Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0139/01398.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 12KB | 193 lines

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$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XXXVIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
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$Subject{painted
done
big
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white
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magnificent
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$Date{1917}
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Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XXXVIII

The House Beautiful

     We took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a Cincinnati
boat - either is correct; the former is the Eastern form of putting it, the
latter the Western.

     Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats were
"magnificent," or that they were "floating palaces" - terms which had always
been applied to them; terms which did not overexpress the admiration with
which the people viewed them.

     Mr. Dickens's position was unassailable, possibly; the people's position
was certainly unassailable.  If Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats with the
crown jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn; or with some other
priceless or wonderful thing which he had seen, they were not magnificent - he
was right.  The people compared them with what they had seen; and, thus
measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent - the term was the correct
one, it was not at all too strong.  The people were as right as was Mr.
Dickens.  The steamboats were finer than anything on shore.  Compared with
superior dwelling-houses and first- class hotels in the valley, they were
indubitably magnificent, they were "palaces." To a few people living in New
Orleans and St. Louis they were not magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to
the great majority of those populations, and to the entire populations spread
over both banks between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces; they
tallied with the citizen's dream of what magnificence was, and satisfied it.

     Every town and village along that vast stretch of double river- frontage
had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion - the home of its wealthiest and
most conspicuous citizen.  It is easy to describe it: large grassy yard, with
paling fence painted white - in fair repair; brick walk from gate to door;
big, square, two-story "frame" house, painted white and porticoed like a
Grecian temple - with this difference, that the imposing fluted columns and
Corinthian capitals were a pathetic sham, being made of white pine, and
painted; iron knocker; brass door- knob - discolored, for lack of polishing.
Within, an uncarpeted hall, of planed boards; opening out of it, a parlor,
fifteen feet by fifteen - in some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain
carpet; mahogany center- table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade - standing
on a gridiron, so to speak, made of high-colored yarns, by the young ladies of
the house, and called a lamp-mat; several books, piled and disposed, with
cast-iron exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among
them, Tupper, much penciled; also, Friendship's Offering, and Affection's
Wreath, with their sappy inanities illustrated in die-away mezzotints; also,
Ossian; Alonzo and Melissa; maybe Ivanhoe; also "Album," full of original
"poetry" of the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee breed; two or
three goody-goody works - Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, etc.; current number of
the chaste and innocuous Godey's Lady's Book, with painted fashion-plate of
waxfigure women with mouths all alike - lips and eyelids the same size - each
five-foot woman with a two-inch wedge sticking from under her dress and
letting on to be half of her foot.  Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly
invention), with pipe passing through a board which closes up the discarded
good old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel, over the fireplace, a
large basket of peaches and other fruits, natural size, all done in plaster,
rudely, or in wax, and painted to resemble the originals - which they don't.
Over middle of mantel, engraving - "Washington Crossing the Delaware"; on the
wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightning crewels by one of
the young ladies - work of art which would have made Washington hesitate about
crossing, if he could have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of
it.  Piano - kettle in disguise - with music, bound and unbound, piled on it,
and on a stand near by: "Battle of Prague"; "Bird Waltz"; "Arkansas Traveler";
"Rosin the Bow"; "Marseillaise Hymn"; "On a Lone Barren Isle" (St. Helena);
"The Last Link Is Broken"; "She Wore a Wreath of Roses the Night When Last We
Met"; "Go, Forget Me, Why Should Sorrow o'er That Brow a Shadow Fling"; "Hours
That Were to Memory Dearer"; "Long, Long Ago"; "Days of Absence"; "A Life on
the Ocean Wave, a Home on the Rolling Deep"; "Bird at Sea"; and spread open on
the rack where the plaintive singer has left it, "Ro-holl on, silver moo-hoon,
guide the travel-err on his way," etc.  Tilted pensively against the piano, a
guitar - guitar capable of playing the Spanish fandango by itself, if you give
it a start.  Frantic work of art on the wall--pious motto, done on the
premises, sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in faded grasses: progenitor
of the "God Bless Our Home" of modern commerce. Framed in black moldings on
the wall, other works of art, conceived and committed on the premises, by the
young ladies; being grim black-and- white crayons; landscapes, mostly: lake,
solitary sailboat, petrified clouds, pregeological trees on shore, anthracite
precipice; name of criminal conspicuous in the corner.  Lithograph, "Napoleon
Crossing the Alps." Lithograph, "The Grave at St. Helena." Steel plates,
Trumbull's "Battle of Bunker Hill," and the "Sally from Gibraltar." Copper
plates, "Moses Smiting the Rock," and "Return of the Prodigal Son." In big
gilt frame, slander of the family in oil: papa holding a book ("Constitution
of the United States"); guitar leaning against mamma, blue ribbons fluttering
from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in slippers and scalloped
pantalettes, one embracing toy horse, the other beguiling kitten with ball of
yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, who simpers back.  These persons all
fresh, raw, and red - apparently skinned. Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and
grandma, at thirty and twenty-two, stiff, old-fashioned, high-collared,
puff-sleeved, glaring pallidly out from a background of solid Egyptian night.
Under a glass French clock dome, large bouquet of stiff flowers done in
corpsy-white wax.  Pyramidal what-not in the corner, the shelves occupied
chiefly with bric-a-brac of the period, disposed with an eye to best effect:
shell, with the Lord's Prayer carved on it; another shell - of the long-oval
sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long, running from end to end -
portrait of Washington carved on it; not well done; the shell had Washington's
mouth, originally - artist should have built to that.  These two are memorials
of the long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the French Market.  Other
bric-a-brac: Californian "specimens" - quartz, with gold wart adhering; old
Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads,
of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from uncle who crossed the Plains; three
"alum" baskets of various colors - being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed on
with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style - works of art which
were achieved by the young ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found
upon all what-nots in the land; convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies
pinned to a card; painted toy dog, seated upon bellows attachment - drops its
under-jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugarcandy rabbit - limbs and
features merged together, not strongly defined; pewter presidential-campaign
medal; miniature cardboard wood-sawyer, to be attached to the stovepipe and
operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreo-
types of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends, in all attitudes
but customary ones; no templed portico at back, and manufactured landscape
stretching away in the distance - that came in later, with the photograph; all
these vague figures lavishly chained and ringed - metal indicated and secured
from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze; all of them too much
combed, too much fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday
clothes of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been
in fashion; husband and wife generally grouped together - husband sitting,
wife standing, with hand on his shoulder - and both preserving, all these
fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk "Now smile,
if you please!" Bracketed over what-not - place of special sacredness - an
outrage in watercolor, done by the young niece that came on a visit long ago,
and died.  Pity, too; for she might have repented of this in time. Horsehair
chairs, horsehair sofa which keeps sliding from under you. Window-shades, of
oil stuff, with milkmaids and ruined castles stenciled on them in fierce
colors.  Lambrequins dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded.
Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of the "corded" sort, with a sag in the
middle, the cords needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed - not aired often
enough; cane-seat chairs, splintbottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall,
school-slate size, veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher,
possibly - but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers.
Nothing else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house; and no visitor likely
to come along who has ever seen one.

