The House-Tops! What a soberizing 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 neighbors;
thirdly, the window must not lie slant on the roof, as is common with
attics,--in which case you can 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 humored 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 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; wherewith
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 vapors.
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 head-gear and cowls. Here, patent contrivances act the purpose of
weather-cocks, 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 but or a palace, the first thing to do is to look to the
hearth and get rid of the vapors.
New beauties demand us. What endless undulations in the various
declivities and ascents,--here a slant, there a zigzag! 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 sky-line, 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 sky-line! It
would be sacrilege to exchange that fine gorge for a dead flat of dull
rooftops. 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 forebodes an avalanche; you 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,--re-peopling 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 he 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 nearer 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 than
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 the ruin is seen from above. O Art! study
life from the roof-tops!