Warning: This post has nothing to do with cute, cuddly puppies!
Notice the objects on the fireplace in the picture below. Can any of you identify the object on the left?
This is called a spill vase, and they were apparently used in homes until the early 20th Century. Today we take matches for granted. Actually, matches are starting to get outdated now, in this age of cheap lighters. But in 1916, when Agatha Christie wrote her first novel, matches wouldn't have been readily available to most people, let alone cheap lighters. So they would endeavor to keep fires going in their houses, and transfer a fire from one source to another via some kind of small, cheap object, such as a stick of wood or a twisted-up piece of paper. Thus, you needed to store these tapers somewhere so you could have them readily at hand.
I'll admit, this item passed over me when I read the novel. I guess I just couldn't visualize it. Nor does it readily make sense, as Mrs. Ingelthorp tells Hastings that they send every scrap of paper they don't use to the English troops fighting in WWI. (This is a point of pride for her). Yet Poirot discovers that Mrs. Ingelthorp burned some papers the day before her death. Why else would she order her staff to start a fire in the fireplace on a hot day? And the way the maid started the fire was apparently by transferring the fire from a candle, to one of those long twisted pieces of paper, then using that to light the kindle in the fireplace.
Even when I saw the TV adaptation for the first time, the notion of paper spills holding a clue to the identity of the murderer wasn't something that particularly resonated with me. It wasn't the method of Mrs. Ingelthorp's poisoning, after all. But the handwriting on those spills, as Poirot discovers, tells him the identity of her murderer. And this he demonstrates at the end of the novel, when he gathers all the suspects together, and slowly unrolls the paper spills he found in Mrs. Ingelthorp's spill vase.
Just try getting a definition of a paper spill on Google. It's impossible. Today, you'll learn about spilling liquids, or taking a fall, or perhaps even what happens when you get a cute, cuddly puppy overly excited. (Okay, my apologies: this post does have a little to do with puppies). But the meaning of a paper spill has been overwritten by the necessities of today's vocabulary. I finally found information on it by looking under spill vases, which led me to an article by Dan Pinnell, an early American lighting collector and researcher. If you're interested, you can read his article, "Spilling the Whole Story," by following the link below. You can even purchase a spill vase for your fireplace, if you're so inclined.
But then, if you're so outdated that you're still using a fireplace for your heating...well, what can I say? Get with the times! Upgrade your home!! Buy yourself a central heating unit, and above all, adopt a puppy!!!
They're so cute and adorable, aren't they?
Related Internet Link
Spilling the Whole Story
When I was a lad my granddad had a little jar on the mantelpiece full of 'spills', small strips of wood about 6 inches long and 1/4 inch wide, very thin. He'd use one of these to light his pipe by getting flame from the fire. I don't know what he did when the fire wasn't lit, probably used matches (England's Glory). You could buy these spills from tobacconists ready made and in packets of multi-coloured wood.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that insight, Joppy. Wood certainly seems a more useful, and safer material for spills than paper. I guess people in WWI used whatever they had, and from the sound of it, scraps of paper were easier to get hold of than matches. If more people had written secret notes on scraps of wood, might Christie have used them in her novel?
DeleteYour mention of wooden spills reminds me of the episode "How to Ignite Your Errand Boy" in the series "Open All Hours," when Arkwright has Granville try to make fire-lighters in the shed out back. Like wooden spills, fire-lighters are another cultural artifact I missed out on in my childhood.
In the novel Limitations by E. F. Benson (published 1896), Teddy and Tom are having a discussion in Teddy's dorm room at Cambridge University in England. Then:
ReplyDelete"There was a long silence. Tom had halted in his walk by the chimney-piece, and was poking a paper spill down his pipe-stem."
In Charlotte Bronte's novel Shirley, the title character agrees to meet her former tutor, Louis Moore, in the old family school room. Tension crackles between them, and both find conversation difficult.
ReplyDeleteFrom Louis' diary:
"She had separated a slip of paper for lighting tapers--a spill, as it is called--into fragments. She threw morsel by morsel into the fire, and stood pensively watching them consume."
I played Poirot in a community theatre production of BLACK COFFEE which uses spills as a plot device as I recall.
ReplyDeleteSo, you've joined the ranks of Francis L. Sullivan and Austin Trevor, eh? Congratulations to you, New-Bedford-Robin! Indeed, your little grey cells have not failed you:
ReplyDelete"He moved to the mantlepiece and began to adjust the vase containing the spills used for lighting the fire.
Hastings watched him affectionately. 'I say, Poirot,' he laughed, 'what a fellow you are for neatness!'"
-----Black Coffee by Agatha Christie, adapted by Charles Osborne