House-Cleaning

THE old rite of spring house-cleaning is, I am told, falling into disuse, with the new improvements in household machinery. I can but regret its passing, for it would seem to have both practical and symbolic value, allying itself with other spring observances which celebrate casting off the husks of the old, the coming of new life, the earth and human beings wakening together to a fresh mood of hope and of vigor. Such were the Demeter festivals in the south ; in the north, those of the ancient pagan May Day, with their dances and fresh garlands ; and other half-religious ceremonies which go back to the dawn of time.

Here, in our quiet village, we hold to this grand spring purification, as we do to other old usages, in part spectators, in part actors therein, constantly stirred to meditation, quickened in memory. There are fingers astir in corners long untouched; there are shadowy cobwebs swept away. It is a fine sight to see, all down the street, on the green lawns, rugs being beaten, cushions shaken; windows are being washed; soap-suds are applied to the lintels of the doorways with almost sacerdotal fervor. Out on long lines hang many garments airing in the sweet April sunshine; dusty things share for a time the life of fresh growing grass. The carpet-beating man is in constant requisition; he knows himself the most important personage in town, and wears his brief glory with a not unkingly air. There is great rivalry in regard to the scrub-women, who have inherited, if not all the joyousness of their dancing predecessors, singing in the spring, at least some of their activity. The painters are all too few, but busy on every side; there are green or brown smudges on passing noses. Our suspense is deep in regard to the color of paint in buckets into which brushes are constantly dipped, for the matter is of great moment. Heaven grant that no mistaken blues, or sulphurous yellows, or unholy magenta shades emerge to buffet our spirits during the coming year! Kalsominers with their pallid pails go past in spotted white, like Pierrots suddenly awakened to a sense of the seriousness of life and its burdens.

Everywhere is stir, motion, life, — it may be only the quick motion of feet escaping from the stream of warm water, which trickles by mistake down the front path; pulses go more rapidly, as fingers fly; wholesome excitement reigns. Through it all, one sees the satisfied faces of householders, as of those who have attained; and the wistful faces of domestic animals, astray in a world whose ideals are beyond their reach.

It is not that we are unaware of modern devices, which keep this constant cleansing of the human habitation going on imperceptibly and do away with the necessity of the annual or semi-annual upheaval. We are aware of them, and we use them, but gingerly, and with full knowledge of their limitations. The past has given us a standard which we refuse to forget as we face the new. Our mistrust is deepened by a belief that it is the most povertystricken in mind, spirit, and estate who are the staunchest upholders of the newest inventions. I shall not soon forget my brief visit to the ash-man’s home, where I found ‘himself’ and ‘herself’ sitting at leisure in one of the two rooms of their cabin, surrounded by their entire possessions. All their bottles, dishes, cooking utensils stood about them on their unclean floor, amid random piles of dirt. Their faces wore an air of pleased expectancy; they were waiting, they said, for the vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaner, indeed! Nothing but yellow soap and hot, hot water and sapolio could have made that room fit for human habitation.

This memory is one of the many reasons why I pin a towel about my head and dust my beloved books myself, fingering them anxiously to see if aught in leaf or binding has come to harm. The word vacuum is unthinkable in connection with any one of them, I sometimes think, as the opened page perhaps betrays me, and I sit down, in all the confusion, to joy and brief oblivion.

There is dead monotony about these new housekeeping ways, each week the same process, mechanical, perfunctory. There is no rhythm of ebb and flow, no grand tidal wave of energy and feeling that seeks to accomplish the impossible, and succeeds in accomplishing the improbable. Where is gone that swelling aspiration of old days, that inner assurance that, were all made perfect once in order and cleanliness, no disorder could ever again prevail? Some such mood of high spiritual adventure was surely Thoreau’s when he wrote, —

‘The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year that will drown out all our muskrats.’

Back of each of these old fashioned household earthquakes was some grand effort of the human will, a resolution, a sense of great deeds to be performed. Ultimate and utter confusion evoked the energy of the human spirit, which rose successfully to meet it. Order came out of disorder, the splendid triumph of cosmos dawning on chaos, a far-off quiver of that magnificent, burning mood of the Creator, — ‘Let there be light!’ Such a crisis is a test of your part in the final order. A world is in ruins at your feet: show what you can do. Mental collectedness, singleness of aim, steadiness of purpose, are imperative. The grand, artistic principle of choice, of selection, must reign, — that principle which makes art, art, and literature, literature, the power of discerning the essential, — it is your test! Box and chest are to be gone over, with that persistent problem of life and of philosophy before you,— what is to be discarded, what is to be kept?

