CHAPTER XII.
NOTICE TO QUIT, AND TURNING OUT.
Doubtless many an anxious housekeeper is hurrying rapidly through the pages of this book to discover whether or no Tom Jones’ piece of entomological information was correct; but I shall not enlighten them on the point, for this is a work on legal subjects, and cannot be taken up with recounting investigations concerning the habits of such small things as insects. Saith not the ancient maxim: “De minimis non curat lex”?
We had, however, other things to think about ere morning’s light again illuminated the eastern sky. Scarcely had we settled ourselves for the night when my wife started up, exclaiming:
“Hear the loud alarum bells! What a tale of terror their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night how they scream out their affright in a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire—in a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire! What a tale their terror tells of despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar!”
“Ha! and well for us that their twanging and their clanging have aroused us; for see! the house opposite is all wrapped in flames, and the wind is driving right toward us!”
Ah! then throughout our house there was hurrying to and fro, and gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, and cheeks all pale, which, but ten minutes past, pressed the soft pillows with their loveliness; and there were sudden snatchings of such as by chance lay within reach, and leaving things which ne’er might be regained; and there was rushing in hot haste—the men, the chattering women, and the pattering child, went pouring forward with impetuous speed, and swiftly showed in the back yard in robes de nuit.
I jumped into my pantaloons; fortunately, they were not like those of Monseigneur d’Artois, nor was I as particular as his highness; four tall lackeys had to hold him up in the air every morning, that he might fall into his breeches without vestige of wrinkle, and from them the same four, in the same way but with more effort, had to deliver him at night. We found shelter in the hospitable mansion of old Mrs. Jones. At the expense of our friends, we thatched ourselves anew with the “dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts, and walked down stairs moving rag screens, over-heaped with shreds and tatters raked from the charnel-house of nature” to partake of the morning meal.
At breakfast, Mrs. Lawyer remarked, in anything but lugubrious tones:
“Well, Mr. Jones, we have got rid of those rooms without much trouble.”
Tom shook his head; so my wife asked:
“Why do you do that?”
“Because I am not quite sure that you are yet quit of my friend, Mr. Screwhard, your landlord,” was the reply.
“What do you mean?” queried my wife.
“Ask your respected husband; he knows more about such matters than I do.”
In reply to my wife’s questioning glance, I said: “I am afraid it is rather too soon to rejoice over the matter. We must pay rent until we can get rid of our liability by a regular notice to quit.”
“But we can’t occupy the place.”
“That makes no difference.”[450]
“Then you had no provision in your lease exempting you in case of fire,” remarked Jones.
“Unfortunately, not.”
“But why should we pay when we cannot use the place?” asked my wife, growing warm.
“The rule is, my dear, that when the law imposes a duty upon one and he is prevented performing it without any fault on his part, and he has no one to whom he may look for satisfaction, the courts will excuse the non-performance; but when a man voluntarily takes a duty or charge upon himself he must perform his contract, come what may, because he might have provided against all accidents in his agreement.”
“And, you stupid! you did not have the lease properly drawn!”
“Exactly so, my female Solomon,” I replied, indignantly.
“Well, I must say,” said Mrs. L., “that I fear I am bound for life to
“‘A wretch so empty, that if e’er there be
In nature found the least vacuity,
’Twill be in him.’”
“Another reason is,” broke in Jones, anxious to throw oil upon the troubled waters, “that in the case of furnished lodgings, as in the case of a house, the rent is deemed to issue out of the land[451]—none of it out of the furniture[452]—so that the landlord can distrain for the whole rent;[453] and even were he to turn the tenant out, no apportionment could be made for the goods.[454] The law makes no difference between lodgers and other tenants as to the payment of their rents, or turning them out of possession.”
“Pray tell me, then, how much notice must we give?” demanded Mrs. Lawyer in tones which would lead one to imagine that she provided all the capital necessary to run the family machine.
