Fire Worship

by Nathaniel Hawthorne




It is a great revolution in social and domestic life, and no less so in
the life of a secluded student, this almost universal exchange of the
open fireplace for the cheerless and ungenial stove. On such a morning
as now lowers around our old gray parsonage, I miss the bright face of
my ancient friend, who was wont to dance upon the hearth and play the
part of more familiar sunshine. It is sad to turn from the cloudy sky
and sombre landscape; from yonder hill, with its crown of rusty, black
pines, the foliage of which is so dismal in the absence of the sun;
that bleak pasture-land, and the broken surface of the potato-field,
with the brown clods partly concealed by the snowfall of last night;
the swollen and sluggish river, with ice-incrusted borders, dragging
its bluish-gray stream along the verge of our orchard like a snake half
torpid with the cold,—it is sad to turn from an outward scene of so
little comfort and find the same sullen influences brooding within the
precincts of my study. Where is that brilliant guest, that quick and
subtle spirit, whom Prometheus lured from heaven to civilize mankind
and cheer them in their wintry desolation; that comfortable inmate,
whose smile, during eight months of the year, was our sufficient
consolation for summer’s lingering advance and early flight? Alas!
blindly inhospitable, grudging the food that kept him cheery and
mercurial, we have thrust him into an iron prison, and compel him to
smoulder away his life on a daily pittance which once would have been
too scanty for his breakfast. Without a metaphor, we now make our fire
in an air-tight stove, and supply it with some half a dozen sticks of
wood between dawn and nightfall.

I never shall be reconciled to this enormity. Truly may it be said that
the world looks darker for it. In one way or another, here and there
and all around us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the
picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful out of human life. The
domestic fire was a type of all these attributes, and seemed to bring
might and majesty, and wild nature and a spiritual essence, into our in
most home, and yet to dwell with us in such friendliness that its
mysteries and marvels excited no dismay. The same mild companion that
smiled so placidly in our faces was he that comes roaring out of Ætna
and rushes madly up the sky like a fiend breaking loose from torment
and fighting for a place among the upper angels. He it is, too, that
leaps from cloud to cloud amid the crashing thunder-storm. It was he
whom the Gheber worshipped with no unnatural idolatry; and it was he
who devoured London and Moscow and many another famous city, and who
loves to riot through our own dark forests and sweep across our
prairies, and to whose ravenous maw, it is said, the universe shall one
day be given as a final feast. Meanwhile he is the great artisan and
laborer by whose aid men are enabled to build a world within a world,
or, at least, to smooth down the rough creation which Nature flung to
it. He forges the mighty anchor and every lesser instrument; he drives
the steamboat and drags the rail-car; and it was he—this creature of
terrible might, and so many-sided utility and all-comprehensive
destructiveness—that used to be the cheerful, homely friend of our
wintry days, and whom we have made the prisoner of this iron cage.

How kindly he was! and, though the tremendous agent of change, yet
bearing himself with such gentleness, so rendering himself a part of
all life-long and age-coeval associations, that it seemed as if he were
the great conservative of nature. While a man was true to the fireside,
so long would he be true to country and law, to the God whom his
fathers worshipped, to the wife of his youth, and to all things else
which instinct or religion has taught us to consider sacred. With how
sweet humility did this elemental spirit perform all needful offices
for the household in which he was domesticated! He was equal to the
concoction of a grand dinner, yet scorned not to roast a potato or
toast a bit of cheese. How humanely did he cherish the school-boy’s icy
fingers, and thaw the old man’s joints with a genial warmth which
almost equalled the glow of youth! And how carefully did he dry the
cowhide boots that had trudged through mud and snow, and the shaggy
outside garment stiff with frozen sleet! taking heed, likewise, to the
comfort of the faithful dog who had followed his master through the
storm. When did he refuse a coal to light a pipe, or even a part of his
own substance to kindle a neighbor’s fire? And then, at twilight, when
laborer, or scholar, or mortal of whatever age, sex, or degree, drew a
chair beside him and looked into his glowing face, how acute, how
profound, how comprehensive was his sympathy with the mood of each and
all! He pictured forth their very thoughts. To the youthful he showed
the scenes of the adventurous life before them; to the aged the shadows
of departed love and hope; and, if all earthly things had grown
distasteful, he could gladden the fireside muser with golden glimpses
of a better world. And, amid this varied communion with the human soul,
how busily would the sympathizer, the deep moralist, the painter of
magic pictures, be causing the teakettle to boil!

Nor did it lessen the charm of his soft, familiar courtesy and
helpfulness that the mighty spirit, were opportunity offered him, would
run riot through the peaceful house, wrap its inmates in his terrible
embrace, and leave nothing of them save their whitened bones. This
possibility of mad destruction only made his domestic kindness the more
beautiful and touching. It was so sweet of him, being endowed with such
power, to dwell day after day, and one long lonesome night after
another, on the dusky hearth, only now and then betraying his wild
nature by thrusting his red tongue out of the chimney-top! True, he had
done much mischief in the world, and was pretty certain to do more; but
his warm heart atoned for all. He was kindly to the race of man; and
they pardoned his characteristic imperfections.

