When Pearl street comes to Park Place, Park Place must run for its life up to Thirtieth street. I know it can't be helped, but I protested, and I will protest. If I've got to go, I'll have my grumble. My wife says:

"I'm ashamed of you, Potiphar. Do you pretend to be an American, and not give way willingly to the march of improvement? You had better talk with Mr. Cream Cheese upon the 'genius of the country.' You are really unpatriotic, you show nothing of the enterprising spirit of your time." "Yes," I answer. "That's pretty from you; you are patriotic aren't you, with your liveries and illimitable expenses, and your low bows to money, and your immense intimacy with all lords and ladies that honor the city by visiting it. You are prodigiously patriotic with your inane imitations of a splendor impossible to you in the nature of things. You are the ideal American woman, aren't you, Mrs. Potiphar?"

Then I run, for I'm afraid of myself, as much as of her. I am sick of this universal plea of patriotism. It is used to excuse all the follies that outrage it. I am not patriotic if I do not do this and that, which, if done, is a ludicrous caricature of something foreign. I am not up to the time if I persist in having my own comfort in my own way. I try to resist the irresistible march of improvement, if I decline to build a great house, which, when it is built, is a puny copy of a bad model. I am very unpatriotic if I am not trying to outspend foreign n.o.blemen, and if I don't affect, without education, or taste, or habit, what is only beautiful, when it is the result of the three.

However, this is merely my grumble. I knew, the first morning Mrs. Potiphar spoke of a new house, that I must build it. What she said was perfectly true; we were getting down town, there was no doubt of the growing inconvenience of our situation. It was becoming a dusty noisy region. The congregation of the Rev. Far Niente had sold their church and moved up town. Now doesn't it really seem as if we were a cross between the Arabs who dwell in tents and those who live in cities, for we are migratory in the city? A directory is a more imperative annual necessity here than in any other civilized region. My wife says it is a constant pleasure to her to go round and see the new houses and the new furniture of her new friends, every year. I saw that I must submit. But I determined to make little occasional stands against it. So one day I said:

"Polly, do you know that the wives of all the n.o.blemen who will be your very dear and intimate friends and models when you go abroad, always live in the same houses in London, and Paris, and Rome, and Vienna? Do you know that Northumberland House is so called because it is the hereditary town mansion of the Duke, and that the son and daughter-in-law of Lord Londonderry will live after him in the house where his father and mother lived before him? Did that ever occur to you, my dear?"

"Mr. Potiphar," she replied, "do you mean to go by the example of foreign n.o.blemen? I thought you always laughed at me for what you call 'aping.'"

"So I do, and so I will continue to do, Mrs. Potiphar; only I thought that, perhaps, you would like to know the fact, because it might make you more lenient to me when I regretted leaving our old house here. It has an aristocratic precedent."

Poor, dear little Mrs. P.! It didn't take as I meant it should, and I said no more. Yet it does seem to me a pity that we lose all the interest and advantage of a homestead. The house and its furniture become endeared by long residence, and by their mute share in all the chances of our life. The chair in which some dear old friend so often sat--father and mother, perhaps--and in which they shall sit no more; the old-fashioned table with the cuts and scratches that generations of children have made upon it; the old book-cases; the heavy side-board; the gla.s.s, from which such b.u.mpers sparkled for those who are hopelessly scattered now, or for ever gone; the doors they opened; the walls that echoed their long-hushed laughter,--are we wise when we part with them all, or, when compelled to do so, to leave them eagerly?

I remember my brother James used to say: "What is our envy for our country friends, but that their homes are permanent and characteristic? Their children's children may play in the same garden. Each annual festival may summon them to the old hearth. In the meeting-house they sit in the wooden pews where long ago they sat and dreamed of Jerusalem, and now as they sit there, that long ago is fairer than the holy city. Through the open window they see the gra.s.s waving softly in the summer air, over old graves dearer to them than many new houses. By a thousand tangible and visible a.s.sociations they are still, with a peculiar sense of actuality, near to all they love."

Polly would call it a sentimental whim--if she could take Mrs. Croesus's advice before she spoke of it--but what then? When I was fifteen, I fell desperately in love with Lucy Lamb. "Pooh, pooh,"

said my father, "you are romantic, it's til a whim of yours."

And he succeeded in breaking it up. I went to China, and Lucy married old Firkin, and lived in a splendid house, and now lies in a splendid tomb of Carrara marble, exquisitely sculptured.

When I was forty, I came home from China, and the old gentleman said, "I want you to marry Arabella Bobbs, the heiress. It will be a good match."

I said to him,

"Pooh, pooh, my dear father, you are mercenary; it's all a whim of yours."

"My dear son, I know it," said he, "the whole thing a whim. You can live on a hundred dollars a year, if you choose. But you have the whim of a good dinner, of a statue, of a book. Why not? Only be careful in following your whims, that they really come to something. Have as many whims as you please, but don't follow them all."