“Light, I say, light.”—OTHELLO.

THOSE who have peeped into the portfolios of Mr. Geoffrey Crayon, will easily remember his graphic sketches of a locality called Little Britain—and his amusing portraits of its two leading families, the Lambs and the Trotters. I imagine the deserved popularity of the draughtsman made him much in request at routs, soirÉes, and conversazioni, or so acute an observer would not have failed to notice a nocturnal characteristic of the same neighbourhood,—I mean the frequent and alarming glares of light that illuminate its firmament; but in spite of which, no parish engine rumbles down the steps of St. Botolph, the fire-ladders hang undisturbed in their chains, and the turn-cock smokes placidly in the tap-room of the Rose-and-Crown. For this remarkable apathy, my own more domestic habits enable me to account.

It is the fortune, or misfortune, of the house where I lodge to confront that of Mr. Wix, “Wax and Tallow Chandler to his Majesty;” and certainly no individual ever burned so much to evince his loyalty. He and his windows are always framing an excuse for an illumination.

The kindling aptitude ascribed to Eupyrions, and Lucifers, and Chlorate Matches, is nothing to his. Contrary to Hoyle’s rules for loo,—a single court card is sufficient with him for “a blaze.” He knows and keeps the birthdays of all royal personages, and shows by tallow in tins how they wax in years. As sure as the Park guns go off in the morning, he fires his six-pounders in the evening; as sure as a newsman’s horn is sounded in the street, it blows the same spark into a flame.—In some cases his inflammability was such, he has been known to ignite, and exhibit fire, where he should have shed water. He was once—it is still a local joke—within an ace of rejoicing at Marr’s Murder.

During the long War he was really a nuisance, and what is worse, not indictable. For one not unused to the melting mood, he was strangely given to rejoicing. Other people were content to light up for the great victories, but he commemorated the slightest skirmishes. In civil events the same, whether favourable to Whig or Tory. Like the lover of Bessy Bell, and Mary Gray, he divided his flame between them.—He lighted when the administration of the Duke of Wellington came in, and he lighted when it went out,—in short, it seemed, as with the Roman Catholics, that candle-burning was a part of his religion, and that he had got his religion itself from an illuminated missal.

To aggravate this propensity, Mr. Sperm, the great oil merchant, lives nearly opposite to Mr. Wix, and his principle and his interest coincide exactly with those of his neighbour. Mr. Sperm possesses a very large star,—and, like certain managers, he brings it forward as often as he can. He is quite as lax in his political creed as the chandler, and will light up on the lightest occasions,—for instance, let there be but a peal of bells, and the Genius of the Ring directly invokes the Genius of the Lamp. In short, Mr. Wix and Mr. Sperm both resemble the same thing—a merchant-man getting rid of goods by means of lighters.

As the other inhabitants do not always choose to follow the example of these two—I have known our illuminations to be very select—the great oil and tallow establishments blazing all alone in their glory. On other occasions—for instance, the rejoicings for that bill which Lord L. calls a Bill of Panes and Penalties—I have seen our street assume the motley appearance of a chessboard, alternately dark and bright—to say nothing of Mrs. Frampton’s lodging-house, where every tenant was of a different sentiment,—and the several floors afforded a striking example of the Clare Obscure.

Among general illuminations, I remember none more so than the one on the accession of his late Majesty—but what so universally brightened the Great Britain might be expected to light the Little one. It was in reality an unrivalled exhibition of its kind, and I propose therefore to give some account of it, the situation of my apartment having afforded unusual opportunities—for it is at the angle of a corner house and thus while its easterly windows stare into those of the Rumbold family, its northern ones squint aside into the sashes of that elderly spinster Miss Winter.

It must have been an extreme fit of loyalty that put such a thought into the penurious mind of Miss W., but she resolved for once in her life to illuminate. I could see her at a large dining-table—so called by courtesy, for it never dined—reviewing a regiment of glass custard cups, so called also by courtesy, for they never held custard—and another division of tall jelly glasses, equally unknown to jellies. I might have thought that she meant for once to give a very light supper, had I not seen her fill them all with oil from a little tin can, and afterwards she furnished them with a floating wick. They were then ranged on the window-frame, alternately tall and short; and after this costly preparation, which, by the heaving of her neckerchief, she visibly sighed over, she folded her arms demurely before her, and, by the light of her solitary rush taper, sat down to await the extravagant call of “Light-up!”

The elder Miss Rumbold—the parents were out of town—was not idle in the mean time. She packed all the little R.’s off to bed—(I did not see them have any supper)—and then, having got rid of the family branches, began on the tin ones. She had fixed her head quarters in the drawing-room, from whence I saw Caroline and Henry detached, with separate parcels of tins and candles, to do the same office for the floors above and below. But no such luck! After a while, the street door gently opened, and forth sneaked the two deserters, of course to see better illuminations than their own. At the slam of the door behind them Miss Rumbold comprehended the full calamity: first, she threw up her arms, then her eyes, then clenched her teeth and then her hands; going through all the pantomime for distress of mind—but she had no time for grieving, and indeed but little for rejoicing. Mr. Wix’s was beginning to glitter. Tearing up and down stairs like a lamplighter on his ladder, she furnished all the blank windows, and then returned to the drawing-room; and what was evidently her favourite fancy, she had completed and hung up two festoons of artificial flowers; but alas! her stock on hand fell short a whole foot of the third window—I am afraid for want of the very bouquet in Caroline’s bonnet. Removing the unfortunate garlands, she rushed out full speed, and the next moment I saw her in the story above, rapidly unpapering her curls, and making herself as fit as time allowed, to sit in state in the drawing-room, by the light of twenty-seven long sixes.

