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- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
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- 9953
- text
- gossip and knave. Yes, wife, a vile eavesdropping varlet was Momus.’
‘Moses?--Mumps? Stuff with your mumps and your Moses!’
The truth is, my wife, like all the rest of the world, cares not a fig
for my philosophical jabber. In dearth of other philosophical
companionship, I and my chimney have to smoke and philosophise together.
And sitting up so late as we do at it, a mighty smoke it is that we two
smoky old philosophers make.
But my spouse, who likes the smoke of my tobacco as little as she does
that of the soot, carries on her war against both. I live in continual
dread lest, like the golden bowl, the pipes of me and my chimney shall
yet be broken. To stay that mad project of my wife’s, naught answers.
Or, rather, she herself is incessantly answering, incessantly besetting
me with her terrible alacrity for improvement, which is a softer name
for destruction. Scarce a day I do not find her with her tape-measure,
measuring for her grand hall, while Anna holds a yard-stick on one side,
and Julia looks approvingly on from the other. Mysterious intimations
appear in the nearest village paper, signed ‘Claude,’ to the effect that
a certain structure, standing on a certain hill, is a sad blemish to an
otherwise lovely landscape. Anonymous letters arrive, threatening me
with I know not what, unless I remove my chimney. Is it my wife, too, or
who, that sets up the neighbours to badgering me on the same subject,
and hinting to me that my chimney, like a huge elm, absorbs all moisture
from my garden? At night, also, my wife will start as from sleep,
professing to hear ghostly noises from the secret closet. Assailed on
all sides, and in all ways, small peace have I and my chimney.
Were it not for the baggage, we would together pack up, and remove from
the country.
What narrow escapes have been ours! Once I found in a drawer a whole
portfolio of plans and estimates. Another time, upon returning after a
day’s absence, I discovered my wife standing before the chimney in
earnest conversation with a person whom I at once recognised as a
meddlesome architectural reformer, who, because he had no gift for
putting up anything, was ever intent upon pulling down; in various parts
of the country having prevailed upon half-witted old folks to destroy
their old-fashioned houses, particularly the chimneys.
But worst of all was that time I unexpectedly returned at early morning
from a visit to the city, and upon approaching the house, narrowly
escaped three brickbats which fell, from high aloft, at my feet.
Glancing up, what was my horror to see three savages, in blue jean
overalls, in the very act of commencing the long-threatened attack. Ay,
indeed, thinking of those three brickbats, I and my chimney have had
narrow escapes.
It is now some seven years since I have stirred from home. My city
friends all wonder why I don’t come to see them, as in former times.
They think I am getting sour and unsocial. Some say that I have become a
sort of mossy old misanthrope, while all the time the fact is, I am
simply standing guard over my mossy old chimney; for it is resolved
between me and my chimney, that I and my chimney will never surrender.
-----
Footnote 12:
In the margin of the MS. of this Essay, Melville’s wife wrote the
following note:--
‘All this about his wife, applied to his mother--who was very vigorous
and energetic about the farm, etc. The proposed removal of the chimney
is purely mythical.’
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