Background.
‘Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.‘ is a quotation from The Old Curiosity Shop (Chapter 7).
The Old Curiosity Shop was the fourth novel by Charles Dickens and follows the life of Nell Trent and her grandfather, both residents of The Old Curiosity Shop in London.
Context.
Quotation said by the character Richard Swiveller.
Richard ‘Dick’ Swiveller is Sampson Brass’s clerk and a scheming lawyer. Laid-back and carefree, despite racking up debts, Swiveller delights in quoting and adapting literature to describe his experiences.
Taken from the following opening passage of Chapter 7 of The Old Curiosity Shop:
Fred,’ said Mr Swiveller, ‘remember the once popular melody of Begone dull care; fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.’
Mr Richard Swiveller’s apartments were in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, and in addition to this convenience of situation had the advantage of being over a tobacconist’s shop, so that he was enabled to procure a refreshing sneeze at any time by merely stepping out upon the staircase, and was saved the trouble and expense of maintaining a snuff-box. It was in these apartments that Mr Swiveller made use of the expressions above recorded for the consolation and encouragement of his desponding friend; and it may not be uninteresting or improper to remark that even these brief observations partook in a double sense of the figurative and poetical character of Mr Swiveller’s mind, as the rosy wine was in fact represented by one glass of cold gin-and-water, which was replenished as occasion required from a bottle and jug upon the table, and was passed from one to another, in a scarcity of tumblers which, as Mr Swiveller’s was a bachelor’s establishment, may be acknowledged without a blush. By a like pleasant fiction his single chamber was always mentioned in a plural number. In its disengaged times, the tobacconist had announced it in his window as ‘apartments’ for a single gentleman, and Mr Swiveller, following up the hint, never failed to speak of it as his rooms, his lodgings, or his chambers, conveying to his hearers a notion of indefinite space, and leaving their imaginations to wander through long suites of lofty halls, at pleasure.
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