Country house

“ The brook behind my father’s house, in which my bared feet daily waded, turns the wheel of a factory; the trees that shaded our log cabin are metamorphosed into three-story houses; the country has turned into a town—and not more has the form changed than the spirit. ”

“ The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that would suit the climate and the habit of life here. But the present occupiers have taken no hints from the natives. In village and country they have done all they can, in spite of the maguey and the cactus and the palm and the umbrella-tree and the live-oak and the riotous flowers and the thousand novel forms of vegetation, to give everything a prosaic look. ”

“ And, although all out of date, and conventionally vulgar this sentiment may be now considered, such is, or should be the subdued, unsophisticated feeling of all natives of the farm house, and the country cottage. We may leave the quiet roof of our childhood; we may mix in the bustling contentions of the open world; we may gain its treasures; we may enjoy its greatness, its honors, and its applause; but there are times when they will all fade into nothing, in comparison with the peace, and quietude, and tranquil happiness of a few acres of land, a comfortable roof, and contentment therewith! ”

“ In designing a country house, an architect is of course much less fettered than with a town or street site, and he can frame it in a garden, which is an important decorative adjunct or setting to a country house or cottage. It is possible also to make it fit into or even become a part of the scenery, especially if local materials are employed. Indeed, it seems to me, that the secret of harmonious effect in building lies in the use of local materials as regards country houses. The beauty of our old castles, abbeys, country houses and cottages is greatly owing to this. ”

“ Although every facility of access to the gardens and grounds is desirable in a country house, yet I think it is disagreeable to be on an actual level with the walks; both from the interior and from the exterior, it gives the notion of the house springing from the earth as a mushroom, as you have observed. I will now follow you through the building at your invitation, observing that I agree as to the choice of aspects and the arrangements of the rooms. ”

“ That American house-building of the last fifty years is out of joint, requires no better proof than that the 21 main improvements which have been applied to our rural architecture, are in the English style of farm and country houses of two or three centuries ago; so, in that particular, we acknowledge the better taste and judgment of our ancestors. True, modern luxury, and in some particulars, modern improvement has made obsolete, if not absurd, many things considered indispensable in a ruder age. ”

“ The whole stands in open grounds, and may be separated from each other by enclosures, as convenience or fancy may direct.
The roofs of all the buildings are broad and sweeping, well protecting the walls from storm and frosts, as well as the glaring influences of the sun, and combining that comfortable idea of shelter and repose so grateful in a well-conditioned country house. It is true, that the dwelling might be more extensive in room, and the purposes of luxury enlarged ”

“ At the threshold—not of the house, but of this treatise—it may be well to remark that it is not here assumed that there has been neither skill, ingenuity, nor occasional good taste exhibited, for many generations back, in the United States, in the construction of farm and country houses. On the contrary, there are found in the older states many farm and country houses 20 that are almost models, in their way, for convenience in the main purposes required of structures of their kind, and such as can hardly be altered for the better. ”

“ The country house, if anything more than a shelter from the elements, is larger and more substantial than the city house, and, with its ponderous thatched roof and elaborate ridge, is always picturesque. ”

“ Low white farmhouses, with picturesque doorways and small windows divided into many panes, straggle pleasantly along on either side of the winding country road, and there is even an old meeting house, with a spire such as you may see in many a New England hamlet. ”

“ Proceeding west, we found the people poorer and more ignorant, consequently more helpless. In many instances only women and children were left in the almost destitute farm-houses. One rainy Sunday afternoon we stopped at a miserable country house—the first one we had seen all that day—which consisted of two rooms and a porch perched a few feet above the ground on the inevitable six stumps which formed the foundation, and a retreat at the same time for pigs and chickens. ”

“ The next thing I will mention is country house visiting, which is very pleasant as a rule, especially to people young enough not to mind the open doors and windows, the large rooms—innocent of fires sometimes when dwellers in towns would have lit them—and long corridors down which a fine north-easter pursues you. ”

“ The beautiful stable might serve as a well appointed dwelling house by making a few minor changes. While such buildings are being constructed, the country school-house, the pride of the American, is left to fall into decay ”

“ A lawn runs about the house, and the lawn is in its turn surrounded by a system of little five-roomed cottages, each with a veranda and a weedy palm before the door. Some of the cottages are let to residents, and these are wreathed in flowers. The rest are occupied by ordinary visitors to the hotel; and a very pleasant way this is, by which you have a little country cottage of your own, without domestic burthens, and by the day or week. ”

“ The Local Government Board does not seem to recognise that circumstances alter cases, and that the regulations which may be beneficial in the crowded and filthy slums of a great city, may he mischievous in a village or country town. Andover is an exceedingly healthy little town, as the table on p. 99 will show, and in it there must be very few, if any, houses more than 50 feet high, and the great majority of the houses and cottages have large yards or gardens. ”

“ The whole group, church, vicarage, and a small hamlet of vine covered and embowered stone cottages, lay in the lap of a gently rising sweep of hills, and all around were spread landscapes of the finished and serene character peculiar to England—rich fields framed in flowering hedges, clumps of forest trees, glimpses of distant parks, country seats, and village spires, and on the horizon a line of mist-clad hills, scarce ever more distinct than the banks of low-lying clouds retiring after a thunder storm in America. ”

“ To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; ”

