But they would have been a bitch to heat

One thing that most Americans do at some point in their lives is something I've never done, or had any desire to do: own a house. Since I left home at 18 I have been a life-long renter, and that has been just fine with me. You couldn't find a monthly mortgage as low as many of the rents I've paid over the years, and I haven't had to worry about paying taxes, or insurance, or taking care of repairs, or other major maintenance situations (in two of the four houses I've rented in my life, I did take care of minor repairs...or rather, my handyman husband did).

Given my indifference to the very idea of owning my own home, I find it interesting that one of my favorite things to do is visit old homes that have become museums. I love looking at the size and layout of the rooms -- so often, even though a house may look large from the outside, the rooms really are not big at all, especially when you consider the large families and the voluminous skirts people generally went in for in the olden days -- the furniture, the knick-knacks (despite having no use for knick-knacks in my own home), the dishes and other kitchen utensils that might be on display, the arrangements for using the toilet, for taking a bath (my favorite example of the former was an elegant wooden "throne" in the master bedroom of an old plantation house in New Iberia, Louisiana, whereas my favorite bathroom was at Waddesdon Manor near Aylesbury, England -- the single round window had a stunning view of a huge, beautiful fountain in the center of a formal garden). I love the staircases, all the fireplaces -- even though I know they did a lousy job of keeping the inhabitants warm -- I love imagining what it might have been like to live in these houses.

On my trip to Rockland in early October (Notes of Oct. 11 and 19), between the main building of the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the converted church down the street that houses the Wyeth Center, is the Farnsworth Victorian Homestead. The last member of the well-to-do Farnsworth family bequeathed the building that became the art museum to the town, as well as her family home, with the stipulation that everything in the later structure remain essentially as it was. Although Lucy Farnsworth died in 1935, unmarried and childless at the age of 97; the house had been very little changed from the mid-1800s when it was built; thus, visitors are, indeed, able to see a comfortably middle-class "Victorian homestead."

There was the "second parlor," which was actually the room the family spent the most time in, where guests were routinely received -- the 1800s' equivalent of today's den or family room. This was a good example of what I was saying about rooms not being as large as you would think they would need to be. Across the hall was the formal parlor, much larger, much more "elegant" (actually quite ugly, in that way attempts by the Victorians to be elegant could be). Two of the most interesting rooms were for the servants, the housemaid and the hired man. Upstairs, back of the house over the kitchen, with a nearby stairs leading down to same. Small, very spartan rooms, especially the hired man's. I think about the maid, cleaning the bedrooms of the family -- so much roomier, and more attractive -- did envy ever tug at her brain stem? Or was her situation such that she could only be grateful to have a live-in position (one afternoon off a week), with her own room, small and plain though it was? The Everything's Relative Sydrome...

The one question I had for the two pleasant ladies who were serving as "guards" was, why was the cast iron stove in the kitchen so low?! It seemed almost like a toy. The ladies explained to me that Lucy had been quite short, not even five feet tall, on top of which, the pots and skillets they used back then were quite heavy, and the higher the stove, the more difficult to maneuver them. This answer left me a little skeptical, since surely Ms. Farnsworth had someone to do the cooking. This was a well-to-do lady, after all, in a time when servants were common. But maybe the cook was pint-sized, too.

Interestingly, this stove had a contraption connected to it that used the heat from the stove to produce hot water, which was then pumped to the one bedroom downstairs (which in her old age became Lucy's), and to one of the bedrooms upstairs...that of one of the sons. Lucky, spoiled so-and-so.