And why not, pray, from a Garret?
And from a Country Garret, too?
Though the sun doth not flood the crannies and crevices with its light—and though dangling webs from spiders’ looms swing from one huge beam to another—yet may there brood no Fancies there?—fancies, too, themselves radiant with sunshine, and fringed with a fine web of beauty?
Ay—it is not in smooth-shaven meadows alone, or beneath broad-reaching trees, or beside brawling brooks, that a man’s Fancies will disport themselves:—it is not in the woods only, that his inward nature will take airy wings, and revel among speculations far more real, after all, than the very realities about him:—but it is here—there—everywhere:—it is even beneath the rafters of a dim, dusty, and lumber-laden Garret.
I have got a little apartment in the south-east corner of one of these thought-peopled Garrets; none at all too spacious, to be sure; lighted by but a single window, and walled in on all sides by the weird and strange influences that haunt the place. To this retreat I am accustomed to betake myself occasionally, when I would indulge in that refreshing and genial siesta of the senses—a Reverie.
Here are no interruptions. Of a warm summer day, I open my door and suffer the cool wind to draw through the room. Sometimes, on entering at the window, it snatches hold of the corners of my manuscript sheets, whirls them rudely about to the floor, performs a rapid pirouette, and whisks out through the door. There it dances at its pleasure in the spacious and silent Garret-hall—piping its own soft music—and kicking up with its airy feet the venerable dust of years.
When the sunlight blazes upon the crisped shingles, it seems to me that it is night; and that I behold innumerable stars, where, the light streams through the hundred holes in the roof. The effect is singular enough. And I go groping about in the darkness and the dust—crouching beneath huge beams—crawling carefully into dim archways and quaint-looking angles—ransacking the lumber of years’ accumulation—and raising clouds of dust, which the slender lines of sunlight through the roof fashion into shining threads of gold.
All the influences here at times are sombre; yet they are not so sad as to depress me. I have a strange feeling of being momentarily out of the world. I do not feel lost: only isolated. Neither do I feel myself wholly lonely; for olden and strange associations come thronging to me, so that I may easily imagine myself surrounded with beings of life and thought.
I wander and grope about in this spacious garret, and lose myself sometimes in the varied play of my feelings. My eyes light on old bits of trumpery, that were vastly counted on fifty years ago. Here are children’s worn and faded playthings—the baubles and hobby-horses, that absorbed minds which are now impressing an influence upon the world. Here, still clasping an open beam, are the ends of the rope by which children swung themselves, full a half century ago; and the whole dusky beam seems circled round and round with rings of childish laughter. Here are dark corners, and cosy angles, and curious spaces, where each erected spacious playhouses, that might, in mimicry, have rivaled the establishments of the jealous Montagues and Capulets.