How I Built Myself a House
My wife Sophia, myself, and the beginning of a happy line, formerly
lived in the suburbs of
This notion was to build a house of our own a little further out of
town than where we had hitherto lived. The new residence was to be right and
proper in every respect. It was to be of some mysterious size and proportion,
which would make us both peculiarly happy ever afterwards—that had always been
a settled thing. It was neither to cost too much nor too little, but just
enough to fitly inaugurate the new happiness. Its situation was to be in a
healthy spot, on a stratum of dry gravel, about ninety feet above the springs.
There were to be trees to the north, and a pretty view to the south. It was
also to be easily accessible by rail.
Eighteen months ago, a third baby being our latest blessing, we began
to put the above-mentioned ideas into practice. As the house itself, rather
than its position, is what I wish particularly to speak of, I will not dwell
upon the innumerable difficulties that were to be overcome before a suitable
spot could be found. Maps marked out in little pink and green oblongs clinging
to a winding road, became as familiar to my eyes as my own hand. I learned,
too, all about the coloured plans of Land to be Let for Building Purposes,
which are exhibited at railway stations and in agents' windows—that sketches of
cabbages in rows, or artistically irregular, meant large trees that would
afford a cooling shade when they had been planted and had grown up—that patches
of blue showed fishponds and fountains; and that a wide straight road to the
edge of the map was the way to the station, a corner of which was occasionally
shown, as if it would come within a convenient distance, disguise the fact as
the owners might.
After a considerable time had been spent in these studies, I began to
see that some of our intentions in the matter of site must be given up. The
trees to the north went first. After a short struggle, they were followed by
the ninety feet above the springs. Sophia, with all wifely tenacity, stuck to
the pretty view long after I was beaten about the gravel subsoil. In the end,
we decided upon a place imagined to be rather convenient, and rather healthy,
but possessing no other advantage worth mentioning. I took it on a lease for
the established period, ninety-nine years.
We next thought about an architect. A friend of mine, who sometimes
sends a paper on art and science to the magazines, strongly recommended a Mr
Penny, a gentleman whom he considered to have architectural talent of every
kind, but if he was a trifle more skilful in any one branch of his profession
than in another, it was in designing excellent houses for families of moderate
means. I at once proposed to Sophia that we should think over some arrangement
of rooms which would be likely to suit us, and then call upon the architect,
that he might put our plan into proper shape.
I made my sketch, and my wife made hers. Her drawing and dining rooms
were very large, nearly twice the size of mine, though her doors and windows
showed sound judgment. We soon found that there was no such thing as fitting our
ideas together, do what we would. When we had come to no conclusion at all, we
called at Mr Penny's office. I began telling him my business, upon which he
took a sheet of foolscap, and made numerous imposing notes, with large brackets
and dashes to them. Sitting there with him in his office, surrounded by rolls
of paper, circles, squares, triangles, compasses, and many other of the
inventions which have been sought out by men from time to time, and perceiving
that all these were the realities which had been faintly shadowed forth to me
by Euclid some years before, it is no wonder that I became a puppet in his
hands. He settled everything in a miraculous way. We were told the only
possible size we could have the rooms, the only way we should be allowed to go
upstairs, and the exact quantity of wine we might order at once, so as to fit
the wine cellar he had in his head. His professional opinions, propelled by his
facts, seemed to float into my mind whether I wished to receive them or not. I
thought at the time that Sophia, from her silence, was in the same helpless
state; but she has since told me it was quite otherwise, and that she was only
a little tired.
I had been very anxious all along that the stipulated cost, eighteen
hundred pounds, should not be exceeded, and I impressed this again upon Mr
Penny.
"I will give you an approximate estimate for the sort of thing we
are thinking of," he said. "Linem." (This was the clerk.)
"Did you speak, sir?"
"Forty-nine by fifty-four by twenty-eight, twice fourteen by
thirty-one by eleven, and several small items which we will call one hundred
and sixty."
"Eighty-two thousand four hundred—"
"But eighteen hundred at the very outside," I began, "is
what—"
"Feet, my dear sir—feet, cubic feet," said Mr Penny.
"Put it down at sixpence a foot, Linem, remainders not an object."
"Two thousand two hundred pounds." This was too much.
"Well, try it at something less, leaving out all below hundreds,
Linem."