Jones replied: “If the hiring of the apartments be from half year to half year, half a year’s notice to quit must be given; if from quarter to quarter, a quarter’s notice; if from month to month, a month’s notice; if from week to week, a week’s notice; and if a lodger leaves without giving such notice he is liable for the rent for a half year, or a quarter, or a month, or a week, as the case may be.”[455]
“Still,” I said, anxious to contradict somebody, “it has been ruled by a very learned judge that in the case of an ordinary weekly tenancy a week’s notice to quit is not implied as part of the contract unless there be usage to that effect, but that such a tenancy will cease at the end of the term without any notice; in fact, he said that he was not aware that it had ever been decided that in the case of an ordinary weekly or monthly tenancy a month’s or week’s notice to quit must be given. It is to be regarded as a tenancy for a week or a month rather than as a tenancy from week to week, or month to month, determinable by notice. Were it otherwise, such tenancies would, in almost all cases, necessarily continue for a double period, which might be inconvenient to one or both parties. Of course, even in absence of such usage, a weekly tenant who enters on a fresh week may be bound to continue until the expiration of that week, or pay the week’s rent.[456] And in New York it has been decided that in a renting by the month, or from month to month, a month’s notice to quit is not requisite.”[457]
“But surely,” urged Jones, “a reasonable notice must be given of the ending of a weekly tenancy. I remember one case in which my father was concerned, Earle, C. J., said that, although it had been laid down that a weekly or a monthly holding does not require a week’s or a month’s notice to determine it unless there be some special agreement or custom, he did not find that any person ever held that the interest of a tenant so holding might be put an end to without any notice at all. It would be most unreasonable, he continued, if a landlord were entitled to turn his weekly tenant out at twelve o’clock at night on the last day of the week; some notice must be necessary. Williams, J., gave it as his view, that whether it be a tenancy from year to year, or week to week, in either case there must be a legal expression of intention that the tenancy should cease. The inclination of his opinion was that where the holding is from week to week a week’s notice should be given, and a month’s notice where the tenancy is from month to month. Judge Willes, in a half frightened sort of way, as if he had no doubt he was wrong, considered that because in a tenancy from year to year half a year’s notice only was required, therefore he could not see how it was possible that a tenant from week to week should be entitled to more than half a week’s notice. While Byles, J., remarked that the notice to a weekly tenant should be a reasonable one.”[458]
“And doubtless he is right. And if it is necessary at all, it must, of course, expire on the proper day, i. e., at the end of some week of the tenancy.”[459]
“Yes; and a weekly tenancy beginning on Saturday ends on Saturday.[460] How would it be, Lawyer, if the landlord rented the rooms to some one else before the expiration of the week?”
“That would amount to a rescission of the bargain, and he could not sue the defaulting tenant for rent for the days the apartments were empty;[461] but lighting or warming the rooms, or putting up ‘to let’ in the window, will not prevent the owner looking to the man who has left without giving the proper notice.”[462]
“I suppose that one cannot leave without notice because he fears that the landlord’s things are likely to be seized by the landlord paramount,” said Jones.
“Of course you can make an express stipulation to that effect;[463] otherwise you cannot leave.”[464]
“Well,” said my wife, “I presume that at all events the landlord will have to rebuild if we are to continue paying rent.”
“By no means. The rule is, that a landlord, after an injury by fire, is under no obligation to rebuild or repair the house for the benefit of the tenant,”[465] was my melancholy reply.
Fortunately, breakfast does not last as long as dinner; so this conversation (which had grown irksome to myself, and has proved probably equally, if not more so, to my readers) was brought to a conclusion before very much more was said on this subject, and I gladly availed myself of the opportunity of going out on business.