“ Certainly there is not much to boast of among us in the way of architecture as yet, either in town or country; but our rural buildings are only seen amid the orchards and fields of the farms, or surrounded by the trees and gardens of the villages, so that their defects are, perhaps, less striking, relieved, as they generally are, by an air of thrift and comfort, and softened by the pleasing features of the surrounding landscape. ”

“ The whole of the cottages thereabout are in equal taste with the roof; so different to the red, staring, square brick houses of manufacturing districts. They seem, as no doubt they are, erected in the spirit, and under the influence, of the genius loci. The beehives in their rustic rows; the little crofts, all belong to a primitive country. I went on; now coming to small groups of such places; now to others of superior pretensions, but equally blent with the spirit of the surrounding nature;—little paradises of cultivated life. ”

“ It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm-house and moss-grown cottage is a picture; and as the roads are continually winding, and the view is shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a continual succession of small landscapes of captivating loveliness. ”

“ From the cottage homes, and old-fashioned farmhouses, which are dropped over the landscape, like birds' nests, "each in its nook of leaves," generation after generation has come forth to wander through the same [Pg 72] grass-grown byeways, and brambly old lanes; to weave the same chequered web of simple joys and sorrows, and cares and toils; and to lie down at last in the same old churchyard, where the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" are sleeping together so quietly. It is a country well worth visiting by any lover of nature, for its own sake. ”

“ With the addition of a few articles of furniture of the rudest construction, the habitation is now considered ready to receive the family of the settler, who view with unbounded delight their new dwelling, and joyfully prepare, for the first time since their sojourn in the forest, to cook and eat their dinner of venison beneath the shelter of their humble roof. The house being completed, the settler next turns his attention to laying out his farm ”

“ The various accommodation appurtenant to the dwelling, makes ample provision for the household convenience of the family, and the main business of the farm may be at some distance, without inconvenience to the owner's every-day affairs. Consequently, the indulgence of a considerable degree of ornament may be given, in the surroundings of his dwelling, which the occupant of a less extensive estate would neither require, nor his circumstances warrant. A natural forest of stately trees, properly thinned out, is the most appropriate spot on which to build a house of this character. ”

“ Much wood is to be seen on all sides, often of great dimensions; and the population appears still as great as before. The villages succeed one another so fast, as almost to form a continued street; and the numberless spires which rise over the woods in every direction, prove that this number of inhabitants extends over the whole country. The cottages still continue neat and comfortable; not picturesque to a painter's eye, but exhibiting the more delightful appearance of individual prosperity. ”

“ Not that the farm house should be like the town or the village house, in character, style, or architecture, but that it should, in its own proper character, express all the comfort, repose, and quietude which belong to the retired and thoughtful occupation of him who inhabits it. Sheltered in its own secluded, yet independent domain, with a cheerful, intelligent exterior, it should exhibit all the pains-taking in home embellishment and rural decoration that becomes its position, and which would make it an object of attraction and regard. ”

“ There are, in almost all places, in the vicinity of the dwelling, portions of ground which can be appropriated to forest trees without detriment to other economical uses, if applied in the proper way. Any one who passes along 182 a high road and discovers the farm house, seated on the margin or in the immediate vicinity of a pleasant grove, is immediately struck with the peculiarly rural and picturesque air which it presents, and thinks to himself that he should love such a spot for his own home, without reflecting that he might equally as well create one of the same character. ”

“ The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country, has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge, the grass-plot before the door, the little flower-bed bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice ”

“ Within the stone or stucco-covered brick cottages of farmer and villager, and in the rear yard bounded by bake-house, wash-house and animal shed, the household duties are performed by the mother of the family, or by a daughter that can be spared from field-work. ”

“ There is no home-look and no home-atmosphere. I love that country better than I like this; but, if you kill me for it, this drive is picturesque. These dumpy little smooth, white, flounced and flowered cottages look like wicker-gates to a happy valley,—born, not built. The cottages of the country, in my thoughts, yes, and in my heart, are neither born nor built, but "put up,"—just for convenience, just to lodge in while waiting for something better, or till the corn is grown. ”

“ Every blade of grass is in its right place; every wayside shrub seemingly has been restrained and trained to grow in exactly the right and the proper way. Streaming by your car window goes a tastefully arranged succession of the thatched cottages, the huddled little towns, the meandering brooks, the ancient inns, the fine old country places, the high-hedged estates of the landed gentry, with rose-covered lodges at the gates and robust children in the doorways—just as you have always seen them in the picture books. ”

“ When prosperity and wealth came through the speedily profitable crops of tobacco, the houses improved. The home-lot or yard of the Southern planters showed a pleasant group of buildings, which would seem the most cheerful home of the colonies, only that all dearly earned homes are cheerful to their owners. There was not only the spacious mansion house for the planter with its pleasant porch, but separate buildings in which were a kitchen, cabins for the negro servants and the overseer, a stable, barn, coach-house, hen-house, smoke-house, dove-cote, and milk-room. ”

“ The country seats of the great land proprietors, with their accompaniments of lawn and plantation, extending as far as the eye can reach, form a part of the picture; and so do the cottages of the village peasantry, with their little gardens before the door, admitting a peep into the interior of the humble abode. In the aristocratical dwellings, half hidden in that paradise of groves and glades, we find every refinement that gold can purchase, or taste produce: in the huts, comfort, and its inseparable adjunct cleanliness, are the most striking characteristics. ”