References to Chinese Lanterns in Western Literature

Chinese lanterns were quite the thing in the late Victorian and Edwardian period in England it seems. They pop up as nice props on TV shows (movie wise Chinese lanterns in 1890s Paris pop up to liven up George’s garret in Bel Ami, which was otherwise a snooze-fest) but I’ve been coming across a few references in literature recently (not including that Charles Dickens at his home at Gads Hill in Kent would hang Chinese lanterns in the conservatory and apparently sit around of an evening admiring them). Here’s a couple, but if anyone has any others do let me know please?

George du Maurier’s Trilby (1894) has a scene with poor Trilby herself and her gang of artist acolytes celebrating Christmas in Paris in some Bohemian poverty but with some lovely decorations – “And suddenly the studio, which had been so silent, dark, and dull, with Taffy and Little Billee sitting hopeless and despondent round the stove, became a scene of the noisiest, busiest, and cheerfullest animation. The three big lamps were lit, and all the Chinese lanterns”.

And then GK Chesterton’s tale of wild anarchists threatening London, The Man Who Was Thursday – Chesterton has the invented Lodon suburb of Saffron Park which he describes in some details: “More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall, when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This again was more strongly true of the many nights of local festivity, when the little gardens were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit.” Those lanterns keep returning, “He thought of all the human things in his story—of the Chinese lanterns in Saffron Park, of the girl’s red hair in the garden, of the honest, beer-swilling sailors down by the dock, of his loyal companions standing by.”

The might DH Lawrence had a few Chinese lanterns around – in Women in Love Chinese lanterns appear decorated with crabs and seaweed as well as flights of storks etc with Ursula and Gudrun having different lanterns with different symbolism.