Down town I met my old friend, Dr. Lane, who told me of the tiff he had just had with his landlord. Some months previously he had hired from one Johnson certain rooms in a fashionable locality, at a rental of a couple of hundred dollars a year, with the privilege of putting a brass plate bearing his name upon the front door. Shortly afterward Johnson leased the whole premises to Mr. Dixon for twenty-one years. In course of time, the health of the neighborhood being excellent, Lane got in arrear; so Dixon removed the brass plate, and refused to let the Doctor have access to his rooms—in fact, finding them open one day, and the lodger out, he fastened the outer door, and so excluded him altogether. Lane sued for damages, and the jury kindly gave him £10 for the breaking and entry into his room, expelling him therefrom and seizing his etceteras, and £20 for the removal of the brass plate. Dixon, rather naturally, was dissatisfied with the verdict of these twelve men and appealed to the court, who, however, agreed that the jury were perfectly correct in their view of the matter, and that the Doctor might keep his £30. The removal of the plate was considered a distinct and substantive trespass.[466] Of course the disciple of Galen was overjoyed, and insisted upon my taking a glass of something alcoholic while he told me of the little trip that he purposed taking at his landlord’s expense.
After parting from the worthy leech my brain was rather puzzled to draw a distinction between his case and one decided some time ago, where one Bloxham, a poulterer and a keeper of a beer-shop, claiming a sum of money to be due to him by a lodger—one Hartley by name—locked up his goods in the room in which Hartley had put them, pocketed the key, and refused the boarder access to them till his bill was paid—yet it was decided that what was done was not such a taking of goods as would sustain the action for trespass brought by poor Hartley.[467] At last it dawned upon me that in the case I was conning over there had been no actual taking—the landlord never actually touched the goods at all—he merely locked the door and kept the key, and therein it differed from Lane’s suit.[468]
In another case, a landlord, before his tenant’s time was up, and contrary to his wishes, entered his (the tenant’s) room and removed therefrom books, maps, and papers, placing them where they were damaged by the rain. The boarder, not liking such treatment, sued his landlord, and the court decided that the latter was a trespasser and liable for all damages sustained, whether they resulted from his direct and immediate acts, or remotely from the act of God.[469]
Before returning home I called on a friend who also dwelt in furnished apartments. Far from seraphic was the state of mind in which I found him.
“What can be done to stop that horrid noise? It will drive me mad!” was his petulant salutation.
I listened, and heard the dull, rumbling noise of some wheeled machine being rolled, now fast, now slow, then up, then down, in the room above.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, I know what it is only too well. A foolish young couple live up stairs, and their first baby is teething or something of the sort, and whines and howls incessantly, so the mother by day and the father by night continually trundle it up and down the room in a parlor baby-carriage, making such a noise that I can neither read nor sleep. It is a regular nuisance, and I’ll have it stopped.”
“I suppose that they don’t do it merely to disturb and annoy you, but rather for the good of the juvenile,” I remarked.
“As for that matter I presume their intentions are honorable, but that does not make any difference.”
“Yes it does; the very point has been decided by Judge Van Hoesen, of New York. To him a Mr. Pool applied for an injunction to prevent one off his fellow-lodgers wheeling a sick child about the room.”
“Well, what was the result?”
“Why, as it did not appear that the noise was made unnecessarily, but only from the attempt to soothe the infant, the court refused to interfere with the amusement of the child, saying that the occupants of buildings where there are other tenants cannot restrain the others from any use they may choose to make of their own apartments, consistent with good neighborhood and with a reasonable regard for the comfort of others.”
“Humph!”
“The judge added that if the rocking of a cradle, the wheeling of a carriage, the whirling of a sewing machine, or the discord of ill-played music, disturb the inmates of an apartment-house, no relief by injunction can be obtained, unless the proof be clear that the noise is unreasonable, and made without due regard to the rights and comforts of other occupants.[470] And in England it was held that the noise of a piano from a neighbor’s house, or the noise of neighbor’s children in their nursery, are noises we must expect, and must, to a considerable extent, put up with.”[471]
“At all events, no judge can compel me to stay in the house and be annoyed in this way. I’ll give notice to quit at once.”
* * * * * *
Here endeth the account of our experiences in the matter of furnished apartments, boarding-houses, and hotels. After this Mrs. Lawyer and myself settled down quietly to housekeeping. Our experiences in that line have nothing to do with the subject of this book.