“Please, sir, the rats be a rampagin’ in the lumber-room as makes the blood curl!”
For fifty years I had never been into that lumber-room. It is situated up a steep flight of steps in the back kitchen, and had once been inhabited by a button-boy. Here is an extract from my grandmother’s account-book for the year 1803:—
Verily prices have risen since 1803.
However, to return to the four-pounder. He inhabited this room some ninety years ago: then it was abandoned, finally locked up, and the key lost. About fifty years ago, as a boy, I did explore the place, through the window, after nests. My grandfather died. Then my father succeeded, and the room remained unopened during his reign. My father died, and I succeeded to the old house. I had been in it some years, when the other day the kitchen-maidcomplained that the rats in this lumber-room over the back kitchen made her blood “curl,” by which she meant, presumably, “curdle;” till then I had never thought of an exploration.
To abate the nuisance, however, I broke open the door and entered the long-abandoned room. Since the four-pounder had occupied it, for some years that room must have been employed as a place for lumber, because it proved to contain a quantity of old, disused articles in iron and tin, and amongst these were two stands for rushlights, a tinder-box, and a glass phosphorus bottle.
Such a find carried one back, as few other things could, to early days, and showed one the enormous advance we have made in this century in the comforts of life.
Some of us can remember the rushlight, a few the phosphorus bottle, fewer the tinder-box.
Of the rushlights I found, one was familiar to me; the other, probably an earlier type, I had never seen. The former consisted of a cylinder of sheet-iron, perforated with round holes, the cylinder about two feet high. This contained the rushlight. At the bottom was a basin for a little water, that the sparks, as they fell, might be extinguished.
Well do I recall such rushlight lamps! One always burned at night in my father’s bedroom, and when I was ill I was accommodated with one as well. The feeble, flickering light issued through the perforations and capered in fantastic forms over the walls and furniture.
The other rushlight lamp was of a different construction.It consisted of a long spiral of iron wire, and was probably discarded for the newer and safer invention of the lamp with perforated holes. The spiral coil would prevent the lanky rushlight from falling over and out of the lamp, but not the red-hot dock from spluttering on to the carpet or boards of the floor.
Fig. 27.—RUSHLIGHT-HOLDERS.
Fig. 27.—RUSHLIGHT-HOLDERS.
Fig. 27.—RUSHLIGHT-HOLDERS.
There was in use, formerly, in England another sort of rushlight-holder. It consisted of an iron rod planted in a socket of wood that stood on the floor. To this rod, which was round, was affixed a sliding contrivance that upheld a socket for the rushlight, which might be raised or lowered as suited convenience. Connected with the holder was the snuffer. The candle had to be takenoutof its socket to have its wick pinched between the upright unremovable snuffers. Conceive the inconvenience! The drip of tallow about fingers and floor! We have indeed advanced since such candle-holders were in use. They stood about four feet from the floor.
It was necessary in former times for a light to be kept burning all night in one room, for to strike a light was a long and laborious operation. There were little silver boxes that contained amadou, the spongy texture of a puff-ball, and some matchesdipped in sulphur, also a flint. One side of the box was armed with a steel. In striking a light the holder put the amadou in position to receive the sparks from the steel as he struck the flint, then, when the amadou glowed, he touched it with the brimstone end of the match and ignited that—a matter of five to ten minutes. Why, a burglar could clear off with the plate before the roused master of the house could strike a light and kindle his candle to look for him.
The tinder-box employed commonly in kitchens and cottages was a different application of the same principle. It consisted of a circular tin or iron box, with the socket for a candle soldered on to the top. This box contained a removable bottom. When opened it displayed a steel and a lump of flint. These were taken out and the removable bottom lifted up, when below was disclosed a mass of black tinder. The manufacture of this tinder was one of the accomplishments of our forefathers, or rather foremothers. It was made of linen rag burned in a close vessel, completely charred, without being set on fire, and the manufacture of tinder had to take place weekly, and consumed a considerable amount of linen.
In the morning early, before dawn, the first sounds heard in a small house were the click, click, click of the kitchen-maid, striking flint and steel over the tinder in the box. When the tinder was ignited, the maid blew upon it till it glowed sufficiently to enable her to kindle a match made of a bit of stick dipped in brimstone. The cover was then returned to the box, and the weight of the flint and steel pressing it down extinguished the sparks in the carbon. The operation was not, however, always successful; the tinder or the matches might be damp, the flint blunt, and the steel worn; or, on a cold, dark morning, the operator would not infrequently strike her knuckles instead of the steel; a match, too, might be often long in kindling, and it was not pleasant to keep blowing into the tinder-box, and on pausing a moment to take breath, to inhale sulphurous acid gas, and a peculiar odour which the tinder-box always exhaled.
