I and my chimney, two gray-headed old smokers, reside in the country. We
are, I may say, old settlers here; particularly my old chimney, which
settles more and more every day.
Though I always say, _I and my chimney_, as Cardinal Wolsey used to say,
_I and my King_, yet this egotistic way of speaking, wherein I take
precedence of my chimney, is hardly borne out by the facts; in
everything, except the above phrase, my chimney taking precedence of me.
Within thirty feet of the turf-sided road, my chimney--a huge, corpulent
old Harry VIII. of a chimney--rises full in front of me and all my
possessions. Standing well up a hillside, my chimney, like Lord Rosse’s
monster telescope, swung vertical to hit the meridian moon, is the first
object to greet the approaching traveller’s eye, nor is it the last
which the sun salutes. My chimney, too, is before me in receiving the
first-fruits of the seasons. The snow is on its head ere on my hat; and
every spring, as in a hollow beech-tree, the first swallows build their
nests in it.
But it is within doors that the pre-eminence of my chimney is most
manifest. When in the rear room, set apart for that object, I stand to
receive my guests (who, by the way, call more, I suspect, to see my
chimney than me), I then stand, not so much before, as, strictly
speaking, behind my chimney, which is, indeed, the true host. Not that I
demur. In the presence of my betters, I hope I know my place.
From this habitual precedence of my chimney over me, some even think
that I have got into a sad rearward way altogether; in short, from
standing behind my old-fashioned chimney so much, I have got to be quite
behind the age too, as well as running behindhand in everything else.
But to tell the truth, I never was a very forward old fellow, nor what
my farming neighbours call a forehanded one. Indeed, those rumours about
my behindhandedness are so far correct, that I have an odd sauntering
way with me sometimes of going about with my hands behind my back. As
for my belonging to the rearguard in general, certain it is, I bring up
the rear of my chimney--which, by the way, is this moment before me--and
that, too, both in fancy and fact. In brief, my chimney is my superior;
my superior by I know not how many heads and shoulders; my superior,
too, in that humbly bowing over with shovel and tongs, I much minister
to it; yet never does it minister, or incline over to me; but, if
anything, in its settlings, rather leans the other way.
My chimney is grand seignior here--the one great domineering object, not
more of the landscape, than of the house; all the rest of which house,
in each architectural arrangement, as may shortly appear, is, in the
most marked manner, accommodated, not to my wants, but to my chimney’s,
which, among other things, has the centre of the house to himself,
leaving but the odd holes and corners to me.
But I and my chimney must explain; and as we are both rather obese, we
may have to expatiate.
In those houses which are strictly double houses--that is, where the
hall is in the middle--the fireplaces usually are on opposite sides; so
that while one member of the household is warming himself at a fire
built into a recess of the north wall, say another member, the former’s
own brother, perhaps, may be holding his feet to the blaze before a
hearth in the south wall--the two thus fairly sitting back to back. Is
this well? Be it put to any man who has a proper fraternal feeling. Has
it not a sort of sulky appearance? But very probably this style of
chimney building originated with some architect afflicted with a
quarrelsome family.
Then again, almost every modern fireplace has its separate
flue--separate throughout, from hearth to chimney-top. At least such an
arrangement is deemed desirable. Does not this look egotistical,
selfish? But still more, all these separate flues, instead of having
independent masonry establishments of their own, or instead of being
grouped together in one federal stock in the middle of the
house--instead of this, I say, each flue is surreptitiously honeycombed
into the walls, so that these last are here and there, or indeed almost
anywhere, treacherously hollow, and, in consequence, more or less weak.
Of course, the main reason of this style of chimney building is to
economise room. In cities, where lots are sold by the inch, small space
is to spare for a chimney constructed on magnanimous principles; and, as
with most thin men, who are generally tall, so with such houses, what is
lacking in breadth must be made up in height. This remark holds true
even with regard to many very stylish abodes, built by the most stylish
of gentlemen. And yet, when that stylish gentleman, Louis le Grand of
France, would build a palace for his lady friend, Madame de Maintenon,
he built it but one story high--in fact in the cottage style. But then,
how uncommonly quadrangular, spacious, and broad--horizontal acres, not
vertical ones. Such is the palace, which, in all its one-storied
magnificence of Languedoc marble, in the garden of Versailles, still
remains to this day. Any man can buy a square foot of land and plant a
liberty-pole on it; but it takes a king to set apart whole acres for a
Grand Trianon.
But nowadays it is different; and furthermore, what originated in a
necessity has been mounted into a vaunt. In towns there is large rivalry
in building tall houses. If one gentleman builds his house four stories
high, and another gentleman comes next door and builds five stories
high, then the former, not to be looked down upon that way, immediately
sends for his architect and claps a fifth and a sixth story on top of
his previous four. And, not till the gentleman has achieved his
aspiration, not till he has stolen over the way by twilight and observed
how his sixth story soars beyond his neighbour’s fifth--not till then
does he retire to his rest with satisfaction.
Such folks, it seems to me, need mountains for neighbours, to take this
emulous conceit of soaring out of them.
If, considering that mine is a very wide house, and by no means lofty,
aught in the above may appear like interested pleading, as if I did but
fold myself about in the cloak of a general proposition, cunningly to
tickle my individual vanity beneath it, such misconception must vanish
upon my frankly conceding, that land adjoining my alder swamp was sold
last month for ten dollars an acre, and thought a rash purchase at that;
so that for wide houses hereabouts there is plenty of room, and cheap.
Indeed so cheap--dirt cheap--is the soil, that our elms thrust out their
roots in it, and hang their great boughs over it, in the most lavish and
reckless way. Almost all our crops, too, are sown broadcast, even peas
and turnips. A farmer among us, who should go about his twenty-acre
field, poking his finger into it here and there, and dropping down a
mustard seed, would be thought a penurious, narrow-minded husbandman.
The dandelions in the river meadows, and the forget-me-nots along the
mountain roads, you see at once they are put to no economy in space.
