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.
IGNIS FATUUS.
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!”