BELLS

Waipa Post, Volume 36, Issue 2148, 24 April 1928, Page 3

BELLS

THEIR DOMESTIC SIGNIFICANCE. To some of us the sight of a new house just completed, but with the unpainted front door still hospitably open, is an irresistible invitation to enter and explore. We poke interestedly through the rooms, examine the cupboards, covet the porcelain sink, and bath, and admire the artistic tiled hearth and the “ country ” outlook (although we know that it will shortly be> blocked out by still newer houses). Then our eyes light on the ends of wire sticking out of the wall by the fireplace, where the bell is to be, and we fall to musing on the. subject of bells in general (writes B.N.S. in the Manchester Guardian).

The bell, in Victorian (and earlier) days, was the hall-mark of gentility. It assumed the presence of a maid. Hostesses did not, except as a special mark of friendliness, themselves show a departing guest to the front door, much less let one in. When the guest' rose to go, her hostess “touched the bell,” and the maid immediately presented herself, waited immovably till the difficult starter tore away her tentacles from the company, and then conducted her quietly away, producing the right umbrella in the hall and dispatching her firmly through the front door. In novels and plays the bell took an active • and useful part. It was the Robot - chaperon of the home. When the villain became violent the heroine merely moved towards the bell, and the very action was enough to subdue rebel passions. The bell on the stage, in fact, took the place the telephone does in modern drama —with the added advantage that it could be less readily _ put out of action by schemers. The harnessing of electricity to service destroyed some of the dignity of the bell. There was an air of inevitability about the old-fashioned bell that had to be pulled. The solemn clanging warned the household of the intruder’s approach. Saint-Simon, in his memoirs, mentions as a curiosity the new kind of bell that, when pulled, sounded in another part of the house. Before that, I suppose, the church bell principle was the only one in use; you pulled the rope and the bell overhead responded—and no doubt the inhabitants of the caistle (for humbler homes would have to be content with knockers) learned to distinguish the different kinds of pull—the pull confident of the friend; the pull timid of the wayfarer; the pull intimidating of the enemy or collector of taxes —and to prepare their welcome accordingly. And so, on a lesser scale, the Victorian bell would translate the intentions of the person without.

The electric bell came, and the inevitability departed. Electric bells have a habit of getting out of order. “ I’ve rung three times; I think your bell can’t be working,” became a familiar opening remark from plain-spoken visitors. Dreadful things happened when others, after ringing long in vain, departed in a fog of offence. Somehow a bell will always work for hawkers or beggars. Constant practice must give them an understanding way with bells. The bell feels that it is properly appreciated, or the caressing touch tickles it in the right place, and it whirrs away with a right good will for them as long as it will work at all. But on more and more front doors, now, you will see the bell a derelict, sinking more and more into the background as it is painted over with the woodwork, while the knocker shrines out in a more and more prominent and cared-for fashion, For the revolving wheel of time is swinging the knocker back into use again. The war and its after-effects killed much of the snobbishness of the suburbs. The inevitability of a maid was no longer assumed. Mistresses were no longer ashamed to do their own work, and, in fact, more and more were obliged to do it. A bell that sounded in the kitchen only was of no use when there was no one in the kitchen to hear it. And ringing the sitting-room bell would have necessitated going out into the kitchen to answer it oneself. Bells languished, and we realised that our front doors had knockers which did quite a swell and had the advantage, on the small house, of sounding through all the rooms instead of in one only. An ornamental knocker is also a more artistic appendage to a door than an electric bell, and one can get quaint or antique brass ones if the plain polished kind is not considered good enough. But tradition dies hard, even the tradition of snobbishness. Architects and builders still fondly imagine that we require this hall-mark of correctness, and |so the tangle of wires protrudes through the wall and the small and ineffectual button will appear in due course here and on the front door. For the encouragement of those people we may inform them that the front door bell will certainly be used a few times before it gives up the ghost—by that queue already forming up in spirit at the new front gate, by the gentleman with the brushes and the ingratiating smile, “ the gentleman with the dusters,” the ancient with the bootlaces, and the lady with the blue cotton bag under her arm, who

will ask hopefully for “ cast-off clothing.” It seem! a pity that one could not invite Her to consider the purchase of the bell, for that will certainly be the first “ cast-off ” article in the new house.