Roused by the suffering of a friend who recently, for her sins, inherited a New England house from which nothing had been thrown away for nearly a hundred years, I bestir myself. I must not leave all this miscellany, intellectual and other, — for there are boxes of old papers as well as trunks of clothing, — to my unfortunate heirs. Which bundles of silk or of serge, which rolls of muslin are to be kept, as perhaps serving some yet undiscovered purpose in the renewed life? Those left-over rolls of a beloved wall-paper which covered our living-room walls in past happy days, — how can I throw them away without throwing away something of that life which they recall? Which of the treasured, flawed, delicate dishes may still remain, not for use but for remembering, upon our shelves? Which are to go, as fragmentary as ourselves, into the ash-barrel, to await the test, the crucible, the resurrection in some form into a part of life again ?

There are garments well-nigh sacred, seeming not of mere cloth, garments which, more than most treasured things, have the power of poignantly stirring the memory, bringing the wearer before us, quick, alive in look and in gesture. One may give them away, but with a struggle: my grandfather’s old-fashioned, broadcloth, Presbyterian ‘mantle’ ill beseems the pagan graybeard of the slums; the quaint children’s garments, preserved in the mysterious old green chest full of subtle fragrances, — secret place of hid treasures whose depths even house-cleaning dared not disturb, — would be but scorned by the little aliens who yearn for the latest styles.

One can decide the great things of life, after sufficient deliberation; one has to! There are destinies to face, grave reasons to be weighed for going or staying, for saying yes or no. The balance, in time, slowly and reasonably tips this way or that; but how shall one decide whether to keep or to burn the little treasures, — the half curl, the old picture, the package of letters tied by a cord which, in all probability, will never be undone? And yet, to see them vanish in flakes of gray ash, so that they never could be read, would be hard. Here is the best of one’s mettle, the measure of one’s power of decision.

What accidents, discoveries, what precious bits of drift upon that flowing tide of spring time! I too have come upon exceeding treasure, have come suddenly, and with holding of the breath. Never old wills, — such vulgar happenings are relegated rightly to paper-covered fiction. As all real treasures are treasures of the spirit, one digs deep, deep in the hoard of the past for other values. A line, a sentence in familiar handwriting upon a yellowing scrap of paper may show a depth of soul undiscovered before in some one loved. I have known reconciliation to take place between long-estranged friends when a forgotten flake of paper brought back an old mood of faith and trust.

A single house-cleaning may bring your priest-like youth to minister to your relaxing middle age, in the rediscovery of some written witness to what you once were. Far, far along the dusty road, — it may be even meditating retreat, — you meet your old self face to face, the morning sunlight on its forehead, in the freshness, vigor, hope of youth. The inspired, accusing eyes, the sense of being able to do all, — from such an encounter you turn again, shamefaced, to the onward track, because one, it may be sole survivor of that past, expects something of you. The old, impassioned resolve, brought back by a few written words, pierces your very breast. Husk by husk your later self is stripped away, and the real you, in all the simplicity of high intent, released from the mood of discouragement and failure, is ready to start again.

Again that wholesome sound of scrubbing, of running water, that chill atmosphere of fresh whitewash, something half way between the world of the living and that of the dead, recalling, by some trick of odor, the catacombs of Rome with their cool dampness, and, inevitably, their hint of new and fairer life, — the undying hope of immortality written in symbols there.

Again, old memories associate this new freshness with the breath of delicate wild flowers abroad in the house, and lilies of the valley whose fragrance stole long ago across chill May days of household lustration. This is the time of the quickening of all things, of casting off the old, of the building of the nests, and all other sweet spring sights and sounds. We share this mood of spring in the joy of renewal; here is the perpetual youth of the race!

I fancy that this spring house-cleaning has in it something of the potency of the confessional in the laying bare of old, sad secrets, and the ensuing sense of sudden lightness, — I speak only from imagination, for I have never been to the confessional ; I sometimes wish I had! — of having made a clean breast of it, of being even with life, of shaking off forever the dust of the past.

Then, the peace of the after-moments, when all is sweet, clean, prepared; Utopian moments, too perfect to last, — surely these are a foretaste of perfectness to come, if the hopes of the highest hearted among us are granted, full of new sense of the beauty of old things, with the ugly and outworn cast away. Earth’s utmost has been done, in the purifying fires and the cleansing that has searched all corners, — as cleansing griefs have left the spirit prepared and ready.