HOMELY PLEASURE

I was thirty years of age before the character of my mind differed consciously from that of any other woman’s mind who is a devoted wife and mother, and, by marriage, deeply and sincerely pious. I was backward with my needle, but necessity compelled me to become skillful in this art. I made my own clothes and they proclaimed the fact. But I was more successful with dear little Faith’s things. She came up in the drawn-line period. We could not afford linen, but every ruffle and hem on her white muslin frocks was hemstitched. The gathers were rolled and whipped. The yokes were elaborately carved with the needle into blossoms and webs worked into the drawn threads.

Faith was an adorable mite of a woman from the very beginning of her life. She felt her feathers and could not resist the joy of switching when she pranced forth in one of these dresses. I wore the long skirts of that period and held them up behind after the manner of those former ladies. Likewise, Faith invariably reached back, caught a fold of her exceedingly abbreviated skirt between her thumb and forefinger, the other three fingers hoisted and curled as daintily as if she held an afternoon teacup. Then, bent slightly forward, head thrown proudly back, she frisked forth glorified in her own pride. It comforts me now to remember that I never chided her for these airs and that she had the joy of her things.

They really were beautiful little garments, if I do say it who should not boast of my handiwork. You may have observed that love can impart to a woman who has no sense of style about her own clothes, a rare genius for dressing her girl child.

I had no domestic accomplishments, but I had one hard-and-fast rule as a loving wife. This was to appeal to the eye. I have a vaguely guilty feeling that I was not an exquisitely neat housekeeper--which immediately became a belligerent feeling the moment some one referred to the fact--but I always kept one place attractive in the house that would strike Lundy’s eye as he entered the door.

I remember once after we had left Oxford and our fortunes were at the lowest ebb we lived in two rooms far up in the mountains. I had saved his dearer books, some draperies and precious ornaments from the sale of our household things in Oxford, but not enough to furnish a whole room cheerfully. So I massed our wealth in one corner of it.

There was an ugly little stove set far enough out to admit of a seat behind it on both sides of the corner. I had it put in, no more than a low wide shelf against the wall. But it was softly cushioned and I covered it with a dark blue chenille curtain. I covered some old sofa pillows with the red-and-yellow borders of these curtains and piled them like gaudy mushrooms on this seat. Some distance above I put in narrow shelves for the books. These were arranged without regard for their titles or inside substance, but to bring out as much color as possible. A red or green backed book was precious and must be placed where the light would fall on it.

There was a vase on the top shelf, two brass candlesticks, and wedged in the corner was a remarkable plaster-of-Paris little boy, quite naked, sitting cross-legged on a square pedestal, reading from a large book open upon his knees. I take it that he was an erudite child, because from the looks of his pouncy body he could not have been more than three years old. Lundy had given me this thing in an opulent moment years before. Remembering the classical Greek turn of his mind, I cannot believe it truly represented his taste, only what he could afford to buy. But he craved statuary of the graver sort to the last and treated himself now and then to the moulded bust of a great poet or a great philosopher. I keep them all, though the little boy has lost half his book, broken off long since in our travels.

Two very wide chenille curtains remained. These were split and hung at the windows on either side of this corner. I do not suppose a professional decorator would have admired the general effect, but compared with the remaining space and furnishing of that wretched room, it was palatial.

On very cold evenings when Lundy came in, the stove would be glowing like a grotesquely deformed red-hot coal. The two candles would be lighted and flickering bravely. The little boy high up in his corner between them would still be studiously reading his book. The books on the shelves below would be lined up brightly like old friends waiting as usual to spend the evening with us. And Lundy, merely giving me the peck of a kiss as he passed, would make straight for that long cushioned seat behind the stove. He stretched out there like a wealthy man and read or scribbled notes for a sermon. I do not think he ever really saw the other part of that wretched room.

This was the life I lived then and the mind I had then. Good, tender and very anxious for my dear ones, but not by any stretch of imagination an intellectual existence. I doubt if we can be very active in such a love affair as this and be intellectual at the same time. Love itself is the self-expression of such a woman, which is something we hear more about these days than in those days, when it seems to me women loved more giftedly than they do now.