Fig. 28.—A TINDERBOX.
Fig. 28.—A TINDERBOX.
Fig. 28.—A TINDERBOX.
Fig. 29.—STEEL FROM A TINDERBOX.
Fig. 29.—STEEL FROM A TINDERBOX.
Fig. 29.—STEEL FROM A TINDERBOX.
Here is a curious passage from an article on “The Production of Fire,” in thePenny Magazinefor 26th July, 1834:—“The flint and steel, with the tinder and match of some kind or other, have long been the instruments of getting a light in the civilised world.... Within the present century the aid of chemistry has been called in, ... and instantaneous lights have become quite common, under the various names of Promethians, Lucifers, etc., although, from its superior cheapness,the tinder-box will probably always keep its place in domestic use.” This article was published in the very year in which I was born, and now it is extremely difficult to obtain an old tinder-box. I have sought in the cottages and farmhousesin my own parish and those adjoining, and have been unsuccessful in discovering more than one. A generation has grown up that has never even heard of the tinder-box.
In or about 1673 phosphorus was discovered, and its easy ignition by mere friction made known, and this opened the prospect of more easy means of obtaining a light. But phosphorus was costly, and a century and a half elapsed before the phosphorus match came into use. Phosphoric tapers were employed; these were small wax tapers, the wicks of which were coated with phosphorus; they were enclosed in glass tubes hermetically sealed, and when a light was required, one end of the tube was removed with a file, when the taper became ignited by exposure to the air.
The plan was, however, clumsy, besides being dangerous and costly, and never took hold of public estimation. The next attempt was to put a piece of phosphorus into a small phial, and dissolve it at a moderate heat, then keep the phial corked. The bottle was about the size of one of smelling salts, and was kept at the head of the bed. When a light was required, the glass stopper was removed, and a match coated with sulphur was dipped into it, and worked about till a flame was produced, when the match was withdrawn, and the phial hastily corked. Another method was to rub the match, after dipping it in the bottle, against a piece of cork or soft wood, the friction more certainly or less dangerously promoting the combination of the sulphur and phosphorus, and the consequent production of flame.
Another method of kindling a match was by means of Homberg’s phosphorus, or fire-bearer. It was a black powder compound of flour, sugar, and alum, which took fire on exposure to the air. But it never came into general use. It remained in the hands of the curious. None of these inventions displaced the old tinder-box, which maintained itself to within the memory of many of us who are over fifty years.
Of all the ingenious attempts to get rid of the tinder-box, the oxymuriate matches were the most successful. From them our present lucifers are lineally descended. The oxymuriate matches were composed of chlorate of potash and sugar coating a strip of wood. The match was dipped into a bottle containing a piece of asbestos soaked in oil of vitriol. The bottle and a number of these matches, with tipped ends downwards, were put into a neat little case, and this was called the “phosphorus box.” On their first introduction, these boxes sold as high as 15s. each; they gradually fell to 10s., then 5s., but never went below half-a-crown. But they were not altogether successful. The oil of vitriol lost its force after a while, owing to the readiness with which it absorbed moisture from the air, and then the matches smouldered instead of bursting into flame.
The next advance was the lucifer-match, with phosphorus and sulphur combined at the end. But this was dangerous, and frightful accidents attended the manufacture. I spent some winters at Pau, in the south of France, and near our house were the cottages of poor people who worked at match-making. The pans of melted phosphorus into which the headsof the matches were dipped would explode suddenly, and scatter their flaming contents over the match-girls. My mother, as an angel of goodness, was wont to visit and minister to many and many a poor little burnt girl, who had thus been set fire to.
But the phosphorus match-making had another objection to it, besides the accidents produced in the melting of phosphorus. It brought on a frightful disease in the jaw. The bone was attacked, and rotted away. In the “Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science” for 1852, the nature of the disease is thus described:—“An affection ensues which is so insidious in its nature that it is at first supposed to be common toothache, and a most serious disease of the jaw is produced before the patient is aware of his condition. The disease gradually creeps on until the sufferer becomes a miserable and loathsome object, spending the best period of his life in the wards of a public hospital. Many patients have died of the disease; many unable to open their jaws have lingered with carious and necrosed bones; others have suffered dreadful mutilations from surgical operations, considering themselves happy to escape with the loss of the greater portion of the lower jaw. In the Museum of the Manchester Infirmary is the lower jaw of a young woman who is now at work. Her face is much disfigured by the loss of her chin, and, on looking into her mouth, the root of the tongue is seen connected with her under lip, the space formerly occupied by the jaw being obliterated by the contraction of the cheek.”
