Upper house

“ The Upper House is filled with eminent financiers—men who think in millions and who under our glorious Constitution may not propose an expenditure of sixpence without the consent of Tom, Dick and Harry in the Commons—and they all talk the most excellent good sense. ”

“ The Upper House is appointed by the Crown, under the advice of the ministry of the day, but as a clamour has been raised against it as yielding too readily to the demands of the Lower House, a measure has been brought in for making its members elective for a term of years. ”

“ In the daytime, when the tenants were out at their various avocations, the upper part of the dingy old building was deserted, save by the housekeeper in the attics; while the counting-house abutting on the street was all life and bustle. ”

“ One type of dwelling, indeed, is found to be more or less prevalent through all the urban aggregation. That is the small four or five-roomed cottage, containing on the ground floor a front parlour, a kitchen, and a scullery built as an addition to the main part [101] of the house; and on the upper floor the bedrooms, the third bedroom in the five-roomed house being built over the scullery. And in such dwelling-places, if anywhere, is concealed the secret of the future of the people of England. ”

“ There is but one people, not a first and a second, and they need but one house for their representation. This house, let it be a simple, noble building, with an elevated roof, resting on tall and strong pillars. ”

“ We should not like to imitate it; while on the other hand, a part of our town-houses are almost always let, the proprietors inhabiting only the ‘bel étage.’ This again appears very strange to the English, and certainly is extremely inconvenient, for the presence of several families in one house is not favourable either to order or cleanliness. ”

“ The neighbourhood, it was equally manifest, was of the highest vogue and distinction: on one side was the dwelling of a fashionable tailor, who built a house out of every ten coats that he cut; on the other side was the residence of a retired tavern-keeper; and right opposite, on the other side of the street, was the mansion of one of the first aristocrats in the town, who had had neither a tailor nor a tavern-keeper in the family for a space of three full generations. ”

“ The lessee of his estates had let them advantageously to four substantial farmers; one of whom occupied the venerable old manor-house. Its quaint wooden gables and ornamental carpentry always arrested the attention of the passer by their venerable appearance.
A bay window, with five lights in two divisions, marked very distinctly the situation of the great hall; a noble apartment used only by the tenant as a vast store-room for the produce of his orchard and his garden. ”

“ Build a grand house in town; drive through the streets four-in-hand on the box of an elegant drag filled with fine fashionable ladies and gentlemen; give splendid entertainments to the rich, obsequious world, his wife, and all his family, and leave the poor and miserable beings of the earth most haughtily and severely alone. Be the great Oliver Ubertus, the wealthy, the proud, the generous grandee, the inventor of the celebrated larrikin couch—the favourite of princes, the Buckingham of the nineteenth century, the observed of all observers! ”

“ He shuffled across the wide stone-paved hall and, losing himself beneath the great arch of the short passage to the entrance-front, hastened to admit his new visitor. He gives us thereby the use of his momentary absence for a look at the place he has left.
This is the central hall, high and square, brown and grey, flagged beneath and timbered above, of an old English country-house; an apartment in which a single survey is a perception of long and lucky continuities. ”

“ Such was the tenant, who, wearied of her dull suburban home, a red brick house in the middle of a row of red brick houses; tired of the loneliness which never presses so much upon the spirits as when left solitary in the environs of a great city; pining for country liberty, for green trees, and fresh air; much caught by the picturesque-ness of Upton, and its mixture of old-fashioned stateliness and village rusticity ”

“ These houses are six, seven, and eight stories high. Every floor, with the exception of the first, which in all probability is used for business purposes, accommodates a family, and, among the poor classes, several families. It would be difficult to find a town where every part of the house is so fully put to use and little waste or idle room. ”

“ We were told, and I believe truly, that there are more house-proprietors—that is, more people who own the houses they live in—in the population than in any city of the Union; and I was struck by the immense number of dwellings of moderate dimensions, all trim and nice, freshly painted, with flowers in the windows, and little gardens of which we caught glimpses in our early drives through the clean, neat, well-ordered streets. ”

“ We have been hunting about for a permanent country home in the neighborhood, but no house is so difficult to get as one which has at once seclusion and convenience of position, which is neither of the suburban-villa style nor of the grand hall and castle dimensions. ”

“ Looking to the hill, crowned with its picturesque ruin, he sees the mansion of a noble citizen united with himself in zealous obedience to an equal law,—the peer who in the higher, or the burgess who in the lower house of parliament, consults for the weal of the community, and derives his own value and importance most from the trust reposed in him by his fellow-townsmen. ”

“ All the domestic offices of every kind being within the four walls of the house itself, there are none of these unsightly outhouses which so much disfigure most of our towns, and so greatly lessen the available garden-space. ”

“ The houses of the better class of people, however fragile in construction, stand somewhat back from the street, guarded by ponderous brick walls in order that the theory “every Englishman’s house is his castle” may be literally maintained. ”

“ The valley is lovely, and the King is building a house here; the grounds are partially laid out, we are living in a building which will form a part of the offices of the new house. My apartment is on the ground floor, and the King and Queen are above me. The people are an industrious race. ”

“ If it were not for the marble halls, and the decorations, and the foolishly expensive finish, the houses could be built round a court, and the flats could be shaped something like a Pompeiian house, with small sleeping-closets—only lit from the outside—and the rest of the floor thrown into two or three large cheerful halls, where all the family life could go on, and society could be transacted unpretentiously. ”

“ A glance shows its feudal relation to, and dependence upon, the great house behind which it nestles; some of the back-kitchens and offices of this great house, indeed, straggle out till they meet and merge themselves into this quadrangle. None the less, it presents to the enquiring gaze a specific character, of as old a growth, one might think, as the oak itself. Here servants have lived, it may be, since man first learned the trick of setting his foot on his brother's neck. ”

