Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
should represent to him the things he would willingliest do with it. I
am not one thing and my expenditure another. My expenditure is me. That
our expenditure and our character are twain, is the vice of society.
We ask the price of many things in shops and stalls, but some things
each man buys without hesitation, if it were only letters at the
post-office, conveyance in carriages and boats, tools for his work,
books that are written to his condition, etc. Let him never buy
anything else than what he wants, never subscribe at others’ instance,
never give unwillingly. Thus, a scholar is a literary foundation.
All his expense is for Aristotle, Fabricius, Erasmus, and Petrarch.
Do not ask him to help with his savings young drapers or grocers to
stock their shops, or eager agents to lobby in legislatures, or join a
company to build a factory or a fishing-craft. These things are also
to be done, but not by such as he. How could such a book as Plato’s
Dialogues have come down, but for the sacred savings of scholars and
their fantastic appropriation of them?
Another man is a mechanical genius, an inventor of looms, a builder
of ships,--a ship-building foundation, and could achieve nothing
if he should dissipate himself on books or on horses. Another is a
farmer,--an agricultural foundation; another is a chemist,--and the
same rule holds for all. We must not make believe with our money, but
spend heartily, and buy _up_ and not _down_.
I am afraid that, so considered, our houses will not be found to have
unity, and to express the best thought. The household, the calling,
the friendships, of the citizen are not homogeneous. His house ought
to show us his honest opinion of what makes his well-being when he
rests among his kindred, and forgets all affectation, compliance,
and even exertion of will. He brings home whatever commodities and
ornaments have for years allured his pursuit, and his character must be
seen in them. But what idea predominates in our houses? Thrift first,
then convenience and pleasure. Take off all the roofs, from street to
street, and we shall seldom find the temple of any higher god than
Prudence. The progress of domestic living has been in cleanliness, in
ventilation, in health, in decorum, in countless means and arts of
comfort, in the concentration of all the utilities of every clime in
each house. They are arranged for low benefits. The houses of the rich
are confectioners’ shops, where we get sweetmeats and wine; the houses
of the poor are imitations of these to the extent of their ability.
With these ends housekeeping is not beautiful; it cheers and raises
neither the husband, the wife, nor the child; neither the host, nor
the guest; it oppresses women. A house kept to the end of prudence is
laborious without joy; a house kept to the end of display is impossible
to all but a few women, and their success is dearly bought.
If we look at this matter curiously, it becomes dangerous. We need
all the force of an idea to lift this load; for the wealth and
multiplication of conveniences embarrass us, especially in northern
climates. The shortest enumeration of our wants in this rugged climate
appalls us by the multitude of things not easy to be done. And if you
look at the multitude of particulars, one would say: Good housekeeping
is impossible; order is too precious a thing to dwell with men and
women. See, in families where there is both substance and taste, at
what expense any favorite punctuality is maintained. If the children,
for example, are considered, dressed, dieted, attended, kept in proper
company, schooled, and at home fostered by the parents,--then does the
hospitality of the house suffer; friends are less carefully bestowed,
the daily table less catered. If the hours of meals are punctual, the
apartments are slovenly. If the linens and hangings are clean and fine,
and the furniture good, the yard, the garden, the fences are neglected.
If all are well attended, then must the master and mistress be studious
of particulars at the cost of their own accomplishments and growth,--or
persons are treated as things.
The difficulties to be overcome must be freely admitted; they are
many and great. Nor are they to be disposed of by any criticism
or amendment of particulars taken one at a time, but only by the
arrangement of the household to a higher end than those to which our
dwellings are usually built and furnished. And is there any calamity
more grave, or that more invokes the best good-will to remove it,
than this?--to go from chamber to chamber, and see no beauty; to find
in the housemates no aim; to hear an endless chatter and blast; to be
compelled to criticise; to hear only to dissent and to be disgusted;
to find no invitation to what is good in us, and no receptacle for
what is wise;--this is a great price to pay for sweet bread and warm
lodging,--being defrauded of affinity, of repose, of genial culture,
and the inmost presence of beauty.
It is a sufficient accusation of our ways of living, and certainly
ought to open our ear to every good-minded reformer, that our idea of
domestic well-being now needs wealth to execute it. Give me the means,
says the wife, and your house shall not annoy your taste nor waste
your time. On hearing this, we understand how these Means have come
to be so omnipotent on earth. And indeed the love of wealth seems to
grow chiefly out of the root of the love of the Beautiful. The desire
of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat and wool
and household-stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit. We scorn
shifts; we desire the elegance of munificence; we desire at least to
put no stint or limit on our parents, relatives, guests, or dependents;
we desire to play the benefactor and the prince with our townsmen, with
the stranger at the gate, with the bard, or the beauty, with the man
or woman of worth, who alights at our door. How can we do this, if the
wants of each day imprison us in lucrative labors, and constrain us to
a continual vigilance lest we be betrayed into expense?
