The Dangers of Domesticity

How a Double Life Ruins the Summer for Many Miserable Males

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

AM, I hope, a respectable family man.

I can at least say confidently that my family is respectable. In any case, let me not be counted among the modems who disdain the ties of home and hearth when I say that a serious condition of homelessness is imposed upon thousands of husbands every year by too much domesticity.

This statement is apparently contradictory, —but the circumstances which give rise to it are peculiar. This homelessness to which I refer is really thrust upon thousands of men during the summer months by their attempt to be at home in too many places at once.

Let me sketch the anatomical chart of fashionable married society just as it breaks apart for the summer, and,, having diagnosed the disease, I will cheerfully suggest the remedy.

The Summer Situation

HERE is what happens.

The moving mania, relic of our age-old migratory instinct, which we share with moose, measles and humming birds, seizes upon us all along about lilac-time. Immediately begins a series of family discussions and the early summer sees thousands of families leaving comfortable homes, expending large sums of money, and putting up with a myriad inconveniences simply in order to be somewhere else.

City folk flock to the adjacent suburbs. Mrs. Suburbus rents her house in Lulu Park, Bronxville, and seeks the shores of the sounding sea, while the lady who owns the seashore villa, "Pebble Rest" or "Clam View," retires to the mountains, where she dispossesses a family of mountaineers who, in turn, sub-let an apartment on Sixth Avenue commanding a magnificent view of the 53rd St. Elevated Station.

We are all doubtless familiar with the childhood game of "Going to Jerusalem," in which the contestants thrash about a row of chairs and someone is always left out. This is exactly what happens every season when the great annual migration takes place, with the added cruelty that the individual who is left out is always the same. I refer to that unfortunate person, the male provider, pater familias, or chief grub, whose business responsibilities tie him for a. large part of the time to the immediate vicinity of his office.

It is here that a delusive element of sophistry enters into the situation. After the Tompkins family plans are settled, Mr. Tompkins forms a sketchy outline of what he will do for "himself during the summer. He will take a room at his club for the month of July, share an apartment with Brown for two weeks in August, and pad out the season by overnight visits to long-lost friends from whom, because of matrimony, he has gradually drifted away.

"I shall get along all right, my dear," he says, putting all possible pathos into his expression, "and, of course, I shall see you all every week-end."

O, Fatal Error! O, carelessly spoken word!

Little though he knows it, glossed over by an expression of what he supposes to be the perfection of marital devotion, his summer is ruined, his doom sealed.

Mark what happens. When the last goodbye has been shrieked to the receding train, Tompkins saunters out of the station, an evil gleam in his eye. He is free! For a few weeks, during his days in town, he becomes a social menace. He frequents his club with bursts of joviality that point to the existence of a mysterious cache of private-stock. The bachelors of his acquaintance peer at him over their newspapers and say, "Tompkins' family must all be away."

He entertains all and sundry, takes in the roof-shows, plays poker, arranges motor parties and dances with abandon. Then, toward the end of the week, he inspects his haggard countenance in the mirror, with the verdict, "not so good," and betakes himself to domesticity at the sea-shore, with his general manager. His arrival is an ordeal. His paleness, attributed by his wife to over-work and city heat, is an object of annoying solicitude. For two or three days he is thrust into all manner of violent forms of recreation, for his health's sake, when what he really needs is to have the dear children removed at least thirty leagues off so that father can get forty-eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I have seen men actually go to pieces under the strain of this sort of double life. Poor Dick Randall! How well I remember meeting him one Monday afternoon not long ago. He was the color of a tomato. "By Jove, old man," I said, "you do look well."

"Don't!" he said, bursting into tears,—"I never felt worse in my life. Ouch, don't touch my shoulder; I'm peeling!"

Poor Dick, he was just a reddened sepulchre of infirmity. It is bad enough to be told that you look ill when you're not, but to be told that you look splendidly when all you want is a dash of contraband and a few kind words, is much too much.

The Second Phase

BUT that is only the initial stage, which had a few moments of mad gaiety to redeem it. The second period is nothing but gloom. It is all darkness and discontent. I refer to the time when the light goes out of all the follies of the metropolis and Tompkins and his ilk begin to realize their real homelessness. I will give the average semi-detached husband about three weeks of so-called liberty, and after that I will point out to you the most miserable and lonely man in existence. Let three weeks pass and you will inevitably find Tompkins bored with his club, bored with town, bored with himself and bored with all about him.

The truth is the poor fellow is at home nowhere. He never has more than a third of his personal belongings where he wants them. His razors are missing, or his brushes, or his evening clothes, and he can't, for the life of him, remember where he saw them last. Verily, I speak as one having authority, for I have spent just such parti-coloured summers inhabiting city and country clubs, boats and houses, house-boats and boat-houses, finding nowhere comfort and contentment.

Never again! I vowed vehemently.

Of course, the solution is obvious. Temporarily, the family must go to the seashore. They wanted to go; let them go. This is not heartlessness, but common sense. To any evicted male I heartily recommend the scheme which Tom Gilfoyle and I have put into effect this year, namely, that of temporarily divorcing our families and trading domiciles.

The Touching Case of Gilfoyle

GILFOYLE, who is married, is one of those city-bred cliff-dwellers with an eyrie on Madison Avenue who has never been able to escape the asphalt except by the hideous weekend route which I have described. Yet deep in his heart there has always existed a passionate love of birds and flowers. He once confessed to me what I thought was a very touching thing. It appears that, during the first week of his family's absence at the sea-shore, he had been so tortured with suppressed desires to be out in the open that he had actually applied to the Park Department for a permit to cut the grass near the 83rd Street entrance. The application was held up by various objections; he was referred from one city department to another and was treated very rudely over the telephone by a delegate of the grass-cutters' union. In short, the matter seemed very difficult to arrange, and in the meantime the poor chap was literally pining away from acute bucoli'cism. When I mentioned my new ball-bearing lawn-mower, Gilfoyle's wan face flushed with pleasure.

Now, my own case is a very different one. I am a veteran suburbanite. By the time I get the family safely despatched to their favorite mountain resort, I am a bit fed up on lawn-mowers and rakes and such like. Owing to the gradual extinction of day labourers in my county I have become quite a competent handy man. But I do not sing at my work, and I regard a neatly coiled garden hose lying in the grass much as I would a virulent snake about to spring and bite me in my leisure hours. The idea of having an apartment in the city with no lawn to cut, no garden to weed, no cellar to clean fills me with joy.

Well, Gilfoyle and I thought of a wonderful plan and put the plan through, after violent battles with our respective families. Of course, they protested loyally at our proposal to spend our two isolated existences for three whole months without the eternal trotting back and forth from bachelordom to family life. But we were firm, and I am sure that when we all meet in glad reunion at the end of the summer they will approve our determination.

Gilfoyle's family are at Bar Harbour. He is at my house in the suburbs. My family are at Lenox, and I am at Gilfoyle's flat on Madison Avenue. I am able to enjoy the pleasures of the town in a leisurely and sensible fashion, without the harrowing sense of hurry and compression,—getting my exercise, when wanted, at nearby beaches or golf courses. Gilfoyle hops into his office every morning like a young antelope, my garden mud on his boots, his hands homy from contact with my lawnmower. We have both put on weight and acquired the ruddy glow of real well-being. Our consciences are at peace with the world and we really think with great tenderness and affection of the dear ones far away to whom we devote our honest toil, and whom we expect to see, if all goes well, in three months' time.