Some seasons, too, our rye comes up here and there a spear, sole and
single like a church-spire. It doesn’t care to crowd itself where it
knows there is such a deal of room. The world is wide, the world is all
before us, says the rye. Weeds, too, it is amazing how they spread. No
such thing as arresting them--some of our pastures being a sort of
Alsatia for the weeds. As for the grass, every spring it is like
Kossuth’s rising of what he calls the peoples. Mountains, too, a regular
camp-meeting of them. For the same reason, the same all-sufficiency of
room, our shadows march and countermarch, going through their various
drills and masterly evolutions, like the old imperial guard on the Champ
de Mars. As for the hills, especially where the roads cross them, the
supervisors of our various towns have given notice to all concerned,
that they can come and dig them down and cart them off, and never a cent
to pay, no more than for the privilege of picking blackberries. The
stranger who is buried here, what liberal-hearted landed proprietor
among us grudges him his six feet of rocky pasture?
Nevertheless, cheap, after all, as our land is, and much as it is
trodden under foot, I, for one, am proud of it for what it bears; and
chiefly for its three great lions--the Great Oak, Ogg Mountain, and my
chimney.
Most houses here are but one and a half stories high; few exceed two.
That in which I and my chimney dwell, is in width nearly twice its
height, from sill to eaves--which accounts for the magnitude of its main
content--besides showing that in this house, as in this country at
large, there is abundance of space, and to spare, for both of us.
The frame of the old house is of wood--which but the more sets forth the
solidity of the chimney, which is of brick. And as the great wrought
nails, binding the clap-boards, are unknown in these degenerate days, so
are the huge bricks in the chimney walls. The architect of the chimney
must have had the pyramid of Cheops before him; for after that famous
structure it seems modelled, only its rate of decrease toward the summit
is considerably less, and it is truncated. From the exact middle of the
mansion it soars from the cellar, right up through each successive
floor, till, four feet square, it breaks water from the ridge-pole of
the roof, like an anvil-headed whale through the crest of a billow. Most
people, though, liken it, in that part, to a razeed observatory, masoned
up.
The reason for its peculiar appearance above the roof touches upon
rather delicate ground. How shall I reveal that, forasmuch as many years
ago the original gable roof of the old house had become very leaky, a
temporary proprietor hired a band of woodmen, with their huge, cross-cut
saws, and went to sawing the old gable roof clean off. Off it went, with
all its birds’ nests and dormer windows. It was replaced with a modern
roof, more fit for a railway wood-house than an old country gentleman’s
abode. This operation--razeeing the structure some fifteen feet--was, in
effect upon the chimney, something like the falling of the great spring
tides. It left uncommon low water all about the chimney--to abate which
appearance, the same person now proceeds to slice fifteen feet off the
chimney itself, actually beheading my royal old chimney--a regicidal
act, which, were it not for the palliating fact that he was a poulterer
by trade, and, therefore, hardened to such neck-wringings, should send
that former proprietor down to posterity in the same cart with Cromwell.
Owing to its pyramidal shape, the reduction of the chimney inordinately
widened its razeed summit. Inordinately, I say, but only in the
estimation of such as have no eye to the picturesque. What care I, if,
unaware that my chimney, as a free citizen of this free land, stands
upon an independent basis of its own, people passing it, wonder how such
a brick-kiln, as they call it, is supported upon mere joists and
rafters? What care I? I will give a traveller a cup of switchel, if he
want it; but am I bound to supply him with a sweet taste? Men of
cultivated minds see, in my old house and chimney, a goodly old
elephant-and-castle.
All feeling hearts will sympathise with me in what I am now about to
add. The surgical operation above referred to, necessarily brought into
the open air a part of the chimney previously under cover, and intended
to remain so, and, therefore, not built of what are called
weather-bricks. In consequence, the chimney, though of a vigorous
constitution, suffered not a little, from so naked an exposure; and,
unable to acclimate itself, ere long began to fail--showing blotchy
symptoms akin to those in measles. Whereupon travellers, passing my way,
would wag their heads, laughing: ‘See that wax nose--how it melts off!’
But what cared I? The same travellers would travel across the sea to
view Kenilworth peeling away, and for a very good reason: that of all
artists of the picturesque, decay wears the palm--I would say, the ivy.
In fact, I’ve often thought that the proper place for my old chimney is
ivied old England.
In vain my wife--with what probable ulterior intent will, ere long,
appear--solemnly warned me, that unless something were done, and
speedily, we should be burnt to the ground, owing to the holes crumbling
through the aforesaid blotchy parts, where the chimney joined the roof.
‘Wife,’ said I, ‘far better that my house should burn down, than that my
chimney should be pulled down, though but a few feet. They call it a wax
nose; very good; not for me to tweak the nose of my superior.’ But at
last the man who has a mortgage on the house dropped me a note,
reminding me that, if my chimney was allowed to stand in that invalid
condition, my policy of insurance would be void. This was a sort of hint
not to be neglected. All the world over, the picturesque yields to the
pocketesque. The mortgagor cared not, but the mortgagee did.
So another operation was performed. The wax nose was taken off, and a
new one fitted on. Unfortunately for the expression--being put up by a
squint-eyed mason, who, at the time, had a bad stitch in the same
side--the new nose stands a little awry, in the same direction.
Of one thing, however, I am proud. The horizontal dimensions of the new
part are unreduced.
Large as the chimney appears upon the roof, that is nothing to its
spaciousness below. At its base in the cellar, it is precisely twelve
feet square; and hence covers precisely one hundred and forty-four
superficial feet. What an appropriation of terra firma for a chimney,
and what a huge load for this earth! In fact, it was only because I and
my chimney formed no part of his ancient burden, that that stout
peddler, Atlas of old, was enabled to stand up so bravely under his
pack. The dimensions given may, perhaps, seem fabulous. But, like those
stones at Gilgal, which Joshua set up for a memorial of having passed
over Jordan, does not my chimney remain, even unto this day?
Very often I go down into my cellar, and attentively survey that vast
square of masonry. I stand long, and ponder over, and wonder at it. It
has a druidical look, away down in the umbrageous cellar there, whose
numerous vaulted passages, and far glens of gloom, resemble the dark,
damp depths of primeval woods. So strongly did this conceit steal over
me, so deeply was I penetrated with wonder at the chimney, that one
day--when I was a little out of my mind, I now think--getting a spade
from the garden, I set to work, digging round the foundation, especially
at the corners thereof, obscurely prompted by dreams of striking upon
some old, earthen-worn memorial of that bygone day, when, into all this
gloom, the light of heaven entered, as the masons laid the
foundation-stones, peradventure sweltering under an August sun, or
pelted by a March storm. Plying my blunted spade, how vexed was I by
that ungracious interruption of a neighbour, who, calling to see me upon
some business, and being informed that I was below, said I need not be
troubled to come up, but he would go down to me; and so, without
ceremony, and without my having been forewarned, suddenly discovered me,
digging in my cellar.