The good old clergyman, my predecessor in this mansion, was well
acquainted with the comforts of the fireside. His yearly allowance of
wood, according to the terms of his settlement, was no less than sixty
cords. Almost an annual forest was converted from sound oak logs into
ashes, in the kitchen, the parlor, and this little study, where now an
unworthy successor, not in the pastoral office, but merely in his
earthly abode, sits scribbling beside an air-tight stove. I love to
fancy one of those fireside days while the good man, a contemporary of
the Revolution, was in his early prime, some five-and-sixty years ago.
Before sunrise, doubtless, the blaze hovered upon the gray skirts of
night and dissolved the frostwork that had gathered like a curtain over
the small window-panes. There is something peculiar in the aspect of
the morning fireside; a fresher, brisker glare; the absence of that
mellowness which can be produced only by half-consumed logs, and
shapeless brands with the white ashes on them, and mighty coals, the
remnant of tree-trunks that the hungry, elements have gnawed for hours.
The morning hearth, too, is newly swept, and the brazen andirons well
brightened, so that the cheerful fire may see its face in them. Surely
it was happiness, when the pastor, fortified with a substantial
breakfast, sat down in his arm-chair and slippers and opened the Whole
Body of Divinity, or the Commentary on Job, or whichever of his old
folios or quartos might fall within the range of his weekly sermons. It
must have been his own fault if the warmth and glow of this abundant
hearth did not permeate the discourse and keep his audience comfortable
in spite of the bitterest northern blast that ever wrestled with the
church-steeple. He reads while the heat warps the stiff covers of the
volume; he writes without numbness either in his heart or fingers; and,
with unstinted hand, he throws fresh sticks of wood upon the fire.

A parishioner comes in. With what warmth of benevolence—how should he
be otherwise than warm in any of his attributes?—does the minister bid
him welcome, and set a chair for him in so close proximity to the
hearth, that soon the guest finds it needful to rub his scorched shins
with his great red hands! The melted snow drips from his steaming boots
and bubbles upon the hearth. His puckered forehead unravels its
entanglement of crisscross wrinkles. We lose much of the enjoyment of
fireside heat without such an opportunity of marking its genial effect
upon those who have been looking the inclement weather in the face. In
the course of the day our clergyman himself strides forth, perchance to
pay a round of pastoral visits; or, it may he, to visit his mountain of
a wood-pile and cleave the monstrous logs into billets suitable for the
fire. He returns with fresher life to his beloved hearth. During the
short afternoon the western sunshine comes into the study and strives
to stare the ruddy blaze out of countenance but with only a brief
triumph, soon to be succeeded by brighter glories of its rival.
Beautiful it is to see the strengthening gleam, the deepening light
that gradually casts distinct shadows of the human figure, the table,
and the high-backed chairs upon the opposite wall, and at length, as
twilight comes on, replenishes the room with living radiance and makes
life all rose-color. Afar the wayfarer discerns the flickering flame as
it dances upon the windows, and hails it as a beacon-light of humanity,
reminding him, in his cold and lonely path, that the world is not all
snow, and solitude, and desolation. At eventide, probably, the study
was peopled with the clergyman’s wife and family, and children tumbled
themselves upon the hearth-rug, and grave puss sat with her back to the
fire, or gazed, with a semblance of human meditation, into its fervid
depths. Seasonably the plenteous ashes of the day were raked over the
mouldering brands, and from the heap came jets of flame, and an incense
of night-long smoke creeping quietly up the chimney.

Heaven forgive the old clergyman! In his later life, when for almost
ninety winters he had been gladdened by the firelight,—when it had
gleamed upon him from infancy to extreme age, and never without
brightening his spirits as well as his visage, and perhaps keeping him
alive so long,—he had the heart to brick up his chimney-place and bid
farewell to the face of his old friend forever, why did he not take an
eternal leave of the sunshine too? His sixty cords of wood had probably
dwindled to a far less ample supply in modern times; and it is certain
that the parsonage had grown crazy with time and tempest and pervious
to the cold; but still it was one of the saddest tokens of the decline
and fall of open fireplaces that, the gray patriarch should have
deigned to warm himself at an air-tight stove.

