SAM WESELOWSKI

The house was quiet and the world was calm

Daily custom grows up about us like a stone-wall, and
consolidates itself into almost as material an entity
as mankind’s strongest architecture.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

for Aaron Peck

A flight of red free-stone steps, fenced in
by a balustrade of curiously wrought 
iron, ascends from the courtyard 
to the spacious porch, over which 
is a balcony, with an iron balustrade 
of similar pattern and workmanship 
to that beneath. There was an older,
more traditional drive, winding away
between rhododendron bushes. There
happened to be a yew tree in the middle
of the lawn. She soon found her way
through the white gate, and down the hilly slope,
and found the latched wicket that guarded
the bricked pathway up to the house.
The owners were wealthy, cared little 
for money, and had authorised the agents 
to let the house on any reasonable terms, 
and it was really a bargain to anyone that wanted it.
I found it to be a good-sized country house, 
comfortably furnished, and, to all appearance, 
well built, standing in enclosed grounds, 
and on a healthy elevation. Behind it
was a smooth lawn fringed with odoriferous
shrubs, and before it a tasteful flower garden.
A low iron railing stood out from the wall.
The hall, which was lofty as the two stories
of the rest of the house, and the wide porch
with its quaint stone seats, were the only remains
of the original building; the rest had been added
at various later dates, some half-ruined walls
and outbuildings having been restored and taken
into the plan of the house. It lay south
of Wareham, between Corfe Castle and Branksea Island, 
and in the midst of scenery which has a peculiar charm 
of its own, a curious blending of level pasture 
and steep hillside, barren heath and fertile 
water-meadow; here a Dutch landscape, 
grazing cattle, and winding stream; 
there a suggestion of some lonely Scottish deer-walk; 
an endless variety of outline. The rooms
were deserted. The terrace, a broad gravel-walk 
with huge flowerpots along it at intervals, 
bounded one side of the house, and ran 
then for some distance round a lawn 
of green velvet, enriched by flowerbeds. 
The roses were in full luxuriance, showing 
every possible tint from pure white to deep 
red-black; and geraniums bloomed in scarlet 
and crimson masses. There is a flight, or rather 
two flights, of old stone steps, that meet together
in a sort of little balcony at the top.
They tower behind ancient black chestnut trees,
five or six stories high, grandly built, 
adorned with stucco tendrils, their date
displayed triumphantly on the gable.
Decrepit lifts with wrought-iron grilles
go up and down in their tiled stairwells.
The gravelled garden paths lay in dazzling sunshine.
The drone of bees and busy presence of insect 
toil is soothing and melodious. The forests,
sombre and dull, stood motionless
and silent on each side of the broad stream.
Main house, wing and churchyard wall 
formed a horseshoe, enclosing a small ornamental garden 
at whose open end a pond and a jetty with a moored boat
could be seen, and close by a swing, its horizontal
seat-board hanging at head and foot on two ropes 
from posts that were slightly out of true.
From behind its high crenellated walls 
pierced with picturesque loopholes 
and supported by gigantic buttresses 
anchoring cyclopean masonry at the foot 
of a strange mountain, it defied the invading ocean. 
Then, at a point where the road, dipping
a little, cut through the dark heart
of a plantation, which was completely walled in
on every side, an avenue of contorted, stunted
limes led to the entrance gates of granite,
topped with stone balls. The only reason 
for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing 
of two footpaths at right angles hard by, which may 
have crossed there and thus for a good five hundred 
years, and which has long since been improved
off the face of the earth. The house assumed
an unnatural and depressing stillness
in a new and flourishing colony,
sufficiently irregular to drive land surveyors 
into a state of distraction. The walls
were toned down to a soft, low grey, 
on which the golden and silvery lichen lay 
in harmonious colouring. Under the beetling,
weather-stained white cliff, was a low fence,
and its bluish grey was touched with shades of gold 
and silvery green where the lichens and mosses crept 
over it, while one long southern wall was clothed 
with trumpet-ash and magnolia, myrtle and rose, 
as with a closely interwoven curtain of greenery, 
