Creole Sketches/Home
HOME[1]
We have all heard curious things said about the peculiarities of New Orleans; we have heard that it was a city where the sun rose in the west and water ran uphill; we have heard it spoken of as built upon a dunghill, and there is a Spanish proverbial expression about it still more uncomplimentary, often uttered by West India captains, which we dare not cite, even in the original. But yesterday we received a visit from an old resident of thirty years' standing, who in the course of a conversation summed up his opinion of New Orleans with the phrase: "New Orleans is a city where it is impossible to make a home for one's self without marrying. I have tried for thirty years to make a home here, and failed." And this observation set us to meditating whether this were, indeed owing to any peculiarity of the city, or to that vague longing for the quiet comforts of a household which all bachelors fell as life creeps by and each succeeding winter adds its frost to their beards. To the latter we trust; for we wish to think well of New Orleans.
There is one thing certain: a rich man who understands what the comforts of like are may make a home for himself anywhere without marrying. But rich men form exceptions to the general rule governing human lives, and we are constrained to consider the matter from the standpoint of those who are not rich, and who must expect for the greater part of their lives to work for others, however independent their capacity as artisans or talent as professional men may render them. The more sensitive their disposition and the more artistic their ideas, the more difficult, of course, must it be for them to obtain a home comfortable to their desires whether married or unmarried. If unmarried, they may expect to have a hard time of it in any city, if compelled to live there for a number of years. Luckily for themselves, many such men are of wandering dispositions. They soon tire of the a city; pack up and go elsewhere, after refusing good offers or neglecting first-class chances of becoming wholly independent by remaining. Being rolling stones, they gather no golden moss and change of scenery and climate, new place and new faces, new friends and strange experiences become for them almost a necessity of life. These are the world's Bohemians. They are a class apart. They enjoy life too, in a peculiar fashion which the generality of quiet people of regular habits do not understand. But there are many who, desiring to continue single, and obliged to live where tune has cast their lot or run the risk of losing all and beginning the struggle with the world over again, do forever pursue after the chimera of a home, and cannot understand, until they have tried all possible expedients and suffered all varieties, of disappointments, why they cannot make a home for themselves. To such as these, of course, the idea of a home is coupled with memories of the home of one's youth — cozy rooms, quiet, good fare, kindly attention, liberty to act and think, something to regret leaving, and to delight returning to of evenings; — a pleasant greeting, a dog barking with joy, a cozy chair by the fire, and a cat purring on the rug. And yet how one can obtain these things without a woman's ministry nobody has ever pretended to explain. A woman is the soul of home; and without her there is little more than furniture and brick walls there. She transforms and beautifies everything. You may pooh-pooh and hum-hum! — but you cannot explain how the comforts of a home — a home such as the term was explained to us in childhood — can possibly be obtained without the presence of woman. Without her one may be said to live at such and such a place; but to say that "he has his home there" is sheer humbug. He has no home!
Consequently many really marry just to obtain a home — which is foolish enough, although the natural consequence of social conditions. We remember one case in this city — a young Frenchman who was continually changing his quarters for years, never being able to find rest or comfort in any one house. At first he had quite a number of effects; but these he gradually disposed of, because they proved serious impediments to his nomadic life, until at last his baggage consisted of a newspaper bundle and a box of matches. His marriage proved unhappy enough in the end. He drew an unlucky number in this great life lottery of ours. But to return to the point under consideration: what home is there for men circumstanced like those we spoke of? Boarding-houses do not offer any. Boarding-houses are good and necessary institutions — but there is no home life about them. No man who longs for home comforts can live in any one boarding-house beyond a certain length of time, or in a hotel. There is no privacy, no seclusion; one is always being brought into contact with persons whom one does not care to know, and obliged to endure things which one does not like to stomach. Life in a private family is better; but, of course, the private-family boarder is always made to feel that he is not one of the family, and the manner of making him feel it is not the most agreeable thing in the world. Renting furnished rooms and boarding in restaurants, or "boarding around" as they call it, is vanity and vexation of spirit, and costs about as much as hotel fare without rendering one any more independent. Furnished rooms! — Furnished rooms! It is an awful, awful subject — too awful to dilate upon! Neither is there any stability about such a method of living. If one does find just what suits him, he can never tell how long it will last; but of one thing he must always be sure — that the better it seems the sooner something dreadful and unexpected is going to happen. And then?
Well, when you have become tired of boarding-houses and restaurants and furnished rooms, you may try renting or buying a house of your own and furnishing it. But a man must have something round the house, if it is only a dog, to keep him company. And he must also have somebody to take care of his rooms. If he gets a housekeeper, to avoid scandal he must get the oldest and ugliest woman he can find. And servants and others victimize the bachelors terribly. Moreover, everybody living near such a man will regard him as a lunatic or an original, and treat him accordingly. The hand of society is raised against the man who tries to live alone in a house of his own — unless he be very rich. Sometimes five or six bachelors get together, as we have known them to do in the French quarter, furnish a house, hire a housekeeper, and live a sort of club-life by themselves. But if they should fall out, the whole arrangement would prove more disagreeable than all the combined afflictions common to furnished rooms and boarding-houses.
There is no consolation. To get a home, one must get rich or marry, and even then he may not be lucky enough to get it.
- ↑ Item, January 8, 1881.