How melancholy an object is a "polished front," that vain-glorious and
inhospitable array of cold steel and willow shavings, in which the
emancipated hearth is annually constrained by careful housewives to
signalise the return of summer, and its own consequent degradation from
being a part of the family to become a piece of mere formal furniture. And
truly in cold weather, which (thanks to the climate, for we love our
country) is all the weather we get in England, the fire is a most
important individual in a house: one who exercises a bland authority over
the tempers of all the other inmates--for who could quarrel with his feet
on the fender? one with whom everybody is anxious to be well--for who
would fall out with its genial glow? one who submits with a graceful
resignation to the caprices of every casual elbow--and who has never poked
a fire to death? one whose good offices have endeared him alike to the
selfish and to the cultivated,--at once a host, a mediator, and an
occupation.
We have often had our doubts (but then we are partial) whether it be not
possible to carry on a conversation with a fire. With the aid of an
evening newspaper by way of interpreter, and in strict confidence, no
third party being present, we feel that it can be done. Was there an
interesting debate last night? were the ministers successful, or did the
opposition carry it? In either case, did not the fire require a vigorous
poke just as you came to the division? and did not its immediate flame,
or, on the contrary, its dull, sullen glow, give you the idea that it
entertained its own private opinions on the subject? And if those opinions
seemed contrary to yours, did you not endeavour to betray the sparks into
an untenable position, by submitting them to the gentle sophistry of a
poker nicely insinuated between the bars? or did you not quench with a
sudden retort of small coal its impertinent congratulation at an
unfortunate result? until, when its cordial glow, penetrating that
unseemly shroud, has given evidence of self-conviction, you felt that you
had dealt too harshly with an old friend, and hastened to make it up with
him again by a playful titillation, more in jest than earnest.
But this is all to come. Not yet (with us) have the kindly old bars,
reverend in their attenuation, been restored to their time-honoured
throne; not yet have the dingy festoons of pink and white paper
disappeared from the garish mantel. Still desolate and cheerless shows the
noble edifice. The gaunt chimney yawns still in sick anticipation of
deferred smoke. The "irons," innocent of coal, and polished to the tip,
skulk and cower sympathetically into the extreme corner of the fender. The
very rug seems ghastly and grim, wanting the kindly play of the excited
flame. We have no comfort in the parlour yet: even the privileged kitten,
wandering in vain in search of a resting-place, deems it but a chill
dignity which has withdrawn her from the warm couch before the
kitchen-fire. Things have become too real for home. We have no joy now in
those delicious loiterings for the five minutes before dinner--those
casual snatches of Sterne, those scraps of Steele. We have left off
smiling; we are impregnable even to a pun. What _is_ the day of the month?
Surely were not October retrospectively associated (in April and glorious
May) with the grateful magnificence of ale, none would be so unpopular as
the chilly month. There is no period in which so much of what ladies call
"unpleasantness" occurs, no season when that mysterious distemper known as
"warming" is so epidemic, as in October. It is a time when, in default of
being conventionally cold, every one becomes intensely cool. A general
chill pervades the domestic virtues: hospitality is aguish, and charity
becomes more than proverbially numb.
In twenty days how different an appearance will things wear! The magic
circle round the hearth will be filled with beaming faces; a score of
hands will be luxuriously chafing the palpable warmth dispensed by a
social blaze; some more privileged feet may perchance be basking in the
extraordinary recesses of the fender. We shall consult the thermometer to
enjoy the cold weather by contrast with the glowing comfort within. We
shall remark how "time flies," and that "it seems only yesterday since we
had a fire before;" forgetful of the hideous night and the troublous
dreams that have intervened since those sweet memories. And all this--in
twenty days.
We are no innovators: we respect all things for their age, and some for
their youth. But we would hope that, in humbly looking for a fire in the
cold weather, even though November be still in the store of time, we
should be exhibiting no dangerous propensities. If, as we are inclined to
believe, fires were discovered previously to the invention of lord mayors,
wherefore should we defer our accession to them until he is welcomed by
those frigid antiquities Gog and Magog? Wherefore not let fires go out
with the old lord mayor, if they needs must come in with the new?
Wherefore not do without lord mayors altogether, and elect an annual grate
to judge the prisoners at the _bar_ in the Mansion House, and to listen to
the quirks of the facetious Mr. _Hob_-ler?
* * * * *