MELVILLE'S CHIMNEY

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 5, 7 January 1938, Page 15

MELVILLE'S CHIMNEY

A JEALOUS GUARDIAN.

WHERE "MOBY DICK" WAS

WRITTEN

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RELIC

PITTSFIFXD. MASS. At Arrowhead, n Fittsfiold estate just sold by Mrs. Russell A. JTibbs. is one of the noted chimneys of Xew Kngland. It was made so by Herman Melville, who bought the place in IS.>2 and wrote there several of his novels, including "Moby Dick."

The estate was named from the many Indian arrows discovered in the garden and cornfields in the ploughing season. Unchanged to this day, the chimney. 12ft square at the hose, was built by Captain David Bush in 17S0. There is the original oven in which the bread and pastry were baked by the early owners. The original crane and andirons brought from Kngland are there. The woodwork over the dining room lireplace mantel is of oak front the original forest. Sentences from Melville's essay. "I and My Chimney." are inscribed on the huge stones of the fireplace. One reads: '"It is resolved between me and my chimney that I and my chimney will never surrender,"' and ""I and my chimney are setting together."

The dining room, 30ft long and 14ft wide, has nine doors, leading into all parts of the house.

Melville's wife urjred him to remove the chimney, which covers "precisely 144 superficial feet."' but the novelist demurred. saying:

"I look upon this chimney less as a pile of masonry than os a personage. It is the king of the house. I am but a suffered and inferior subject. Very often I go down into my cellar and attentively survey that vast square of masonry. I stand long and ponder over and wonder at it.

"At the second landing, midway up the chimney, is a mysterious door, entering to a mysterious closet; and here I keep mysterious corditils of a choice, mysterious flavour, made so by the constant nurturing and subtle ripening of the chimneyV gentle heat distilled through that warm mass of masonry. Better for wines is it than voyages to the Indies, my chimney itself a tropic. "It is now seven years since I have stirred from my home. My citv friends all wonder why I don't come to see them as in former times. They think I am getting sour and unsocial. Some say that I hav2 become a sort of. mossy old misanthrope, while all the time the' fact is. I am simply standing guard over my mossy old chimney, for it is resolved between me and- my .chimney that I and my chimney will never surrender." • i