OPEN LETTERS
OPEN LETTERS
... “Magic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery-lands forlorn.”—KEATS, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
... “Magic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery-lands forlorn.”—KEATS, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
... “Magic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery-lands forlorn.”
... “Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery-lands forlorn.”
—KEATS, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
—KEATS, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
From a Seeker after the Ideal House, Recommending the Latest Thing in Windows
The Seeker
Margaret Dear:
Enjoy our new home? Indeed I do, as much as you enjoy “Parva sed Apta.” Yet I confess to a little restlessness at times, such as Browning’sJuanin “Fifine” felt over his “honest civic house.” I want to cut away, and to wander foot-loose and free. And if it weren’t for the magic casement—don’t you want to hear about the magic casement?
The architect’s assistant proposed it, a young fellow with irregular eyebrows and a nice smile. You would like him. We had been talking windows, and he asked me all of a sudden:
“Since you like the type, sha’n’t I put a magic casement in your study? We sometimes find it a very acceptable little addition in suburban building.”
I gasped, and seized on a familiar phrase. “Will it add materially to the cost?” I inquired.
“No, not materially,” he answered. “And it would harmonize capitally with the study.”
For many a day after we moved I forgot all about the conversation and the casement. You know what it is to get settled. The dining-room flue wouldn’t draw, and our invaluable but expansive Maggie grumbled because she had to turn sidewise to get up the narrow back stairs, and to arrange family and furniture absorbed my energies. But a day came finally when I shut myself in the study for a bout of work. A set of examination blue-books had come in from my college classes, and my mood was grim. I learned that the “Shepheard’s Calendar” consisted of twelve pastoral decalogues, and that Ariel’s song was intended to “guide Hamlet to his shipwrecked father,” or, as another student suggested, “to lead Minerva on.” Most of the papers were equally stupid and less funny. My muscles were aching, for the furniture had been heavy. As for my heart, here I was starting life afresh and receiving felicitations in a pretty new house, but life seemed over. Well, dear, never mind that; but you will understand. You know what narrow house guarded by two tall cypresses is always before my eyes.
Suddenly I noticed the casement. I never had tried the patent spring.
It opened at a touch. I had expected to look out on Mr. Baker’s hen-yard; but I didn’t. There was instead a wide stretch of tumbling seas—splendid, perilous seas, gray and fierce, with glints of silver at the horizon, and great waves racing inland and breaking in sheets of foam below! As I leaned out and drew deep breaths of salty, foamy air, I saw a dim sweep of coast through the spray.
The moving waters at their priest-like taskOf pure ablution
The moving waters at their priest-like taskOf pure ablution
The moving waters at their priest-like taskOf pure ablution
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution
were plain enough; but were those “human shores” or the forlorn coasts of faery-land?
“Please, Miss, the butcher,” called Maggie’s voice behind me, and I shut the window and ran down-stairs as though I had never heard of tired muscles or heart. When I got back to blue-books, it was amazing how brilliantly the students were writing.
When I next opened the casement the sea was moony-calm, and a nightingale was singing outside in balm-laden air. Mr.Baker’s hen-yard, viewed from the next window, never varied, but let me tell you that out of a magic casement one does not see the same sight twice. I did not let myself open it often. When I was leaning from it I forgot the passage of time, and you can’t imagine how “jobs” crowded last winter. But if, while I worked, I left a crack ajar, and this grew to be rather a habit, the air that came in kept me fresh and fit, so that I have never carried my work so easily.
One day—inside, I remember, it was bleak winter twilight—there was an island rising from the sea. The tremulous waters were tinged with the first promise of dawn. A planet on the horizon glowed red. Though the heavens elsewhere were clear, the summit of the mountain isle was veiled in drifting mists, like tears; yet behind the mists the sun seemed to be shining on level reaches of springlike verdure, which caught the longing of the heart, yet stilled all longing with an exceeding peace. As the dawn brightened, I could discern two figures on the low sands at the base of the hill, and presently, speeding across the waters faster than flight of bird, appeared a spark, glowing as though the planet had left the sky. Faint shining grew at sides and center, till I could see the vesture and the two wings, serving as sails, of an angel whose face was as the morning star. If you had only been there! Of the blessed folk who filled the ship, some looked affrighted, some exceeding glad; and though I could not clearly hear the chant they sang, one voice sweet above the rest, I knew it to be a song of deliverance. Do you remember our Dante readings under the pines? All that day there was absolution in the air.
But there was none on that other day when sky and sea blazed blue fire, thunder-caps lay pearled in the west, and a high-pooped ship dropped anchor beneath my window. Sea-weary serving-folk in medieval garb, went ashore by ones and twos, while a knight in green array and a most fair lady lay talking on the deck. Now and again he touched a harp, with skill, I thought, seeking languidly to please her; but she looked on him in distaste. Then a page brought them liquid from a crystal flask of curious fashioning, and the two drank thirstily, for it was hot. Then they gazed startled on each other with changed eyes. The thunder-caps rolled up, and I heard them speak in troubled, riddling words of “aimer” and “la mer,” and I shut the window lest I prove indiscreet. Besides, the air was stifling.