Thus, in the advance of civilisation, great agonies have been gone through. Our present conveniences have been purchased at the cost of throes and tears in the past. We should not forget that civilisation has had its martyrs.
Lastly came the match made without phosphorus. When we think of the toil and trouble that the lighting of a fire occasioned, we can understand what store was set on never letting a fire on the hearth go out. An old woman on Dartmoor, recently dead, boasted on her death-bed: “I be sure I’se goin’ to glory; for sixty-three years have I been married, and never in all them years once let the hearth-fire go out.” But there the fire was of peat, which will smoulder on untouched for many hours.
There was a stage of civilisation before the tinder-box came in, and that was a stage when fire had to be kept in, and if it went out, borrowed from a neighbour. In the earliest age, fire was obtained by friction; a piece of wood with a hole in it was placed on the ground between the feet. Then a man held a piece shaped like the letter T in his hands, and rapidly twirled this about, with the long end inserted in the hole of the piece he held between his feet, till by friction the upright was ignited. The pieces of wood must be very dry, and requisite dryness was not easily procurable in our moist northern climes, consequently the labour of kindling a flame was proportionately great. Sometimes a wheel was employed, and the axle turned in that to produce a flame. It has been thought that thefylfotfylfot, the crook-legged cross found on so many monuments ofantiquity, theSvastikaof India, represents an instrument for the production of fire by friction. But owing to the great difficulty in producing fire by this means, the greatest possible care was taken of the household fire, lest it should become extinguished. This originated the worship of Vesta. The flame once procured was guarded against extinction in some central spot by the unmarried women of the house, and when villages and towns were formed, a central circular hut was erected in which a common fire was maintained, and watched continuously. From this central hearth all the hearths of the settlement were supplied. Ovid tells us that the first temple of Vesta at Rome was constructed of wattled walls, and roofed with thatch like the primitive huts of the inhabitants. It was little other than a circular, covered fireplace, and was tended by the unmarried girls of the infant community. It served as the public hearth of Rome, and on it glowed, unextinguished throughout the year, the sacred fire, which was supposed to have been brought from Troy, and the continuance of which was thought to be linked with the fortunes of the city. The name Vesta is believed to be derived from the same root as the Sanscritvas, which means “to dwell, to inhabit,” and shows that she was the goddess of home, and home had the hearth as its focus. A town, a state, is but a large family, and what the domestic hearth was to the house, that the temple of the perpetual fire became to the city. Every town had its Vesta, or common hearth, and the colonies derived their fire from the mother hearth. Should avestal maiden allow the sacred fire to become extinguished, she was beaten by the Grand Pontiff till her blood flowed, and the new fire was solemnly rekindled by rubbing together dry wood, or by focussing the sun’s rays. It might not be borrowed from a strange place. The circular form and domed roof of the Temples of Vesta were survivals of the prehistoric huts of the aborigines.
Among the legends of the early Celtic saints nothing is more common than the story of the saint being sent to borrow fire, and carrying it in his lap without the fire injuring his garment.
In Ireland, before St. Patrick introduced Christianity, there was a temple at Tara where fire burned ever, and was on no account suffered to go out.
When Christianity became dominant, it was necessary to dissociate the ideas of the people from the central fire as mixed up with the old gods; at the same time some central fire was an absolute need. Accordingly the Church was converted into the sacred depository of the perpetual fire, and a lamp was kept in it ever burning, not only that the candles might be ignited from it for the services, without recourse had to friction or tinder flint and steel, but also that the parish, the village, the town, might obtain thence their fire.
Fig. 30.—CRESSET-STONE, ST. AMBROGIO, MILAN.
Fig. 30.—CRESSET-STONE, ST. AMBROGIO, MILAN.
Fig. 30.—CRESSET-STONE, ST. AMBROGIO, MILAN.
Fig. 31.—CRESSET-STONE, LEWANNICK.
Fig. 31.—CRESSET-STONE, LEWANNICK.
Fig. 31.—CRESSET-STONE, LEWANNICK.