And I, likewise,—who have found a home in this ancient owl’s-nest since
its former occupant took his heavenward flight,—I, to my shame, have
put up stoves in kitchen and parlor and chamber. Wander where you will
about the house, not a glimpse of the earth-born, heaven-aspiring fiend
of Ætna,—him that sports in the thunder-storm, the idol of the Ghebers,
the devourer of cities, the forest-rioter and prairie-sweeper, the
future destroyer of our earth, the old chimney-corner companion who
mingled himself so sociably with household joys and sorrows,—not a
glimpse of this mighty and kindly one will greet your eyes. He is now
an invisible presence. There is his iron cage. Touch it, and he
scorches your fingers. He delights to singe a garment or perpetrate any
other little unworthy mischief; for his temper is ruined by the
ingratitude of mankind, for whom he cherished such warmth of feeling,
and to whom he taught all their arts, even that of making his own
prison-house. In his fits of rage he puffs volumes of smoke and noisome
gas through the crevices of the door, and shakes the iron walls of his
dungeon so as to overthrow the ornamental urn upon its summit. We
tremble lest he should break forth amongst us. Much of his time is
spent in sighs, burdened with unutterable grief, and long drawn through
the funnel. He amuses himself, too, with repeating all the whispers,
the moans, and the louder utterances or tempestuous howls of the wind;
so that the stove becomes a microcosm of the aerial world. Occasionally
there are strange combinations of sounds,—voices talking almost
articulately within the hollow chest of iron,—insomuch that fancy
beguiles me with the idea that my firewood must have grown in that
infernal forest of lamentable trees which breathed their complaints to
Dante. When the listener is half asleep he may readily take these
voices for the conversation of spirits and assign them an intelligible
meaning. Anon there is a pattering noise,—drip, drip, drip,—as if a
summer shower were falling within the narrow circumference of the
stove.

These barren and tedious eccentricities are all that the air-tight
stove can bestow in exchange for the invaluable moral influences which
we have lost by our desertion of the open fireplace. Alas! is this
world so very bright that we can afford to choke up such a domestic
fountain of gladsomeness, and sit down by its darkened source without
being conscious of a gloom?

It is my belief that social intercourse cannot long continue what it
has been, now that we have subtracted from it so important and
vivifying an element as firelight. The effects will be more perceptible
on our children and the generations that shall succeed them than on
ourselves, the mechanism of whose life may remain unchanged, though its
spirit be far other than it was. The sacred trust of the household fire
has been transmitted in unbroken succession from the earliest ages, and
faithfully cherished in spite of every discouragement such as the
curfew law of the Norman conquerors, until in these evil days physical
science has nearly succeeded in extinguishing it. But we at least have
our youthful recollections tinged with the glow of the hearth, and our
life-long habits and associations arranged on the principle of a mutual
bond in the domestic fire. Therefore, though the sociable friend be
forever departed, yet in a degree he will be spiritually present with
us; and still more will the empty forms which were once full of his
rejoicing presence continue to rule our manners. We shall draw our
chairs together as we and our forefathers have been wont for thousands
of years back, and sit around some blank and empty corner of the room,
babbling with unreal cheerfulness of topics suitable to the homely
fireside. A warmth from the past—from the ashes of bygone years and the
raked-up embers of long ago—will sometimes thaw the ice about our
hearts; but it must be otherwise with our successors. On the most
favorable supposition, they will be acquainted with the fireside in no
better shape than that of the sullen stove; and more probably they will
have grown up amid furnace heat in houses which might be fancied to
have their foundation over the infernal pit, whence sulphurous steams
and unbreathable exhalations ascend through the apertures of the floor.
There will be nothing to attract these poor children to one centre.
They will never behold one another through that peculiar medium of
vision the ruddy gleam of blazing wood or bituminous coal—-which gives
the human spirit so deep an insight into its fellows and melts all
humanity into one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life, if it may
still be termed domestic, will seek its separate corners, and never
gather itself into groups. The easy gossip; the merry yet unambitious
Jest; the life-like, practical discussion of real matters in a casual
way; the soul of truth which is so often incarnated in a simple
fireside word,—will disappear from earth. Conversation will contract
the air of debate, and all mortal intercourse be chilled with a fatal
frost.

In classic times, the exhortation to fight “pro axis et focis,” for the
altars and the hearths, was considered the strongest appeal that could
be made to patriotism. And it seemed an immortal utterance; for all
subsequent ages and people have acknowledged its force and responded to
it with the full portion of manhood that nature had assigned to each.
Wisely were the altar and the hearth conjoined in one mighty sentence;
for the hearth, too, had its kindred sanctity. Religion sat down beside
it, not in the priestly robes which decorated and perhaps disguised her
at the altar, but arrayed in a simple matron’s garb, and uttering her
lessons with the tenderness of a mother’s voice and heart. The holy
hearth! If any earthly and material thing, or rather a divine idea
embodied in brick and mortar, might be supposed to possess the
permanence of moral truth, it was this. All revered it. The man who did
not put off his shoes upon this holy ground would have deemed it
pastime to trample upon the altar. It has been our task to uproot the
hearth. What further reform is left for our children to achieve, unless
they overthrow the altar too? And by what appeal hereafter, when the
breath of hostile armies may mingle with the pure, cold breezes of our
country, shall we attempt to rouse up native valor? Fight for your
hearths? There will be none throughout the land. FIGHT FOR YOUR STOVES!
Not I, in faith. If in such a cause I strike a blow, it shall be on the
invader’s part; and Heaven grant that it may shatter the abomination
all to pieces!