Essays of Travel Tale 11 - The Ideal House

Robert Louis Stevenson (0:00)

Section 11 of Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson. The sleeper box recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 8, The Ideal House.

Two things are necessary in any neighborhood where we propose to spend a life, the desert and some living water. There are many parts of the Earth's face which offer the necessary combination of a certain wildness with a kindly variety. A great prospect is desirable, but the want may be otherwise supplied. Even greatness can be found on the small scale, for the mind and the eye measure differently. Bold rocks near hand are more inspiriting than distant elps, and the thick fern upon a surrey heath makes a fine forest for the imagination and the dotted yew trees noble mountains. A Scottish moor with birches and firs grouped here and there upon a knoll, or one of those rocky seaside deserts of Provence overgrown with rosemary and time, and smoking with aroma are places where the mind is never weary.

Forests being more enclosed are not at first sight so attractive, but they exercise a spell. They must, however, be diversified with either heath or rock, and are hardly to be considered perfect without conifers. Even sandhills, with their intricate plan and their gulls and rabbits, will stand well for the necessary desert.

The house must be within hail of either a little river or the sea. A great river is more fit for poetry than to adorn a neighborhood. Its sweep of waters increases the scale of the scenery and the distance of one notable object from another, and a lively burn gives us, in the space of a few yards, a greater variety of promontory and islet, of cascade, shallow goil, and boiling pool with answerable changes both of song and color, than a navigable stream in many hundred miles. The fish too make a more considerable feature of the brookside, and the trout plumping in the shadow takes the ear.

A stream should, besides, be narrow enough to cross, or the burn hard by a bridge, or we are at once shut out of Eden.

The quantity of water need be of no concern, for the mind sets the scale, and can enjoy a Niagara fall of 30 inches. Let us approve the singer of Shallow Rivers by Who's Falls, Melodious Birds sing Madrigals.

If the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard with a heavy beat of surf, one much broken in outline, with small havens and dwarf headlands, if possible a few islets. And as the first necessity, rocks reaching out into deep water. Such a rock on a calm day is a better station than the top of Tenerife or Shimberazzo. In short, both for the desert and the water, the conjunction of many near and bold details is bold scenery for the imagination and keeps the mind alive. Given these two prime luxuries, the nature of the country where we are to live is, I had almost said, indifferent. After that, inside the garden, we can construct a country of our own. Several old trees, a considerable variety of level, several well-grown hedges to divide our garden into provinces, a good extent of old well-set turf, and thickets of shrubs and evergreens to be cut into and cleared at the new owner's pleasure, are the qualities to be sought for in your chosen land. Nothing is more delightful than a succession of small lawns, opening one out of the other through tall hedges. These have all the charm of the old bolding green repeated. Do not require the labor of many trimmers, and afford a series of changes. You must have much lawn against the early summer, so as to have a great field of daisies, the years morning frost, as you must have a wood of lilacs, to enjoy to the full the period of their blossoming. Hawthorn is another of the spring's ingredients, but it is even best to have a rough public lane at one side of your enclosure, which, at the right season, shall become an avenue of bloom and odor. The old flowers are the best and should grow carelessly in corners. Indeed, the ideal fortune is to find an old garden, once very richly cared for, since sunk into neglect and to tend not repair that neglect. It will thus have a smack of nature and wildness, which skillful dispositions cannot overtake. The gardener should be an idler, and have a gross partiality to the kitchen plots. An eager or toilful gardener misbecomes the garden landscape. A tasteful gardener will be ever meddling, will keep the borders raw, and take the bloom off nature. Close adjoining, if you are in the south, an olive yard, if in the north, a swarded apple orchard reaching to the stream, completes your miniature domain. But this is perhaps best entered to adore in the high fruit wall, so that you close the door behind you on your sunny plots, your hedges, and every green jungle, when you go down to watch the apples falling in the pool. It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves. Nor must the ear be forgotten. Without birds, a garden is a prison yard. There is a garden near Marseilles, on a steep hillside, walking by which, upon a sunny morning, your ear will suddenly be ravished with a burst of small and very cheerful singing, some score of cages being set out there to sun their occupants. This is a heavenly surprise to any passerby, but the price paid to keep so many ardent and winged creatures from their liberty will make the luxury too dear for any thoughtful pleasure lover. There is only one sort of bird that I can tolerate caged, though even then I think it hard, and that is what is called in France the bec d'argent. I once had two of these pygmies in captivity, and in the quiet higher house upon a silent street where I was then living, their song, which was not much louder than a bee's, but eerily musical, kept me in a perpetual good humor. I put the cage upon my table when I worked, carried it with me when I went for meals, and kept it by my head at night. The first thing in the morning, these maestrini would pipe up, but these, even if you can pardon their imprisonment, are for the house. In the garden, the wild birds must plant a colony, a chorus of the lesser warblers that should be almost deafening, a blackbird and the lilacs, a nightingale down the lane, so that you must stroll to hear it, and yet a little farther, treetops populous with rooks.