There exist still a few—a very few—contrivances for this perpetual fire in our churches; they go bythe name of cresset-stones. The earliest I know is not in England, but is in the atrium outside the remarkable church of St. Ambrogio at Milan. It is a block of white marble on a moulded base, it is now broken, but banded together with iron. It stands 3 feet 10 inches high, and is 2 feet 6 inches in diameter at top. It consists of a flat surface in which are depressed nine cuplike hollows. These were originally filled with oil, and wicks were placed in them and ignited. In England one is stillin situ, in the church of Lewannick, in Cornwall. There it is not far from the door. It consists of a circular block containing on its flat upper surface, which is twenty-two inches across, seven cuplike hollows, four and a half inches deep. The stone stands on a rudely moulded base, octagonal, and is in all about 2 feet 6 inches high. In Furness Abbey, among the ruins, has been found another, with five cups in it; at Calder Abbey another, with sixteen such cups for oil and wicks. At York is another with six such fire-cups, and at Stockholm another with the same number, in a square stone table. At Wool Church, Dorset, is again another example built into the south wall of a small chapel on the north side of the chancel. It is a block of Purbeck marble, and has in the top five cup-shapedcavities quite blackened with the oil and smoke. In some of the examples there are traces of a metal pin around which the wick was twisted.
In addition to these, in several churches are to be found lamp-niches. Some have chimneys or flues, which pass upwards, in some cases passing into the chimneys of fireplaces. Others have conical hollows in the heads or roofs, in order to catch the soot, and prevent it passing out into the church.
Now, although these lamps and cressets had their religious signification, yet this religious signification was an afterthought. The origin of them lay in the necessity of there being in every place a central light, from which light could at any time be borrowed; and the reason why this central light was put in the church was to dissociate it from the heathen ideas attached formerly to it. As it was, the good people of the Middle Ages were not quite satisfied with the central church fire, and they had recourse in times of emergency to others—and as the Church deemed them—unholy fires. When a plague and murrain appeared among cattle, then they lighted need-fires, from two pieces of dry wood, and drove the cattle between the flames, believing that this new flame was wholesome to the purging away of the disease. For kindling the need-fires the employment of flint and steel was forbidden. The fire was only efficacious when extracted in prehistoric fashion, out of wood. The lighting of these need-fires was forbidden by the Church in the eighth century. What shows that this need-fire was distinctly heathen is that in the Church new fire was obtained at Easter annually by strikingflint and steel together. It was supposed that the old fire in a twelvemonth had got exhausted, or perhaps that all light expired with Christ, and that new fire must be obtained. Accordingly the priest solemnly struck new fire out of flint and steel. But fire from flint and steel was a novelty; and the people, Pagan at heart, had no confidence in it, and in time of adversity went back to the need-fire kindled in the time-honoured way from wood by friction, before this new-fangled way of drawing it out of stone and iron was invented.
The curious festival of the Car of Fire observed on Easter Eve every year at Florence carries us back to a remote period when fire was a sacred and mysterious thing. As is well known, in the Eastern Church, also in the Roman Catholic Church, all fires are extinguished before Easter; and in the Cathedral, the Bishop, on Easter morning, strikes new fire, blesses it, and all the hearths in the city receive the new fire from this blessed spark. It is vulgarly supposed that the old fire has got worn out, and has lost its full vigour by use throughout the year, and that the new fire is full of restless and youthful energy. There can be little doubt that this idea goes back to a remote and Pagan time, and the Church accepted what was a common custom, and gave it, or tried to give it, a new and Christian idea, connecting it with the resurrection of Him who is the Light of the World. The same custom of striking and blessing new fire exists in many parts of the West as well as the East, and is sanctioned by the Roman Church. But nowhere does this ancient usageassume so quaint and picturesque a form as at Florence. There, however, the primitive significance is completely forgotten, and the people have endeavoured to explain the ceremony which I will now describe in various mutually contradictory ways.