It was not always sea that greeted me. You can imagine the pleasure of opening in harsh March weather on the cool depths of a summer forest, where the angel face of a sleeping girl in white nun’s habit made a sunshine in the shade! My worries rolled away as I watched joyous wood-folk—fauns, satyrs, and fair hamadryads—caper and dance through the forest, and saw them, awestruck at her sweet holiness, bend their knees before her, grinning gently, and crown her with garlands. In that same wood, when the moon was risen, I saw star-crossed lovers misled by faery pranks, and the queen of faery herself beguiled. But the next evening my window gave on a blasted, treeless heath, where weird women lay in wait for two doomed soldiers.
One of the best things I got from the window was a glimpse of Utopia. Several of us had spent the day trying to organize relief in a mill town where a three-cornered strike was going on, and the regular unions, the employers, and the I. W. W. were involved in a hideous wrangle-tangle. It was worse than any of our old settlement experiences. I came back sick at heart and touched the casement spring, afraid that I couldn’t see out for the smart in my eyes. But there lay Utopia before me. Yes, dear, Utopia.
Did it? I dared not be sure. Past the rear gardens of the pleasant houses a clear river ran sweetly, just as Sir Thomas More had said, and through the wide street passed comely, alert citizens, full of grave, friendly cheer. But might there not be slums and strikers round the corner? The power of faith was blurred in me that night.
Just then a man who carried a kit of carpenters’ tools, whistling as he walked, looked up and waved his cap. It was young Stanton of our economics department. He was always tinkering at his house, but it looked odd to see him carry a kit on the public way.
“Good morning. Isn’t Utopia the greatest ever?” he cried. “My lectures are over; I’m off to help with those new houses around the bend.”
“Is this real Utopia?” I asked eagerly.
He nodded.
“I perceive, however, that the inhabitants have not changed their nature,” he laughed. “You have your old skeptical mind.”
“If it’s Utopia,” I retorted, “why in the name of common sense are you still lecturing on economics?”
“The wonder is how I lectured on it in the old days,” he replied. “I was like a professor of harmony, with nothing to expound but discords. Now we have a symphonic whole to study and even fuller harmonies to evolve. The department is the largest in the college.”
“Have pity on my skeptical mind,” Ipleaded. “Give me a sign that Utopia is here.”
He motioned to the passing people.
“Why, look!” he said.
And I was satisfied: for never could there have been that serenity of eye had one factory been left exploiting the labor of children, one sweat-shop, or one malcontent. Yet even while I watched, a woman, dressed in black, passed, sobbing bitterly. Tears? In Utopia?
“We are still on the earth, you know,” said Stanton, gently; “we are not exempt from tears.”
NOTlong after I met the architect’s assistant. I had been worrying somewhat. I was troubled about the price of the magic casement, even though he had said that it would not add materially to the cost of the house. He caught the same train as I to town by a flying jump at the last minute. He was scurrying by, but I pulled his coat and made him sit down.
“I hope the house is satisfactory?” he asked.
“Very, on the whole,” I replied. “The door-panels warp, but no house is perfect. I want to ask you about the price of the magic casement. It was not included in the specifications, and I am anxious to settle for it.”
He wriggled, looking annoyed.
“If you like it, you ought not to haggle about the price,” he said.
“I shall not haggle,” I replied with spirit; “but if the window is as expensive as I fear, perhaps you wouldn’t mind being paid on the instalment plan.”
“If I had not supposed you perfectly solvent, I should never have put that casement in,” he returned.
“You had strict instructions to avoid all luxuries,” I said with indignation, for I was frightened. “You knew that I was living on a salary and that I had to mortgage in order to build. However, I am not complaining. I am willing to pay heavily for the casement, for it certainly is a shipshape affair.”
“That’s better talk,” said the assistant. “Now, as a matter of fact, you’ve paid already. The contract for magic casements is to the effect that the article is paid for by use. It runs, ‘For so much value received in vision, equivalent price in use, thus and so.’ I knew you could pay cash for that window.”
To pay by using! Now, Margaret, did you ever hear of anything like that! “How uncommon,” I protested. “How absurd!”
“Nobody would suppose that you had a look into Utopia lately,” he sighed.
“We’re not in Utopia,” I argued.
“Are you so sure?” he asked; and looking at him, I found I wasn’t.
“People are dull,” he complained ruefully. “Of course they are in Utopia the minute they believe themselves there.” As he talked, I was noticing that ruffled hair of his and those queer, triangular, merry eyebrows.
“Does your firm approve your way of doing business?” I asked.
“They have nothing to do with magic casements. Those are a little specialty of my own which I put in now and then for a suitable client like yourself.”
“Who are you, anyway?” I cried; and with a flourish he handed me a card engraved in the latest style. Mr. Robert Goodfellow was the name it bore. The wind from the train window blew the hair from his ears.
“Robin!” I shouted.
“At your service,” he laughed. “You see, I adapt myself to the times. There’s no use playing helter-skelter pranks on systematic Americans. They get their cream by a separator, so they never put out bowls of milk for me; the chores are done by machinery; and if I prowl about the kitchen by night, I get nervous prostration for fear some one will turn on the electricity. So I went in for scientific efficiency, and studied for the professions. I have lots of fun. But you people who live in steam heat are so afraid of drafts that hardly anybody will let me put in a magic casement. I was really grateful to you for giving me the chance. Hello! Here we are at Back Bay! Good-by!”
There’s my story. Now, may I not send Robin to give you a magic casement in “Parva sed Apta”? I am sure he would not mind the journey. But I suspect you may have one already; Robin and you were always on good terms.
Lovingly yours,Vida D. Scudder.
Butterfly