Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Blowing bubbles
BLOWING BUBBLES.
The midnight mail was tearing up through South Staffordshire at the rate of forty miles an hour; and I, a passenger by it, was on my way from Scotland to spend Christmas at the country-seat of an old friend in North Worcestershire. Wolverhampton had been left behind, hissing and snorting from all its chimney mouths, like a den of fiery dragons, and we were being hurried with horrible tumult through what is called the “Black Country.” All around us the Temples of Tubal Cain were flinging out flames and resounding with the music of hammers. Beneath us, thousands of the votaries of that grim demi-god were delving for minerals to be sacrificed upon his altars; and above hung the night-fog, laden with the incense that arose from his mighty thuribles. I was feeding my vision with the wild, weird scene, and dreaming of Vulcan forging thunder, when there came a deafening crash as if one of Jove’s bolts had been hurled down from high Olympus. A thousand brilliant lights danced up before me for a moment, and then—life became a blank. The mail had dashed into a luggage-train.
I awoke—it seemed to me on a bright sunny morning in June—to find myself nestling in the softest of beds, beneath hangings of rich embroidery, in the midst of the cosiest of bed-chambers. I did not trouble myself to think where I was, nor how I came there, for a pleasing languor possessed my whole being. Yet I seemed to be longing for active gratification of some kind. So my eye wandered listlessly from one object to another, and my mind played idly with all the eye presented to it. At length my scattered fancies came trooping back to look upon a scene that lay far out, as it seemed to me, between the curtains at the foot of the bed. There, in an old Gothic window through which the sunlight was streaming, sat a merry little urchin blowing bubbles. His long golden curls, tossed hither and thither by the light morning breeze, played around his laughing face like the tendrils of a vine around the rich ripe fruit; and, ever and anon, as the bubbles rose up to break amongst the creeping foliage that surrounded and overhung the window, his blue eyes sparkled gleefully, and he seemed to leap for very joy. I must have watched him a long time I saw so many of his antics. But, suddenly, I became conscious of a slight pressure on my arm, and turning about, I found myself in the presence of an elderly lady who seemed to be all good nature, and a prim old gentleman who seemed to be all shirt-frill. The one was the wife of the old friend I had proposed visiting; the other the family doctor. Between them I learned that I had been seriously injured on the night of the collision; and that, following the direction on a small parcel I had had in the carriage with me, the railway officials had brought me on to the very house for which I had set out from Scotland, and where I had now lain in a state of unconsciousness many days. Aweary of their recital, I again turned languidly to the window, where my young friend, apparently unconscious of all that was passing, still sat blowing his bubbles as gleefully as ever. Watching him intently for a moment or two, I, for the first time, noticed something strange about his appearance. He did not look like a child of earth at all, but more like one of those little fellows we read about in Grecian story—a sort of Elysian little boy, scantily clothed, very plump and symmetrical, and always laughing. I had almost come to the conclusion, indeed, that Cupid, following the example of other naughty little boys of the present day, had laid by his bow and quiver for the grosser pleasures of the pipe, when it struck me that I might settle the matter at once by asking a simple question.
“Who is that little boy sitting in the window?” I asked.
“O dear! dear!” exclaimed the lady, with a sigh, “I was afraid it would be too much for him; he is wandering again.”
“I assured her I was not, and repeated the question.
“Sir,” said the prim doctor, “I am afraid you are the subject of a very singular optical illusion. The child of whom you spenk is not a living being; nor, indeed, is it altogether a phantom. It is smply a figure in a stained glass window, and—”
“But,” I interposed, “he is in motion, and his bubbles keep rising and breaking amongst the branches of that creeping plant there.”
“Allow me to finish my sentence,” said the doctor; and, going to the window, he touched a spring, and the curtain flew up. “Now, you see,” he continued, “the aerial current conveyed through the room for purposes of ventilation imparted a slight undulating motion to the white curtain in front of the window; and, as an exact photograph of the figure fell upon the curtain, the child appeared to you to move, when in reality it was doing no such thing.”
“But,” I said, “the child is still moving; he and his bubbles are passing away to the right there. Look!—look!” and I half rose up in bed to point them out.
The doctor smiled a very stately smile, and, flinging open a casement which carried away half the figure with it, pointed to a large mass of cloud that was being driven along furiously by a rude wintry wind. “Again,” he said, “you have mistaken the subject of motion; it was the cloud moving—not the figure.”