‘Gold-digging, sir?’
‘Nay, sir,’ answered I, starting, ‘I was merely--ahem! merely--I say I
was merely digging--round my chimney.’
‘Ah, loosening the soil, to make it grow. Your chimney, sir, you regard
as too small, I suppose; needing further development, especially at the
top?’
‘Sir!’ said I, throwing down the spade, ‘do not be personal. I and my
chimney----’
‘Personal?’
‘Sir, I look upon this chimney less as a pile of masonry than as a
personage. It is the king of the house. I am but a suffered and inferior
subject.’
In fact, I would permit no gibes to be cast at either myself or my
chimney; and never again did my visitor refer to it in my hearing,
without coupling some compliment with the mention. It well deserves a
respectful consideration. There it stands, solitary and alone--not a
council-of-ten flues, but, like his sacred majesty of Russia, a unit of
an autocrat.
Even to me, its dimensions, at times, seem incredible. It does not look
so big--no, not even in the cellar. By the mere eye, its magnitude can
be but imperfectly comprehended, because only one side can be received
at one time; and said side can only present twelve feet, linear measure.
But then, each other side also is twelve feet long; and the whole
obviously forms a square; and twelve times twelve is one hundred and
forty-four. And so, an adequate conception of the magnitude of this
chimney is only to be got at by a sort of process in the higher
mathematics, by a method somewhat akin to those whereby the surprising
distances of fixed stars are computed.
It need hardly be said, that the walls of my house are entirely free
from fireplaces. These all congregate in the middle--in the one grand
central chimney, upon all four sides of which are hearths--two tiers of
hearths--so that when, in the various chambers, my family and guests are
warming themselves of a cold winter’s night, just before retiring, then,
though at the time they may not be thinking so, all their faces mutually
look towards each other, yea, all their feet point to one centre; and,
when they go to sleep in their beds, they all sleep round one warm
chimney, like so many Iroquois Indians, in the woods, round their one
heap of embers. And just as the Indians’ fire serves, not only to keep
them comfortable, but also to keep off wolves and other savage monsters,
so my chimney, by its obvious smoke at top, keeps off prowling burglars
from the towns--for what burglar or murderer would dare break into an
abode from whose chimney issues such a continual smoke--betokening that
if the inmates are not stirring, at least fires are, and in case of an
alarm, candles may readily be lighted, to say nothing of muskets.
But stately as is the chimney--yea, grand high altar as it is, right
worthy for the celebration of High Mass before the Pope of Rome and all
his cardinals--yet what is there perfect in this world? Caius Julius
Cæsar, had he not been so inordinately great, they say that Brutus,
Cassius, Antony, and the rest, had been greater. My chimney, were it not
so mighty in its magnitude, my chambers had been larger. How often has
my wife ruefully told me that my chimney, like the English aristocracy,
casts a contracting shade all round it. She avers that endless domestic
inconveniences arise--more particularly from the chimney’s stubborn
central locality. The grand objection with her is, that it stands midway
in the place where a fine entrance-hall ought to be. In truth, there is
no hall whatever to the house--nothing but a sort of square
landing-place, as you enter from the wide front door. A roomy enough
landing-place, I admit, but not attaining to the dignity of a hall. Now,
as the front door is precisely in the middle of the front of the house,
inwards it faces the chimney. In fact, the opposite wall of the
landing-place is formed solely by the chimney; and hence--owing to the
gradual tapering of the chimney--is a little less than twelve feet in
width. Climbing the chimney in this part, is the principal
staircase--which, by three abrupt turns, and three minor landing-places,
mounts to the second floor, where, over the front door, runs a sort of
narrow gallery, something less than twelve feet long, leading to
chambers on either hand. This gallery, of course, is railed; and so,
looking down upon the stairs, and all those landing-places together,
with the main one at bottom, resembles not a little a balcony for
musicians, in some jolly old abode, in times Elizabethan. Shall I tell a
weakness? I cherish the cobwebs there, and many a time arrest Biddy in
the act of brushing them with her broom, and have many a quarrel with my
wife and daughters about it.
Now the ceiling, so to speak, of the place where you enter the house,
that ceiling is, in fact, the ceiling of the second floor, not the
first. The two floors are made one here; so that ascending this turning
stairs, you seem going up into a kind of soaring tower, or lighthouse.
At the second landing, midway up the chimney, is a mysterious door,
entering to a mysterious closet; and here I keep mysterious cordials, of
a choice, mysterious flavour, made so by the constant nurturing and
subtle ripening of the chimney’s gentle heat, distilled through that
warm mass of masonry. Better for wines is it than voyages to the Indies;
my chimney itself a tropic. A chair by my chimney in a November day is
as good for an invalid as a long season spent in Cuba. Often I think how
grapes might ripen against my chimney. How my wife’s geraniums bud
there! Bud in December. Her eggs, too--can’t keep them near the chimney,
on account of hatching. Ah, a warm heart has my chimney.
How often my wife was at me about that projected grand entrance-hall of
hers, which was to be knocked clean through the chimney, from one end of
the house to the other, and astonish all guests by its generous
amplitude. ‘But, wife,’ said I, ‘the chimney--consider the chimney: if
you demolish the foundation, what is to support the superstructure?’
‘Oh, that will rest on the second floor.’ The truth is, women know next
to nothing about the realities of architecture. However, my wife still
talked of running her entries and partitions. She spent many long nights
elaborating her plans; in imagination building her boasted hall through
the chimney, as though its high mightiness were a mere spear of
sorrel-top. At last, I gently reminded her that, little as she might
fancy it, the chimney was a fact--a sober, substantial fact, which, in
all her plannings, it would be well to take into full consideration. But
this was not of much avail.
