26 
House & Garden 
THE 
GENTLEMAN AT 
HOME 
N that nice old mediaeval poem, “Le Roman de la Rose”, are found 
A these lines—“Whoever aims at being a gentleman must keep him¬ 
self from pride and idleness.” 
With pride we are not concerned, for this is not to be a disquisition 
on ethics, but with idleness and its opposite virtue, industry, we are 
mightily concerned, since it has much to do with the making of a home 
and the acquiring of contentment from it. The happy man is the indus¬ 
trious one, and he is most happy whose industry is devoted to the 
enrichment of his home. 
These are broad statements, so we must set about to explain them. 
I T is generally conceded to be the better part of wisdom for a man 
to engage the services of an architect in the building of his house. 
That is what architects are for. If we didn’t employ them, archi¬ 
tects would starve. Likewise, we would make many lamentable mistakes 
in our designs and constructions—such as putting into that house all the 
delightful but incongruous little details we promised ourselves to put in 
when we came to build, or placing bathrooms where there was no plumb¬ 
ing system or making our design so out of scale that the house looked as 
though it suffered from dropsy. This is what invariably happens when 
a layman thinks he knows more than the architect—and his house looks 
it. There are innumerable homes scattered over this broad and pleasant 
land which attest to this fact. 
The wise man, then, employs an architect. But the wise man does 
not move out and let the architect move in, nor does any sensible archi¬ 
tect desire him to. 
The successful house is the result of intelligent cooperation between 
the architect and the client, for the architect’s business is to express, in 
the mundane materials of construction, the client’s idea of the sort of 
house he wants. He crystallizes the client’s dream, he precipitates the 
filmy substance of a desire into the concrete essence of a house. 
T HE architect can build you a house,, but he cannot make you a 
home. I his is the point where the gentleman enters upon the 
scene in the leading role. In common parlance he is known as 
a handy man about the house; in the spirit of “Le Roman de la Rose”, 
he is the industrious gentleman. 
We generally think of the handy man as one who, in his youth, mani¬ 
fested a penchant for playing with tools, and who, in middle age, has 
never entirely recovered from it. The sort of person who can drive a 
nail without bruising the board, who can saw in a straight line, who is 
ready with the glue pot, who can screw together broken chairs, mend 
china, hang pictures, adjust roller shades, lay carpet, put on locks and 
fix doorbells. These things are accounted a great virtue, and many men 
pride themselves on possessing it. For a matter of fact, this readiness 
is nothing unusual, it is quite commonplace. What is unusual is 
creative industry, the gift that makes it possible for a man to take the 
bare house that the architect hands him and, by ingenuity, incorporate 
those pleasant little marks of his personality and skill that will make 
the house his home. 
During this past year I have been searching for examples of just such 
creative industry and I find their name is legion. Country houses 
especially seem to be ripe fields for this sort of endeavor. Here it is an 
ingle nook walled in with bookshelves, there it is an ornate shelf for 
china, here an unusual system of porch lighting, there a superb use of 
commonplace objects. One country living room had indirect lighting 
made possible by ordinary wooden chopping bowls suspended beneath 
the globes by ornate Chinese tassels. In another a sluggish stream was 
dammed and harnessed to furnish light and power. A third had a rough 
stone fireplace built by the owner’s hand and equipped with an elec¬ 
trically-run spit for al fresco cooking. Each of them was an evidence 
of the industry of the owner, and whenever I found them, I found men 
proud of their homes and happy in them. 
S OME wise person has said that there are two kinds of people who 
have homes—those who, when they arrive home, say, “Where’ll we 
go?” and those who ask, “What'll we do?” Having a home and 
not living in it may help support the road house and the local country 
club, but it does not create contentment. Industry creates contentment, 
and creative industry in one’s home is the finest contentment of all. 
This creative industry may find expression in a dozen different ways 
and in each instance the expression will have some lasting effect. It 
may take the form of a collecting hobby—pewter or old chairs or china 
or coins or racing pictures or band-boxes. Or it may lead to gardening, 
which is a God-given hobby no one can resist once he feels the stirring 
of it within him. Or it may take the architectural form and be expressed, 
as I have said, in laying up a fireplace with one’s own hands. What¬ 
ever avenue his interest chooses to pursue, it will bring a man the greatest 
satisfaction when it leads to the enrichment of his home. 
T HUS far the handy man makes an ideal picture, his contentment 
well nigh approaches domestic Nirvana. There is another side 
to the portrait, and we would not be playing fair unless we 
looked upon it. The handy man may overdo. He may become too 
handy. His hobby may ride him. He may become so interested in 
doing things about the house that he neglects more important affairs. 
It may cause him to lose his perspective. He may suffer from what 
“Le Roman de la Rose” warns against—pride! 
It is possible for a man to become so handy about the house that when 
professional and skilled talent is required, he prefers to do the work 
himself—and make a botch of it. He may become so wedded to his 
innocuous industry that he loses interest in the bigger job of the day’s 
work, slighting that which brings in the necessary coin of the realm for 
that which tickles his domestic fancy. He may even get so self-centered 
about his hobby that he neglects to be interested in the pleasure of other 
people. In short, lose his balance. 
It is a strange fact, but have you ever noticed that the sons of handv 
men make the best golfers ? When a household depends upon one soli¬ 
tary member to do all the pleasant, little, odd chores, the other members 
of the family will never bother themselves to learn how. Everybody 
plays but father. The instinct for domestic industry does not appear 
to be inherited. Father gets all the contentment, and, somehow, he 
can t quite understand why the rest of the family does not share in his 
delight. It rather warps his judgment, and this is unfortunate for 
everyone concerned. 
Like everything else in life, the most estimable hobby must be taken 
in moderation. One must not be handy to his own hurt. For the over¬ 
doing of a hobby leads eventually to satiety. The day can come when 
a man has worked on his house and in his garden to such an extent 
that he loathes the very sight of them. 
1 he satisfaction of being the gentleman at home, then, should be 
enjoyed in small portions. This sort of contentment is too heady a 
wine to be drunk in large goblets. It is the liqueur of a rounded life, a 
sweet substance to be tasted a sip at a time—then cork the bottle. 
