Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Certain Personal Matters - The Coal-Scuttle

Transcript

Certain Personal Matters - The Coal-Scuttle · The H. G. Wells Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty one of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Recording by Graham Scott, Cheltenham, England. Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: The Coal Scuttle a study in domestic esthetics. Euphemia, who
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: loves to have home dainty and delightful, would have no
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: coals if she could dispense with them, much less a
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: coal scuttle. Indeed, it would seem she would have no
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: fireplace at all. If she had her will all the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: summer she is happy, and the fireplace is anything but
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the place for a fire. The fender has vanished, the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: fire irons are gone. It is draped and decorated and disguised.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: So would dear Euphemia drape and disguise the whole iron
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: framework of the world with that decorative and decent mind
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of hers, had she but the scope. There are exotic
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: ferns there, spreading their fan like fronds. A majollica glows
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and gleams and fabrics of which Morris is the actual
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: or spiritual weghetta delight the eye. In summer time. Our
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: fireplace is indeed a thing of beauty, but alas for
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the solar system, it is not a joy forever. The
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: sun at last recedes beyond the equinoxes, and the black bogie,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: who has slept awakens again. Euphemia restores the fender curb,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: and the brazen dogs, and the fire irons that will clatter,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and then all the winter. Whenever she sits before the fire,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: her trouble is with her, even when the red glow
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of the fire lights up her features most becomingly, and
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: flattery is in her ear. Every now and then a
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: sidelong glance at her ugly foe shows that the thought
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of it is in her mind, and that the crumpled
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: rose leaf, if such a phrase may be used for
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: a coal scuttle, insists on being felt. And she has
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: even been discovered alone, sitting elbows on knees and chin
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: on her small clenched fist, frowning at it, puzzling how
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: to circumvent the one enemy of her peace. It is
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: what Euphemia always calls this utensil. When she can bring
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: herself to give the indescribable and imperfect vent in speech,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: but commonly the feeling is too deep for words. Her
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: war with this foeman in her household, this coarse rebel
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in her realm of soft prettiness, is one of those
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: silent ones, those grim struggles without outcry or threat or
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: appeal for quarter, that can never end in any compromise,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: never find a rest in any truce except the utter
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: defeat of her antagonist, And how she has tried the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: happy thoughts, the faint hopes, the new departures and outflanking movements,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and even to day there the thing defies her, a
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: coal box with a broad smile that shows its black teeth,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: thick and squat, filling a snug corner, and swaggering in
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: unmanly triumph over the outrage upon her delicacy that it commits.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: One of Euphemia's brightest ideas was to burn wood logs,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: make even a picturesque pile in a corner look uncommon.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: But there are objections to wood wood finely divided burns
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: with gay quirks and jets of flame, and making cheerful
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: crackling noises the while, But its warmth and brightness are
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: as evanescent as love's young dream and your solid log
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: has a certain irritating inertness. It is an absent tea
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: fuel spending its fire up the chimney, and after its
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: youthful clouds of glory, turns but a cheerless side of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: black and white char towards the room. And above all,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the marital mind is strangely exasperated by the log. Smite
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: it with the poker, and you get but a sullen resonance,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: a flight of red sparks, a sense of an unconquerable toughness.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: It is worse than coke. The crisp fracture of coal,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the spitting flames suddenly leaping into existence from the shiny
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: new fissures, are altogether wanting old seasoned timber burns, indeed
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: most delightfully. But then it is as ugly as coal,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and with all very deer. So Euphemia went back to
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: coal again with a sigh. Possibly, if Euphemia had been
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: surrounded by the wealth she deserves, this trouble would not
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: have arisen. A silent servant bearing the due dose of
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: fresh fuel would have come gliding from a mysterious beneath,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: restored the waning animation of the grate, and vanished noiselessly again.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: But this was beyond the range of Euphemia's possibilities, and
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: so we are faced face with this problem of the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: scuttle again. At first she would feign there was no
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: such thing as coal. It was too horrible. Only a
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Zola would admit it. It was the epoch of concealment.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: The thing purchased was like a little cupboard on four legs.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: It might have held any convenient trifle, And there was
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: a shelf upon the top, and a book of poetry
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: and a piece of crackled satsuma. You took a little
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: brass handle and pulled it down, and the front of