The contrast was one of the strangest imaginable. Through the warm colour of the unopened part of the window the light was streaming with the brilliancy of summer sunlight; through the open casement I could see nothing but dull leaden rain clouds. So dismal, indeed, was the outlook, that I begged the doctor to close the window as speedily as possible, and to draw down the blind, in order that I might once more revel in the pleasant illusion he had taken so much pains to dispel. He did as I desired, but the illusion was gone for ever; and though, during the long weary hours of my recovery, I often tried to carry my mind back to that morning, and to see the urchin laughing and blowing bubbles as I then saw him, the effort was useless. He still sat there, but he sat motionless; the blind and the clouds moved often—he never. Not willing, however, to part with so merry an acquaintance on so slight grounds, I fell to admiring him as a work of art, and from admiring him as a work of art, I went on to wonder how he was made. The result was a determination to visit, as soon as I recovered, some large works in the neighbourhood, where, as I had been informed, my young friend first received his being. My recovery is now complete; my determination unaltered. And if the reader is willing, I shall be glad—for I am fond of good company—to take him with me through one of the most extensive glass manufactories in the world. But with this proviso: we must not stay by the way minutely to inspect any process that does not relate strictly to the making of coloured glass windows. And that this condition is reasonable will be evident, when I tell him that that branch of the manufacture alone will fully occupy our attention during one entire article, and that there are several other branches equally interesting.
We shall find the “works” on the borders of the “Black Country;” and, looking down upon them as we approach by train, they have all the appearance of a gigantic store-yard, where samples of chimneys of every size, shape, and description, and specimens of smoke of every hue and degree of density, are kept constantly in stock for the surrounding manufacturers to choose from. There are tall, slender, aristocratic chimneys—“heavy swells,” in their way—pouring out wreath after wreath of jet-black velvety smoke; there are little fat squat chimneys sending up continuous streams of nasty yellow smoke that seems to be afflicted with jaundice. Then, there are square, hard-fisted looking shafts—a sort of artisan chimneys—red-hot at the mouth, and labouring forth fierce flames that flash the thin blue smoke high up into the air; and there are little infant chimneys—steam outlets—that hilariously pant out an innocent-looking silvery white smoke all day long, and here and there and everywhere. And over the whole community of chimneys there hangs a great cloud of writhing smoke in which many shades of colour seem to be wildly struggling for individual mastery. The works are more like a town in Pluto’s regions than a manufactory upon earth. And their size is immense. They occupy many acres of land, and they are inhabited daily by nearly two thousand workmen. A railway runs into them to whisk away their products to all parts of the world, and a canal rolls sluggishly through them, under the pretence of helping the railway at its work.
We enter the “works” through an enormous gateway, and, tapping at the door of the porter’s lodge, bring out an old man whose duty it is, provided we are furnished with the proper credentials, to hand us over to a guide. This done, on we go: over a canal bridge, across the railway, by long ranges of workshops, until we come to a large shed where several workmen are engaged in treading out clay and fashioning it into immense “pots,” or pans, as big as brewers’ vats of moderate dimensions. On asking what these are for, we are requested to follow two or three of them; then, being taken out at the other end of the shed, and doing as we are bid, we come to a sudden halt at the mouth of a red-hot kiln. From this kiln several similar pots, baked hard, are withdrawn, and the soft ones deposited in their places. The baked pots are then trundled off, and we follow them to a large building, lighted only by the glare of a score of roaring furnaces. Hundreds of grimy workmen, with what appear to be long red-hot drum-sticks in their hands, are flitting about amongst the strange lights and shadows in every direction, and some twenty or thirty are engaged in blowing gigantic bubbles of all the colours of the rainbow. But for our guide we should assuredly be bewildered. At his request we again turn our attention to the “pots,” and have the satisfaction of seeing them thrust, burning hot, into furnaces ten times hotter than themselves. That done, we are told that they are filled with due proportions of sand, lime, soda, and whatsoever colouring matter is necessary, and that as the mass, which weighs about two tons, melts, it is stirred until it reaches the consistency at which it is workable. After some twenty or thirty hours of melting and stirring, that point is reached, and the “metal,” as it is now called, is ready to be fashioned into glass. Passing on to another furnace and peeping through a hole in a screen or breastwork in front of it—for the heat is too intense to allow a nearer approach—we get a glimpse of one of these pots of metal ready for use. But, before we have well had time to peer into the blinding mass, we are warned off by a swart workman, who, advancing, thrusts into it a long tube, which he twirls round until he has gathered upon the end of it a glowing ball of metal, with which he rushes off to a flat iron table or “marver.” Arrived there, he cools the tube with water, and, applying his mouth to the end of it, blows down into the metal at the bottom, and, as the ball increases in bulk, rolls it over and over upon the table to preserve its rotundity. Before the bubble has attained its proper size it cools considerably. So, as soon as it has from this cause lost its elasticity the operator carries it off to another furnace, where he re-heats it, and blows it larger and larger, until it is ready for the next process. As soon as it is thus prepared, another workman advances with a kind of pole tipped with molten glass, which he affixes to that part of the bubble immediately opposite the blow-pipe. Workman number one then releases the blow-pipe, and the bubble becomes the property of workman number two, who at once carries it off to another furnace, whose flames roar far out into the workshop. Thrusting the bubble into the midst of the flames, and resting the pole, or “ponty,” as it is termed, upon a breastwork, the operator twirls it as one would twirl a mop. The result is almost magical, for, before we can well see what is being done, the heat has softened the glass, the centrifugal force has flung open the bubble, and a large flat wheel of “crown glass” is rolling away before us ready for our every day use. This our guide tells us is the old-fashioned method of making glass, and he explains that it is an objectionable one, because a large lump called the “bull’s-eye” is left behind in the centre of the sheet by the ponty. The reason it is objectionable, as he puts it, is this: that a large square, taken out of a circular piece of glass fifty-four inches in diameter—and that is the largest size made—must necessarily retain the unsightly bull’s-eye. So, to overcome the difficulty, another method has been adopted. Instead of blowing the bubbles round, they are blown long, and, both ends being cut off, the tube is ripped open, and laid flat by heat.
