Chapter 6

Somewhere, if I could but find it, must exist a diary of one of these ancient astronomers--and from it I quote in anticipation. "Early this night to my roof," it runs, "the heavens being bare of clouds (_coelo aperto_). Set myself to measure the elevation of Sagittarius Alpha with my new astrolabe sent me by my friend and master, Hafiz, from out Arabia. Did this night compute the equation a=(Dx/2T)f(a, b c T_3). Thus did I prove the variations of the ellipse and show Hassan Sabah to be the mule he is. Then rested, pacing my roof even to the rising of the morning star, which burned red above the Sultan's turret. To bed, satisfied with this night."

Northern literature has never taken the roof seriously. There have been many books written from the viewpoint of windows. The study window is usual. Then there is the college window and the Thrums window. Also there is a window viewpoint as yet scarcely expressed; that of the boy of Stevenson's poems with his nose flattened against the glass--convalescence looking for sailormen with one leg. What is "Un Philosophe sous les Toits" but a garret and its prospect? But does Souvestre ever go up on the roof? He contents himself with opening his casement and feeding crumbs to the birds. Not once does he climb out and scramble around the mansard. On wintry nights neither his legs nor thoughts join the windy devils that play tempest overhead. Then again, from Westminster bridges, from country lanes, from crowded streets, from ships at sea, and mountain tops have sonnets been thrown to the moon; not once from the roof.

Is not this neglect of the roof the chief reason why we Northerners fear the night? When darkness is concerned, the cowardice of our poetry is notorious. It skulks, so to speak, when beyond the glare of the street lights. I propound it as a question for scholars.

'Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.

Why is the night conceived as the time for the bogey to be abroad?--an

... evil thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meager hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time.

Why does not this slender, cerulean dame keep normal hours and get sleepy after dinner with the rest of us--and so to bed? Such a baneful thing is night, "hideous," reeking with cold shivers and gloom, from which morning alone gives relief.

Pack, clouds, away! and welcome, day! With night we banish sorrow.

Day is jocund that stands on the misty mountain tops.

But we cannot expect the night to be friendly and wag its tail when we slam against it our doors and, until lately, our windows. Naturally it takes to ghoulishness. It was in the South where the roofs are flat and men sleep as friends with the night that it was written, "The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth his handiwork."

I get full of my subject as I write and a kind of rage comes over me as I think of the wrongs the roof has suffered. It is the only part of the house that has not kept pace with the times. To say that you have a good roof is taken as meaning that your roof is tight, that it keeps out the water, that it excels in those qualities in which it excelled equally three thousand years ago. What you ought to mean is that you have a roof that is flat and has things on it that make it livable, where you can walk, disport yourself, or sleep; a house-top view of your neighbors' affairs; an airy pleasance with a full sweep of stars; a place to listen of nights to the drone of the city; a place of observation, and if you are so inclined, of meditation.

Everything but the roof has been improved. The basement has been coddled with electric lights until a coal hole is no longer an abode of mystery. Even the garret, that used to be but a dusty suburb of the house and lumber room for early Victorian furniture, has been plastered and strewn with servants' bedrooms.

There _was_ a garret once: somewhat misty now after these twenty years. It was not daubed to respectability with paint, nor was it furnished forth as bedrooms; but it was rough-timbered, and resounded with drops when the dark clouds passed above. On bright days a cheerful light lay along the floor and dust motes danced in its luminous shaft. And always there was cobwebbed stillness. But on dark days, when the roof pattered and the branches of trees scratched the shingles and when windows rattled, a deeper obscurity crept out of the corners. Yet was there little fear in the place. This was the front garret where the theatre was, with the practicable curtain. But when the darker mood was on us, there was the back garret. It was six steps lower and over it the roof crouched as if to hide its secrets. The very men that built it must have been lowering, bearded fellows; for they put into it many corners and niches and black holes. The wood, too, from which it was fashioned must have been gnarled and knotted and the nails rusty and crooked. One window cast a narrow light down the middle of this room, but at both sides was immeasurable night. When you had stooped in from the sunlight and had accustomed your eyes to the dimness, you found yourself in an uncertain anchorage of old furniture, abandoned but offering dusty covert for boys with the light of brigands in their eyes. A pirates' den lay safe behind the chimney, protected by a bristling thicket of chairs and table legs, to be approached only on hands and knees after divers rappings. And back there in the dark were strange boxes--strange boxes, stout and securely nailed. But the garret has gone.

Whither have the pirates fled? Maybe some rumor of the great change reached them in their fastnesses; and then in the light of early dawn, in single file they climbed the ladder, up through the scuttle. And straddling the ridgepole with daggers between their teeth, alas, they became dizzy and toppled down the steep shingles to the gutter, to be whirled away in the torrent of an April shower. Ah me! Had only the roof been flat! Then it would have been for them a reservation where they might have lived on and waited for the sound of children's feet to come again. Then when those feet had come and the old life had returned, then from aloft you would hear the old cry of Ship-ahoy, and you would know that at last your house had again slipped its moorings and was off to Madagascar or the Straits.

Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat, Wary of the weather and steering by a star? Shall it be to Africa, asteering of the boat, To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?

So a roof must be more than a cover. The roof of a boat, its deck, is arranged for occupation and is its best part. Consider the omnibus! Even it has seats on top, the best seats in fine weather. When Martin Chuzzlewit went up to London it was on the _top_ of the coach he sat. Pickwick betook himself, gaiters, small-clothes, and all, to the roof. Even the immaculate Rollo scorned the inside seats. He sat on top, you may remember, and sucked oranges to ward off malaria, he and that prince of roisterers, Uncle George. De Quincey is the authority on mail coaches and for the roof seats he is all fire and enthusiasm. It happened once, to continue with De Quincey, that a state coach was presented by His Majesty George the Third of England, as a gift to the Chinese Emperor. This kind of vehicle being unknown in Peking, "it became necessary to call a cabinet council on the grand state question, 'Where was the Emperor to sit?' The hammer cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; and partly on that consideration, but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat, was nearest the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by acclamation that the box was the Imperial throne, and for the scoundrel who drove, he could sit where he could find a perch."

Consider that the summer day has ended and that you are tired with its rush and heat. Up you must climb to your house-roof. On the rim of the sky is the blurred light from the steel furnaces at the city's edge and, paneling this, stands a line of poplars stirring and sounding in the night wind.

Alone upon the house-top to the North I turn and watch the lightnings in the sky.

Is it fanciful to think that into the mind comes a little of the beauty of the older world when roofs were flat and men meditated under the stars and saw visions in the night?

Once upon a time I crossed the city of Nuremberg after dark; the market cleared of all traces of its morning sale, the "Schöner Brunnen" at its edge, the narrow defile leading to the citadel, the climb at the top. And then I came to an open parade above the town--"except the Schlosskirche Weathercock no biped stands so high." The night had swept away all details of buildings. Nuremberg lay below like a dark etching, the centuries folded and creased in its obscurities. Then from some gaunt tower came a peal of bells, the hour maybe, and then an answering peal. "Thus stands the night," they said; "thus stand the stars." I was in the presence of Time and its black wings were brushing past me. What star was in the ascendant, I knew not. And yet in me I felt a throb that came by blind, circuitous ways from some far-off Chaldean temple, seven-storied in the night. In me was the blood of the star-gazer, my emotions recalling the rejected beliefs, the signs and wonders of the heavens. The waves of old thought had but lately receded from the world; and I, but a chink and hollow on the beach, had caught my drop of the ebbing ocean.