House Hunting as an Outdoor Amusement - Page 2

neglected in this country. I have heard, indeed, of old ladies who
enlivened the intervals of their devotions in this manner, but to the
general run of people the thing is unknown. Yet a more entertaining way
of spending a half-holiday--having regard to current taste--it should be
difficult to imagine. An empty house is realistic literature in the
concrete, full of hints and allusions if a little wanting in tangible
humanity, and it outdoes the modern story in its own line, by beginning
as well as ending in a note of interrogation. That it is not more
extensively followed I can only explain by supposing that its merits are
generally unsuspected. In which case this book should set a fashion.

One singular thing the house-hunter very speedily discovers is, that the
greater portion of the houses in this country are owned by old gentlemen
or old ladies who live next door. After a certain age, and especially
upon retired tradespeople, house property, either alone or in common
with gardening, exercises an irresistible fascination. You always know
you are going to meet a landlord or landlady of this type when you read
on your order to view, "Key next door but one." Calling next door but
one, you are joined after the lapse of a few minutes by a bald, stout
gentleman, or a lady of immemorial years, who offers to go over "the
property" with you. Apparently the intervals between visits to view are
spent in slumber, and these old people come out refreshed and keen to
scrutinise their possible new neighbours. They will tell you all about
the last tenant, and about the present tenants on either side, and about
themselves, and how all the other houses in the neighbourhood are damp,
and how they remember when the site of the house was a cornfield, and
what they do for their rheumatism. As one hears them giving a most
delightful vent to their loquacity, the artistic house-hunter feels all
the righteous self-applause of a kindly deed. Sometimes they get
extremely friendly. One old gentleman--to whom anyone under forty must
have seemed puerile--presented the gentle writer with three fine large
green apples as a kind of earnest of his treatment: apples, no doubt, of
some little value, since they excited the audible envy of several little
boys before they were disposed of.

Sometimes the landlord has even superintended the building of the house
himself, and then it often has peculiar distinctions--no coal cellar, or
a tower with turrets, or pillars of ornamental marble investing the
portico with disproportionate dignity. One old gentleman, young as old
gentlemen go, short of stature, of an agreeable red colour, and with
short iron-grey hair, had a niche over the front door containing a piece
of statuary. It gave