And here, respectfully craving her permission, I must say a few words
about this enterprising wife of mine.[12] Though in years nearly old as
myself, in spirit she is young as my little sorrel mare, Trigger, that
threw me last fall. What is extraordinary, though she comes of a
rheumatic family, she is straight as a pine, never has any aches; while
for me with the sciatica, I am sometimes as crippled up as any old
apple-tree. But she has not so much as a toothache. As for her
hearing--let me enter the house in my dusty boots, and she away up in
the attic. And for her sight--Biddy, the housemaid, tells other people’s
housemaids, that her mistress will spy a spot on the dresser straight
through the pewter platter, put up on purpose to hide it. Her faculties
are alert as her limbs and her senses. No danger of my spouse dying of
torpor. The longest night in the year I’ve known her lie awake, planning
her campaign for the morrow. She is a natural projector. The maxim,
‘Whatever is, is right,’ is not hers. Her maxim is, Whatever is, is
wrong; and what is more, must be altered; and what is still more, must
be altered right away. Dreadful maxim for the wife of a dozy old dreamer
like me, who dotes on seventh days as days of rest, and out of a
sabbatical horror of industry, will, on a week day, go out of my road a
quarter of a mile, to avoid the sight of a man at work.
That matches are made in heaven, may be, but my wife would have been
just the wife for Peter the Great, or Peter the Piper. How she would
have set in order that huge, littered empire of the one, and with
indefatigable painstaking picked the peck of pickled peppers for the
other.
But the most wonderful thing is, my wife never thinks of her end. Her
youthful incredulity, as to the plain theory, and still plainer fact of
death, hardly seems Christian. Advanced in years, as she knows she must
be, my wife seems to think that she is to teem on, and be inexhaustible
forever. She doesn’t believe in old age. At that strange promise in the
plain of Mamre, my old wife, unlike old Abraham’s, would not have
jeeringly laughed within herself.
Judge how to me, who, sitting in the comfortable shadow of my chimney,
smoking my comfortable pipe, with ashes not unwelcome at my feet, and
ashes not unwelcome all but in my mouth; and who am thus in a
comfortable sort of not unwelcome, though, indeed, ashy enough way,
reminded of the ultimate exhaustion even of the most fiery life; judge
how to me this unwarrantable vitality in my wife must come, sometimes,
it is true, with a moral and a calm, but oftener with a breeze and a
ruffle.
If the doctrine be true, that in wedlock contraries attract, by how
cogent a fatality must I have been drawn to my wife! While spicily
impatient of present and past, like a glass of ginger-beer she overflows
with her schemes; and, with like energy as she puts down her foot, puts
down her preserves and her pickles, and lives with them in a continual
future; or ever full of expectations both from time and space, is ever
restless for newspapers, and ravenous for letters. Content with the
years that are gone, taking no thought for the morrow, and looking for
no new thing from any person or quarter whatever, I have not a single
scheme or expectation on earth, save in unequal resistance of the undue
encroachment of hers.
Old myself, I take to oldness in things; for that cause mainly loving
old Montaigne, and old cheese, and old wine; and eschewing young people,
hot rolls, new books, and early potatoes, and very fond of my old
claw-footed chair, and old club-footed Deacon White, my neighbour, and
that still nigher old neighbour, my betwisted old grape-vine, that of a
summer evening leans in his elbow for cosy company at my window-sill,
while I, within doors, lean over mine to meet his; and above all, high
above all, am fond of my high-manteled old chimney. But she, out of that
infatuate juvenility of hers, takes to nothing but newness; for that
cause mainly, loving new cider in autumn, and in spring, as if she were
own daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, fairly raving after all sorts of salads
and spinages, and more particularly green cucumbers (though all the time
Nature rebukes such unsuitable young hankerings in so elderly a person,
by never permitting such things to agree with her), and has an itch
after recently-discovered fine prospects (so no graveyard be in the
background), and also after Swedenborgianism, and the Spirit Rapping
philosophy, with other new views, alike in things natural and unnatural;
and immortally hopeful, is forever making new flower-beds even on the
north side of the house, where the bleak mountain wind would scarce
allow the wiry weed called hard-hack to gain a thorough footing; and on
the road-side sets out mere pipe-stems of young elms; though there is no
hope of any shade from them, except over the ruins of her
great-granddaughters’ gravestones; and won’t wear caps, but plaits her
gray hair; and takes the Ladies’ Magazine for the fashions; and always
buys her new almanac a month before the new year; and rises at dawn; and
to the warmest sunset turns a cold shoulder; and still goes on at odd
hours with her new course of history, and her French, and her music; and
likes young company; and offers to ride young colts; and sets out young
suckers in the orchard; and has a spite against my elbowed old
grape-vine, and my club-footed old neighbour, and my claw-footed old
chair, and above all, high above all, would fain persecute, unto death,
my high-manteled old chimney. By what perverse magic, I a thousand times
think, does such a very autumnal old lady have such a very vernal young
soul? When I would remonstrate at times, she spins round on me with,
‘Oh, don’t you grumble, old man (she always calls me old man), it’s I,
young I, that keep you from stagnating.’ Well, I suppose it is so. Yea,
after all, these things are well ordered. My wife, as one of her poor
relations, good soul, intimates, is the salt of the earth, and none the
less the salt of my sea, which otherwise were unwholesome. She is its
monsoon, too, blowing a brisk gale over it, in the one steady direction
of my chimney.
Not insensible of her superior energies, my wife has frequently made me
propositions to take upon herself all the responsibilities of my
affairs. She is desirous that, domestically, I should abdicate; that,
renouncing further rule, like the venerable Charles V., I should retire
into some sort of monastery. But indeed, the chimney excepted, I have
little authority to lay down. By my wife’s ingenious application of the
principle that certain things belong of right to female jurisdiction, I
find myself, through my easy compliances, insensibly stripped by degrees
of one masculine prerogative after another. In a dream I go about my
fields, a sort of lazy, happy-go-lucky, good-for-nothing, loafing old
Lear. Only by some sudden revelation am I reminded who is over me; as
year before last, one day seeing in one corner of the premises fresh
deposits of mysterious boards and timbers, the oddity of the incident at
length begat serious meditation. ‘Wife,’ said I, ‘whose boards and
timbers are those I see near the orchard there? Do you know anything
about them, wife? Who put them there? You know I do not like the
neighbours to use my land that way; they should ask permission first.’