"About eighteen hundred and seventy pounds."
"Very satisfactory, in my opinion," said Mr Penny turning to
me. "What do you think?"
"You are so particular, John, " interrupted my wife. "I
am sure it is exceedingly moderate: elegance and extreme cheapness never do go
together."
(It may be here remarked that Sophia never calls me "my dear"
before strangers. She considers that, like the ancient practice in besieged
cities of throwing loaves over the walls, it really denotes a want rather than
an abundance of them within.)
I did not trouble the architect any further, and we rose to leave.
"Be sure you make a nice conservatory, Mr Penny," said my
wife; "something that has character about it. If it could only be in the
Chinese style, with beautiful ornaments at the corners, like Mrs Smith's, only
better, "she continued, turning to me with a glance in which a broken
tenth commandment might have been seen.
"Some sketches shall be forwarded, which I think will suit
you," answered Mr Penny pleasantly, looking as if he had possessed for
some years a complete guide to the minds of all people who intended to build.
It is needless to go through the whole history of the plan-making. A
builder had been chosen, and the house marked out, when we went down to the
place one morning to see how the foundations looked.
It is a strange fact, that a person's new house drawn in outline on the
ground where it is to stand, looks ridiculously and inconveniently small. The
notion it gives one is, that any portion of one's after-life spent within such
boundaries must of necessity be rendered wretched on account of bruises daily
received by running against the partitions, door posts, and fireplaces. In my
case, the lines showing sitting-rooms seemed to denote cells; the kitchen
looked as if it might develop into a large box; whilst the study appeared to
consist chiefly of a fireplace and a door. We were told that houses always
looked so; but Sophia's disgust at the sight of such a diminutive drawing-room
was not to be lessened by any scientific reasoning. Six feet longer—four feet
then—three it must be, she argued, and the room was accordingly lengthened. I
felt rather relieved when at last I got her off the ground, and on the road
home.
The building gradually crept upwards, and put forth chimneys. We were
standing beside it one day, looking at the men at work on the top, when the
builder's foreman came towards us.
"Being your own house, sir, and as we are finishing the last
chimney, you would perhaps like to go up," he said.
"I am sure I should much, if I were a man," was my wife's
observation to me. "The landscape must appear so lovely from that
height."
This remark placed me in something of a dilemma, for it must be
confessed that I am not given to climbing. The sight of cliffs, roofs, scaffoldings,
and elevated places in general, which have no sides to keep people from
slipping off, always causes me to feel how infinitely preferable a position at
the bottom is to a position at the top of them. But as my house was by no means
lofty, and it was but for once, I said I would go up.
My knees felt a good deal in the way as I ascended the ladder; but that
was not so disagreeable as the thrill which passed through me as I followed my
guide along two narrow planks, one bending beneath each foot. However, having
once started, I kept on, and next climbed another ladder, thin and
weak-looking, and not tied at the top. I could not help thinking, as I viewed
the horizon between the steps, what a shocking thing it would be if any part
should break; and to get rid of the thought, I adopted the device of mentally
criticising the leading articles in that morning's Times; but as the plan did
not answer, I tried to fancy that, though strangely enough it seemed otherwise,
I was only four feet from the ground. This was a failure too; and just as I had
commenced upon an idea that great quantities of feather-beds were spread below,
I reached the top scaffold.
"Rather high," I said to the foreman, trying, but failing to
appear unconcerned.
"Well, no," he answered; "nothing to what it is
sometimes (I'll just trouble you not to step upon the end of that plank there,
as it will turnover); though you may as well fall from here as from the top of
the Monument for the matter of life being quite extinct when they pick you
up," he continued, looking around at the weather and the crops, as it
were.
Then a workman, with a load of bricks, stamped along the boards, and
overturned them at my feet, causing me to shake up and down like the little
servant-men behind private cabs. I asked, in trepidation, if the bricks were
not dangerously heavy, thinking of a newspaper paragraph headed "Frightful
Accident from an Overloaded Scaffold."
"Just what I was going to say. Dan has certainly too many
there," answered the man. "But it won't break down if we walk without
springing, and don't sneeze, though the mortar-boy's hooping-cough was strong
enough in my poor brother Jim's case," he continued abstractedly, as if he
himself possessed several necks, and could afford to break one or two.
