The House

The House by Eugene Field (1893)

The House recounts the extended saga of Reuben Baker, an amateur astronomer, and his wife Alice, who spend nearly two decades dreaming of owning their own home. Their fantasy begins in the earliest days of marriage as a modest cottage adorned with roses and honeysuckle, inflated briefly by hopes of an inheritance from Reuben's wealthy Aunt Susan, then deflated when she leaves him only nine hundred dollars and a hideous wax flower-piece. The dream shifts through successive incarnations — a Norman-Gothic villa, a cottage in the typhoid-ridden Paradise Park, a suburban retreat in Elmdale — each abandoned for practical reasons, while the couple's family grows to include children Galileo, Herschel, Fanny, Josephine, and Erasmus. Nineteen years into this planning, Alice impulsively purchases the old Schmittheimer place on what is officially Clarendon Avenue (still labeled Mush Street on the lamp-posts) for nine thousand five hundred dollars, mostly financed through a mortgage-like "deed of trust." The purchase is enabled by a one-thousand-dollar advance from Reuben's elderly family friend Mr. Black, secured after an awkward visit to Cincinnati, and negotiated with help from neighbor Mr. Denslow, who manages the practical details while his wife supplies decorating enthusiasm. Reuben cannily has a small adjoining thirty-three-foot strip deeded to himself alone, half-jokingly securing a refuge from Alice's domestic authority. What follows is a comic chronicle of home renovation presided over by boss carpenter "Uncle Si" Plum (whose sideline is coffin-building) and painter Mr. Krome, amid constant interference from neighbors (the Baylors, Tiltmans, Rushes, Denslows), Alice's sister Adah (who worships her friend Maria's house in St. Joe), and a parade of self-interested visitors: real-estate men Colonel Bobbett Doller and Mr. Leet each try to sell Reuben adjoining strips of land; multiple insurance agents (Teddy, Doller again, Jeems, Macleod) besiege the household with competing fire, marine, and life policies; and neighbor Belville Rock offers to pay for painting the house, while wealthy Mr. Black eventually funds three thousand dollars in additional improvements after cautioning against extravagance. Domestic comedy runs throughout: disputes over closets, hardwood floors, paint color, and a butler's pantry; Alice's insistence on making a will excluding Reuben from full inheritance; Reuben's disastrous foray into gardening, including hiring a con man named Percival Wax who steals his wheelbarrow and tools, then later reappears posing as a night watchman and is caught sleeping in the barn a second time; a poison-ivy affliction Reuben tries fruitlessly to claim against his accident insurance; destructive workmen, a stray cow, and a horse that eats the lilac bushes; a mistaken shooting of a homemade scarecrow by a policeman; and a fine Reuben must pay for illegally watering the lawn during restricted hours, which he resolves to fight through neighborhood political action. Reuben also befriends neighbor Burr Robbins, a retired circus proprietor whose yard is filled with exotic animals, and is scandalized upon first encountering a woman riding a bicycle in bloomers. Throughout, Reuben's eccentric passions — astronomy, antique armor, curios, and pet birds — repeatedly clash with Alice's and the neighbors' more conventional domestic tastes, as the house's design becomes a patchwork of competing influences even as construction continues.

By Eugene Field · First published 1893 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Humor · 25 chapters · 53,646 words

First lines

It was either Plato the Athenian, or Confucius the Chinese, or Andromachus the Cretan -- or some other philosopher whose name I disremember -- that remarked once upon a time, and the time was many centuries ago, that no woman was happy until she got herself a home. It really makes no difference who first uttered this truth, the truth itself is and always has been recognized as one possessing nearly all the virtues of an axiom.

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Poetry · Nostalgia · Childhood · Memories · Family · Home · Sentimental · Whimsical · Imagination · Fantasy · Dreams · Youth

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The House is listed on Textopian as a novel by Eugene Field, dated 1893 CE.

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