She regarded me with a pitying smile.
‘Why, old man, don’t you know I am building a new barn? Didn’t you know
that, old man?’
This is the poor old lady that was accusing me of tyrannising over her.
To return now to the chimney. Upon being assured of the futility of her
proposed hall, so long as the obstacle remained, for a time my wife was
for a modified project. But I could never exactly comprehend it. As far
as I could see through it, it seemed to involve the general idea of a
sort of irregular archway, or elbowed tunnel, which was to penetrate the
chimney at some convenient point under the staircase, and carefully
avoiding dangerous contact with the fireplaces, and particularly
steering clear of the great interior flue, was to conduct the
enterprising traveller from the front door all the way into the
dining-room in the remote rear of the mansion. Doubtless it was a bold
stroke of genius, that plan of hers, and so was Nero’s when he schemed
his grand canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Nor will I take oath,
that, had her project been accomplished, then, by help of lights hung at
judicious intervals through the tunnel, some Belzoni or other might have
succeeded in future ages in penetrating through the masonry, and
actually emerging into the dining-room, and once there, it would have
been inhospitable treatment of such a traveller to have denied him a
recruiting meal.
But my bustling wife did not restrict her objections, nor in the end
confine her proposed alterations to the first floor. Her ambition was of
the mounting order. She ascended with her schemes to the second floor,
and so to the attic. Perhaps there was some small ground for her
discontent with things as they were. The truth is, there was no regular
passage-way upstairs or down, unless we again except that little
orchestra-gallery before mentioned. And all this was owing to the
chimney, which my gamesome spouse seemed despitefully to regard as the
bully of the house. On all its four sides, nearly all the chambers
sidled up to the chimney for the benefit of a fireplace. The chimney
would not go to them; they must needs go to it. The consequence was,
almost every room, like a philosophical system, was in itself an entry,
or passage-way to other rooms, and systems of rooms--a whole suite of
entries, in fact. Going through the house, you seem to be forever going
somewhere, and getting nowhere. It is like losing one’s self in the
woods; round and round the chimney you go, and if you arrive at all, it
is just where you started, and so you begin again, and again get
nowhere. Indeed--though I say it not in the way of fault-finding at
all--never was there so labyrinthine an abode. Guests will tarry with me
several weeks, and every now and then, be anew astonished at some
unforeseen apartment.
The puzzling nature of the mansion, resulting from the chimney, is
peculiarly noticeable in the dining-room, which has no less than nine
doors, opening in all directions, and into all sorts of places. A
stranger for the first time entering this dining-room, and naturally
taking no special heed at what door he entered, will, upon rising to
depart, commit the strangest blunders. Such, for instance, as opening
the first door that comes handy, and finding himself stealing upstairs
by the back passage. Shutting that door, he will proceed to another, and
be aghast at the cellar yawning at his feet. Trying a third, he
surprises the housemaid at her work. In the end, no more relying on his
own unaided efforts, he procures a trusty guide in some passing person,
and in good time successfully emerges. Perhaps as curious a blunder as
any, was that of a certain stylish young gentleman, a great exquisite,
in whose judicious eyes my daughter Anna had found especial favour. He
called upon the young lady one evening, and found her alone in the
dining-room at her needlework. He stayed rather late; and after
abundance of superfine discourse, all the while retaining his hat and
cane, made his profuse adieus, and with repeated graceful bows proceeded
to depart, after the fashion of courtiers from the Queen, and by so
doing, opening a door at random, with one hand placed behind, very
effectually succeeded in backing himself into a dark pantry, where he
carefully shut himself up, wondering there was no light in the entry.
After several strange noises as of a cat among the crockery, he
reappeared through the same door, looking uncommonly crestfallen, and,
with a deeply embarrassed air, requested my daughter to designate at
which of the nine he should find exit. When the mischievous Anna told me
the story, she said it was surprising how unaffected and matter-of-fact
the young gentleman’s manner was after his reappearance. He was more
candid than ever, to be sure; having inadvertently thrust his white kids
into an open drawer of Havana sugar, under the impression, probably,
that being what they call ‘a sweet fellow,’ his route might possibly lie
in that direction.
Another inconvenience resulting from the chimney is, the bewilderment of
a guest in gaining his chamber, many strange doors lying between him and
it. To direct him by finger-posts would look rather queer; and just as
queer in him to be knocking at every door on his route, like London’s
city guest, the King, at Temple Bar.
Now, of all these things and many, many more, my family continually
complained. At last my wife came out with her sweeping proposition--_in
toto_ to abolish the chimney.
‘What!’ said I, ‘abolish the chimney? To take out the backbone of
anything, wife, is a hazardous affair. Spines out of backs, and chimneys
out of houses, are not to be taken like frosted lead-pipes from the
ground. Besides,’ added I, ‘the chimney is the one grand permanence of
this abode. If undisturbed by innovators, then in future ages, when all
the house shall have crumbled from it, this chimney will still
survive--a Bunker Hill monument. No, no, wife, I can’t abolish my
backbone.’
So said I then. But who is sure of himself, especially an old man, with
both wife and daughters ever at his elbow and ear? In time, I was
persuaded to think a little better of it; in short, to take the matter
into preliminary consideration. At length it came to pass that a master
mason--a rough sort of architect--one Mr. Scribe, was summoned to a
conference. I formally introduced him to my chimney. A previous
introduction from my wife had introduced him to myself. He had been not
a little employed by that lady, in preparing plans and estimates for
some of her extensive operations in drainage. Having, with much ado,
extorted from my spouse the promise that she would leave us to an
unmolested survey, I began by leading Mr. Scribe down to the root of the
matter, in the cellar. Lamp in hand, I descended; for though upstairs it
was noon, below it was night.
We seemed in the pyramids; and I, with one hand holding my lamp over
head, and with the other pointing out, in the obscurity, the hoar mass
of the chimney, seemed some Arab guide, showing the cobwebbed mausoleum
of the great god Apis.
‘This is a most remarkable structure, sir,’ said the master mason, after
long contemplating it in silence, ‘a most remarkable structure, sir.’