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the little cupboard came forward, and they found your coal.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: But a dainty little cupboard can no more entertain black
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: coal and inelegant firewood and keep its daintiness than a
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: mind can entertain black thoughts and yet be sweet. This
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: cabinet became demoralized with amazing quickness. It became incontinent with
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: its corruptions. A hinge got twisted, and after a time
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: it acquired the habit of suddenly, and with an unpleasant,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: oscillatory laughing noise, opening of its own accord and proclaiming
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: its horrid secret to Euphemia's best visitors. An air of wickedness,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: at once precocious and senile, came upon it. It gaped
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: and leered at Euphemia as the partner of her secret,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: with such a familiar air of I and you, that
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: she could stand it no longer, And this depraved piece
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: of furniture was banished at last from her presence, and
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: relegated to its proper sphere of sham gentility below stairs,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: where it easily passed itself upon the cook as an exquisite.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Euphemia tried to be sensible then, and determined, since she
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: must have coal in her room, to let no false
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: modesty intervene, but to openly proclaim its presence to all
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the world. The next thing, therefore, was a cylinder of brass,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: broadly open above, saying to the world, as it were, look,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: I contain coal. And there were brass tongs like sugar tongs,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: wherewith Euphemia would regale the fire and brighten it up,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: handing it a lump at a time in the prettiest way.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: But brass dints. The brazen thing was quiet and respectable
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: enough upstairs, But ever and again it went away to
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: be filled. What happened on these holiday jaunts Euphemia has
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: never ascertained, but a chance blow or worse cause, ran
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: a crease athwart the forehead of the thing, and below
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: an almost imperceptible bulging hinted at a future corpulency. And
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: there was complaint of the quantity of polishing it needed,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: and an increasing difficulty in keeping it bright. And except
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: when it was full to the brim, the lining was unsightly,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: and this became more so. One day Thuriel must have
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: visited Euphemia's apartment, and the tarnished brilliancy of the thing
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: stood confessed. For some days. There was an interregnum, and
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a coal scuttle from downstairs. A black, unstable thing on
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: flat foot, and with a vast foolish Nether lip did
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: its duty with inelegant faithfulness. Then Euphemia had a really
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: pretty fancy. She procured one of those big open garden
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: baskets and painted it a pleasant brown, and instead of
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: a garden fork, she had a little half horticultural scoop.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: In this basket. She kept her coals, and she tied
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a pink ribbon on the handle. One might fancy she
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: had been in some dewy garden and had dug a
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: few coals as one might dig up bulbs, and brought
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: them in and put them down. It attracted attention from
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: all her visitors, and set a kind of fashion in
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood. For a time Euphemia was almost contented. But
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: one day a malignant woman called and looked at this
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: device through her gilt eye glasses, while she secretly groped
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: in the dark of her mind for an unpleasant thing
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: to say. Then suddenly she remarked, why not put your
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: coal in a bassinette or keep it all on the floor.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Euphemia's face fell. The thing was undeniably very like a
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: cradle in the light of this suggestion, The coal certainly
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: did seem a little out of place there. And besides,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: if there were more than three or four lumps, they
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: had a way of tumbling over the edge upon the carpet.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: When the fire was replenished, the tender shoot of Euphemia's
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: satisfaction suddenly withered and died. So the struggle has gone on.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it has been a wrought iron tripod with a
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: subtle tendency to upset in certain directions. Sometimes a coal box. Once,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: even the noisy old coal box of Japan's tin, making
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: more noise than a Salvation Army service, and strangely decorated
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: with art enamels, had a turn. At present, Euphemia is
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: enduring a walnut casket that, since its first week of office,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: has displayed an increasing indisposition to shut. But things cannot
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: stay like this. The worry and anxiety and vexation, Euphemia declares,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: are making her old before her time. A delicate woman
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: should not be left alone to struggle against brazen monsters.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: A closed gas stove is happily impossible, but the husband
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: of the household is threatened with one of those beastly
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: sham fires, wherein gas jets flare among f firebrick, a
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: mechanical device without vitality or variety, that never dances, nor crackles,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: nor blazes, a monotonous horror, A fire you cannot poke.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: That is what it will certainly come to if the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: problem remains unsolved. End of Chapter thirty one