My wife was picking daisies a little distance off, apparently in a
state of complete indifference as to whether I was on the scaffold, at the foot
of it, or in
Beyond a continual anxiety and frequent journeyings along the sides of
a triangle, of which the old house, the new house, and the architect's office
were the corners, nothing worth mentioning happened till the building was
nearly finished. Sophia's ardour in the business, which at the beginning was so
intense, had nearly burned itself out, so I was left pretty much to myself in
getting over the later difficulties. Amongst them was the question of a porch.
I had often been annoyed whilst waiting outside a door on a wet day at being
exposed to the wind and rain, and it was my favourite notion that I would have
a model porch whenever I should build a house. Thus it was very vexing to
recollect, just as the workmen were finishing off, that I had never mentioned
the subject to Mr Penny, and that he had not suggested anything about one to
me.
"A porch or no porch is entirely a matter of personal feeling and
taste," was his remark, in answer to a complaint from me; "so, of
course, I did not put one without its being mentioned. But it happens that in
this case it would be an improvements feature, in fact. There is this
objection, that the roof will close up the window of the little place on the
landing; but we may get ventilation by making an opening higher up, if you
don't mind a trifling darkness, or rather gloom.
My first thought was that this might tend to reduce myself and family
to a state of chronic melancholy; but remembering there were reflectors
advertised to throw sunlight into any nook almost, I agreed to the
inconvenience, for the sake of the porch, though I found afterwards that the
gloom was for all time, the patent reflector, naturally enough, sending its
spot of light against the opposite wall, where it was not wanted, and leaving
none about the landing, where it was.
In getting a house built for a specified sum by contract with a
builder, there is a certain pit-fall into which unwary people are sure to
step—this accident is technically termed "getting into extras." It is
evident that the only way to get out again without making a town-talk about
yourself, is to pay the builder a large sum of money over and above the
contract amount—the value of course of the extras. In the present case, I knew
very well that the perceptible additions would have to be paid for.
Commonsense, and Mr Penny himself perhaps, should have told me a little more
distinctly that I must pay if I said "yes" to questions whether I
preferred one window a trifle larger than it was originally intended, another a
trifle smaller, second thoughts as to where a doorway should be, and so on.
Then came a host of things "not included—a sink in the scullery, a
rain-water tank and a pump, a trap-door into the roof, a scraper, a
weather-cock and four letters, ventilators in the nursery, same in the kitchen,
all of which worked vigorously enough, but the wrong way; patent remarkable
bell-pulls; a royal letters extraordinary kitchen-range, which it would cost
exactly three pence three—farthings to keep a fire in for twelve hours, and yet
cook any joint in any way, warm up what was left yesterday, boil the
vegetables, and do the ironing. But not keeping a strict account of all these
expenses, and thinking myself safe in Mr Penny's hands from any enormous
increase, I was astounded to find that the additions altogether came to some
hundreds of pounds. I could almost go through the worry of building another
house, to show how carefully I would avoid getting into extras again.
Then they have to be wound up. A surveyor is called in from somewhere,
and, by a fiction, his heart's desire is supposed to be that you shall not be
overcharged one halfpenny by the builder for the additions. The builder names a
certain sum as the value of a portion—say double its worth, the surveyor then
names a sum, about half its true value. They then fight it out by word of
mouth, and gradually bringing their valuations nearer and nearer together, at
last meet in the middle. All my accounts underwent this operation.
Families-removing van carried our furniture and effects to the new
building without giving us much trouble; but a number of vexing little
incidents occurred on our settling down, which I should have felt more deeply
had not a sort of Martinmas summer of Sophia's interest in the affair now set
in, and lightened them considerably. Smoke was one of our nuisances. On
lighting the study-fire, every particle of smoke came curling into the room. In
our trouble, we sent for the architect, who immediately asked if we had tried
the plan of opening the register to cure it. We had not, but we did so, and the
smoke ascended at once. The last thing I remember was Sophia jumping up one
night and frightening me out of my senses with the exclamation: "O that
builder! Not a single bar of any sort is there to the nursery-windows. John,
some day those poor little children will tumble out in their innocence—how
should they know better?—and be dashed to pieces. Why did you put the nursery
on the second floor?" And you may be sure that some bars were put up the
very next morning.