_Give us wealth, and the home shall exist._ But that is a very
imperfect and inglorious solution of the problem, and therefore no
solution. “_Give us wealth._” You ask too much. Few have wealth; but
all must have a home. Men are not born rich; and in getting wealth, the
man is generally sacrificed, and often is sacrificed without acquiring
wealth at last. Besides, that cannot be the right answer;--there are
objections to wealth. Wealth is a shift. The wise man angles with
himself only, and with no meaner bait. Our whole use of wealth needs
revision and reform. Generosity does not consist in giving money or
money’s worth. These so-called _goods_ are only the shadow of good. To
give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement
of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence,--a credit-system
in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of
liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to
man man. If he is sick, is unable, is mean-spirited and odious, it is
because there is so much of his nature which is unlawfully withholden
from him. He should be visited in this his prison with rebuke to the
evil demons, with manly encouragement, with no mean-spirited offer of
condolence because you have not money, or mean offer of money as the
utmost benefit, but by your heroism, your purity, and your faith.
You are to bring with you that spirit which is understanding, health
and self-help. To offer him money in lieu of these is to do him the
same wrong as when the bridegroom offers his betrothed virgin a sum
of money to release him from his engagements. The great depend on
their heart, not on their purse. Genius and virtue, like diamonds,
are best plain-set,--set in lead, set in poverty. The greatest man in
history was the poorest. How was it with the captains and sages of
Greece and Rome, with Socrates, with Epaminondas? Aristides was made
general receiver of Greece, to collect the tribute which each state
was to furnish against the barbarian. “Poor,” says Plutarch, “when he
set about it, poorer when he had finished it.” How was it with Æmilius
and Cato? What kind of house was kept by Paul and John,--by Milton and
Marvell,--by Samuel Johnson,--by Samuel Adams in Boston, and Jean Paul
Richter at Baireuth?
I think it plain that this voice of communities and ages, ‘Give us
wealth, and the good household shall exist,’ is vicious, and leaves
the whole difficulty untouched. It is better, certainly, in this form,
‘Give us your labor, and the household begins.’ I see not how serious
labor, the labor of all and every day, is to be avoided; and many
things betoken a revolution of opinion and practice in regard to manual
labor that may go far to aid our practical inquiry. Another age may
divide the manual labor of the world more equally on all the members
of society, and so make the labors of a few hours avail to the wants
and add to the vigor of the man. But the reform that applies itself to
the household must not be partial. It must correct the whole system of
our social living. It must come with plain living and high thinking; it
must break up caste, and put domestic service on another foundation.
It must come in connection with a true acceptance by each man of his
vocation,--not chosen by his parents or friends, but by his genius,
with earnestness and love.
Nor is this redress so hopeless as it seems. Certainly, if we begin by
reforming particulars of our present system, correcting a few evils
and letting the rest stand, we shall soon give up in despair. For our
social forms are very far from truth and equity. But the way to set the
axe at the root of the tree is, to raise our aim. Let us understand,
then, that a house should bear witness in all its economy that human
culture is the end to which it is built and garnished. It stands there
under the sun and moon to ends analogous, and not less noble than
theirs. It is not for festivity, it is not for sleep: but the pine and
the oak shall gladly descend from the mountains to uphold the roof of
men as faithful and necessary as themselves; to be the shelter always
open to good and true persons;--a hall which shines with sincerity,
brows ever tranquil, and a demeanor impossible to disconcert; whose
inmates know what they want; who do not ask your house how theirs
should be kept. They have aims: they cannot pause for trifles. The
diet of the house does not create its order, but knowledge, character,
action, absorb so much life and yield so much entertainment that the
refectory has ceased to be so curiously studied. With a change of aim
has followed a change of the whole scale by which men and things were
wont to be measured. Wealth and poverty are seen for what they are.
It begins to be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, and
poverty consists in feeling poor. The rich, as we reckon them, and
among them the very rich, in a true scale would be found very indigent
and ragged. The great make us feel, first of all, the indifference of
circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and
subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury; but the higher perceptions
find their objects everywhere: only the low habits need palaces and
banquets.
Let a man, then, say, My house is here in the county, for the culture
of the county;--an eating-house and sleeping-house for travellers it
shall be, but it shall be much more. I pray you, O excellent wife, not
to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or this
woman who has alighted at our gate, nor a bedchamber made ready at too
great a cost. These things, if they are curious in, they can get for
a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if he will, in your