BEING A CHAPTER ON HOUSE-TOPS.
The house-tops! what a soberising effect that prospect produces on
the mind. But a great many requisites go towards the selection of the
right point of survey. It is not enough to secure a lodging in the
attic; you must not be fobbed off with a front attic that faces the
street. First, your attic must be unequivocally a back attic; secondly,
the house in which it is located must be slightly elevated above its
neighbours; thirdly, the window must not lie slant on the roof, as is
common with attics--in which case you only catch a peep of that leaden
canopy which infatuated Londoners call the sky--but must be a window
perpendicular, and not half blocked up by the parapets of that fosse
called the gutter; and, lastly, the sight must be so humoured that you
cannot catch a glimpse of the pavements: if you once see the world
beneath, the whole charm of that world above is destroyed. Taking it
for granted that you have secured these requisites, open your window,
lean your chin on both hands, the elbows propped commodiously on the
sill, and contemplate the extraordinary scene which spreads before you.
You find it difficult to believe that life can be so tranquil on high,
while it is so noisy and turbulent below. What astonishing stillness!
Eliot Warburton (seductive enchanter) recommends you to sail down the
Nile if you want to lull the vexed spirit. It is easier and cheaper to
hire an attic in Holborn! You don't have the crocodiles, but you have
animals no less hallowed in Egypt--the cats! And how harmoniously the
tranquil creatures blend with the prospect--how noiselessly they glide
along at the distance, pause, peer about, and disappear. It is only
from the attic that you can appreciate the picturesque which belongs to
our domesticated tiger-kin! The goat should be seen on the Alps, and
the cat on the house-top.
By degrees the curious eye takes the scenery in detail: and first, what
fantastic variety in the heights and shapes of the chimney-pots! Some
all level in a row, uniform and respectable, but quite uninteresting;
others, again, rising out of all proportion, and imperatively tasking
the reason to conjecture why they are so aspiring. Reason answers
that it is but a homely expedient to give freer vent to the smoke;
whereon Imagination steps in, and represents to you all the fretting,
and fuming, and worry, and care, which the owners of that chimney,
now the tallest of all, endured, before, by building it higher, they
got rid of the vapours! You see the distress of the cook, when the
sooty invader rushed down, "like a wolf on the fold," full spring on
the Sunday joint. You hear the exclamations of the mistress, (perhaps
a bride,--house newly furnished,) when, with white apron and cap,
she ventured into the drawing-room, and was straightway saluted by a
joyous dance of those monads, called vulgarly _smuts_. You feel manly
indignation at the brute of a bridegroom, who rushes out from the door,
with the smuts dancing after him, and swears, "Smoked out again--By
the Arch-smoker himself, I'll go and dine at the club!" All this might
well have been, till the chimney-pot was raised a few feet nearer
heaven; and now perhaps that long-suffering family owns the happiest
home in the Row. Such contrivances to get rid of the smoke! It is not
every one who merely heightens his chimney; others clap on the hollow
tormentor all sorts of odd headgear and cowls. Here patent contrivances
act the purpose of weathercocks, swaying to and fro with the wind;
there others stand as fixed as if by a "_sic jubeo_" they had settled
the business. But of all those houses that, in the street, one passes
by, unsuspicious of what's the matter within, there is not one in a
hundred but what there has been the devil to do, to cure the chimneys
of smoking! At that reflection, Philosophy dismisses the subject; and
decides that, whether one lives in a hut or a palace, the first thing
to do is to look to the hearth--and get rid of the vapours.
New beauties demand us. What endless undulations in the various
declivities and ascents: here a slant, there a zig-zag! With what
majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left!--Doubtless, a palace
of Genii or Gin, (which last is the proper Arabic word for those
builders of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin.) Seeing only
the roof of that palace boldly breaking the skyline--how serene your
contemplations! Perhaps a star twinkles over it, and you muse on soft
eyes far away; while below, at the threshold--No, phantoms, we see you
not from our attic! Note, yonder, that precipitous fall--how ragged and
jagged the roof-scene descends in a gorge. He who would travel on foot
through the pass of that defile, of which we see but the picturesque
summits, stops his nose, averts his eyes, guards his pockets, and
hurries along through the squalor of the grim London lazzaroni. But
seen _above_, what a noble break in the skyline! It would be sacrilege
to exchange that fine gorge for a dead flat of dull roof-tops. Look
here--how delightful!--that desolate house with no roof at all--gutted
and skinned by the last London fire! You can see the poor green and
white paper still clinging to the walls, and the chasm that once was
a cupboard, and the shadows gathering black on the aperture that once
was a hearth! Seen below, how quickly you would cross over the way!
That great crack forbodes an avalanche; you would hold your breath, not
to bring it down on your head. But seen _above_, what a compassionate
inquisitive charm in the skeleton ruin! How your fancy runs
riot--repeopling the chambers, hearing the last cheerful good-night
of that destined Pompeii--creeping on tiptoe with the mother, when
she gives her farewell look to the baby. Now all is midnight and
silence; then the red, crawling serpent comes out. Lo! his breath;
hark! his hiss. Now, spire after spire he winds and coils; now he
soars up erect--crest superb, and forked tongue--the beautiful horror!
Then the start from the sleep, and the doubtful awaking, and the run
here and there, and the mother's rush to the cradle; the cry from the
window, and the knock at the door, and the spring of those on high
towards the stair that leads to safety below, and the smoke rushing
up like the surge of a hell! And they run back stifled and blinded,
and the floor heaves beneath them like a bark on the sea. Hark! the
grating wheels thundering low; near and near comes the engine. Fix the
ladders!--there! there! at the window, where the mother stands with
the babe! Splash and hiss comes the water; pales, then flares out, the
fire: foe defies foe; element, element. How sublime is the war! But
the ladder, the ladder!--there at the window! All else are saved: the
clerk and his books; the lawyer, with that tin box of title-deeds; the
landlord, with his policy of insurance; the miser, with his bank-notes
and gold: all are saved--all, but the babe and the mother. What a crowd
in the streets! how the light crimsons over the gazers, hundreds on
hundreds! All those faces seem as one face, with fear. Not a man mounts
the ladder. Yes, there--gallant fellow! God inspires--God shall speed
thee! How plainly I see him!--his eyes are closed, his teeth set. The
serpent leaps up, the forked tongue darts upon him, and the reek of the
breath wraps him round. The crowd has ebbed back like a sea, and the
smoke rushes over them all. Ha! what dim forms are those on the ladder?
Near and nearer--crash come the roof-tiles. Alas, and alas!--no; a cry
of joy--a "Thank heaven!" and the women force their way through the men
to come round the child and the mother. All is gone, save that skeleton
ruin. But here, the ruin is seen from _above_. O Art, study life from
the roof-tops!