On Easter Eve, four magnificent white oxen, their huge horns wreathed with flowers, and with garlands about them, as though they were being conveyed to sacrifice, draw a huge car, painted black, some twenty-five feet high, pyramidal in shape, and crowned with a mural coronet, into the piazza before the west doors of the white marble cathedral. The car is itself wreathed with flowers to its highest pinnacle, and with the flowers various fireworks are interspersed. As soon as this great trophy is in place, and the oxen unyoked, the west doors of the cathedral are thrown open, and a rope is strained from the top of the car to a pillar that is erected in front of the high altar, a distance of some two hundred yards. On this cord is seen perched a white dove, composed of some white substance, probably plaster. For two hours before the event of the day takes place the great piazza and the nave of the vast cathedral are crowded. Villagers from all the country round have arrived; but there are also present plenty of townsfolk, and strangers from foreign lands. At half-past eleven, the archbishop and all his clergy come in procession down the body of the church, pass out of the west doors, and make the circuit of the cathedral. Before twelve o’clock strikes they are again in their places in the choir. At the stroke of noon the newly-blessed fire is applied to atrain of gunpowder at the foot of the pillar. In another moment the pigeon skims down the nave, pouring out a shower of fire, sweeps out of the west door of the cathedral, reaches the trophy in the square, sets fire to a fusee there, then turns and flies back along the rope, still discharging a rain of fire, till it has reached its pillar before the altar, and there is still.
Fig. 32.—THE CARRO, FLORENCE.
Fig. 32.—THE CARRO, FLORENCE.
Fig. 32.—THE CARRO, FLORENCE.
But in the meantime the fusee at the car has set fire to various squibs and petards and crackers there, and the whole structure is speedily enveloped in fire and smoke, from which explosions issue every few moments. As soon as the last firework has expired, the white oxen are again yoked to the car, and it is drawn away.
The flight of the dove is watched by the peasants with breathless anxiety, for the course it takes indicates, in their idea, the sort of weather that is likely to ensue during the year. If the bird moves slowly, halts, then goes on again, halts, and is sluggish in its flight, they conclude the year will be tempestuous and the harvestbad. If the dove skims along to the car and back without a hitch, they calculate on a splendid summer and autumn, on a rich yield of corn, and overflowing presses of grapes.
And now for the legends whereby the people explain this curious custom. According to one, a certain Florentine named Pazzino went to Jerusalem in the twelfth century, kindled a torch there at the Holy Sepulchre on Easter Eve, and resolved to bring this same sacred fire with him back to Florence. But as he rode along, the wind blew in his face and well-nigh extinguished his torch, so he sat his steed with his face to the tail, screening the flame with his body, and so rode all the way home! The people along his route, seeing him thus ride reversed, shouted out, “Pazzi! Pazzi!” (“O fool! fool!”) and that name of “fool” he and his family assumed; and the family is still represented in Florence.
There is another version of the story; one Pazzino, seeing the Holy Sepulchre in the hands of the infidels, broke off as much of it as he could carry to convey home to his dear Florence. As he was pursued by the Saracens, he reversed the shoes of his horse to avoid being tracked. On reaching Florence it was resolved that the new Easter fire should always be kindled on the stone of the Holy Sepulchre he had brought home. In honour of his achievement, moreover, the municipality ordered that the ceremony of the Car of Fire and the fiery dove should be maintained every year. For many centuries the expenses were borne by the Pazzi family; but of late years they have been relieved of these by the municipality.
The third version of the story is, that Pazzino was a knight with Godfrey de Bouillon in the first Crusade, and that he was the first of the besiegers to mount the walls and plant on them the banner of the cross. Moreover, he sent the tidings of the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre home to Florence by a carrier-pigeon, and thus the news reached Florence long before it could have arrived in any other way.
Such are the principal legends connected with this curious ceremony, and we are constrained to say that we believe that one is as fabulous as another. The explanation of the custom is really this.
The rite of striking the new fire was observed at Florence, as elsewhere, from an early date, but thecommunicationof the new fire from the newly-ignited candle was both a long affair, and occasioned noise, struggle and inconvenience. Accordingly—partly to save the church from being the scene of an unseemly scramble, and partly to make the communication of the fire an easy matter to a large number of persons at once—an ingenious contrivance was made, whereby a dove should carry the flame from the choir of the cathedral, above the reach of the people, who therefore could not scuffle and scramble for it, to the market-place outside, where it ignited a bonfire, to which all the people could apply their candles and torches. After a while the real intention was forgotten, and the bonfire was converted into a great exhibition of fireworks in the daytime.
The whole ceremony has a somewhat childish character, but then it dates back to a period when all men were children; and it serves, if rightly understood,to link us with the past, and enables us to measure the distance we have trodden since those ages when fire was one of the most difficult things to be re-acquired, if once lost, and the preservation of fire and the striking of fire were matters of extreme importance, and were after a while reserved to a sacred class.[22]