“ It is that their buildings have not been fine and austere enough. They have, in short, not treated their banking business sufficiently seriously.
25 V.
THE SMALL SUBURBAN HOUSE. Not only at election times, but always under modern conditions, the very small house is the most important unit in our towns. As long as the mechanic, the small tradesman, and the black-coated poor prefer to live in separate dwellings under separate roofs, each thinking of his little box of bricks as an Englishman’s castle, their little houses will occupy a larger space than any other type of building. ”

“ After a lingering inspection of the parlor, which looks so homelike because, like the dining-room, it is really lived in by the settlement residents, the visitor passes out the front door to study the exterior of the house and enjoy the old-fashioned garden. ”

“ It seems all wrong to be pulling down those thick walls; exposing the privacy of the inside of the house, its arrangement of rooms and fireplaces, and the occupant's taste in color and wall decorations. Two young women who take the walk up-town always look the other way when they pass this sad display; they say it's unfair to take advantage of the house. ”

“ Then Aunt Emma wanted to go with him, and another room or two was added for her; and so it went on till [200] the little law office had grown into a big, rambling country house of the most irregular shape, with small chambers opening out of large ones, doors, cupboards, entries, and staircases where you least expected them, little flights of steps leading up into rooms and down into rooms—just the sort of house, in short, which boys and girls delight in. ”

“ Passing through a broad court-yard, we enter the grand entrance-hall—a noble room some sixty or seventy feet in length, its lofty wall adorned with elegant frescoes, representing scenes from the life of Cæsar, including his celebrated Passing of the Rubicon, and his Death at the Senate House, &c. Passing up a superb, grand staircase, rich with statues of heathen deities and elegantly-wrought columns, we went [104] on to the state apartments of the house. ”

“ It will thus be seen that the only really private part was the house itself between the inner courtyard and the river; the great hall and both courtyards being practically open to the public under the supervision of the custodian at the outer gate, who was responsible only to the Queen, and was a constant source of friction with the foreign occupants of the house. ”

“ We are going to build this House for ourselves, and we shall expect the brethren and sisters, neighborhood after neighborhood, ward after ward, to turn out their proportion of men to come here and labor as they shall be notified by the proper authorities. ”

“ Within the house, some rooms had been thrown together, the walls richly yet harmoniously colored, and the sumptuous furniture thus received a proper setting. In contrast to the houses of even the wealthiest farmers, which expressed a nicely reckoned sufficiency of comfort, the place had an air of joyous profusion, of a wealth which delighted in itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Only that here in the courtyard the male element detached itself from the female; the neighbours following the Mayor up the staircase into the pension house, the neighbours’ wives remaining below in the courtyard. ”

“ Spaciousness without austerity and beauty without ostentation were the fundamental impressions the Big House gave. Its lines, long and horizontal, broken only by lines that were vertical and by the lines of juts and recesses that were always right-angled, were as chaste as those of a monastery. ”

“ One figures a remarkable building labeled Custom House, an interesting fiscal revival this population has made, and beyond, crowding up the hill, the painted walls of a number of comfortable inns clamor loudly. ”

“ Idiotic foreign visitors surveying this from train windows remark on the Englishman’s superb individualism, so that every man’s house is his castle. In the East End no man’s house [Pg 320] is his castle; every floor, and often every room, is a separate household, and sometimes these households entertain lodgers. This state of affairs the new Labour legislation will extend and perpetuate. ”

“ It has lately been decreed, that every house in the republic shall have fixed on the outside of the door, in legible characters, the name, age, birth-place, and profession of its inhabitants. Not the poorest cottager, nor those who are too old or too young for action, nor even unmarried ladies, are exempt from thus proclaiming the abstract of their history to passers-by. ”

“ I don’t admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as that stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, and door-steps, and a real balcony—greener than I ever see now, except at watering places; and even they afford but a poor imitation. ”

“ But aren't forty rooms with all the closets and storerooms, and stairways and halls, and bays and oriels and dungeons going to make a large house for one family? Can't we work the same idea on a smaller scale? ”

“ But look at us now. Suppose a posse was to rush the house. They bust into the kitchen side. Where are they? Just the same as if they hadn't got in at all. I bolt the doors from the inside of the big room, and they're shut out agin. Or suppose they take the big room? Then a couple of us slide out on this balcony and spray 'em with lead. This house ain't going to be took till the last room is filled full of the sheriff's men!"
He paused on the balcony and looked proudly over the big, baronial room below them. It seemed huger than ever from this viewpoint, and the men below them were dwarfed. ”

“ In the large halls erected for meetings, theatrical performances, spectacular displays, and games, the people found themselves at their ease, at home as it were. They frequently fraternised at the festivities which were interspersed among the days of work. If the little houses, where each lived as he listed, were modest ones, the common-house, on the contrary, displayed dazzling luxury and beauty, such as was appropriate for the sovereign abode of the people-king. ”

“ It is altogether in a ramshackly state, and it will be rather an advantage for the next Governor-General not to try any repairs; the floors have given way, so that the tables against the walls look like writing-desks, with perhaps a thought too much of a slope; and if it tumbles down, he can build himself a house with good doors and windows. ”

“ The house of the mayor was upon a hill, extremely picturesque, looking down upon a deep valley, where also people lived and were building. That is one of the dangers of building a house upon a hill. You have, for instance, bought a piece of land upon a hill, a piece large enough for a house and a little garden; and you have built a beautiful house, and planted trees and flowers around it, rejoiced in your house and in your magnificent view which extends over the whole lake and great part of the country. ”