from which the small latticed windows flashed
back the sunshine, drawing through the maze
to reconnoitre the house again. But
when a search was instituted in any of these 
suspected quarters, nobody was found.
There was only a sunk fence where the Chinese
honeysuckle climbed, where a large bow window, 
invisible before, bulged out from the main building.
The slight elevation which formed the lower
boundary of this little domain, was crowned
by a neat stone wall, of sufficient height
to prevent the escape of the deer. 
On the other side a little stream
of water flowed from the fountain,
and made its way out under the wall,
among nettles and briars: ducklings
were swimming on it. The shadow
of the house lay across the sward, and preserving
the hoarfrost, which, in the sunshine, was melting
into diamond drops on the lingering China
roses. The vulgar little street, in this view,
offered scant relief from the vulgar little room. 
The homestead was more than substantial. A square 
of stone wall ran round the whole, with a stout turret 
at each corner; the gate was framed in stone, with a coat 
of arms above, fitted to outweather a century
of hurricanes. On a knoll in the marshes
stand the ruins of an old croft-house.
The mansion, which had been built
with all kinds of architectural conceits, was
a building well suited to the forest scenery on which 
it closely bordered, with its time-mellowed 
red-brick, and grey stone coignings, and huge 
oaken beams, whose ends were grotesquely carved.
It had originally been a watchtower. It commanded
sixty miles or more of scenery, flat, undulating, and 
mountainous; wood, water, and pastures; towns, villages, and hamlets.
It is furnished with everything that is costly 
and comfortable, with ornaments and articles of vertu 
from all parts of the earth, under suave feminine rule. 
Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons 
round yonder lofty mansion, and many a lozenge-shaped 
window glancing back the light of the sun with the clear, 
sharp gleam of the diamond. A long gravelly drive 
leads up to the principal entrance, which is cut off 
from the park with iron fencing and chains. 
On the other side of the house there are conservatories 
of flowers and extensive gardens. Behind, at a short distance, 
there is stabling for many horses, shut out from view 
by shrubs and young trees. It stood far back 
in its own grounds, which were parcelled out 
into flower garden, orchard, and vegetable garden—
also there was a charming walk called “the glebe,” 
a series of meadows sloping upward, bounded 
by a pleasant green path and a hedge 
fragrant with the sweetbrier-rose and eglantine.
The deep-set lattices did not shake. No escape
was possible. That big clumsy building 
with the Prussian eagle over the doorway 
is the Rathhaus. The door had figured glass
let into it in place of the upper panels. 
Not a rood of ground under or around
the house was solid; it was all a great warren,
only that tunneling and burrowing had been done
by men and not by conies, which meant 
that you had to lift out every inch 
of your two thousand feet of pipe. Indeed, 
there was a legend in Little Yafford 
that it had once belonged to a farm. 
The sunsets are more beautiful here
than anywhere else in all this western land. 
The twilights are full of yellows, and delicate neutral 
tints, and shifting lights. There were no more 
fertile pastures than those which surrounded it 
in all the fen country, not a pleasanter house 
and garden, no better shooting
than was to be had close by, and with
the advantage of being near an important 
town, and not far from a railway station.
Worked in the early days mostly by means of lashes
on the backs of slaves, its yield had been paid for
in its own weight of human bones. The fences
were out of repair, and the cattle suffered 
from neglect. A lane of mud and stones ended at the door.
It was situated on the edge of a hill. The heavens
above the house seemed to be draped in black rags,
held up here and there by pins of fire. The moon 
had sailed to the other side of the house, and the shadow
of the night lay heavy upon the screw piles, in this
steaming climate. The grand old house stands,
as I have said, on a plateau, protected from the north 
and east by the hills, down which the road
winds in and out like a white ribbon. On the west
it faces the Atlantic, and the lawn, merging
with the park, falls rapidly seawards till it meets
the natural barrier of the beach. Originally built
in the fifteenth century, it had received its last