‘Yes,’ said I, complacently, ‘everyone says so.’
‘But large as it appears above the roof, I would not have inferred the
magnitude of this foundation, sir,’ eyeing it critically.
Then taking out his rule, he measured it.
‘Twelve feet square; one hundred and forty-four square feet! Sir, this
house would appear to have been built simply for the accommodation of
your chimney.’
‘Yes, my chimney and me. Tell me candidly, now,’ I added, ‘would you
have such a famous chimney abolished?’
‘I wouldn’t have it in a house of mine, sir, for a gift,’ was the reply.
‘It’s a losing affair altogether, sir. Do you know, sir, that in
retaining this chimney, you are losing, not only one hundred and
forty-four square feet of good ground, but likewise a considerable
interest upon a considerable principal?’
‘How?’
‘Look, sir,’ said he, taking a bit of red chalk from his pocket, and
figuring against a whitewashed wall, ‘twenty times eight is so and so;
then forty-two times thirty-nine is so and so--ain’t it, sir? Well, add
those together, and subtract this here, then that makes so and so,’
still chalking away.
To be brief, after no small ciphering, Mr. Scribe informed me that my
chimney contained, I am ashamed to say how many thousand and odd
valuable bricks.
‘No more,’ said I, fidgeting. ‘Pray now, let us have a look above.’
In that upper zone we made two more circumnavigations for the first and
second floors. That done, we stood together at the foot of the stairway
by the front door; my hand upon the knob, and Mr. Scribe hat in hand.
‘Well, sir,’ said he, a sort of feeling his way, and, to help himself,
fumbling with his hat, ‘well, sir, I think it can be done.’
‘What, pray, Mr. Scribe; _what_ can be done?’
‘Your chimney, sir; it can without rashness be removed, I think.’
‘_I_ will think of it, too, Mr. Scribe,’ said I, turning the knob, and
bowing him toward the open space without; ‘I will _think_ of it, sir; it
demands consideration; much obliged to ye; good-morning, Mr. Scribe.’
‘It is all arranged, then,’ cried my wife with great glee, bursting from
the nighest room.
‘When will they begin?’ demanded my daughter Julia.
‘To-morrow?’ asked Anna.
‘Patience, patience, my dears,’ said I, ‘such a big chimney is not to be
abolished in a minute.’
Next morning it began again.
‘You remember the chimney,’ said my wife.
‘Wife,’ said I, ‘it is never out of my house, and never out of my mind.’
‘But when is Mr. Scribe to begin to pull it down?’ asked Anna.
‘Not to-day, Anna,’ said I.
‘_When_, then?’ demanded Julia, in alarm.
Now, if this chimney of mine was, for size, a sort of belfry, for
ding-donging at me about it, my wife and daughters were a sort of bells,
always chiming together, or taking up each other’s melodies at every
pause, my wife the key-clapper of all. A very sweet ringing, and
pealing, and chiming, I confess; but then, the most silvery of bells
may, sometimes, dismally toll, as well as merrily play. And as touching
the subject in question, it became so now. Perceiving a strange relapse
of opposition in me, wife and daughters began a soft and dirge-like
melancholy tolling over it.
At length my wife, getting much excited, declared to me, with pointed
finger, that so long as that chimney stood, she should regard it as the
monument of what she called my broken pledge. But finding this did not
answer, the next day, she gave me to understand that either she or the
chimney must quit the house.
Finding matters coming to such a pass, I and my pipe philosophised over
them a while, and finally concluded between us, that little as our
hearts went with the plan, yet for peace’ sake, I might write out the
chimney’s death-warrant, and, while my hand was in, scratch a note to
Mr. Scribe.
Considering that I, and my chimney, and my pipe, from having been so
much together, were three great cronies, the facility with which my pipe
consented to a project so fatal to the goodliest of our trio; or rather,
the way in which I and my pipe, in secret, conspired together, as it
were, against our unsuspicious old comrade--this may seem rather
strange, if not suggestive of sad reflections upon us two. But, indeed,
we, sons of clay, that is my pipe and I, are no whit better than the
rest. Far from us, indeed, to have volunteered the betrayal of our
crony. We are of a peaceable nature, too. But that love of peace it was
which made us false to a mutual friend, as soon as his cause demanded a
vigorous vindication. But I rejoice to add, that better and braver
thoughts soon returned, as will now briefly be set forth.
To my note, Mr. Scribe replied in person.
Once more we made a survey, mainly now with a view to a pecuniary
estimate.
‘I will do it for five hundred dollars,’ said Mr. Scribe at last, again
hat in hand.
‘Very well, Mr. Scribe, I will think of it,’ replied I, again bowing him
to the door.
Not unvexed by this, for the second time, unexpected response, again he
withdrew, and from my wife and daughters again burst the old
exclamations.
The truth is, resolve how I would, at the last pinch I and my chimney
could not be parted.
‘So Holofernes will have his way, never mind whose heart breaks for it,’
said my wife next morning, at breakfast, in that half-didactic,
half-reproachful way of hers, which is harder to bear than her most
energetic assault. Holofernes, too, is with her a pet name for any fell
domestic despot. So, whenever, against her most ambitious innovations,
those which saw me quite across the grain, I, as in the present
instance, stand with however little steadfastness on the defence, she is
sure to call me Holofernes, and ten to one takes the first opportunity
to read aloud, with a suppressed emphasis, of an evening, the first
newspaper paragraph about some tyrannic day-labourer, who, after being
for many years the Caligula of his family, ends by beating his
long-suffering spouse to death, with a garret door wrenched off its
hinges, and then, pitching his little innocents out of the window,
suicidally turns inward toward the broken wall scored with the butcher’s
and baker’s bills, and so rushes headlong to his dreadful account.
Nevertheless, for a few days, not a little to my surprise, I heard no
further reproaches. An intense calm pervaded my wife, but beneath which,
as in the sea, there was no knowing what portentous movements might be
going on. She frequently went abroad, and in a direction which I thought
not unsuspicious; namely, in the direction of New Petra, a griffin-like
house of wood and stucco, in the highest style of ornamental art, graced
with four chimneys in the form of erect dragons spouting smoke from
their nostrils; the elegant modern residence of Mr. Scribe, which he had
built for the purpose of a standing advertisement, not more of his taste
as an architect, than his solidity as a master mason.
