I and My Chimney
by Herman Melville
I and my chimney, two grey-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 hereby 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
traveler'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 neighbors call a
forehanded one. Indeed, those rumors 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 rear-guard 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, 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 modem 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 honey-combed 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 economize
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 triannon.
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 neighbor's fifth--not till then does he
retire to his rest with satisfaction.
Such folks, it seems to me, need mountains for neighbors, 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 Champs 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 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 clapboards, 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 modeled,
only its rate of decrease towards 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 razed
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 chinmey--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 traveler 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 sympathize 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 travelers, passing my way, would wag their heads,
laughing; "See that wax nose--how it melts off!" But what cared
I? The same travelers 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 bum 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 by-gone 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 neighbor
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 Caesar, 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.