     That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way from the
suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis.  When he stepped aboard a big
fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world: chimney-tops cut to
counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes -and - and maybe painted red;
pilot-house, hurricane-deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with white
wooden filigree-work of fanciful patterns; gilt acorns topping the derricks;
gilt deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture on the paddle-box,
possibly; big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and furnished with Windsor
arm-chairs; inside, a far- receding snow-white "cabin"; porcelain knob and
oil-picture on every stateroom door; curving patterns of filigree-work touched
up with gilding, stretching overhead all down the converging vista; big
chandeliers every little way, each an April shower of glittering glass- drops;
lovely rainbow-light falling everywhere from the colored glazing of the
skylights; the whole a long-drawn, resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and
soul-satisfying spectacle!  in the ladies' cabin a pink and white Wilton
carpet, as soft as much, and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic
flowers.  Then the Bridal Chamber - the animal that invented that idea was
still alive and unhanged, at that day - Bridal Chamber whose pretentious
flummery was necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellect of that
hosannahing citizen.  Every stateroom had its couple of cozy clean bunks, and
perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet; and sometimes there was even a
wash-bowl and pitcher, and part of a towel which could be told from
mosquito-netting by an expert - though generally these things were absent, and
the shirt-sleeved passengers cleansed themselves at a long row of stationary
bowls in the barber shop, where were also public towels, public combs, and
public soap.

     Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have her in her
highest and finest, and most pleasing, and comfortable, and satisfactory
estate.  Now cake her over with a layer of ancient and obdurate dirt, and you
have the Cincinnati steamer awhile ago referred to.  Not all over - only
inside; for she was ably officered in all departments except the steward's.

     But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about the
counterpart of the most complimented boat of the old flush times: for the
steamboat architecture of the West has undergone no change; neither has
steamboat furniture and ornamentation undergone any.