Mrs. Farrell

Mrs. Farrell

This story of my fathers was first printed under the title of Private Theatricals in the Atlantic Monthly of 1875, while he was still editor of the magazine. It appeared a few years after Henry Jamess Gabrielle de Bergerac, and neither of the two short novels was ever republished by their authors. My fathers must have been written in the Concord Avenue house in Cambridge which he and my mother had just built and moved into. They were very proud of the new house, even of its mansard roof such as every house of the period was obliged to have, and which is reflected in the newly added French roofs of some of the houses near the church in West Pekin; but their greatest pride was in the library. My impressions of the house are those of rather extreme youth, but I can remember that it was lined with bookshelves bordered by bands of red, scalloped leather that were meant, as I now suppose, to keep the dust from the book tops but which were then pleasantly mysterious to the infant mind. There were very satisfactory tiles of Eastlake tendencies over the fireplace, picturing the seasons in yellow and brown, and a vast flat-topped desk in the middle of the room with rows of drawers on either side{vi} that went down to the floor, leaving a dark hole between them, which was useful as a dolls house when not occupied by my fathers feet. The room was at the back of the house, for greater quiet, and looked out into a deep, grassy yard divided down the center by a hedge of lilacs, and only invaded by birds and children. The background of Mrs. Farrell is the New England farm boarding house, which was the only form of simple country sojourn before summer cottages were imagined, and it is interesting to compare it with the farm boarding in The Vacation of the Kelwyns, written so many years after and giving a much fuller study of the country people. The farmhouse of this story, kept by the finer type of New England farmers, must, I think, have been the sort of summer place that my parents were always seeking, and the Kelwyns experience a picture of what they more often found. In the latter book the country people are of much poorer stuff than the Woodwards, but one feels in his handling of them the greater tenderness and understanding that age teaches, and youth, no matter how sympathetic, cannot compass. During the later summers, while we still lived in Cambridge, we tried many different kinds of farm board, and I wish I could remember more of them for comparison with those of Mrs. Farrell and the Kelwyns, but I can only recall one of all our landladies, a good-natured farmers wife, so stout that her apron strings only appeared where they were tied behind her. I made many solemn journeys{vii} around her in search of them, and I think it must have always been while she was frying doughnuts, for that act is firmly associated in my mind with her invisible apron strings. I was also vaguely conscious of a feud that raged between our hosts and their relations, over a family Bible that had reversed the squaring of the circle by having its corners worn off until it was quite round. It had been borrowed and wrongfully detained by a younger branch of the family, leaving hatred and uncharitableness behind. These reflections, I am afraid, do not throw any great light on the practical conditions of farm boarding, but they are all I have. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 56970
Author: Howells, William Dean
Release Date: Apr 12, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English