improvement, with the most lavish expense,
during the reign of Anne; and it united the Gallic
magnificence of the latter period with the strength
and grandeur of the former; it was in a great part
overgrown with ivy, and, where that insidious ornament
had not reached, the signs of decay, and even ruin,
were fully visible. The trees around probably remembered
the laying of the first stone. If you passed straight through,
you came out upon a terrace, where grew
a magnificent stone-pine and some robust agaves.
The house and everything in it, and the adjacent farm,
and the right of cutting timber in the forests, and
the neighbouring quarry, are all the undoubted
property of the Frau. It had been a hotel of a great family
in the old regime, with Swiss roofs, Cairene windows, 
Italian balconies and a Persian court, which was bowered 
amongst lime-trees and filbert trees, gaunt girders, 
mighty chimney-stacks, and a quaint old iron weathercock, 
with a marvellous specimen of the ornithological race 
pointing its gilded beak due west. Its steep overhanging roof, 
and porched doorway, gave it a sleepy, reposeful look, 
as though it were watching the ongoings 
of the little town through half-closed lids, and taking 
small cognizance thereof. But the gradual descent 
of the grassy land causes it to look very much nearer,
a straggling, in-and-out, spacious building
bearing some inexplicable, indefinable, but
most indubitable resemblance to Noah’s ark,
adorned with pediment and colonnade,
a colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, 
with its Doric portico, the stone vases
full of bright scarlet geraniums, the velvet lawn 
and gaudy flowerbeds, the belt of fine 
old timber, the deer-park across the ha-ha.
Pools of water stood between them and often 
covered them, and blocks of coal of all sizes, 
which had shaken from the corves, lay in the road.
Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America
will you find a more patrician-like house.
Entering from the street through a little wooden gateway 
of a bright green colour, a narrow pathway, paved 
with round pebbles that were very trying to people 
with tender feet, conducted you to the front door, 
on which shone a brass plate of surpassing brightness
covered by an immensely high-pitched roof
of palm-leaves, resting on beams blackened
by the smoke of many torches. Over this, grim
and weird-looking in the moonlight, rose
the framework of the derrick. To the right,
beyond the screen of jasmine which climbed
up to form a pergola, you could glimpse
a little courtyard full of bric-à-brac, cases
of empty bottles, a few broken chairs. 
The first part of the building was a two-story
structure receding along a vertical axis.
At the main entrance, fifteen feet high,
there stands a red-lacquered memorial arch.
All the way round, in twenty segments,
there stretches a crenellated wall
of crushed limestone. This was the happy
side of the house, and had been built
by a wealthier family, in the days
of the real estate boom. Sprinkled over hill 
and dale lay cabins and farmhouses, shut out 
from the world by the forests and the rolling hills
toward the east. Yonder is another grove, 
with unkempt lawn, great magnolias, and grass-grown paths.
In this latter end of autumn, with a sparse remnant 
of yellow leaves falling slowly athwart the dark 
evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the house 
too had an air of autumnal decline. The windows
are enormous, and would appear abnormal 
in any other city but this. All the blinds
were down. Not a sound of everyday labour, 
indoors or out, broke the stillness sitting there. 
The opaque darkness of the house seemed to swallow 
it, a black blotch upon the whiteness of the night.
A terrace festooned with Virginia creeper and low-growing 
monthly roses bounded the lawn to the south, below 
which lay a long strip of flowerbed, and beyond, 
a broad hayfield, stretching down as far as the village.
They say they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and 
every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.
Whole tribes of Indians had perished in the exploitation. 
I should have liked to have seen the little octagon room again.
This was the entire outfit of the household.

Sam Weselowski is a poet and essayist from Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of I Love My Job Too (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2024), Triple Rainforest (Veer2, 2023), and Love Poems <3 (Distance No Object, 2021). He lives in the West Midlands, United Kingdom.