Our Picturesque Ancestors

From John the Builder: Our Picturesque Ancestors

My Dear Architect:

I've no doubt it would be vastly agreeable to you to have Mrs. John keep up this end of the correspondence. Very gratifying, too, to another party,--the paper-makers. It would be a big thing for them. But I don't want to hire a housekeeper, even in so good a cause, not till I have a house.

In spite of Mrs. John's devotion to her first love (I mean the stone walls), it is, as you say, quite possible that our family mansion will be wood; and Barkis is willing to hear what you have to say about it.

One topic in your reply to my wife's historical report I hope you will work up more fully. Just explain, if you can, why the cheap buildings we have nowadays are so much less satisfactory to look at than those built fifty or a hundred years ago. Do you suppose the bravest artist that ever swung a brush would dare put an ordinary two-story house of modern style on the front seat in a New England landscape? It would ruin his reputation if he did,--even without the French roof. Can you tell why? There's no such objection to the homesteads of a generation or two ago. Don't tell me age is venerable, and moralize about the sacred associations and old-time memories that lend a halo of poetry and romance and what-'s-his-name to these relics of the past. That's all very well in its place, but if our grandchildren can discover anything artistic or even picturesque in our common houses of today, they'll be a progeny of enormous imaginations,--regular Don Quixotes; windmills will be nothing to them.

Yours,

John