Having followed one sheet of glass from the melting-pot to perfection, we may now find time to take a somewhat wider range. We learn from further inspection and the comments of our guide that there are two methods of colouring the bubbles we see all around us. The one is by using coloured “metal” entirely; the other by “flashing”—coating white glass with a thin film of colour only. All colours may be “flashed;” red must be, because the colouring matter used would render the glass blown entirely from red “metal,” opaque. So, in order to be inducted into the mysteries of “flashing,” we seek out a workman who is about to blow a red bubble. The process, we find, is very simple. Having gathered, upon the end of his blow-pipe, a ball of white metal, the operator, before carrying it to the “marver,” gives it a twirl in a pot of red metal, and then goes on with his blowing. The two colours retain their relative positions throughout every succeeding process; as the one grows thinner and thinner the other grows thinner and thinner; and the final result is a sheet of white glass coated with red on one side. Passing on from one workman to another, we notice that, though there are bubbles of every other colour, there are no yellow ones; and, on asking the reason, we are told that all the shades of yellow are produced, not out of yellow metal, nor by flashing, but by staining white glass. And, with the promise that we shall be shown how staining is done, we leave the fiery workshop.
Still confining ourselves strictly to the object of our visit, which is to see how coloured windows are made, we next visit the studio of the designers of the establishment, where we find several gentlemen painting small designs upon paper, and others enlarging similar designs, previously painted, to the size at which they are intended to be reproduced in glass. One here is intent upon a window full of saints for a foreign cathedral; another, there, is touching off the mane of a rampant red lion for a public-house lamp; while a third is deep in the mystic labyrinths of a rich arabesque; and a fourth is throwing off the outline of one of a series of historical subjects for the hall windows of some nobleman’s mansion. While we are examining these works of art, a workman enters and asks for the “cartoon of St. Catherine.” One of the enlarged paintings is given him, and on a hint from our guide we follow him out of the room with it. Carrying it into a workshop where bins of glass of all colours surround a large table, he lays his cartoon flat; and, selecting a piece of blue glass, places it upon a part of the picture coloured blue. He then follows the outline beneath with his diamond, and eventually snaps out a piece of blue glass of the exact shape and size of his pattern. Red glass, green glass, and white glass, to be stained yellow, or to be painted in different colours, follow, until every part of the cartoon has been reproduced in glass. That done, the pieces of glass are carried off to the studio of the glass painters, where they are fitted together on the face of the cartoon, like a piece of mosaic work, and where those parts of the outline not represented by the joints—as most of the outline is—are “put in” with a brown enamel colour which, after baking, becomes part and parcel of the glass. The baking over, the pieces of glass again come to the painter, who then fits them together upon a large sheet of white glass, to which he attaches them with drops of hot resin. He next rears the whole sheet upon an easel, and, so placing it that the light shall fall through it, puts in his shadows and covers certain of the “whites” with a preparation of silver. Another baking fixes the shadows; and, the silver scraped off, the “yellows” are revealed. After this the pieces are again set up on the easel, and those parts—such as flowers and borders—that require lines of colour too fine to be represented in mosaic, are either skilfully painted in or stencilled. This painting, we are told, often occupies many days, for during the progress of the work baking must follow baking as often as the necessities of the case demand it. And, even when the laying on of colour is finished, there is, if the design be very elaborate, one other work to be performed upon it. It is often desirable that a few lines of white or yellow should appear in the midst of the darker colours—as with moonbeams upon the water, or gold or silver embroidery upon drapery. In these cases the kind of glass used is that which has been “flashed,” and to produce the required effect, the artist covers the coloured side of it with a thin coating of wax; picks out his design in little channels that reach down to the surface of the glass; pours into these channels an acid which eats away the coloured face; and then, either leaves it as it is, or stains his white lines yellow in the manner before described. In the end, when the whole painting is finished, the pieces of glass are handed over to the glaziers, who join them together with grooved strips of lead, and the window is complete.
And this was how they made young Cupid, who, for all I know, still sits in the old Gothic window yonder, “blowing bubbles.”
J. L.