A violent uproar now recalled my attention to Number 29, where the mob had begun to call out to Miss Winter for her Northern Lights. Miss W. was at her post, and rushed with her rush to comply with the demand; but a sudden twitter of nervousness aggravating her old palsy, she could not persuade her wavering taper to alight on any one of the cottons. There was a deal of coquetting indeed between wick and wick, but nothing like a mutual flame. In vain the thin lover-like candle kept hovering over its intended, and shedding tears of grease at every repulse; not a glimmer replied to its glance, till at last, weary of love and light, it fairly leaped out of its tin socket, and drowned its own twinkle in a tall jelly-glass. The patience of the mob, already of a thin texture, was torn to rags by this conclusion; they saw that if she would, Miss Winter never could illuminate: but as this was an unwelcome truth, they broke it to her with a volley of stones that destroyed her little Vauxhall in a moment, and in a twinkle left her nothing to twinkle with!

Shocked at this catastrophe, I turned with some anxiety to Miss Rumbold’s, but with admirable presence of mind she had lighted every alternate candle in her windows, and was thus able to present a respectable front at a short notice. The mob, however, made as much uproar as at Miss Winter’s, though the noise was different in character, and more resembled the boisterous merriment which attends upon Punch. In fact Miss Rumbold had a Fantoccini over head she little dreamt of. Awakened by the unusual light, the younger Rumbolds had rushed from bed to the window, where, exhilarated by childish spirits and the appearance of a gala, they had got up an extempore Juvenile Ball, and were dancing with all their might in their little nightcaps and nightgowns. In vain the unconscious Matilda pointed to her candles, and added her own private pair from the table to the centre window; in vain she wrung her hands, or squeezed them on her bosom: the more she protested in dumb show, the more the mob shouted; and the more the mob shouted, the wilder the imps jigged about. At last Matilda seemed to take some hint; she vanished from the drawing-room like a Ghost, and reappeared like a Fury in the nursery—a pair of large hands vigorously flourished and flogged—the heels of the Corps de Ballet flew up higher than their heads—the mob shouted louder than ever—and exeunt omnes.

This interlude being over, the rabble moved on to Mr. Wix’s, whose every window, as usual, shone “like nine good deeds in a naughty world,” and he obtained nine cheers for the display. Poor Mr. Sperm was not so fortunate. He had been struggling manfully with a sharp nor-wester to light up his star, but one obstinate limb persisted in showing which way the wind blew. It was a point not to be gained, and though far from red hot, it caused a hiss that reached even to Number 14, and frightened all the Flowerdews. Number 14, as the Clown expresses it in Twelfth Night, was “as lustrous as ebony.” In vain Mrs. Flowerdew pleaded from one window, and Mr. Flowerdew harangued from the other, while Flowerdew junior hammered and tugged at the space between; the glaziers and their friends unglazed everything; and I hope the worthy family, the next time they have a Crown and Anchor, will remember to have them the right side uppermost. Green and yellow lamps decline to hang upon hooks that are topsy-turvy, and the blue and red are just as particular.

I forgot to say that during the past proceedings, my eyes had frequently glanced towards Number 28. Its occupier, Mr. Brookbank, was in some remote way connected with the royal household, and had openly expressed his intention of surprising Little Britain. And in truth Little Britain was surprised enough, when it beheld at Mr. Brookbank’s nothing but a few sorry flambeaux: he talked to the mob, indeed, of a transparency of Peace and Plenty, but as they could see no sign of either, and they had plenty of stones, they again broke the peace. I am sorry to say that in this instance the mob were wrong, for there was a transparency, but as it was lighted from the outer side, Mr. B.’s Peace and Plenty smiled on nobody but himself.

There was only one more disorder, and it occurred at the very house that I help to inhabit. Not that we were dim by any means, for we had been liberal customers to Mr. Sperm and to Mr. Wix: the tallow of one flared in all our panes, and the oil of the other fed a brilliant W. P. Alas! it was these fiery initials, enigmatical as those at Belshazzar’s banquet, that caused all our troubles. The million could make out the meaning of the W, but the other letter, divided in conjecture among them, was literally a split P. Curiosity increased to furiosity, and what might have happened nobody only knows, if my landlady had not proclaimed that her W had spent such a double allowance of lamps, that her R had been obliged to retrench.

To aid her oratory, the rabble were luckily attracted from our own display by a splendour greater even than usual at Number 9. The warehouseman of Mr. Wix—like Master like Man—had got up an illumination of his own, by leaving a firebrand among the tallow, that soon caused the breaking out of an insurrection in Grease, and where candles had hitherto been lighted only by Retail, they were now ignited by Wholesale; or as my landlady said,—“All the fat was in the fire!”

I ventured to ask her when all was over, what she thought of the lighting-up, and she gave me her opinion in the following sentiment, in the prayer of which I most heartily concur. “Illuminations,” she said, “were very pretty things to look at, and no doubt new Kings ought to be illuminated; but what with the toil, and what with the oil, and what with the grease, and what with the mob, she hoped it would be long, very long, before we had a new King again!”