At last, smoking my pipe one morning, I heard a rap at the door, and my
wife, with an air unusually quiet for her, brought me a note. As I have
no correspondents except Solomon, with whom, in his sentiments, at
least, I entirely correspond, the note occasioned me some little
surprise, which was not diminished upon reading the following:--
‘NEW PETRA, _April 1_.
‘SIR,--During my last examination of your chimney, possibly you
may have noted that I frequently applied my rule to it in a manner
apparently unnecessary. Possibly also, at the same time, you might
have observed in me more or less of perplexity, to which, however,
I refrained from giving any verbal expression.
‘I now feel it obligatory upon me to inform you of what was then
but a dim suspicion, and as such would have been unwise to give
utterance to, but which now, from various subsequent calculations
assuming no little probability, it may be important that you
should not remain in further ignorance of.
‘It is my solemn duty to warn you, sir, that there is
architectural cause to conjecture that somewhere concealed in your
chimney is a reserved space, hermetically closed, in short, a
secret chamber, or rather closet. How long it has been there, it
is for me impossible to say. What it contains is hid, with itself,
in darkness. But probably a secret closet would not have been
contrived except for some extraordinary object, whether for the
concealment of treasure, or what other purpose, may be left to
those better acquainted with the history of the house to guess.
‘But enough; in making this disclosure, sir, my conscience is
eased. Whatever step you choose to take upon it is, of course, a
matter of indifference to me; though, I confess, as respects the
character of the closet, I cannot but share in a natural
curiosity.
‘Trusting that you may be guided aright, in determining whether it
is Christian-like knowingly to reside in a house, hidden in which
is a secret closet.--I remain, with much respect, yours very
humbly,
‘HIRAM SCRIBE.’
My first thought upon reading this note was, not of the alleged mystery
of manner to which, at the outset, it alluded--for none such had I at
all observed in the master mason during his surveys--but of my late
kinsman, Captain Julian Dacres, long a shipmaster and merchant in the
Indian trade, who, about thirty years ago, and at the ripe age of
ninety, died a bachelor, and in this very house, which he had built. He
was supposed to have retired into this country with a large fortune. But
to the general surprise, after being at great cost in building himself
this mansion, he settled down into a sedate, reserved, and inexpensive
old age, which by the neighbours was thought all the better for his
heirs; but lo! upon opening the will, his property was found to consist
but of the house and grounds, and some ten thousand dollars in stocks;
but the place, being found heavily mortgaged, was in consequence sold.
Gossip had its day, and left the grass quietly to creep over the
captain’s grave, where he still slumbers in a privacy as unmolested as
if the billows of the Indian Ocean, instead of the billows of inland
verdure, rolled over him. Still, I remembered long ago, hearing strange
solutions whispered by the country people for the mystery involving his
will, and, by reflex, himself; and that, too, as well in conscience as
purse. But people who could circulate the report (which they did), that
Captain Julian Dacres had, in his day, been a Borneo pirate, surely were
not worthy of credence in their collateral notions. It is queer what
wild whimseys of rumours will, like toadstools, spring up about any
eccentric stranger, who, settling down among a rustic population, keeps
quietly to himself. With some, inoffensiveness would seem a prime cause
of offence. But what chiefly had led me to scout at these rumours,
particularly as referring to concealed treasure, was the circumstance,
that the stranger (the same who razeed the roof and the chimney) into
whose hands the estate had passed on my kinsman’s death, was of that
sort of character, that had there been the least ground for those
reports, he would speedily have tested them, by tearing down and
rummaging the walls.
Nevertheless, the note of Mr. Scribe, so strangely recalling the memory
of my kinsman, very naturally chimed in with what had been mysterious,
or at least unexplained, about him; vague flashings of ingots united in
my mind with vague gleamings of skulls. But the first cool thought soon
dismissed such chimeras; and, with a calm smile, I turned towards my
wife, who, meantime, had been sitting near by, impatient enough, I dare
say, to know who could have taken it into his head to write me a letter.
‘Well, old man,’ said she, ‘who is it from, and what is it about?’
‘Read it, wife,’ said I, handing it.
Read it she did, and then--such an explosion! I will not pretend to
describe her emotions, or repeat her expressions. Enough that my
daughters were quickly called in to share the excitement. Although they
had never before dreamed of such a revelation as Mr. Scribe’s; yet upon
the first suggestion they instinctively saw the extreme likelihood of
it. In corroboration, they cited first my kinsman, and second, my
chimney; alleging that the profound mystery involving the former, and
the equally profound masonry involving the latter, though both
acknowledged facts, were alike preposterous on any other supposition
than the secret closet.
But all this time I was quietly thinking to myself: Could it be hidden
from me that my credulity in this instance would operate very favourably
to a certain plan of theirs? How to get to the secret closet, or how to
have any certainty about it at all, without making such fell work with
the chimney as to render its set destruction superfluous? That my wife
wished to get rid of the chimney, it needed no reflection to shew; and
that Mr. Scribe, for all his pretended disinterestedness, was not
opposed to pocketing five hundred dollars by the operation, seemed
equally evident. That my wife had, in secret, laid heads together with
Mr. Scribe, I at present refrain from affirming. But when I consider her
enmity against my chimney, and the steadiness with which at the last she
is wont to carry out her schemes, if by hook or by crook she can,
especially after having been once baffled, why, I scarcely knew at what
step of hers to be surprised.
Of one thing only was I resolved, that I and my chimney should not
budge.
In vain all protests. Next morning I went out into the road, where I had
noticed a diabolical-looking old gander, that, for its doughty exploits
in the way of scratching into forbidden enclosures, had been rewarded by
its master with a portentous, four-pronged, wooden decoration, in the
shape of a collar of the Order of the Garotte. This gander I cornered,
and rummaging out its stiffest quill, plucked it, took it home, and
making a stiff pen, inscribed the following stiff note:--
‘CHIMNEY SIDE, _April 2_.
‘MR. SCRIBE.
‘Sir,--For your conjecture, we return you our joint thanks and
compliments, and beg leave to assure you, that we shall remain,
very faithfully, the same,
‘I AND MY CHIMNEY.’
