AND ANOTHER THING
Fires can be a blessing, often very effectively disguised
PAUL JOHNSON
One also learns from fires. Years ago, when we lived in Iver, Bucks, one of our small children, sent to rest in my study, played with matches and set it burning briskly. By the time I arrived, the mattress of the bed was well alight. Without thinking, I rushed in and tried to smother the flames by turning the mattress over. The only result was that both my hands were badly burned. This taught me that, when catastrophe strikes, it is sensible to pause for a few sec- onds and think hard before deciding what to do. When the Irish Republicans blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton, and nearly killed the entire Cabinet, we were staying next door at the Metropole, but were woken up and told to leave the hotel instantly, as the police thought a second bomb was about to go off. The other guests went down in their nightclothes, but I decided to take my time and get dressed. Just as well, as we were not allowed back into the hotel for many hours. I think of that dreadful night whenever I see brave and sweet Lady Tebbit in her wheelchair, pushed by her devoted husband. Odd to think that the unapologetic mass- murderers who perpetrated this atrocity have now been released from jail, patted on the back by Mo Mowlam, and for all I know given police protection like their leader Gerry Adams.
Fires fascinate some people, especially in Manhattan, where they raise peculiar prob- lems because they are often hundreds of feet above ground level. High-society types ingra- tiate themselves with the fire chief so that he gives them special access to the smarter blazes. The 18th-century MP George Selwyn, whose letters I have just been reading, was a fire fiend and had a special relationship with the London insurance companies, who then operated their own fire engines. He devel- oped his pyromania as a compensation for giving up gambling, the thrill being similar.
How is it that fires, like ruined financiers jumping off skyscrapers, provoke so many jokes? Hellfire jokes go right back to the early Middle Ages, and still worked as recently as the 1940s, when the musical Hellzapoppin' was a smash on Broadway. We fear fire so much that we like excuses to laugh at it. One of the most tragic fires occurred at Eton a century ago, when a boys' house went up in flames and some small boys, trapped on the top floor behind iron bars ironically put in for their protec- tion, died a horrible death.
The story of that fire was often recounted at the Beefsteak Club by an elderly habitué, an elegant, lanky baronet always dressed in impeccable tweeds, who had been head boy of the house at the time. He was called Sir Lawrence Somebody and wrote books of memoirs with names like A Victorian Boy- hood, An Edwardian Youth, and so on. One day he ended his narration with the words: 'And so the poor little boys were burnt to a crisp.' This struck those of us who were sit- ting opposite him as irresistibly funny and we laughed uproariously. Sir Lawrence was out- raged. Unfortunately, and most unfairly, his gaze focused exclusively on the man immedi- ately across the table, a jovial, Wodehousian peer called the Earl of Onslow, who admit- tedly had a penetrating chortle but who was no more responsible for the laugh than any- one else. 'How dare you laugh, sir!' stormed Sir Lawrence. 'Have you no heart? I had the heartbreaking experience of speaking to the parents of those poor dead boys, the most disagreeable experience of my entire life, sir, and you laugh! Fie, fie for shame!' And much more. The rest of us cringed and put on mournful long faces and pretended we had never so much as tittered.
Architecturally, fires are mixed blessings. The Great Fire of London destroyed most of the City's mediaeval churches but pro- duced Sir Christopher Wren's masterworks. To judge from prints, I do not regret old St Paul's, which had already lost its steeple and had acquired an incongruous portico by Inigo Jones. Without the fire, Wren's St Paul's, our noblest public edifice, would never have been built. But a generation later, in the reign of William III, fire destroyed the old palace of Whitehall, rich in treasures including Holbein's master- piece, his wall painting of Henry VIII and his family, plus magnificent gardens and fountains. On the other hand, the 1834 fire which destroyed the old Houses of Parlia- ment gave us Barry's present structure, which with its Pugin interiors, and now spec- tacularly cleaned, is at long last recognised as one of the finest buildings in Europe.
There can be few Scottish castles which have not been fire-struck at one time or another, the result of drunken revelry. In the days when I used to stay at Beaufort Castle, the ancient stronghold of the Lovat Frasers which went back to Norman times, I used to talk to an old man who had been an appren- tice stonemason at the time when the castle was rebuilt between the wars, following a devastating fire. In those days most Highland castles were crammed with stalking trophies, the ten-pointers' heads being mounted on shields to decorate the walls, the antlers of lesser stags being turned into chairs and other hideous articles of furniture. Indeed the amazing Mar Lodge in Aberdeenshire has, or had, a ballroom with walls and ceiling hung with more than 3,000 interlocked sets of deer horns. Beaufort had an ample sup- ply, too, in those pre-war days. When the fire broke out the family was away, but the estate workers, seeing the blaze, hurried to the cas- tle and formed human chains to rescue its contents. Lacking precise instructions, and fearing the blazing roofs would crash down at any moment, the brave Highlanders chose to get out the items they themselves thought most valuable. So all the stags' heads and countless other moth-eaten pieces of ancient taxidermy were laboriously hauled out, at grave risk to life, while family Rae- burns and Ramsays, precious porcelain and objets d'art of every description were left behind to perish in the flames.
Ah well! I am not sure what I would choose to save, if confronted by the same dif- ficult choice of priorities. Old master draw- ings and paintings? Cherished books, so arduously collected and arranged, read and reread? Papers and notebooks, plainly essen- tial if I ever get round to writing an autobi- ography? Or my millions of words of diaries? My mother used to say that possessions are a burden. I am getting to an age when I tend to agree with her. Maybe a fire can be a healthy purgative, a blessing in disguise. But as Churchill said after the 1945 election, 'it appears to be very effectively disguised.'
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