Of course, for this epistle we had to endure some pretty sharp raps. But
having at last explicitly understood from me that Mr. Scribe’s note had
not altered my mind one jot, my wife, to move me, among other things
said, that if she remembered aright, there was a statute placing the
keeping in private houses of secret closets on the same unlawful footing
with the keeping of gunpowder. But it had no effect.
A few days after, my spouse changed her key.
It was nearly midnight, and all were in bed but ourselves, who sat up,
one in each chimney-corner; she, needles in hand, indefatigably knitting
a sock; I, pipe in mouth, indolently weaving my vapours.
It was one of the first of the chill nights in autumn. There was a fire
on the hearth, burning low. The air without was torpid and heavy; the
wood, by an oversight, of the sort called soggy.
‘Do look at the chimney,’ she began; ‘can’t you see that something must
be in it?’
‘Yes, wife. Truly there is smoke in the chimney, as in Mr. Scribe’s
note.’
‘Smoke? Yes, indeed, and in my eyes, too. How you two wicked old sinners
do smoke!--this wicked old chimney and you.’
‘Wife,’ said I, ‘I and my chimney like to have a quiet smoke together,
it is true, but we don’t like to be called names.’
‘Now, dear old man,’ said she, softening down, and a little shifting the
subject, ‘when you think of that old kinsman of yours, you _know_ there
must be a secret closet in this chimney.’
‘Secret ash-hole, wife, why don’t you have it? Yes, I dare say there is
a secret ash-hole in the chimney; for where do all the ashes go to that
we drop down the queer hole yonder?’
‘I know where they go to; I’ve been there almost as many times as the
cat.’
‘What devil, wife, prompted you to crawl into the ash-hole! Don’t you
know that St. Dunstan’s devil emerged from the ash-hole? You will get
your death one of these days, exploring all about as you do. But,
supposing there be a secret closet, what then?’
‘What then? Why, what should be in a secret closet but----’
‘Dry bones, wife,’ broke in I with a puff, while the sociable old
chimney broke in with another.
‘There again! Oh, how this wretched old chimney smokes,’ wiping her eyes
with her handkerchief. ‘I’ve no doubt the reason it smokes so is,
because that secret closet interferes with the flue. Do see, too, how
the jambs here keep settling; and it’s down hill all the way from the
door to this hearth. This horrid old chimney will fall on our heads yet;
depend upon it, old man.’
‘Yes, wife, I do depend on it; yes, indeed, I place every dependence on
my chimney. As for its settling, I like it. I, too, am settling, you
know, in my gait. I and my chimney are settling together, and shall keep
settling, too, till, as in a great feather-bed, we shall both have
settled away clean out of sight. But this secret oven; I mean, secret
closet of yours, wife; where exactly do you suppose that secret closet
is?’
‘That is for Mr. Scribe to say.’
‘But suppose he cannot say exactly; what then?’
‘Why, then, he can prove, I am sure, that it must be somewhere or other
in this horrid old chimney.’
‘And if he can’t prove that; what then?’
‘Why then, old man,’ with a stately air, ‘I shall say little more about
it.’
‘Agreed, wife,’ returned I, knocking my pipe-bowl against the jamb; ‘and
now, to-morrow, I will a third time send for Mr. Scribe. Wife, the
sciatica takes me; be so good as to put this pipe on the mantel.’
‘If you get the step-ladder for me, I will. This shocking old chimney,
this abominable old-fashioned old chimney’s mantels are so high, I can’t
reach them.’
No opportunity, however trivial, was overlooked for a subordinate fling
at the pile.
Here, by way of introduction, it should be mentioned, that besides the
fireplaces all round it, the chimney was, in the most haphazard way,
excavated on each floor for certain curious out-of-the-way cupboards and
closets, of all sorts and sizes, clinging here and there, like nests in
the crotches of some old oak. On the second floor these closets were by
far the most irregular and numerous. And yet this should hardly have
been so, since the theory of the chimney was, that it pyramidically
diminished as it ascended. The abridgment of its square on the roof was
obvious enough; and it was supposed that the reduction must be
methodically graduated from bottom to top.
‘Mr. Scribe,’ said I, when, the next day, with an eager aspect, that
individual again came, ‘my object in sending for you this morning is,
not to arrange for the demolition of my chimney, nor to have any
particular conversation about it, but simply to allow you every
reasonable facility for verifying, if you can, the conjecture
communicated in your note.’
Though in secret not a little crestfallen, it may be, by my phlegmatic
reception, so different from what he had looked for; with much apparent
alacrity he commenced the survey; throwing open the cupboards on the
first floor, and peering into the closets on the second; measuring one
within, and then comparing that measurement with the measurement
without. Removing the fire-boards, he would gaze up the flues. But no
sign of the hidden work yet.
Now, on the second floor the rooms were the most rambling conceivable.
They, as it were, dovetailed into each other. They were of all shapes;
not one mathematically square room among them all--a peculiarity which
by the master mason had not been unobserved. With a significant, not to
say portentous expression, he took a circuit of the chimney, measuring
the area of each room around it; then going downstairs, and out of
doors, he measured the entire ground area; then compared the sum-total
of all the areas of all the rooms on the second floor with the ground
area; then, returning to me in no small excitement, announced that there
was a difference of no less than two hundred and odd square feet--room
enough, in all conscience, for a secret closet.
‘But, Mr. Scribe,’ said I, stroking my chin, ‘have you allowed for the
walls, both main and sectional? They take up some space, you know.’
‘Ah, I had forgotten that,’ tapping his forehead; ‘but,’ still ciphering
on his paper, ‘that will not make up the deficiency.’
‘But, Mr. Scribe, have you allowed for the recesses of so many
fireplaces on a floor, and for the fire-walls, and the flues; in short,
Mr. Scribe, have you allowed for the legitimate chimney itself--some one
hundred and forty-four square feet or thereabouts, Mr. Scribe?’
‘How unaccountable. That slipped my mind too.’
‘Did it, indeed, Mr. Scribe?’
He faltered a little, and burst forth with, ‘But we must now allow one
hundred and forty-four square feet for the legitimate chimney. My
position is, that within those undue limits the secret closet is
contained.’